TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING ADVERTISER.

SIR, Public attention is being called to what professes to be an inquiry, under a royal commission, into the state and government of the Corporation of London. Violent attacks are being systematically directed against that Corporation, without, however, any distinct charge being fixed upon it, or any advantage of argument discoverable, except that which a man enjoys who attacks from ambush, and has the power, and always exercises it, of refusing to give opportunity for defence.

But I have not seen the public anywhere reminded that the questions involved in this inquiry do not concern the Corporation of London alone. They are not special, but universal. Every one who values peace and good order, intelligence and self-reliance, and the maintenance of free institutions against insidious encroachments, is bound to watch narrowly such a proceeding as this "Inquiry" professes to be. The whole question of the principle and practice of Municipal Institutions is at stake.

It is the temper and disposition of our day,-a temper and disposition carefully cherished and appealed to by all governments,—to give heed to what is selfish and self-aggrandizing, as the one main thought and occupation of life. Men would avail themselves of all the advantages of social and political existence, and shun carefully all its corresponding duties and responsibilies. They blot out the precept to love their neighbours as themselves; and think it a fine and very genteel thing to show their superiority to all who heed that precept, by sneering at the Institutions which alone can insure its continual practical observance, as antiquated and a "humbug," They are loud in verbal pretence at anxiety for the progress of what can be but a mere formal education; but would put down and "absorb" all the Institutions which alone can ever give the real means and practical field for an education befitting freemen, or secure an intelligence that will know how to value and rightly use and improve those opportunities and Institutions, confidence in the permanence and security of which, peace, good order, and lasting social prosperity must always depend.

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Every intelligent man would have supposed that the main points in an inquiry into the Corporation of London would have been, first, the attempt to discover, from such experience and well-formed opinions as could be got, what are the essentials, the true ends, and the practical means, of sound municipal institutions; and then, without condescending to any personal or petty details, whether and how far the Corporation of London has, at any former time, answered these conditions; at what time, and under what circumstances, it most did so; when and wherein any change has taken place; and wherein any short-comings now are. It would have been remembered, in doing this, that man himself, however "mighty in reason and excellent in faculties," can only be known, as to either capabilities or practical institutions, by that history which is a record of human experience and of the results of human capabilities.

No such course has been adopted. Men have been admitted as " witnesses" to prove-nothing but their own selfishness and contempt of their first duties. Others have been admitted to parade, under special ostentation of oath-taking, the picked-up eaves-droppings and small scandals that spleen and discontented vanity always hunger after, but which have certainly, in this case, failed altogether even to make out a prima facie case to justify any pretence for the necessity of inquiry.

On the other hand, this commission has refused to receive and hear that which would have opened broader and practical views. It has distinctly refused-I affirm the fact, as within my own knowledge-to hear evidence which had no scandal to bring up, but which would have set forth and illustrated what is the actual and fundamental grievance that the City of London complain of, and would have traced its origin, and proved that the true remedy lies, not in a revolutionary, but in a constitutional course.

Allow me, then, Sir, to invite public attention, through your columns, to what the real merits of this inquiry are; what is the mode in which it proceeds, and its actual authority; and what is the character of the schemes and statements that it has been the means of giving to the world. The subject of municipal institutions is one which has been my study for many years, and the object of my not unsuccessful practical labours, also, for several years and in several places. As to the City itself,-I was the principal means, nearly six years ago, of keeping out a centralised interference on sanatory matters; and the persevering and successful activity of the City Commission of Sewers (contrasting so strongly with the Metropolitan) has well justified the effort. As to the constituency of the Corporation, I also made, three years ago, considerable and continuous exertions, which were entirely approved and supported by the regular and legitimate expression of opinion of the Ward of Farringdon Without;-and would, in their results, though not by that revolutionary process which alone will satisfy some men, have led to the removal of every abuse that the most fastidious can justly complain of in "the state and government of the Corporation of London."

I hope, therefore, that I may, without presumption, ask the attention of those who discuss, on any side, the subject of the Corporation of London; provided their advocacy or hostility is not the result of bigotry or vanity, or of spleen, or the rejected application for a ball or dinner ticket.

