had to be tried by a jury empannelled from the corporation. There were only about 70 Catholics on the panel, and it was always so contrived that the corporation had a majority. In Cork, the same thing occurred; men who had become bankrupts, or who had been discharged as insolvents, were preferred to individuals who represented the wealth and respectability of the city, but who did not belong to the corporation. The corporation of Limerick claimed an exclusive right to fish in the Shannon; certain fishermen, who disputed the right, having proceeded to fish, were fired on by the water-bailiffs of the corporation. They lodged an information with a magistrate, a warrant was granted after some delay, and the parties were held to bail. In the mean time, however, cross indictments were sent up against the fishermen by the watermen of the corporation. The grand jury, composed in the way which had been described, ignored the bill at the instance of the fishermen, and found bills against them for a capital felony in having dared to fish. They were put upon their trial, and with the approbation of the judge, were instantly acquitted.

These evils he proposed to remedy by the present bill in the same manner in which similar evils had already been remedied in England and Scotland, by placing the corporations under effective popular control, and annihilating their partial and exclusive character. In regard to the seven largest towns, Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Kilkenny, Belfast, Galway, and Waterford, it was proposed that every inhabit ant, possessing the 107. franchise

In

under the provisions of the Irish reform act, should be entitled to vote in the election of municipal officers. But this rate, if applied to the other boroughs, would give too small a constituency in proportion to the population. Thus Kinsale contained 1,000 houses, but not 200 of them were valued at 10l. a-year. In Drogheda there were 3,371 houses, but the 10l. houses did not amount to 500. In Dungannon there were only 163 houses of the requisite value, and 667 below it. regard to these, and all other boroughs containing a population of less than 20,000, it was to be borne in mind that parliament had already provided, by an act passed in 1828, that all householders inhabiting houses of the yearly value of 57. and upwards, should be empowered, for the purposes of lighting, watching, and paving their several towns, to elect commissioners, who were to manage these local affairs, and raise money to defray the expenses. As this statute had been brought into operation in many towns, and had answered extremely well, it was now proposed that, in all the boroughs, except the seven already mentioned, every occupier of a 5l. house or shop should be entitled to vote in the election of municipal officers. With regard to councillors, the qualification in the seven large boroughs was to consist in having property worth 1,000l., and in the other towns, property worth 500l. In the seven large boroughs, and and likewise in Londonderry, Sligo, Dungannon, and Drogheda, where the population exceeded 15,000, there would be a division into wards. The aldermen, likewise, were to be elected, not by

the councillors, but by the inhabitants, and were to consist of the councillors who had the greatest number of votes at the election. One half of the councillors and aldermen would go out of office every three years. The bill also declared, that a commission of the peace might be granted in any such borough, if the lordlieutenant thought fit; and in other towns, the mayor for the time being would be the magistrate of the borough. It was intended, likewise, to preserve to the inhabitants of the Irish corporate towns, the right of proceeding summarily by petition in cases of misapplication of public funds, instead of leaving them to the ordinary tedious process of law, and to retain the courts in the nature of courts of conscience, and the right of their suitors to proceed by attachment. In the seven large boroughs, the council was to have the power of electing sheriffs, but these officers were not to be considered as actually in office, till their names had been transmitted to the lord-lieutenant, and approved of by him. It was farther proposed that the government should have the power of obliging the council, if either or both of the persons first chosen were not approved of, to proceed to the election of some other persons, and not, as in the case of Dublin, re-elect the same person. other provisions were similar to those comprised in the English

bill.

The

but sir Robert Peel took occasion to state fully the views taken of this particular mode of alteration by himself and the party to which he belonged. After shewing that the greater number of the corporations, and especially between forty and fifty of them erected by James I., had been created, and created as close boroughs, expressly to secure and promote Protestant interests, he observed that, whatever might be said to the contrary, and what ever principle government might wish to substitute, this bill amounted to an unqualified extinction and destruction of corporate bodies in Ireland. Looking at the objects for which the corporations under James I., had been originally framed, and the close principles according to which, with a view to these objects, the governing body was selected, it was mere affectation in the framers of the present bill to deny that it was meant to annihilate the ancient corporation system of Ireland, or to pretend that they entertained any horror at completely destroying and sweeping away these former institutions. They themselves began with utter destruction, and therefore could not be allowed to exclaim against it when proposed by others: they had found it necessary to pull down these old edifices, and clear away the ground, before beginning to raise their new building. By this bill there would be no more connexion between the old and new corporations, than there existed between the old and new departmental systems of France.

For himself, he avowed that he neither thought it possible to defend the corporation system which

existed in Ireland; nor did he conceive this bill would be a remedy for its evils. He admitted, that the system which presented to the public view but 13,000 corporators amidst such a population as Ireland possessed, was a system radically wrong; and to that objection was to be superadded another-namely, that those corporators were almost entirely professors of one form of religious faith to the exclusion of others. This was an aggravation of the original objection, and was a system which, by mixing up the administration of justice with political feelings, was calculated to create suspicions as to the mode of administering justice, though that administration was in no degree tainted. The exclusion of one party from corporate appointments was inconsistent with the principles of the act of 1829, which established, with respect to civil offices, perfect equality among all classes of his majesty's subjects, and made civil worth and not religious faith a qualification for civil office. Another ground of objection was the misapplication of corporate funds. He should be as unwilling as any gentleman possibly could be, to connect himself or the party with which he had the honour to act, with any vindication of these abuses, assuming the facts stated in the report to be correct; and though he had no opportunity of referring to documents to ascertain whether the allegations in those respects were well founded or not, he had no hesitation in saying, that such abuses ought to be corrected, and the possibility of their recurrence prevented. For these united reasons he could not help coming to

the conclusion, that it would not be wise to attempt to maintain the present municipal system in Ireland.

