The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-08-04 00:00:00

r I . GENJLEMEN% FASI4IONABLE COSTUME • ESTABLISHMENT. • " Bank-buildings, . Cita le-street: WPAT of ENGLAND CLOTHS, CASSIMERES&c. , of the most prevailingColours, sold by the Piece orArard• Garnar , rits made to order at 'prices unequally', without any responsibititv to purchasers, for pro not paym t only. viz.:— Various' Colbur Dress Coats, VVaistc ts, and s. d. Trowser4, per order Handsome Frock, with Silk Faciigs. Superfine Black Dress Coat, W tcoat, and Tr )wseri, complete 4 11 6 The Proprietors beg to assure the public, that all Coals, Cas simeres, &c. sold at this Establishment are of genuine West of England manufacture. The. Trade supplied, as heretofore, at manufacturer's prices. SODA, SEDLITZ, AND GINGER B ER POWDERS. KENDA LL and SON, 447, West Str ud, Londo,t, prepare, with the most accurate care, LINE POWDERS of everl• description. A Packet of Pow qs, containing sufficient for Twelve Glasses of SODA Water, SIX-PENCE. A Box of Powders, containing sufficient for Twelve Glasses of SED LITZ WATER, ONE SHILLING. A Packet of Powders, containing sufficient for Twelve• Goblets of GINGER BEER, in the highest. state of perfection, ONE SHILLING. The above are recommended by the most 'eminent of the Faculty. May be obtained at the Proprietors' Depot :-17, New-street, Birmingham ; 61, Lord-street, Liverpool ; 35, Market-street, Manchester; 1, Adelaide-street, Charing-cross, London; 191, Fore-street, Exeter • 43, Wine-street, Bristol; 18, Foregate street, Worcester ; I, Theatre-buildings, Shrewsbury; 97, St. James's-st reet,'Brigh ton. FRENCH ESTABLISHMENT, Removed; from No. 22 to No. 35, opposite Postofftce-place, Church-street, Liverpool.) I / BRANCH HOUSES IN MANCHESTER AN RISTOL. ' MONSIEUR CHOFFIN, (from Pari FonEIGN Boors, PRINT, and MUSIC SELLER, respec iliv invites the Pub lic to an inspection of his extensive a choice COLLEC TION of Ancient and Modern FRENCH E.N GRAVINGS and LITHOGRAPHIC PRINTS, Plain and•Coloured, which he continues to offer from 15 to 20 per cent. lower than any other house i❑ the trade. • French Books at the publishers' prices. Fitch, Sable, Hog Hair, and other Brushes, Crayons, &c. French Ultra Ma rine and Carmine, Optical Views, amusing Mechanical Fi gures, &c. at equally.low prices. Mons. C. deems it advisable to inform the Public, that he continues to procure for his Friends works in -all Languages, from Paris, also any articla,nl French Manufacture not pro-, `hibited to he imported. .All these eotning direct .from his fa mily in Pftiis, instead of thikugh London Agents,' lons. C. is enabled . f o be very moderate in hia, prices. Subscriptions received for-all the new works`now publishing in Paris. Catalogues of the principal French Booksellers ready, for perusal. Schoois.,and Libraries supplied, and Exportation Orders executed at 3 trifling Commission. • N.l3.—A letter despatched to Pam every Thursday, and large imports received once a'fortnigV. VETERINARY 'MEDICAL DISPENSARY, . 1 91, pA L lit,gTREEi. • • IiAAVIri WrAGGART, VETERINARY SURGEON, Member of.the'Royal Veterinary College, and Fellow of the Lon ' doUVeteriaary :Medical Society, begs to intimate to the Nobi lity and Gentryof LiverOo'ol Arid its Vicinity, t the has corn ' menced 'Practice at 91,' Dale-street, and re ectfully solicits ' their support. Having studied under the st celebrated Pro fessors im London and Paris, and for seve 1 years pursued the _practice With distinguished success, un the finn of D. and W. M'Taggart, Veterinary Surgeons, eeds, he flatters him self that he will be enabled t o give en tir e sat i s f act i on to those . whO may honour him with their'patronage. D. M'T. begs further to intimate, that on application at his • Veterinary Medical Dispensary, the most approved Medicines may be hid, with advice gratis, in all . cases where personal attendance may be deemed unnecessary.' . N.B.—Forge at Mr. BELLIS'S, Marble-street. CAMBRIDGE' UNIVERSI 11,TESSRS. CREEKE and RATNET , Roes 'MAKERS _Lilt and TAILORS, in submitting their t ms of doing Busi ness,' beg leave to return their sincere anks for the liberal patronage they have experieriCed fr the University and Public in general, and most respectfully to solicit a continuance of the same. • TERMS . . Twelve Months Credit, 'or 5 per Cent. Cash. 2.1 per Cent. , Discount at Six Months, and ail accounts sent to Tutors con sidered as Ready Money, and. Discount deducted on delivering . the Bills. An additional 5 per Cent..per Annum will be added on all Accounts exceeding twelve months credit Extra quality Black or Blue Coat £4 4s. Regular Best • Ditto Finest Coloured Coat 316 Regular Ditto - 3lO The quality usually sold • 3 3 • Made td Order, and all other Garments at the same rate. Clergymen's Silk or Tabinet Gowns from £5 ss. to £l2 12s. , Cassock and Sash at two-thirds the price of the Gown. Contracts to any extent for Army, Navy, or Foreign Cloth ing. Costumes of every Age and Country made on the shortest' notice. P.S. Tuom As Crt LEKE respectfully requests that all Accounts contracted previous to the above 'Partnership may be paid iinuediately; or they will be charged the additional 5 per Cent. per Annum, and that those Gentlemen'who have not received their Ae6mnts will be pleased to favour him, per post or other wise, with their addresses. ' • : ' Mews' - Yard, Sidney -street, July 28, 1835. TO THE FASHIONABLE -CIRCLE OF LIVERPOOL. .47 4 11.1EDERICK AsTLEY, for some years Principal At-sis tant to Vox, of the Burlington Arcade, and previously with Mr. Truefitt, London, announces to the Nobility, Gentry, &c.. of Liverpool and vicinity; that, having had the honour of waiting upon the following distinguishred•members of the'Royal - Family, the Dukes of Cambridge and (late) Gloucester,.Frinceui Augusta, Duchesses Cumberland and Gloucestey, also the piin , cipal noble Vamilies in the kitigdinn, %Yid Trhin thein'ideeti/Vd ; expressions of extreme satisfaction, he will CUT and DRESS LADIES' and GENTLEMEN'S ILAIR , in a style' unpiece dented in Liverpool, and excelled by none in the Metropolis : a trial will ensure their approbation. ,` GENTLEMEN'S WIGS on a new principle, entirely void of stiffness and formality, the appearance of which will astonish the connoisseur.. Also, the 'celebrated INDIA RUBBER DIT ' The stiff end-sombre appearance, so just complained of, and forming the great obj ec ti on t o Ladies w aring F'alse entirely obviated, the natural appearance r der,ing it impossible to lie recognised as the work of art. To those ladies who value a smooth an glossy appearance of the Hair, ASTLEY'S PERSIAN OIL will be found the only thing extant to retain its gloss after application, and cause the short and rough Hairs to comb with the long beautifully, either with Natural or False Flair. f o those who wear plaits or Ring lets, it will be found to admit of no coinpetition with any article of the .day. Price 2s. 6d., and ss. A splendid Bost of the Princess Vittoria, in full Dress, from life, obtained at a great expense, fr om th e m o st celebrated Ar tist in LOndon, PERFUMERY of every description. Cumparivons sOlicited in price and quality, 25, Bold-street. ?public Bobttz. UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF' HER MOST 1 GRACIOUS MAJESTY, THE QUEEN, THE PRINCESS VICTORIA, THE MARCHIONESS OF CHOLMONpELEY, LADY GREY EGERTON, '• THE LADY ANN WILBRAHAM, MRS. EGERTON WARBURTON, MRS. ASHLEY, • M R.S. WOODIIOUSE, MRS. HAYES, MRS. LowTEN. AND A COMMITTEE OF MANAGEMENT. A BAZAAR, for the SALE of LADIES' USEFUL and 11... 'ORNAMENTAL WORK, will be held in the PRODS IIAM FRET: GRAMMAR SCHOOL, on Tficasnsy next, the 6th of August. the proceeds of which will be applied in aid 'of the Fund fur Erecting and Supp or ti ng a National S c ho o l in frodshatn. The Committee, ip announcing this_Bazaar, respectfully soli cit the contributions of alt who have it iu their power to forward the great object of instructing the. Children of the. Poor. They have sincere pleasure-in announcing that her Majesty has been graciously pleased to patronize the Baiaar by sending two elegant and Ornamental Baskets, a Drawing executed by , the PrincesS Victoria, and a pair of Socks knit by the late Mrs. Hannah More. . The Lady-Patronesses and the several Members of the Com mittee have kindly consented to preside at the stalls. Driers 1.6 be opened at Eleven o'clock. - . Admittance-)ms Shilling. . • For the convenience of those F r i en d s o f Ed ucat i on, resident in Liverpool, who may be disposed to patronize this undertak ' ing, the E . tierton Stearn-packet has been kindly granted by Mr. J. Sothern, - and will start from the George's Pier-head precisely at a quarter past Seven en the morning of the 6th August, and will return from.Fredshain the - same evening. —Fare; Is. 6d. ~•I * . Mr. StUbl - is'S' Royal Harmonic . Band is engaged 'for the occasion. GRAND' JUNCTION RAILWAY. • XTOTICE IS 11EREBYfGIVEN that ttie ANNUAL .OE -1.1• N ERA L of RAitIVArCOMP.ANY rill be heldKn WEDNESDAY, the 26th day of August next, at One o'clock in the Afternoon. at , the Cotton Sales Room, in the •Exchange-buildings, in Liver . Pool. Dated at Liverpool this 29th day of July, 1835, J. SWIFT', Clerk of the Company. GRAND JUNCTION RAILWAY, PURSUANT to an Act passed in the third year of the reign of his present ,Majesty,, intituled " A Act for waking } a Railway froui th e . W arr i ng t on a nd 'New on Railway, at Wilr " rington, in the county of Lancaster, t Birminvham, in the " county of 'Warwick, to. be called T Grand Junction Rail " way, " NOTICE. IS HEREB GIVEN, That the Directors ; appointed under and by virtue of the said Act have, pursuant to the proviiious thereof, made a CALL from the several Subscriliers to, anti Proprietors of Shares .in, the said Undertaking of the 6Ufft of TEN POUNDS. in respect .of every Shire, and haVe ordered that such Call be paid to Messieurs Moss and C0 me „,,,,, , bankers, Liverpool, or (on their Account) to i vi ess i eurs B ARCLAY, TRITII , N, B EVAN, en d . ComPANv., Bankers, London, or to Tn. BIRAIVNGHAM BA>ilK -I.NG Cusieativ., Birmingham, on ur before the fifteenth day of Septemberuelit ; anti the several P ropr i etors, of Sbares•are required to, pay such Call ai:cordiuglv. Dated at Liverpool this 22d . day of July, 1835, J. SWIFT, Clerk of the Company. BANK OF LIVItRPOOL; ' SIXTR DlilDt:NP. THE DIRECTORS of 'the BANK' of LIVERPOOL db i . hereby give Notice to the Proprieto 4, that they have de dared . a HALF-YEARLY DIVIDE , ,at the rate of £7 per Cent. per annum,,on the paid up C- pital of the Company, ' front the Ist ofJanuary to the 30th o' une, 1835, and that such - Dittidend will he payable at .the B -of the Company, in Wa , ter:stteet, on and after Ttiv.srA the 4th'dav of August next, . ' between the hours of Ten and Th eon each "day, . - . . Fated at Liverpool this Bth day, of July, 1833. By ordar of.the Beard,' JOSE 'l-I LANGTON, Manager. Eaeli:Proprietor wi4 be ei:pected, (d required,) . on applying ',.. 