The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-08-04 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

clauses, With the substance and effect of Which the guardians
of the public purse cUuldnot, he preautned,.have been acquainted:
The substance was not stated in the margin. Many hon. mem-
bers had probably only read 'the catch wurds, and then the ayes
had it whatever it was. It was most desirable, however, that

this should be corrected there, and thatthe rash and iudls-
criminate, frarn“s of Ibis bill gbatild be saved from the copse-

quences of their own blind precipitancy. Let them see what
the Chancellor Of the Exchequer could do under his new Ex-
chequt.r—hia new municipal corporations bill. They found, in
page 52,-that to the new council was to be transferred all the
corporate property of the ancient corporations. This, it must
be allowed, was a pretty good temptation to a set of men who
might not have any property at all. It private individuals were
to appoint bankers, they would inquire at Lombard-street;
they would look to their credit; but the magnanimous framers

,
of the bill in respect of corporate property despised all such low
considerations, all grovelling inquiries as to money ciedit. In
the spirit of liberalism they had left out—they had spurned the
vulgar terrene qualificatious of wealth; their pure feelings of
philanthropy and philosophy were sublimated far beyond that.
othing could be inane natural than that men who had been

elected by persons having nothing, and having nothing them-
selsies, should, under the wise and liberal principles formed, be
intrusted with property, the amount of which, lest he might ap-
pear to exaggerate, he would not attempt to state. Their lord-
ships, however, might easily ascertain to bow many millions it
went. But all this property was to be transferred from the can-
tiously-chosen and well-qualified body now existing to the new
body, whose only qualification was as electors or elected, and
who were not even tested as to being worth £lOO or £5O. It
was to be given to them, according to• the provisions of the act,
for paying off debts and paving salaries, and also to be ex-
pended for the public benefit and the improvement of the
lorough. Pretty large words these ! • Moreover,. when the
funds did not suffice for those purposes of paying; off debt, pay.
ing salaries, and expending monies for the public benefit and
the improvement of the borough, there was actually to be a
power of taxation given to this body. The House of Commons
used to be very nice on this subject, very chary of its privileges.
They were wont to keep in loculo the power of raising money.
The doctrine as to the raising of this tax was laid down in page
54, he should like to know their lordships' opinion on the sub-
ject. It was declared to this new corporate dynasty, if the ex-
isting funds were not satis, that they might afterwards take
means to raise plus. When he looked to the clause he really
doubted whether the framers of the bill could have meant to

grant such powers to this body, but there were the words' which
could bear no other interpretation or explanation, and which
entered into the very soul of the construction 'of the clause. He
admitted that in some boroughs there now existed a right of
taxation. In Bristol, which was a city and-a county of a city,
neither a borough nor a county-rate had ever been raised.
A great majorit), of the boroughs and counties or towns through-
out England and Wales never had exercised the right of, raisiog
sucha rate. Ne.should now call the attention of their lordships
to a power conferred by a clause which they would find at pa'e
57 of the bill, and which imparted to the corporations the privi-
lege of selling corporate property. Hitherto corporate: bodies
had been restrained from effecting such sales, but now the power .
