The Sun.
London, England, 1836-04-18 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Though the people appreciate the motives by which
Lord Melbourne was induced to avoid resisting 'the
motion of Lord Lyndhurst for withdrawing the Eng-
lish Corporation Amendment Bill, which had received
the sanction of their Representatives, from public dis-
cussion, in order to carry on the work of destruction
in secret in a Committee up stairs of twelve Tories to
ten Reformers, they are not on that account the less
indignant at the evidence thus afforded of the humi-
liating position in which the Peers are determined to
place the Government. We can well understand why
Lord Melbourne, knowing, as he does, that the great
majority of the Peers are opposed to all Liberal mea-
,;ures, should, from a natural attachment to his own
order, wish, if possible, to prevent their rushing on a
course from which there may be no safe retreat, and, at
all events, to avoid incurring the responsibility of his
having, by any imagined want of courtesy or deference,
driven their Lordships into more_violent courses than
they might otherwise have pursued. But the people
..,3e in all this another proof that no Government which
has the confidence of the nation can have the support
of the Peers. It is not a secret that all the Liberal
measures which have received the support of a large ma-
jority of a House of Commons, chosen under a Tory
Ainistry, are to be rejected or destroyed. The Duke
of Beaufort may not be the most discreet of men ; but
he would not have talked, at the Conservative dinner
in Covent Garden Theatre, of an expected collision
between the Peers and the Commons, had not the
meeting at Apsley House determined to provoke that
collision. It is known, in fact, that their Lordships
have determined to give effect to the scheme of Lord
Francis Egerton, which was rejected by a large majo-
rity of the Commons, for destroying the corporations o
Ireland, in order to deprive the people of that country
of the protection to local interests which can be derived
from local institutions, and to impress on the Catholics
in particular, that their religion shall for ever stamp
them as unfit to enjoy the privileges which have
been bestowed on the inhabitants of England and
Scotland. Even the Irish Constabulary Bill, the
principle of which received the sanction of Sir Ro-
bert Peel, is too liberal for their Lordships' taste,
and it is also to be mutilated. We will not now
allude to the fate of other measures. But we may,,
once for all, state that their Lordships being unable to
retract their assent to the Reform Bill, seem firmly
dztermizied, as far as they have the power, that it
shall remain a dead letter, by their rejecting or essen-
Lally mutilating every measure for effecting those im-
provements in our laws and institutions, for the sake
of which a reform in the House of Commons was de-
manded by the nation. Unwilling as the people may
be to enter rashly on the bold course of farther organic
reform, and little desirable as it may be at this time to
disturb, by fresh agitation, the prosperity the nation
enjoys under a Ministry in the possession of its confi-
dence, the course which the Peers have resolved to
pursue, must force on the public a conviction that
something must be done to rescue the Government
from degradation, and to give effect to the Reform
Bill. For of what avail is it that Ministers intro-
duce liberal measures, and that they are patiently and
deliberately discussed in the Commons, if the Peers
are determined to render the proceedings of the
other branch of the Legislature nugatory ? Are the
Commons to go, like so many mill-horses, over and
over the same ground ? Are their labours to be re-
gularly brushed away by the besoms of the Peers
as if they were so many cobwebs ? The people of
England are not fend of pushing speculative re-
forms too far ; but when the necessity to act is de-
monstrated by the irresistible evidence of facts, they
will not be slow in screwing up their resolution to
the sticking place. They became satisfied that so
long as the Peers returned a majority of the
Com-
mons, the Government could not be conducted on
principles in accordance with the interests of the
country, and with one voice they demanded that
their representatives should no longer be returned
by the Oligarchy. The Lords resisted as long as
they safely could ; but at length they were forced
to yield to what must always be triumphant, the
determination of an united people. The people
cicl not want, in the first instance, to carry Reform
beyond the occasion ; and although speculative
writers had affirmed that an unreformed House
of Peers could not act harmoniously with a Re-
formed House. of Commons, they wished to allow
to the Peers a fair trial, in order that if the
uoper branch of the Legislature should prove
its fitness to legislate for the nation, histo-
rical associations might be superadded to utility. But
the Peers have determined to spurn the people from
them, and to afford a demonstration that they possess
no feeling in common with their representatives. The
consequences may easily be predicted, and cannot be
long averted. The collision is not a light matter,
whatever Noble Lords may think—it is neither more
nor less than a declaration of war against the people of
these kingdoms. The people will know how to do
themselves justice, and whatever the Lords may think,
v.ith whateer illusions they may feed themselves in the
struggle with the nation, they will be but as dust in
the balance—as chaff before the wind. The peopl,a
are now quiet ; but their eyes are intently fixed on thf.t
Peers—and when the demonstration is afforded thrgt
th-ir Lordships are incurable, the tranquillity will be
sacceeded by a course of action suited to the ein.er-
ninth:
tanzdeY;
toll .it be
before
yet.
