The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-07-03 00:00:00

FRASER'S MAGAZINE FOR JULY.

We have only7tiine, to announce. the arrival of our
spirited friend frem'Regent-street. He being . the first
of the batch which has come to hand, is entitled to the
first notice. We give the following lengthy extract from
a very able article.

It appears to us very d .abtful- whether the conservative mem-
bers of the Hoese of Lords. have yet taken a correct view of
_their present position. That position has been entirely changed
within the last four years. In former times it was their practice
to leave the main part of the legislation of the country to be
performed by their agents in the House of Commons. In those;
days'the lower house was the arena in which the three estates
met, and in which the .chief business of law-making was gone
through. The peers, by their borough nominees, and the
crown, by its borough arrangements, were present in the House
of Commons, and influenced its movements, not in opposition
to, but in concurrence with a large body of popular representa-
tives. The E;linburgh ,Reeiew, in several elaborate articles, •
exhibited the use and beauty of this arrangement.
But it has pleased the whips to trample du their former creed,
and to put an entire end- to this system. "What follows ?
Surely and most .obviously this:—that the peers, having no
longer their agents and nominees in the lower house to aid in
the progress of legislation, must now address.thernselves in good
earnest to the work, and must become, if they would preserve
their own importance and their own existence, a watchful, pains-
taking committee of revision, amending and improving the hasty
and crude legislation of the lower house.
The power which has unquestionably been .added of late to
the House of Commons, by .its increased. connexion with the,
people, will render it hazardous and scarcely prudent for the:
peers to exercise with, any frequency their abSolute veto on mea-
sures proposed and agreed to hy the commons. Nor is it in the
least necessary that 'they should do so. A hasty glance over
the last four years will ;how with how easy and moderate an
exercise of their undoubted rights they may effect all that is
really desirable.
Sir John Hobhouse's bill, which at once threw down all the
ancient select vestries, and opened the dominion "of our largo
parishes to the mob and their leaders, was carried up to the
House of Lords in 1831. - That bill, as it has actually come into
operation, is fraught with all kinds of mischief. 'Yet one
teration of the simplest, easiest, and most unobjectionable kind
would have rendered it Loth harmless and beneficial. Had the
lords only insisted,, not upon the six votes of Sturges Boutne's
bill, but upon merely a double vote for all householders rated
at £5O and upwards, the result would have been almost nu.:
mixed good, instead df being, as it.now is, alidost unmixed evil, ,
How trifling and how easy the iinproveinent! but how vast
would have been the diffe'rence made in the operation of the
bill! With that alteration the mob would every where have
been overruled;* without it we now see the mob every where
victorious.

, Thus for want of one single amendment, which might have
been carried with ease, and which would not have so far altered
the bill as to make it unacceptable to its anthors, that mea.ure
was allowed to remain a bad one, fraught with rnischio s re-

