The Sun.
London, England, 1835-08-17 00:00:00

EDINBVRGH.

( Abridged from the Edinburgh Evening Courant of Thursday.)
Yesterday, at three o'clock, in consequence of a requisition
presented to the Lord Provost on Monday last, a public meet-
ing of the inhabitants, which was numerously attended, took
place in the Waterloo Large Room, for the purpose of peti-
tioning the House of Lords to pass the English Corporation
Bill without alteration, and for the purpose also of expressing
confidence in his Majesty's Ministers, for the firmness which
they have shown in the present crisis.
On the platform were the Lord Provost and four Bailics,
Sir James G. Craig, Sir Alex. M. Gibson, Mr. Forrest of
Comieston, &c. &c.

The LORD PROVOST having, on the motion of Sir James
Gibson Craig, been called to the chair by acclamation, read
the requisition, and shortly stated the objects for which the
meeting had been 'called, in which he most cordially concurred.
—( Cheers.) His Lordship observed that an erroneous opi-
nion was held by some individuals, that the effect of the Eng-
lish Corporation Bill would be to rob these Corporations of
their property. Never was there entertained so gross a mis-
take as this, for not one iota of that property would be taken
away by the measure which bad so triumphantly passed the
House of Commons, and was now so violently opposed in the
other House, by those who had opposed all reform. The only
change that would be made by the Bill, would be to place
the citizens of the English burghs in a situation to elect those
whom they considered most fit to manage their own affairs.—
( Cheers.) And that this would be an important benefit con-
ferred upon them was abundantly proved by comparing the si-
tuation of our own city now, to what it was before the passing
of the Scots Reform Bill. Fer the lamentable situation of
this city's affairs, he did not blame his predecessors in office,
but the system ; indeed the immediate predecessors of Ate
present Town Council deserved high commendation for boldly
laying the state of affairs before the public. But he would
not detain the meeting, as they would be addressed by others
more able to do so than himself.

Mr. J. Slum STEWART then rose, and was received with
loud applause. The Chairman, he said, had just ably and
clearly expressed to the meeting the general nature of those
objects which were the occasion of the present meeting.
When the celebrated Bill, the Reform Bill, received the
sanction of the Crown, and became the law of the land, no
man, he believed, supposed, or if some did so delude them-
selves, no intelligent, discerning man supposed that that Bill
had worked a positive or final benefit, but rather regarded it
as an engine affording the means of ulterior essential objects
—an engine in itself as useless as the steam-engine would be
if fire were not applied to it.—(Cheers.) It was contemplated
merely as an implement for cutting down the rank and pesti-
ferous weed of corruption which had overgrown our institu-
tions ; for pruning away their excrescences, and infusing new
strength and vigour into the plant of Constitutional liberty.
—( Loud cheers.) Among those rank and noisome weeds,
thickly as we were surrounded by them, there were none
more rank and corrupt than those which beset the Municipal
Corporations of the country. In our own country, the Re-
form Act was speedily followed by a measure for the correc-
tion of this class of abuses, and by a singular fatality or over.
sight, or it might be a gleam of liberality, it was allowed to
pass by those who did not at that time foresee what a fatal
precedent it afforded to the views of their opponents in setting
up a demand for a similar measure for England.—( Cheers.)
He needed not, he said, enter into any details to prove the
abuses of the English and Irish Corporations. He should
content himself with adducing only one witness—he meant
one of our own beloved Members—who in that very room,
when speaking of Corporation Reform, declared that the
abuses under which the inhabitants of Scotland groaned, in
comparison of the analogous abuses of England, were small
indeed ; the Corporations in England were far richer than
those of Scotland, and accordingly were proportionately more
gross and corrupt.—( Hear, hoar.) But before he proceeded
farther, be thought it right to advert to an objection which
would certainly never have occurred to himself, and the
mere statement of which he was sure would carry its own
answer. He alluded to the reply of the first Magistrate
of the first city in the empire (the Lord Mayor of London)
to a requisition, calling on him to convene a meeting of
the Common Council of London, for the same purpose as

