The Sun.
London, England, 1833-09-26 00:00:00

of the council were likewise non-resident, and
left the management of the corporation to the
four remaining persons, who were brothers or
cousins of each other, and managed the concern
as a family matter. The chief bailie, or the head
of this resident junta, was an innkeeper, at
whose house, or for whose benefit, the whole
revenue of the burgh was spent, and a large
portion of its property sold. This man, though
a magistrate, took to celebrate clandestine mar-
riages for a few shillings a-piece, and was pro-
secuted for the offence. The prosecution cost
841., which he set down to the account of the
burgh. He engaged in a brickwork concern,
in which he did not succeed, and he made
the corporate funds pay his losses. He invited,
as he called them, " his well-wishers" to his
house to dine and drink with him, and he made
he burgh funds pay the bills. He took trips to
Banff, the district town, where his principal the
Provost resided, to concert with him about their
common election interests, and the burgh was
always debited with the hire of the post-chaise,
and the other expenses of the journey. Being a
loyal Tory, he expended a quarter's return of
the burgh revenue in celebrating the victory of
Leipsic, and the entertainment was given for
the good of his own inn. Nay, this bailie and
Boniface of a Scotch burgh—this magistrate of
the north—this Solomon of corporations—had
the effrontery or the simplicity to tell a Com-
mittee of the House of Commons, sitting in
Westminster, that he thought the public money
could not be better expended than in a loyal
public treat ! " Who authorized that expense
for the battle of Leipsic" (he was asked), " the
Provost or yourself?"—" I do not know that
the Provost was consulted." "Do you not
know that that amount was nearly one-fourth of
the permanent income of the burgh ?"—" Per.
haps it might." " Did it not occur to you it
was a great deal of money to spend on that
occasion ?"—" I thought the public income was
for that purpose."—" Did you think the in-
come of the burgh was for paying balls and
entertainments ?"—" On such occasions as that
—not always." Nay, so liberal do we find this
innkeeper-magistrate—this guardian of trust
property—this pink of Conservative purity—
with " the common gude" of the town, that
when he had given " a dinner and drink"
to the town gentlemen out of the funds
of the burgh, he put down a sum for what
was called "a treat to the wives," which de-
scription of public expenditure was duly recorded
in the Town Council books presented to the
Committee of Parliament ! But when we say
" duly recorded," we are saying too much, for
the honest bailie, at whose house and by whose
order all these entertainments were given at the
public charge, kept no reckoning of 6001. thus
expended between the years 1808 and 1817,
and only made up the bills from the best of his
recollection, and by the help of his waiter, to
answer an action brought against him by the
inhabitants for malversation in the Court of Ses-
sion. And the very worst feature of this extra-
ordinary case is the fact last mentioned, that
though these malversations are admitted, the
burgesses, as the law stood, could obtain no
redress, and, being defeated, were obliged to
pay their own costs with those of the Conserva-
tive culprit, the highest tribunal declaring that
in such transactions it had no jurisdiction !
With respect to the illegal imposition of taxes,
there can be as little doubt of its frequent oc-
currence as about the gross violations of corpo-
rate property to which we have just alluded. It
is remarked in the report of 1793, that 29
burghs (out of the 64) had levied imposts beyond
the amount paid to Government,—averaging
one-third of their land tax,—though no act of
Parliament warranted such extra exaction. The
immense patronage possessed by these corpo-
rations, and the manner in' which they have
exercised it,—a part of the inquiry which
has never yet come before a Parliamentary
Committee,—will demand the most rigid ex-
amination by the present Commissioners. The
magistrates and Town Council of Edinburgh
alone dispose of a revenue of 40,0001. a year,
and besides the presentations to about 20 or 25
church livings, have the appointments of the
Principal and Professors of the University, and
of the Masters and Ushers of the High School.
According to the charter of the College, they
possess " totam et integrata prmposituram Col-
legii.Trinitatis," and the exclusive privilege of
electing Professors to its different chairs 0!
divinity, arts, law, and medicine, "cum potes-
tate imponendi et removendi ipsos, sicuti expe-
diverit." Such a prcepositura and potestas
ought not to have existed so long in the hands
of the shopkeeper corporation, who are invested
with them by the charter of King James, and
must, as well as some of their other privileges,
be modified or controlled, by the reform spirit
which is embodied in the municipal commission.
—Times.

Having fully answered the elaborate article in
the Journal of St. Petersburgh, wherein the
Northern Autocrat arrogated to himself the
right of treating the kingdom of Poland accord-
ing to his own sovereign will and pleasure, in
despite of the treaty of Vienna, by which its
nationality and constitutional existence were
guaranteed, we will now dispose of the adden-
dum to that article, which recently appeared in
the Hamburg Correspondent, and which was,
no doubt, written under Russian inspiration.
The Russian writer in the Hamburg paper
attempts to justify the conduct of the Czar or.
the three groundo—first, that the Powers could
not, in 1815, have given Poland to Russia upon
the condition of establishing a Constitution,
since that country had then formed a Russian
province for two years by right of conquest.
Secondly, that Poles had no right to rebel
against their Sovereign, because he would not
comply with all their constitutional follies
Thirdly, that the undisciplined elements of
which the Polish population is composed will not
allow it to receive the title of nation. 'We will
take these arguments, if such they can be called,
in an inverted order, beginning with the last.
"The undisciplined elements," says the writer,
of which the Polish population is composed,
will not allow it to receive the title of nation."
What is meant by " undisciplined elements" we
scarcely know, nor, perhaps, the writer himself.
If he mean incongruous and discordant parts,
the Russian empire has far less claim, according
to his argument, to receive the title of a nation
than Poland. If his notion of discipline be
synonymous with slavery, and the phrase " un-
disciplined elements" be only a mystified ex-
pression for the unsubdued spirit of Polish pa-
triotism, his argument must amount o
to this, that
the Polish people are unfit to receive the title of
a nation, because the national love of freedom
still survives every effort of brutal and ferocious
barbarism to extinguish it ! In other words, Po-
land does not deserve to be a nation, because
the mind and soul of a nation still lives among
that people, whose political existence has been