a time, the same complaints were advanced against the decision of election committees that had formerly been employed to discredit the judgments of the whole House.  The success or failure of a petition again became a party question; and as in a committee of an odd number the ministerialists or the Opposition must inevitably have a majority of at least one member, before the end of the reign it had become as easy to foretell the result of a petition from the composition of the committee as it had been in the time of Walpole.  And it was with the approval of almost all parties—­an approval extorted only by the absolute necessity of the case—­that, after one or two modifications of Mr. Grenville’s act had been tried, Mr. Disraeli induced the House to surrender altogether its privilege of judging of elections, and to submit the investigations of petitions on such subjects to the only tribunal sufficiently above suspicion to command and retain the confidence of the nation, the judges of the high courts of law.

We shall probably be doing the House of Commons of the day no injustice, if we surmise that the degree in which public attention had recently been directed to the representation, and the interest which the people were beginning to show in the purity of elections, as the principle on the maintenance of which the very liberties of all might depend, had some share in leading the House to establish the wholly new, though most necessary, precedent of punishing a constituency for habitual and inveterate corruption.  It may be called the first fruits of Mr. Grenville’s act.  At the end of the same year in which that statute had been passed, a select committee had sat to try the merits of a petition which complained of an undue return for the borough of New Shoreham.  And its report brought to light an organized system of corruption, which there was too much reason to fear was but a specimen of that which prevailed in many other boroughs as yet undetected.  It appeared from the report, founded as it was on the evidence and confession of many of the persons inculpated, that a society had long existed in New Shoreham, entitled the Christian Club, which, under this specious name, was instituted, as they frankly acknowledged, for the express purpose of getting as much money as possible at every election from the candidates they brought in.  The members of the club were under an oath and bond of L500 not to divulge the secrets of the club, and to be bound by the majority.  On every election, a committee of five persons was nominated by the club to treat with the candidates for as much money as they could get.  And, in pursuance of this system, when, on the death of Sir Stephen Cornish, one of the members for the borough, five candidates offered themselves to supply the vacancy, this committee of five opened negotiations with them all.  The offers of the rival purchasers were liberal enough.  One (General Smith) proposed to buy the entire club in the lump