4 for.his Dividend, to pr94o the Certificate or Certificates °lbis : The.trinsfer•Bookgs7wAl,h closet: lutiii the st.b . oVAugust ; ..., -asclusive.- . ;. 1 „ -, .. , .. 7 .„ .‘, •:( ‘ `..:-.c.i. ,- , ~ . :, •• .... t imptrial Varlianunt. HOUSE OF LORDS.-•--THL'ItSDAY. MUNICIPAL COI.PORATIONS BILL. [ln order to give the whole or Sir Charles Wetherell's argu ment at the bar of the House of Lords, against the principle of the municipal corporations' bill, we have been compelled to omit our usual abridgment of the other proceedings in parkia ment.] . . . The order of the day having been read, counsel were or dered to be called in, and Sir Charles Wetherell and Mr. Knight appeared at the bar. Sir CHARLES WETHLRELL'COMMeBeed his address to their lordships, by• stating that he, was placed in a perfectly novel situation, and had to beg their lordships' indulgence under the circumstances in which he found himself. Sir L. SHADWELL asked for whom the learned counsel ap peared Sir C. WETHERELL said that he could not so easily explain. Perhaps he might best do so by stating that he appeared pro populo —for every corporate population in England and Wales. His clients he was unable distinctly to enumerate: All those who had petitioned were his clients, and as to those corpora tions whose petitions were not yet before their lordships, he was convinced that if they only knew the tyrannical attack which was levelled against th e i r rights and privileges, and property , they would be, one and a ll, as anxious to rush forward to the rescue as those which had been fortunate enough already to ap par before their lo r d s hip s ,— un d ou bt e dly, if t h e y bad heard, or could have conceived or imagined us dreamed of the contents of that most outrageous, unjust, and tyrannical bill, they would one and all have presented themselves before their lordships as petitioners. When, therefore, he was asked for whom he did appear, he feared that the reverse of that question might be put to him. and th a t h e m i g ht b e as k e d f or w h om h e did not appear. He was anxiou s not t o exc l u d e an yb o dy th a t was a fflicted. He believed that h e a pp eare d f or a ll th e corpora ti ons o f England and Wales. The bodies, however, that he appeared for, trod •that • had petitioned, he would recite to their lordships as soon. as he could get the catalogue of his' clients. The learned gentleman then proceeded to read the list, stating that Roches ter confided in him—thiit• Malburough depended upon him — that Leicester"was Ins—that Oxford regarded him as a friend — that Norwich affected him—that Warwick went with him—that Worcester he took under his wing—that with Coventry he was hand and glove—that the rose of Lancaster he wore—that He reford consorted with him—that Truro trusted him—cum multis aliis, which it would be too long to number. Having now stated and intimated the parties fur whom he appeared, he would beg to say a'word or two upon a person so humble as himself. A petition had been presented from 13ristol, of which corpora tion he •was a member, and that petition it was his wish, his anxiety, and his duty to support to the very best of his ability. They solicited that their case should be taken' out of the, bill; the corporation was irreproachable, and it was universally m•knowledged that Bristol was th e iec o nd or third city of Great 'loritain. NoifLondon was left out, and he 'considered that -Bristol had grounds equally strong for claiming its .exclusion from the operation of this penal measure. He had had instruc tions to support this Bristol petition, and was ready so to do; ' but after this he understood it was their lots - Mips' wish that the arguments against the principle and chiet details of the bill should be consolidated, and that some two counsel should be heard on the subject. Under these circumstances, although in the Bristol petition he felt he had responsibility snore than enough, and although it was greatly against his wishes and feel ' roes to undertake at twenty-four hours'notice the defence of 183 different corporations, all the cases varying, varying the one from the other, yet obedient to their lordship? order he would not shrink from the task imposed upon him, hazardous as he knew it to be, and great as was the responsibility. The Very imperfect opportunity which he had, enjoyed of examining the various documents and instruments which had poured in upon him compelled him "tis throw himielf upon the candour and indulgence of their lordships. Undeterred, however, by the difficulties with which he was surrounded, he should, in pur suance of the duties imposed on him, pursue the best course he could, and proceed in the most direct road that he could take in this unexampled case, so as to consume the smallest possible portion of their lordships' valuable time.. The prayer of the pe titioners was, that they might s be heard by counsel at theirlord ships' bar against the bill, which bore. a very modest-title. Parenthetically he begged to observe, that it would be a conve nience if noble lords • would take care to have the bill itself before them, together with the protest of Sir Fs Palgrave and, the so-to-call-it posthumous protest of a' gentleman nitmned Hogg. Both these documents he could assure them weresvery important. ThiS bill, against which the petitioners contended, was a bill which recommended itself, as was the case with -most bills in which something very violent was meditated; by a title the most modest, unassuming, bashful, and captivating. One 'would be led from the title to suppose e that the object of the .measure was simply, and solely, and sincerely to preserve each and all of these institutions. They would be led to suppose, under the title, that the bill was what they were in the habit of styling elsewhere a conservative measure; and they would eou elude from its modest face and maiden bldsh that, while it 'pro posed to regulate, it at the same time fervently intended to preserve the corporations. The bill was entitled . " An Act to provide for the Regulation of Municipel Corporations in Eng land and Wales." But what was the lea' meaning of -this regulation ?'' To what did it amount? It amounted to a confis cation of-all their charter:L-- to the expulsion of every man Who now held a corporate office—to the overthrow i utterly o the ancient municipal hOdy, whi c h Was to - be Supe.raeded quite,'and a new and different instituti o n es tabli s hed i n its steal. The regulation was to abolish the authority which the existing cor-' poste bodies had derived from the crown, amid to substitute for the ancient depositaries of p ow e r a n e w plebeian anal democra tic system of government, which was not only nut like the pre ceding, but which would be absolutely untenable by any one of the:charters. With this mendacious title to the bill, then, ths trainers of it proceeded to regulate the corporations; but he did not read beyond the second page before he found "that so much of all laws, statutes, and usages, and so much of all royal and other charters, grants, and letters patent now - in force relating to the several boroughs named in the schedules (A) and (13): to this act annexed, or to the inhabitant's thereof, or tothe several bodies or reputed bodies corporate named in the said schedules, ,or any of them, as are inconsistent with or contrary to the provisions of this act, shall be and the same are hereby repealed and annulled;" that was to say, excepting just eo.-niuch of the statutes, &c. &c. as they yteesed, to ' leave . . untouched in the fallowi ng p ages . And henrhe had painfully travelled as far as page 30, he dis.- covered that not one real principle, law, or usage—nothing, in it:word, of 'the ancient system had been left—that everything; had been altered, excepting that which,' indeed, the bill did condescend to leave, and that was not one substantial particle • of the ancient frame and forum of municipal government and system. The effect of the bill therefore was literally this e the name of existing charters was left, the norninis umbra. The ancient charter was left, but it was gutted,—it was disembowel led; the skeleton of the charter, the dry unclothed bones were let, aud those alone. They left the ancient names of the officers and the corporations; there was still to be the mayor and bur gesses -of Oeford, the bailiffs and burgesses of IpswiCh; but every existing mayor, bailiff, and burgess, was to be expelled, and a new race, novi homines, a strange herd of person; were to be driven into their places under the operation of the democratic principles of this bill, which were actually founded on the doc trines of annual Parliaments and universal suffrage. 'Thus, bodies that from th e n a t ure o f th e i r i nst i tut i on s h ou ld b e fi xe d and sedentary, were to be removed for others which, from the tratureof them, must necessarily be in a perpetual condition of commotion and transition. Moreover, in addition to giving to the new body the powers, magisterial and others, held by, the old, others were to be conferred upon them. All the . powers of locally keeping the peace—all the executive and admiuistrative powers, which haq been given to the ancient authorities, upon certain conditions, were to be handed over t o th e new corners,who were n o t qualified by any of the probationary or precau tionary measures which were essential to the promotion of their predecessors. The whole system, which they had inherited from' their ancestors, was to be sweptaway. The form of the charter was to be left; but the charter itself was to be vaccinated with a new system, or rather let him say, was to have a new system ingrafted on it. Without running through a crtntilena of the clauses of the bill, lie Would attempt to deal with its leading principles. First, he would ask who were to be the electors of this municipal body? It appeared from pages 4 and 5 of the bill that every man in any community who was rateable fur pro perty to any amount (for it was not limited) ini e eht vote; every man occupying any h ouse , warehouse, counting-house, or shop, within any district, had a right to be put upon the rate : and it put on the rate for a period which was short of three years be fore the election in the new community, .he had a right to vote for the new body which was called a council. That was to say, that any man who for a certain period paid upon a property, no matter how small a' rate, of five per cent., say ev en 6d. on 10s, a-year, would have a right to vote. Why this was even worse than in the French Constitution of 1792, which one would have imagined was in all conscience sufficiently liberal. It was made by great philanthropists and philosophers, and philoinaths,—in