The Express.
London, England, 1849-04-07 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, SATURDAY EVENING, APRIL 7, 1849.

OUR REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM

MORPETH.

" Marpeth is a small and ancient country town,
eitastad on the river \Tanabe& The stream ie
shallow and rapid, and as it lbws over a rocky bed
it is very improbable that it will ever be rendered
navigsble. The neighbourhood of the town is purely
agricultural. There are n, nisonfactures around or
in Morpetb, bat it is famous for its cattle fairs, which
are held weekly. The town is neither flouriehing nor
decaying. Its condition has undergone no change
for the last fifty years. There are no buildings
coarse of erection, nor has the town any tendency to
increase."

Seek is the report of the bxindary ommissioners
wwwhatrathe baroogh of Morpeth ; and it is
these gentlemen that we shall have to
re 1 g **Femme nukes it is only right to give
there own ulna& The wander is that the parlia-
ment that passed the Rehm Aat eirould, in the face
of sash a report, have alma liespeth to retain a
umber at all. TM senindenwsesp unreservedly

that this small borough has "neither Ale nor manu-
factures, nor the slightest tendency to increase."
When they visited it the copulation was only
3,890, the number of houses 568, of which only 221
wore of tke value of 101. a yenr and upwards.
What claim had such a place to an equality
of representation with Salford, or Gateshead, or
Greenock, or Bury ? It seems to have been an act of
fevotuit•sm to have left it a member at all.

Morpeth, before the Reform Act, returned two
members to the House of Commons. Prior to 1802
bah those members were the nominees of the Earl of
Carlisle, bat in that year one seat was wrested from
the family of Howard by Mr. Wm. Ord, the present
representative of Newcastle. The oonstitueecy of
Morpeth in these days, was a very peculiar
ens. The right of election was vested is the
bailiffs, burgesses or freemen, who were sham
from amongst the brothirs of seven different
trades or companies. Each of these seven frater-
nities was entitled according to its importance to
qualify a prescribed number of burgesses. But there
wig a mode of keeping down the number to a very
low point. No new burgesses could be sworn except
in a batch of 24. Now the batch of 24 was made up
by each company contributing its prescribed quota.
But it c mtinually heppeted that some one or other of
the companies was not in a position to make up such
quote. The parties selected were to be taken from
" the brethren, who were either apprentices to the
particular trade, or else sots of the freemen of the
company. In order to be presented, it was necessary
that these brethren should be of age. Bat mse
gmited a population it often happened that some of
the small companies were not able to present their
quota of apprentices or sons of freemen who were thus
eligible for the burgess roll. The twenty-four, there-
fore, could not be swore, and in effect the borough
was rendered as close as its patrons could possibly
have wished.

