The Sun.
London, England, 1841-10-09 00:00:00

RADICAL REFORM.

The following is the petition for Radical Reform, &c.
from the Cobbett Club, which was presented on Thurs-
day to the House of Commons by Mr. T. Duncombe,
who did everything that the very stringent rules of the
House would allow to bring the matter contained in it
plainly and clearly before the Members. At any rate
its cirulation through the Press will place some very
important facts before the country, and will, in that
quarter at least, have a very beneficial effect
To the Honourable the Commons of the United King-
dom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament
assembled.
The Petition of the Cobbett Club of London, unani-
mously agreed to, at a meeting of that body, on
the Ist day of September, 1841.
Humbly showeth,
1. That your petitioners, in their great anxiety to see
a restoration of the freedom, the greatness, and the power
of this country, so that it may again take its proper
station amongst the nations of the earth ; and, knowing
that this can be effected only by the people having re-
stored to them the power of exercising their ancient
constitutional rights, have frequently petitioned former
Parliaments to grant Universal Suffrage, Annual Par-
liaments, and Voting by Ballot. And they are daily
receiving fresh evidence of the necessity for these things,
the granting of which would have rendered it wholly
unnecessary for them now to trespass upon your atten-
tion, and occupy the public time ; a great deal of which
has been (as it appears to your petitioners) hitherto
spent, not in matters calculated to benefit the people,
but in party squabbles, having for their object the turn-
ing out of one set of men, whom the Queen had se-
lected to be her servants in the Executive, and the
putting another set of men in their place ; not because
the Queen had no confidence in those her servants ;
but, because your Honourable House, forsooth, a se-
parate branch of the Legislature, had not confidence
in them ! Thus leaving it almost doubtful, whether
the Ministers are the servants of the Crown, or whe-
ther they are the servants of the House of Commons !
2. That, your petitioners have always understood,
that the Three Estates of this Realm have separate and
distinct duties and privileges, which the Constitution
has plainly defined for them ; and, that, beyond the
limits thus defined, neither the one nor the other has
the power of passing ; and this not merely to secure
the harmonious working of the whole, but to ensure to
the people the benefit of the separate and independent
working of each Estate.
3. That, amongst those duties and privileges,
your petitioners believe that the Crown, that
is to say, the Highest Estate, has the prero-
gative of selecting its own servants, or Ministers, who
are to be those whom the Crown wills to be of its
Privy Council ; who are, therefore, "a noble, honour-
able, and reverend assembly," whose duty it is to
" advise the Crown to the best of their cunning and
discretion." The prerogative of the Crown, in choosing
this body of men, cannot be interfered with by either
House of Parliament," or it must cease to be a prero-
gative. All writers upon the Constitution, declare,
that, " Parliament ought not to deal, to judge, or to
meddle with, any prerogative of the Crown ;" that they
can "increase the prerogative of the Executive, but
they cannot invest themselves with it : they have it not
in their power to command its motions ; they can only
unbind its hands :" that Privy Councillors are made by
the Sovereign's nomination only, and that the will of
the Sovereign is their sole constituent : that " the
dissolution of the Privy Council depends upon the plea-
sure of the Sovereign, and that he may, whenever he
thinks proper, discharge any particular member, or the
whole of them, and appoint others ; and that the Con-
stitution has provided a remedy at law, either by im-
peachment or by criminal information, for their delin-
quencies : that " neither House of Parliament has a
right to animadvert upon the Sovereign, nor have any
jurisdiction over him in civil matters, as that would be
to destroy one of the constituent parts of the Sovereign
power ;" that is to say, would be a lopping off of one-
third part of the Constitution at a blow, sinking the in-
dependence of the Crown, and making it a mere tool in
the hands of the other two parties, who may strip it of
all remaining power, and leave it as an useless and de-
spicable bauble.