they
late,
pause ,
them, either through.
jw,t, lest it should be imputed to_
ti .evably, and, most ,of all, not to fear to. do what is
we
tshhemoulsdelyweasr
not inclined to yield to conviction
ti in what they were
wPaleness or wickeelness, that they
_yielded to intimida,
--Morning Chronicle.;
3
yprobable fixed
Onfathtee mil:bite
-
I\ lunicipal Reform Bill, that any thint,
,-, which appears
.issoasii
to
tom:::
li'::ely to zr..s•-T:•st, .
The public
conjectureinterest
I. of Lords is watched with the most eager
- it is this feeling which
(;...zosity ; directs the creneral
b
a tention to those dress rehearsals which have beers
e ,t up at the Duke of Wellington's, to assign their
k: :specave parts in the forthcoming drama to the 8 •P-
--, ~..opriate performers, but the refraCtory spirit of ecer-
f)
In members of the company have hitherto frustr a teil
~; le laudable efforts ofthe of Apsley Hot Iss-
manager
1 Chas been for some time kno'wn, that the more ad-
\l inturous spirits among the Tory peers had be )me
ii tt'a,rly impatient of the controul which the more v vary
1 a 41 calculating heads of their anti-national fac ;tion
(\ ished to impose upon them, and it was in the. hope

of preventing an open breach, of averting those sallies
of impatient ignorance or factious violence, which
are otherwise inevitable at the approaching debate,
that this new system of preparatory private lectures by
the most eminent professors of Toryism, under the
mmediate inspection of the Chancellor of Oxford,
have been got up. It is with the highest satisfaction
we feel enabled to state, and that from an authority
entitled to the fullest credit, that the plan adopted has
hitherto proved a signal failure, and that the differences
among those men whose sole bond of union is their
common hatred of improvement, are at this moment,
sofar as the Irish Municipal Bill is concerned, as
irreconcileable as ever. It is known that the meeting
at Strathfieldsaye during the recess was eminently dis-
cordant, and that a second held at Apsley House on
Tuesday last rather widened the breach. It was then
supposed that matters might be more satisfactorily ar-
ranged in a less numerous assemblage, and accordingly
a third conclave was summoned for Wednesday. We
understand the number of Peers present at this last
meeting did not exceed nine, none of those who had
been refractory upon the two former occasions were
invited to this select committee ; but two of the
nine had been delegated in the interim to wheedle
the mutineers into at least an appearance of ac-
quiescence. Lords Wharncliffe and Roslyn are
mentioned as the delegates employed on this delicate,
and, as it proved, impracticable mission. The insu-
bordinates obstinately refused all compromise, and the
two noble Missionaries were obliged to report their
failure to the Select Committee. Under these circum-
stances, the third rehearsal has ended as abortively as
the two former. A fourth is announced to be in con-
templation, but this is rather doubtful, as the manager
has been heard to say, that " as they (meaning the
accusants) will neither lead nor drive, they may go to
the Devil their own way ;" and thus stands matters at
present. Since writing the above, which ought to
have appeared on Saturday morning, if space had
sufficed for it, we have learned that the refractory
Peers have, though with much grumbling, consented
f-o be guided by their more wary leaders. Lord Lynd-
hurst is the General-in-Chief upon the occasion, and
the amendment of Lord F. Egerton, in the House of
Commons, will be the ground-work of the drama. God
speed the Lords in their work of national regeneration.