suits, which might have been iila'single sitting changed into a
sale and efficacious piece of legislation. •
• But a 'etillinore striking instance of an opportunity lost was
given iu the: passage, of the -reform bill., .The ivajurity of the
House Ofl'eers apprehended that measure to be fraught with,
the most dangerous tebdencies,, and they exercised their un-
doubted privilege by rejecting the measure. In the following
year it was again laid on their table. That they taken an'
exaggerated view of the dangers connected with it is now clear-
from the circumstance, that the second election which took
place alter the passing of that bill (the English reform bill) re-
tuxjjoil for Eugland a majority of conservatives. However,
clangorous or hot, being again brought before the lords witlith
concurrence of the sovereign and a' large majority of the .House
of Commons, it was no longer possible for the upper house to
meet it with:a sipipl.e negatiye. right course:was to accept
the measure as.a whole, and to make such moderate amendments
in it as would-operate to lessen. the dreaded evils. , But
,this
course was -not taken. A hostile attitude was assumed, aifd
thus the lords were placed in a situation which it was impossible
for them to maintain, and from which they.cottld not retire with.
honour. The ministry took advantage of this false step, and
forced them to surrender at, discretion. The. opportunity of
amending the, bill was lost, and the only optionieft them. was to
accept the measure us it,stood, or to be themselves annihilated
by a new creation.
At the preaent Moment, looking back on the whoje, proceed-
ing, and recollecting that, with the reform act as it passed un-
amended, the electioli.of January last, gave the conftervAtiyes
inangland a clear majority, it becomes a matter, npt. of. PP-
position, but of certainty, that, if the lords had abandoned, boeci
fide, all opposition to the bill, and had merely demanded that iii
the towns of the first class the franchise shouldbe £2O, and that
the. borough freeholders should not vote in county elections; the
result would have been that we should have had at this moment
a conservative, majority of .one hundred in the lipase of Com-
mons. And theie two points might have been gained with ease.
Neither of them would have amounted to such h clear and posi-
tive attack upon -the bill as to have given the opportunity to
Lord, Grey to.tender his resignation,, or to demand a new' cre-
ation of peers. These points might have been gained; and,
hail they been :so gained„the country,wonld be at this moment
in a comparatively sound and peaceful state.
Such hare been some of the errors committed within the last
, three or four years. A calm retrospective consideration of them
will surely show the leading members of the House of Lords
the Course in which it will be their wisdom to walk for the
future: They may expect, a variety of propositions, some of an
encroaching and levelling character, from the powerful repub-
lican party now in the douse of, CoMmons; and others of a
moderate character from the whig ministers now in alliance
ivith that republican party. A proposition of each description
Is now in progress through the, lower house. The
.first. is, that
pf Colonel Evans for abolishing the provision in Sturges
Bourne's vestry act which gives a plurality of votes in vestry
Meetings to the higher classes of rate-payers. This is an open
and barefaced attack on the rights 'of_ property, and should be
met by an instant and unhesitating rejection. 'The second is a
more insidious proceeding, and is of a more mixed character.
It is a proposition for limiting the poll at contested elections to
a single day. Now this measure is partly unjust and mischiev-
ous, and partly unobjectionable. It is unobjectionable as far
as cities and boroughs are concerned. Here the voters must be
all generally resident in or near the place of election, since
occupc!ncy, not property, confers the right' of voting; and, as a
man is seldom a resident in two boroughs at the OatPutime,
(excepting, perhaps, contiguous boroughs, like Finsbory and
11larYlebone,) he cannot be deprived of his vote in one place by
it
having.to give in another.
But in counties the case islividely different; and here lies the
real, though, concealed object, slf this insidious measure. It is
confessed by all the, Whigs and radicals that men of property
are generally conservatives. Such men have frequently votes
for different counties, such as Bedfordshire
.and Kent, or Mid-
dlesex and Devonshire, or frequently more: If, therefore, all
the- elections can be made to fall on one day, or nearly so, the
effect will be that most of these. double votes will, be lost.
But all, .this is net merely •undesirable, as, diminishing the
'strength of ihe conservative party, but it is also clearly unjust.
The law andthe constitution annex the county vote to property :
residence is not the test. ' A that, therefore, who has th'e means,
and who chooses to buy an estate in Kent, and another in
Herts, and another in Cheshire; has a perfect right, according
to the theory and practice of the 'constitution; to vote in each of
those counties. If you so arrange matters, therefore, as to make
it impossible for him to exercise this franchise, you do him a
a plain, palpable, undeniable wrong. This part Of the bill,
therefore, their lordships must remove, or they will at once
desert their duty and betray their own interests.
But all these are minor points, however important in them-
selves, compared with that one measure which the,ministry.have
declared to be the great leading feature of the present session—
the one object for which every thing, else is to be postponed.
We allude, of course; to the corporation reform bill.
This measure ought to be received in the House of Lords, as
it was in the House of Commons, (as to its main ontlines,) with
a unanimous assent. True, it is introduced simply and solely
from party motives mules a party manoeuvre, in the hope that
it would either meet with the opposition of the• conservative
party. at the outset, and would thus involve: them in a storm of
.unpopularity, or would, if allowed to pass, utterly destroy. their
hold upon all the leading boroughs. Still, however despicable
may have been the motives which have given rise to it, the pro-
position is a good one, or, rather, is capable of being made a
good one; and as such it ought, to be received with cordiality
and amicable feelings. To attempt to maintain with,pertinacity
a system of self-election and monopoly in the present day is
altogether absurd. One great object among us ought to be the
rendering the 'people every where comfortable and contented.
This is the most, effectual, or, rather, the only effectual way of
spreading and fostering a conservative feeling. Let them see
practically that there is no party desirous of keeping up ancient
abuses, and their jealepsy aud towards the higher classes
will gradrially subside.
The corporation' Worth' bill, then, in its great leading fea-
tures, is a good, and desirable measure. It is just and right to
terminate all the old, and various, and Arbitrary ways of consti-
tuting a corporation, and to substitute in their room one simple,
rational, and uniform system. But in so doing be careful as to
your details, for in these consist the real efficiency, for good or
evil, of the measure. The principle of the bill now before par-
liament is good; but some of its provisions are 'as absurd and
some of them as dangerous as it is possible for provisions to be
made.

Here, then, is an especial occasion in which the House of
Lords may prove its efficiency and its utility. If they should
reject this measure at starting, the effect would be to raise a cry
of " anti-reformers" and " maintainers of ancient abuses," and
to give the whig a pretext for foisting another score of their
creatures in the peerage. If, on the other hand, they should
indolently and carelessly allow it to pass just in the shape in
which the commons may present it; or if.
jthe conservative ma-
ority, through want. of organization and unanimity, should allow
the .ministerial minorityto out-vote lir out-manoeuvre them, then
the effect on the minds'of a large portion of the conservatives
throughout the country will be to suggest a doubt whether the
upper house is really of any tae?