one word, by great march-et-intellect men, yet even they had not ventured to go quite so far as the enlightened legislators who had succeeded theta in the labours of reform and reconstruction. They had a rule that no man should vote for the primary body, which was to consist of electors, excepting he pail in taxes -to the state three days' labour, which was equivalent to some 4s. or ss. a-year. Now here there was riot only the guard of some pe cuniary qualification, but also that of an intermediate body. But, accordiug to the bill before them, the person who contri buted as a rate the smallest silver or copper coin for a definite period might vote for the rulers under the new Jacobin dynasty. So much for the electors. Let them now cast their eyes uppn those who Were eligible to till offices in which there is much power fur good aud evil, aud so much responsibility. In page 17 they might see the characterof the rulers of the new dynasty. There was to be a mayor and council. There was to be no qualification of property. There was none for the voter, and s pariratione, by the powers of just sympathy and the fine liberal feelings,pf *eternization which now prevailed, there was of pourse to bp none for the person elected. TL only qualification . ' asecessartetikhlsoficer Was, that he * s hould .be a burgess, that he shoubi be entitled to vote. Therefore the qualification for th 4 mayor was no more than for the voter, and the person in vested under the bill with high authority , and great trust might be no more than a rated pauper—an individual who paid some trifle as a rate to maintain his vote, though scarcely by any means able to maintain hi mse lf. N ow, suc h being the case, let their lordships look to the power, administrative and executive, which belonged to these new corporate offices. The bill gave the officers the power of watch and ward, which amounted to a power infinitely greater than any which existed at present : they hail the power of making by-laws. It was there enacted, "that it shall be lawful for the council of any borough to make such by-lawseis to them shall seem meet for the good rule and government of the borough, and fur prevention and suppression of all such nuisances as are not already punishable 111 a stint mary manner by vi r t ue o f any act in force throughout such borough, and to appoint tic such by-laws such tines as they shall. Non this by-l aw b e i ng sent up deem necessary f o r th e prevent i on and suppress i on o f suc h of fence,." to one of His Majesty's principal Secretari e s o f S tate, m i ght acqu i re t h e f orce o f l aw . I t was, in fact, a legislative nower. They,might, - for instauee, in their district establish a curfew law 'provided it 'seemed meet for the good rule and government of the borough. In fact, their lordships would find that iii that bill there was too much of Downing-street in every . clause. It was new to liaVe the corporate officers Moved about here and there'as a secretary o e• s r a t e might fancy. It was strange to have corporate bodies, that used to be re cognized as fixed, turned into teols to be played with by the government—to go on with the movement, or to stand still with its opponents, just as the administration then in power might happen to fancy. The intervention of government in the local affairs of corporations he maintained was new and unheard of in any era or time of the British' constitution. Great complaints, indeed, had been made, that at present the magistrates always took a side in politics on every question; but did not the govern ment itself always take a side on every question, and was this a reason for making corporation s mere playthings aud tools in the hands of each successive administration—tsi have their offi cers made or unmade under the auspices of that new democratic system, as might suit the whine or the convenience, or the po licy of the minister? lie begged to press these matters on their lordihips' at tention, and should be glad to know from those who supported the bill what they could say in favour of these large privileges. He now came to a power even still more monstrous than that of legislation to which he had adverted. Be alluded to that which in the House of Commons was called the poser of the purse. 'lt was said their lordships had no right to interfere u ith a money bill. The commons accordingly ought to be taut obliged tp their lordships for•strikisig out certain . c • ,•~ 4 THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD. clauses, With the substance and effect of Which the guardians of the public purse cUuldnot, he preautned,.have been acquainted: The substance was not stated in the margin. Many hon. mem bers had probably only read 'the catch wurds, and then the ayes had it whatever it was. It was most desirable, however, that this should be corrected there, and thatthe rash and iudls criminate, frarn“s of Ibis bill gbatild be saved from the copse- quences of their own blind precipitancy. Let them see what the Chancellor Of the Exchequer could do under his new Ex chequt.r—hia new municipal corporations bill. They found, in page 52, - that to the new council was to be transferred all the corporate property of the ancient corporations. This, it must be allowed, was a pretty good temptation to a set of men who might not have any property at all. It private individuals were to appoint bankers, they would inquire at Lombard-street; they would look to their credit; but the m a gnanimous framers , of the bill in respect of corporate property despised all such low considerations, all grovelling inquiries as to money ciedit. In the spirit of liberalism they had left out—they had spurned the vulgar terrene qualificatious of wealth; their pure feelings of philanthropy and philosophy were sublimated far beyond that. othing could be inane natural than that men who had been elected by persons having nothing, and having nothing them selsies, should, under the wise and liberal principles formed, be intrusted with property, the amount of which, lest he might ap pear to exaggerate, he would not attempt to state. Their lord ships, however, might easily ascertain to bow many millions it went. But all this property was to be transferred from the can tiously-chosen and well-qualified body now existing to the new body, whose only qualification was as electors or elected, and who were not even tested as to being worth £lOO or £5O. It was to be given to them, according to• the provisions of the act, for paying off debts and paving salaries, and also to be ex pended for the public benefit and the improvement of the lorough. Pretty large words these ! • Moreover,. when the funds did not suffice for those purposes of paying; off debt, pay. ing salaries, and expending monies for the public benefit and the improvement of the borough, there was actually to be a power of taxation given to this body. The House of Commons used to be very nice on this subject, very chary of its privileges. They were wont to keep in loculo the power of raising money. The doctrine as to the raising of this tax was laid down in page 54, he should like to know their lordships' opinion on the sub ject. It was declared to this new corporate dynasty, if the ex isting funds were not satis, that they might afterwards take means to raise plus. When he looked to the clause he really doubted whether the framers of the bill could have meant to grant such powers to this body, but there were the words ' which could bear no other interpretation or explanation, and which entered into the very soul of the construction 'of the clause. He admitted that in some boroughs there now existed a right of taxation. In Bristol, which was a city and-a county of a city, neither a borough nor a county-rate had ever been raised. A great majorit), of the boroughs and counties or towns through- out England and Wales never had exercised the right of, raisiog sucha rate. Ne . should now call the attention of their lordships to a power conferred by a clause which they would find at pa'e 57 of the bill, and which imparted to the corporations the privi lege of selling corporate property. Hitherto corporate: bodies had been restrained from effecting such sales, but now the power . of Downing-street made its appearance, and with the pertnis 'ion of the Treasury such sales could be effected. Here they had the executive government again. The government was now to in tromit in that with regard to which they never before had exer cised any concert). "Here was a change novel,.unheard, and never before thought of. To clause 38 he should now beg leave to call their attention, that which related to the licensing of public-houses. In the longest, and certainly one of the ablest, speeches he had ever heard, that power of licensing public-houses was discussed for full one hour by the timepiece of that other place in which that speech was,delivered, and the main ground of the denunciations then poured out against tie state of the law as it existed at that period was the iniquity which arose from the practice of public-houses being licensed by the borough magistrates; but if that state of the law drew forth such eloquent condemnation, how much worse a condition of it would the con templated changes introduce; fur by the bill then in his hand the very lowest orders of society were invested with the power of licensing public-houses. What did their lordships think of giving to the plebeian rank the privilege of licensing, for ex ample,.lso public-houses in Oxford, and, perhaps, 300 or 400 in Bristol? Could they, for a moment, doubt that in a matter of that sort there would be a traffic of Largain and sale--that there would ben direct traffic in the whole conduct of the municipal government of corporations? He should now come to the ap pointment of magistrates. 'What sort of persons were those who heretofore had filled the magisterial chairs? They were men who had risen through various gradations of wealth, and had at length attained the full confiderice of their fellow-eitizeus ; those were, by the wisdom of the crown, in ancient times, deemed the fit depositaries of magisterial power. 