—Morning Advertiser.
The Bill of Mr. D. O'Connell, for covering Ireland
with schools of rebellious agitation, each having for its
professor the resident Popish priest, comes on in the
House of Lords this evening. That the Peers of the
realm will " do their duty" by the cause of civil and
religious freedom, by the members of the Protestant
reformed church, by the established rights of pro-
perty, by the just dominion of the British Crown,
by the integrity of the yet united empire, and by the
lawful security and peaceful enjoyment of house and
home, of life and limb, now menaced by and expesed to
a system of barbarous and interminable outrage against
every loyal subject of his Majesty throughout Ire-
land, we have not the shadow of a doubt. The
Municipal Bill for Ireland, as framed by Mr.
O'Connell, and at his dictation introduced to the
House of Commons by the Irish Ronan Catholic
Attorney-General, Ologhlen, on the 29th of Fe-
bruary, will never be sanctioned by the House of
Lords, or receive the Royal assent of King Willtatn.
Tire Bill, as it left the [louse of Commons on the 28th
March,,though after some partial and comparativel,-
!,12,ht amendments, will never pass into an Act of Pal-
liannuit through the concurrence of the House of
Lords. The Bill will be read a second time to-night,
hut in Committee it will be placed upon that footing
which, on the ith of March, was recommended by so
much accurate reasoning, and so much temperate but
powerful persuasion, on the part of Lord Francis
Egerton, when his Lordship moved that " the Corn
mittee might be enabled to make provision for the abo-
lition of municipal corporations in Ireland, and for
such arrangements as might be necessary, on their
abolition, for securing the efficient and impartial admi-
ntstration, and the peace and good government, of
cities and towns in Ireland." Here we find a perfect
agreement between the preliminary principles of the
Whig-Radical Bill and the motion of Lord Francis
Egerton, with, however, the striking and characteristic
qualification that the Noble Lord, in confirming thus
much of the Ministerial measure, honestly avowed the
purpose, which the Ministers hypocritically disguised
—viz., the complete abolition of the existing Protest-
ant corporations throughout :Ireland. The Noble
Lord, or the Conservatives who voted with piing would
not lend themselves to the fraudulent pretence, that
the corporations of Ireland were to be " continued" by
a transfer of their rights and privileges to a hostile, re-
vengeful, and implacable enemy ; by his instruc-
tion to the Committee accepted the proposal,
which went infallibly, though not avowedly, to
their abolition ; and only averted that con-
sequence of the scheme which built a Popish and
insurrectionary despotism on their ruins. We are sa-
tisfied, and we rejoice in the anticipation, that the con-
stitutional safeguards then rejected by the motley ma-
jority of the House of Commons will be restored by
the wisdom of the Upper House of Parliament ; and
that, on going back again to the same House of Con",
mons, the Municipal Bill, purged of its demagogue
and anti-British character, will be thankfully received
as a Godsend by the very Ministers who paid their
mean court to O'Connell by giving it, as framed ori-
ginally, their make-believe support, but who would
never have dared to bring forward a machinery so de-
structive without a moral assurance of their own inca-
pacity to force it through the Legislature. On the
abject cowardice of such a manoeuvre—on its ignoble
treachery—on its profound and ineffable disregard of
all truth and principle, we shall not take the trouble to
expatiate, because the Whig portion of the criminals are
not free agents in the choice of their own means, the one
great and paramount end being acknowledged—namely,
that of maintaining themselves in office, and keeping the
Conservatives out. Looking to the practical operation
of this measure, as first submitted to Parliament, and as
Lord Melbourne will this day have the humiliating task
of presenting it to the House of Lords, we shall just
repeat our original charge against the Government—
to wit, that their Irish Municipal Bill affects to be a
bill founded on, and enforcing, the " same principles"
of " popular controul" and " equal justice" as the
English Bill of Corporate Reform. Popular con-
trol means control " by the people. But this mea-
sure establishes no such thing. The control it pro-
vides is over the people, and against the conscious in-
terests and free enjoyments of the " people:' It makes
the lower order of Irish R oman Catholics the simu-
