The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1876-10-17 00:00:00

To the Editor..

Si,—There seems, by what I read in your paper, to be
a conflict of opinion as to the manner in which the
anniversaryof the l'opish Plot on the sth of Novetuber,l64
shall be kept in Dorchester. Doubtless, there is claw
whereby the tiring of guns and letting off fireworks on
or near a highway is punishable; so also are obstructions
in streets and other public roads by crowds or otherwise,
but these police regulations are often relaxed when
sufficient cause is shewn, as in the case of crowds
attending open air political meetings, or as spectators of
royal or municipal processions, or of public illuminations,
and even of private festivities when sufficiently attractive.
In these and like cues the police, instead of dispersing
the crowds, are usually instructed to regulate them, and
prevent any mischievous persons in them from doing
damage to persons or property. If, therefore, any con-
siderable portion of the inhabitants of Dorchester are
desirous of cerebrating the sth of November by • torch-
light procession through the streets, and a display of
fireworks on private lands, and seek permission to do so,
it seems to me to be the duty of the municipal authorities
to give the aid of the police to regulate the celebration,
rather than to prohibit it.
A Towtssisas.

THE LORD__ MAYOR
__ OF
_LONI )0N ON

.;ELV-UoVihiNifEjW,

Now that tio7;fia;-CoOn--,;;;;O—tidi of lull:tiling over
the government of the Borough to the County it may
not he uninteresting to hear the opinion of the Lord
Mayor of London on the subject, expressed at the
banquet, at which be entertained the Mayors and
Town Clerks of the provinces, on Monday evening.
In the course of his speech the Lord Mayor said :
He looked upon the municipalities of the kingdom as
its backbone. The City of London, which had
always enjoyed the honour of being the chief of these
municipalities, was formerly more isolated than at the
present time Within the last twenty years, how-
ever, it had pleased the Government, from some cause
or other, to increase the number ofilprovincial muni-
cipalities, and it gave the citizens of London very
great pleasure to give an annual greeting to the
representatives of those municipalities. They were
assembled, however, not to do honour to the Corpora-
tion of London, but for a nobler and better motive—
that of drinking prosperity to the municipalities—or
local parliaments, as he might term them, of the cities
and towns of the kingdom. For if the country had
not in every diztrict its King, Lone, and Commons, it
had at least its " Speakers " and its corporations to
vindicate its righta. He would most emphatically
urge the municipalities to guard jealously whatever
privileges they might possess, and not to allow there
to be cajoled from them on the paltry excuse of an
attempt to economise pounds, shillings, and pence.
Nothing had ever yet passed from a municipality on
the spacious plea of economy that was really economical,
into the hands of the Government ; for the Govern-
ment in such matters NMI not economical, and was
necessarily ignorant of the many matters advan-
tageously discussed and decided in municipal councils.
The word " centralisation " was in itself, to his ears,
an unwelcome sound, and lie still further disliked
patrimage following in the wake of centralisation. He
liked corporations and sessions, however, to enjoy a
small amount of patronage, because they were
peculiarly in a position to judge of the value of the
individuals upon whom they lasts/wed it. Now, if
this patronage passed into the hands of the Govern-
ment it must necessarily be bestowed upon persons
whose fitness and pemonal mu/lineations were more or
less a matter of chalice. As a notorious instance of
loss to the middle classes of &large system of patronage
he alluded to the dissolution of the Bast India Com-
pany—an event by which the Government had beet me
possessed of an important patronage which had passed
away from the middle clewed to whom it had really
and legitimately belonged, and to whom it had now
become for ever lost. Let his friends therefore keep
to themselves the patronage which was really there,
and let them through their town clerks study carefully
any proposed Act of Parliament which in any way
tended to diminish their powers—not allowing it to
pals unless they entirely concurred in its measures.
The losal residents in any given locality knew far best
its concerns, and were best capable of its manage-
ment, and if they allowed their liberties to be snatched
from them on the plea of economy, all that they saved
In the rates would simply pass into the consolidated
funds and fall back upon the shoulders of the income-
tax payers. Speaking as a Conservative he felt that
he should best advance the cause of Conservatism by
impressing upon them the urgent necessity of retaining
those ancient rights which had been handed down to
them from time immemorial.