'But what sort of men did the new system introduce? What was the tremendous attack which plebeian legislation made upon the authority and prerogative of the crown ? The council of 96 were to furnish a list to the crown, front which his Majesty would be at liberty to choose as many as he saw fitting to become borough magis tlrates. Heretofore the King, had been deemed the fountain of justice, but that distinguished prerogative no longer remained, but was transferred from the monarch to the lowest inhabitants of the boroughs; a plan of corporation government as old as Alfred was now to be exchanged for a new and democratic system, by which the King would have no more to do than re gister au apparent consent to the appointment of thenominees of universal suffrage, for of necessity the King could not do otherwise _than accept the names that were given tfflhim—he must do it, whether be would or not; thus a completely self elected corporation would prevail 4lid be predominant. He knew nothing more illustrative of the republican 'and radical tendency of the measure, first, than this mode of election — secondly, than the total absence ofiall qualification qf a pecu niary nature; the perfect and totat deprivation . of pstivate and individual wealth was precisely that'wbich was deemed the most fitting to place him in the situation of one component to fill civic offices; such a man would then be in all respects in the safest and happiest condition to which a corporator could attain. He remembered a poem quoted by Dr. Johnson in his Lives, in which the man• without wealth was described as the happiest of mortals, and the 'best protected from danger,— "Felix cui ni/ill est ; Non tinzet insidius incendia temnit ; " from him nothing could be stolen, he could be neither the sub ject of robbery nor of arson. The possession of that negative wealth, which consisted in having nothing at all, formed the highest possible recommendation to corporate offices tinder this. new bill. To another and not less important part of the bill he should now address • birnself- s :uarriely,_ the mode-of appointing the trustees for charitable purposes. Their lordships must be well aware, many of them touch better acquainted than he could ,pretend to he, with the amount placed at the disposal of corpo rations for charitable purposes. He would nut permit, himself to name any amount as at all approximating to the sum total, lest he might .be exposed to the imputation of exaggerating. That there was-now lying at the disposal of the corporations of England and Wales a prodigious amount of real property and of money in the- funds, no man in his senses would attempt to deny. Now, the whole of that by one of the clauses of the bill would be taken out of the hands of the existing holders and transferred to the honest money-keeping conservative curators created under the new measure, and declared by its enactments to be the fit and proper depositaries, trustees, and transferees of all that prodigious amount of real and personal 'property, their best qualification for which was, that they possessed, as he had said betide, - that sort of negative wealth which consisted in having nothing. Under the' bill nine trustees were .to- be ap pointed for charitable purposes, and with the sanction of the. Treasury; they came to Downing-street again; those nine trustees might do as they thought proper with the whole of the property; they might dispose of and transfer it wheresoever they thought right. Then there were certain things which half the nine were to do. Now, he should be very happy to see a set of gentlemen who constituted the half of nine—would it be six, or three, or four and a half? Then of this number nine, three were to be a quorum. At page 39, sec. 67, their lord ships would see that these three would have the disposal of those vast funds; such would be the monstrous delegation of power imparted to them under that bill. They possessed the final power, with the sanction of the Treasury, of making any order whatever. The corporation of Bristol possessed property appli cable to charitable purposes, amounting, he believed, to no less 'a aunt than £13,000 ulcer. Accorling, then, to this novel piece of legislation, that would be at the disposal of three indi viduals, not one of whom need possess the least pecuniary qua lification. In the existing state of the law not a shilling of that £13,000 a-year could be disposed of other wise than under the corporation seal. He need not inform their lordships (many of whom werehetter acquainted with subjects than he was) that the seal of that corporation could not be used without the con sent of twenty-one, being a moiety of the council; but the mo dern democratic and republican measure would break down all these safeguards, and give the full ascendancy to three persons. Those were the powers which that bill created, that was what it built upon the ruins of the existing corporation system. The next clause to which he should direct attention was that which gave the crown the power of granting charters under the provisions of that bill to such new boroughs, containing a , specified amount of population ; as the Secretary of State might recommend. Here again they had the interference of the ex ecutive power, and again the tntioduction and working of the proposed bill, which was to subvert and supplant the system un der which 183 boroughs had been governed; all was now to be abolished that had attracted the attention or won the feelings Of the lower orders of society, or which had been an object of ve neration to the humbler classes of freemen; all that had hi therto satisfied those classes was now to be exploded. The an cient corporations of England were no longer to exist. And he would ask, why no longer? Could they not be amended, could not faults be corrected, could not deficiencies be sup plied? Was the whole frame of those Corporations so very, bad that nothiug less than total destructiou would suffice? Were they so fall of vice, so' steeped in wickedness, so buried in sin, so pervaded by corruption—was the circulation of their lifeblood rendered so stagnant, were they so covered with le prosy and filth, as that nothing could purify. that tlothingcoiild heal ? That .they wera.uot eveteirt a remote degree approaching - t - t that condition he took upon himself to say; end yet au ass te. . wboie sumption of the opposite formed one of the avowe d groun d s o f the measure, since the very foundation of the bill was , t h at t h e n ot existing be dealt corporations %.th in thewere wa in y o fa amendment,s ta te viciousso but that that they h could system must be esepluded, or either that it must be destroyed and buried as a carcass, the exhalations of which would .putrify the air, the continuation of which on the surface of the earth would breed disease, the touch of which Would contaminate therefore the corporations of England and W a l es were to be nailed tip in their coffins. But if they. were so very bad, why have any corporations ? "Oh but," says the promeitar of the bill, 'we do not object to corporations in gene ra l ; w h at we dis like is your corporations, and we are resolved upon setting up corporations of our own, and we are resolved to have our cor porations upon a democratic basis—a basis sp'republican that it shall be uothing short of annual parliaments and universal suffrage, for a third of the council is to go out every year." The bill would go to destroy the power of the King so far us crop-- rations were concerned; and would give the oountry nut royal or aristocratic but republican communities. The tide, he can tended, kept bad faith with itself; but he would pass over that, and call their lordship?' attention to the preamble of the bill, which constituted, as it did that of every bill, its foufidation. the house desire to know- what formed the foundation of the measure ? Abuse of power and privilege formed one of the grounds. The preamble stated that "partly by defecti in the charter by which the said bodies corporate have been constitut ed, partly by neglect and abuse of the privileges by such char ters granted and confirmed to the inhabitants of the said cities, towns, and boroughs, and partly by the chatige of circumstances since the said chatters were granted, the said bodie s corporate, for the most part, have not of long time been efficient instru- , nienta of local government." Those three propositions were then brought into activity in dealing with the present bill. Ile Would maintain, without the slightest fear of anything like successful opposition, that if there were defects in the corporate system they might be remedied by the authority and prerogative of the crown. That power was so large that there was no fault which it could not reach. But before alterations could be made the legislature ought to know what were- the circumstances of the place. That bill, however, did not accommodate itself to any variety of circumstances, but proceeded with a sweeping range to level that which for centuries had been held sacred and venerable. Instead of the power of the crown being exercised as it might have been, and the remedy rendered opposite to the .place for which it was intended, they had a bill suitable to no useful purpose, and meeting no individual case, at least as it required to be met. He had spoken of three propositions, and he .should observe, with re.spect.to the first of them; (halt turned up9r.l crautter of. fact, and;-as he e.ontended, act did the uther two; for the question whether the existing corporations were or were not inefficient and improper instruments of local govern ment, was beyond all possibility .of question a matter of fact ; what those corporations had douse; or what they had left undone, was assuredly a matter of fact; but then let the house only ob-' serve another instance of the looseness of expression for which the preamble was remarkable.• It talked of the "..,change of circumstances;" centuries, it was true, had passed away since those corporations were constituted, the parties originally con cerned had long since died ; really that sort of loose talk about "change of circumstancess" he knew not bow to deal with ; .there was nothing tangible in it; "change of circumstances" might mean anything which imagination, fancy, genius, or spe culation might suggest. He would make some attempt to grapple with this °barge were it not in its own nature so indefi nite and etherial. The learned gentleman then proceeded to com plain of the hardships to which apprentices, otherwise entitled to their freedoM, would be exposed under the bill, and next went on to notice the change which would be operated in the form of society in corporate towns by the measure then before parliament. Ile aldermen and recorders and corporate offi cers, the functionaries who represented the authority of the crown and dispensed its benevolences, would be cast on the pare. Those who had been accustomed to the curule chair and familiar with an high estate would be seen walking the streets, and pointed at as men who once held auth or ity, but were its depositories no longer • who once were dignifies the service of the state, but had o f been superseded by one Isaac Tom kins or one Peter Jenkins. (Great laughter.) He, himself, in his judicial capacity, would now have nothing mote to do; he was funetus officii, and instead.of being front eight o'clock in the morning till twelve at night engaged in presiding at arduous trials, he might be taking an airing on the Downs. Their lord ships, too, might look to their graduated ranks in