lated holders and depositaries of a power which they
are not suffered to wield according to their own judg-
ments. It makes them blind and helpless instruments
of designs which they do not share. It devotes and sa-
crifices them to the plottings of a priesthood, of which
they are the slaves, the dupes, and victims. If there
was a just outcry in this country against those fictions
of successive centuries, the boroughs returning mem-
bers to Parliament which assumed the name of popu-
lar constituencies, but in truth were nothing better than
s worn servants of their respective proprietors, what
difficulty is there in understanding with regard to Ire-
land a similar contrast between words and things ;
or the existence of a fact made so clear by volumes
of multifarious evidence, that every parish in that
island, as respects its Popish inhabitants, is a close bo-
rough, under the tyranny of Maynooth, and sternly
ruled by the parish priest or his " coadjutor." Who
now disputes the reality of this representation ? Who,
after the disclosures which have been made before Com-
mittees of Parliament, will henceforth have the hardi-
hood to deny, that whatever we give to the peasant or
small occupant of towns for lawful purposes, will be
turned by the priest to purposes, lawful or unlawful,
as may suit his pleasure ? " Ireland," quoth one of
these apostles of sedition, " Ireland was once Catho-
lic, and she shall be Catholic again." " The bloody
landlords, upstarts of yesterday, shall soon be forced to
uroduce their titles to the lands they wrested from our
forefathers," says another.
a
h
"He that votes against
i. 5 religion," exclaims
third, thereby meaning against
themandate of his priest, "shallbe punished both here
•
and: hereafter ! Why, then, we ask, are these men
rigl itful trustees of national liberty for Ireland, or
fitti'xig directors of the mode in which, or of the object
for which, elective franchises and corporate powers
shall be exercised ? When Mr. Daniel O'Connell
i s in a humour to fabricate false impressions
a bout Popery, as it works in practice, he makes

no bones of telling Englishmen that the Pope him-
self has no concern with the affairs of temporal
politics. Over and over he has declared, that if the
Pope were to meddle with the political opinions of
English or Irish Roman Catholics—if he were to in-
vade this country, for instance, or attempt to shake
the lawful dominion of the King, he, the devout Agi-
tator, would be the first to wage war upon his Holi-
ness ; indeed, to the best of our recollection, parodying
Cromwell, he went still further, and the conscientious
Daniel actually pledged himself in such a case to shoot
the Pope ! Yet we never heard, that in proof of his
sincerity, this enthusiastic friend to religious liberty has
on any occasion attempted to reprobate, or ever so
mildly to rebuke, the most turbulent priest of an Irish
congregation, for intruding upon the politicalfree agency
of his parishioners, let him threaten, bully, abuse,
coerce then as he might, and thus committing that very
political transgression for which Mr. Daniel O'Connell
would make us believe that he would hold the Pope
himself to be a criminal, and would blow his Holiness's
brains out ! But, save in the article of rent, words and
things with Mr. O'Connell are very different matters.
As for the " equal justice" with which Ministers as-
sure us this measure is fraught, even to overflowing,
because it boasts of establishing a like qualification
for all municipal voters, here again the mask has
been longs ago pulled off, and the country been
disabused of the deceit intended by a misap-
plication of terms. If one certain class, and one
exclusive sect, be as plainly denoted by a given
qualification as the number of pounds sterling enu-
merated under it—if it be fact, a fact unquestion-
able, that the great majority of 5/. householders do
constitute the great majority of electors, and do them-
selves consist of Roman Catholics, and are, as unedu-
cated and ignorant Roman Catholics, under the im-
plicit guidance of their priests, is it not self-evident
that the hollow semblance of " equality" is thus used
as a cloak to hide the want of the essence of equality,
and that the nominal extension of the franchise to the
whole community of 5/. householders is, in reality, a
limitation of it to the priest alone, all whose exertions,
open and secret, are, by the mere spirit of his church,
dedicated, not to the maintenance of equal rights b.:—
tween Protestant and Catholic, but to the subversion
of every Protestant privilege or immunity, and to
the erection of Popish sway upon its overthrow.
