The Sun.
London, England, 1853-11-15 00:00:00

•an dfrect.
Fore Cabin. Saloon
.... 10d. .. Is. 2d,

Passages marked • are ri

To or Prom Gravesend and L0nd0n......

„ Gravesend and Blackwall or Woolvrieh Bd. ..
Between Gravesend and Intermediate Piers.. 6d. ..

Os. 10d,
Os. Bd.

BOAT TICKETS.—TweIve Months, sr. Os. ; Six Months, 31. Os. ;
Three Months, 21. Os. ; to be had of the Collectors on board the
Packets; or of Mr. Monk, Terrace Pier, Gravesend.
Nov. 1, 1853.

THE CORPORATION OF LONDON.

(From, the Times.)

Though we have not yet gathered all the sweets
which the civic garden of roses presents to the
eager eye and greedy hand of the inquirer, we may
cull some samples which sufficiently betray the rich
and luxuriant nature of the soil in which they have
been reared. The case of Messrs. Combe and
Delafield, the great brewers, is as good an illustra-
tion as may be of the delights of municipal go-
vernment, and the truth of those annual compli-
ments which associate the name of the City Cor-
poration with the spread of industry and commerce.
This is the way the Corporation takes to encourage
the trades which, in spite of its baneful influence,
are still carried on within the limits of its jurisdic-
tion, or rather the following are the penalties which
we have to pay for the intolerable nuisance of a
Lord Mayor's Show, for the Aldermanic adminis-
tration of justice, for the ruin of our river, the
distortion of our thoroughfares, the enhancement
of the price of our coals, and the perversion of a
large mass of charitable property to any other pur-
pose rather than that for which it was intended.
Messrs. Combe and Delafield have the misfortune

to carry on the trade of brewers within the pre-
cincts of St. Giles's. They had the additional mis-
fortune to be the proprietors of a_wharf near Water-

100-bridge, to which were sent large quantities of
malt for the purposes of their brewery. This
malt the city authorities claimed a right to unload
on behalf of the Corporation of Fellowship Porters,
which goodly fellowship claims the porterage and
cartage of all coals, corn, and grain, salt, apples,
pears, and plums, onions and roots, and all manner
of merchandise, measurable or to be measured,
arriving at the port of London. To enforce this
right of doing that for the brewers which they were
perfectly content to do for themselves a bill was filed
in October, 1835. In 1839 the city set up another
claim—that of metage—in addition to porterage
and cartage, which, as Messrs. Combeand Delafield
did not want their malt measured at all, they re-
garded with equal disfavour. The result of this
second instance of contumaciousness was the filing
another bill against them in 1839. So that here
was a respectable firm involved in two heavy law-
suits because they would rather pay threepence or
fourpence to their own porters than three shillings
and threepence to the civil guild for the porterage
of every ten quarters of malt, and because they
did not want the city to measure that which they
had. already measured themselves. The matter
was of great importance to the brewers, the exac-
tion in question amounting to somewhere about

1,0001. a-Pear, and they naturally thought that they
would be better able to defend themselves if they
could get a sight of those documents upon which
these claims of metage and porterage rested. For
this purpose they filed two bills of discovery, to
which the city returned indirect and evasive an-
swers, and it was only after being twice excepted
to that anything like information could be ex-
tracted. This is the way in which a corporation,
whose existence can only be justified on the ground
that it contributes to the public good, treats those
against whom it is seeking to enforce the most op-
pressive claims in the most arbitrary manner, and
thus does it keep back the evidence on which
those claims are founded. But this was not all.
After they had got the third answer, Messrs.
Combe and Delafield asked Vice-Chancellor Knight
, Bruce for leave to inspect the documents iu ques-
tion in the cause, and the Vice-Chancellor granted
the application. The city appealed to Lord
Lyndhurst, then Chancellor, who dismissed the
appeal, and from this judgment they appealed to
the House of Lords, where the case remains un-
decided to this day. Thus, after a litigation of
18 years in the one case, and of 14 years in the
other, the question of metage and porterage re-
mains untried and undecided, and the case is, by
the act of the parties claiming the right, hung up
on a collateral point. It is very difficult to pe-
ruse these proceedings without feeling that the
city, which puts forward claims of this odious
and extravagant nature, which nothing but imme-
morial usage, yesupposing an act of Parliament,
could sanction, has no confidence in its own case,
dare not expose to the world the evidence on which
its claim rests, and seeks to weary out and exhaust
by prolonged and frivolous litigation a resistance
which it despairs to overcome by the weapons of
reason and justice. In this case, as in many others,
we see the proof that the Corporation has entirely
lost sight of its public character ; that it regards
its franchises and its Powers as private property,
to be used for the good of existing members, not
as trusts to be exercised for the public benefit ; and
that there is no artifice, no delay, no chicane at
which it will stop to extend its powers, or to beat
down and weary out opposition to its demands.
Such being the weapons that it wields, a poor man
—we had almost said a prudent one—must submit
to any extortion and bear any injustice rather than
risk his total ruin in the assertion of rights which
this great incorporation has raised up to trample
on and destroy.

But, while the Corporation is thus exhibited in
most unfavourable colours in the inquiry before the
Commission, we cannot say that those city magnates
who have appeared to give evidence have done much
to raise the general opinion of their competence to
deal with questions of this nature. No blame at-
taches to the Commission in this respect, for they
have undoubtedly sought out for witnesses persons
of high standing in the city, and who usually take
a lead in all its transactions. The problem is a
very interesting one, and one which
The
awaken their utmost' care and attenticoerrhned
in
merchants of London are deeply.
-etecr°esnts of ti: ade
settling the question how far the Tight well
municipal insti tu-
and commerce, the claims of ai city improvement,
tion, and the requirements °ye, t ,of these gentle-
can be conciliated togetherrs;
had little more to say
men, the first, Mr. Treaveorp
oration, and desired its
than that he hated
to
did not give the least reason.
extinction, though _
to
suppose that be had taken any trouble to make: