The Sun.
London, England, 1833-09-30 00:00:00

NAVAL INTELLIGENCE.

PORTSMOUTH, SEPT. 28.— BRITISH MEN-OP-WAR ON
FOREIGN STATIoNs.—The Isis, 46, Capt. Polkinghorne,
arrived at St. Helens on the 7th August, and left on the
9th for Ascension ; she was then to proceed to the coast
of Africa. The Imogene, 28, Captai❑ Blackwood, arrived
at New South Wales on the 3d of April, from Hobart
Town. The Comus, 18, Commander Hamilton, arrived
at Jamaica on 12th July, from Barbadoes. The Opossum
packet arrived at Jamaica on the 6th August, from Fal-
mouth and St. Domingo. The Hermes steamer arrived
at Cadiz 10th September, from Falmouth.
The Charybdis brig, of three guns, is corning home
from the African station. Lieutenant Crawford, her
Commander, is to be tried by a Courtmartial, on charges
brought against him by the Master.
The Favourite, 18, Commander Mundy, was undocked
yesterday. The Sultan, 74, will be undocked in a few
days, and laid up in ordinary, having undergone a thorough
repair. The Warspite, 74, will the❑ be taken in.
A frigate, to mount 30 guns, and to be built on the
plan of Captain Symonds, the present Surveyor of the
Navy, is ordered to be laid down in this dockyard. The
Royal Frederick, 120, has commenced lying down in this
yard.

In Harbour—Victory, Royal George, Excellent, Chal-
lenger, Favourite, Orestes, 2E-na, Lynx, Raven, and
Sparrow cutters ; and Messenger steamer.
PROXOTIONS AND APPOI NTMENTS. --Commander
M'Dougal to the Nimrod, vice Lord E. Russ. 11, who
resigns from ill heath ; Commander W. G. Skyring to
tha 'Etna; Mr. C. Dixon, Midshipman of the Isis, is
promoted to the rank of Lieutenant ; Lieut. C. E. Powys
to the Vesta ; Lieut. H. V. Huntley to command the
Lynx ; Lieut. J. M. C. Symonds to the Endymion ;
Lieuts. H. W. Hill. C. Tennant, Ae Reed, Mr. J. Hall,
Surgeon, and Mr. W. Graham, Assistant-Surgeon to the
Andromache ; Mr. J. Shaw, Assistant-Surgeon, to the
Raven cutter.

DINNER TO MR. OSWALD.--On Tuesday
the dinner to James Oswald, Esq. M.P., by his fellow.
citizens and constituents, as an expression of their appro-
bation of his firm, independent, and consistent conduct i❑
Parliament, took place in the Assembly Rooms, Ingram-
street. The number of gentlemen who sat down to dinner
amounted to about 260. Wm. Stirling, Esq. officiated
as chairman ; supported on the right by James Oswald,
Esq. and Kirkman Finlay, Esq., and o❑ the left by Robert
Grahame, Esq. of Whitehill, Dr. M'Fadyen, &c. A. G.
Spiers, Esq. of Culcreuch, acted as croupier, assisted by
Mr. Charles Tennant and Mr. Walter Buchanan. Mr.
Oswald and many other gentlemen addressed the meeting,
and the utmost harmony prevailed until a late hour.

ILLEGAL ELECTION OF MAYOR AND
SHErtut-s.—Mr. Gregg has addressed a letter to his Ex-
cellence, the Lord Lieutenant, and the Privy Council,
setting forth, in the most satisfactory and explicit terms,
two moat important legal defects in the election of the
mayor and sheriffs for this city, whose inauguration to
office is fixed to take place on next Monday. A commu-
nication has been made to the Iri,h Government, by last
evening's mail, with a view to procure at the hands of the
Cauncil an immediate order to quash the elections and
suspend the intended proceedings.-- Cork Reporter.

