The Sun.
London, England, 1835-06-15 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN,

SIR,-It is an excellent maxim, " Do JUSTICE TO ALL". In
compliance with this rule, I am about to bear testimony as to
the character and conduct of two Magistrates who have in-
curred the censure of a Committee of the House of Com-
mons, and the intense opposition of my political opinions to
their's may render my evidence of some value.
Messrs. Bignold and Booths the parties alluded to, are
generally allowed by us on the popular side to be among the
most able and impartial of our Magistrates ; and I am fully
persuaded their Tory opinions would never induce them to
swerve one hail's breadth from the path of justice.
Neither of these gentlemen bad the slightest leaning in
favour of the prosecution—the second became one of the exa-
mining: Magistrates from the mere accident of having called,
on business, upon the former, at the moment Mr. Bignold was
proceeding to the examination.
Both acted under the advice of the two legal officers of the
Corporation—the Recorder and the Town Clerk.

These gentlemen deemed that the authority of the ordinary
Courts of Justice were not over-ridden by that of a Committee
of the House of Commons, and that Magistrates were bound
to terminate the investigation of a criminal charge, before they
resigned the accused to the Committee.

In this view of the case there is reason to believe that
the very able Counsel for Messrs. Wagon and Morrison coin-
cided—since he applied to the Court of King's Bench, as the
superior authority over the magistrates, to obtain the presence
of the intended witness, instead of applying to the Committee
of the House, WHICH IT IS NOW ASSUMED IS THE PARAMOUNT
AUTHORITY.

Whether any " breach of the privileges of the House" has
been committed, appears then VERY doubtful—( and be it re-
membered that a committee does not inherit all the powers of
the House at large)—but if any has, it will turn out, lam con-
vinced, to have been done through an error of judgment in the
law officers of the Corporation.
I am, Sir, yours, &c.,
A NORWICH RADICAL.

P. S.—Look to the practical consequences of magistrates
sending up to the House an accused peason, prior to examina-
tion into a criminal charge, to give evidence. Suppose the
charge perjury—the accused goes up to the committee—de-
livers his evidence—is believed—his testimony acted upon by
the House—and then he is brought back to the magistrates, and
found to be utterly unworthy of belief 1 Here is a charming
result 1 It is a case that might occur surely. I scarcely need
add, that I do not advert to the present case, being fully con-
vinced of the truth of the evidence which has brought such
awkward consequences on Messrs. V. and D. Sparrow and Co.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The second reading of the Municipal Corporation
Reform Bill comes on this day. This is not the stage
in which the Bill is in much danger. The Tories
have abandoned all idea of open hostility to the mea-
sure, and will confine their exertions to mutilation of

the more important provisions in the Committee. We
were unable to notice the numerous articles of our
Tory Contemporaries which appeared during the past
week ; and it is now too late to revert to the subject,
with any chance of doing justice to it. We cannot,
however, allow the occasion to pass without noticing
the remarks in the Standard of Wednesday last. The
Tories and the Tory journals are naturally sore under
the accusation, which they well know to be just, of
having apostatized from their former opinions on the
question of Corporation Reform. No Swiss ever
displayed more readiness to abandon an unprofit-
able service, thin the Tories have displayed to
quit the falling cause of their old adherents.
The brazen effrontery with which—in spite of all
their exertions to uphold the very worst abuses
of Corporations, down to the latest period—they
now suddenly turn round and affect to take a sincere
and zealous interest in the establishment of the muni-
cipal rights of the people, almost exceeds belief. If
we were to take the word of these pretended apostles
of Reform, they have always been strongly opposed
to abuses, and yield to none in attachment to the cause
of the people. Forced by the policy of Sir Robert
Peel to surrender at discretion the garrisons of the
close Corporations—to admit that all self-elect Corpo-
rators ought to be disbanded, to be succeeded by pub-
lic trustees elected periodically by a municipal consti-
tuency—compelled to acknowledge the existence of
the flagrant abuses of the present municipal system,
our contemporaries are extremely hampered with the
incumbrance of their late opinions. They would now
fain destroy their own nests and betake themselves to
ours. Nothing can be more amusing or edifying—no
greater proof can be afforded of the ultimata omnipotence
of public opinion—than the sight of the Tories thus
awkwardly pressing through the turnstile of Corpo-
ration Reform. We may allow the- Standard
to be a partial exception to this censure of the Tory
party. Our inconsistent evening Contemporary is a
curious compound of High Church, divine right, and
democratical principles, and withal an acute and prac-
tised logician. Our Contemporary gravely assures us
that he advised the Corporations to disobey the Royal
Commission, on the assumption that the Corporators
were free from guilt. " The members of Corpora-
tions," our Contemporary solemnly states, " with
three or four honourable exceptions, despised our warn-
ing, and by submitting to an invasion of the rights of
British subjects, from motives too plain to be misun-
derstood, abundantly confirmed all our former ill
opinion. They betrayed their post, the maintaining of
which post was the only possible service they could
render to the eause of general liberty ; and were they
less ripe than they are for correction, that single act
of cowardice and treachery incurs a just forfeiture
of public sympathy. But, in truth, this cowardice
and treachery presented a confession of former de-
linquency, while they constituted a new substantive
crime. Had the Corporations felt secure in their in-
tegrity, they would have set the Commission at defi-
ance ; but that they did not defy the Commission
leaves but one inference." This is, to be sure, a most

