tions of its "powerful agency" in the case of Croydon and some others (though modestly not named in the above document); but the world is so perverse as to be unwilling to hail the fruits of such a system "by compulsion." Local bodies have, throughout the whole land, gone on improving, by their own efforts, though thwarted and obstructed by Central Boards of functionaries, appointed and paid out of the public purse, under the pretence of the public welfare.

The Board of Health undertook to teach us the best way to get and distribute a water-supply for the metropolis. For three years all other efforts were thus hindered. Its schemes were paraded with unbounded pretentiousness. After all the evils caused by such delay, the ridiculous absurdity of all its schemes became too palpable for even a jobbing Government to bolster them up. The same as to extra-mural burial. The Board of Health was loud and pretentious as usual: but it did nothing,-except, indeed, the usual trick of swelling the list of its own functionaries. It still retains its added functionaries; but the work, taken out of its incapable hands, is now being energetically done by the parishes themselves. In this case, as in that of water-supply, the attempt was made to enforce procrustean dogmas "by compulsion." But we have been obliged to go back, in each case, to the only legitimate means, of those doing the work who are most immediately interested in its well doing.

The friends of the Board of Health, and those hungering for the crumbs that may fall to them from the wholesale system of jobbery of which that Board has been the unexampled source and nourisher,-probably think that Lord Palmerston will favour the renewal of the Public Health Act. I am myself one of those who not only rejoice to see Lord Palmerston in high position, but hope to see him Premier. An able correspondent of your journal has lately called him a "humbug." I differ from this verdict. I think Lord Palmerston is the only member of the present Cabinet in whom the country places confidence. He is the only one whom I myself believe capable of retrieving our position in the face of Europe. He is the only one who seems to me to have the sound heart of an Englishman in him. I trust many weeks will not pass before we see him premier. But I hope this, because I think that he has courage enough to break through the trammels and the net of red-tapism that have been so long weaving round our Ministers; that he has the honesty and the courage to pursue a Constitutional course, in both home and foreign policy, instead of letting himself be the slave of that debasing system of functionarism which our Liberal Governments have, of late years, been so industriously importing from Austria, and trying to smother our English Institutions with. There are, doubtless, near influences around Lord Palmerston in reference to the Board of Health. Some will presume upon these, to endeavour to let ene side only of all facts be put before him, and even that in a distorted view. But I hope he has

grasp and strength of mind enough to look further. I know, at any rate, that such a sense of the mischief of the Public Health Act, and of the Board of Health, has grown up over the whole country, that neither Lord Palmerston nor any other minister will be able to renew the present Act, however cunningly the renewal may be attempted to be smuggled through.

I have already trespassed too much on your space, Though there are several other aspects of this subject that I should have wished to notice. At present I must forbear and remain, Sir,

:

Deci 1853

BUNTINGFORD-On Friday, 16th inst.,

Mr. Toulmin Smith gave a lecture, or rather address,^ before the Literary Institute at Buntingford, on the "Municipal and Parochial System of England," and any one that heard his words which rivetted the attention of a crowded andierce for more than an hour; must have been convinced that if we wish to escape put of the mass of jobbery and extravagance into which we have fallen from the inroads made in our consti. tution by centralization, we must rouse ourselves to recover the working of our municipal and parochial systems under regulations suited to the present times. And we are glad to hear that it is proposed by several who are determined to make an effort to uproot the evils of functionarism exemplified in the various new fangled commissions in the Poor Law-Public Health

Ecclesiastical Revenucs, &c., &c., as soon as pos aible to organise an association, the object of which will be to restore effective municipal and parochial self management throughout the country; and we heartily wish them "God speed."

THE CORONATION OATH, AND THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING ADVERTISER.

SIR,-It often happens that, in the discussion of a topic, an incidental point arises of more real interest and importance than the matter whence it arose. It seems to me that such has been the case, at the present time, as regards one of the statements that have attracted such wide attention, with reference to the Prince Consort.

His rightful position as Privy Councillor has been disputed, and has been defended. I am not going to enter the lists on that subject. I will only remind all whom it concerns, that every resolution taken in the Privy Council is bound, by the law of England, to be "signed by such of the Privy Council as shall advise and consent to the same;" which rather simplifies some disputed questions. The point that has attracted my particular attention, has been the extraordinary nature of the answer that has been set up, by those who have maintained the legality of the Prince Consort's seat in the Privy Council. That answer amounts to an announcement to Englishmen, that all our most cherished constitutional guarantees are worthless. Let me try, in a few words (for its full development would take a volume), to make this understood.

