The Sun.
London, England, 1856-04-02 00:00:00

Spirit of the Public Journals.

REFORM OF THE CORPORATION OF
LONDON.
(From the Ti .rtes of this Clary.)
The long-expected measure for the reform of the
Corporation of London presents itself at last in
the mildest possible form. It was not without
reason the civic Conservatives 20 years ago de-
manded a special consideration, for they have cer-
tainly obtained for the Corporation of London a
gentler treatment than fell to the lot of its pro-
f compeers. These were so entirely newly
! constituted that identity was lost in the change,
and a new body of men stepped in and assumed the
property and functions of the old. Not a corpora-
tion but changed its members, its officers, the,
boundaries of its jurisdiction, its duties, and every-
thing that can make a municipal body. Sir Geo.
Grey proposes to leave the boundaries of the city
of London unchanged, and the mode of admission
also the same as now. With the government of
the body ho interferes somewhat more. Of the

three courts, the Court of Aldermen, the Court of

Common Council, and the Common Hall, made up
for both, he gives power to the Court of Common
Council, and takes it away from the Court of
Aldermen. That this leaning will be popular with
the more popular body, and contribute to the suc-
cess of the measure, is likely enough, though one
cannot help desiring that a b,dy to be intrusted
wi,ll larger powers should be better prepared and
qualified for them. It is proposed to take from
the A'dermen their right of nominating the candi-
da es for the Mayoralty from their own body ; to
leave their magisterial powers, but to create some
new police-courts, presided over by stipendiary
magistrates, as in the rest of the metropolis. Sir G.
Grey does not propose to merge the city police in
the metropolitan, notwithstanding the recommen-
dation of the commissioners, and the strong ;rounds
of economy, as well as unity of action, that have
been urged for this change. IL is a matter of ne•
cessity that certain customs and privileges should
be abolished. The right of opening a shep is no
longer to be reserved to freemen, and the rights of
porterage, met age, and street tolls are to cease. It
will be remembered that the commissioners, whose
report was made previous to the creation of the
new Metropolitan Board of Works, with its taxing
powers, proposed to hand over the coal duties, as
long as they lasted, to that body, hen it should be
formed. Sir George Grey now proposes to let the
penny and the eightpenny duties expire, and to
retain the fourpenny duty in the present hands—
only, however, for the liquidation of existing
charges upon it. The ancient conservancy of the
Thames ho proposes to transfer to a Government
board.

Such a measure can only be regarded in the
light of a compromise, and as such its present
success, its working, and its duration must depend
upon circumstances. If the reformers are content
with it, and if the Conservatives, nowhere so
numerous and so influential as in the City of Lon-
don, are ready to compound for the measure, it
will certainly remove some inconveniences and
absurdities. The main absurdity, for such we
must call it, is, however, untouched. It is absurd
that in the heart of this metropolis there should
be an imaginary boundary, existing only in maps
and the minds of officials and ratepayers, and
without one particle of.public utility in its favour,
upon one side of which a man is a citizen and
on the other nothing at all, without one iota of
self-government. That distinction, it seems, is to
be continued. The man on one side of a party-
wall may have a voice in the election of an Alder-
man or a Mayor, and may himself aspire to those
offices with a fair chance, if he has only the per-
sonal qualities and a determination to address him-
self to the object ; he may attain to important
magisterial functions, to the management of a
large body of police, to the control of an immense
oxpendi,ure ;and to the chance of numerous
emoluments and honours, which the genius of our
ancestors certainly intended for the widest possible
competition, not for- a small section of London.
It is true that the man who is so fortunate as to
dwell inside the imaginary line has to pay for it
in the shape of some high rates, and possibly, too,
in a little misgovernment ; for of the enormous
wealth belonging to institutions in the city of
Louden not much is diffused among that modest
•nd independent class that will not ask for a
share. Yet there is no denying—for it constitutes
the very case against a substantial reform of the
Corporation—t hat the man who d wells just inside
a certain line to be found in the 'naps of the
metropolis, though by no means in the metropolis
itself, is decidedly better off in some considerable
respects than his outlying but very near neighbour.
This is still to be the case, though no sufficient rea-
son has been assigned fur it ; nor has it yet been
shown why the municipal rights so industriously re-
tained fur a portion of the metropolis should not be
equally desirable for the rest. No doubt, the dignity
and importance of the municipal offices would be
vastly enhanced if the municipality were the whole
of the maropolis, instead of a twentieth part of
It ; or, at all events, if it comprised all that we
commonly call London. Whoever, then, wishes
the Corporation of London to be something worthy
of the name must desire to have its boundaries
extended.