But there is another test likewise of the truth or
falsehood of the virtues ascribed to this municipal re-
volution, as a source of comfort or advantage to the
better class of Roman Catholics themselves. If it he
really a substantial boon to that body, it is one of
whose value we must suppose themselves to be COP -
sciou s. It is one which they must naturally be desirous
of enjoying. Then, how stands the fact ? We refer
our readers to the letter of a correspondent from
Clonmel, who knows somewhat more upon this sub-
ject than Lord John Russell has had any means of
Laming, or than Mr. Daniel O'Connell might be wil-
ling, to confess. It appears from this authority,
which we know to be respectable, that even the
act of George IV., for paving, lighting, cleans-
ing, which was painted by the Roman Ca-
tholic; Attorney-General, O'Logiden, as not only
an innocent, but a most beneficial measure, has
been used by the turbulent and] vulgar banal
of agitators as an engine of exclusion, of annoyance,
and oppression towards the more decent inhabitants o!.
Clonmel. It appears that the respectable inhabitant-,
have been sot aside by the 5/. electors—that the great
majority of commissioners are O'Connellites---that
even in the dress appointed for constables and watch-
men, the cloven foot of disaffection has shown itself
be a change in the facings of these officers livery, from
red, the colour, to green, which is al•
ways that of Irish rebellion ! It is emphaticaliv
stated, that the " respectable Roman Catholic in-
habitants of Clonmel are already quite as wear;
of the tyranous system of the agitation as the
Quakers or Protestants have ever been ;" and some
industrious shopkeepers of the former (Roman Catho-
lic) creed " have assured" our correspondent, that •
" they would hail the adoption of Sir Robert Peel's
plan (of Municipal Reform) as a positive blessing."
Here, then, arc data on which the Peers of the em-
pire may, with safety and prudence, proceed. They
will he bellowed at, of course, and yelled at, by the
O'Connell ruffians, and abused for contemning the
rights of the "people of Ireland," meaning those fac-
tious vagabonds by whom the peace of Ireland is
eternally disturbed. But Lords and Commons, and
our Sovereign himself may depend upon it, that the
interests of all good men, Catholic as well as Prote:,-
tant, are bound up indissolubly in the peace and good
older of Society, and the taste and right feelings of
Roman Catholic and Protestant, supposing both
to be independent and educated men, are equally
shocked by the brutal means resorted to for pro-
motiit, the selfih, sordid, and profligate views of
Mr. Daniel O'Connell and his Myrmidons.—Times.
The first entry upon the " orders of the day," to be
disposed of this evening by the House of Commons,
is the Bill for consolidating the turnpike trusts of
England, which is to he considered in Committee. It
is very probable that many of our readers have scarcely
heard even of the existence of this Bill, and yet it is
one of great importance, both as regards local interests
and general policy. It is, we believe, neither more nor
less than a very enormous and pernicious job, which
its managers are smuggling through the House in time
quietest manner possible. It is another centralization
project, to give patronage and power to the Govern-
ment in London, and to take away from the people in
the country the management of their own affairs. It is
a matter which, to say the least of it, requires expo-
sure ; and, cunning as its managers may think them-
selves in keeping it so quiet hitherto, it shall be exposed.
It will then rest with the public to raise their voices
against it, if they think, as we think, that it is under-
taken with other motives than the public good, and that
it will operate (if it become law) to the public injury.
