The Sun.
London, England, 1829-04-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE LONDON JOURNALS.

The first overt operation of the Catholic Relief
Bill took place yesterday in the upper House of
Parliament, when his Grace the Duke of Norfolk,
with Lords Clifford and Dormer, stood up at the
table, repeated audibly after the clerk the oath pre-
`scribed by the new Act of Parliament, received the
congratulations of the Lord Chancellor and of many
noble and distinguished Peers—amongst whom were
the Dukes of Sussex and Leinster, Earls Grey,
Fitzwilliam, &c.—and resumed, if in their persons
it can be called a resumption, the hereditary seats
of their illustrious ancestors, which no Catholic had
been suffered to occupy for 148 years. This cere-
monial, though in its outward form as simple as any
oath administered to a witness before a country ma-
gistrate, was to us an exhibition in the highest de-
gree bath animating and affecting. We saw in the
persons of these three Noblemen—whose chief title
to notice of any kind wa3 the cause of that unme-
rited obscurity and insignificance, under the humi-
hating yoke of which their habits and charac-
ters had been formed, and out of which, although
the pressure be formally removed from them, they
can never, perhaps, hope fully to emerge—we saw
in the group before us the representatives, as it
were, of six or seven millions of British subjects
re-admitted, after a cruel exile, into the sanctuary
of that Constitution which they have reverenced
even while it rejected them—supporting it by their
fortunes, and cementing it with their blood. But
the late glorious act of Parliament had operated
morally long before yesterday's proceedings—it had
restored peace to Ireland. Of national tumult there
is not left a single particle throughout that mercurial
people. The nation as a body now range them-
selves tinder the banners of the law. If there be
noise any where, or violence any where—if there be
rancour—if there be indecency, or disloyalty—nay,
open aspirings after treason—the Irish people have
no concern in such things. The old exclusive loyalists
are now the exclusive traitors ; nay, it is in the name
of loyalty itself that they would convulse the king-
dom. Since the Legislature has abandoned those
for whose benefit it was that Irish legislation had
ever before existed----since the House of Commons
(as we are told) has betrayed its trust, and no longer
speaks the language of the nation—since the
King—the child (or great-grand-child) of Orange-
ism (for so these historians read the Consti-
tution) has rebelled against the Dublin Lodges, who
represent the power which assumes to have created
him King,—it is, indeed, hardly to be wondered at
that they should transfer their allegiance to the Duke
of Cumberland, and more especially when that illus-
trious Duke can bring so many suffrages from the
people of England to swell the coronation anthem of
the Dublin Aldermen in his praise. The Dublin
Evening Mail, which is a mad paper, and London
papers which cannot boast of being mad, have ac•
tually put forth, as a subject of felicitation, that,
authorized either by the mandate of Dr. Magee, or
by the manoeuvres of some "loyal placemen," there
were no flags hoisted, no bells rung, nor any other
display of respect or courtesy to our gracious Sove-
reign, on the recent recurrence of his birth-day.—
We should like his Majesty, therefore, and his Mi-
nisters to ask themselves, on what could be founded
the pretensions to "loyalty" proclaimed with so
much insolence on every occasion by the Orange
party. The question is easily answered :—they
were loyal to the loaves and fishes,—loyal to their
own monopoly,—loyal to plunder,—loyal to perse-
cution; but of all this loyalty the principle was trea-
son to the free Constitution of 1688.—Th/zee.

Mr. Hobhouse brought before the House last
night the important subject of Select Vestries, or
rather self-elected Vestries, because the only sense
in which they can be called select is, that on any
vacancy occurring in the Members of the Vestry, the
remaining Members select a person to supply his
place. It is the more necessary to hear in m►nd the
distinct ion between select and srtf-elected, because a
Bill was brought in, in 1819, by Mr. Sturges
Bourne, empowering parishes to create Select Ves-
tries if they chose, formed on the principle of re-
presentation, under which Act no fewer than 2,868
Select Vestries had been agreed on. That any
body of irresponsible men, having the disposal of
enormous sums of money (in some of the parishes
of the metropolis sums almost equal to the revenue
of some of the kingdoms of Europe are levied),
should not endeavour to profit by this power, would
be to expect too much from human nature. There
must be jobbing—scandalous jobbing—in all such
cases. There is not, in fact, a single parish in the
Metropolis where the system of self-elected Vestry
exists, which has not been the constant theatre of
the foulest jobbing. The size of the parishes very
much favours misapplication of the publiC money ;
for in parishes like St. Pancras and Mary-le-
bonne, who can be expected to take the trouble of
making himself acquainted with the particulars of
parish business, with a View of keeping an eye on
the parish functionaries ? The very life and soul of
a Poor System is the smallness of the territorial
divisions; for thus alone can the conduct of the
parish functionaries be properly appreciated by the
inhabitants. The townships into which the parishes
of the North of England are divided are, in this
way, exceedingly beneficial. A parish inhabited
by one hundred thousand persons is much too
large a division for ordinary parochial matters.
We hope to see all the self-elected Vestries
thrown open, and a sort of representative consti-
tution substituted for them. In small parishes in
the counts v, a representative Vestry may not be ne-
cessary; but in large and populous parishes, if we
would escape anarchy, we must have recourse to
representation. We anticipate much benefit from
the labours of the Committee moved for by Mr.
Hobhouse, by which the laws and usages under
which Select and other Vestries are constituted in
England and Wales, will be enquired into. Mr.
Peel did not oppose the motion, but he made use of
several of the hacknied observations in defence of
the existing system. " The Honourable Member,"

he said, "lia(.l certainly produced instances of a very
lax expenditure of parochial funds, but it was Un-
fair to include in a general charge :those Vestries
which had properly conducted their affairs, and
without any blame attaching to their expenditure or
to their system of examination and audit. If the
Committee succeeded in devising any plan which

was better than that in practice for attaining an eco-

nomical expenditure of parochial funds, and a more
efficient system of general management, he for one
should be glad ; and he should be particularly so at
the establishment of any efficient system of audit.
He could not, however, admit that any effectual re-
medy of the evils would be found in a system of
popular election. The greatest advantage was de-
rived from the attention and application to paro-
chial management by Gentlemen, whose pro-
perty and intelligence would be a security that
no mean and sordid objects would influence the
decisions of the Vestry. Any system which
obstructed the exertions of gentlemen of this de-
scription would he objectionable. Any scheme
which drove from parochial concerns gentlemen of
wealth, and substituted those that would be elected,
if all who paid rates had votes hi the election,
would do the utmost injury instead of effecting any
benefit."—All this is quite unintelligible to
Mr. Peel professes himself an admirer of the British
Constitution, and yet coolly informs the House,
that the best way of securing an economical expen-
diture of the produce of Taxes is to deprive the
tax-payers of all controul over it through their
Representatives ! Why he talks, too, of efficient
systems of audit ; but who are to be the judges of
the efficiency under a self elected Vestry ? The
irresponsible Vestrymen of course. They who
have the controul of the expenditure have all other
powers. The argument of the benefit parishes re-
ceive, by attracting to the management of parochial
affairs gentlemen of property and intelligence, is
somewhat stale now. It is known that these gen-
tlemen of property and intelligence seldom interfere
at all with the management of the parish matters,
which devolves in general on a knot of interested in-
, dividualt. If gentlemen of property and intelligence