of Downing-street made its appearance, and with the pertnis 'ion
of the Treasury such sales could be effected. Here they had the
executive government again. The government was now to in-
tromit in that with regard to which they never before had exer-
cised any concert). "Here was a change novel,.unheard, and
never before thought of. To clause 38 he should now beg leave
to call their attention, that which related to the licensing of
public-houses. In the longest, and certainly one of the ablest,
speeches he had ever heard, that power of licensing public-houses
was discussed for full one hour by the timepiece of that other
place in which that speech was,delivered, and the main ground
of the denunciations then poured out against tie state of the
law as it existed at that period was the iniquity which arose from
the practice of public-houses being licensed by the borough
magistrates; but if that state of the law drew forth such eloquent
condemnation, how much worse a condition of it would the con-
templated changes introduce; fur by the bill then in his hand
the very lowest orders of society were invested with the power
of licensing public-houses. What did their lordships think of
giving to the plebeian rank the privilege of licensing, for ex-
ample,.lso public-houses in Oxford, and, perhaps, 300 or 400 in
Bristol? Could they, for a moment, doubt that in a matter of
that sort there would be a traffic of Largain and sale--that there
would ben direct traffic in the whole conduct of the municipal
government of corporations? He should now come to the ap-
pointment of magistrates. 'What sort of persons were those
who heretofore had filled the magisterial chairs? They were
men who had risen through various gradations of wealth, and
had at length attained the full confiderice of their fellow-eitizeus ;
those were, by the wisdom of the crown, in ancient times, deemed
the fit depositaries of magisterial power. 'But what sort of men
did the new system introduce? What was the tremendous
attack which plebeian legislation made upon the authority and
prerogative of the crown ? The council of 96 were to furnish
a list to the crown, front which his Majesty would be at liberty
to choose as many as he saw fitting to become borough magis-
tlrates. Heretofore the King, had been deemed the fountain of

justice, but that distinguished prerogative no longer remained,
but was transferred from the monarch to the lowest inhabitants
of the boroughs; a plan of corporation government as old as
Alfred was now to be exchanged for a new and democratic
system, by which the King would have no more to do than re-
gister au apparent consent to the appointment of thenominees
of universal suffrage, for of necessity the King could not do
otherwise _than accept the names that were given tfflhim—he
must do it, whether be would or not; thus a completely self-
elected corporation would prevail 4lid be predominant. He
knew nothing more illustrative of the republican 'and radical
tendency of the measure, first, than this mode of election—
secondly, than the total absence ofiall qualification qf a pecu-
niary nature; the perfect and totat deprivation. of pstivate and
individual wealth was precisely that'wbich was deemed the most
fitting to place him in the situation of one component to fill
civic offices; such a man would then be in all respects in the
safest and happiest condition to which a corporator could attain.
He remembered a poem quoted by Dr. Johnson in his Lives, in
which the man• without wealth was described as the happiest of
mortals, and the 'best protected from danger,—
"Felix cui ni/ill est ;
Non tinzet insidius incendia temnit ; "
from him nothing could be stolen, he could be neither the sub-
ject of robbery nor of arson. The possession of that negative
wealth, which consisted in having nothing at all, formed the
highest possible recommendation to corporate offices tinder this.
new bill. To another and not less important part of the bill he
should now address • birnself-s:uarriely,_ the mode-of appointing
the trustees for charitable purposes. Their lordships must be
well aware, many of them touch better acquainted than he could
,pretend to he, with the amount placed at the disposal of corpo-
rations for charitable purposes. He would nut permit, himself
to name any amount as at all approximating to the sum total,
lest he might .be exposed to the imputation of exaggerating.
That there was-now lying at the disposal of the corporations of
England and Wales a prodigious amount of real property and
of money in the- funds, no man in his senses would attempt to
deny. Now, the whole of that by one of the clauses of the bill
would be taken out of the hands of the existing holders and
transferred to the honest money-keeping conservative curators
created under the new measure, and declared by its enactments
to be the fit and proper depositaries, trustees, and transferees
of all that prodigious amount of real and personal 'property,
their best qualification for which was, that they possessed, as he
had said betide,- that sort of negative wealth which consisted in
having nothing. Under the' bill nine trustees were .to- be ap-
pointed for charitable purposes, and with the sanction of the.
Treasury; they came to Downing-street again; those nine
trustees might do as they thought proper with the whole of the
property; they might dispose of and transfer it wheresoever
they thought right. Then there were certain things which half
the nine were to do. Now, he should be very happy to see a
set of gentlemen who constituted the half of nine—would it be
six, or three, or four and a half? Then of this number nine,
three were to be a quorum. At page 39, sec. 67, their lord-
ships would see that these three would have the disposal of those
vast funds; such would be the monstrous delegation of power
imparted to them under that bill. They possessed the final
power, with the sanction of the Treasury, of making any order
whatever. The corporation of Bristol possessed property appli-
cable to charitable purposes, amounting, he believed, to no less
'a aunt than £13,000 ulcer. Accorling, then, to this novel
piece of legislation, that would be at the disposal of three indi-
viduals, not one of whom need possess the least pecuniary qua-
lification. In the existing state of the law not a shilling of that
£13,000 a-year could be disposed of other wise than under the
corporation seal. He need not inform their lordships (many of
whom werehetter acquainted with subjects than he was) that
the seal of that corporation could not be used without the con-
sent of twenty-one, being a moiety of the council; but the mo-
dern democratic and republican measure would break down all
these safeguards, and give the full ascendancy to three persons.
