The Sun.
London, England, 1835-08-03 00:00:00

refer to the temperate though striking speech of the Atter-
asy-General for Ireland on Friday last, for facts abundantly
demonstrative of the corrupt. and abominable condition to
which municipal property and privileges in that island have
been reduced by the knavery of those who had usurped
their direction. The case of Cashel, monstrous as it is,
does not stand alone many which scarcely fall short of
it are enumerated by the Attorney-General, and their his-
tory and actual circumstances displayed with an exactness,
which must be insupportable to those whose morality is
thus gibbetted for the advantage of future generations. It
hence follows, that as against the enactment of some
effectual cure for this grave malady, we are neither
able nor disposed to offer a single word of cavil.
That objections have been found to the English
Corporation Bill we have already stated more than once,
and likewise our own acquiescence in some of them as rest-
ing on provisions of the Bill nearly equal in .
Of miscl.iieft the Irish
the
.
grievance which they proposed to remea•-
.
Bill it may be said with no less ss -
it aims at the overthross ' " • tali ' that the evil' at which
and frightfull, -
. Sias been revolting, and that a new
'poson pervades extensively the medicine
throua which a cure is promised-by his Majesty's Govern-
tnent. The mischief complained of is a monopoly of pelf
and power by Protestants, to the exclusion of Papists. Tile
penal laws for a whole century encouraged this monopoly—
nay, prescribed it ; and the Roman Catholics have been
for years crying out, that after the penal prohibitions were
rsmoved by law, they still were maintained in practice, the
corporations composed of Protestants having by an exclu-
sive exercise of the discretion still vested in them withheld
from Papists the privilege to whisli the lo•v had made them
eligible. But what ialstlits,enedy ia.troduced by Mr.
Perrin ? It is the subStitutsen in fii4of a Paphit ma-1
.nopoly for a Protestant. It is that everywhere but in
seven cities of Ireland, whereof the population exceeds
20,000 souls, the burgess right shall be given to every
man who inhabits a house worth .5/. per annum ! ay, to
every man who shall occupy such a house within seven
miles of the city, town, or borough, over whose concerns
he is to enjoy this formidable jurisdiction. Now, the com-
ment which suggests itself to us upon this matter shall be
very brief. If we were asked which we should prefer, a
corporation consisting of Protestant insolvents (which has
not rarely been the case) steeped, as they have long been,
in the worst practices of sordid corruption and envenomed
faction, or a municipal body, of which the majority should
be composed of Roman Catholics, in comfortable circum-
stances, tolerably intelligent, and not entirely under the
thraldom of their priests, our election would in that case be
made at once. We would willingly reform the diseased
Protestant body by incorporating with it a number of re-
spectable Roman Catholics. But what are likely to be the
great mass of Roman Catholics whom the new Bill recom-
mends for the corporate Irish franchise ? They are
low, ignorant, priest-ridden Papists—men at the beck of
priest or agitator, inflamed against Protestants—hating
the law—prone to disturbanee—overflowing with bigo-
try. These are to be the materials and instruments of
our Irish corporate reforms ; they are Papists, occupying
houses of .51. value in towns, and for seven miles round them.
Why, what amendment of the old system is this ? If a
Protestant gentleman monopolizing the patronage of a
borough be objectionable, is the priest, at the head of his
duped and frightened penitents, a much less objectionable
patron ? Are the sworn enemies of the Protestant Church
and State, possessing absolute power over the souls and
actions of the Popish multitude, are they the parties in
whose persons Protestant England will be satisfied to lodge
the influence which she snatches from her own Protestant
dependents ? Had Ministers, we repeat, been contented to
let in intelligent, independent, and respectable. Roman
Catholics to a share of the power now possessed by Protes-
tant monopolists, little, we think, could have been fairly
urged against any such a change. But this is not a part-
nership with Protestants ; it is a wholesale transfer to the
priest, through the medium of his superstitious and subser-
vient rabble. If Ministers mean justly to England in this
Irish matter, let them limit the qualification in all cases to
10/. houses, which is low enough, considering by whom
those houses will be inhabited. We fear little from Popery
where it is restrained by the possession of property. But
for the creation of this deadly monopoly in favour of a
savage, anti-Saxon mob, we were not prepared, nor, we
suspect, will the representatives of the English people sub-
mit to it.—Times.
' .