the peerage,— they might look to the security of those honours which they derived from a remote ancestry, and which they might wish to transmit, at least not impaired, to their posterity; let them be ware of the ascendancy of Saffron-hill and St. Giles's, and of those losses and that degradation which must be far less endura ble than even pecuniary wrong or confiscation. Did their lord ships know, could they imagine, how many of the existing mem bers constituting the select - body of those corporations would be affected by this bill ? There were some whose views were too exalted to condescend to such a vulgar inquiry; their principles were too much solemnized; their genius mounted too high ; their taste was too exquisite; they could not deal with corporeal ideas; they looked to man, not as he was, but as he was not. If they did not look to man as he was, they would not know what he (Sir 0. Wetherell) would now state to their lordships, that under the operation of this bill in the to be exploded corporations there were 4000 or those men, forty at Oxford, fnrty at Bristol, forty at Worcester, &c., to be turned loose and driven from their places of rank, dignity,, and station, by the unheard-of, persecuting, execrable whipping and scourging and tyranny of this bill-evictims of the taunt and ridicule .and scorn of the new democratically elected council and constituent body who were to supplant them in official station and dignity. Among those persons who were thus to be turned out to walk abroad, as if just dismissed from the treads mill, there was a body of 148 recorders, and he could not but ex press the surprise he felt that whenever the gentlemen who drew up the report of this municipal corporation commission hail the opportunity, special care was taken to add, by way of qualification, that the recorder was a peer; in fact, the mea sure was one of the closest approximations to the subversion of the privileges, powers, and ex i s t ence o f t h at h ouse as a constituent body in the state which the mind of man could possibly conceive. There were 23 or 30 instances in which the recorder was a peer, and in all such cases the fact was sure to be mentioned; and what, in the name of all the trash and ribaldry of the report, did that mean? Could it be meant that a peer was incompetent to perform the duties of recor der ? Did not the silly individual who drew up the report know that every peer was a magistrate of the county in which he resided, accustomed to sit at quarter sessions, and, inde pendently of his judicial capacity. in that house, was among the most active and zealous persons in the constant adminis tration of the peace throughout the whole of the kingdom ? So much for the recorder being a peer. There was one case, he belieVed that of Leamington, where the recorder was an admiral. Now one had undoubtedly heard that a warrior was at liberty in time of peace to "beat his sword into a plough share," and, according to the Roman maxim, to become an agriculturist, an improver of the soil —a citizen--mollifylng and soothing and spreading the blessings of cultivated life over those among whom it was his lot to move. No matter for that; perhaps they would by and by hear that the mere circumstance of a peer or other persons having been at the battle of Waterloo would incapacitate them for every thing. Really there was a ribaldry, a low-bred something, which he could not describe, prevailing throughout the report, which held it fairly up to unmeasured ridicule and contempt. It was fit for a Roderick Random or a Tom Jones, to form part of a country-town circulating library—a sort of Margate or Ramsgate, or Southend, or the Nore, or Sheerness, or other sea-bathing compilation of b oo k s . (Loud langhter.) It was fit to be put into the steam-boat—it was fit for the use of any of the genteel, or not very genteel, people, who might be dis posed to give up . an hour of their time, whether at sea-bathing places or returning from such quarters. (Loud laughter.) Such a,sort of thing was that municipal report, upon the vet Its , and truth of which their lordships were called upon to legislate as to matters of fact, and to become what they could not become, the hideous instruments of carrying a great object, founded on a report which was the scorn of .every roan who looked into it, and the laughing stock of all who were disposed to treat it with levity or pleasantry. He was not at present disposed to trouble their lordships with details, although that might become necessary in the sequel of the case; and there were some docu ments which he should direct to be printed, in order that they might be furnished with the real facts on which they were to decide • but if they were acqua i nte d w i t h t h e num b er o f th ose individuals whose rank, station, office, property, and other in cidents would be affected by this bill, they could not but ex 'press surprise at its unexpected, unheard-of extent of operation. In point of number, how many , would be handed over to the discipline of the new system? If he were not misintormed, - the number of persons who were to be governed according to this new-made kingdom —this new empire of reason and philosophy —of democracy and republicanism—the population, hart of his Majesty's subjects, who were to be taken out of the existing empire constituted by the King, under his undoubted preroga tive, and charters of centuries' duration up to the present mo ment, and to he handed over to the government,of new demo cratic rulers, constituted at least a number of 2,200,000 persons; and if he were to suppose that underahe last clause of the bill, which called it an enablingact—an act to enable his Majesty to constitute municipalities on the new principle, but which in fact was, as he should presently show, a disabling act to prevent his Majesty from constituting municipalities by royal charter otherwise than conformably to the new systein,—if he were to suppose that the enlightened inhabitants of the neighbourhood of Saffron-hill, the dense population of the Tower Hamlets, and the not unpeopled purlieus of Marylebone were to be included, he was disposed to think not fewer than 3,000,000 would be the number of his Majesty's subjects to be withdrawn from the now existing, regular, constitutional, legitimate government of this realm, under these principles by which the monarchy was ad ministered, and handed over to the tender mercies, if not to the tyrannical- discipline, of the to be newly constituted, radical, Jacobin, republican institutions. (Hear, hear.) That was not all,—the bill, with its not ingenious sophistications, for such they were not to any man who could apply his mind to know how a clause might appear to have one aspect while in reality it had another, with a visage of bypocrisy looking one way, and a visage of another kind looking elsewhere,—this hill, with its not ingenious sophistications, while it professed to capacitate the King to grant charters, actually incapacitated him, and he (Sir C. Wetherell) was prepared to contend that no monarch, no authority, no individual whatever, ought to be invested with powers to constitute bodies as they would be under this act of parliament, with rights, titles, and authority derived and flowing from the sovereignty of the people—in other words, under the pretence and profession that the King should do so and so, it was provided that the King should never again, in this country, constitute a corporation, except upon the tyran nical and democratical principle on which the corporations of this bill were to be constituted. He declared to their lord ships as a lawyer, after laborious investigation of this bill, that its intention and operation were to pillage and rob front the crown the power of constituting corporations as the King thought fit to constitute them, and to direct, compel, and order his Majesty to constitute them alone accordiug to the execrable disposition and democratical dictation and ineffable absurdity of this hill. That was a nut for any man to crack who could. (Loud laughter.) He now begged leave to call their lordships' attention to another part—he meant to the effect of the bill on freemen, on whose numbers and property it would inflict such grievous injury and loss. The perpetuity of freedom being kept up in corporations, there were various rights and interests that descended from father to sort, pretty much like an estate tail, some of ancient, others of more modern gift, belonging entirely to the freemes, and of which they had theafirect and immediate enjoyment. Thus, in the case of Alnwick, with 369 freemen, there Was property amounting to £5,000: in Berwick-upon- Tweed, to £120.000; in Beverley, with 850 freemen, to the amount of £BO,OOO ; which those guardians of the public purse, who would not allow a single comma to be altered in a money bill, were with a most precipitous velocity, and the utmost heeds lessness of all possible consequences . , prepared at once to confis cate and destroy. He contended that in the contest and strug gle of who should carry on the. administration and government of the country there was a class of persona whose rights ought to be attended to equally and indifferently b y both parties— that in the scramble they became a sacrifice to the dominant faction, in order to carry a measure which, under the sham pre text of corporate reform, was to become an engine of political power. (Hear.) lie hoped their lordships would bear this in mind when they came to deal with the garrulous trash and ri baldr), the Gipsy jargon of the - report, contrasted with the evi dence he should tender in favour of that to-be-disinherited, de prived, vexed, and tyrannised-ea/or-body; the - cotdinonalty of tleir- existing corporations. He would now simply state, that according to the estimate which hid been made out of the value of the property to be taken away from those people throughout England, and within the provisions of the bill, its annual value was 03,473, and if sold would, at twenty :rears' purchase, con stitute a sum of upwards of half a million sterling, in the contest of political animosity, to. be sacrificed at the altar of the domi nant party-under the false and sham pretence of reform in their municipal institutions. He had now stated to their lordships the constitution of the bodies corporate as existing at present, as they were proposed to exist, and the particular effects and results which they must expect to flow from the new system; he had also ventured to give his name and denoMination to that new system which throughout the whole of it appeared to be an s utler supercession, deprivation, and abrogation of his Majesty's prerogative, upon the subject 'of constituting a delegation of au ,thority as flowing from himito municipal bodies except as ac cording to the precept of this act, for the past to proscribe