The Sun.
London, England, 1836-03-09 00:00:00

anxiously provided for than that of the lowest citizen on the
burgh roll. In order to entitle an inhabitant of one of the
towns of Ireland to that distinction, he must be possessed of
a residence in the borough of the annual value of at least 51.
Ridiculous as such a sum iai ht seem as a test of respectabi-
lity for a borough, even that paltry qualification was dispensed
with for a magistrate.—( Hear, bear.) Nay, more, he was not
required to be even resident in the town ; so that literally
under this Bill a mendicant, without a home or a shilling,, was
eli,2ible to take his scat upon the bench as a guardian of the
public peace.—( Hear, hear, and " Oh, oh," from the Ministe-
rial side of the House.) A grand juror under another
clause was admissible, on the panel with no other qualification
than the possession of a 5/. house. And now as to the mode in
which other municipal functions of. the town were discharged in
Belfast, independently of a corporation. These consisted there,
as elsewhere, of duties connected with the health of the inhabit-
ants, such as paving, lighting, and cleansing, of the supplying
the town with water, and of looking after the preservation and
improvement of the harbour. For these several purposes the
town had three local Acts of Parliament, which enabled all
the inhabitants, paying a certain rate of police-tax, to elect
annually from themselves three Boards of Commissioners to
conduct their affairs. The Police Committee was chosen
under one of these by householders paying 20/. annual rent ;
the Water Commissioners by a still lower assessment ; and
the Ballast Board by those most interested—the shipowners,
the anchor-merchants, and iron-masters. There are, then,
three bodies popularly chosen from the mass of the inhabi-
tants, who have, in every instance, the assessment, the col-
lection, and the expenditure of the funds raised for muni-
cipal purposes, and amounting to about 17,000/. per an-
num; and, being thus themselves participators in the bur-
thens they impose, interested in the duties they discharge, and
amenable to popular scrutiny and opinion for their
these several departments are conducted with a
care, an economy, and an efficiency which cannot be ques-
tioned, and which cannot be surpassed by any corporate
system, however elaborate or ingenious. The Commissioners
in their printed Report, whilst they recommend a less complex
machinery in one department, have in no one case discovered
or recorded any instance of inordinate expense, or improper
expenditure, or of imperfect operation. And all this the
House will observe is performed without any connection
with the Corporation ' • yet Belfast is certainly the most pros-
perous, peaceful, and improving town in Ireland.—( Hear.)
It was not to be wondered at, then, that. the town of Belfast,

thus efficiently governed by a system of its own adoption, the
offspring of its own wants, and the result of its own expe-
rience, should feel a just alarm at the prospect of having its
municipal regulations, the growth of half a century, wrested
from it, for the purpose of forcing back upon it the old and
antiquated corporate system which it had repudiated and re-
jected fifty years before.—(" Hear, hear," from the Opposi-
tion," and " Oh, oh," from the Ministerial benches.) Besides,
in such a proceeding the operation of the measure would ab-
solutely falsify the very principle on which it professes to be
founded. That principle is declared to be the placing of the
corporations on a more ample basis, and the extension of po-
pular influence and popular controul in the manasrement of
these affairs. By the schedule appended to the Bill it appears
that Belfast is to be provided with thirty common councilmen,
who arc to have entrusted to them the management of its
police, paving, lighting, and watching ; of its charitable
trusts ; and, in short, of all its internal and local interests.
Now, these interests are at present watched over by a
variety of Boards, elected as he had already mentioned,
and comprising, one with another, between 140 and 150 pur-
sons. The functions of the entire of these individuals were
forthwith to be superseded for the purpose of conso-
lidating their labours in the thirty common councilmen
to be elected under this Bill ; and yet this, they were told,
was to be regarded as widening the basis of political privi-
leges and popular controul.—(Hear, hear.) The persons at
present attached to public functions in Belfast had their duties
so accurately defined, and their labours so minutely subdivided,
that no one board, nor one individual, could be said to possess