SPIRIT or THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Municipal Commissioners are proceeding
on their important circuit, and executing their
mission with equal courage and sagacity, by in-
vestigating the state of our municipal corpora-
tions, and exposing the knavery, while they
excite the dismay, of jobbing, electioneering,
guzzling, corrupt,
Thecorrup periodical t, embezzling,
appearanceing,ancl of plundering
cthe
Judges at an assize town is not more dreaded by
a certain portion of the assize calendar than the
arrival of these " itinerant inquisitors" (as they
are called) is dreaded by the culprits of close
corporations, and their accomplices in public
robbery. The parallel between these two sets
of offenders is carried further than their mere
alarm at a judicial investigation or a public ex-
posure. The latter, as well as the former, ap-
prehend punishment as the result of a verdict of
guilty, and therefore are making every exertion
in their power to pervert or to suppress the evi-
dence against them ; nay, in one remarkable case
they have appeared at the bar of the Court of
Inquiry, to be examined, with their counsel or
legal adviser by their side, who advised them not
to answer certain questions, lest they should
criminate themselves ; as. if, in their situa-
tion and circumstances, the disclosure of
truth would have amounted to the admission
of a crime, or the proof of a misdeed ! !
Even their recorded acts—their legal in-
struments—the books and papers in which
they themselves have consigned the evidence of
their trust management—the results of their
corporate stewardship, are considered to contain
such strong proofs of corruption and malversa-
lion that they are withheld by the corporators on
the same Old Bailey plea of not being obliged to
furnish the means of their own conviction !
They thus have declined all further responses
and every production of papers, and have ren-
dered themselves contumacious towards the
authority of the Royal commission. Their
town-clerk has been supported by their sanction,
and has, at their command, resisted the summons
of the Commissioners, which required, in the
terms of the Royal order, the inspection of
deeds, documents, and writings, accounts,
books, and other papers relating to the funds
and estates of the Corporation, particularly the
production of a certain mortgage executed lately
by the Corporation, together with the Chamber-
lain's accounts .of the last 10 years." The un-
happy borough, to the management of which
we thus refer, is the borough of Leicester, and
as its Mayor and Magistrates have exhibited
the first instance of co/du/iv:city against the
Royal Commission, we shall make no apology
for entering somewhat further into the circum-
stances of the existing inquiry, and the grounds
on which the Corporation rests the absurd
defence of its deliberate disobedience. It
appears from the official announcement of
the proceedings of the Leicester Guildhall, in
the Leicester Herald of the 25th instant, and
from the declamations of that violent Tory print
itself, that the town clerk had been summoned by
the commissioners to attend them for the pur-
pose of being examined relative to borough
affairs, on Saturday, the 14th instant. The
court was very properly declared open, as it was
conceived that there could be no secrets between
the corporation and the commissioners,—as the
inhabitants are supposed to be entitled to know
to the fullest extent how their affairs are con-
ducted by their representatives (though they may
have no control in their immediate management)
—as there could not, by possibility, be imagined
any reason why honest corporators should refuse
to give the most unreserved account of their
corporate behaviour in the face of their fellow
citizens—as it was reasonably anticipated that,
if any grounds of doubt or suspicion existed
against their management, the burgesses who
had facts to disclose, or official misrepresenta-
tions to correct, ought to be heard—mid as, in
truth, the whole proceeding was intended only
to obtain information, in the first instance,
which there could be no temporary reason to
conceal ,from the inhabitants of the place,
when it was afterwards to be laid before the
public of the whole empire. If there was any
chance of disturbance, or any appearance of ex-
citement in the court, or if there was any inti-
midation threatened towards the witnesses, the
commissioners, as presiding officers, were bound
to provide for such a contingency, or to exercise
their authority to prevent such an evil, as the
authorities are in every other case of a public
inquiry, front that of a Committee of the House
of Commons on an election petition to that of a
parish vestry in the examination of an overseer's
account. Had an opposite conduct been pur-
sued,—had the investigation been conducted in
secret, and had the commissioners received, with-
out announcing it, evidence from persons hostile
to the existing management of corporators, what
an outcry would have been raised against their
inquisitorial injustice, their mysterious defama-
tion of corporate character, and their ex parte,
uncanvassed, unexamined,unconfronted charges!
Nay, the very inconsistent advocates of corrup-
tion, who call themselves Conservatives, seem,
in their unmeaning declamations, to have pre-
pared even this as a double string to their bow
against the commission, declaring—that it is, as
an open court, "a daring innovation on the

