Star.
London, England, 1830-03-02 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR.

MARC,' 1, 1830.

Sta—The very able manner in which you hare exposed the ne-
farious practices of the self-eleeted, irresponsible Select Vestry
system of St. Mary-la.bonne on the 26th ult. deserves the thanks of
the whole of the ratepayers of that much injured parish ; but still,
there is one item in the account there referred to so very impudently
inserted, that I cannot refrain from calling your attention to it.
It may be within the recollection of many of your readers. that in
the last Session of Parliament, a Bill was brought into the House to
secure the inhabitants of St. Diary-la-bonne from being plundered by
the select in the wholesale way they had been accustomed to. The ex-
penses attending the prosecution of this bill amounted to SOU Se.
7d. collected entirely by voluntary subscription among the rate.
payers, hoping thereby to lesson the burden which the vestry had
for so many years imposed on them; but the vestrymen having
firmly impressed on their minds the recollection of the secrets of
office, arising from jobbing amongst themselves, their friends, and
relations, and the advantages arising from maxima tar.su xi.
TRIES in THEIR 10015, took upon themselves to oppose the pa.
rishioners bill, and by the opposition given to it in its progress
through the House, incurred an expense of 1,1771. lbs. 6d. which,
in this precious specimen of a statement of cash, is charged to the
poor rata; thus making the payers of rate throughout the parish
pay both ways, for the bill and for the opposition of it ; and as the
statement of expenditure is not distributed till after the accounts are
passed, and the time of appeal to the laws of the land gone by, it
cannot be resisted.
Having spoken of the account-keeping of the select, I cannot con-
dude this letter in a better way, than by giving an extract of the
evidence, before the House of Commons, of • gentleman as well
known in India as on the Royal Exchange of London, for his adepts
and integrity.

William 6rawford,'Esq. of Pippbrook Park, Dorking, Surrey, and
of Uppa Wimpole.street, called in and examined.

Ara you an inhabitant of the parish of Mary-la-bonne ?-1 have
been so for the last twelve or thirteen years.

Are you a Magistrate ?--Not in Middlesex ; I am in Surrey,
•hero I act.

Have you had much experience in the examination of accounts ?
I have had very much more experience than falls to the lot of most
men, from the earliest period of my life.
Have you carefully looked over the accounts of the receipts and
expenditure of the rates of Mary-la-boone, which are generally
printed for the use of the vestrymen ?--I have looked over than
with a great deal of attention; and I have made myself, with a
great deal of labour, thoroughly master of them. In consequence
of the opinions I entertained of those accounts, I addressed • let-
. tel to the vestry of Mary-la-bonne on the 12th of January last,
which I have brought with me. I detailed the objections which :ap-
peared to me to be in them : and some of the principal of them are
of the most obvious character. The observations that I have made,
unless they can be refuted, which 1 conscientiously believe to Le
quite impossible, show that for years put, the vestry clerk and
accountant of the pariah, and the various committees and meetings
of vestrymen, who have sanctioned and approved their accounts,
have not discovered what is properly the debtor and creditor side of
an account; and those accounts are constructed on erroneous prin-
ciples, which defy human ingenuity to balance them in their pre.
seat form ; that those abstracts furnish the clearest evidence that
the accounts of Mary-le-bonne. having an expenditure of 150,0001.
a year, have not been balanced for many years, because indepen.
dently of the errors in construction, I have detected entries, which
if the test of trial balance could have been applied, would have
shown that the balances carried forward were incorrect. Thirdly,
that in consequence of :so regular balance having been made, facility
has been given and freely exercised (I say this under great mai-
deration of the subject) of so interpolating entries, that expenses
on one account have been made to appear' as charged on another,
as an example of the effect of that I may mention, that by this
jobbing in the entries, the expenses of repairing the streets was to
year 1V.4 made to have cost 6,003/. less than was really disbursed
de that account. After these observations, I need only add, that
no man belonging to the vestry, or in any other situation, eats pre-
nal to say whether the cash brlanees in the lest of their accounts,
hi right within 10,000/.
le it your opinion that if the parochial concerns of Mary-la.
bane were differently rnansged, a very considerable sum might be
saved to the parishioners ?-1 have not the least doubt in the world
of it; beaus', though I am nut prepared to give it in evidence to
I know parts of the present system of management that are
extravagant beyond all measure whatever.
Do the accounts that you examined bear any certilleates of hee-
led been examined by any persons ?—Celt' they do not •
the accounts I hays seen, and from which I have spoken, are the
abstracts which are annually printed for the infant/Alen of the po-
tful'
On,Park& have not bad access to any of the detailed accounts of
Awes accounts so made up and balanced as to enable any use-
tier of the 'staff, or any person, to detect any improper entryt sr
all Oils= IL-Certainly not; I conceive very Sew men eau owner-
sine deer accounts. With all the experiment I have had in is-
nowelh It cost me a great deal of khan, Wore I solid 10 whet
they *Wm. They hare none of the right rinalploa of extMting
"aimemis about them.
Z. Jams.

