The Sun.
London, England, 1853-03-28 00:00:00

as an excuse for giving currency to a little of that
smart spitefulness which, for some unexplained
reason, our contemporary indulges upon all occa-
sions against the municipal authorities of the City.
We fancied we had arrived at the depth of the
project when we found that it furnished an excuse
for calling the City of London " the scandal and
nuisance of the British metropolis," and for pro-
pounding the startling statement that, "to have
anything to do with the City of London was a dis-
grace !" Nay, we believed the writer might have
been tempted to the discussion of the plan by the
opportunity of uttering the marvellous pleasantry
that the City was " but five per cent. of London,"
a pleasantry which we cannot help thinking, oddly
enough, betrayed the origin of the article. There
is but little difficulty in guessing the sort of people
who, even in their witticisms and civic speculations,
can think of nothing but the "rate per cent."
A second article in the columns of our contem-
porary, on Saturday, induces us to suspect that
we may have dealt too lightly with this wild and
mischievous project. The article is obviously in-
tended, although with commendable discretion
it does not profess to be a reply to our
former remarks. It not only reiterates the pro-
posal, but with an amazing recklessness of asser-
tion, declares that public opinion has already de-
termined that it shall be carried into efket ! Public
opinion resolved that the corporation of London is
to be destroyed, and all the district within three
miles of St. Paul's constituted into a metropolitan
corporation ! ! This certainly is startling intel-
ligence to those who, up to Thursday last, had
never known that such a project was so much
as thought of. On Saturday, our contemporary tells
the corporation of the City that it isquite useless for
them to entertain plans of self-reform. " The
public care nothing for their mayor, their alder-
men, their bye-laws, their common council, their
festivals, and their jobs." The only thing for the
poor corporation is to-esti-drink* -and-be merry,-
for their doom is inevitable and at hand. "It is
not the reform, but the abolition of the corporation
which public opinion requires, and a substitution
in their place of a body representing, according to
the regulations of one of the most successful pieces
of modern legislation—the Municipal Reform Act
—that vast mass of wealth, intelligence, and popu-
lation, which is to be found within threp miles of
St. Paul's." The writer then proceeds to advocate
the rights of the people of Chelsea, Southwark,
Finsbury, and the Tower Hamlets, to form a por-
tion of a great metropolitan municipality, and
winds up with an oracular announcement that the
corporation of London is " to leave reform to those
who have the power of carrying it out, and who
are not for the first time awakening to its neces-
sity."
Considering the demi-official character which
sometimes attaches to statements in the Times, we
protest we think that those interested in this mat-
ter have a right to be informed who are the per-
sons for whom the Government journalist vouches
as " having the power " of effecting this change,
" and not now for the first time awakened to its
necessity." Are we to understand these words as
an official intimation that this preposterous mis-
chief is really thought of by men in power, and
that among the promised blessings which are in due
time to issue from the Cabinet of contradictions,-
we may reckon the scheme of destroying all the
ancient rights of the citizens of London, and estab-
lishing upon their ruins a municipal nuisance in
which the very refuse and scum of the lanes and
alleys of this great metropolis may, under the pre-
tence of a corporation, lord it over its wealth, its
intelligence, and its respectability. We will not go
the length of saying that such a plan is as yet depo-
sited in any of the pigeon-holes of the office of
Woods and Forests ; yet, when we remember the
utter dependence of the present wretched Ministry
upon that conspiracy of Jew brokers and money
jobbers which the Times so faithfully serves—the
only interest from which, through all its marvellous
gyrations, it has never swerved, and when we re-
collect, moreover, that such a scheme would pro-
bably belong to that department which is presided
over by that walking impersonation of all crude
and radical theories, who represents the respectable
borough of Southwark, we feel bound to call the
serious attention, not only of those intrusted with
the defence of the privileges of the City, but of all
the dwellers " within three miles round St.
Paul's," to a plan which, in spite of its palpable
absurdity, we can no longer say is not seriously
threatened.