that which the present meeting had in view. The an-
swer of that person was, that the City and Corporation
of London, not being individually affected by the Bill in
question, the citizens could not therefore legitimately in-
terest themselves, nor constitutionally express their opi-
nion on that measnre... Upon that ground the Lord Mayor
declined to call together the legally constituted organs
of the citizens of London. Now, it was hecauge they (the
citizens of Edinburgh) were not waiting for a reform of the
burgh system, having already obtained that boon, that the
Lord Provost of this city had not returned the same insulting
answer—(Cheers)—and that the present meeting was now
held.---( Cheers.) After alluding to the proceedings in the
case of the Catholic Emancipation Act, and' the Slave Eman-
cipation Act, and he might add fifty others, as cases in which
the people exercised their right of petitioning, though not
personally affected by those measures, the learned gentleman
proceeded—could it be said, however, that the people of this
country were not individually interested in wishing to see the
advancement of the great principle of freedom over the length
and breadth of the land? He would say boldly, and he thought
it was impossible to deny it, that the motive which had caused
the majority of the House of Peers to adopt the extreme
course they had taken with regard to this Bill was one which
scarcely could be avowed, and which certainly could not stand
the test of constitutional investigation.—(Cheers.) One great
objection to this Bill was, the effect it would give to the
freer scope and louder expression of liberal opinions in the
country. It was not denied that it would give strength
to the Liberal party, the defeat and subversion of which
was one of their dearest objects.—(Cheers.) This ob-
ject, however, the House of Lords ought not and could not
avow, because it was at variance with the first principles of the
Constitution. They were now making the last struggle to
inm aii)natran h t
wrested
u t
ecdo rfrropflu e n
from them
i bcyet the ghree
acountry f whichße wasm, fit,
a ndr first,
which this last Bill, they were aware, would put a final end.—
(Cheers.) They were now, therefore, met there to give ex 7
pression to the opinion embodied in the resolutions he was
about to submit, that the Bill for reforming the Corporations
of England was of vital importance to the stability of the
throne, the preservation.of the Constitution, and to the peace
and prosperity of the empire.—(Cheers.) He would say,
that with regard to the House of Lords themselves, it was of
the last and most vital importance that the Bill should pass.
They had. placed themselves, by their opposition to it, in a
false and perilous situation ; and it became the friends of the
Constitution, and of the peace of the country, to interfere and
to tell the House of Lords that they could not be permitted,
in their blind infatuation of clinging to abuses, to endanger
the existence of even their own branch of the Legislature, with
the privileges of which the people of this country had no de-
sire to intermeddle.—( Cheers.) They must, therefore, be
awakened from their dream—the treacherous, wild, and peri-
lous dream—in which they were now indulging—and the con-
tinuance of which might involve the ruin of their own order.—
Before the Reform Bill all run smooth—there was no fear of
collision ; and the reason of this was,. that the sympathy to
which ho alluded then existed, but it did so because of the
corrupt influence exercised by the Peers in the formation of
the House of Commons, and the consequent readiness of the
latter body always to give way to the former. This could not
be the case, however, now. Then the House of Commons,
was the creation of an Oligarchy, now it was the organ of the
nation. The one House was now the organ of the nation ;
the other only that of a few ; and it was reasonable and proper,
that the smaller should give way to the larger body.
The Learned Gentleman then commended that forbearance
which now characterisedßeformers in sinking all Shades of
political differences, for the purpose of upholding and strength-
ening a Miuistry in wl,3m they had' confideneethese Minis-
ters whosel'reeent uncereinthiious dis Missal from Office. bad
aroused one universal cry cry of indignation throughout the
country, and who had been so triumphantly. brought-back t 6.
powerby the voice of the pc )ple. It was those Ministers who
were now struggling against un -oppocition such 'as no other
ever before had tcreontend-with.--.4010- were beset 'with .sut:b