Those were the powers which that bill created, that was what
it built upon the ruins of the existing corporation system. The
next clause to which he should direct attention was that
which gave the crown the power of granting charters under
the provisions of that bill to such new boroughs, containing a
, specified amount of population; as the Secretary of State might
recommend. Here again they had the interference of the ex-
ecutive power, and again the tntioduction and working of the
proposed bill, which was to subvert and supplant the system un-
der which 183 boroughs had been governed; all was now to be
abolished that had attracted the attention or won the feelings Of
the lower orders of society, or which had been an object of ve-
neration to the humbler classes of freemen; all that had hi-
therto satisfied those classes was now to be exploded. The an-
cient corporations of England were no longer to exist. And
he would ask, why no longer? Could they not be amended,
could not faults be corrected, could not deficiencies be sup-
plied? Was the whole frame of those Corporations so very,
bad that nothiug less than total destructiou would suffice?
Were they so fall of vice, so' steeped in wickedness, so buried
in sin, so pervaded by corruption—was the circulation of their
lifeblood rendered so stagnant, were they so covered with le-
prosy and filth, as that nothing could purify. that tlothingcoiild
heal ? That .they wera.uot eveteirt a remote degree approaching
-t-t that condition he took upon himself to say; end yet au ass
te..wboie
sumption of the opposite formed one of the avowed grounds of
the measure, since the very foundation of the bill was, that the
n ot existing
be
dealt
corporations
%.th
in
thewere
wa iny
o fa
amendment,s ta te viciousso
but that
that theyh could
system must be esepluded, or either that it must be destroyed
and buried as a carcass, the exhalations of which would .putrify
the air, the continuation of which on the surface of the earth
would breed disease, the touch of which Would contaminate
therefore the corporations of England and Wales were to be
nailed tip in their coffins. But if they. were so very bad, why
have any corporations ? "Oh but," says the promeitar of the
bill, 'we do not object to corporations in general; what we dis-
like is your corporations, and we are resolved upon setting up
corporations of our own, and we are resolved to have our cor-
porations upon a democratic basis—a basis sp'republican that it
shall be uothing short of annual parliaments and universal
suffrage, for a third of the council is to go out every year." The
bill would go to destroy the power of the King so far us crop--
rations were concerned; and would give the oountry nut royal
or aristocratic but republican communities. The tide, he can-
tended, kept bad faith with itself; but he would pass over that,
and call their lordship?' attention to the preamble of the bill,
which constituted, as it did that of every bill, its foufidation.
the house desire to know- what formed the foundation of the
measure ? Abuse of power and privilege formed one of the
grounds. The preamble stated that "partly by defecti in the
charter by which the said bodies corporate have been constitut-
ed, partly by neglect and abuse of the privileges by such char-
ters granted and confirmed to the inhabitants of the said cities,
towns, and boroughs, and partly by the chatige of circumstances
since the said chatters were granted, the said bodies corporate,
for the most part, have not of long time been efficient instru-,
nienta of local government." Those three propositions were
then brought into activity in dealing with the present bill. Ile
Would maintain, without the slightest fear of anything like
successful opposition, that if there were defects in the corporate
system they might be remedied by the authority and prerogative
of the crown. That power was so large that there was no fault
which it could not reach. But before alterations could be made
the legislature ought to know what were- the circumstances of
the place. That bill, however, did not accommodate itself to
any variety of circumstances, but proceeded with a sweeping
range to level that which for centuries had been held sacred and
venerable. Instead of the power of the crown being exercised
as it might have been, and the remedy rendered opposite to the
.place for which it was intended, they had a bill suitable to no
useful purpose, and meeting no individual case, at least as it
required to be met. He had spoken of three propositions, and
he .should observe, with re.spect.to the first of them; (halt turned
up9r.l crautter of. fact, and;-as he e.ontended, act did the uther

two; for the question whether the existing corporations were or