laws, preparatory, as would seem, to the
I revival of a Star-chamber COMMZSSIOII, or the
worst (lays of the Spanish Inquisition,"
How an open court, which is complained of
expressly because it was open, is " preparatory"
to the formation of a secret one, " like the Star-
chamber" or the '' Spanish Inquisition," we
leave the Tory blockhead to explain : but we
may assert, without fear of contradiction, that if
time proceedings in the Castle of Leicester had
been conducted in private, "'the Star-chamber
and the inquisition" would have been declared,
not in a state of preparation for revival, but
already revived. The Commissioners having
heard other evidence from the inhabitants, called
before them the town clerk on the 14th instant.
This officer stated that he wished to consult the
Recorder of the borough before he gave his
evidence. The Commissioners very properly
replied, or might have replied, that they would
admit no delay for such a purpose ; that the
town clerk hiniself was a witness, and was
required to give evidence upon oath ; that he
did not require counsel to enlighten his con-
science as to his duty of telling the truth ;
and that in the present investigation they
had nothing to do with the Recorder or
any other judge or counsel for the borough
of Leicester. On this the town clerk seems
to have submitted to be examined, and con-
tinued under examination for
four or five
days, making the most extraordinary disclosures
the organ of a. which were ever obtained from

therefore
corporation. The affair was pressing—the clanger was great—the earth was yawning beneath
corporation
erpfoereattioofi'l theseen tlon—
to have
witho
sentut timely
corporation—and
orpadvice or assistance all appeared to be lost.
p,t

