The bill for restraining the Dividends of the East India Company was renewed, and after great debates carried by 130 to 41. Wedderburn opposed it strongly, and took occasion to ask, Who was the Minister of the House of Commons, now General Conway had resigned? He complained, too, of the erection of a third Secretary of State.
The nearness of a general election had now turned the attention of all men that way; and such a scene of profligacy and corruption began to display itself, that even the expiring House of Commons thought it became the modesty of their last moments to show indignation, if they showed no repentance: and while they were separately pursuing the same traffic, much of their public time was consumed in stigmatizing the practice. Beckford, on the 26th of January, moved for leave to bring in a bill to oblige the members to swear that they had not bribed their electors--a horrid bill, likely to produce nothing but a multiplication of perjury! It came out now, that the city of Oxford had acquainted Sir Thomas Stapylton[70] and Mr. Lee,[71] that they should be chosen for that town if they would contribute 7500_l._ towards paying the debts of the Corporation. The two gentlemen refused, and Oxford sold itself to the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Abingdon. Lord Strange took up the matter with zeal, and Sir Thomas was ordered to produce to the House the letter by which the offer had been made. It is not worth returning to this subject, and therefore I will conclude it briefly here. The Mayor of Oxford, and ten more of the Corporation, appearing at the Bar, confessing their crime, and asking pardon, Lord Strange moved to commit them to Newgate for a short time. This, after a debate, was agreed to. Beckford proposed an address to the Crown, that the Attorney-General might be ordered to prosecute them; but the House did not come into it, and they were discharged after confinement for five days. Dowdeswell proposed that Sir Thomas Stapylton should be thanked for rejecting the offer, and for telling the Corporation, that, as he did not intend to sell them, he could not afford to buy them; but Conway objecting that a mere rejection of corruption did not deserve the thanks of the House, which ought not to be rendered too common, the motion was dropped. The Duke and Earl not having been so scrupulous, and their agreement with the town having been entered into the book of the Corporation, the town-clerk was sent off with it to Calais; and Lord Strange was prevailed upon to absent himself from the House till the matter was hushed up.[72]