what had been done by royal charter,- and for the future to incapaci tate the crown from ever granting any municipal charter, but tinder and subject to the dictation of democratic influence. in 'the vast variety of matter with which he had been obliged to deal he had endeavoured, as far as he could, to trace out some clear line of consideration, and so to classify the points as to render them, in some' degree, intelligible to their lordships, and he was now about to examine by what evidence the allega tions as to abuse had been substantiated. With that view he should have to solicit their attenton to the protest of Sir Francis Palgrave. A commission was issued, to scamper with horse, ready equipped, over all the country, and to report as expeditiously as possible, so that parliament might be enabled to legislate on the subject early in the ensuing session : and hence, perhaps, the obviously crude and indigested state of the opinions which the report contained. (Hear, hear.) The commissioners were to gallop all over the realm, to hunt up all the charters, to examine all the archives of all the ancient bodies corporate in the land, and to make their report with a precipitation which might almost excuse their blunders—why? —not to reform the municipal constitutions so as best to secure the advantage of those who lived under them, and who had no concern as respected ministers, parliament, or the superior authorities of th e state, 'Arum Pompeins ant Cesar rempublieam habeas, provided only their institutions were formed on a good basis, but to forward the pariv purposes of those to whom this measure was supposed to be o e f considerable value. Be that, however, as it might, it was expected that the harvest which those sicklemen were to reap, the sheaves of corruption which they. were to bind and warehouse, nod bring into their garners, accumulate in their ricks, and constitute their agricultural pro duce, would have been very great; but althony,h they had done their duty, the crop had not been very abundant. It was ex pected that in all the great towns corruption, malversation, cheating of public charities and trusts, ell:lb-calico-J.:nil of corp.- , ration property, and every species of departure from economy and rectitude uf administrat►on, would have been made up of that a 4red messis, the golden harvest .which those sickleiuen were expected to reap. It turned out, however, that wherever the malversatiou was expected, every species of good conduct had been realized, and out of the 185 corporations, which, ac cording to the second topic of this bill, it was proposed to dis franchise and annul on the ground of neglect and abuse, there' were no fewer thou 96 which, notwithstanding the fooleries and partisan prattling and erroneously and defectively applied in vestigation, and prejudicial influences which characterized the report, stood unreproached and irreproachable by those very commissioners themselves. He would not go so far as to accuse their lordships of the bad taste of havilig read the whole of the report; he believed that not five among them had done so, but hoped their gallantry and honour as gentlemen would not allow them to be made the dupes of its ribaldry. lie called on them to look well to its contents. It was said of the great Roman lawyers that the y- had secretaries to read to them, and he was afraid their lordships would be under the necessity of having recourse to some such vicarious vision, bat at all events he hoped they would not come to a conclusion without well investigating all the circumstances affecting each individual corporation. Lord BitouGnam here interrupted the learned gentleman, and suggested to the house the propriety of allowing him to retire for a few minutes, which having been agreed to, Sir C. Wetherell left the bar, labouring evidently under considerable exhaustion from the extreme heat of the house, and the pro tracted length (upwards of three hours) of his address. A.fter the lapse of about a quarter of an hour, Lord KEN vox rose and stated that the learned counsel who had lately retired was really so exhausted from the extreme heat of the weather—the thermometer in their lordships' house being nearly g.)—and the great exertions he had made, that it would be quite impossible for him to go on with his address to their lordships to-night. Ile hoped, therefore, that their lord ships would extend their usual kindness to him, and the learned • counsel would attend at any time their lordships might please to appoint to-morrow. • Alter a short discussion, the further hearing of counsel was postponed until the following day and the house adjourned. Sir C. WETHERELL appeared at the bar on Friday, and continued his address to their lordships. He observed, that his anxious eudeavour would be (oppressed and overburdened as he was with p ar ti cu l ar cases an d views) to confine himself to general results, and to offer such general remarks as appeared to him to be applicable to the principle of the bill—that being the purpose, as he understood, for which he was especially called to appear before their lordships. Ile should now proceed to show, that under this sham bill for regulating corporations very great injury would be dune to a numerous class of persons, who at present enjoyed important rights and privileges—the right, for instance, to participate in the benefits derivable from common lands. He had stated yesterday, when he referred to a document .which he meant to have printed, that the annual value .uf those lands was, according to that statement, ;.P.,500,000. But he believed that the amount was much underrated, and that the annual value was not less than £750,000. The rights of all those persons who were interested in common lands were com pletely and must unjustly thrown overboard in this political re form. They were cast aside to lighten the passage of the poli tical vessel—they were dung away as useless lumber in order that the political ship might sail inure steadily into the revolu tionary harbour. The . rights of that class of people were totally neglected, although some of those rights were actually of a freehold nature, particularly right of common, which gave to those who owned it as extensive a privilege of depasturing cattle as any noble lord in that house possessed to turn cattle out on any common for pasturage in any county of England. Now, as to the existing rights of those persons, there was a clause in the bill to which he had not before adverted, which enabled the new corporation, or municipality, or commune, for he knew not what to call it, to purchase thai right. This clause, which would be found at page 9, was peculiarly oppressive. Under it this new body were enabled to purchase all the corn mon rights of all the freemen iu those existing communities; and it provided, further, that if the parties could not agree on the price, a jury was to be empanelled to set a value on that which was disputed. In Oxford, Lincoln, and many . other places, freemen, as matters now stood, who were carrying on business, had a right to turn out their cattle on certain common lands, and it was quite clear to him that the value to those per sons of such privilege was three times greater than any amount of remuneration that would be offered to give it up. This clause affected to give a benefit, whereas, in point of fact, it took one away. By this clause a power was given to the town council which was very nearly coupled with a principle of compulsion. It gave authority to those new powers to purchase, and to corn pel the sale of lands and commons belonging to the old corpo rations, which were worth annually nearly £750,000. They could, under this clause, compel men to sell those rights. But the clause declared, that if the value were disputed, a jury should decide upon the matter. That looked very fair and plausible, but if they examined more closely into the subject, they would find that there was uothing solid in it. So long as a perpetual race of freemen was kept up, the tight of each, with respect to common lands, descended to his sun. It was like a tenantry in common, at common law; or, like an estate in tail male, it went to his eldest son. Such was the case at Grantham, and in many other places. If a man were compelled to sell his interest in this right, he would not probably receive one-half, in many instances Lot one-third, of its actual value. This, there fore, he must denominate a peculiarly tyrannical act. He was now speaking on behalf of the poor freemen whom this bill went to disinherit ; and he would much rather exert his vigilance in support of the poor than of the select body, who were to be made the victims of this struggle for political power. It had been made the subject of especial complaint by those who approved of this bill, that the present corporate bodies were self-elected,—that aldermen elected aldermen,—bailiffs elected bailiffs,—common-councilmen elected common-coun cilmen. lie would not enter into a technical definition of what self-election actually was, but he would treat the question prac tically. This system of self-election was one of the odious things most reprobated in the report. But was there no self election under this new bill? The body who had the power to elect magistrates might name them from among themselves ; they need not, and mrobably would not, go to strangers. Here was self-election. '1 hen the nine charitable trustees were taken from a list of individuals who held certain corporate situations, and was drawn up by themselves. Here again was self-election. The report objected to the principle of self-election as it now existed; but in the bill the same• principle was adopted with respect to the election of magistrates and of the nine charitable trustees. Those who favoured the system said, "We hate the self-electing principle as it is adopted by you; but under this new form of law we surely cannot ltive and benefit ourselves too much." They, it appeared, were no 'longer egotists. What they looked upon as egotism, as mere self-love in others, was nothing in them but th milk of human kindness, or that deuce Aumanite of which Rousseau had spoken. if self-election were a vice, (and he would contend that it was not a vice,) it cer tainly was not excluded from this bill. The existing corpora tion system answered its purposes well; under it the corporations had flourished; and, with respect to the abolition of those cor porations, he would predicate that it would not be effected; that not a sparrow of them would fall to the ground; that the wis dom, and discretion, and justice of their lordships would pre serve them. The revolutionary reformers had held out the principle of self-election as that which justified the subversion of the existing corporations. He would say, let that doctrine be strictly laid down, and, standing on it, he would subvert