At the same time we are bound to admit that in
so serious an affair, and in dealing with such
various and intractable elements, it may be better
to proceed by the tentative or experimental method.
Die Metropolitan Board of 'Works, as at present
constituted, is only au experiment, for it remains
to be seen how far a popular assembly composed of
the nominees of a number of local democracies will
conduct with wisdom, unanimity, and discretion
even that lesser part of social government, the ma-
terial works of the metropolis. It cannot be said
that these representatives, though they may be
considered by position the very elite of the metro-
polis, and must be supposed to have won their place
by force of character and social qualities, have as
yet worked together even so well as our represen-
tatives in Parliament. They seem disposed gene-
rally to circumscribe their jurisdiction within the
narrowest possible limits, instead of extending it
to the utmost limits of their charter. The general
conviction farmed on the minds of enlightened
observers by the constant jealousies and mutual
obstructions of the newly•created metropolitan
ptzliament is decidedly adverse to the credit of
British citizens for local self-government on a
considerable scale. That a few 101. householders
and as many freemen should be able to
manage their wretched little affairs at least
without scandal, if not wi la much profit, is thought
likely enough ; but the example of the new Board
of Works is now daily cited to show the middle-
class Englishman wants the pressure of the class
below and the guidance of that above in his admi-
nistration of public affairs. Time alone will show
whether this board will get over those difficulties
of deliberation and co-operation which were noticed
even in the British House of Commons fresh from
the Reform Act. But, for the present, it is natural
to suppose that Sir George Grey does not think the
Board of Works so succes ful an iestance of self-
government as to encourage him to a strong and a
large measure of municipal reform for the city of
London. When the new Board of Works has done
its present work well, it will then be time to give
it more to do.

PROPERTY OF MA.RMED WOMEN.
(Prom the Times of this day.)

In an age which is usually supposed to have been
wanting iu chivalrous, devotion to the position,
and in a nation which did not pay extraordinary
homage to the peculiar virtues of the female sex,
the genius of a great poet schemed the fiction of a
Female Parliament. el course, the outline once
sketched was not difficult to fill up. Judges mind-
ful of their fees rather than the justice of the cause
they were to try—partieaus forgetting the honour
of their country iu their spite to a virtuous politi-
cian or a distinguished commander--demagogues
blustering on their own untried prowess, and
threatening, if they had the opportunity, " to do
such things," shared the applause of the audience
with the picture of husbands forgetting the
is the alluring society
claims of wife and home
which tempted Socrates not less than Alcibiades,
or in the celebration of those religious rites w:lich
probably made the same impression on -the simple
minds of Athenian housewives that we may sup-
pose is produced on the innocent meditations of
modern married ladies when their husbands leave
t'nem to talk politics at "the club."
But one element was wanting, if not two, that
a modern imitator of Aristophanes might supply in
a sketch of a Female Legislature. Wifelheating, if
e recollect aright, is alluded to in the drama of
the Attic artist ; but probably it either was not so
strongly developed a practice, or, if so, was not so
strongly condemned, as in our day, for not much
stress is laid on it. The Athenian tinker or cob-
bler may have knocked his wife down with a ten-
syllabled epithet, instead of having recourse to the
wore material fashion of the monosyllabic London
costermonger. However th:s may have been, civi-
lisation has introduced a new grievance for femi-
nine indignation and masculine remedy ; and this
grievance is embodied in a petition addressed to
" the Hon. the House of Commons in Parliament
assembled," bearing the signatures of sundry
amiable, sensitive, and strong-minded women,
married and unmarried, of the United Kingdom,
and intrusted to the care of Sir Erskine Perry._

We are at some loss how to express this griev-
ance, for itt begins with the admission of a state of
things which we hardly ventured to hope existed.
We have been accustomed to hear and record
cogaplai4to Qii all aides that women, have no Tph,