4. That your petitioilers, believing that these
opinions are in unison with our ancient Constitution,
cannot avoid stating them to your Honourable
House ; and they beg also to be permitted to make
another statement, which they take from the
" Act of Limitation of the Crown ;" it is this, " that
no person who holds any office, or place of profit, under
the King, or who is receiving a pension from the Crown,
shall be capable of serving as a Member of the House
of Commons ;" and which, although your petitioners
are not ignorant of the adroitness with which it is
evaded, is a most wise, just, and wholesome law, which
they hope soon to see rigidly reinforced.
5. That the consideration of these things has brought
to your petitioners' recollection, a long list of most
grievous innovations upon the Constitution of our fore-
fathers; each of which has been an abridgement of the
liberties of the great body of the people of these realms,
and the effect of the whole, united, has been to leave the
main part of the people with scarcely more political
rights than are possessed by the people of Algiers, of
Egypt, or of Turkey.
6. That the first and greatest of these innovations,
may it please your Honourable House, is the one from
whence all the others have flowed ; namely, the with-
holding from the mass of the people their ancient right
of suffrage. This your petitioners believe to be the
great master-evil that has produced consequences most
fatal to the well-being of the people, of which every man
must be convinced, when be reflects that from this
source alone has been produced—
The dividing the Church and Abbey lands amongst
the aristocracy, and compelling the people to
maintain the poor, instead of their being main-
tained out of the tithes and revenues of the Church ;
The throwing the Church-rates upon the people, in-
stead of causing the Churches to be repaired and
maintained out of the fruits of the livings ;
The appropriating the property of the Guilds and
Fraternities, and Charitable Bequests, amongst the
aristocracy and their dependents ;
The uniting of parishes, and amalgamating the pro-
duce of the livings, and giving them to one man,
instead of permitting each parish to have its sepa-
rate priest ;
The giving a plurality of votes, at a vestry, to rich
men, and thus destroying the weight of the vote
of the poor man ;
The inventing and introducing the cunning and in-
quisitorial Excise system, in[order that the taxes
should be taken from the people in a manner that
they cannot resist, any more than they can resist
the robber who has his hands in their pockets,
after having first blindfolded and bound them ;
The establishing, first triennial, and then septennial
Parliaments ; which, down to the period of any-
thing-but-" glorious Revolution of 1688" had been
annual ;
The taking from the Crown its landed estates, and
dividing them amongst the aristocracy, and making
the Sovereign a sort of pensioner, to be maintained
out of the taxes raised upon the people ;
The leaving, in innumerable cases, the convicting and
punishing of persons at the discretion of men who
are appointed by, and removable at, the pleasure
of the Minister of the day ;
The trying, and imprisoning of men without trial, by
jury, for simple trespass, in treading on corn-fields ;
and protecting rich men from such law, when, with
horses and dogs, they sport upon these same corn-
fields.
The compelling men to leave their aged parents, their
wives, and their children, and to come forth in de-
fence of the country ; to submit to military dis-
cipline, and punishment for disobedience of orders,
and to risk their lives in its service, whilst they
are refused the right of voting at elections, on the
ground that they have no stake in the country ;
The delegating to three men, who are called " Poor-
law Commissioners," the power of making laws to
bind the people of this country ! a circumstance,
the existence of which is almost sufficient to make
the dry bones of our brave and free forefathers to
rattle in their graves, from shame and indignation
at the tameness and baseness of their degenerate
SOW.
7. These constitute a mass of grievous innovations
on the liberty of the people, may it please your Hon.
House, the smallest of which would never have existed
if the people had not been robbed of the power of re-
turning Members to their own House of Parliament ;
which power they had exercised for so
m
and the. continuance of the possession of
whichaay wouldagea
have prevented
grasping the hands of power from
many
other things unjustly, amongst which are the Army, the
Navy, the Colonies, the Diplomatic Affairs, the
Col-
leges, yea, everything, to which are attached great heaps
of money, is enclosed in this unrelenting grasp ; and this
same power, now, by means of the " New Poor-law"
(which was passed " to bring the people of England, by
degrees, to live upon a coarser sort of food"), hopes to
grasp some twenty, or thirty, millions more a-year, out
of the wages of the labouring part of the people—from
that part of the people, who are, at this time, in such of
state of poverty, that the agonizing cries for bread, o
millions of them, are piercing our ears and harrowing
our hearts, and exciting in our minds grief and shame,
and a burning and inexpressible rage, when we reflect
on the causes of such sufferings ; and, more espe-
cially, when we find that, although these
sufferings were long ago foretold, nothing was
done to prevent them ; and, now that they present
themselves in such fearful array before us, we are
sickened to the soul at the almost total absence or thefa
efforts to remedy them, or of any sympathy fe
sufferers, being evinced by those who have the power to
relieve them.
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be put in force which will remove her Majesty's ser-
vants from the occupying of seats, and voting in your
Honourable House ; and, also, that you will set about
removing those grievances which they have, in this