The Corporation of London is not perfect. In other words, it a human institution. I would see its actual defects remedied,—not destroy it because they are present. A sensible man does not cut his throat because he gets hungry: he recruits his strength by rejoicing in his dinner. Because there are some ailments, let us not apply the butcher's knife to slay, but the best skill we can to re-invigorate.

But, if the Corporation of London be not perfect, how is it, with this Commission now sitting for "inquiry" on it? It well behoves a body assuming to sit in judgment on an institution that has endured actively than a thousand years, to show that its own hands

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are clean; that both its mode of procedure is sound and its authority unimpeachable. I affirm that this Commission will not stand the test on either point.

There can hardly be a worse symptom of the ignorance or want of principle of men, than when, in reference to any end sought, the character of the means to it becomes matter of indifference. The means used to an end are always of as much, oftentimes of more, importance than the end itself. At this time, many, who profess all sorts of liberality and all manner of devotion to popular rights and to "Reform," sound great cry of triumph at this Commission of Inquiry. Are they consistent in so doing? Is there not a previous question they should have considered? Flunkeyism has, unfortunately, become so prevalent in our day, especially among those making loud pretensions of liberality, that few men dare look a Royal Commission in the face.

No body of intelligent men, whose object it is to get at the truth on any subject (in contradistinction to the mere getting up of props to a foregone conclusion), will ever allow themselves to consider it as discretionary whether they shall take any evidences within their reach. It is their clear first duty to accept all evidence tendered. The law, too, requires this where the procedure is a legal one. But I have already stated, and repeat, that this commission has, thus early, refused to hear evidence most material, if the getting at truth were sought. I have shown, too, that it has not adopted the only useful and material line of inquiry.

Again, no evidence will be accepted, where truth is sought, without every opportunity being given for the most searching cross-examination, in order to test its reality and value. In this case, it was clearly requi site that it should have been an express condition to the hearing of every witness, that the Corporation of London should be present, represented, through the whole time, and every witness be cross-examined by its authorised representative. As it is, the very first witness began, and built up his whole story, on a misstatement so gross and palpable, that a single question on cross-examination would have put him out of court.

However much disposed any one might have been to see this commission hear witnesses, and even help it in doing so, had its course of procedure been fair and impartial, and such as to bespeak general con!fidence, apart from any legal obligation, when it rejects this course the question is forced-What is the authority of a tribunal that thus acts, and on a subject of such great and universal importance ?

We have been told, indeed, that the Corporation of London has consented to the Commission. I reply,the Corporation of London can give no such consent. When a former quo warranto was brought against the City of London, which had the cover, at least, of legality, it is recorded that "the Common Council knew it was not in their power to betray their city.”* Nor has the Common Council now the power or right to betray their city. But it is a question beyond even this. The Corporation of London is but one among the municipal institutions of England. It is the head

and chiefest of them, it is true: but only so much the greater is its responsibility not to betray the rights and liberties which it has in keeping, and for the firm guarding of which it is looked up to as an exemplar.

There is no doubt whatever that the object and intention of the instigators to the issue of this Commission, are to undermine and destroy the Corporation of London, and to supersede it by the shadow of a French municipality, which shall be a convenient tool in the hands of a centralising government. The scheme is all ready, cut and dried. A sort of a case has to be got up, to salve over the recommendation of it. Those who are at the bottom of it, rely on the daily increasing selfishness of certain classes of the community, to enable them to accomplish their designs. These classes are able to make themselves more heard than others, though their merits in the State are less, and their numbers as nothing in comparison. But it is they who are always crying to Parliament and Government to set somebody else to do for them that which it is their first duty to the State to fulfil themselves; that so, being enabled to leave their duties undone, they may have more time to devote selfishly to hoarding up gains. Government lets itself be deluded, and functionarism is the gainer. All these solicitations are gladly seized on, as excuses to sap more and more the foundations of freedom and intelligence, and to root out all the substance and reality of those municipal institutions, without the constant activity of which a nation's liberties can have no being.

The Corporation of London has, for ages, stood in the way of such designs. Absolutely to destroy all our municipal institutions (already much undermined) it is felt that, as it has been significantly expressed by one witness before the Commission, they must " begin with London." That is the bulwark. An effective breach once made there, and what chance will Birmingham or Liverpool, or Manchester, have? Of course

none.