their system. The learned gentleman then proceeded to show, that the corporation of Oxford was not a self-elected body, but pro ceeded on a regular principle of gradation, and, as regarded the mayor, of popular election. He should now apply himself to that part of the bill which related to charitable trusts. There were to be nine charitable trustees, who were to be appointed by the town council. In point of law they would be trustees, curators, and administrators of all charitable property—theirs would be the hands to protect, to divide, to administer the whole of that class of trusts known by the name of charitable trusts, of which at present municipal bodies in their corporate capacity were the trustees. He could not state the aggregate annual amount of those charitable trusts. It did not, he believed, ap pear in the report—he did not mean the travelling report, but Lord Brougham's public report upon charities. He could, however, put their lordships iu possession of certain facts which would enable them to form some judgment on the subject, and would enable them to decide un the propriety of applying the principle of this bill to those charitable trusts. The annual amount of funds connected with charitable institutions belong. ing to Bristol was at the present moment £12,000, of which the corporation were trustees. And how were those funds protect ed? Nothing could be done with reference to them but by a formal act given under the corporate seal and in the presence of at least one-half of the council, consisting of 40 persons. In stead of that provision, they wer e t o h ave un d er the new bill nine trustees, three of whom were empowered to make any order they pleased with respect to charitable funds. The clause was very loosely drawn, and seemed to be picked up from some turn pike act, or some poor legal compilation. Surely it was not right that property to the amount of £12,000 or £13,000 a year (the extent of the l3ristol charitable trusts) should be managed in this manner. Why should such an alteration be made? What necessity existed for it? Lord Brougham's report com plimented the corporation of Bristol for the accuracy with which they kept their accounts; and they were also complimented by the present commissioners. Their charitable trusts were partly in Bristol, partly in Gloucestershire, and partly in Somerset shire. The accounts were not left, as in other cases, to three or four persons who took the labouring oar; no, they . were examinable, and examined, by the whole council, con sisting of forty persons, before whom they were regularly laid. The same might be said of Oxford. When the accounts were there audited, a table was read containing each and every of the charities, the trusteeship of which the corporation held. Yet those corporations, which had hitherto exercised their functions so beneficially, were, under the provisions a:this-hill, to be pre 'muted from, exercising them in 'future. He would not enter - into an examination as to what, strictly speaking, constituted a charitable trust. The presentation to livings, perhaps, was not, But he should like to know who, under this bill, was to present to livings belonging to corporate bodies? If the nine trustees (three of whom -might act) were to have that power, then they would become the . patrons of eleven advowsons in the city of Bristol, an alteration which their founders never could have con templated. It was very much to be regretted that that part of the government called the cabinet bad not had the assistance of a Lord Chancellor when this measure was framed; for if that had been the case, they never would have seen such a thing its this launched in the shape of what was technically called a bill. It was full of omissions, and passed over many cases for which special provision should have been made. He should now give some proofs of this. Amongst other charities that belonged to the corporation of Bristol was a grant of £lO,OOO, which had been given by a gentleman named Weir. Now, as the corpora tion wits about to be dissolved he might reclaim the gift. He might say, " I am not dead, and I recall that which I meant for the corporation, and which I never contemplated being placed under the care of nine trustees, of whom I know nothing." Had a lawyer been consulted, lie would have asked, "How can, we frame a bill transferring preperty . from a body to whom'it had solemnly been given, and conferring it on another who had never been thought of by the devisor ?" It wits certainly the most poetical or fanciful change that ever was contemplated. A man left to his associates and companions, to the mayor and corporation of a borough with which he was connected, property to be held in trust for charitable purposes, and behold, the legis lature, by a most at titre ry act take-it away from that body and place it under the care of persons whom the testator had never known, anti of whom he had not even beard. Again, Mr. Par sons, a gentleman who resided in Oxford, had granted £7,000, in trust, to the mayor and corporation, for certain charitable purposes. Under this bill the trust would be trausferred to these nine new trustees, of whom Mr. Parsons, who had peti tioned the house on the subject, knew nothierg. If this bill were passed, there would be no aldermen to act as trustees. as was contemplated by the donor. That class of persons would be consigned to the old almanack of history—they would be as ob solete as the ancient aldermanni, or the members of the wit tcnagemote. Under these circumstances Mr. Parsons had an undoubted right to call back his gift, since he had-placed it at the disposal of trustees, who had ceased to exist. Mr. Parsons might say, "I devoted this sum to certain purposes; but I did not mean to place it under the control of persons who were elected on the principle of universal suffrage and annual par. liaments. I will not allow the trusteeship of nine men, three of whom go out inrstally." Those donations were made in every ease (and it wisitoberallystxpressed in the deed) with the full hope anti expectation. on the part of the donors, that the persons whom they appointed out as curators and trustees of the property devised by them for charitable purposes should be suc ceeded by ethers of the same rank and class. If any nor of tl,issee A CGCST 4, 1835. .. persons could start into existence, and lee the alteration that was about to be made with reference to trusteeship, he would exclaim "Non hoc in feedera veni." He would now go over a catalogue of chu rc h 'p re f ermen t s w hi c h would by this measure be taken out of the hands of the present trustees, who were, d priori, members of the church Of England. He first begged to observe,- that substantially and practically the cor poration ou g ht t o have been protestauts of the church of England. Certainly by connivance, or rath er sufferance, dissenters were admittedinto corporations his 'means of the annual indemnity act, but the intention undoubtedly was that the trustees were to be members of the church of England. But now for the cata logue. These new bodies, which might be of any religion or no religion at all, were to have eleven ecclesiastical livings at Brie tol, and four preacherships at Oxford. Let him next take a journey in the Leeds mail. In Leeds, the mayor and three senior aldermen had the presentation to two livings, the one worth £5OO, the other worth f,300 a-year. And here he might' take occasion to observe that there was no complaint in the re port of the charity commissioners, than which there was no more valuable document. Their report was one made by learned and honourable men, not by the mere tools of a party s it was made, too, not as a mere party job, but in the discharge of their legal and moral duty. In that, then, there was no complaint of malversationaganist the corpor a ti ons i n t h e management o f their charities. But to accompany the flying commissioners of municipal reform their lordships would have to travel across the country to Norwich; and in Justice he must remark incident ally, that no rider for a London shop, sent out to ascertain the price of cotton in various places, could have been so pricked oa to expedition as were these riding commissioners. They had hardly time to lunch themselves, and not an hour to cure the broken knees of their hacks. There was not time granted them for leisure or lucubration, but they were to send up to the go vernment the wet sheets of their report, that they might be forthwith put into the twopenny post for the printer, so that they should with all imaginable speed be able to produce the draught of a bill. Their lordships should remark, too, that these muni cipal corporations wished not to have anything to do with the church or to deal with its patronage; they were for voluntary rfiligion, annual parliaments, and universal suffrage. Yet, at Norwich they had reaped a large clerical crope—namely, 12 advowsons, and by-the-by, one of the complaints against this same corporation of Norwich, that was to be extruded from its rights, was, that it was too popular. The ecclesiastical patron age thus to be transferred amounted to £2,150 a-year. There was likrewise a valuable school called Edward Vl.'s school. And if it had not happened that the gloat seal was not iu the hands of the Lord Chancellor, whose place was vacant, as this school was a royal foundation, some question might be raised as to whether the visitors could be thus unceremoniously changed under the bill. But, in addition to the benefices and the school, there were five scholarships at Corpus Christi College, Cam bridge, fonnied by Archbishop Parker, who certainly never lopked forward to their behig disposed of according to the good will and pleasure of a body Of annual parliament and universal suffrage men.., Next he came, to -Coventry, and there he found that there was a,rectirie , and another preferment which it was proposed tp transfer to the tender care of the new body. The corporation of Coventry too had two fellowships at St. John's College, and a fellowship at Catherine-hall, Cambridge, and four exhibitions of I:40 each. At Boston there were two livings in the gift of the corporation, one of £4OO, anotherof £lOO a year. In Doncaster there was a rectory and a grammar school. In Bath a living of £BOO a-year and a rectory ; be merely stated the cases of these cities as examples. He would not run through the cases of the other cities and boroughs, indeed he was not in a condition to do so, but he was convinced that if a tabular view of the ecclesiastical preferments now administered by existing corporations were taken, the amount would prove to be more considerable than any body perhaps imagined. After stating the nature of these facts, he would call their lordships' attention to legal matters, which arose out of them. He could assure their lordships