aste for their recorder, Mr. Sergeant Goulburn,
to rescue them from their difficulties, or to ward
off their disgrace, and the Learned Gentleman
made his appearance in Leicester after the town-
clerk had made some of his extraordinary dis-
closures, and was probably on the eve of revealing
the whole iniquities of the corporation. The
recorder backed the town-clerk with his appro-
bation immediately after his arrival, and appeared
with him before the Commissioners, to guide
him in what questions he might innocently
answer and to what interrogatories he should
demur. Such an interference the Commissioners
could not, of course, permit, and the Learned
Sergeant was obliged, therefore, to retire from a
disgraceful situation which he ought never to
have occupied for a moment. The inquiry had
now gone on for a fortnight, and the Commis-
stoners wanted chiefly some documents to
support previous depositions or admissions,
when the corporation all at once, taking counsel
either of their fears, or acting under the advice
of their Learned Recorder, " called a halt"
and refused any further to " criminate
themselves." They therefore withdrew their
confidential agent from the Castle, invited
their junta to what they denominated a
Guildhall meeting, or Common Ball, and passed
resolutions prohibiting their office-bearer to com-
municate the demanded documents relative to
their corporate management. The law of the
case we have already explained. We have
shown, and the invariable course of Govern-
ment superintendence over corpor-ate manage-
ment has proved, that the King has a right to
appoint commissions like the present, and that
the commissioners could not have exceeded
their authority in requiring the inspection of the
documents adverted to, without which their
whole investigation would have been a farce.
But let us hear the reasons which the wise and
honest corporation of Leicester, inspired, no
doubt, by their Learned Recorder, have assigned
for resisting the King's writ. 1. In the first
place, their town-clerk, in their Guildhall ad-
vertisement, defends his contumacy, on the
ground that the inquiry was conducted in public ;
that what he calls " the private income and ex-
penditure of the corporation would have been
disclosed to all the town ;" that the documents
demanded, if furnished, would have been shown
to all the world, and " particularly to the poli-
tical opponents of the corporation ;" that he
had seen former documents supplied by
him in the hands of political adversaries ;
and, in short, that the most unlimited pub-
licity would be given to the facts which
• he had declined to explain, or the papers which
he had refused to furnish. Now, it is quite
evident that the town-clerk and the corporation
of Leicester in this case pretend to dictate to the
King's commissioners in matters over which
they ought to have no control—namely, in what
manner, or with what degree of publicity, they
shall conduct their inquiries. His Majesty's
confidential agents and responsible advisers are
the proper judges how far they shall reveal to the
world, or at what time they shall so reveal, the
information which the commission shall elicit
and collect. The town-clerk and the corporation
object to the publicity of their accounts, because
that publicity would gratify their " political
opponents ;" but the commissioners know no-
thing, and can hear nothing, about "
political
opponents," or political friends, as reasons for
restricting or extending their disclosures. As
well might a culprit decline the authority of a
lawful Court because the result of his trial would
be grateful to his enemies, as a corporation re-
fuse to answer lawful questions because " poli-
tical opponents" are present to witness the ex-
posure. Beside, if publicity of disclosure was
their real and only ground of objection on the
part of the corporation to the proceedings of
the commissioners, why did they not decline the
jurisdiction of an open Court at once from the
commencement ? Why did the town-clerk at all
obey the summons to appear at the castle, except to
protest against it ? Why did the Learnedßecorder
attend the Commissioners to guide the corporate
functionary in his public answers? Why, after
having answered for four or five days, and having
furnished a certain quantity of documents, did
he refuse to answer towards the close of the exa-
mination, and resist the production of the re-
maining deeds and records ? The reply to these
questions is obvious to all the world : publicity
was not assigned as a reason for declining to
supply the demanded documents, till the mort-
gage deed, by which the corporation had pledged
the town property for their late electioneering
expenses, was demanded. It was then that they
felt all the evils of an open court, and appealed
from the Commissioners to the Common Hall.
2. The second reason for declining to comply
with time order of the Commissioners, for the
production of the books and papers of the cor-
porate body, is still more ridiculous than the last
—namely, an alleged intimidation of the corpo-
rate officers by the populace who attended the
Court. What ! was Mr. Thomas Burbidge,
the town-clerk, examined for four or five days
without danger or alarm, when he was all the
time fencing with the Court, assisted on one
of those days by his friend the Recorder;
and was he to be subjected to any hardship or
indignity when he complied with a summons
to present the books, accounts, deeds, and docu-
ments relative to the estates of the corporation ?
The whole story of the intimidation is an evi-
dent falsehood ; but if there had been any inti-
midation, it would not have extended to the
cyphers of an account-book, or to innocent
pieces of parchment. If the town-clerk did not
choose to attend himself with these documents,
he might have sent them, and the purpose of the
Commissioners and of the public would have
been answered. 3. But having no reasons
which they can own for refusing the required
papers, the corporation, in the third place, pre-
tend that they can see no advantage in the in-
quiry, which is not, according to them, con-
ducted in an impartial manner. The town-
cletk is made officially to declare—" That from
the mode in which his own examination has
been conducted, and that of other witnesses,
submitted by him to the examination of the
Commissioners, on behalf of the corporation,
his mind is impressed tuith the belief that the
further prosecution of this inquiry cannot tend
to an impartial elucidation offacts." So this
corporate official is to resist the King's commis-
kion, because, conscious that disclosures would
be dangerous to his employers, he chooses to
d
form an of about. the actual conduct an
probable result of the investigation ! Was ever
such impertinence, such
k corporation of Leices-
nown beyond the Tory
ter ? We might allude to some of the other still
more flimsy pretexts with I,vhich the Leicester
corporation endeavour to disguise from their fel-
low-citizens the real motive for disobeying the
King's commission ; but the exposure would
be superfluous. They are perfectly conscious
that all the world comprehends their position,

and that their extraordinary malversation of the
borough property must subject them to serious
responsibility. Hence, in order to parry the
blow, they have set on foot, " a declaration
among the burgesses, of which the following is a
copy, as we find it in the Leicester Herald,
signed, it is said, by 1,000 inhabitants :—" We
whose names are hereunto subscribed, inhabitants
of the town of Leicester, beg leave to state that
we are perfectly satisfied that the magistrates of
this borough administer justice to all parties
with impartiality, and discharge the duty they
are called upon to perform with intelligence and
discrimination : that they are at all times assi-
duous to preserve good order in the town, and
that we can safely place confidence in them."
These persons, it will be noticed, say nothing
about the jobbing in votes, mortgage, or the
abuse of the trust funds, and though they did,
the corporation would find it now too late to call
witnesses to character. One of the late Re-
corders of the city of London, who long presided
at the sessions in the Old Bailey, was in the
habit, after summing up the evidence on criminal
trials, of concluding in the following words :

