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

THR SUN, LONDON, AV_EDNESDAY, MARCH 9, 136',

proposed on the opposite side of The 11 Jtri'e was entirely
destructive of Irisf, Corporations. Now he would put it to
the Hen. Gentlemen whether such a proposition had not some
tendency to interfere with the prerogative of the Crown, with
the power of granting charters of incorporation ? If the pre-
rogative of the Crow❑ in this respect was not to be restricted
the plan of Hon. .Members opposite might prove nugatory ;
for, after the present Corporations were entirely put an end
to, as now proposed, whit was to prevent the Crown the very
next week from reviving them, and placing them on the very
s ime footing on which it was proposed by this Bill to place
them Ilea*, hear.) If such might be the effect, he could
not help. expressing his surprise that such a proposition should

come from such a quarter.
Mr. M. J. O'CO NS ELL said that, so far as the debate
hail hitherto gone, the real merits of the question were
scarcely touched upon. It had been said that the county of
Kerry election was made a religioua question. Now, this was
disproved by the letter of a Roman Catholic Nobleman ( Lord
Kenmare), which was read last night by the Right Hon. and
Gallant Officer himself ( Sir H. Hardinge.) He must say
that the Hon. and Learned Gentleman the Member for the
University of Dublin ( Mr. Lefrov) did not seem better ac-
quainted with the subject of population, an related to this Bill,
in Ireland, than the ihn. and Gallant Officer did with its loca-
li:ies. He said that in the English Reform Bill the average
population of the places in schedule C was 5,743. Now, he
looked at schedule C, both in the English Bill and this, and
he found that in the former the average population fell short
by three hundred and thirty of the population of schedule
Cin this Bill. The Learned Gentleman mentioned par.
ticularly Middleton and Belturbet. Now, in the English
Act there were two places, South Wold and Kendal (as we
understood), the population in the former being only 1,942,
in the otlitr 1,875, far short of the population of Middleton or
of Belturbet. In the English Bill, Romford, with a popula-
tion. of 6,112, Malmesbury, with a population of 3,000, and
Sutton Colfield, with a population of 3,618, were struck out.
He would not go further into details. The great question
was, would they extend to Ireland the same principle that was
considered so valuable in England ?—( Hear, hear.) Much
was said of the strength of party feelings in Ireland, and the
Hon. Gentleman who spoke in the course of the debate (Mr.
G. Knight) said he was greatly influenced by this considera-
tion. But was this new? Were riot those feelings as strong