This Bill (like many other Bills of the same family,
which have appeared within the last two or three years)
begins with the appointment of Commissioners. One
of his Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, the
Postmaster-General, and the Chief Commissioner of
Woods and Forests, are to be Commissioners ex-
officio ; and to these the Treasury is empowered to
add six, for the purpose of carrying the Act into exe-
cution. They are to have the usual powers of sending
for witnesses, examining them on oath, ordering their
expenses to be paid, and so forth. Such " commis-
sioned" authorities are now made every Session by the
score, and habit has reconciled us (though it ought
not) to such practicse, of which the spirit of our Con-
stitution should make us very jealous. But this is but
a small thing to the framers of such Bill as that be-
fore us, which proceeds to give power to the Com-
missioners to appoint a salaried Surveyor-General, and
all other such salaried officers as they shall deem ne-
cessary. It also gives them power to delegate all or
such part of their authority as they shall think fit to
the Surveyor-General, and to notify such delegation,
to which every man in England will be bound to give
obedience in all matters and things relating to turn-
pike trusts, in whatever manner, in whatever places,
and under whatever circumstances the Commission-
ers may be pleased to direct. This is the sort of En-
glish freedom which the centralization system affords.
The Commissioners may declare so many turnpike
trusts " as they may think fit," to be consolidated and
united. They may from time to time, as " they shall
see fit," declare any consolidation of turnpike trusts to
be dissolved, or any particular trust to be separated
from the consolidation; and thereupon the said trusts
shall be so dissolved or separated accordingly. And
the Commissioners shall in every such case frame and
make such orders " as they may think fit" for adapting
the constitution and management of every such conso-
lidation to the altered state of the same. They may also
make such orders and regulations for the maintenance
a d
managementtrusts,
aiid of the
the
e fu
itz udrsntphieke roads
re
of,as
esuch consoli-
dateday tk
fit ; and they are empowered to do the same with re-
spect to trusts which are not consolidated ; and they
may rescind, amend, suspend, or alter the same from
time to time, as they may think fit. They may also
appoint all officers, fix their duties, and their salaries,
continue them or dismiss them, and all as they shall
think ft. It is, in short, utterly impossible to conceive
any degree of absolute despotic authority in all matters
now belonging to turnpike roads, or which may here-
after be superinduced upon their present concerns,
which this Bill does not give to these Commissioners.

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY, APRIL 18, 1836.

And this downright unquestionable despotism is to be
exercised over the whole of England, by Government
Commissioners fixed in London, or their Surveyor,
who may travel about the delegated tyrant of the public
ways, which, indeed, can no longer with propriety be
called public ways, so completely will nine Commis-
sioners, or one Surveyor, have them under absolute
control. And is a monstrous project like this to slip
through Parliament in silence, because they who are
grasping at power, which no man or set of men in
England ought to possess, have cunning enough to
keep its insolently tyrannous provisions out of the public
view ? What reason is there that the nobility and gen-
try, and occupiers of land throughout the country, should
not, as heretofore, have in their own hands the manage-
ment of the roads in their respective neighbourhoods ?
It may be said that many of the turnpike trusts have
been ill managed—that many of them are heavily in
debt. This may be very true ; and it may, also,
be very
true that measures should be taken for the better regu-
lation of these trusts ; but is that any reason that the
business should be taken out of local hands altogether?
Is that any reason that Commissioners sitting in Lon-
don shall take upon them to regulate every proceeding,
and appoint every officer in turnpike trusts two or three
hundred miles off? Are the local affairs, even to the
putting of a barrow-full of stones on the road, in Corn-
wall or Cumberland, to be settled in Whitehall by
Government Commissioners ? Surely, that is not ne-
cessary for all the amendment that is required ; surely
the Government has no just claim under such a consti-
tution as ours, to interfere in such matters. What
will be the consequence ? Why this, that every alte-
ration or repair of a road—every appointment of al
district surveyor, or even of common overseers and
labourers, will be made a party and political matter.