that there were many points which would arise on which he doubted not they would see fit to take the opinion of the judges. Many nice questions would arise with respect to foundership, visitorship, and trusteeship. It should be recollected that if the founder appointed no trustee, then his heir became the trustee. This was where the foundation was in land. Now, the trusteeship was a freehold right, whether merely as a matter of duty or a usufruct. It was as much a freehold as their lordships' patents, by which they hid a right to sit and vote in that house,, What they held under their . patents was title, dignity, station, tru s t. It was U nconn e c t e d with property: it was conferred for the public benefit; and such precisely was fouudership, visitorship, and trusteeship. And there was no corporation, be believed, that had hot some public trust. Most of them had power over public schools, some over colleges at our Universities; and now the mode in which the framers of the bill proposed to deal with those rights was to turn out those who were seised and possessed of them. and take not only the pi o posed, but also all the powers and privileges and control em ployed by them, and transfer them t o o th ers , on wh om th e y pro- . pied to confer the powers and duties of visitors and trustees- He regretted very much, he regretted deeply and sincerely, that there was not a Lord Chancellor present at the discussions of that portion of the Privy Council called the Cabinet. If any lawyer were in that situation, he would have been hound to in form his colleagues that the measure proposed in another place was one to which he could' not, in the form in which it was pro posed, give his assent. He would have been bound to tell then* that the charge against the corporations being abuse and neglect, that a case had not been made out against them ; that if he had been sitting in his court he could not upon the evidence pre ferred have entertained the case, or that if he did he would have incurred universal odium and contempt—he would have been made au outcast, despised, and at the same time hated, like Lord Jefferies, by a tyrannized-over and insulted people. Where proceedings of a penal nature were taken in Parliament, the Parliament proceeded after the same manner as the courts of law. Confiscation was never proceeded to unless a legal case for confiscation had been made out. But this was from begin ning to end a bill of confiscation, and therefore their lordships should be bound to see that there were some judicial groom's, such as would be recognized in a court of law, whereon they might proceed to put out the peccant and ill-conditioned cha racters of the corporations. He repeated, then, that he felt sin cere and deep regret, knowing what a Lord Chancellor could do, and what he could not do in his court, that there was not in this empire such an officer at that time to raise his voice against a bill -which was= founded on princioies that must be spurned with ridicule from any legal tribunal before which they height happen to be brought. If there had been a lawyer to'cleclare this to the Cabinet, a measure of such injustice and tyranny never would have passed 'through the several stages which had brought it before their lordships' house. He would next remark that there were many charities of which grave questions might arise. There was Sir Thomas Whyte's charity, which was to be administered by aldermen. What was to become of it when these were not longer aldermen in existence, unless they re sorted to some measure of violence ? lele.asserted that as to land, and no lawyer would contradict him, if it were given to people who could not enjoy it, then it went back to the donor. tie contended that in many (sae°, it would be found that the charters had fallen to thegrounih ' Having called their lord ships' attention to the principle of the change. and sketched out a portion of the property which would be affected by it, he would now proceed to a more general view of the measure, and to direct their minds to other considerations. He knew not if . it would be of any use for Min to say inure about the report of the com missioners or the two proteste. He wished,- however, to make one remark upon the mode in which these gentlemen had availed themselves. of every opportunity of saying everything, of record ing every scrap of idle tittle-tattle against the corporate bodies. In Coventry it appeared there was a school and a library. The commissioners, who had visited the city as lovers of literature and great march-of-intellect men, were grieved and annoyed at the library's being neglected by the corporation. They stated —"From the evidence of a person who had been a pupil - of the under master, the books epeear, at the time he was at the school, to have been used to light the fires. An inspection and catalogue was taken by a committee of the corporation in January, 1831, when it was evident that not the slightest pains had been taken for their preservation." oiow it was known that boys at schools did not always use their bodies most re verently; but surely there ought to have been some better authority than this ex-pupil of the tinder master to justify grave commissioners in putting forward this gossiping tale. But the history of the matter was this—that when the comrade sinners came round there under my Lord Brougham's bill, the schoolmaster, who was always a very absolute character, and who, within the purlieus of theferae, which was his sceptre, was a very autocrat, was then at feud in seine sort with the corpora tion, the visitors being annoyed at the little care he took of the books, and of which they complained to the commissioners. A gentleman with whom he bad coranauuicated'had spoken of books being bernt, and had some t wo or t h ree years before made a complaint to prevent this arson of books. This formed the foundation of the story- which had been thrust into the report. The gentlemen might have seen that the charge was not a very sound one, when th ey k new, or m i g h t h ave - known, that the visitors gave £2O a year to the library. It was not very proba ble that boys or servant maids would be permitted habitually to light fires with the books. If, indeed, a parliamentary report like unto one which he had in his eye were so be used to light a fire or for waste paper in any other respect, there could be a" great complaint of the consumption Of intellectual power, or rather of its embedment and the loss of useful knowledge—if , indeed, this paper, marked with such characters of peculiar power as it was, could have furnished forth a blaze. It woulel be another thing, indeed, if boys had flung their Horner, or the ardentia verba of Lucan on the fire. Then in truth there woult ' I . have been some good reason for the conieleiiit. He •vonld 11 °' weary their lordships by dwelling on stele matters—time sea* a perfectflorilegiuse of them in Sir F. Palgrave'e protest. ll° would merely advert to une or two . prominent ease& which he' should not be quite justified in pasting over. First, there so , ' Ranbuvr e ethat was a gateiheense. The colniniesioners saide -4"l"be high estimation in which the present deputy recorder to held, and his disconnexion from local party, exclude all suer coon of judicial injustice in trial at the sessions ; but there 15 " constant apprehension of unfairness in the previous machioerf of the courts, and its the exercise of the summary jurisdictioc of the magistrates. One instance of thie we have already ihety boned in the case of the supposed alteration of the jury panels; others of a si m il ar ki n d were re l a t e d t o its; and thenge we wer e ' satisfied that the charges were without foundation in the earl neuter instances, we consider them as so many tooth of the existence of an inveterate s uspicion a n d di s t rus t on the part ( 1 f the inhabitants towards the local magistracy, which leads eve n intelligent and well-instructed rersons to believe irnprobab,r e suggestions and accusations upon littl e or n o evidence." '', the silly credulity of these intelligent and well-educatedperson was to be an argument for overturning our ancient institution'' But after all, Banbury was a close body; let us see Plymouth' —"The constitution and character onhe corporation of P 1 3.- mouth are very superior to those of the other municipal bodie s in the west of England. It affords the only instance that ee curred to us, in the course of our inquiries, of a cor p or atioe framed and acting upon popular principles. Not only are 0/ mayor andeildermen elected by the commonalty, but the ruse nagenient of all the corporate affairs has, in fact, since the ye s l 181)3, been in the hands of the freemen at large. This pow' has been exercised by them with much prudence and discretion , by the appointment of a committee of 21 of their number, 1 1 wheme- )1 the business of the cor p ora ti on i s con d uc t e d. Th° hea v e . 'ding itself into sub-comm fl ittees, appears to out al ~,,, excellent, a nd of manage men t, an d to con d uc t th e a ff a irs 0 . ..i4e'corpera n with dili gence, zea l , an d i ntegr i ty. Th e po pular, election of it eeeenbers not me re ly p reven t s th e admission °' persons adverse to the public interests, but inspires a feeliti of good-will tavardi the m un i c ip a l au th or iti es on th e pars c' s the inhabitants A large, seldom found to exist in c o rporation where the goverment is- vested in a select body. The ili v. portant question of the right to the public conduits has nr , deed, in some degree, disturbed the harmony which subsist, ed between the corporation and inhabitants of Plymouth.. How grand ! How Ci cer e n i an ! B u t th en th e y go on to g; excellent conclusion—" Tbe committee of 21 have not, in the management of the financial affairs of the corporation, acts with that caution and discretion which might have been e, % ; petted from them. Th e i m p rov id en t s p ecu l a ti ons en t ere d it", be them in the erection of the Royal Hotel, and the thest,t adjoining, the expen se o f w hi c h f ar excee d e d t h e sum originel'i proposed to be laud opt, b roug ht t h e cor p ora ti on i nto cousigil e re able difficulties, from which they arci not yet extricated. , 5 from which it must b e l ong b e f ore th e y can belsee. It is 95 . that the town has benefited g rea tly by those improvements, the corporation have disabl e d themselves from eesocutiag etb et a , works of 'hr.:morn importance. On ac co unt of the want of fua t : r i it is fen ed iszipeseediela to erect a new ,gaol, whirelt, ifil, been P required, and which cer t a i n ly oug h t to h ave leteetiecopetruc 4 before the funds of the corporation were devoted tr, what 04. , be considered as a mere mercantile sprculatirn. One eietT i e quonxe r,t the thilicultle int, r.tich Ill:/ utifo,tunati esp.'n, Stof tip tint