anything deserving the name of patronage, or influence, or
profft from his office. But the case would be widely different
when they had concentrated in thirty individuals not only the
whole functions, authorities, and powers which were at present
vested in so many persons; but likewise the new patronage
created by this Bill—the amintment of mayors, treasurers,
clerks, and corporate officers—the choice of sheriffs, coroners,
and salaried police magistrates—the elections of commissions,
committees. and constables—as well as the granting of licenses,
and fixing the amount of annual taxation for the whole com-
munity.—(Hear.) Offices endowed with such powerful influ-
ence would no longer be regarded as matter of indifference, not
merely from their political importance, but from their actual
and substantial value. Elections would no longer be, as they
were at present, matters of careless nomination or of indifferent
moment. They would have the contests for office set about in
right earnest ; labour, and time, and entreaty, would be devoted
to the canvass, proportioned to the importance of the appoint-
ment, and the elections for common-councilmen in every
borough would be even keener and bitterer conflicts than
those for Parliamentary representatives, inasmuch as the
spur of self-interest would be added to the ambition
,of
patty triumph. What, he.would ask, in the midst of these
turmoils and strifes, was to become of the peace and tranquil-
lity, and union of society ? And in trading and commercial
towns, how would the time, and attention, and passions of the
people be engrossed ? It could scarcely be possible that
Gentlemen on the opposite side of the House, who represented
commercial constituencies, and who were disposed to vote for
the Bill had examined its provisions,' and understood tho-
roughly what it was that they were about to inflict upon the
trading towns in Ireland.—( Hear.) , Party might well indeed
be said to be the madness of the many for the gain of the
few, if the population of well-ordered towns were once to be in-
duced to enter with full spirit into the endless proceedings
which such a measure would institute. The consequences in
any case must inevitably be greater, that men abandon their
private business to ruin themselves by their attendance upon
local politics—or else that people will shortly grow weary of
such incessant and hopeless broils, and that the municipal
elections will fall altogether into the hands of the idle and the
restless, who have no other occupation, and deserve no higher
command.—( Hear.) lie should conclude by repeating his
entire conviction that the carrying of such a Bill for Ireland
would be the cause of the most serious injury to the kingdom
at large, and would entail inevitable mischief on the peace and'
prosperity of every commercial and mnufacturing community
in the country.—( Cheers from the Opposition.)
Mr. BARRON thought the lion. Member could not have
read the Bill very attentively, or he would not have indulged
in more than one mis-statement. The Hon. Member had al-
lowed it to be inferred that under this Bill the magistrates
would be appointed by the town councils. He (Mr. Barron)
begged to inform the House that this was not the case, but
that the appointment of magistrates was taken by it from the
close Corporations, and given to the Crown. In this respect
the Irish differed from the English Bill, as originally passed
last year. The Hon. Gentleman had also said, that the con-
trol of the Courts of Justice would be vested in the new Cor-
porations. This was also in contradiction to the provisions of
the Bill. The Hon. Gentleman found fault with the Bill be-
cause, forsooth, the Corporations were to continue to be called
by. the same name. But if he had such a hatred—a hatred, be
it remembered, that was new-born in the lion. Gentleman and
his friends on the opposite side of the House—to these civic
monopolies, why not substitute for Corporation some other
word, which would be more congenial to his and their notions
of propriety ? So shocking did the very name " Corporation"
appear to be to the Hon. Gentlemen opposite, that they could
not even bear the sound. For his part he would, with all his
heart, say do away with it altogether; but he could not at the
same time help exclaiming, with respect to their conduct on
the present occasion, " Oh, it smells rank."—( Great laughter. )
Why, was it not evident that the Hon. Gentleman argued
more against the use of the word " corporation" than against
this Bill. Now, if it so pleased the Hon. Gentleman, lie ( Mr-
Barron) had no objection whatever to let the word be abo-
lished altogether; for they all knew that ,c a rose"—( Peals of
laughter, and cries of " Oh, oh.") Well, he would go no fur-
ther.—( Hear, hear, and laughter.) If they did not wish the
civic body to be called " corporations," they might, if they
liked, give them a new name. Let them be called commis-
sioners, or anything else they pleased. He supposed that it
was not the intention of the Right Hon. Baronet opposite to
. limit the powers of the authorities which he proposed to con-
stitute for the good government of the towns to such trifles as
lighting, paving, and cleansing. Did the Right Hon. Baronet
forget that improvements were constantly required to be made
in towns, or was it his intention to place all such local mat-
ters in the hands of commissioners, appointed by the Crown ?
What would the Right Hon. Baronet who paid such reverence
to everything that was ancient—the vindication of the institu-
tions of the country in Church and State—allow corporations
to be swept away thus unceremoniously ? Oh I hear it not.
Sooner would he submit to have his head severed from his body.
—( Renewed laughter.) He would die rather ; but the thing
was impossible, for the Right Hon. Baronet would never do
anythine of the kind.—( Laughter.) Surely the assertor of
the inchoate rights of freemen would never tolerate the aboli-
tion of mayors, aldermen, common councilmen, and all the
other paraphernalia of corporations, and place the power which
they exercised at the disposal of the Crown. This, indeed,
would be unconstitutional doctrine, with a vengeance. There
must, however, be some civil bodies appointed for the govern-
ment of towns under popular controul, and, if so, why should
nut Ireland have corporations as well as England? Oh ! but
it was aaid that Ireland should be deprived of the advantage of
municipal governments, because party spirit ran so high at
elections in that country. What I had party spirit never run
high in any other place? Had nothing like party spirit been
evinced in either England, Scotland, or even in Wales, on a
recent occasion ? Did the Right Hon. Baronet forget that ho
himself had been pelted with mud in the city of London ; and
was it not a notorious fact that cabbage-leaves and other mis-
siles bad been seen flying about the hustings in Covent-garden
as plentifully as at•any Irish election that ever taken place?
These assertions about party spirit, therefore, were nothing
more nor less than bugbears, used for the purpose of deluding
the people of England.—( Hear.) It had, he knew, been
stated by the Morning Post that the Irish Members who sat
on that sidc of the House owed their return to brickbats and
bludgeont
An HON. MEMOR—No; it was the Times that said so.
Mr. BARRON—WeII, they had been called "the brick-
bat and bludgeon Members ;" and every conflict, great or
small, that bad taken place at any election in Ireland was
blazoned forth not only in the newspapers, but in the Reports
which had been placed upon the table of that House, for no
other purpose but to create alarm in England, and, by that
means prevent justice being done to Ireland. Discussion
bad been stigmatised as agitation ; but lie cared not for that,
because he knew that it was discussion—agitation, if they
pleased—which had wrung from unwilling hands Catholic
Emancipation, Reform, and the emancipation of the slaves in
the Colonies, and which had still to drag from the opponents
of this Bill the same measure of justice for the towns of Ire-
land which had been dealt out to the English and Scotch
towns. If corporations were an object of desire to English