Sycophancy to the Government will be made the price
of every appointment—interest with the powers in
Downing-street, will be the only means of accomplish-
ing any arrangement respecting the roads in any part
of the kingdom. The addition to the local patronage
of the Government will be a most dangerous exten-
sion of influence, and the immediate interference with
the local authority of trustees will be galling and of-'
fensive. There are a thousand details which might
be pointed out of the vexation and injury of uniting
concerns which have had different interests, arid arc
in different circumstances, but these we must pass by,
as subordinate to the tyrannical principles and poli-
tically dangerous tendencies of the Bill. It may
be urged that the consolidation of the various
trusts o: Middlesex has worked extremely well. We
admit it ; but with this consolidation the Government
has not,'and never had, anything to do. It was left to
the present liberal Government to grasp at everything
which can by possibility be made available for patron-
age. The Middlesex Consolidation Act was passed
in the high Tory days of 1826 ; but not a particle of
authority or patronage was vested in the Governmeht
by that Bill. Neither does it follow that, because it
is good policy to unite the several turnpike trusts of a
small district like Middlesex, for the sake of uniformity
of management, it is also good policy to unite all the
trusts of the kingdom under one Government diree-
tion. Management may be too much extended, as
well as too much divided. Uniformity may be desir-
able in a small county, and yet both pernicious and
absurd in a whole kingdom. No fair analogy can
therefore be allowed between the Parliamentary Com-
mission for the north roads of the Thames and the
flagrant job now before Parliament for putting all the
roads of the kingdom into the hands of Government
Commissioners. If this attempt at tyranny be not
resisted, we shall consider that the sense and spirit of
English country gentlemen must be indeed at -a low
ebb.—illorning Herald.
The Irish Corporation Bill is this night to be
dis-
cussed in the House of Lords upon the question of
reading it a second time ; and we venture to anticipate
that this question will be decided in the affirmative,
inasmuch as we have reason to believe that their
Lordships concur with a large majority of the House
of Commons in thinking that the Corporations of
Ireland are not capable of accomplishing, in the pre-
sent state of society in that country, th purposes for
which they were originally instituted in a state of so-
ciety. entirely different from the present. But although
the House of Lords agrees with that large majority of
the House of Commons which has pronounced an opi-
nion in favour of the extinction of the existing Corpo-
rations of Ireland, it by no means follows that the
House of Lords should therefore coincide with that
small and insignificant majority of the House of
Commons which has resolved to create Corpora-
tions of a character entirely new in the place of
those which are about to be abolished. Upon
the latter question, as upon the former, the House of
Lords is bound to exercise an independent judgment ;
and certainly the right and the duty of that noble
assembly to judge independently is not less clear in
the case in which it differs from the small and insig-
nificant majority than in that in which it gives validity
by its sanction and concurrence to the decision of a
large and powerful majority of the Lower House of
Parliament. Upon the constitutional independence of
the House of Lords, and upon the solemn obligation
by which their Lordships stand bound to the country
to assert and maintain that independence, it is not
necessary for us to insist here. These points have
been illustrated by our correspondent Zeta, in a letter
which appears to-day, with a degree of clearness and
force of which we will not mar the effect by any addi-
tional observations of our own. There never was a
doubt, indeed, in the mind of any man who under-
stands or who values the British Constitution, as to
the right and the duty of the House of Lords to
reject altogether any Bill sent up to it from the
Commons of which it cannot conscientiously ap-
prove, and still less can there be any doubt as to
its right and duty to make such amendments in any
measure so brought under its consideration as it may
believe to be necessary or expedient. What amend-
ments the House of Lords will think it necessary or
expedient to introduce into the Ministerial measure of
Irish Corporation Reform, it would at the present mo-
ment be improper to predict with absolute confidence.
It is highly improbable, however, that their Lord-
ships should be of opinion that any alterations less
extensive than those which were proposed by the Con-
servative Members of the House of Commons, will
be sufficient to render the Bill of Mr. O'Loghlen a
beneficial or a reasonable measure. The most impor-
tant of these alterations went to transfer the powers and
duties now exercised and discharged by Corporations
in Ireland to the Executive Government ; to restore, in
a word, to the Crown, on the extinction of the existing
Corporations of Ireland, those functions of which the
Crown voluntarily divested itself when the Irish Cor-
porations were at first created, instead of erecting as the
Bill proposes, new corporations in lieu of the present, of
a character the most opposite, and with principles, feel-
ings, and objects the most repugnant and hostile to the
present. It may be considered as quite certaina
very
the House of Lords will carry their amendments of the
Bill to this extent at the least, and the slightest reflec-
tion will, we think, suffice to convince all the reason_
able part of mankind that if the House of Lords
occasion
anything less than this, it would be guilty of did
gross derilection of its duty. Why should the extine-
ton of the Protestant Corporations of Irela.anndy,
the
upon
the i)d
the ground that they do not now fulfil the purposes
which they were instituted, he thought a fit
for the erection of an equal number of Papist Corpo-
rations, without any, or, at least, without
byto the
purpose whatever ? Corporations, it is said,
friends of the measure, have wrought evil in Ireland.
