The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-21 00:00:00

EVENING EDITION.

LONDON, TUESDAI", JUNE 21, 1870.

Outrageous though it cannot but appear to say so,
it is, nevertheless, the literal fact that, in the midst
of our complex system of mercantile arrangements,
there is one exceptional class, set quite apart, the
members of which are constrained to pay five pounds
a-year for the extraordinary privilege of being slan-
dered with impunity. By consenting to be mulcted
of that £5 per annum, they render themselves liable
to be at any time flagrantly and quite causelessly
traduced without retaining in their hands any power
enabling them to punish their traducers. It is
because of the recognition 'of this monstrous
anomaly in the commercial organization of England
that there is now before Parliament the Bill the
second reading of which is fixed for to-
morrow, Wednesday, the 22nd instant, a
bill which, it is proposed by its projectors, shall be
passed into law under the title of the London Broker's
Relief Act— an act through the enrollment of which
on the Statute Book, the Stock Brokers and Produce
Brokers of the Metropolis shall be relieved at last
from the wholly superfluous and hitherto intolerable
supervision of the Court of Aldermen.
Accordingly as things have been heretofore, and
still are, between the Brokers of the City of London
and the Court of Aldermen, charges of the most
groundless kind may at any time be brought, in the
most scurrilous manner, against any one of the for-
mer, that is, against any individual broker, or any
number of brokers, and this publicly before the
latter, that is before the Court of Aldermen, without
the unfortunate broker or brokers thus wrongfully
accused having any means left at his or their com-
mand for the redress of the wrongs thus wantonly
inflicted.

The relations between the London Brokers and
the Court of Aldermen date from a very remote
period in the national history. Stage by stage thy
may be traced down from their earliest germ of
development, on the one hand through the
eighteenth year of the reign of EDWARD IV., when
the office of Guager in London was first granted
by way of security for monies lent to the Sove-
reign ; through the enforcement of those letters
patent by others confirming them in the fourteenth
year of tke reign of CHARLES 1., and subsequently
in the sixteenth year of the reign of CHARLES 11.,
and on the other hand, though that statute of the
first year of the reign of JAMES 1., entitled an Act
for the well garbling of Spices—until by the Act 6
ANNE, cap. 16, an equivalent was granted to the
City of London, by everybroker being compelled to pay
40s. on admission and 40s. a year afterwards, for the
privilege of carrying on his trade in the metropolis
—until subsequently by the Act 57, GEO. 111., cap.
60, these payments to be received by brokers were
increased to the sum of £5 on admission and £5 per
annum afterwards—the City brokers by each of these
acts in turn being brought directly under the
jurisdiction of the said Court of Aldermen.

Twice before now a strenuous endeavour has
been made to get rid of the absurdities, but still
more of the cruelties resulting from this anomalous
arrangement. • A Royal Conmission (consisting of
Sir G. C. LEWIS, Sir JOHN PATTESON, and Lord
TAUNTON) reported as far back as in 1854, " that
the admission of brokers by the Court of Aldermen,
and the inspection exercised over them by the
Court, appeared not to be productive of any public
benefit, and that the statutory enactments in refer-
ence thereto should be repealed." In consequence
of this recommendation a clause affecting the parti-
cular matter we are here referring to was introduced
into the Bill, which was then in 1858 brought in
by the Government of that day for the general
reform of the Corporation. As it happened the
attempt was inoperative, the Bill not being passed
into an enactment. Subsequently in 1864, and again
in 1865 first one private bill, and then another, was
introduced in the House of Commons with a view to
the abolition of the yearly rents paid by the London
Brokers and of the jurisdiction exercised over them
by the Court of Aldermen. Both these endeavours
were successful, the strongest argument raised by
the defenders of the interests and of the rights of
the Corporation resting chiefly on the pecuniary loss
resulting from the act of abrogation. That money
argument is now altogether of rid of by the Bill, at
present before Parliament, proposing in no way to
interfere with the rents, monstrously unjust though
those rents, aro both in practice and in priu-
ciple—the projected act simply aiming at the abo-
lition of the vexatious, and, as we have said, the
long intolerable system by which the Brokers of the
City of London are brought within the jurisdiction
and under the supervision of the Court of
Aldermen. What the bill now proposes is, that
the Corporation shall still obtain its equivalent for
the diminished profits of the City guager, and for
the dwindled gains formerly accruing from the well
garbling of spices, by raising henceforth, as hereto-
fore, £5 sterling from every stock broker and produce
broker permitted to carry on his trade in the City,
and £5 sterling from each of them year by year
afterwards. What the Bill aspires to accomplish is
the relieving the brokers of the City of London from
the supervision of the Court of Lord Mayor and
Aldermen. Happily the Bill is supported in Par-
liament by all the Metropolitan members, with one
exception, namely, Mr. Alderman LAWRENCE, or as