The Sun.
London, England, 1829-06-16 00:00:00

.necessitated to use inilceent drifts toare money,
did, about Ott ) ears 1(63, 1666, &';-' - y for dui*
purpose to 'the city of London, ancl..• . e tieachei#
or folly of some A Idermon, &c.,,,t,ii '.. red a loan Oil
iris privy seal or tallies: of loarr,-,4rsuch monks be,
it
lon2ii,g to the said chanilwr or iiie said city, wite;
lvhich, for a while lie if;;;1(.1.!-ed his extravagaiscc,
and p....'d ;lie in:eri2At , (1,,
.i'hereon, until aboir
the year 1671, when, 11:1.1i:q; himself unable to pa)
The principal, and scarcely the interest, and the Par.
liament refusing to supply him with money, he, be
the advice of the then Lord Clifford, (who for that
service seas made Lord Treasurer of England),
' closed the Exchequer, and thereby became riot onli
bankrupt himself, but cccasioned the Chamber r;
the City to be to also ; whereby many thousam
city orphans (heir pietas reguml) ere reduced t,
misery and want, and were not only defrauded o
their principal moneys, but even of interest for th
same, till the said Act of .sth and 6th W. and M.
which is called an Act for their Relief, though i
utterly deprives them of their principal, and Mil;
allows them four per cent. interest, besides the in
jury done to the said city in divesting it of its an
cient jurisdiction." The necessity of the time.
might excuse the passing of this Act, but no suet
plea could be urged now for its continuance. Fron
the accounts it appeared, that under the authority°
the Act of the 21st George 11., 3,000/. had been
annually paid to the Mercers' Company by the Cit)
during 33 years, out of the Orphan's Fund. Or
what account this appropriation of the Fund hati
been made, did not appear. There were appli-
cations of the funds of the Bridge-house estates,
which, though for public purposes, did not ap-
pear to be authorized by their trust. The Couristl
then contended that the Corporation were bound to
keep the bridge in repair from their own funds, in-
dependently of the Bridge-house estates. It was
proved that the Corporation claimed and exercised
a prescriptive right to the tolls over the bridge. A
prescriptive right to the tolls implied a prescriptive
obligation to keep the bridge in repair. It was
next strongly objected that the mode of levying the
proposed tax was partial and unjust. It fell upon
the coals brought into the port of London,—that is,
' not upon the whole of. the coals brought into the
' metropolis, but upon the sea-borne coals. Wh)
was not the tax imposed upon other articles which
came into the port of London ? and why was it to
be imposed on this particular description of coal ?
It was true that it was the species of coal at present
most consumed ; but when rail-roads were formed
to the metropolis from the inland counties (an
event which must, sooner or later, take place), the
extraordinary reduction in the prices of conveyance
which must then occur would place all the inland
coals in competition, as they were free from any tax,
they might put the sea-borne coals out of the
market. By this partial tax the coal-owners of the
north were made the victims to effect this local im-
provement—for an improvement die Counsel ad-
mitted it to be. The tax fell upon the producers,
arid must operate as a premium to give an undue
advantage to a rival commodity. They prayed,
therefore, that the City's trust might be allowed to
terminate in 1832, and that the expense of this
great national work, as it was called, might be de-
frayed out of the national funds, or by some tax
which would operate more equally and more im-
partially than the one proposed.
Mr. Joy appeared as Counsel, with Messrs.
SAUNDERS and COMYN, as Solicitors, to claim com-
pensation fOr the parishes of St. Magnus arid St.
Margaret, New Fish-street. In the latter parish
there were 34 houses out of 63 marked to be taken
down. More might he taken down. The salary of
Illieir Rector was fixed by Act of Parliament, and
the parish was liable to the claiMs, not only of those
who were at present paupers, but of those who
might hereafter become paupers in consequence of
previously•acquired settlements. if all the houses
except five or six were taken down, that five or six
must • pay the salary of their Rector, and discharge
those liabilities which were now spread over the te-
nants of the houses now standing. In the parish of
St. Magnus, 21 houses were actually marked to be
taken down out of 45 houses now standing. The
claim for all the parishes affected was the. same,—
They asked for compensation against the ruinous
increase of charges upon the remaining houses. In
the Committee of the House of Commons they had
been promised by the Chairman the introduction of
a'clause. which should give them compensation in
the event -of loss; but which provided that any
u profit, in the event of an improvement
s producingrpiu of
a surplus over their present income, should
be paid to the Corporation. This clause was con-
sented to by the petitioners ; but they found
that two parishes out of the number would be
benefitted; and those parishes would not of course
consent to the introduction of a clause which
went to deprive them of that benest, by taking
from them their surplus revenue, and. paying
it to the Corporation. The latter were so. unrea-
sonable as to refuse the admission of the clause, un-
less all the parishes would consent to it,—that is,
unless the two parishes mentioned would forego the
benefits derivable from an increase in the value of
their premises. But surely the compensation which
was equitable for the whole was equitable to the
part. The Corporation, however, said, that as the
whole of the parishes taken together would be bene-
fitted, compensation ought not to be given .to parti-
cular parishes ; the amount of which was, that, al-
though A might be severely injured, yet 13, his next
door neighbour, would be more than proportionately
benefited, and A must be content to suffer, unless B
should voluntarily give up his advantages. The Com-
mittee would never sanction such a mode of legisla-
tor, nor deny the compensation claimed by the peti-
tioners, for which many of the improvement Acts of
recent- date furnished precedents. They asked no
favour, but only justice.
Evidence was given to prove the amount of loss
to which the parishes might be subjected.
Mr. F. THORNHILL addressed the Committee in
support of the petition of himself and others of the
inhabitants of Bridge-ward. They objected to the
new plan of approaches adopted by the Committee
of the Corporation, and sanctioned by the Committee
of the House of Commons. They objected to it
on the ground that that plan was no less detrimental
to the trade and convenience of the public than it
was ruinous to the petitioners. By the first act for
the formation of the new bridge and the approaches
(Ist of: George-IV.), it was provided that the old
line of approaches should be preserved. Evidence
was taken at great length, and the adoption of the
old line was only determined upon after the most
mature consideration. The Corporation was in-
trusted to carry this Act into effect, yet they took
upon themselves to declare that the Parliament had

not determined rightly, and that they would set
aside the Act and place the bridge in another situa-
tion. Mr. Rennie in his evidence declared that it
would be the best to erect the new bridge on the
site of the old one; Mr. Rennie, senior, declared
the same ; but the Committee of the Corporation
declared they knew better where the bridge ought
to be built than the engineer, and they changed the
site contrary to his opinion; they declared that they
knew better how to legislate than Parliament, and
they set the Act of Parliament aside. The change of
the site of the bridge occasioned them to call for
new approaches. Then it was that the Corporation
Committee determined upon the plan of an al ch.
The object of this plan Ni as to get rid of the inter-
ruption occasioned by the cross traffic from Upper
to Lower Thames-street. But the nature of the
traffic had been misrepresented, and he was pre-
pared to prove that the interruption would not be
diminished by an arch. By an account taken by
the petitioners, it appeared a greater proportion of
vehicles turned down into Upper and Lower
Thames-street from the bridge, and fumed tip to
the bridge from those streets, than crossed the
line of traffic. Now, he contended that the amount
of .inconvenience diminished by getting rid of the
cross traffic would not at all compensate for the in-
convenience which must be crewed by sending all
the vehicles which he had mentioned as tfiniittg
down Upper and Lower Thames-street to get to
thy Custom-house or y4poul Mites by a highe