The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-04-17 00:00:00

POREIGIVINTELLIGE:VCE.

FRANCE.
Pants, APRIL 13. —Special news from the head quarters of_
Don Carlos his been received to-day at Paris. The aespatches
are dated the sth instant, and their contents are of considerable
importance. Th,y inform us that on the 2d instant Zumala-
carreguy commenced the siege of Maesta. On the next day a
body of Christinos troops, amounting to 9,000 men, advanced
by Santa Cruz and Campeza against Zumalacarreguy. Al-
though the latter had but 5,000 men, haresolyed on standing his
ground, and accepting the combat. On the 31, haying placed
his pieces of artillery in safety, lie prepared to receive the attack
of the 9,000 Christinos. During the 3d he kept his troops in'
readiness, but the 9,000 Christinos did not attack him. Having, .
waited the whole of that day in vain, he determined on taking
the offensive side, and on advancing upon them. This he did
on the morning of the 4th, but the Christinos troops retreated
precipitately before he could come up with them. Thus 9.000
Christinos troops refused to accept combat with Carlist forceit
only, amounting to a little more than half that number. The
reason given for this fact is, that the Christinias troops had been
so completely routed and put to the sword on the 29th and 30th
of last month that the Queen's troops were greatly discouraged,
and would not fight against Zumalacarreguy.
The news from Madrid is sufficiently sombfe. The Queen
Regent has renounced her journey to Aranjuez, from fear of a
" coup de main," on the part of the Carlists. The military com-
mandants of all the provinces are requiring that troops be. sent
them. Malaga, Andalusia and Saragossa are in a state of fer-
mentation.- Letters fromßarcelona, dated the 31it of March,
state, thht in the environs of that town a "paraded" of 80 sol-
diers had been formed, and that on the 30th ult. a corporal and
12 soldiers of the garrison had deserted, and had joined this
" partidad," That at Belaguer, three leagues from Lerida, in
the Llano de Urgel, the Carlist chief, Burgos, has raised a
guerilla of 500 men That the chief, Mesonero de Caitille
Leva, is at the head of a guerilla of 200 men, devoted to Don
Carlos. That at Agramoat he attacked with success the Chris 7
tines, and that, during the action, a captain, three sub-o rcers,
and sixty soldiers left the Christinos side and joined the Carlist
chief. 'Ma the Christinos geyernor of Seu d'Urgel has written
to the general commanding the corps of observation in the
eastern Pyrenees to request permission to traverse, when he
may deem it. necessary, the French territory, as all the commu-
nications were interrupted between-the north of Spain and Bar-
celona by the Spanish routes.
Letters from Pampeluna, dated 2d instant, state that the
troops of Mina are so discouraged at their ceaselesi failures arid
want of success that he does not even dare to leave the city with
them. In order to give some excuse fur his inaction, he says
that, he is too ill to go on 'much longer, and he keeps hiS Tamil
and sees hardly any one. From the '2Bth of Marcia to 2d inst.
he had only seen his wife and his medical adviser, who is his
personal friend. Still at Pampeluna the system of terror was
being adopted. No one is allowed even to speak on the'subject
of the military operations: No one had dared to say a word on
the subject of the fall of EchArri-Aranaz. If any one had
ventured to transgress this order tie would have been instantly
seized and shot

Letters from Zugarramnrdi, dated the sth instant, state that
travellers and others, who bad arrived from Escurra, where was
the Cariist junta, had declared that for three days there bad
been fighting in.the environs of Los Arcos, and that the Chris-
tinos had been defeated, and had sustained very considerable
loss. They add that they were the young Christmos conscripts
who had been attacked and put to 'flight. These letters from.
Zugarramurdi are not hovrever .confirmed by any other, letters
or -.prcirnals.to-day.
The French papers assure us that the three northern powers
of Europe have proposed to the governments of France and
England, to interfere in the settlement of the affairs of Spain ;
as Fraitte, Russia, and England di.l in the affairs of Greece.

THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT AGAINT THE FRENCH BAR.

