constitution, ‘That as one borough decayed and another arose, the one was abolished, and the other was invested with the right.’ He had been told some curious circumstances connected with the proceedings at Wareham. His hon. friend had informed him that on the occasion of his being chaired as one of the members for Wareham, he heard one elector say to another, ‘Pray, which is the new member.’ Why, answered the other, ‘Calcraft is one, and a friend of his is the other; but I never saw him, and I don’t know who he is.’ Doubtless any person recommended by his hon. friend would be highly respectable but he was elected without being at all known by the electors. For his own part he felt no alarm for the results of the Bill. By that Bill would be upheld the influence of the aristocracy as it was before; he meant that legitimate influence which they ought to possess, not the influence of bribery and corruption, nor the influence of direct nominations, for the only influence which the Bill would remove was that which was notoriously illegal. Ministers had come into office pledged to economy, retrenchment, and reform; these pledges they had redeemed. They had cut off from themselves and their successors for ever that corrupt patronage upon which heretofore so much of the Government depended. With these views of the measure before the House, he earnestly implored hon. members, by their sense of justice to the country, by their respect of what was due to the people, by their regard for the maintenance of that glorious constitution, what had been handed down to them by their ancestors, by their regard for the permanency of our institutions, and the peace and security of the state; he called on them by all these considerations, by their respect for the petitions of the people, for what might be lawfully asked and could not be constitutionally refused, to support His Majesty’s Government in their endeavour to uphold and cement the legitimate rights of the Crown, the aristocracy, and the people, and, by so doing, to fix the whole as well as their own fame on the imperishable basis of the affections of the people.”