were not inefficient and improper instruments of local govern-
ment, was beyond all possibility .of question a matter of fact ;
what those corporations had douse; or what they had left undone,
was assuredly a matter of fact; but then let the house only ob-'
serve another instance of the looseness of expression for which
the preamble was remarkable.• It talked of the "..,change of
circumstances;" centuries, it was true, had passed away since
those corporations were constituted, the parties originally con-
cerned had long since died ; really that sort of loose talk about
"change of circumstancess" he knew not bow to deal with ;
.there was nothing tangible in it; "change of circumstances"
might mean anything which imagination, fancy, genius, or spe-
culation might suggest. He would make some attempt to
grapple with this °barge were it not in its own nature so indefi-
nite and etherial. The learned gentleman then proceeded to com-
plain of the hardships to which apprentices, otherwise entitled
to their freedoM, would be exposed under the bill, and next
went on to notice the change which would be operated in the
form of society in corporate towns by the measure then before
parliament. Ile aldermen and recorders and corporate offi-
cers, the functionaries who represented the authority of the
crown and dispensed its benevolences, would be cast on the
pare. Those who had been accustomed to the curule chair and
familiar with an high estate would be seen walking the streets,
and pointed at as men who once held authority, but were its
depositories no longer • who once were dignifies the service
of the state, but had of been superseded by one Isaac Tom-
kins or one Peter Jenkins. (Great laughter.) He, himself,
in his judicial capacity, would now have nothing mote to do;
he was funetus officii, and instead.of being front eight o'clock in
the morning till twelve at night engaged in presiding at arduous
trials, he might be taking an airing on the Downs. Their lord-
ships, too, might look to their graduated ranks in the peerage,—
they might look to the security of those honours which they
derived from a remote ancestry, and which they might wish to
transmit, at least not impaired, to their posterity; let them be-
ware of the ascendancy of Saffron-hill and St. Giles's, and of
those losses and that degradation which must be far less endura-
ble than even pecuniary wrong or confiscation. Did their lord-
ships know, could they imagine, how many of the existing mem-
bers constituting the select-body of those corporations would be
affected by this bill ? There were some whose views were too
exalted to condescend to such a vulgar inquiry; their principles
were too much solemnized; their genius mounted too high ;
their taste was too exquisite; they could not deal with corporeal
ideas; they looked to man, not as he was, but as he was not.
If they did not look to man as he was, they would not know
what he (Sir 0. Wetherell) would now state to their lordships,
that under the operation of this bill in the to be exploded
corporations there were 4000 or those men, forty at Oxford,
fnrty at Bristol, forty at Worcester, &c., to be turned loose and
driven from their places of rank, dignity,, and station, by the
unheard-of, persecuting, execrable whipping and scourging
and tyranny of this bill-evictims of the taunt and ridicule
.and scorn of the new democratically elected council and
constituent body who were to supplant them in official
station and dignity. Among those persons who were thus to be
turned out to walk abroad, as if just dismissed from the treads
mill, there was a body of 148 recorders, and he could not but ex-
press the surprise he felt that whenever the gentlemen who drew
up the report of this municipal corporation commission hail
the opportunity, special care was taken to add, by way of
qualification, that the recorder was a peer; in fact, the mea-
sure was one of the closest approximations to the subversion
of the privileges, powers, and existence of that house as a
constituent body in the state which the mind of man could
possibly conceive. There were 23 or 30 instances in which
the recorder was a peer, and in all such cases the fact was sure
to be mentioned; and what, in the name of all the trash and
ribaldry of the report, did that mean? Could it be meant
that a peer was incompetent to perform the duties of recor-
der ? Did not the silly individual who drew up the report
know that every peer was a magistrate of the county in which
he resided, accustomed to sit at quarter sessions, and, inde-
pendently of his judicial capacity. in that house, was among
the most active and zealous persons in the constant adminis-
tration of the peace throughout the whole of the kingdom ?
