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

THE S'eN, LOisiDON, gATVADAY, irlsit 6, 1835,

boroughs. Afterwards he will vote annually for as many
as one-third of ninety, to supply the places of the one-
third who go out, and it would be inconvenient, if not
impracticable, to repeat the names of all at the poll.
The Mayor is to be elected annually by the Coun-
cil. The Mayor is to be a Justice of the Peace for
the borough and county. There is to be no qualifi-
cation either for Mayor or for Councilman, excepting
of course the qualification necessary for a burgess—that
is to say, being a resident householder, rated to the poor,
and not in arrear in payment of his rates. The officers of
the Council will be confined to a Town Clerk and a Trea-
surer, if the Council choose to elect them. The Council
will not be compelled to keep the present Town Clerks un-
less they please ; but wherever there are Town Clerks at
present, and they can make out that they sustain pecuniary
loss by removal from office, compensation will be given
them if they should be removed. The management of the
funds of Corporations is to be vested in the Council, who
will appoint a Committee of Finance, and audit their ac-
counts, the fullest publicity being given to such transactions.
The Council will appoint a Committee of not less than 15
persons (from the burgesses generally, if we understand it
rightly) as trustees of charity estates, and for the adminis-
tration of them, the accounts of which trustees will be
audited by the Council, or by a Committee of the Council,
appointed by the whole body of the Council. The police in
boroughs is to be completely under the control of the Council.
All provisions of local Acts to the contrary are repealed.
The licensing of public-houses in boroughs is to be vested
in the Council, or in a Committee of the Council, and no
Magistrate is to have anything to do with granting such
licenses. With regard to the administration of justice in
boroughs, that will be regulated thus :—The boroughs will
be divided into two schedules—A and B. Schedule A
(which is a schedule of privilege this time) is to consist of
129 boroughs, and schedule Bof the remaining 54. The
boroughs in schedule A are to have a Commission of the
Peace under the Bill ; the boroughs in schedule B are not
to have any Commission of the Peace unless they please, and
if they do please, they may be satisfied on application to the
Crown, by whom Magistrates will be appointed. As to the
boroughs in schedule A, the Councils in those boroughs
will not elect the Magistrates ; but they will submit to the
Crown a list of persons whom they think fit and proper
for the Commission. The Crown will approve or reject
the list, or any part of it, at pleasure. These Magistrates
are not to sit in Quarter Sessions ; but as in the larger bo-
roughs there may be necessity for Quarter Sessions, the
Bill will contain a provision, that if the Council of any
borough (large or small) apply to the Crown for the ap-
pointment of a Recorder, stating that they are ready to pay
the salary of a Recorder, then the Crown will appoint a
Recorder. If there be now a Recorder of the borough,
and the Council wish him to remain, he will be allowed to
remain upon application from the Council, and the Council
undertaking to pay his salary. Except in this last case, the
Crown will appoint the Recorder, but only upon the appli-
cation of the Council, &c. The Recorders are to hold
their offices quamdiu se bene gesserint. If to this summary
we add, that all pecuniary rights now attaching to corpora-
tors are to be reserved during the lifetime of those
corporators, but that all exclusive privileges of trading
are to be abolished, and all modes of acquiring corpo-
rate rights, such as by birth, apprenticeship, &c., are
to give way to the single qualification created by the
Bill, we shall have told our readers shortly all that
Lord John Russell told the Parliament respecting the
measure. With regard to the merits of this Bill, we must
beg leave humbly to imitate the example set us by the
House of Commons, and reserve the expression of our
opinion until we see it in print. It is hardly fair to expect
a member, introducing a measure of so complicated a
description, to explain minutely all its details. We find no
fault, therefore, with Lord John Russell for the very scanty
information he afforded us respecting matters upon the ex-
act arrangement and management of which the practical
benefits or mischiefs of the Bill must materially depend. The
nature of the franchise, and the power given to the Coun-
cils of licensing public-houses, are matters upon which very
warm contentions will arise, both in and out of Parliament.
It cannot be forgotten that in the Scotch burghs the muni-
cipal franchise was made conformable to the elective fran-
chie ; that in all vestry bills, all bills of local taxation
(and the Councils of boroughs will have the power
of imposing such taxes)—from the first vestry-bill to the
Poor Law Bill, property, not the person merely, has been
represented. What will those who, in Scotch Burghs,
are excluded from voting at their own town elections, say
when they see Englishmen similarly situate with themselves
admitted to the enjoyment of municipal franchise ? If it
be supposed that the Scotch Parliamentary electors will
silence their murmurs, upon what ground is it calculated
that the English Parliamentary electors will quietly admit
the mere householders to share with them the municipal
franchise here ? With this bill, too, as an examplar, what
,ort of a municipal franchise will not the ‘‘ Tail" claim for
Ireland? Sir Robert Peel put very well the condition of,
a community split into fractions by the treble franchise
which this part of the Corporate Reform Bill will con-
summate. There will be the Parliamentary franchise,
the vestry franchise, and the municipal franchise ; so
that our provincial towns will hardly be so dull
