There is another objection, which, I think, was first raised by the honorable and learned member for Newport [Mr. Horace Twiss]. He tells us that the elective franchise is property; that to take it away from a man who has not been judicially convicted of malpractices is robbery; that no crime is proved against the voters in the closed boroughs; that no crime is even imputed to them in the preamble of the bill; and that therefore to disfranchise them without compensation would be an act of revolutionary tyranny. The honorable and learned gentleman has compared the conduct of the present ministers, to that of those odious tools of power who, toward the close of the reign of Charles the Second, seized the charters of the Whig corporations. Now, there was another precedent, which I wonder that he did not recollect, both because it is much more nearly in point than that to which he referred, and because my noble friend, the Paymaster of the Forces, had previously alluded to it. If the elective franchise is property, if to disfranchise voters without a crime proved, or a compensation given, be robbery, was there ever such an act of robbery as the disfranchising of the Irish forty-shilling freeholders?[7] Was any pecuniary compensation given to them? Is it declared in the preamble of the bill which took away their franchise, that they had been convicted of any offence? Was any judicial inquiry instituted into their conduct? Were they even accused of any crime? Or if you say it was a crime in the electors of Clare to vote for the honorable and learned gentleman who now represents the County of Waterford [Mr. O’Connell], was a Protestant freeholder in Louth to be punished for the crime of a Catholic freeholder in Clare? If the principle of the honorable and learned member for Newport be sound, the franchise of the Irish peasant was property. That franchise the ministers under whom the honorable and learned member held office did not scruple to take away. Will he accuse those ministers of robbery? If not, how can he bring such an accusation against their successors?