The Express.
London, England, 1847-02-26 00:00:00

the following opinions were expressed in the protests of a
large number of dissentient peers who in vain endeavoured
to induce the House of Lords to take the opinion of the
judges upon the legality of the measure :
" That the new constitution of the Common Council
enacted by this bill, whereby a negative is given to the
mayor awl aldermen ... is • dangerous innovation upon the
city, unsupported by any evidence of the ancient constitu-
tion; and though in late times mentioned to be claimed,
yet contrary to a clear, uninterrupted and convincing proof
of the exercise of the powers and authorities of the Common
Council, in all ages. to the 29th of January, 17'23:"—" the
written evidence offered in support of the claim of; • nega-
tive by the mayor and aldermen being also conceived in
general terms inapplicable to that claim, and not maintained
by subsequent practice, or drawn from proceedings in times
of trouble and confusion."—" That the petition of the many
thousand freemen of the city against this bill ought to be
of far greater weight against this bill than the petition
of fifteen aldermen for it."—" That the extraordieary. power
given by thy bill to the mayor and aldermen will vest in them
new and exorbitant authorities over all the citizens, their
rights, liberties, and franchises of all kind*, inconsistent
with that balance of power in the City by which the lame
have been preserved; and in the future exercise thereof
must, as we conceive, lay the foundation of constant and
lasting disputes,"
The passing of the bill was strenuously opposed in the
House of Cemmoris, by those able and patriotic Aldermen
Sir Francis Child and Sir John Barnard, who justly pre-
ferred the ;rights of their fellow-citizens to the oligarchic
pretensions of their brotneealdermen ; and it was upon the
motion of the latter member that the clause was afterwards
abrogated by l'arliament.
Ever since the repeal of the obnoxious clause in the act of
11 Geo. 1. the legislative and administrative functions of the
Common Council have been exercised, as of old, by " the
Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons, in Common Council assem-
bled," the present being the first din et attempt of the
aldermen to assert, in addition to their voice in the general
couniil, a power of stopping any of its proceedings through
the instrumentality of the Lord Mayor.
With regard to the immediate occasion upon which the
aldermen hese seen fit to put forth this claim, it is not to be
supposed that any real objection to the Qualification Bill
now before the court for a third reading has anything to do
with it. The bill has been for more than two years in pre-
paration in • committee of which twelve aldermen are mem-
bers; and neither in committee nor in the common council
has any alderman ever specified any objection to it. Mr.
Richard Taylor moved the inquiry which led to the order
for preparing it as far back as 1841, in consequence of the
state of things manifested by the election for alderman in
Breadstrcet Ward, which the newspapers of the day and the
whole of the public justly reprobated. During the long
scrutiny which followed, the hair-splitting and inconsistent
opinions and decisions as to the household qualification, ex-
posed this portion of the civic institution* to general censure.
the Lord Mayor and the It corder sat side by side disperse-
iug each other's judgments, and reproaching each other as
deciding contrary to law and to common sense, to the great
scandal of all who wish to maintain a reverence for such
worshipful authorities and the scrutiny ended in reducing
the whole constituency by which an alderman of London
was elected for life (with the mayoralty in reversion), to
about thirty persons, and even some of those would have
been disqualified had the scrutiny been continued.
The decisions of the Court of Aldermen upon disputed elec-
tions of Common Council at different timeshare been equally
conflicting; and the judgment of one Recorder has been
directly at variance with that of another. Upon the legal
meaning of the ambiguous word "Householder," the Common
Council have had volumes of opinions from the law officers.
They had Mr. Common Serjeant Knowlya' at great length
and for Mr. Common Pleader Norton's ample investigation
of the subject the court voted him • large gratuity. The
present learned recorder's opinion differs from that of his
predicessor; and hitherto, to the great profit of gentlemen
of the bar in the case of a disputed election, the whole matter
has been kept in a delightful state of doubt and uncertainty,
whether a qualified householder be simply, as the term im-
plies, one who holds a house, for which he is rated, and
therefore in scot and lot; or whether he must also be an in-
habitant, or resiant, or resident householder,—and then
what may be the various possible legal imports of any or all
of these terms —moreover, how far sleeping in the house is
the essential requisite : also, whether the said sleeping must
be personal, by himself, or by his servants wh they if he
does not actually sleep he has Mill the animus rlortniendi:
whether it must be by night in a bed, or, as in the case of
old Deputy Hooper, after dinner in his arm.chair, before hia
back counting-house hoe or, if a servant or watchman,
whether on a truckle-bed, or on a heap of shavings ; whereas,
all the while, the citizen who occupies his warehouse or
manufactory, for which he pays large taxes, where he is
habitually to be found, at his business, gaining hie living
and employing a number of persons there, and liable to be
summoned there, has no qualification at all. according to
this construction of City law, unleas he shall have recourse
to one of the aforesaid sleeping subterfuges.
The Common Council having in 1841 referred the sub-
ject to the Committee of General Purposes, of which twelve
aldermen are members, the recorder's opinion (or, more
correctly, his oracular and obscure substitute for an opinion)
wax after • long delay (Sept. 1842) obtained, on a case, pre-
pared by the City solicitor, and to this effect :-
1. That the qualification of electors being fixed by act of
parliament, can be varied only by application to parlia-
ment :—but,

2. That the qualification of a person to be elected de-
pended upon records, ordinancea, and acts of Common
Council.
The first question being already in the hands of the Free-
dom Committee, to whom it had been referred to cinsider of
an application to parliament for a repeal or amendment of
the 11th of George 1., cap. 13, with a view to an extension
of the franchise the second question, as one with which, on
the recorder's own showing, the corporation itself was com-
petent to deal, was on the 13th of May, 1845, referred again,
on the motion of Mr. Richard Taylor, to the committee of
general purposes, with orders to prepare a bill, under the
advice of the law officers, for art act of Common Council to
declare " what is the qualification of a person to be elected."
The hill, after having received much consideration in the
committee, assisted by the townelerk, was read a first time
Oct. 29, 1846, and amended in some particulars, no alder-
man having opposed its object ; and some of them, whose
opinion had been consulted, havingexpressed their approval
otri measure which would remove ambiguities and prevent
conflicting decisions in cases of disputed elections. Even to
this hour the aldermen have nothing to allege against the
provisions of the bill itself, but an objection ts started aa to
as having been originated in the Court of Common Council,
—the only place, however, where acts of Common Council,
so far as we know, have originated, or can originate, as in
legislative proceedings there are no separate houses as in
parliament, but all sit, and discuss, and vote together in one
body. Those persons, therefore, who speak of a dispute
between the " two houses," or " two courts," misled by an
imagined analogy with the parliament, are ignorant ot the
constitution of the council,which is the entire body, including
"Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons, in Common Council as-
sembled." Apart from this, the aldermen, as magistrates,
and for certain matter, delegated to them, form a board, in
their collective capacity, which has been designated a court,
but which has no distinct legislative power.
It is not true that the bill, if passed, would "do away
with the ancient qualification ;" since that is carefully pre-
served, at the s ,me time that tke additional one is declared. '
The term in the:former ordinance is simply " Householder,"
and the bill only provides that this term shall not be nar-
rowed by arbitrary decisions and legal subtleties, but taken
in a wider and more liberal sense.