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'At Aberystwith, an individual who often served the office of mayor, is the lessee of two parcels of land, now of considerable value. But, "how far this gentleman may have availed himself of his influence with the Corporation, for the purpose of obtaining a beneficial lease of the premises in question-or how far improvident bargains may have been made on the part of the Corporation in the other leases granted by them-it would now be difficult to determine; the transactions were not conducted in such a way as to be altogether free from suspicion." 'The last and most important case of this description occurs at Carlisle, where, between the years 1700 and 1750, various demises were made by the Corporation of a tract of land called King-moor, for lives, for nominal considerations, and with covenants for perpetual renewal, the larger portions to members of their own body, and the smaller to freemen. About fifty years ago the Corporation contemplated resisting the renewal of these leases, but being advised they could not do so legally, the leases were renewed. About twenty

years ago, a small piece of land was let by the Council to one of its own members for 999 years, at the annual rent of 61. Three years afterwards he sold his interest in it for 70l.; and in the year 1815, the Corporation, for a nominal consideration, granted to the Recorder the site of a building in "Scotch-street;" but which grant was in fact an exchange. These cases are here stated somewhat in detail, because the details alone will show that the assumption that Corporations are in the "habit" of committing the most culpable species of malversation, rests (except so far as it may be supported by the Cambridge case and the other inedited evidence) upon the " conceptions of the Fordwich witnesses; the "strong belief," without evidence, of the Barnstaple witnesses; the "suspicions" which attach to the Aberystwith demise; the value of a moor in Cumberland in the first half of the eighteenth century; and the bargain made about twenty years ago by the member of the council at Čarlisle.'pp. 9, 10.

This, we think, will be quite enough to satisfy our readers; and we shall take leave of this topic by reminding these learned Commissioners of one of the maxims of their own profession' relative to evidence; falsus in uno-falsus in omni. What, then, must be the deduction, when the instances of falsehood-we are willing to hope not intentional-are so numerous and important?

Upon this Report, however, the ministers have introduced a bill to annihilate all our ancient municipal institutions, which had grown with the growth and strengthened with the strength of the English people; and to substitute for them a number of new districts-to be still called boroughs-in which all royal and corporate and local authorities and rights are to be merged in one uniform system of popular, or rather democratic, election: a system in all its details not merely destructive of all ancient influences, but establishing

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establishing amongst us new and, we think, most unconstitutional principles of authority, wholly at variance with the spirit of the English monarchy. The old rule was, that all authority emanated from the king. Rousseau and the modern philosophers, wandering back into the original theories of government, asserted that all authority emanates from the people; and this speculation-which evidently can never have a practical existence but in a republic-is about to become the sole rule and foundation of all internal government, in what we still affect to call the kingdom of England. Of the mere details of the bill we shall say little. There are some of them so monstrous that we cannot even now believe that they will be persisted in; such as not only depriving the crown or its chartered delegates of the choice of magistrates, but giving that choice to the rate-payers of the district, with larger powers than are now enjoyed by the king himself. For instance, the king cannot now appoint county magistrates without a certain qualification of property, and even then under the double check of two responsible advisers-the Lord-Lieutenant of the county and the Lord High Chancellor. Hereafter, says the Bill, the magistrates for the boroughs shall have jurisdiction in the counties, without any necessary qualification of property, and with no check or limit whatsoever on the elective caprices of the rate-payers—and, of course, of the lowest rate-payers, who will necessarily constitute the majority. A town council is to be elected by all rate-payers, one-third going out annually, but capable of immediate re-election. To the town council, thus irresponsibly constituted, all the authority, patronage, and property of the old corporations are to be transferred-under whatsoever circumstances or conditions such patronage and property may have been originally granted-whether by the gift or bequest of corporators themselves, or by persons having a special confidence in the corporation and with the clear intention of entrusting the administration of their benevolence to no other hands. Grants, therefore, and bequests made by members of the Church of England for the support of that church, may in all, and certainly will in many, cases, fall under the administration of Dissenters; and so certain are the dissenters of the predominance which the provisions of the bill are calculated to give them, that we have heard that a dissenting Member of Parliament, when asked why he did not urge the ministers to bring forward their promised measures for the relief of dissenters, answered-' If they will only carry the Municipal Reform Bill they will have done quite enough for us.'

But these democratic councils are not merely to be the trustees of all charity funds, and to have the management and distribution of all corporation property, and the exercise of all church patronage:

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they are to have, also, the uncontrolled licensing of all publichouses, and the absolute appointment to every borough office which can give the holder any kind of political influence. They are to choose the Mayor; who, besides other large and uncontrolled powers, is to be the sole judge of the right of voting in the borough, and is, moreover, to be in all cases the returning officer in elections of members of Parliament. The consequence of all this is obvious-the lowest rate-payers will be invested with all the power and patronage, and eventually with all the political influence, of the borough.

The whole principle of the bill is democratical; and its practical results will be anomaly, faction, and confusion. All the towns will be kept in the fever of constant canvass, and exposed to the disturbance of annual elections, without even the countervailing advantage of an annual change. Party spirit, which is the chief objection made to the existing corporations, will receive new fuel, and be extended in directions and applied to purposes where it is now wholly unknown. It will penetrate the inmost recesses of every town of the empire. Masters and workmen will be brought into new collisions; landlords and tenants will have fresh topics of difference; friends and families will be exposed to additional risks of disunion; and the result must be the election of a magistrate, who, if he does his duty, must offend his constituents-but who, on the other hand, is more likely to propitiate his constituents by the abandonment of his duties.