Why, then, should those which are about to be de-
stroyed be replaced by others of a character more
perverse arid malignant ? Is it pretended that
the existence of such bodies is necessary
good municipal government of cities and towns
If so, let us ask how some of the greatest towns in
England have risen to their present condition of
wealth and importance without the aid of such
stitutions ? Corporations were not originally in-
stituted either in Great Britain or Ireland for the
purpose of the internal government of towns, or the
administration of municipal affairs, but entirely or
principally as defensive unions against the dangers ge_
nerally apprehended at that period from the attacks of
some powerful oppressor, or the inroads of aggressive
turbulence from without. This remark applies pecu-
liarly to the Protestant Corporations of Ireland. But
if the latter have outlived the object of their institu-
tion, or have not been found to fulfil it, and if, there-

SHIPPING INTELLIGENCE.

ARRIVED AT LIVERPOOL, APRIL 16.

ore, they are to be abolished, is it possible to imagine
anything more perverse and absurd than to substitute
Popish Corporations in their place ? Are the Roman
Catholics of Ireland the parties in that country who
have to dread the assaults of aggressive turbulence ?
Do they live in every part of that country in the im-
mediate neighbourhood of tyrants and oppressors,
against whose lawless power it is necessary for them
to combine for the purpose of mutual protection
and defence ? Have they been, of late, the in-
nocent and unoffending victims of lawless violence ?
Let us not be misunderstood. We do not ask these
questions in order to show from the answers which
they must receive, if they be truly answered, that
the Protestant Corporations in Ireland ought to be
continued. The Protestant corporations, if we under-
stand the subject aright, are given up, not because their
purpose is become needless, but because they are found
out not to be the proper instruments for its accom-
plishment. With respect to the Roman Catholics,
there is, however, no such purpose to be pursued.
They need no charters of incorporation for their pro-
tection. They are the especial objects, not of the pro-
tection, for this they do not require, but of the favour
of Government ; and they are so apparently because
they are the only portion of the population of the
country which habituates itself to outrage, which or-
ganizes turbulence, which conspires for the perpetra-
tion of oppression, rapine, and murder. Why give
the defensive organization of corporations to a body
which has nothing to fear from others, but is, on
the contrary, the constant source of apprehen-
sion and alarm to all the rest of the community ?
There is but one answer to this question. Cor-
porations are to be given to the Roman Catho-
lics of Ireland, because with this instrument in their
hands they will become politically more powerful than
they now are—because they lend the support of their
political power to Mr. O'Connell—and because Mr.
O'Connell gives the support of his political power to
Lord Melbourne's Government. Our correspondent,
already mentioned in the course of this article, gives,
in a word, the true solution of the question, why Ro-
man Catholic corporations are to be instituted in Ire-
land. It is the O'Connell bribe for supporting Govern-
ment. It is part of the price of the votes of the tail.
But, fortunately, the compact between the Government
and Mr. O'Connell cannot be carried into full effect
without the ratification of the House of Lords. And
their Lordships like neither the buyers, nor the seller,
nor the price, nor the commodity. And their ratifica-
tion will accordingly be withheld.—Morning Post.

The Jersey, Picot, from Parabia ; Ellen Jenkinson,
Lisbon; Amphitrite, Smyrna.
ENTERED FOR LOADING, APRIL 16.

The Sisters, Reid, for Leghorn ; Jumna, Titherinton
Linton and Cmton ; the Mary Cummings, Thompson, Mira.
michi ; Berwick, Candler, New York ; Hero, Tear, Peel
Acceus, Grigson, Quebec ; Cleofrid, Scotland, St. Peters.
burgh.