There is no possibility of getting into the Royal Court of
Paris. The avenues are all thronged to suffocation. The pro-
cess has begun on the part of the -French government against
the French bar. Not M. Dupin the elder, but M. Philip Du-
pin, the " batonnier," himself, is charged with the defence.
He will insist on the incompetency of the Royal Court to decide
on any matter which arises out of orders issued by the president
of an exceptional tribunal. M. Menestrier, one of the members
of the Paris bar, has in this day's Debats contended that the
ordinance of Louis Philippe is legal, and not illegal, as the
Paris bar has decided. Another barrister, M. Devaux, mem-
ber of the council of state, has also come forward to maintain
that, as that council considers the ordinance to be legal, its de-
cision is as good as the " Counseil de Discipline" of the Paris
bar, which Is of opinion that the ordinance is illegal. The ar-
gument of M. Devaux is this, that, inasmuch as the Court of
Peers is reenznised by the charter, it is-not, and cannot be, an
exceptional tribunal. This, however, is a fallacy. The char-
ter declares that a_ law shall be passed to define the critLes of
treason and conspiracy against the state, and then that the
Court of Peers shall, try those offences. But, as no such law
has passed,' of course the Court of Peers is an exceptional tribu-
nal.. Thus the resistance to the government by enteotes has
been succeeded by a legal resistance, beginning with the bar.

MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS.-SIR FRANCIS
PALGRAVE'S PROTEST.