We say nothing at present of the wisdom and
justice of the coolly-proposed destruction of the
ancient and immemorial rights which belong to the
citizens of London. Bold, indeed, will be the man
whd will proposed by a summary act of confiscation
to deal with all the various and complicated inte-
rests and properties which are bound up in the
aggregate that forms the municipality of that City.
But let us ask, in the name of Heaven, what offence
has been committed by the peaceful inhabitants of
the thousands of streets and squares in which men
now dwell at their ease, that they are to be cursed
with incorporation into all the turmoil and vexa-
tion of a democratic municipality, regulated upon
the model of the Reform Act ? Let us imagine, if
we can, the whole district extending three miles in
every direction from St. Paul's—let us imagine,
we say, this district, with all its various classes and
kinds of population, divided, it may be, into some
thirty or fifty wards, the 10/. householders of each
ward electing their quota of representatives to a
monster common council, and that common council
affecting to represent the opinions of the metropolis,
and more than this, appointing its magistrates, en-
acting its bye-laws, and levying its taxes over every
street and square within the limits we have men-
tioned. Feebly and inadequately it expresses the
monstrosity of such a proceeding to say that it would
constitute Shoreditch the ruler of Belgravia, and
make Whitechapel and St. Giles's give laws to Port-
man-square. Even if its vast extent did not forbid it
to apply it to a metropolis like London, the principle
of a municipal act would be at once an absurdity and
an injustice. The seat of Government, the Legis-
lature, and the courts of law must of necessity
attract or compel a class of residents who never
ought to be treated as fit objects for such a munici-
pality as is fairly established in provincial towns.
The country gentleman or the nobleman whose Par-
liamentary duties, or the attractions of the Court,
induce him to take a residence in London, ought
not, therefore, to be seized on and compelled to be
a burgess by virtue of a citizenship such as this.
The professional man ought not to be subjected to
the control of a municipality with which he has no
feeling and no pursuit in common. Could the pro-
ject be carried there would be wards at one end of
the City composed of districts of the very existence
of which the burgesses at the other end had never
heard. So far from there being unity of interest or
sympathy of feeling, it would not be possible to
name two towns in the same country so utterly
separate and dissimilar as are the districts round
the Tower and Belgrave-square. The project of
uniting them in one system of municipal govern-
ment is too absurd to be seriously discussed.
This is not all. The perverse ingenuity of man
could not devise a more intolerable nuisance than
such a corporation, were it possible to construct it,
would be sure to prove. In two-thirds of the
wards into which it would be possible to divide the
metropolis the very lowest class of householders
would bear absolute sway. Too unwieldy for every-
thing but mischief, such a body could not even
attempt to discharge any one municipal function
except by dividing itself into local sections, each of
which would contain the concentrated essence of
those "nests of robbers," as the Times has, with
more truth than politeness, designated our Radical
vestries. In its united capacity it would reserve
itself for political follies on a grand scale, and those
gigantic jobberies, the anticipated plunder of which
has probably recommended the scheme to those
gentlemen who are thinking of the rate per cent.
We feel as if we have wasted time in seriously
discussing this subject. We may, perhaps, expect
the project of the great metropolitan corporation
to be brought forward along with one to re-enact
the Heptarchy, and establish over England seven
kingdoms tributary to the Crown. The one pro-
posal we believe to be about as rational and as
probable as the other. Nevertheless, when it is
gravely put forward by an authority like the Times,
and put forward, too, with a not very equivocal
hint, that those who have the power to pass it aro
ready to adopt this most absurd and revolutionary
project—it may not be amiss that, once for all, we
should hold up its folly and its wickedness to pub-
lic ridicule and contempt.

TITF. JEW BILL.
( From the Weekly Dispatch.)
We think we have made a discovery—which is
not an invention. Our contemporary, the Morning
Advertiser, who is somewhat clever at detecting
mare's nests, or imparting to its readers important
intelligence, from what it calls "exclusive sources"
—the said intelligence generally turning out to be
a bottle of smoke—our respectable friend, we ob-
serve, announces that Mr. Disraeli has resigned the
leadership of the Opposition, and that he is to make
fcrsial daolantion to that effect after Easter.