The Sun.
London, England, 1833-05-22 00:00:00

tr
_Lto:* *nit,
r -
' •

LONDON,
WEDNESDAY EVENING, MAY 22, 1833.

M. MAGALHAENS, a gentleman connected
with the Portuguese Embassy, leaves London
this evening for Oporto, and it is understood
that the Marquis of PALNIELLA, accompanied
by a British naval officer of high rank will em-
bark in a steamer for the same destination on
Friday next. The presence of the Marquis will
be a guarantee for the performance of all the
promises made by Don PEDRO.

The announcement we made in our City
article of Monday, of the approaching conclu-
sion of a treaty of peace (if we may so style a
return to our former position) with Holland,
has been confirmed by an article in the 7 inzes
of this morning, which informs us that the pre-
liminary treaty was signed yesterday by the Ple-
nipotentiaries of Great Britain, France, and Hol-
land. The embargo is to cease,'commerce is tolbe
restored to the footing it was on before the siege
of Antwerp, the Dutch prisoners are to be dis-
missed, and the navigation of the Scheldt is to
be left free till a definitive arrangement is entered
into between Holland and Belgium.
We earnestly hope, certainly (remembering
the past) not without some misgivings, that this
definitive arrangement, so necessary to the pros-
perity of both countries, may be speedily made.
It is said that it was with great difficulty that
the King of HOLLAND could be brought to
allow his plenipotentiary to sign the treaty
in the name of his master, as Duke of Lux-
EMBURG, as well as King of HoLLAND; but
the point was insisted upon as a sine qua non,
and he at length gave way.

We perceive, from the House of Commons
papers before us, that Mr. CHARLES GRANT
brings the Indian question under the conside-
ration of Parliament on Tuesday, the 11th of
June. The form he has adopted is that of re-
solutions which has the advantage of enabling
the House at once to pronounce an opinion
upon the several principles of the measure of his
Majesty's Government, as propounded in the
several resolutions.

It will be seen, from our Parliamentary
Report, that Lord ALTHORP last night gave
notice of his intention to bring the subject of
the Bank of England Charter before the House
on Friday, the 31st of May. No hints of the
nature of the Government plan upon this
important subject have yet transpired, nor do we
suppose will transpire till the day in question.
It would not be difficult to gather from the
evidence given before the Committee some par-
ticulars which would give a clue to the tendency
of his Majesty's Government on particular
points; but when conjecture must so soon be
supplanted by certainty, it would be a useless,
as well as a hazardous, and ungrateful task.

At three o'clock this morning, a Bill was
presented to the House of Commons to c, re-
duce the stamp duties on advertisements, and on
certain sea insurances ; to repeal the stamp duties
on receipts for sums under five pounds ; and to
exempt insurances on farming stock and imple-
ments of husbandry from stamp duties." Better
late than never.

To-night Mr. IfILLIAM BROUGHAM
moves the second rending of the General
Registry Bill. This Bill was originally brought
forward by Sir JOHN CAMPBELL, but on his
accession to office he was obliged to give it up
to Mr. W. BROUGHAM. He still, however,
individually supports it, and so do most, if not

all, of the barristers in the House, who take an
enlightened view of their own interest, who see
that to render law dear is as injurious to them-
selves as it is unjust to the, public. What is
the object of the General Register Bill ? It is
to extend to the whole of England and Wales
advantages which are now enjoyed, exclu-
sively, by Yorkshire, Kingston-upon-Hull,
and Middlesex, and enjoyed even by them
to a very small extent. The most prominent
of the benefits which the Bill either directly
or indirectly tends to confer upon the public are
the raising the value of many hundreds of thou-
sands of acres of land i❑ every county in the
kingdom, putting an end to many of the abuses
in conveyancing, cheapening all conveyancing,
and finally putting a complete stop to certain
species of frauds practised on mortgagees, and
all the litigation arising out of those frauds. The
classes who have an apparent interest in stopping
the removal of these abuses are lawyers, are
land-owners who fancy they can jockey capitalists
out of more money on mortgage than they would
be able to do if their affairs were examined into--
just as they have the folly to imagine that they
prevent them getting more than five per cent,
by the usury laws,—and finally, the inhabi-
tants of counties which have local register offices.
With respect to the first class of persons,
we are happy to say, for the honour of the pro-
fession that a large section of it is in favour of
this Bill. A correspondent, who did us the
favour to notice some remarks we before. made
upon this Bill, did not deny that the opposition
of the country attorneys was grounded upon in-
terest, but retorted the charge of interested
support of the Bill upon the London attorneys.
The charge is, however, perfectly groundless.
In the first place some few of the London
attorneys oppose the Bill on the same grounds
that the country attorneys do, viz., that the Bill
will cheapen law, and will put an end to those
complicated cases of conveyance which now give
them their richest harvest. But, on the
other hand, many see that the increased
security and cheapness of conveyances, will
vastly augment their number ; that much pro-
perty will be transferred with ease, confidence,
and profit, which has hitherto been lying dead,
as it were, upon its owner's hands, because he
could not furnish a marketable title ; in short,
that in law, as in everything else, honesty is the
best policy, and that ultimately they will profit
more by disentangling justice from the abuses
which time has woven round it, than by em-
barrassing its course. We are willing to sup-
pose that many country practitioners see these
general advantages. Why, then, do they op-
pose the Bill ? Because, they say, it will entail
upon them the expense of an agent in London,
to examine the register in all cases of transfer of
land. What is the fact? If they choose to take the
word or assurances of a vendor or a mortgagor
as to the state of his property, as they do now,
they need not consult the Register-office. They
may purchase the land or take the mortgage and
send up a copy of the deed to the Register-
office without the expense even of postage. Of
course, if the vendor or mortgagor shall appear
by deeds in the Register-office already to have
sold his land or mortgaged it to its full value,
the first purchaser or mortgagee steps in as he
has every right to do. Parties therefore will
consult their own interest in searching the Re-
gister-office, either by means of an agent or by
means of the officers of the establishment. It is
no hardship to have to pay for the machinery
by which they are thus enabled to guard
their interests. And after all, the fees
which will have to be paid, for the inesti-
mable advantage of perfect security will be
trifling indeed. This argument, therefore, of
the provincial practitioners, has no solid founda-
tion upon which to rest.
The fears which the fancies of the country
gentleman have conjured up, are too ludicrous
to require serious notice. The only objection
they have urged worth a straw, viz., the expo-
sure of their affairs, is completely removed by a
provision of the Bill giving the power of in-
specting the registry to persons only having a
direct interest in doing so ; persons who want to
buy land, lend money upon it, or who have some
other equitable claim to a knowledge of its
existing burdens. Any man who wishes to bor-
row money of another upon the security of his
estate, and desires to conceal from him the extent
of the iucumbrances already upon it, must be
either a fool or a knave.