Mr. Ord, who gained one of the seats in 1802,
unused a property within the limits of the oil
borough, which he let very much under its value to
the burgesses and their relatons. It cost this gentle-
man 16,0001. to obtsin the share he acquired
in the
representation ; but having once go; in, his seat was
not again disputed, and he continued to represent
Morpeth until the Reform Bill limited its representa-
tion to a single member. In narrating the source
of Mr. Ord's influence, we are, in effect,
nitrating the source of the influence of the
family of Carlisle. They are lords of the
=OW, patrons of the living, proprietors of some
portion of the house property, and owners of
all the lands on one side of the town. If von ask
the value of those lends, you will be told that they
f tch a very exorbitant price per acre ; but if you
examine further, you will find that the tenant in pos-
session seldom or never holds them from the land-
owner. The property is let from Lord Carlisle to
qualified voter, at a very reduced rental, and by them
ft is underlet to those residents who may require land
near the town, at very greatly increased prices.
Of course a small tradesman who makes ids 101.
or 121. a year by his piece of land,
is not anxious to be dispossessed of it. As he shrewdly
suspects that he would be if he voted spinet the
family interest at an election, he is a vo'er of whom
the stewards may make as sere as possible in the
event of any opposition.
Bat this is not at the present time the only source
ef Lord Carlisle's influence in Morpeth. When the
boundary commissioners went down in 1831 they
found the limits of the borough confined to the town
and its immediate outakirte. But the town alone
had not sufficient population to retain the right
of sending a representative to parliament. The
commissioners accordingly began to look out
for a new boundary which would give the
total population that was requisite. Now, you would
naturally have supposed that they would have set
about this by enlarging the circle of the old boundary
all around the town. They did not do that. Welt
then, you will say, probably they took, as they did at
Richmond, the river for their boundary, and extended
the borough along its banks. They did not do that
either. The course which they did take is certainly
as remarkable as any that ever came under our no-
dee. They cruised the river (which the boundary
commissioners were ordinarily very loth to do), but
more than that, they crossed the division of the county
in which Morpeth is situated, and wilted not
only pieces of North and South Northumberland,
but an outlying district forming part of the
county of Durham! Bat this was not all. Instead
of taking in an equal space on all sides of the town
of Morpeth, they took in nothing more than a few
hundred acres, which theywould not leave oat, upon
the north, while upon the south they took in an ex-
tent of country Isms mike in length by lour and a
hay in breadth ! The town of Morpeth is therefore
now situated at one extremity of an immense electoral
district, extending right away from the town to the
German Ocean, a district which the commissioners
san only find a reason for uniting with the town in
the het of there being situated in the midst of it
some coal pits, from which this cattle market town
obtains the requisite supply of heel.
Now, the boundary thus assigned to Morpeth ac-
quires a peculiar importance from the fact that it
includes the greater part, if not the whole, of the
Carlisle yy around the town, whilst it excludes
nearly every intermit that mighV, possibly con-
flict with it. On the north side of the Wansbeck—
the side, be it remembered, on which the town itself
is situated—the land is chiefly owned by. the Duke of
Portland. Towards the west the proprietors are the
Mitford family' who are conemwadves like the duke.
The borough limits are very contracted on both those
sides. But then they go nearly five miles to the
south, and nine to the east, and that—makes up
for it.
If the family of Carlisle had made good public use
of their influence in Morpeth, though there would be
no better excuse fur the gratin, yet people might
have hand some extenuation in the practice. Bat
sines the Reform Act, Morpeth has been exercised
purely and exclusively as a family borough. In 1831,
the Hon. Win. Howard was retuned • in 1833,
the Hon. William George Howard; in 1833, Com-
mander the Hon. Edward Granville George Howard;
in Febniary, 1837, the present Earl Granville (a
11.47 of the late Lord Carlisle) ; in February,
the Honourable Edward Granville
which eminent debater and cele-
=.llliMman still continues to do the electors the
anew remigeMing them. This is carrying the
to an extreme. Even when Cosa-
=erFt.6:=. E. G. G. Howard was obliged to
comply with the imperious domande of his service
and the nation, and to mum in 1837 the command
of the Wolverine, in which be was seat to the fearful
wave raging in the Mediterranean, whore, with a
lantry Worthy of a better canes, he bumped his sbbfipi
ashore, to his own imminent peel and that d all
mew—even on occasion of the vacancy thu arising,
when there was absolutely no other " Honourable'
Tom. Dick, or Harry to fill the sink the bons& we.
still preserved in the family thanegh the inetrawn-
tality of a nephew. And this nephew, when the
hon. commander came bask orb, covered with
laurels, won in harbour, sad nag "honourably no-
qaittar et all blame by a esertraisrtial—this nephew
(how convenient!) woe* the Chiltern Hundred/,
and lets the Hoe. Poet-Captain (for hie acquittal hes
won him his promotion) resume his seat for Morpeth,
and take his place again imam those member, of the
House of Commons who are famed for the ability with
which they my " Hear, hear." In the annals d
borough jobbery there is scarcely to be found a more
curious example of the cool disposal of en electorate,
turned over from eon to nephew, without hesitation.

taartl7 that the former might go to sea, sad get "poet-
militant's" rank.
We may ridicule inch a syslom, and talk of it as a
matter donne, bat ekrionsly is it not disgusting tint
" our r tative system" should be eo devised
that whiseat in Great Britain eta be found f
snob a statesman es Macaulay, Post-Captain the Hon.
Edward Howard can get in and out of the house just
se it suite his ammonium or his whim P Mr. Glad-
stone, after he relinquished Newark, was oat of par-
liament $ year and a 11.14 and was melds, election
by half the eanstitaencize of the empire. If we are
to have nomination boroughs, let them at least be
seed to afixd to each mat as these the opportunity of
giving the state the advantage of their service', not
for the parpase of tilling the Homo of Common with
mere nonentities.

We wish this was all we had to say a' out the
present state of Morpeth, bat there is a carounutance
bearing on its political position to which it is impos-
sible not to refer. The living of Morpeth is, as we
have already remarked, in the gift of the Faris of
Carlisle. The present rector is the Ron. and Rev. F.
R. Grey, a brother of our colonial minister, and the
husband of Logy Elizabeth, the sister of the pressot
Earl of Carlisle. Now, you would scarcely expect to
find in the brotlur of Esrl Grey, in the mash of the
very evangelic el Home Secretary, and in the
brother-in-law of the Chief Commaidomer of
Woods and Forests, the rankest Passyits oat of
the pale of the church of Rome. Yet so it is. The
new church at Morpeth puts in the shade St.
at Knightsbridge, Christ Church, Regent's Park, or
even the vicarage of East Brent, held by the tory
brother of another Whig statesman. Evelyn Denison,
Fag., M.P. for Melton. Our experience of Paseyite
churches has not been small. We have seen them in
the diocese of London, where they are tolerated—in
the diocese of Exeter—where they are olserihed. But
of all the examples we ever saw, none have come up
to Mr. Grey's °larch at Morpsth. Ws sought far
the holy water lastinotively. Its absence was the
solitary dramatise°e that led us to suppose it within
the bounds of possibility that the church of Morpeth
was not a convent chapel or a monastic shrine. If
the Bishop of Durham has ears to hear—" let him
hear.'