in 1832 as they were now ? In a speech delivered in the Sea.
sion of 1832 it was said—" Justice demands that, out of the
Church property in Ireland, the ministers of the national re-
ligion should receive a provision as well as the Protestant
clergyman. There is not in Europe such .a monster as the
Protestant Establishment in Ireland."—(Hear, hear.) He
(Mr. M. O'Connell) believed that the existing corporate system
was almost as great a monster, " and I can never believe that,
whatever strength the Government may derive from the assis-
tance of such an instrument, it can be compared with the faci-
lities which may be afforded by a more equitable system."_
(The reading, of the extract was received with loud cheers
from the Opposition benches.) He (Mr. M. O'Connell) had
read this, not for the mere purpose of obtaining a cheer at
the expense of the Hon. Member, but because it afforded an
explanation of the real state 7of the question as affected Ire-
land. As long as a real grievance existed there this state of
party animosity would exist also ; and the question was, how
should the party disputes be put an end to—by continuing the
grievance, or by affording justice to the people ? It was said
that the Irish people were not yet in a fit state to be trusted
with that for which they sought ; but that was the usual argu-
ment of tyranny against the restoration of liberty.—( Hear.)
It had equally been used as an argument against the abolition
of negro slavery.—( Hear.) H,-; hoped and trusted that the
House would enter into the feelings of the Irish people—that
they would show by a triumphant majority that they were de-
termined to extend to Ireland the same principle and the same
measure which had already been adopted for England ; that
the representatives of the English people would show that
they considered the people of Ireland as equally entitled to
justice with themselves ; and that as Ireland has already had
more than her fair share of that corporate corruption which had
prevailed in both countries, she would-at least have a fair share
in the measure of justice and reform.—(Cheers from the Mi-
nisterial benches.)
Mr. E. TENNENT observed that the measure of the
Right Hon. Gentleman the Attorney-General for Ireland was
unquestionably calculated to effect a vast alteration in the
existing system; nay, further, were it indispensable to con-
tinue corporations at all, it was, in his (Mr. E. Tennent's)
opinion; in many particulars, a material improvement upon
them. But the question which now agitated the country was
not confined to so narrow a compass—it was not restricted to a
mere inquiry into what extent of improvement the old corpo-
rations were susceptible of. The broad important question
was this—are the corporations worth repairing at all ? Are
they institutions which are worth preserving, and which,
under any modification, are suited to the present state of
society in Ireland?—(Hear, hear.) He was only anxious,
if the House would grant him its attention for a few minutes,
to take up that portion of the subject which referred to the
machinery of the Bill itself, and to explain his reasons for
thinking that a corporate system, such as the Right Hon.
and Learned Gentleman the Attorney-General for Ire-
land proposed to introduce, was unsuited to the purposes for
which it was intended. It would be useless and cumbrous,
as regarded the smaller towns of Ireland, and injurious as
regarded the interests and prcperity of the larger ones.—
(Hear, hear.) In his opinion, the inquiry which the House
should apply itself to was this—whether it would not be wise
to deliver the towns of Ireland from the antiquated system of
Corporations altogether, and to leave them, for their munici-
pal government, to the adoption of such measures as the local
necessities and the more enlightened policy of modern times
might recommend.—( Hear, hear, hear.) There did not
seem to him to be anything rash or unwarrantable in such an
investigation. The results of experience in every town and
city in the empire, and the different circumstances of places
in which Corporations had or had not existed, justified in
every way the propriety of entertaining such an inquiq.
Throughout the whole contents of the elaborate and volumi-
nous reports of the Commissioners of Corporation Inquiry he
had been unable to discover one instance in which the pros-
perity or the inercased wealth and resources of any one town
was attributed to the existence or influence of the corporate
system, however modified—(Hear, from both sides of the
House)—whilst not only in England but in Ireland we had
abundant example of cities rising to the utmost pitch of
prosperity and importance without having once possessed
either in name or in substance a trace of corporate govern-
ment.—( Hear, hear.) Manchester, and Birmingham, and
Westminster were overwhelming instances in England : and
in Ireland no more irresistible example could be adduced of
a town rising into eminence and wealth without the slightest
aid from a Corporation than the town which he (Mr. E. Ten-
nant) had the honour to represent—the town of Belfast.—
(Cheering from the Opposition benches.) Although a Cor-
poration still exists in name in Belfast, no functions of any
description can be possibly said to have been discharged by it
for nearly half a century; and yet during that same period it
must be well known to the House that no town in the empire
has advanced with more rapid strides to importance and afflu-
ence. He had thought it necessary to mention these facts
with regard to the Corporation of Belfast, as well in order to
show that such institutions were not by any means essential to
the prosperity of towns as because that, as well in the discus-
sions which had taken place in that House on the question as
in its agitation out of doors, the instance of Belfast hail always
been dragged in as a pitiable example of a fine town oppressed
and harassed by the operation of corporate abuses. In the
report of the Commissioners it was adduced in three or four
several places as an illustration of exclusive monopoly as to
privileges, and of the ends of self-election as to officers. The
late Attorney-General for Ireland, in the speech in which he
introduced his Bill for Corporation Reform last year, had
feelingly alluded to the fact of there being, out of the whole
population of 50,000 or 60,000, but six freemen to be dis-
covered in Belfast. Whether even so many as six were to be
found there he could not really tell, for he had never heard of
one ; but this he could attest, that be never in his life had
heard the remotest complaint from any individual of his being
excluded from that honour.—( Hear, hear.) What, in fact,
in such a state of things as he ( Mr. Tenncnt) had described,
was any individual to gain by being admitted to freedom? No-
thing in the world. There were neither privileges nor im-
munities to enjoy ; neither patronage nor property to share—
( Hear, hear)—and the inhabitants, with all these rights, on
a perfect equality, and all their interests in their own guar-
dianship, allowed the old Corporation to ,expire without a
regret or a murmur.—(Hear, hear, hear.) And now as to
the system of municipal Government by which it teas
governingltTie tolls
prope ofr property
theo
su-
perseded, and which so amply attested in action the prac-
ticability of a large community themselves and
managing their ()an affairs without any Corporation, either
on the antiquated or the modern model. With the ma-
nagement of corporate property the town had no concern,
having inn,g
amounting no corporate
to aboutiirop e property
a year,manage;
wereT
Lord Donegal, and by him conferred along with the office of
chief magistrate, of which he holds the patronage. The only
public property of any kind which they had once possessed
were some charitable bequests in money, which being left in
trust to the Corporation had disappeared about twenty years
ago, and a suit was at present pending in Chancery with a
view to discover the mode of their appropriation. The Noble
Lord, the Secretary for Ireland, had in his speech last night
declared the principle on which the towns of Ireland were to
be included or omitted in the schedules of the Bill to be the
conjoint possession of a corporate charter and corporate pro-
perty. And, after showing to him that the town of Belfast had
no other corporate property than a Chancery suit, and neither
functions nor privileges as a Corporation, he surely would not
refuse to redeem his pledge of la3t night, to expunge it from
the Bill. With the administration of justice the Corporation
had no exclusive concern, the Chief Magistrate for the time
being generally holding the commission of the peace for the ad-
jacent counties of Down and Antrim, and acting at quarterly
and petty sessions in conjunction with the other county magis-
trates resident in the town ; but as head and representative of
the Corporation he exercised no exclusive jurisdiction be-
yond superintendence of the markets and the licensing of public
amusements, duties which would equally well devolve on the
officers of police. The administration of justice, therefore, was
altogether in the hands of the usual authorities—the magis-
trates appointed by the Crown. Complaints, the Commis-
sioners stated in their report, bad reached them of partiality in
its dispensation ; but these, they said, were probably exagge-
rated by party feelings. At all events, if any cause for them
ever existed, he (Mr. Tennent) hoped it was now removed ;
at least, if it was not, the fault did not rest with the Irish Go-
vernment, who had lately taken the matter into their own
hands, and appointed four magistrates of their own exclu-
sive 'selection, two of them without the approbation of the
Lord Lieutenant of the county, and two others, he (Mr.
Tennent) believed, without complying with the exploded ce-
remony of asking it.—( Hear.) Nothing in the present Bill
seemed to him half so objectionable as the carelessness and
laxity with which it seemed to provide for the administration
of justice. The dignity of a magistrate was actually less