TAINING THE QUALIFICATION OF VOTING.

The interest of the manufacturers was also consulted in an act
encouraging the growth of madder, a plant essentially necessary in dying
and printing calicoes, which may be raised in England without the least
inconvenience. It was judged, upon inquiry, that the most effectual
means to encourage the growth of this commodity would be to ascertain
the tithe of it; and a bill was brought in for that purpose. The rate of
the tithe was established at five shillings an acre; and it was enacted,
that this law should continue in force for fourteen years, and to the
end of the next session of parliament; but wherefore this encouragement
was made temporary it is not easy to determine.--The laws relating to
the poor, though equally numerous and oppressive to the subject, having
been found defective, a new clause, relating to the settlement of
servants and apprentices, was now added to an act passed in the
twentieth year of the present reign, intituled, "An act for the better
adjusting and more easily recovering of the wages of certain servants,
and of certain apprentices." No country in the universe can produce
so many laws made in behalf of the poor as those that are daily
accumulating in England: in no other country is there so much money
raised for their support, by private charity, as well as public
taxation; yet this, as much as any country, swarms with vagrant beggars,
and teems with objects of misery and distress; a sure sign either of
misconduct in the legislature, or a shameful relaxation in the executive
part of the civil administration.--The scenes of corruption, perjury,
riot, and intemperance, which every election for a member of parliament
had lately produced, were now grown so infamously open and intolerable,
and the right of voting was rendered so obscure and perplexed by the
pretensions and proceedings of all the candidates for Oxfordshire in
the last election, that the fundamentals of the constitution seemed to
shake, and the very essence of parliaments to bo in danger. Actuated
by these apprehensions, sir John Philips, a gentleman of Wales, who
had long distinguished himself in the opposition by his courage and
independent spirit, moved for leave to bring in a bill that should
obviate any doubts which might arise concerning the electors of knights
of the shire to serve in parliament for England, and further regulate
the proceedings of such elections. He was accordingly permitte