The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-06-23 00:00:00

HOUSE OF LORDS.-FRIDAR.

Several bills received the royal assent by commission.
Lord LYNDHURST then, in pursuance of the course which
he had stated his intention to adopt, moved the order of the
day for going into committee on the Irish Municipal Corpo-
rations Bill.

The Bishop of EXETER, however, said that he could not
consent that the bill should go through any further stage.
It would evidently tend most materially to injure the inte-
rests of the Protestant church, by increasing the power of a
large body of persons who were its fiercest enemies. He
would take as an instance the corporation of Tuam, in which,
after it had been thrown open, the Roman Catholics had so
far outnumbered the numbers of the established church, that
they had been able to appropriate all the funds of the corpo-
ration to the support of their own cathedral. The number
of corporate bodies which would be immediately affected was
very great, but it would be, moreover, in the power of the
Crown to make any town having 3000 inhabitants the seat of
a municipal body, which would use all its newly-acquired
rights to the injury of the church. It had been said that
amendments securing a just property qualification would be
introduced, but all experience had gone to prove teat such a
test could never be relied on in Ireland. He trusted that
the bill was not to be passed for the purpose of a
spurious conciliation which sought to silence an enemy who
could not conveniently be opposed, but that appeared to be
the policy which was now acted upon. It had been held
that even in this country the period for the corporations had
passed by, but, however that might be, they had been
established in Ireland for very different purposes than those
which were now urged as the object of their extension.
They were instituted for the special aid of those English who
settled in towns, and the plain fact was that every charter
had been granted with the view of keeping up the Protestant
connexion. He did not think that any amendments which
could be introduced would afford adequate security for the
established church, which it was the particular duty of the
House to protect, as the Roman Catholic population had
- proved themselves so utterly unworthy .of the concessions
which had been made in their favour. The most strenuous
agitation had been set on foot by men who had on oath
disavowed their intention of subverting the church establish-
ment, but who openly declared that they would use every
means in their power to• deprive it- of its revenues. The
measure was itself repudiated by the very class whom it was
intended to conciliate, and he could not certainly join with
tbose who supported the motion.
The Duke of WELLINGTON considered that it would tend
greatly to the convenience of the house if the arrangement
which had been made by Lord Lyndhurst on the preceding
evening were carried into execution, and the objections of the
right rev. prelate might then be discussed in committee.
The house having then gone into committee, Lord LYND-
HURST put in his amendments, which were ordered to be
printed, and it was afterwards agreed that the subject should
be resumed on Monday next.
Lord ABERDEEN then rose to present a petition from the
seven members of the Strathbogie Presbytery who had been
suspended by the General Assembly of the Church of Scot-
land. The noble lord proceeded to state the peculiarly diffi-
cult circumstances in which the petitioners were placed,
which were, however, fully entered into in the course of the
debate upon the introduction of the non-intrusion bill. The
prayer of the petitioners was to the effect that they might by
some legislative measure be protected in the discharge of
their duties, and that the church 'courts might be restrained
from punishing those who only acted iu obedience to the
supreme court which gives effect to the statutes of the realm.
His lordship concluded by regretting that ministers had
thought fit to oppose the measure which he had introduced,
without themselves bringing forward any bill to put an end to
a state of things which was a disgrace to the legislature.
After a short discussion, in which several peers took part,
the petition was ordered to lie upon the table.
The LORD CHANCELLOR'S bill for the better enforcement
- of church discipline was read a first time.—Adjourned.

HOUSE OF COMMONS.—FILIDAY.
LORD STANLEY'S BILL.
The house having resolved itself into committee on Lord
Stanley's bill without a division, Lord STANLEY proposed,
with reference to the filling up of the blanks for the dates,
that by reason of the lateness of the session, the operation
of the bill, if carried, should be postponed for one year.
Lord MOO.PETH said he must at once interpose with an
amendment, which he had no regret in introducing thus
early upon a clause disfranchising the whole existing body of
Irish electors. He thought there could be no fair objection,
where no new circumstances had occurred, to let every voter
now registered retain his franchise during the remainder of
the term for which the law had guaranteed it, but he would
willingly allow the revision in all cases where new circum-
stances had intervened to destroy his right. It would be
said that the clause would be in the very words of former
bills introduced by the government themselves. True, this
clause and some others were the same as in the bills of the
government ; but then the clauses in this bill were unaccom-
panied by those qualifying and beneficial provisions which the