So much for the recorder being a peer. There was one case,
he belieVed that of Leamington, where the recorder was an
admiral. Now one had undoubtedly heard that a warrior was
at liberty in time of peace to "beat his sword into a plough-
share," and, according to the Roman maxim, to become an
agriculturist, an improver of the soil—a citizen--mollifylng
and soothing and spreading the blessings of cultivated life
over those among whom it was his lot to move. No matter
for that; perhaps they would by and by hear that the mere
circumstance of a peer or other persons having been at the
battle of Waterloo would incapacitate them for every thing.
Really there was a ribaldry, a low-bred something, which he
could not describe, prevailing throughout the report, which
held it fairly up to unmeasured ridicule and contempt. It
was fit for a Roderick Random or a Tom Jones, to form part
of a country-town circulating library—a sort of Margate or
Ramsgate, or Southend, or the Nore, or Sheerness, or other
sea-bathing compilation of books. (Loud langhter.) It was
fit to be put into the steam-boat—it was fit for the use of any
of the genteel, or not very genteel, people, who might be dis-
posed to give up. an hour of their time, whether at sea-bathing
places or returning from such quarters. (Loud laughter.) Such
a,sort of thing was that municipal report, upon the vet Its, and
truth of which their lordships were called upon to legislate as
to matters of fact, and to become what they could not become,
the hideous instruments of carrying a great object, founded
on a report which was the scorn of .every roan who looked into
it, and the laughing stock of all who were disposed to treat it
with levity or pleasantry. He was not at present disposed to
trouble their lordships with details, although that might become
necessary in the sequel of the case; and there were some docu-
ments which he should direct to be printed, in order that they
might be furnished with the real facts on which they were to
decide • but if they were acquainted with the number of those
individuals whose rank, station, office, property, and other in-
cidents would be affected by this bill, they could not but ex-
'press surprise at its unexpected, unheard-of extent of operation.
In point of number, how many, would be handed over to the
discipline of the new system? If he were not misintormed,-the
number of persons who were to be governed according to this
new-made kingdom—this new empire of reason and philosophy
—of democracy and republicanism—the population, hart of his
Majesty's subjects, who were to be taken out of the existing
empire constituted by the King, under his undoubted preroga-
tive, and charters of centuries' duration up to the present mo-
ment, and to he handed over to the government,of new demo-
cratic rulers, constituted at least a number of 2,200,000 persons;
and if he were to suppose that underahe last clause of the bill,
which called it an enablingact—an act to enable his Majesty
to constitute municipalities on the new principle, but which in
fact was, as he should presently show, a disabling act to prevent
his Majesty from constituting municipalities by royal charter
otherwise than conformably to the new systein,—if he were to
suppose that the enlightened inhabitants of the neighbourhood
of Saffron-hill, the dense population of the Tower Hamlets, and
the not unpeopled purlieus of Marylebone were to be included,
he was disposed to think not fewer than 3,000,000 would be the
number of his Majesty's subjects to be withdrawn from the now
existing, regular, constitutional, legitimate government of this
realm, under these principles by which the monarchy was ad-
ministered, and handed over to the tender mercies, if not to the
tyrannical- discipline, of the to be newly constituted, radical,
Jacobin, republican institutions. (Hear, hear.) That was not
all,—the bill, with its not ingenious sophistications, for such
they were not to any man who could apply his mind to know
how a clause might appear to have one aspect while in reality
it had another, with a visage of bypocrisy looking one way, and
a visage of another kind looking elsewhere,—this hill, with its
not ingenious sophistications, while it professed to capacitate the
King to grant charters, actually incapacitated him, and he (Sir
C. Wetherell) was prepared to contend that no monarch, no
authority, no individual whatever, ought to be invested with
powers to constitute bodies as they would be under this act
of parliament, with rights, titles, and authority derived and
flowing from the sovereignty of the people—in other words,
under the pretence and profession that the King should do so
and so, it was provided that the King should never again, in
this country, constitute a corporation, except upon the tyran-
nical and democratical principle on which the corporations
of this bill were to be constituted. He declared to their lord-
ships as a lawyer, after laborious investigation of this bill,
that its intention and operation were to pillage and rob front
the crown the power of constituting corporations as the King
thought fit to constitute them, and to direct, compel, and order
his Majesty to constitute them alone accordiug to the execrable
disposition and democratical dictation and ineffable absurdity
of this hill. That was a nut for any man to crack who could.
