of undoubted personal honour do not feel it necessary to protest against measures which they find it impossible to defend.

The point on which alone they made any successful stand was their reply to the accusation that the great merchants had left their ranks during the last century. As to this matter, however, the chief stress of their reply was an inculpation of their predecessors. The Corporation, say they, were bankrupt; jobbing was carried on to an unheard-of height; and aldermen were insolvent, a century ago. It may be so. We are quite willing to take the word of the Corporation for it, that their predecessors were much worse than themselves. But this does not establish the benefits of civic rule, nor make out the purity of the present system.

To the rest of the real substantial attack upon them, they make no real answer. They aver that they have kept within the bounds of the law; that they have charters to show for their rights; Acts of Parliament for their tolls and taxes; opinions of counsel for their lawsuits. Who was ever fool enough to doubt it? Whatever may have been the case in former times, the intelligent officers who now administer their affairs are quite sure to take care that nothing is done without at least a plausible, sometimes a sound, legal reason. How does this meet the charge that they act in a selfish, narrow spirit? Of course they have charters on which they build their claims. How does this tend to show that the claims are not vexatious and oppressive? They have Acts of Parliament in abundance to show for their coal and other taxes. Does that go to prove that Parliament was wise or just, that the taxes in question are politic or tolerable, or that they have been administered in a wise, ungrudging, and conciliatory spirit? And as for opinions of counsel! Why, of course, the opinion of a lawyer depends upon the way the case is stated to him; and we have little doubt that, by some not very great ingenuity of statement, an opinion to any effect that is desired may be drawn from any counsel. There is a well-known, and we believe a true, story, that two neighbours who were about to go to law, each for his own satisfaction consulted Sir William Follett upon his case, and each obtained from Sir William an opinion directly in his favour. Besides, a number of considerations ought to weigh with a body like the Corporation, of which, in giving legal advice, a counsel properly takes no cognizance. He advises simply on the legal bearings of a case; and the question with regard to the City was, not whether they had acted as a cautious lawyer would advise a private individual to act, but whether their endless delay and obstruction and vexation and expense showed the proper spirit in which a great public body should

set to work to vindicate a right held by them in trust for the benefit of the public. Perhaps, indeed, they would deny that this was the question. They might say, indeed several of their ablest witnesses, such as Mr. Serjeant Merewether and Mr. Pearson, did say, that these tolls, and dues, and taxes were their private property, for their private benefit. If so, no doubt custom has sanctioned almost any amount of legal subtlety and chicane in defending a man's private estate; but to us the very presenting this view of the matter appears in the light of a plea of guilty to the charge. It could only be put forward by persons who had taken a false view of their position, and were labouring under a total confusion as to the distinction between the property of private individuals and of public bodies. The Corporation of London is in every sense a public body, with public duties; liable at any moment to be destroyed in its very essence by the will of the Legislature-the mere fiction and creature of the law; and it is idle to compare it with private persons, and assimilate its rights to theirs. It obtained its rights as a great public body, and it is absurd to say that a body, which might be dissolved to-morrow, and cease to exist, without any arbitrary or unconstitutional exercise of parliamentary power, can claim to hold its property indefeasibly, and adversely to parliamentary inspection and control, when it cannot create or guarantee its own legal existence or continuance for a single day. But the claim was characteristic of the feeling of the Corporation, and a tolerable evidence of the spirit of their administration. The Commissioners, we are happy to see, have treated it with entire disregard; and have recommended the total and immediate abolition of all such rights and privileges as appear to be oppressive in their character, or inconsistent with general public policy. They have very properly declined to consider the legal foundation for these rights, which is proper matter for a court of law. They have addressed themselves to the far more important practical question, whether it is wise and just to retain them.

With an assertion of the legality of their proceedings the substantial defence of the Corporation really closed. Indeed, the personal claim was inconsistent with any attempt to show that personal feelings had been disregarded, and larger views generally acted upon. Of course, if the coal-tax belongs to them, as any private individual's house belongs to him, it is no reproach to them that they have spent it on themselves. If, really, the rest of the metropolis, and twenty miles round it, have nothing whatever to do with this tax, except to pay it, they cannot complain that they are totally neglected in the application of its proceeds. Certain metropolitan improvements are made, it is truc, out of