It is with great regret that we direct attention to the
scene which took place in the House of Lords on Satur-
day, respecting the Corporation Reform Bill. The violence
of temper manifested by the Earl of Winchilsea, the Duke
of Newcastle, and others, even supposing that their unqua-
lified condemnation of the whole measure in principle and
detail were well founded, exhibits any th:ng but a state of
mind 'adapted to the consideration of such important to-
pics. We have ourselves many, and, as we conceive,
mighty objections against different parts of the Bill ; but
we more than doubt whether the course adopted by the
Noble Lords is the course most likely to remove or palliate
such objections. If their Lordships had been taken by sur-
prise, if they had heard for the first time on Saturday, that
such a Bill was introduced into Parliament under the aus-
pices of his Majesty's Government, it might be natural that
they should give vent to their indignation iu some sudden
expression of disgust. But to lose one's temper, as it were,
deliberately ; to lose it after due notice, and long reflec-
tion—for the measure has deen slow enough in its progress
through the Commons to give time for the arrangement of
its reception elsewhere—to break out under such circum-
stances into vehement gesticulations and exclamations, can
only serve to weaken the influence of the parties, and injure
the strength of the cause. Wishing to see the Corporation
Reform Bill so amended as to afford satisfaction to the
country, we cannot but lament that a spirit unfavourable
to rational discussion should have been manifested at so
early a stage of their Lordships' proceedings. We hope,
however, that the example of' Saturday will be consi-
dered rather as a warning than an encouragement, anti that
the discussions of the Aristocratic branch of the Legislature
will in future be conducted with more dignity and modera-
tion than their commencement would seem to predicts—
Morning Herald.
Reformers of the United Kingdom, " once more unto
the breach !" and by one vigorous effort, give the last blow
to the children of corruption and the unrelenting enemies
of improvement and Reform ! Notwithstanding your
superiority in numbers—your declared attachment to Re-
form, as evidenced in the return of a liberal and reforming.
Parliament, though called together under the influence of
a Tory Government—notwithstanding the triumphant
passage of the Corporation Reform Bill through that
House, and the consequent hope, based not only upon that
safe passage, but upon the express declarations of the
Tories themselves that they would not attempt to mutilate
it in any of its essential provisions—there is every reason
to believe that it will not only be mutilated, but actually
destroyed, root and branch, in the House of Lords—
nay, it is almost a matter of certainty, that upon the
division which is to take place this day, his Majesty's
Ministers will be beaten—the motion for hearing evi-
dence against the Bill carried by. a large majority,
and the present Ministers be either compelled to re-
sign without having been able to accomplish the great de-
sign which they had in view, or to see the remainder of the
session frittered away in listening to testimony upon matters
of corruption which are as notorious as the sun at noon
day. The debate of Saturday must satisfy every one not only
upon this point, but upon the unchanged and unchangeable
nature of Toryism—upon the determination of a certain por-
tion of the House of Lords to resist all salutary reforms while
there is a chance of resisting them with safety—and upon
the deception which that section of its " hereditary wisdom"
has practised upon the too easy credulity of the country, in
order to take it by surprise, and to blight its fond anticipa-
tions. The comparatively small opposition which the Cer-
poration Reform Bill met with in the House of Commons,
was but a lure to induce a false confidence—the repeated
reports that the Lords would, though with some difficulty, be
brought to pass it, a gross and planned deception ; and
it is now for the Reformers to say whether they are to per-
mit their just hopes of a large and liberal Reform of the
most corrupt and rotten of all the institutions of the coun-
try to be thus blighted—whether the whole labours of the
Session are to terminate in an insolent rejection of a mea-
sure upon which they have set their hearts—whether heri-
ditary wisdom is to be allowed to lord it over the expressed
will of the people—and a reforming Ministry to become
the sport and the laughing-stock of selfish and sycophan-
tish courtiers, without firing one shot in their own defence ?
The noble stand which ye made upon the Reform Bill—the
energy which ye displayed when its authors were kicked out
of office at the bidding of the base minions of a Court—your
attachment to Reform generally, and more especially to
those measures of Reform which have been brought for-
ward by his Majesty's Ministers dasing the present Ses•
sion—your gallant shAing at all differences upon minor
matters of Reform, in order to obtain the most kn.
mediately pressing—and the sense
the paramount importance - ye entertain of
"'",
p P"
gated with liorporation Reform, as corn-
s.- ...; other measure which has been introduced
.nee the passing of the Reform Act—assure us that ye
will not be wanting in this great crisis in what is due to