Few countries are content to have a sovereign installed without some obligatory form of coronation oath. Ferdinand of Austria and Hungary had hence a twinge, which led Jesuitical statesmen to substitute Francis Joseph, who had taken no oath to Hungary, for the old King of Hungary who had taken such oath. The law and custom of England have always required such oath to be taken. Has that oath less meaning and reality, as a pledge for the maintenance of our English laws and liberties, than the oath of Ferdinand of Austria had ?

The Coronation Oath Act (1689) expressly requires the King or Queen to "solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of this kingdom of England, and the dominions thereto belonging, according to the statutes in Parliament agreed on, and the laws and customs of the same." A reference to the older forms of the oath, as well as the express separation of the parts of this clause, show that here was a distinction intended to be drawn between the temporary regulations made by Parliament, and the great constitutional landmarks. Are a Cab Act and a Gas Act to be put into the same category with the statute de tallagio non concedendo, or the Bill of Rights?

The Act of Settlement (1700) again expressly requires the same coronation oath to be taken, by every King or Queen occupying the throne under that Act; and under which Act alone it is that Queen Victoria now sits on the throne.

I cannot conceive that any person can do otherwise than recognise it as a fact that the Acts of 1689"declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject, and settling the Succession of the Crown," and of 1700" for the further limitation of the Crown, and

better securing the rights and liberties of the subject," are fundamental Acts and Laws of the Realm, to be altered only under circumstances analogous to those under which they originated. It is these Acts only that exclude a Papist from the Throne of England, and declare that "the people of these realms shall be and are absolved of their allegiance" to any heir to the throne who shall be or become a Papist. Is such a provision to be altered as glibly as a London Cab Act? Verily, Englishmen must look about them if such is to be the teaching. And unquestionably such is the teaching now.

66

The provision as to Privy Councillors is even more emphatic, in one respect, than that as to a Papist filling the throne, though part of the same Act. The same parties who would evade the former would assuredly evade the latter. It is expressly declared, in the Act of Settlement, that "it is requisite and necessary that some further provision be made for securing our religion, laws, and liberties." Prominently among these requisite and necessary further provisions," comes the one that, after the said limitation shall take effect [by which, having taken effect, Victoria is Queen of England] no person born out of the kingdoms of England, Scotland, or Ireland, or the dominions thereunto belonging, (although he be naturalised or made a denizen, except such as are born of English parents) shall be capable to be of the Privy Council."

66

The difference between a constitutional monarchy and an absolute one, consists mainly in this-that, under an absolute monarchy the crown is personal and dynastic; under a constitutional one it is representative-an impersonation of the unity of a people. Hence the former fixes all responsibility directly on the occupier of the throne; the latter maintains always the principle of impersonation, and rightly reckons the advisers of the Crown as, except under very special circumstances, the responsible parties. The Lord Chancellor is called "Keeper of the Crown's conscience." The occupier of the throne takes the coronation oath, as a pledge that the embodied power of the State will be used to uphold the Laws and Liberties of the Realm. If the coronation oath is violated, every one well knows that it is the ministers of the day who are responsible. It behoves every one, then, who thinks any guarantees of our Laws and Liberties worth preserving, to ask what is the meaning of the plea set up, that the provisions of the Act of Settlement, as to Privy Councillors, are avoided by any later Act, brought in by a courtly minister, and passed by Parliament,-probably unheeded,-certainly with the consciousness that any opposition would be construed into personal hostility to "illustrious personages ?"

Surely there is revolution enough floating about in these days, without those who should be our teachers setting before us the lesson, that our fiest constitutional guarantees are waste-paper, and the Coronation Oath a mere delusion. Our dearest institutions are being daily undermined. Continental notions of centralisation are, step by step, annihilating the manli

ness and the spirit of our nation. Is there to be no hold left, to which we may cling; no guarantee that we can regard as sacred? "No:"-say the sycophants of courts. If Acts of Settlement, Bills of Rights, or Coronation Oaths, stand in the way of Juggernautish servility, they may all be scattered to the winds by five lines of a modern smuggled Act of Parliament !

I will only say, in conclusion, that our fathers must have been a very different set of men from our contemporary (so-called) statesmen, when Lord Coke could declare, as he does, that, "in many cases, the Common Law will control acts of Parliament, and sometimes adjudge them to be utterly void;" and when it could be proclaimed, as it is in the noble language of the last clause of the Act of Settlement itself, that "the Laws of England are the birthright of the people thereof; and all the kings and queens who shall ascend the throne of this realm ought to administer the government of the same according to the said laws; and all their officers and ministers ought to serve them respectively according to the same." I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

Highgate, Jan. 26, 1854.

TOULMIN SMITH.

THE OFFICE OF PRIVY COUNCILLOR.