(Loud laughter.) He now begged leave to call their lordships'
attention to another part—he meant to the effect of the bill on
freemen, on whose numbers and property it would inflict such
grievous injury and loss. The perpetuity of freedom being kept
up in corporations, there were various rights and interests that
descended from father to sort, pretty much like an estate tail,
some of ancient, others of more modern gift, belonging entirely
to the freemes, and of which they had theafirect and immediate
enjoyment. Thus, in the case of Alnwick, with 369 freemen,
there Was property amounting to £5,000: in Berwick-upon-
Tweed, to £120.000; in Beverley, with 850 freemen, to the
amount of £BO,OOO ; which those guardians of the public purse,
who would not allow a single comma to be altered in a money
bill, were with a most precipitous velocity, and the utmost heeds
lessness of all possible consequences., prepared at once to confis-
cate and destroy. He contended that in the contest and strug-
gle of who should carry on the. administration and government
of the country there was a class of persona whose rights ought
to be attended to equally and indifferently by both parties—
that in the scramble they became a sacrifice to the dominant
faction, in order to carry a measure which, under the sham pre-
text of corporate reform, was to become an engine of political
power. (Hear.) lie hoped their lordships would bear this in
mind when they came to deal with the garrulous trash and ri-
baldr), the Gipsy jargon of the-report, contrasted with the evi-
dence he should tender in favour of that to-be-disinherited, de-
prived, vexed, and tyrannised-ea/or-body; the -cotdinonalty of
tleir- existing corporations. He would now simply state, that
according to the estimate which hid been made out of the value
of the property to be taken away from those people throughout
England, and within the provisions of the bill, its annual value
was 03,473, and if sold would, at twenty :rears' purchase, con-
stitute a sum of upwards of half a million sterling, in the contest
of political animosity, to. be sacrificed at the altar of the domi-
nant party-under the false and sham pretence of reform in their
municipal institutions. He had now stated to their lordships
the constitution of the bodies corporate as existing at present,
as they were proposed to exist, and the particular effects and
results which they must expect to flow from the new system; he
had also ventured to give his name and denoMination to that
new system which throughout the whole of it appeared to be an
sutler supercession, deprivation, and abrogation of his Majesty's
prerogative, upon the subject 'of constituting a delegation of au-
,thority as flowing from himito municipal bodies except as ac-
cording to the precept of this act, for the past to proscribe what
had been done by royal charter,- and for the future to incapaci-
tate the crown from ever granting any municipal charter, but
tinder and subject to the dictation of democratic influence. in
'the vast variety of matter with which he had been obliged to
deal he had endeavoured, as far as he could, to trace out some
clear line of consideration, and so to classify the points as to
render them, in some' degree, intelligible to their lordships,
and he was now about to examine by what evidence the allega-
tions as to abuse had been substantiated. With that view
he should have to solicit their attenton to the protest of Sir
Francis Palgrave. A commission was issued, to scamper with
horse, ready equipped, over all the country, and to report as
expeditiously as possible, so that parliament might be enabled
to legislate on the subject early in the ensuing session : and
hence, perhaps, the obviously crude and indigested state of
the opinions which the report contained. (Hear, hear.)
The commissioners were to gallop all over the realm, to hunt
up all the charters, to examine all the archives of all the ancient
bodies corporate in the land, and to make their report with a
precipitation which might almost excuse their blunders—why?
—not to reform the municipal constitutions so as best to secure
the advantage of those who lived under them, and who had no
concern as respected ministers, parliament, or the superior
authorities of the state, 'Arum Pompeins ant Cesar rempublieam
habeas, provided only their institutions were formed on a good
basis, but to forward the pariv purposes of those to whom this
measure was supposed to be oef considerable value. Be that,
however, as it might, it was expected that the harvest which
those sicklemen were to reap, the sheaves of corruption which
they. were to bind and warehouse, nod bring into their garners,
accumulate in their ricks, and constitute their agricultural pro-
duce, would have been very great; but althony,h they had done
their duty, the crop had not been very abundant. It was ex-
pected that in all the great towns corruption, malversation,
cheating of public charities and trusts, ell:lb-calico-J.:nil of corp.-
,