" Gentlemen of the Jurv, you have now seen
the strength of the evidence against the prisoner,
and heard the facts alleged in his defence. He
has subsequently called witnesses as to character
—but, Gentlemen of the Jury, I place very little
reliance on such testimony. You know, Gen-
tlemen, that we have all a tolerably good cha.
racter till we are found out." And so we
might say of the corporation of Leicester !
Times.

We extract from the Leicester Journal o
Friday a most extraordinary, and, we presume,
the first public communication vouchsafed by
the Leicester Corporation for a century past.
Our extracts from the local papers have fully
informed our readers that a creditable and re-
spectful obedience has hitherto been paid to the
Corporation Commissioners in every district.
But an exception has now occurred at Leicester,
and apparently under circumstances peculiarly
illustrative of the existing corrupt state of our
municipal institutions. From the public docu-
ment, signed by the Town Clerk of Leicester,
we can collect the facts of this political contu-
macy ; in their own publications the Corporators
and Town Clerk stand before the public self-
condemned. It appears that on Saturday the
14th instant, the Town Clerk duly attended the
Commissioners, Mr. Whitcombe and Mr. Cock-
burn, on their requisition to examine him by
virtue of his Majesty's Commission ; that the
Town Clerk submitted to a public examination
of two entire days, answering on oath "to the
best of his knowledge and ability, all questions
put to him by the Commissioners relative to the
constitution of the Corporation, and to its in-
come and expenditure;" and that his examination
was subsequently often renewed during the fol-
lowing week. The Town Clerk, it appears, in
his simplicity, considered that his first two days'
examination "closed apparently to the satisfaction
of the Commissioners," but in this supposition he
was palpably mistaken and "reckoned without his
host." The Commissioners subsequently served
him with a summons to produce various muni-
cipal and legal documents, "particularizing the
copy of a certain MORTGAGE executed by the
Corporation." This summons naturally excited
alarm in the corporators and their solicitor and
town clerk, and they had recourse to the special
advice of their " Conservative" Recorder, Mr.
Sergeant Goulburn. A " Common Hall," we
presume a meeting of the Self-Elect, was there-
upon assembled, and the result of their secret
discussions and conference with their Recorder
was a point blank refusal of the required muni-
ments and documents. We now proceed to
analyse the reasons publicly assigned by the cor-
porators for refusing obedience to the summons
of the Commissioners, and in which reasons
they have curiously committed themselves and
betrayed their real motives of contumacy. They
first profess to feel " towards his Majesty's
Commission the greatest possible deference and
respect," and " desire to yield obedience to it,"
Their loyalty and fidelity as subjects, however,
appear to be considerably limited by a shrewd
preference of their own personal interests. They
object to the publicity of the intended examina-
tion of the required documents, and that there-
fore the town clerk be instructed to refuse them.
Now as no riots or fires occurred at the
previous examination of the town clerk, or any
reasonable apprehension of such casualties, and
as the corporators must know that the ob-
ject of the commission is a report to Par-
liament of the result of the municipal in-
quiry, this excuse is evidently a mere pre-
tence involving other and real sieister objections
to the production of the papers. Equally men-
dacious must have been the objections of the
Town Clerk founded on the violation of his
official oath. Of any oath of office standing in
the way of the Commissioners, we are utterly
ignorant ; and none such can exist, or other
Town Clerks would have cheerfully taken the
benefit of its protection. The Leicester Town
Clerk, Mr. Burbidge, had moreover palpably
overcome this scruple of conscience, as he had
voluntarily submitted to the prior examinations
of the Commissioners,and doubtless was satisfied
with the absolution from his " oath" afforded by
their authority. The inconvenience and nuisance
of his public examination are apparent to all who
know the secrecy and misdoings of Corporators.
If the Corporation of Leicester had honourably
and faithfully discharged its municipal trust,
publicity would be courted instead of being
shunned and condemned. It is the Corporators
therefore, who now notoriously object to " an
impartial elucidation of facts" and to " the dis-
passionate investigation of truth," though they
artfully but weakly endeavour to cast reflections
on the mode of examination adopted by the
Commissioners. As to the claim of the Town
Clerk for the attendant advice of the Recorder
during his examination, nothing can be more
absurd or obviously improper. The Commis-
sioners not the Recorder are tine arbiters of their
own examinations, and the Town Clerk not the
Recorder was under examination. Non-resident
Recorders notoriously must be ignorant and little
informed or consulted on the pecuniary and gene-
ral municipal affairs of Corporators ; the province
of the former is simply judicial, and Recorders are
not responsible for the administration of corpo-
rate funds, or for the acts of mayors, aldermen,
and town clerks. We suspect that Mr. Sergeant
Goulburn would prefer not to be responsible for
the preceding acts of this corporation. The
town clerk must also have been apprised by
public rumour of the appointment of the Cor-
poration Commission, and of the nature of its
intended inquiries ; and he had therefore had
ample time to consult his recorder. The real
motives of this contumacy
a
detection. The Common Hall,r not beyond
on Tuesday
last, passed a resolution, warmly thankine Mr.
Sergeant Goulburn " for his valuable advice and
assistance in the emergency in which they find

