The Sun.
London, England, 1833-06-24 00:00:00

fully justify the malpractices of the corpora-
tors of Coventry and Leicester. The interior
of these close and foul places must be ventilated,
and the doors thrown open to the whole com-
munity. Publicity must henceforth be the Con-
servative principle. The importance of the ques-
tion of Municipal Reform is second only to that
of the amendment of the representation : it re-
lates to the security of property—to the recovery
of debt and the punishment of crime—to the
preservation of the public peace of large commu-
nities—to the education and moral culture of the
people—and to the advancement of public liberty
by the extension of popular power, and the con-
sequent new formation of public character. The
proposed Commission would, of course, possess
themselves of full information on the municipal
systems of Europe and the United States of
North America ; and the reduction of the prin-
ciples of the Municipal Common Law to a
written text, and a revision of the Statute Law
affecting Corporations and public charities, would
form a useful department of the Commission.
The future political existence of this country may
depend on its improved municipal system. The
importance of the subject cannot be over-rated.
The proposed inquiry and reform will, of course,
he met with the usual Tory opposition► of prejudice,
stupidity, and sinister interest. Corporate abuses
have been too useful agents in corruption, to be
voluntarily or easily abandoned. As the deans
and chapters protest against Church Reform, so
will the interested corporators scream out like
screech owls in an old ruin when threatened with
any disturbance of their quiet and favourable
retreats. It will be fallaciously argued that the
constitutions of the corporations are to be re-
garded as permanent rights or establishments.
Now, in fact, they are those institutions of the
country, which for centuries have been continu-
ally changing—always growing worse, never
mending—the poison of self-election and secrecy
destroying their vitals. We shall immediately
return to this most important subject, and to the
valuable report of the Commons' Committee. If
the present Ministry as honestly and vigorously
promote the question of Municipal Reform as
they did that of Parliamentary Reform, and if
they extirpate the vile principle of self-election,
they will, in the language of Lord Chatham,
" infuse a portion of new health into the veins
of the Constitution."—Morning Chronicle.
The vote of the House of Commons on Fri-
day evening, whereby the 147th clause of the
Irish (Church) Temporalities Bill was ex-
punged, we consider a lamentable circumstance.

It must be recollected, and indeed was recalled
to mind by more than one Member in the
course of that discussion, that Ministers had, on
first introducing the Coercive Bill, declared
their determination to resign if they could not
carry the Church Reform Bills, as well as the
Bill of Coercion. This was a pledge, and a
pledge the inure sacred because it held out to
adverse parties a condition, which, in reliance
on the good faith of Government, those adverse
parties have fulfilled. The Coercive Bill, we
repeat, was supported by many of those who
would otherwise have opposed it, in full confi-
dence that the Bills of conciliation relating to
church affairs would have been carried also, and
neither sold nor compromised. For some time
previous to Friday's vote rumours had been in
circulation, and the matter of them was an-
nounced in this journal, that the Tories in
the House of Lords, impatient at their exclusion
from office, had decided on the immediate over-
throw of Ministers, which was to be effected
by that of the Irish Church Bill. A hostile
vote of the Peers was therefore ordained, and a
consequent resignation of Lord Grey's Ministry
was reckoned on. The question, therefore, for
his Majesty's Government was, whether they
should maintain their Church Reform Bill intact
in the House of Commons, where they were
powerful, leaving upon the Tory Peers the
responsibility of rejecting it elsewhere, and so
disgusting the country, or whether they should
submit to be beaten without fighting on that
field where they had the victory already in their
own hands, and, under the name of a " com-
promise for the sake of peace," yield to their
enemies what they would take care to represent
as a signal triumph. The latter branch of the
alternative was that which the Ministers, we

think unfortunately, believed themselves justi-
fied in accepting. They made what they deemed
was a compromise, but what the Conservatives

loudly boast of as a complete surrender of the
whole point in dispute—viz., the " inalienable"
nature of church property. The 147th clause
of the Bill contained a provision, that any
surplus arising from the conversion by pur-
chase of Bishops' twen ty-one:year leases into per-
petuities, should, after securing certain ecclesias-
tical objects formerly provided for by the vestry
cess, be " applied to such purposes as Parlia-
ment shall hereafter appoint and direct." Apart
from all special pleading on the subject, Mr.
Stanley, by giving up this clause, has given up,
in fact, the assertion of the original and funda-
mental principle of all church reform,—namely,
the power of dealing according to the supreme
will of Parliament with any and every portion of
that property which the state had itself originally
appropriated to the temporal uses of its religious
establishment. The recognition of this principle
was essential to the legitimacy of any measure
of temporal church reform. It is that without
which not even a commutation of tithes, or a
charge for poor-rates, or a property tax on the
tithe-owner, can be rendered valid. If there
was not an Irish Protestant layman from north to
south of the island to-morrow, the temporalities of
the superfluous church could not be touched by
Parliament without a declaration of the one great
datum—that "church property is disposable by
the State." And this is the ground which Mi-

nisters have abandoned, and, upon their own
showing, what does their inducement amount to?
Says Mr. Stanley " There may be no surplus
whatever ; why, therefore, prematurely regulate
its application ?" To this we answer, that
although the proposal for a tax on existing in-
cumbents has been withdrawn with the general
assent of the House, there still remains, be-
sides the income of the suppressed bishoprics,
the whole fund to accrue from the conversion

of terminable Bishops' leases into perpetuities.
Such conversion is authorized by the Bill, the
manner of it is prescribed, and its results are
minutely calculated and provided for by several
successive clauses. Is it not, therefore, mere
trifling with the country to tell us that because
there is no fund in hand at the present ma.

nient, save only what proceeds from a re-
duction in one Bishop's income, and from the
suppression of another, yet that the fund,
prospective and eventually certain, which must,
in the nature of things, arise from an extensive,
it not universal, buying up of Bishops' leases in
perpetuity, is no way worthy of being taken into
account by Parliament, but is to be treated as a
pure abstraction, and left to the chances of
future, or merely possible, legislation-IP Mr.
Stanley avows, however, that Ministers have