We now come to the opposition given to the
Bill by those who oppose it only because they
already have the advantage of a local registry.
We put it to them whether it be fair in them to
endeavour to prevent others from enjoying the
same advantages as themselves. We should not
be surprised at their simply wishing to preserve
their own local registries, but we are surprised at
their almost gratuitous selfishness in op-
posing the Bill in toto. But we really cannot
see what great advantages they enjoy at present
which they would not equally enjoy under the
Bill before us. The few hours' difference be-
tween sending a deed by post to London and
sending it from the extremity of either riding of
Yorkshire to the local register office, is not worth
mentioning. Indeed we should imagine that
an inquiry may now be sent from Yorkshire
to the register office in London, and an answer
be received in a shorter space of time, than
is took to send from one end of the west
tidily, to the other, when the Act giving it a
local register was passed in the reign of ANNE.
But besides this strong fact staring him in the
face, the objectors to a Metropolitan Register
should remember that two years probably will not
pass before Rail-roads will, if not << annihilate
ho:h time and space," certainly make the send-
ing of a message to London, and the receipt of
an answer in Yorkshire on the same day, an
easy and common transaction. The greater
economy of a general metropolitan regis-
ter over a number of local registers is too
obvious to require being dwelt upon. We
trust, then, that although the subject be
not a very inviting one, although Hon.
Members will not have the opportunity of utter-
ing a few trashy common-places, capped with a
piece of Latin, although it is a real and im-
portant service they have to perform, that they
will take the trouble of walking down to the
House to-night, and at least pretend to dis-
charge their duty to their constituents. We
have been led to say this from the circumstance
of there not having been above a score or
two of Members present when Mr. WILLIAM
BitouGHAnt, in a most lucid speech, explained
the advantages of the Bill.

Sir SAMUEL WHALEY's motion for the
repeal of the house and window tax was last
night defeated by a majority of 273 to 124.
This is a strong minority, but not so strong as
it ought to have been, and would have been,
but for the absence of some scores of Members
who have given distinct pledges on this very
queltion. We have before alluded to the dis-

graceful shirking of duty which has been dis-
played by some pretended Reformers, and again
urge upon their constituents to make them re-
member it on the day of election. In this in-
stance, however, we have every reason to hope,
that their neglect will injure no one but themselves
for these taxes, if not removedo,vill certainly next
year be equalized. Lord AETHoRP has admitted
over and over again, and he repeated the admis-
sion last night, that there were inequalities in
the house and window taxes. Let this admis-
sion be followed up by action, not merely in
our assessed but other taxes, and we shall have
nothing fairly to complain of. Mr. S. RICE
was again put forward to display the useful qua-
lities of an unblushing front. The total number
of houses in England is 2,846,179, of which
only 430,607 are charged to the house duty.
This proves, says the Honourable Gentle-
man, that it is preposterous to say, that
the tax presses on the working classes. Now
the complaint is not that the tax presses on the
working classes, but that it is an unfair and a
grievous tax as pressing upon one part of the
middle classes. We grant that to a consider-
able extent the tax is paid by the landlord of the
house, and that the instance quoted by Mr.
RICE of a landlord bargaining to receive 2001.
per annum if the assessed taxes were taken, in-
stead of 1501., is not an uncommon case ; but
this very case, and the figures we have quoted
above, only prove the just ground on which
these taxes are complained of. A man owns a
perishable property in a town worth 2001.
per annum, and he is taxed at the rate of
251. per cent. Had he been fortunate
enough to have invested his money in the
same species of property as is possessed by the
governing power, he would have escaped upon
the payment of a very trifling sum. Besides, it
is ridiculous for a Ministry to object to the re-
peal of a tax because its produce will go into
the pocket of houseowners, when they only last
week gave up a tax which will avowedly go into
the pocket of landowners, we mean the tax on
policies on farming stock.
We must, we supppose, consider the question
of the house and window taxes as settled at
present, but their partiality, inequality, and op-
pressiveness, having been demonstrated to the
whole country, and the CHANCELLOR of the
EXCHEQUER having acknowledged at least their
imperfections, we look forward to the certainty
of either their entire removal, or such a modifi-
cation of them as will remove their most objec-
tionable features.

VICE-CHANCERY COURT.-(THIS DAY.)

This being the first day of Trinity Term, his Honour the
Vice-Chancellor, did not take his seat till a few minutes before
2 o'clock, in consequence of having to breakfast with the Lord
Chancellor, the other Judges, Masters in Chancery, and King's
Counsel, at his Lordship's house in Berkeley-square.