certain portions of it, under special Acts of Parliament; but there is a portion which the City claim as their own, and regard as a private gentleman regards his estate, and dispose of accordingly. Yet on this and kindred subjects they have been halfhearted and inconsistent. Again and again they were asked by the Commissioners, if they claimed to represent the metropolis? —and again and again they shrank from giving a direct answer to a pertinent but embarrassing question. Mr. Pearson, indeed, took a bold flight. He said the city and the metropolis were identical; that their interests did not conflict; and he could not, even in imagination, conceive a case in which they could; and that the large streets in the city were a direct, and immediate, and tangible benefit to the people of Staines, and Watford, and Hertford, because they all came to town to the Bank to get dividends, and then they had handsome streets to walk in! But the fact that, except where a special Act of Parliament otherwise directed, all their funds, although derived from so wide an arca, were spent upon themselves, was not, as indeed it could not be, disputed. Nor could it be disputed that, in spite of their very large revenues, the municipal government of the City of London was as heavy upon the inhabitants as that of any other city of England, without a tithe or a twentieth of the revenues of the Corporation.

In sewerage, in paving, in police, in prisons, they have something to show for their money; all these, especially the last, are remarkably good in the city; but the expense of them all, except the last, is defrayed out of special rates levied upon the inhabitants. In other matters the catalogue of their deeds is barren. It is melancholy to think how many great and noble works might have been achieved by a municipality alive to its duties, and animated by an elevated feeling, out of those vast sums of money which have been for years eaten up in management and in that heavy and tasteless splendour which surrounds the Corporation. Commerce might have been assisted, education advanced, literature encouraged, the arts promoted, religion fostered, and the City of London have become a Venice without its despotism, a Florence without its turbulence, or a Paris without its irreligion. It is not pleasant to contemplate the dull reality of the picture, the more especially as it seems that the Corporation themselves discern nothing unsatisfactory in it, and appear to promise but little amendment for the future. The Town Clerk, an intelligent and educated gentleman, could not the least understand the outcry; the Corporation, he thought, had done nothing they had not a perfect right to do; he was of opinion, in fact, that all alteration would be for the worse, that the whole thing was as nearly perfect as one could expect any human institution to be, and he really could not suggest any amend

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dated, and that an appeal be given from such court to one of the superior courts at Westminster.

12. That the Court of Hustings be abolished.

13. That the Court at St. Martin's-le-Grand be abolished.

14. That all regulations prohibiting persons not free of the City from carrying on any trade, or using any handicraft within the City, be abolished. 15. That the metage of grain, fruit, and other measurable goods, be no longer compulsory.

16. That the Fellowship of Porters be dissolved; and that other privileges of porters be abolished.

17. That the admission of brokers by the Court of Aldermen be abolished.

18. That the street toll on carts not the property of freemen be abolished.

19. That the City police be incorporated with the Metropolitan police. 20. That the conservancy of the River Thames be transferred to a Board consisting of the Lord Mayor, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the President of the Board of Trade, the Deputy Master of the Trinity House, and the First Commissioner of Woods.

21. That the exclusive privileges of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen on the River Thames be abolished.

22. That the accounts of the revenue and expenditure of the Corporation be consolidated.

23. That the money and securities of the Corporation be lodged in the Bank of England.

24. That the election of Auditors be amended.

25. That the provisions of the Municipal Corporations Acts, with respect to the mortgaging of lands, and the making of an annual return of revenue and expenditure to the Secretary of State, be extended to the Corporation of London.

26. That the Irish Society be dissolved, that its trusts be declared by Act of Parliament; and that new trustees be appointed by the Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

27. That the external boundaries of the City remain unchanged; but that the municipal connexion between the Corporation of London and a part of the borough of Southwark be abolished.

28. That the rest of the metropolis be divided into districts for municipal purposes.

29. That in the event of such division being made, a Metropolitan Board of Works be created, composed of members deputed to it from the Council of each metropolitan municipal body, including the Common Council of the City.

30. That the coal duties now collected by the Corporation of London, so long as they remain in force, be under the administration of this Board; and that in case the coal duties, which expire in 1862, should not be renewed, the 4d. duty now levied on behalf of the City should cease at the same time.

31. That this Board be empowered to levy a rate, limited to a fixed poundage, for public works of general metropolitan utility, over the metropolitan district.

32. That no works be executed by this Board unless the plans have been approved by a Committee of the Privy Council.'

It ill be seen that in our jew of the unsatisfactory nature fence of the Corpor, we have at least the support missioners. Most e points on which they were