TO THE EDITOR OF TliE STAR.
Sta,—Should any other example be deemed neces-
sary to support the truth of the assertion with which
my last letter concluded, Alfonso V. in his second
marriage, will afford it. When he took for his bride
Queen Donna Joanna, the espousals Were celebrated in
the city of Placentia, and there they 'rere proclaimed
sovereigns of Castile, of Leon, and of Portugal. N-ter
we would ask, whether Don Alfonso V. was, perchance,
deemed a foreign sovereign, because he was at the same
time King of Castile and of Leon ? Don Alfonso V. did
not cease to be considered a Portuguese, after he was
proclaimed King of foreign kingdoms, and is Don Pedro
to be considered a foreigner because lie was proclaimed
Emperor of Brazil ? Don Alfonso V. could possess other
estates, reside out of the kingdom, and dispatch from
thence his royal mandates t.) Portugal ; while the minions
of Don Miguel will deny this inivilege to DJit Pedto
Credite posteri ! Whence is, or whence springs the dif-
ference? If it exists; it is undoubtedly in favour of Dan
Pedro, both as to his legitimacy, as well as to his acts
As to his legitimacy, because Don Pedro did not, as did.
Don Alfonso V. leave his country to become the sovereign
of a foreign one. Brazil was a Portuguese estate, and
coqpidered an integral part of the Lusitanian .monarchy,
until the moment of its independtmce ; and even after
that epoch, no one will assert that it became so com-
pletely separated from the mother country, that Don
John VI. did nct retain the right of domain in this
empire. As to his proceedings, because Don Pedro, I,y
the act of his abdication, in favour of Donna Maria, re•
cognised Queen of Portugal, clearly showed that he had
no idea of uniting the two crowns. Far different we-J
the circumstances attending the conduct of Dan Alfonsa
V. In the first place, because of his accession to the
crown of Castile, and of Leon, which, when he assumed
the sovereignty, were foreign kingdoms; in the second
place, because although he re-united three crowns, he
never abdicated the government of Portugal. Many
more examples could be produced from every page of
history, but two more will suffice.
It was resolved in Cortes, in the year 1498, that
Don Manuel, who was married to Queen Donna Isabel.
heiress to the crowns of Castle, of Leon, and of Aragon,
should proceed to Castile with his wife, to be there sworn,
as in fact they were, heirs and successors to the crow
of Portugal. How was that ? Were the Cortes so ig-
norant of the Laws, that they not only thought Don
Manuel retained the rights of a Portuguese, by inherit-
ing the kingdoms of Castile, Leon, and Aragon, but even
entreated him to adopt all the necessary measures to in-
sure to himself the legal possession of so rich an inhe-
ritance ! Another example, and let it be the last. The
Prince, Don Miguel da Paz, was born at Saragona, on
the 24th August, 1498, and was immediately acknow-
ledged on oath by the kingdoms of Castile, Leon, and
Arragon. What did the Cortes of Portugal decide when
assembled at Lisbon on the 7th of March, 1499 ? Dill they
declare that prince, because born in Aragon, a foreigner,
and incapable of governing? On the contrary, they
unanimously swore allegiance to him as heir to the king-
dom of Portugal and King ; Don Manuel his father, by
an autographic letter of the same month, prescribed the
manner in-which he should govern when he succeeded to
the crown of Portugal, as well as to the ethers of the
three kingdoms. It is, consequently, clearly demon-
strated, that neither the possession of other realms, nor
being a subject of another king, nor even being born in
a foreign country, were in the opinion of the Portuguese,
and in the eyes of the laws of Lamego, deemed circum-
stances by which a Prince should lose his prerogatives as
a Portuguese ; and that the fact of not having Portu-
guese blood, alone constituted him a foreigner. There-
fore till it is proved that Don Pedro is not the first born
son of Don John VI. and that in his veins no Portuguese
blood flows, be cannot be considered a foreign Prince.
Enough for the undisputed rights of Don Miguel, and
let us now proceed to investigate if he exercises his sway
quietly and without opposition.
Facts will, in the present instance, bespeak volumes.
Are the Portuguese people quiet and happy ? No man
will dare to answer yes, even the venal scribblers of
Asseca. Disturbances every where ; assassinations ;
the scaffold continually covered with the innocent blood of
Donna Maria's faithful subjects ; all the prisms of the
kingdom crowded with the tyrant's victims; men of the
greatest respectability tied to the chain of the galleys
with the assassin and the highway robber; public misery
at its summit; and, finally, scenes of misery and devas-
tation everywhere. Such is Portugal under Don Miguel's
sway ! By a very moderate calculation we may say,
that two-thirds of the existing population oppose Don
Miguel, and are only constrained by oppression. Resides
those, we can enumerate the following disparsed mass of
the most wealthy people :
Portuguese Emigrants actually in England,
France, and the Netherlands _. _ - 3,000

In Terceira, emigrants, not including the popu.
lotion of the Island . - it 000
In Eustis - 5,000
-
In different parts of Europe, and in the United
_ States . -

2.000

In the prisons of Lisboa for political Ipi dons,
in the Lima*, and Cidade - 3,051)
Item in Lisbon Castle - 1,005
Item in the Ecclesiastical pesos called Aljube 1,000
Item in the fort/seas o' St. Julian,Bugio, Tea-
faris, and C4llOllOll/2
Item in Peniche
Item at °pond
Item at Coimbra and Absanty
Item at Elvis
Item at Chary, Braga, and Almeida,
Item in different ports of the kingdom
Convicts sent to the Coast of Afrka
Item ea board the hulks
Persons absconded through the kinFilotn
Total - 61,500
If, on an average, this enormous number of victims is
multiplied by 4, allowing to each, four persons connected
directly or indirectly with the sufferers, the reader will find
more than two-thirds of the useful male population of
Portugal suffering under the tyrant's sway, and waiting
an opportunity to put an end to the reign of terror.—
Every day the atmosphere is dark and gloomier ; the
signs of a crisis approach—they are portentous and
alarming even to those unacquainted with the tyrannv,
inconsistency, and imbecility, of the present ruler. The
island of Terceira, defeating his warriors and braving all
his power, has shown his impotence, sad be would'have
folios long ego, bad be not met decided protection and
interference in Ms behalf. With such elements is
Millera Way quiet end without oppositiOn?—Dicant
P~tritif -
Maw IS ♦ C.

3,W0
COO
4000
1,100
1,200
. 2,000
.000
61)0
500
10,000

.

•