SELECT COMMITTEE ON FICTITIOUS VOTES, IRELAND. y the election, without being liable to an indictment for perjury ?— I know they some- T. Covrtenay, Esq. times take the qualification oath, when they have parted with every perch of the ' land ; ajid I have known them to take the qualification oath when the life in the 23 March 1838. lease was dead, and the title ceased. 6807. You have no doubt that they were liable to an indictment for perjury?— No doubt of it, and I indicted some of them ; but, in consequence of being called away from Longford, I was obliged to give up the cases. 6808. But you may bring them on again?— I suppose we may if we think it worth while. 6809. Mr. Lefroy.] Is there not great difficulty in sustaining an indictment for perjury ?— Very considerable difficulty. 6810. Do you consider that the mere penalty of being subject to an indictment for perjury is at all a sufficient guard against fraudulent and fictitious votes ?— I do not think it is. 6811. Has any latitude of practice with regard to a species of written evidence of title, which has been admitted, tended to introduce fictitious and fraudulent votes upon the register"— I have seen persons come forward claiming to register out of scraps of paper pasted together, suppose on a newspaper, which they state to have been a lease, but that it had melted, as they called it, in their box ; on being asked how it came that it had melted, they have said that the damp had destroyed it. 6812. Have you actually seen admissions made in cases of that sort, where neither the name of the lessor nor the lessee appeared ?— Yes ; nor the land, nor the rent, nor the tenure, nor the execution, and not the slightest trace of a stamp ; I have seen persons admitted upon such a document. 6813. Has that been the practice before both the registering barristers, Mr. French and Mr. Tighe ?— Yes; where not one of us could read what the thing purported to be. 6814. Mr. Beamish.] Was there no corroborative evidence sought?— The cor- roborative evidence sought, was a question put to the man as to how the document became injured and torn in that way ; and he said it had been a lease, and that it had been either destroyed by damp, or that it had melted, that was the general phrase ; and that he had pasted those bits together, and that that was all that remained of it. 6815. Mr. 0, Connell.~] In every such case must not the landlord know whether the man had a title or not?— The landlord should know. G816. Mr. Beamish.] Was there only the man's own evidence in corroboration of the claim ?— I do not recollect any other evidence being brought forward. 6817. Mr. Lefroy. J Do you conceive that, taking the man's own oath as a test of his qualification, is a good or a politic system with a view either to the preven- tion of perjury, or to the obtaining of a sound constituency ?— I do not. 6818. What would you propose to substitute in place of it?— That the holding out of which the claimant sought to register should be viewed by, we will say, the county cess collector, the rate collector or collectors, and that they should return upon oath their opinion of the value of that holding, or the fitness of it to qualify a 10/. voter, and that the voter himself should not be tested as to the value of it; for I think it is a dangerous and a very unfortunate system for Ireland that men are suffered to come forward, and in many instances put a false exaggerated value upon their lands under the political feeling that exists of swelling the register. 6819. Do the claimants in many instances resort to the evidence of one another for the purpose of upholding their qualifications ?— They do ; I have witnessed such testimony. There has been claimant and witness, and witness and claimant, swearing for each other ; the next man upon the list of notices would be offered in support of the man under examination from the same townland, and who have of course a direct interest in swearing the property out of which the man under exa- mination claimed to register to be of 10/. value. It has got to an enormous pitch, the practice of swearing land to be worth a rent which, from my experience in the letting of lands, I never would think of looking for. 6820. You have been present at most of the registries ; you were present at the whole of the great registry, and you have been present at most of the subsequent registries ?— Every day. 6821. Have you heard in many instances a value put upon lands which you knew to be outrageously beyond anything that could be obtained from any species 643. i> ot