What system, then, should be proposed in place of it? The plan now proposed, after demolishing the existing corporations, provided, especially, and by name, for the establishment of a new system of municipal government in fiftyfour towns in Ireland, to fortyseven of which towns i gave a household suffrage of 51. With regard to population, the bill descended very low, for the town of Middleton, with a population of 2,037 inhabitants, and the town of Belturbet, with a population of 2,067 inhabitants, were each to be provided with a town-council, four aldermen, and twelve councillors. But the bill also gave to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland the power of applying its provisions to any town in that country, without reference to the amount of population. This provision seemed to him one of an extraordinary character; and though it did not appear to vary much in words, yet, like many other provisions in the present bill, it did differ most materially in substance from the English measure. English bill enacted, that if a certain proportion of the inhabitant householders in any town petitioned the Crown to grant them a corporation, the king should have the power of complying with their wish. But the present bill declared, that if any of the inhabitant householders of any town in Ireland should petition the lord-lieutenant to grant to them a charter of incorporation, it should be lawful for the lordlieutenant to do so. Thus power was given to two or three inhabit

The

ant householders, and not solely to a majority, to call upon the lord lieutenant to incorporate their town. The inference he drew was, that it was intended to call into most extensive, almost indefinite operation the provisions of the present measure. He was aware, that the two towns, to which he had referred, had corporations at present; but according to the very bill before the house, that circumstance did not constitute a reason why these corporations ought not to be extinguished; for ministers had not adopted the rule, that every town, having a corporation at present, should continue to have one under the new system. The rule laid down was, that where there was an incorporated town with more than 2,000 inhabitants, that town should continue to possess a corporate body. With respect to the granting of charters of incorporation, a discretion was apparently left to the lord-lieutenant; but, in point of fact, his judgment would be fettered by the rule which the house in passing this bill would prescribe, that if a town had a population of 2,000 inhabitants and upward, it ought to have a corporation. The number of towns in Ireland having a population of more than 2,000 inhabitants was 126, and he therefore had a right to infer, that the minimum number of corporations in that country would be also 126; while, if any inhabitants of a village, with a population of 1,000 persons, petitioned for a corporation, the lordlieutenant would have the power of granting their request. The corporations were further to have the power of making such by-laws as to them should seem meet for the good

rule and government of the borough. Was it not desirable, that there should be found some degree of uniformity in the by-laws of the different towns of Ireland? Yet there was nothing in this bill to prevent 126 towns in Ireland having each a different system of by-laws and regulations, established by the towncouncils; and the offences against these by-laws would be tried by corporate justices in each borough. In every corporate town there was to be a mayor, who was to be a justice of the peace, and to have a place among the county magistrates. Now, in looking into the report on the Irish corporations, he found that one of the complaints urged against the existing system was, that the corporate justices were independent of all control on the part of the crown; and it was rather a singular circumstance, that the justices to be created under this bill would also be appointed independently of the control of the crown. The sanction of the lord-lieutenant would not be required for the appointment of corporate justices, who would owe their distinction exclusively to popular election. It was said, that the lord-lieutenant would be empowered to grant to any borough a separate commission of the peace. Such a power was given to the crown in England; yet it would not be enjoyed by the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, for a separate commission of the peace could only be granted upon the application of the towncouncils. He thought this a most improper check on the discretion of the lord-lieutenant; for that officer must be a better judge than the town-councils, whether a separate commission of the peace

was wanted in any of the towns in Ireland for the due and proper administration of justice. In those towns for which a separate commission of the peace should be granted, the town-clerks, elected by the town-councils, would be the clerks of the peace; and they, along with the sheriffs, also elected by the town-councils, would hereafter be the parties to summon juries within the corporate jurisdictions. Such a system, he conceived, was not likely to conduce to the due and impartial administration of justice, and was opposed to the principles laid down by ministers themselves, with regard to domestic and municipal government. There was one course of argument, indeed, which made short work with the whole matter, namely, certain things have already been done in England and Scotland; therefore they must be done in Ireland. But, surely, if it could be shewn, that a particular system, which had been adopted in England, would, if adopted in Ireland, not secure the impartial administration of justice, acquire confidence for its functionaries, or produce public satisfaction, it would be absurd to say, that inquiry was superfluous, and that the house had merely to apply to Ireland the principles which had been acted on in England. There might be inconveniences in having the practice of the two countries different; but if it were proved, that a system, which was good for England, would practically work in Ireland to defeat the ends of justice, then he cared nothing for the argument about the necessity of assimilating the laws of the different parts of the kingdom,

but would maintain, that they, as legislators, had no right to inflict a positive curse on a nation for the sole reason that the new system they established was in conformity with a system to be found in some other country. Now the bill before the house assumed, that because many imperfections are to be found in the administration of justice in those towns in Ireland, in which exclusive and self-elected corporations existed, all that was needed for the removal of these evils was the introduction of a system of popular election. A system of popular election might be found in many respects a check upon abuse; but it was a gross fallacy to say, with regard to functionaries intrusted with the administration of justice, that their selection by the popular voice would conduce to its satisfactory and impartial dispensation. The report of the commissioners set forth most expressly, that among the greatest evils of the present system was the composition of grand juries, as controlled by the corporate body, and the general exercise of their functions, in reference to the administration of justice, both civil and criminal. How would these evils be remedied by making the corporate sheriffs objects of popular election? In towns having their corporations and corporate justices independent of the control of the crown, in which, unfortunately, a state of discord already prevailed, arising out of religious differences and animosities, fresh causes of division and discontent would be furnished by the continual agitation consequent on the frequent elections which the present bill would render necessary. First of all, there would be the annual registration