Every stranger who has visited America has reprobated, and many of the best of her own citizens regret, the constant excitement of elections which, like that minor curse, the yellow fever, is always lurking in the populations of the towns, impeding industry, engendering feuds, propagating and instigating brutality and barbarism, and tending to bring into more direct opposition and struggle the two great classes, which our ancient institutions wisely endeavoured to keep out of personal contact and consequent conflict-the Rich and the Poor. To this great-perhaps we should say this greatest-object, for securing the internal quiet and happiness of a civilized people, our old corporate system admirably contributed. The corporations formed, both in theory and practice, a middle term between labour and affluence. The poorest artisan-the parish apprentice-might become Lord Mayor of London; and, in point of fact, all the corporations in the kingdom were mainly composed of men who, by industry and good conduct, had bettered themselves in the world, and who rose through that happy medium to different degrees of respectability and rankwithout offence either to the humble classes from which they gradually emerged, or to the higher orders amongst whom they arrived,

with a well-earned opulence and by the merited confidence of their fellow-citizens. Instead of this beneficial system of permanence and unity in the institution itself, and of succession, gradation, and probation amongst its members, we are to have the sudden elevations and depressions of mere popular elections. The lowest brawler in the mob to-day, if he has but paid rates for three years, may be a town-councillor to-morrow, and chief-magistrate the day after; while the orderly and respectable inhabitants will retire from the arena of promiscuous and vulgar competition, and leave the municipal offices and the handling of the municipal funds and patronage to noisy and needy demagogues.

But the bill, we are satisfied, is framed even less for municipal than for political objects. It is meant as a supplement to the Reform Bill; and as if that were not sufficiently democratical, this municipal reform is calculated to extend and complete the mischief. This is indicated by many circumstances, but by one in particular, which, even after all our experience of Lord John Russell, has, we confess, surprised us.

Our readers will recollect that the Reform Bill was at first recommended by its supporters as a final constitutional arrangement. This pledge was afterwards, somewhat jesuitically, frittered down by an explanation that it was final only as to those points for which it had specially provided; but on these points, the ministers reiterated their solemn pledge, that it was a final measure; and, in short, that its provisions were not to be disturbed.

Now, mark the honesty of these men!-In the Reform Bill there was introduced a special clause, preserving their elective franchise to resident freemen, entitled to that privilege by birth or apprenticeship. This was one of the only two or three decent, just, and salutary amendments forced upon the government during that protracted struggle. Lord John Russell was obliged to defer to the sense of the House and the country; but the petty mortification of that slight defeat rankled, it seems, in his little mind, and a clause was introduced in the Municipal Reform Bill-in defiance of the pledge we have before mentioned, and at the risk of opening again all the questions of franchise understood to have been finally settled by the Reform Bill-a clause, we say, was introduced, abrogating that part of the Reform Act, and depriving the freemen of the justice which even the Reform Act had done them. This was bad enough; but what will our readers think when they are told that this repeal was attempted, not boldly, openly, and honestly, but-sub silentio-so obscurely, so casually, that it might and would probably have passed undiscovered and unnoticed, had not Sir William Follett's legal sagacity detected the device! And what places the covert intention beyond all doubt is this-that Lord

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John Russell, in the speech in which he opened the Municipal Bill, did not make the slightest allusion to the subject, nor say one word which could induce the House to suspect that so important a matter as the alteration of one of the most remarkable clauses of the Reform Bill-the second Magna Charta of our liberties, as it was pompously called-was to be repealed by a side wind-and by words so ambiguous, that none but a practised and astute lawyer could develope the secret intention. Was he covered with confusion at this detection? It seems not!-When, after this untoward discovery, he could no longer conceal the meaning of the clause, he tardily confessed, that such was the intention of the ministry; and the House of Commons, backing him by a large majority of Scotch and Irish members, repealed, in a bill for regulating corporations, this clause of the Reform Bill which had preserved to the freemen of England the rights which they had earned by their own labour, or inherited from that of their fathers. We will not trust ourselves to add one word of comment on these remarkable and undeniable facts, except only to congratulate Lord John Russell on this fresh instance of his consistency; and to rejoice, with the country, on its having a minister of such candour and talents, and with the House of Commons, on their having so judicious and trustworthy a leader.

We cannot, after all, believe that this provision, which to our understanding appears to be not merely wrong in policy but an absolute breach of faith, can be permitted to stand. If, from motives which we cannot appreciate, the House of Commons should, on re-consideration, persist in that determination, we know that there is yet another body which will see the danger of re-opening the discussions of the Reform Bill, and the injustice of depriving an humble but numerous and deserving class of Englishmen-against the opinion of a majority of English representatives-of the rights of their inheritance and their labour and we trust that, on such an occasion, the House of Lords will see the propriety of acting, even now, according to its convictions. We are anxious on this point, not because we think that an injustice, more or less, can alter the character of the Municipal Reform Bill, or that this franchise itself can be, under the existing circumstances, of any real value to the poor men from whom it is to be taken, or to the general interests of the country, but because we feel a peculiar anxiety that the House of Lords should vindicate and assert that character of impartial justice which belongs to it, as the highest legal tribunal, and the best, and hitherto neverfailing, resort of the injured and oppressed.

There are other details of this bill of a similar character; but our business is not with such details-and what could we add to the

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