We refer our readers to a letter by Mr. Toulmin Smith, under the head, "Coronation Oath, and the Act of Settlement," which will be found in another column. We regard this communication as one of the ablest and most conclusively reasoned letters which has yet appeared on the disputed question of the right of a foreigner to hold the office of Privy Councillor.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL ON THE

BUSINESS OF PARLIAMENT.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING ADVERTISER.

SIR,-Lord John Russell seems anxious to do, for the next Book on Logic, what the authors of Kings' Speeches so well did for Cobbett's Grammar,—in furnishing examples of contempt for all sound rules. Tuesday and Wednesday last each furnished a choice illustration.

Feeling that it was absolutely impossible to grapple successfully with the argument founded on the Censtitutional question involved in the tampering with the Act of Settlement, Lord John gives it up. He therefore seeks to evade it by the very stale trick of a loose generality. Speaking of an illustrious personage hasays"Some doubts," says he, "have been started on this subject; but every body who has looked into the subject is aware that he was not only able, but fully authorised, to sit in the Privy Council." Now, Sir, as this is a simple mis-statement of fact, it amounts to a clear admission that the Constitutional argument which has been put forth in your columns, is incapable of being met and answered. Lord John cannot plead ignorance of the fact that "everybody who has looked into the subject" is not aware of what he asserts (but of precisely the reverse), for he refers freely to your columns. This point, then, of the violation of a fundamental Constitutional guarantee on the Privy Council matter, must be taken as proved,-like all the other main points that have been stated in your columns.

On Wednesday, Lord John declared that "there was so great a call for legislation that they could not satisfy it." The very complaint of all sensible men is, that there is such an enormous mass of unnecessary legislation forced through Parliament every year, that it is quite impossible for any one to know where we are from one year to another. This course of overlegislation is the artful device of the upholders of the functionary system of Centralisation. By taking everything to Parliament, and making long-winded acts of Parliament about everything, which nobody can understand, doubt and uncertainty are made to enter into every act and transaction, public and private. The way is thus daily more and more opened for urging on the specious pretence, that we must have Commissioners and Functionaries to do for us what it has been carefully managed that we shall be hindered from doing, as our fathers did, fer ourselves.

What Lord John further said on Wednesday only serves further to illustrate this, and to show with what entire contempt the common sense of the people of England is treated by these (so-called) statesmen. He talks of "the multifarious subjects before Parliament, and which are every year increasing. The House of Commons was not like the Congress of the United States, which had a great many State Legislatures to do, perhaps, two-thirds or three-fourths of the business before it; but had under its consideration all the vast questions of public business affecting this great Empire, and all the private business of every separate town in the kingdom as well."

Why, this is precisely what honest men complain of. Parliament has been led on to usurp, for the interested purposes of centralisation, a mass of legislation with which it has, constitutionally, nothing to do; which it cannot understand; which it does ill; but which engrosses an enormous amount of time. The institutions of the country are set at nought, and the fundamental principles of the constitution violated, in order that centralisation may triumph over our liberties. Those institutions and those fundamental principles require that the "private business of every separate town," and of every separate county also, shall be done by its own body-by those who understand it, and are most interested in its being well done. We talk of education now, while the schools of only real education are being daily shut up. Those schools are the local institutions where men, in their parishes, and towns, and counties, used to deliberate on, and carry out, their own affairs. Now, we are taught that we must think and deliberate, and have every thing done, by deputy; and that we must go for every thing, cap in hand, to Parliament or some Commission, or other machinery of functionarism. If Parliament kept to what is declared by the highest authorities to be its true function-" the maintenance of the law, and the redress of grievances which happen touching the common good of the whole realm,"-all would be well. Its business would be well done, within reasonable time; and the business of local institutions would also be well done.

Lord Palmerston, on the same day, stated-in more of the spirit of the statesman-that the Sewers' Commission is to be re-constructed; "basing it," according to one report, "on the principle of representation;" according to another, "infusing into it the principle of local administration." I hope the latter is the true intention. Unless it is so, the former is a mere sham and delusion. "Representation," without "local administration," is only adding insult to injury. Lord Palmerston has a fine opportunity. I trust he will not throw it away. Then will the people have to thank him; and Parliament will have to thank him also. But it is rather odd that neither the Queen's Speech, nor any speech of Minister alludes to the very important fact that the Public Health Act and the Poor Law Act-the chief strongholds of centralisation in England-expire this session. It is very necessary the public should know this, and watch all proceedings; else their renewal will be smuggled through Parliament. Let us hope that Lord Palmertson will show the same statesmanlike appreciation of the value of constitutional principles, in reference to those measures, as he at any rate feels it necessary to seem to show in reference to the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL'S PROPOSITION FOR REPRESENTATIVES OF MINORITIES.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING ADVERTISER.