Sir Francis Palgrave, one of the commissioners appointed t
inquire into the existing state of municipal corporations in Eng-
land and Wales, has published a long protest against the re-
port agreed to by his fellow-labourers, in order to show that it
Is of a partial character and unsupported by the evidence upon
which it professes to he founded. The protest, after setting
forth the names of the commissioners and the objects of the
commission, proceeds as follows :
The undersigned eommissioner- having beeon informed
in the month of October last, that John Blackburne, Esq., the
chief commissioner named in the said commission, was collect-
ing materials fur the general report, he shortly afterwards de-
livered to the said chief of commissioner, a statement contain-
ing a summary of the opinions which appeared to him to be the
results of the evidence, so far as the same had come to his
knowledge, and in which, amongst several other matters, were
contained ebservations to the following effect:—
"In whom is the elective franchise for corporate purposes to
he vested ?----:In considering and discussing this question, may it
not be proper] to pause and inquire whether conservatives and
reformers do not respectively overrate the dangers as well as
the advantages of an extended popular franchise ?—With the
fears and apprehensions of the former, i.e. the conservatives,
which -1 firmly ,believe to be erroneous, we have no concern.
But if the list, ii.e: the reformers, trust too much to the benefi-
cial effects of popular election ; and if, so trusug, they are
thereby induced to neglect the elements of good government,
they will assuredly inflict the most serious evils on the country.
Popular suffrage is not a panacea for a 1 the diseases of the body
politic. Popular suffrage, ;taken by itself alone, affords no se-
curity against the incompetency, corruption, jobbing, or des-
potism of the ruling body; nor does the establishment of a po-
pular constituency in anywise relieve the legislature from the
necessity of_providing every possible check against maladmi-
nistration. The most open borough must be watched as jea-
lously by the law as the closest oligarchy. The vices may differ
in feature, but they will be the same in nature. Popular suf-
fragan the .Most powerful engine, which may be rendered the
means of reniciVing causes of offence. It may tend to promote
security and political cheerfulness; but it cannot •be received
as the basis and foundation of political virtue, political inte-
grity, or political order and prosperity. Muncipal suffrage
must not be surrendered to the mass of the people as a right
which they are entitled to demand, but treated as a flee gift,
bestowed upon them out of a spirit of conciliation, restoring
confidence and harmony bete een the governors and the go-
verned, and thus contributing to the general welfare of the
community.
Of course these observations could not be applied to a report
then not in existence, but it will be seen that they involve a
main principle of the objections hereinafter taken, that is to
say, that in examining the evidence it is proper to discriminate
between those defects which may be removed by laws applied
to the acts or defaults of individuals, and those that may re-
quire a change in the political constitution of municipal corpo-
rations.
Sir Francis then proceeds to detail the objections which he
raised at the deliberations of the board, both verbally and in
writing, all of which were overruled. On this subject he says :
The general objections to the report are the following, viz.,
that in the statements professing to be enumerations of the
principal abuses and defects found in the constitution and ma-
nagement of the municipal corporations of England and Wales
the report dues not clearly and pertinently discriminate be-
tween those abuses and detects which are or may be remedied
by law in municipal corporations as they now exist, and those
abuses and defects which cannot be remedied without an altera-
tion in the constitution of municipal corporations; and that by
thus refusing to admit the broad distinction between adventi-
tious defects and inhereurdefects, and also between the acts of
individuals and the acts of communties, the report contains vari-
ous assumptions and inferences which the evidence, so far as it
has come to the knowledge of the undersigned. commissioner;
viz., the evidence obtained in the city of London, and the
printed circuit reports of the commissioners, ending with the
Leeds report, (p. 1,624,) does not sustain
It would be difficult to point out any branch of legal policy
which can be investigated with accuracy and justice unless the 11
foregoing distinctions be admitted ; but in the present inquiry
they are of vital importance. The addre-ss of the House Of
Commons upon which the commission is grounded is in the na-
ture of an accusation; municipal corporations are to be put
upon their trial before the whole high court of parliament. The
-address is virtually an information against every corporation
which has been visited ; and any bill adopted in consequence of
the address and report will be, not an amendment of abstract
principles of law operating in i'utiob, but an adjudication affect-
ing vested rights and franchises; and, so far as it alters or di-
vests those rights and franchissa, a bill of pains and penalties.
In the great case of the city of London, it was argued, and
most conclusively, that the franchises of a corporation are net
liable to forfeiture by reason of the misuser of its individual
members; wncreas'the asstrroptions and inferential statements
adopted by the report make such corporation liable not only
for the acts of its own members but also for the acts of every
other corporation. Each personal default—each local abuse is
ascribed to the whole agregate of municipal corporations; in-
cluding not merely the transactions of the present era, but
ranging without limitation of time to the past,
and suggesting,
as existing defects, abuses which have ceased or have been
wholly extirpated. And although it is not maintained that the
high court of parliament, acting in its legislative capacity,
should conform to the strict and technical rules required in
cases between party and party, yet it is submitted that the evi-
dence should be presented to the legislature in a form regulated
by the maxims and dictates of justice; and furthermore, that
although the report of the commissioners is in no wise stringent
upon the legislature, it nevertheless is fit and proper that in
such a report an endeavour should be made to sum up the evi.
dence so as to assist the parliament in the duty of apply:ng the
evidence to the several branches and bearings of the subject,
pointing out also those portions of the evidence which ought tint
to be received implicitly,
or which ought to he wholly rejected.
It is further submitted that in order to assist parliament in the
duty of forming a right judgment, the evidence ought to have
been analyzed and digested, distinguishing, in all needful ewes,
between the acts of individuals and the defaultsof communities ;
'and further, so as to discriminate clearly under each head or ar-
ticle of inquiry %between and amongst. the following classes of
evidence, viz.:---1. Evidence relating to abuses capable of
being remedied by the ordinary course of law, or by new laws
remedial of the afmse, but not necessarily affecting the present
form of municipal corporations. 2. Evidence relating to de-
fects inherent in the present form of municipal corporations,
and by which they are rendered inadequate to the wants of the
present state of society, or perverted from theirroper ends.
3. And, lastly, evidence which ought to be carefully examined
before it is,admitted as the.motives of legislation, or wholly dim-
discarded. And that by neglecting this, or some similar mode
of sifting and-trying the relevancy of the evidence, various as-
sumptions, generalizations, and inferences are presented to par-
liament by the report which are not sufficiently supported by,
the evidence to which the report refers. The whole of the evi-
dence is not before parliament, hut the report states that the
commissioners " have reason to believe that the remaining te-
ports will not affect their conclusions otherwise than by afford-
ing further illustration and confirmation," (p. 15,) and the
mode of reasoning would not have been altered had the eeneral
report been postponed until the production of the whole of the
evidence.
' It is stated in the report "that there prevails amongst the
' inhabitants of a great majority of the incorporated towns a