themselves placed." This " emergency" is
tolerably obvious. In the early examinations of
the town clerk, as extracted from the Leicester
papers the week before last, the town clerk, as
the News of yesterday quaintly observes, had
let " half the cat out of the bag." The Com-
missioners wished to shake out the other half of
the animal. The fact of the scandalous appro-

priation of 10,0001. of the corporate funds to
the Tory election contest of 1826 had transpired.
The false justification of this illegal expenditure
was founded on the pretence that a part of the cor-
porate property was privately purchased centuries
since by the then members of the Leicester
corporation. But if such was really the fact—
of such a particular ancient origin of a portion
of the present corporate funds—it had become
trust property, and how could the present corpora-
tors be justified in an illegal and shameful election
expenditure? The "emergency" was evidently the
unexpected demand for " the copy of a certain
mortgage,"the facts connected with which nefarious
alienation of the Corporate estates probably involve
the Corporators in the natural dread of future pro-
' ceedings and punishment. Ilinc ill e lacltunue,
and we admit that the " emergency" was dis•
agreeable and fearful. What a revelation of
black political corruption is involved in this sin-
gular case of detection ! The immaculate and
self-congratulatory Corporation, discerning in
1824, the growing strength of a popular local
party, and that its own close municipal influence
and all its means of corruption and electioneer-