SIB,-Objections have been taken to Lord John Russell's proposition as to the representation of Minorities, as contained in his new Reform Bill. In these objections you have joined. Still, I think, your candour will allow me to offer a few considerations leading to an opposite conclusion.

Of all the points that have been suggested in any Reform Bill introduced within this century, there seems to me, I must confess, no single one so strikingly sound and constitutional as this proposition. The essence of free institutions consists in the opportunity being always present for every side of every question to be discussed. From such discussion, taken from every point of view, the most truthful result has the best chance of being attained.

It may suit a Lord Mayor to stop discussion by calling in the police. This is, however, but emulation of Russian and Austrian systems. The statesman, and the lover of truth, will desire that every inducement shall be open for considering every question in the fullest way; that is, from the most numerous points of view. On this principle all our best institutions have been founded. It is the practical realisation of this that makes the action of our local institutions valuable.

The absolute rule of any majority is but tyranny: as much so as the rule of any despot. That mode only of government can be safe and sound, which gives the ever-present opportunity,-and, more than this, requires its exercise,-for the minority to utter argument and invite discussion in support of what they believe to be truth. The noblest truths that the world rejoices in, were once the opinions of minorities.

Here lies one of the great difficulties of representative institutions ;-the problem of making them consistent with true freedom. If the representatives utter only the views of the majorities, the institution is representative in name only, not in fact. The task of the Statesman is, to make the institution a reflex of the varied opinions of the represented; so that full discussion may be ensured among the representatives. Herein lies the importance of local representation, and the inapplicability of any system of mere arbitrary "electoral districts." Thus all manner of special interests are represented. But an additional element seems needed. In the same place, and under the same general circumstances, men see the same things dif ferently. Unless this mode of difference can also be expressed in the great representative assembly, it is not a true representative institution.

The" protection of the minority," has been a convenient cry raised sometimes, to support functionary interference. And the modern tendency is, to limit the numbers of representative bodies. Both are clearly errors, arising from the principle above illustrated being lost sight of. In every case, the object should be, to ensure each question being considered from a wide

range of points of view, by those having the best opportunity of knowing all the immediate bearing. To this end, opportunity for every marked minority to be heard, and to urge its arguments, should be given, in every representative assembly, if the character of true free institutions is to be maintained. I could urge many other points in illustration. I will only add, that there seems to me to be no more legitimate way of carrying out, practically, the ideas thus suggested, than to impose on places whose range and circumstances are large and varied, and where the number of choosers is great, the necessity of having some proportioned representation of the minority, as well as of the majority. Without dwelling on minor points, I, for one, cannot but thank Lord John Russell for this feature in his new Reform Bill.

Peradventure, Sir, I may find myself in the minority in the views thus expressed. Still, the suggestion of them will afford to those who differ the opportunity of showing wherein lies the fallacy of my argument. So will their own case be strengthened.

Highgate, Feb. 18.

I am, Sir, &c.,

TOULMIN SMITH.

THE BOARD OF HEALTH.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING ADVERTISER. SIR,-Attention is called, in an article in your paper of this day, to the Board of Health and a report just issued by it. Upon that report the comments in the article are founded.

It is due to truth and honesty, that the public should be reminded that the report in question is a purely ex-parte report, put forth to make out a case for renewing the Board, which expires this session, and enlarging its already arbitrary powers. I am in a position to prove that many of the facts stated in that report are untrustworthy, that the most material facts are not stated, and that its conclusions are altogether unsustainable and unsound.

The law of England justly esteems no evidence worthy of trust where there is not opportunity given for answer and cross-examination; that so, upon & view of all sides, right conclusions may be formed. The modern and unconstitutional system of govern ment by commissions, of which the Board of Health is an example, sets this principle at defiance. The supporters of these commissions dread the free exercise of the faculties and thoughts of men. Their art is, to contrive means of enforcing dogmas upon men under cover of paraded pretensions. They put forth carefully concocted "reports," which the slothful take as " official," and so to be all swallowed. This is the most effectual device that ever was contrived for benumbing the souls and minds of men by a system of intolerant State education;-a system which, when attempted without disguise, you have always opposed, but which, when thus disguised, is far more dangerous.

66

As to the labours described as con amore," if high emoluments, paid for enforcing crude Procrustean schemes, and preventing enterprise and real improvement, can be called working con amore, the members and officers of the Board of Health (Lord Shaftesbury excepted) deserve the praise :-not otherwise. No doubt they are now working con amore to get up these exparte "Reports," and to devise other means by which those emoluments may be retained, and the public mind rendered more and more helplessly subservient to such mischievous domination and fatal dictation.

I am, your obedient servant, Highgate, May 11th, 1854.

TOULMIN SMITH.