The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-12-13 00:00:00

The result of the ordeal to which the Corporation of
Liverpool has voluntarily exposed itself, may be looked ►
upon as a signal triumph achieved on behalf of the great
chartered institutions of the country. An investigation
pursued in a spirit the most bitter, and with a scope the
most latitudinarian, has ended in superadding to the dis-
appointed vengeance of its opponent all the ridicule at-
taching to the impotent exhibition of malice prepense.—
For twenty-four days has that magnificent abode of com-
merce been delivered up to the tender mercies of the
ambulatory inquisition, endowed by the keeper of the
King's conscience with powers which conscientiously he
could not assume a right to delegate—of powers unrecog-
nised by the constitution, which our Royal Master, well
advised, would never have dreamed of usurping—ofpowers
founded in principles of the most revolting despotism ;
which none, therefore, but an official Whig and ajobbincs
Chancellor could ever have attributed to a Sovereign of
the House of Brunswick. The Star Chamber, in all the
plenitude of fiscal and lawless exaction—the Inquisition,
with its Briarean gripe and terrific oppression—are
scarcely more than typical of the anti-social and grinding
spirit of absolutism presiding in the composition of their
kindred institution of modern times. The Corporation
Committee does not indeed work in darkness like its
monkish forerunner—thanks for that to the doings of its
fellow in iniquity the factory conclave at Leeds—nor has
it assumed to levy taxes and distrain for ship-money, like
the Chancery invention of Charles's time—that was des-
potism and robbery in detail only. The ministerial mag-
nanimity of our days scogxs the petty bridle-way of an-
cient usurpation ; disdaining to measure itself with vil-
lage Hampdens, it flies at nobler quarry, and audaciously
grapples with communities once powerful enough to defy
anti to depose kings. Armed with powers to arraign men
and bodies of men against whom no tangible accusation
was preferred, and no responsible accuser could be found
—to demand accounts and tamper with the rights of pro-
perty over which the once venerated law of the land had
extended its Egis—to administer oaths and invite testi-
mony where prevarication or perjury were beyond the
reach or the dread of punishment—to compel men, as the
case might be, to criminate and expose themselves to the
pains and penalties of law, as the accused were put to the
rack in the dungeons of the inquisitor to extort confes-
sion, contrary to the first and equitable provisions ofEng-
lishjurisprudence--this was the tribunal before which the
second civic institution of the country was traduced—be-
fore which, we say it with mingled feelings of pride and
reproach, it humbled itself for twenty-four consecutive
days—but from whose unhallowed and unsparing scrutiny
it has emerged with honour untainted and with unble-
mished reputation. The Corporation of Liverpool might,
like the Lord Chancellor, have refused to join issue and
sheltered themselves tinder privilege, but they declined
to avail themselves, as he had done, of a flaw in the in-
dictment to escape trial They pleaded before a packed
jury, confiding, as Whig hirelings told them they ought
to do, in the goodness of their cause and the upright-
ness of their proceedings, whilst Lord Brougham, auda•
ciously justified by the same venal tribe, refused to trust
his innocence and submit his actions to the award of twelve
honest men iuspartially selected. If their attitude was
noble and becoming, that of the Chancellor was anything
but lofty or honourable. Theirs indeed was a case in
which, as the trustees for the rights of others, and bound
to preserve and transmit them unimpaired to posterity,
they would have stood amply vindicated to their consci-
ences and their country for impeaching the validity of the
jurisdiction before which they were summoned; whilst to
Lord Brougham, their oppressor, the question was almost
wholly a personal affair.
The inquiry to which the municipality bowed them.
selves took a most excursive range. The extent and the
management of the corporate funds was sifted to the
uttermost farthingerthe town dues overhauled with all
the exultation of discovered sources of embezzlement—
the dock duties scrutinized with the certainty, ill-dissem-
bled, of detecting misapplication—the workhouse tho-
roughly ransacked to bear out the slanderous accusation
that the poor had been stinted of bread to swell out the
miserable gains of overseers—the town records dissected
with keen and jaundiced eyes for the long denounced
lists of freemen, manufactured to throw Brougham out
and keep Thornely at the bottom of the poll—the Church
and other patronage canvassed to show what cousin
twice-removed of a Common Councilman, or what great
grand child of an Alderman had been inducted into a
vicarage, or planted, by way of sinecure, into the scav-
enging department—all and more than all this was
waded through by Commissioners and expectant Corpo-
rators under the -Charter that is to be—all and more than
all this the honoured chiefs of that proud city (for so it
is or ought to be), whose " merchants", as the illustrious
Canning said, " are princes," patiently subjected them-
selves to. And where, and to what amount, have the
corporate, sins that we are told have for ages cried to
high heaven for vengeance, been rooted out from their
strong holds for the finger of scorn to point at, and the
thunder of a Reformed Parliament to strike ? The bal-
ance sheet of the immense funds administered by the
Mayor and Council has been struck by. their bitterest
foes, and where are the defalcations—where the pecula-
tors ? Out of the millions and tens of millions dealt
with by this privileged junta have no bold hands ab-
stracted aught from the public purse—no robbery been
committed to an amount that would have constructed a
dock or built an Indiaman—no petty larceny inroad upon
the joint stock—no petty cash pickings—no illegal ex-
actions—no fabricated votes—no patronage dishonestly
or dishonourably bestowed ? Alas and alackaday ! no—
none ; not even so much as turtle for a Mayor's feast,
imprescriptible and indefeasible right of Corporations
for ages, according to tradition handed down. Farewell
now to Joe Miller, a long farewell—the Chancellor's
deputies have betrayed the secret and been the death of
.him. Nay, this rich, this powerful Corporation have
been husbands so niggard of the immense funds com-
mitted to their dispensation, that not even can a free-
man thank them for a particle of such roast beef and
mild ale as one Henry Brougham, somewhere about the
years 1811 or 1812, formally invited and actually treated
two thousand of the freemen to partake of preparatory
to an election.

And this calumniated body has all this while had the
absolute controul of town property and dues to the extent
of nearly £lOO,OOO a-vear—some of its members have
been interested in dock-rates reaching to £lB2,ooo—the
poor-tax which amounted to .£50,000=-and its customs'
duties which attained the enormous sum of near £4,000,000
annually. Yet a contemporary—and that the Times—
who never renders justice whilst one solitary safety-plank
for calumny remains, after fully acquitting tha Corpora-
tion of all peculation, mismanagement of funds, or jobbing
for votes, coolly and impudently states of the result of this
trYnscendently honourable investigation, that " the ne-
cessity which it creates for corporate reform is not the
less urgent and imperative." The logic of this is that of
the wolf and the lamb—what can innocence avail where
the victim is predestined? The Lord Chancellor has
never pardoned, and we venture to say never will, the
freemen of Liverpool, for repudiating Henry Brougham
as their representative in Parliament, and this vindictive
feeling has most probably not been diminished in fervour
by his occasional potations with the Unitarian parson
Shepherd.—Guardian and Public Ledger.