ingenious explanation of the former opinions of the
Standard, but it serves, at the same time, to justify
the appointment of the English Corporation Commis-
sion, because the excellent result of its inquiry has
been to substantiate the fact, that, " with three or
four honourable exceptions," the Corporators have
beeu brought, by the instrumentality of the Commis-
sion, to the 'confession of their delinquency ; though
though it is not for us, the advocates of the Ministerial
Bill of Municipal Reform, to go so far as the Stan-
dard, on the lst inst., when our destructive contem-
porary " avowed " the radical opinion, " that the
best Municipal Reform would be the sweeping atoay
of Municipal Corporations altogether ! ' The sub-
mission of the Corporators to the legal authority
of the Commission, and their contumacious repu-
diation of the advice of the. Standard to disobey
the powers of the Commissioners, appear to have
operated a strange revolution in the opinions of our
Contemporary. We will, however, willingly now close
this part of the discussion, since it is admitted on all
hands, by the Standard and Sir Robert Peel, the% the
rotten Corporations resemble old ships, no longer sea-
worthy, and only fit to be broken up and sold as old
matcrials. One word more with respect to our Con-
temporary. We yesterday instanced the open vestry
of Mary-le-bonne, and its successful working, as an
example of just confidence in a local constituency of
extended qualification. The Standard thanks us cor-
dially "for this, to us most happy instance, twice
happy" as an illustration of retrenchment of expendi-
ture and improvement of local government ; and, then
singularly asserts that Mary-le-bonne is an unfortunate
selection as an example, because Mary-le-bonne, as a
parish, is unparalleled in wealth, so that the classes
possessed of property have, in reality, effected the im-
provement in its administration. If our Contemporary
attributes the improvement in Mary-le-bonne to the
Aristocracy, or to the highest class of householders, we
utterly deny this. It is notorious that the old ves-
try exclusively packed by one class, the most wealthy,
scandalously abused their trust, as far as regarded
economy. The Tories are the daily propagators of
an extraordinary fallacy—viz., that the Conservatives,
as a party, possess nearly all the wealth of the com-
munity I Now, we have seen an analysis of the county,
and city, and borough polls, which demonstrates the
contrary. No one will be hardy enough to deny on
which side the scale of property predominates in the
constituency of Scotland. In England mid 'Wales
the polls of the Conservatives display two opposite
ranks of partisans—one consisting of individuals of
the nzost wealthy class undoubtedly ; but the other,
the majority, consisted of bribed and debauched free-

men, kind intimidated dependents—to wit, Ipswich,
Norwich, Bristol, Liverpool, Hull, York, and the
small tenantry of the landlords in the counties. In
the greater number of Tory returns in the large towns,
the majority of ten-pound electors are voters in the
Liberal interest. We defy our Contemporary to over-
turn this position. The fact is, that the Conserva-
tives do not possess the largest portion of the wealth
of society. Assertion is one thing, proof another.
We shall hereafter state, in support of our assertion,
some remarkable facts, by which we hope to prove
the statistics of Sir Robert Peel as loose as his politi-
cal opinions.—Morning Chronicle.
Our attention has been lately called to one or two
provisions in the Corporation Reform Biil, by which
the interests of numerous innocent individuals will be
most materially affected, without any attempt at com-
pensation being made. Now we are most fully aware
that scarcely any extensive measure of reform or public
improvement can be carried into effect without the in-

fliction of some degree of injury to the rights of indi-
viduals, and without some sacrifice of private pri-
vileges. But it has always hitherto been a principle
of our law that no private property should be touched
without some pressing or urgent necessity on the part
of the public being established, and that, in the event of
such a case being made out, the fullest possible com-
plication of large portions of the national bounty of
Great Britain, and its diversion in many recorded cases
from the relief of hunger to the ends of fraudulent
cupidity, that we deem the main or most enduring
mischief ; but it is the officious interception of the Irish
landlord or capitalist in the fulfilment of his own
bounden duty of ministering to the distresses of his own.
native poor. It is the hindrance to the creation of what
had never before, and has never since, existed—a bond
of union and a consciousness of reciprocal dependence
between the Irish proprietor and the Irish pauper. It
is the practical demonstration thus afforded, that the
peasant in his extremity could not rely upon the more
affluent inhabitants of his own island, but must look_
abroad for relief, and that the Irish gentry or mercan-
tile classes might rely upon the_willingness of another
people to discharge the offices of charitable protection,
which they themselves might therefore neglect with
immediate impunity. It is that increased alienatism
between the two great divisions of rich and pour in
Ireland which has left the latter open to the sinister
influence of every incendiary, whether in the garb of
priest or lawyer, whose object is to make tools of the