s they have been hitherto, especially when they
have the aid of a committee of a country Common
Council to license all public-houses. However, these are
matters to be dealt with hereafter, and the bill strikes us,
judging from Lord John Russell's description of it, to be
remarkable rather for its faults of omission than of commis-
sion. Some of these were most pointedly touched upon by
Sir R. Peel, to whose liberal and acute speech we beg to
direct the attention of our readers. There was nothing
that can be called discussion on the introduction of this
measure, or anything worthy of notice in what was said, if
we except the speeches of Lord J. Russell and Sir R. Peel.
The first was common-place enough, but it was charac-
terised by that same fair, manly, and honourable spirit,
which has marked his Lordship's political conduct from the
day in which he contrived to displace the late Speaker up
to the hour in which he managed to oust the late Govern-
ment, under pretences which have been too painfully exposed
to need another word of comment from our pen.—Times.
The Bill for Municipal Reform was last night laid before
the House of Commons by Lord John Russell. On this
occasion, as on the introduction of Parliamentary Reform,
hie Lordship has most ably and honestly responded to the
demands of the country, and again stands before the public
in the proud position of a true and patriotic Reformer--a
name than which no man need wish a nobler. In the open-
ing of his speech, his Lordship first proved the expediency
of reform by exposing the gross and monstrous existing
abuses—and next developed, in a free, straightforward line
of argument, the heads of the Bill proposed for their re-
moval. The Bill itself is so efficient, and truth and ho-
nesty of purpose so prominently marked its introduction,
that all opposition was silenced. The following are some of
the more important propositions of the Bill .—That the muni-
cipal constituency shall be Occupiers of Houses,Warehouses,
Counting-houses, or Shops,ratedfor three years to the relief of
the Poor of the Borough, and who have paid all rates due for
six months before the revision, and who shall be entitled to be
Burgesses. And that after the passing of the Act no Per-
son shall be elected, admitted, or enrolled a Citizen, Freeman,
Liveryman, or Burgess, or by any name, a Member of any
Body Corporate, in respect of any right or title other than
that of being a settled rate-payer within such Borough, ac-
cording to the meaning and provisions of the Bill. The
Mayor and one-third of the Council to be elected annually
—the Mayor to be chosen by the Council. No Qualifica-
tion for Mayor, Council, or other Municipal Officers, other
than that of Burgess. The number of Members of which
the several Councils will be composed to be regulated in pro-
portion to the number of inhabitants, varying from fifteen in
the smaller to ninety in the larger towns. In the course of his
admirable speech, his Lordship professed principles most
cheering to the advocates of general improvement in our
governing institutions, and calculated to command the
perfect confidence of the country. " What I wish to see,"
said he, "is persons belonging to the lower ranks of the
people assisting in municipal elections, and called upon to
do so on the ground of the confidence and esteem of their
fellow-citizens, and not by means of bribery and corrup-
tion." And again, after describing the shameless impurity
of corporate elections, he said—" But great and glaring as
it is, it is not so great, so vicious, as that which connects
a few persons for carrying on the Government for their
own benefit, with a portion of the lower classes of the
the people belonging to it, whose votes they buy, whose
habits they demoralize ; and who, while they make them
the slaves and the tools of that political influence which
tends to their own profit and benefit, at the same time they
disseminate amongst these men, who have this symbol and ap-
pearance of freedom of election, and the most debasing prac-
tices." How strikingly applicable is the foregoing to the
intentions and organization of the Conservative clubs. This
sentence contains, more clearly than all their resolutions,
the real motive of every Tory, whatever his fraternity or
denomination, from Sir Robert Peel to the parish beadle.
It should serve as an antinote to the delusions on which the
Peel faction endeavour to ensnare the country. The fol-
lowing involves a principle, the action of which we trust
will not be confined to corporate towns, but ere long will
be permitted full play throughout the entire nation. His
Lordship said, " According to the principle and constitution
of the British Government, I think it but fair that the rate-
payers should likewise have a voice in the election of those by
whom the rates are made, and the expenses of the town ar-
ranged." The amount and distribution of expenditure of a
Government should, in fairness and justice, be equally
under the controlling influence of all contributing to its
support ; or, in other words, a State can never be free till
representation and taxation go hand in hand. But under
the sanction of iniquitous laws, Governments frequently
perpetrate with impunity crimes which, in an individual,
would be punished on the scaffold. However, in regard to

the present Bill, we cannot say more in its favour than this
(which in our opinion comprises the highest eulogy), that if
the principles embraced in it and acknowledged by the No-
ble Mover were permitted general adoption—if Members
of Parliament were to be elected by constituencies enfran-
chised on the same principle of qualification as those of
the Corporations—we should hope that even the Ballot, the
Spes altera Rornce, might be unnecessary ; and every free-
man might safely exercise • his right " manfully, openly,
and in open day." We shall return to this subject on
Monday.—Morning Advertiser.