ing management would not achieve the return o
ultra Tory members opposed to the Catholic
Question, in close divan assembled, make a
wholesale manufacture of 800 " honorary" non-
resident freemen, and misappropriate Ten
Thousand Pounds in the expenditure of a
subsequent contest for two representatives in the
House of Commons. The Head of this
Corporation, the Mayor of 1826, participating
in all this corruption, was the impartial and
disinterested Returning Officer of the borough ;
his Assessor, we perceive by referring to the
Morning Chronicle of that year, was Mr.
Sergeant Goulburn ; the mode of polling appears
to have been an unusual and illegal arrangement
called " pens," by which free access to the poll
was impossible ; the constables are alleged to
have been partially selected from one (the cor-
porate) party ; the most alarming riots occurred ;
and lastly, the selfelect, as the exclusive local
Magistrates, solemnly presided at the committal
and any trial of offenders! Well might this
remarkable specimen of a defective and corrupt
English Corporation require the patch-work aid
of a " character" now averred to be warranted
by upwards of 900 signatures (the Honorary
Freemen not being distinguished), and duly
advertised in the County Papers as follows ;
" We whose names are hereunto subscribed, inhabitants
of the town of Leicester, beg leave to state that we are
perfectly satisfied that the magistrates of this borough
administer justice to all parties with impartiality, and dis-
charge the duty they are called upon to perform with in-
telligence and discrimination ; that they are at all times
assiduous to preserve good order in the town, and that we
can safely place confidence in them."
We do not doubt, from the composition of
this curious and questionable document, that it
originated with the town-clerk, and was proba-
bly maturely determined on in a previous
" Common Hall." We can now only gratu-
itously advise the corporators of Leicester, if
they have any sense of shame, standing as they
thus do at the bar of public opinion, that they
will make some atonement for their notorious
misdeeds by a full submission to the authority of
of the commissioners, and in the language of the
comment of the Leicester Journal, " looking
with no small curiosity to the result of the in-
quiry which will be resumed on Monday week."
Possibly the " valuable advice and assistance" of
Mr. SergeantGoulburn,more maturely considered,
will suggest to all the respectable private individuals,
members of the corporation of Leicester, that
information refused to the commissioners will be
extracted at the bar of a reformed House of
Commons ; and that their temporary contumacy
will be of no avail. Ultimate concealment is
impracticable and impossible ; and we should
further advise the corporation and their recorder
that their present course only plunges them
in deeper suspicion, and, persevered, in will pro-
bably terminate in a worse end. This local case
now assumes a character of great public interest
and justice demands an acute attention to the
future movements of the Leicester corporators.
If the commissioners had abandoned the great
principle of publicity of procedure, they would
have compromised their authority and justly sub•
jected themselves to public animadversion.—
Morning Chronicle.
The proposed junction of the Royal Academy
of Painting, &c., with the new National Gal-
lery, however feasible, as far as their objects are
concerned, is in some respects of so question-
able a nature, that it was not till we saw the
name of Sir M. Shee, the President of the
former, as one of the Committee for superin-
tending the plans, &c., of the other, that we
could bring ourselves to believe that the Aca-
demy had given its assent to the arrangement.
George 111,, when he established the Royal
Academy, and assigned it a noble suite of
apartments in Somerset House, omitted that
which, perhaps, he had not the power to ac-
complish. We mean the assigning adequate, or
indeed any funds for its support; and the con-
sequence, therefore, has been that the Academy
has been mainly, if not wholly, supported by
the profits of its annual exhibition. But what
will become of these, when the exhibition is
transferred from Somerset House to the pro-
posed National Gallery ? We pass no unmerited
reflection upon modern artists, when we assume
that the treasures of the National Gallery will
far surpass any productions which one year's
labour of modern artists can produce ; nor do
we much admire the judgment of those who
propose to place their respective merits in such
close juxtaposition. But what, we say, will
became of the profits of the exhibition? Though
no animal has ever been made to bleed so freely
on the score of payment as John Bull, yet no
one pays so unwillingly, or with so bad a grace.
And place Juhn and his whole family on the
landing of a staircase, on the right hand of
which there is a picture gallery, which he may
see for nothing, and on the other, one for ad-
' mission to which a shilling is demanded, and
another for the catalogue, and John's very na-
ture will have been wholly altered if it does not
prefer the gratuitous to the pay door, especially
when he learns that which he can see for no-
thing is the one by far the most worth seeing.
This would be by no means the case if the ex-
hibition were under different roofs and at a
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ofe expense, other. Nor,
p'ense, is it at all
unreasonable to imagine that if this falling off in
its present resources should happen, the Academy
will of necessity be compelled to look to the
public for an indemnity, as its only means of'
existence. If we are right in these conjectures,
they only furnish another instance of the want

of foresight which distinguish most of our public
undertakings ; and, as Baron D'Haussez says of
the French engineers, that they dig canals first,
and have to find the water to fill them after-
wards, so it may be said of most public buildings
in England, that we seldom look to their adapta-
tion with half so much care as that they shall
turn out profitable jobs to their projectors.—
Morning Herald.