The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-03-05 00:00:00

!SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1887.

A CHARGE OF CORPORATE COR.

:RUPTION.

ALACZ and alack! What is this scandal in
connection with the magnificently venerable
and honourably wealthy head of our British
municipalities, the Corporation of the City
of London? On Tuesday Mr. George
Howell, champion of the trades-unionism of
labour and. metropolitan M.P., losing sight
for the moment of the particular interests
of the borough of Bethnal-green, :rose in his
place and detailed a grave indictment which
rumour is making against the City Fathers
demanding that, rise, matter of urgent public
importance, the charges inferred should have
immediate investigation. Mr. Howell
obtained the virtual promise of a Select
Committee of Inquiry into the whole matter,
and whether there be truth in the allegations
made or not they are certainly sufficiently
alarming and remarkable to call for rigid
examination. Roundly, it is urged against
the richest of modern municipal corporate
bodies that it has expended some twenty
thousand pounds sterling of the public funds
in corruptly crushing out an attempt to re-
form it of alleged abuses. When the Bill
for the Better Government of London was
the topic of the hour, we are told that the
Corporation of the City opened its coffers in
a maaner most unwarrantable, in order that
a bogus public opinion might be given to the
world, so stifling the impression of the
people's true views. All this is repeated
with great circumstantiality, and sensational
statements have gone the rounds of the press
thereanent ; and until the Corporation prove
tl-aanselves innocent of the charges—if they
as a._ —anal, sa as.yTir r ovp,nrato them
have made, there will be plenty of believers
in the scandal. If one is able to swallow
the particulars adduced in the pages of
nnth, or to follow the catalogue of compro-
mising actions cited by Mr. Howell in the
ear of a startled House of Commons, London
ouildhall has covered a corruption recalling
the wcrst phases of the bad old time when
every public man had his price, and the
privileges of the people were the stakes with
which wealth and power gambled at will
and without compunction. It may be, as
a-as lightly said by that faithfril champion
of the City of London, Sir Richard Fowler,
that all these statements are mere " anony-
nions tittle-tattle," and thus wicked and Un-
warrantable; if so, all the better for the
reputation of a Corporation which has for
centuries enjoyed a position of high and
unique honour. In that case, those 1,v1;0
have sat tindt..r the shadow of the great twin
giants Gog and Magog have no need to
shrink from an inquiry which a ould show
them still pure and without reproach. But
a portion of the people—and that no incon-
siderable portion—has a habit of attaching
importance to every allegation until a sound
tietence has demolished it:; and in their eves,
deapite the loyalty of Sir Richard and others
to the Corporation with which they are so
closely connected, Guildhall rule will be be-
neath a cloud of anything but lovely con-
tour. Relentless reformers and disrespectors
of the poet's pronouncement that "time doth
consecrate, and what is grey with age be. comes religion,' like the two members for
Northampton, are backing up the represent-
ative of Betlinal-green, and speak, each of
them, of having evidence in their hands of
'very compromising character as to the Dial-
- versation of public funds. Very large sums
are said to have expended in manufacturing
sham "public meetings" from an element of
roughs, such meetings being made to figure
in the organs of intelligence, by the bribing
of reporters, as veritable expression of re-
paesentative utterance, and always, of course,
in the direction of deprecating the laying of
hands on the rights and privelee;es of the
ancient Corporation. We are told that not
.(:oly speakers and chairmen were provided
ntolesale, but audiences also with a proper
pari,soli of well-fee-ed stewards and door-
aaepers, all over London to raise the cry of
protest against Sir William Harcourt's
lireatened tilt against alleged corporate
o 'uses. Thus everything about these queer
public meetings was, it is claimed, " got up,"
even to the glowing accounts which sub-
sidised penny-a-liners smuggled into the
newspapers. All these charges are not
lightly and vaguely made, but are urged
with a wealth :and particularity of detail
'which certainly seems to demand explanation
i a every specific case. Mr. Labouchere even
avers that he holds a cheque book which
gives convincing proof of the substantiality
of the tremendous indictment, and promises
to produce it at the proper time; and we are
told, too, that a go-between sort of secretary-
official, who is said to have', controlled the
operations which passed muster as the agi-
tation of a genuine association of ratepayers,
was remunerated with the monies of London
citizens at a scarcely insignificant salary of
eighty pounds a month! Shocking, if there
be but a tithe of truth in the preferment.
The City Fathers will hardly now be able
to get away from the bar of public opinion
without the death penality being passed up-
on their antique Corporation unless they
have a full answer to the heavy charges now
hanging over their heads. Guildhall has
long been threatened, but its worst enemies
could not have wished to have a more dam-
aging weapon put into their hands than they
are now wielding if Mr. Howell's details
have the fcoindation of andeniahle fsct. The
cast, may fairly be said to be sub judice, and
the ( °natt) aii watch the evieeuce adduced
ea either side with knit intereit.