The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-03-01 00:00:00

Tzar, LONDON PRESS.

(FROM THE STANDARD.)
The question of the power of the House of Comm ons
to call for the muniments of corporation rights is one of
very great importance, and public attention cannot be
called to it too earnestly or too early. This is, howeirer,
a question of great extent, if thoroughly investigated ;
it is therefore only in a very simple and abstract shape
that we can touch upon it.
The universally established principle of English law,
and of the law of every civilized country, is, that pos-
session affords a presumption of right ; consequently, our
civil courts will never call for the defence of a civil right
before a prima facie case is made against it, any more
than our criminal courts will require a party to prove his
innocence before information or indictment is preferred
against him, and supported too by evidence. If .a party
were to apply to Lord Brougham, upon mere suggestion
that the Duke of Bedford has no right to Covent Garden
Market, for leave to. file a bill of discovery against his
Grace ; or, to come nearer to the mark, were to request
from that keeper of the officina brevium, a " a subpama
duces tecum," commanding the production of the duke's
title deeds, the learned Chancellor would no doubt give
the officious " orator" some such hint, as that he had
better go ask his brother Denman why judgment of death
and execution should not be awarded against his Grace,
unless he proved that he had never robbed the mail—of
robbing which the Duke of Bedford has, let us remark,
never been accused; more than we can say for every
member of the legislature. The principle, we repeat it,
is, that no man is to be made party in a suit in which his
life, liberty, property, or privilege, shall be jepparded,
before a prima facie case has been raised against him ;
still less shall a man be put to the torture of imprison-
ment, or any other torture, to furnish evidence as a
ground-work for that prima facie case.
What is true of individuals in their individual capacity
is no less true of corporations; indeed, the rights of cor-
porations are fenced by still stronger barriers, for they
seem to partake in some degree of the royal prerogative
of impeccability.
We find in "Rolls' Abridgment," 1. 514, that a cor-
poration cannot be punished or dissolved by.act of the
King, or otherwise than by the extinction of some essen-
tial part ; and the putting, of interrogatories to a corpora-
tion, with a view to the discovery of evidence against it,
is, in the well-known argument of Sir George Treby,
properly assimilated to the inquisitorial examination of
an individual. "I confess, my lord," said the intrepid
lawyer, "I do not see but that at this rate a quo warranto
may be brought against a particular man to know by what
authority he claims to have the liberty of a subject ? to
sue and be sued ? to plead and be impleaded ? Now, if
the exercise of an inquisitorial power by the "Rex in
Curia," the minister and representative of the whole
legislature, be so intolerable, and necessarily lead to an
extinction of all individual liberty, can it be pretended
that this. inquisitorial power exists in one branch of the
legislature and that which used to be considered the
meanest ? In short, has the House of Commons the right
of delegating to its committees a power which the law
has not given to the King in his Court of King's Bench ?
The question may be soon put in issue. Let the first
corporation upon which (what we consider the tyrannical)
demand for its muniments shall be made, refuse. If the
House of Commons dare to coerce a compliance by the
only process which it possesses—imprisonment of the re-
cusant officer or officers, the sufferer will then sue out his
habeas corpus in the King's Bench. If the court decide
that it is sufficient return to the writ to say that the party
is committed by the order of the House of Commons, then
there is a solemn -confession, that British liberty is no
more, an acknowledgment that we are at the Mercy of an
assembly of 658 men, who may imprison our bodies—arid
why not hang us ?—upon any pretext,,or no pretext ; and
that though the subject should be bolted down in the low-
est dungeon of Newgate, or even stand haltered upon the
drop before that building, the Court of King's Bench will
not interpose to save him from torture or death, when
once apprised that " les communes se veulent." If either
King, Lords, or Commons, can claim more than a de-
fensive right of coercion, independent of the law and of
their co-ordinates in the sovereignty, then the pretence
of a free constitution is an idle jest, and the King or
chamber having right to make such claim, is depot() the
despot of the country, despot King, despot oligarchy, or
despot democracy, for despotism can subsist with either
of the three forms. Despotism of any kind, however,
the people of England will not bear; and, if the House
of Commons show itself in the character of despot, or be
so displayed by subservient tribunals, it will run a fair
chance of being effectually reformed, body and members.
On the other hand, should the . Court of King's Bench
entertain the consideration of merits, upon return of a
habeas corpus, on a committal by the House of Com-
mons, the question is at an end; the Court cannot sanc-
tion, in a parliamentary committee, a power which it has
not itself, and the proposed exercise of which is discoun-
tenanced by the whole policy of the law. All we ask is
a fair hearing in a court of justice, to shut up Lord Al-
thorp's committee. The corporations, however, have, one
way or the other, the whole game in their hands. Re-
sist, we say—resist. Examples of firmness are what
kings and statesmen, lords and bishops, most want at the
present time ; and the first corporation which shall afford
that example will not only achieve the victory that legal
courage, supporting a just cause, always maintains; but
commence a revulsion of feeling by which the country
may yet be saved from the spoliation and anarchy that
now threaten, and, whatever the result, he who shall for
the first time try the question whether the Habeas Cor-
pus Act is a dead letter as respects the • House of Com-
mons, will be entitled to, and will obtain the, gratitude
of all posterity.

(FROM THE GUARDIAN AND PUBLIC LEDGER.)

We have heard, in common with others, of the whis-
pers about dissensions in the Cabinet. That they exist
we have not the slightest doubt, but what they relate to
is still a matter of conjecture. We may infer, however,
from the whole policy of the Government, that they are
beset with difficulties, which have their origin in the stu-
pendous measures which they have undertaken for the
reformation, as they are pleased to call it, of all the in-
stitutions of the country. They have sown the whirl-
wind, and they must now reap the storm. They have
set the machinery of revolution into motion, and they
must place themselves on the front of the chariot, and fly
with it whether for good or for evil, and whether the re-
ward be fame or infamy.
This being the case, it is very natural to infer that there
are some members of the Cabinet who have little or no
relish for so perilous and precipitate a movement, who do
not feel easy in their situations, and who are disinclined
to march, or, rather, gallop, with their colleagues.
• It is not simply the, affairs of Ireland which involve the.
Ministers in serious difficulties. They see that the re-
formers of England will not be satisfied unless some
sweeping changes take place in the temporalities of the
church here as well as in Ireland. They. perceive that
agitation will, ere long, work the same effects on this as
it has already done on the other side of the Irish chan-
nel, and we believe they are apprehensive that the scene
of its operations will, as soon as the suspension bill is
passed, be transferred from the Corn Exchange of Dub-
lin to some Exchange nearer the Court of St. James's.
But, whether or not, there is quite enough connected
with other important questions to occupy the attention of
the Cabinet and keep alive their anxieties. There is the