But to carry out this clever and well-schemed plan, a difficulty is met with at the outset. There are no lawful means by which the end can be begun or accomplished. Charles and James only ventured to pursue the same ends by a course that had a cover of legality. But one of the first acts of the Revolution of 1688 was to restore the Corporation of London to all its liberties and rights, on the express and solemnly-declared ground, that this would "tend very much to the peace and good settlement of this kingdom." Even that cover of legality would, however, fail now. Another resource must be invoked. The selfish spirit of the age has engendered, as a natural accompaniment, a depth of sycophancy and flunkeyism which has never before been reached in this country. It is thought that men will gaze in admiring wonder, and with awe-stricken spirit, on a Royal Commission, and that none will dare to question it. Those who suggested this Commission, and those who have been weak enough to let it be issued, must be perfectly well aware that it is altogether illegal; that it can carry with it no shadow of real authority. A fit instrument was such, to be employed to undermine the rights and liberties of the Corporation of London.

It would hardly be the place, in a newspaper, to enter on the proof of the unlawfulness, and want of any authority, of this Commission ;-and therefore that its issue is, in itself, but a deliberate blow aimed, in conscious illegality, at the Municipal Institutions of England. It is sufficient that, not making the charge anonymously or secretly, but pledging myself to its truth, and prepared anywhere to prove it, I now deliberately and publicly charge that the Commission of Inquiry at this time sitting on the Corporation of London is, and that all its proceedings are, altogether unlawful and illegal;-unlawful, as a violation, in themselves, of the Law of England (albeit the Commission would sit in judgment on the legality of the acts of others);-illegal, as specially in violation of both Common and Statute Law, as applicable to the City of London; that there is a lawful way of making full inquiry on the subject of the acts and deeds of the Corporation of London, but which has not been adopted; that no such Commission as this has, or can have, and that this has not, any power to administer an oath to any witness;-and that it can neither summon nor compel the presence of a single witness, or the production of a single document, before it. Having said thus much, and proposing to return to the subject in a day or two,

I remain, Sir, your obedient servant, Highgate, Nov. 12, 1853.

TOULMIN SMITH.

*Memorial to the Prince of Orange: 1688. This memorial contains many instructive passages on this subject; all of them precisely applicable at the present time.-T. S.

THE CORPORATION INQUIRY.-No. II.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING ADVERTISER.

SIR,-It is a trite remark that the very repetition of a story, known to be false, gradually accustoms men so much to the idea that they treat it by degrees as truth. So it has happened in regard to the Corporation of London. She has many enemies who have the means of making their voices heard. Gifted with a copious vocabulary, though with but small store of logic, they have set out with the rule of disregarding facts, and of repeating over and over again a certain round of sweeping assertions. There will always, even among the members of a popular body, be a dissatisfied minority who will greedily seize on any such balm to wounded vanity.

We are being now almost daily told, with an assiduity which, were the thing a fact, would be unnecessary, that the merchants of London would consider the offer of any of the dignities of the Corporation as an insult; that no merchant would "stoop to the office of Lord Mayor;" that the Lord Mayor "has only the distinction of being the first magistrate of the worst governed and best jobbed section of the metropolis;" and that the merchant princes of London "shun the Corporation as utterly beneath them."

It is difficult, perhaps, to say whether these pretences are more actually untrue, or more self-condemnatory if, and so far as, true.

There was once a merchant in London of the name of Beckford. Though his very name is of course entirely unknown to the present revilers of the Corporation, he was a merchant-prince whom no importer or exporter of either calicoes or sugar-bags of our day will presume to rank second to himself. Beckford thought the office of Lord Mayor not beneath his dignity. And, in the discharge of his duty in that office he said and did a thing or two which startled the sycophants of his day and the enemies of the liberties of England. If his successors, of our day, do not walk in his footsteps, the dishonour is theirs ; the fault does not lie in the institution, which remains to remind the world what the citizens of London have been, and how recreant some of them now are.

The name of "Beckford" is but one among a thousand that might be quoted.

There are some very refined gentlemen who cannot, we are often told, bring themselves to enter on the turmoil of a contested election for a seat in Parliament. It grates harshly on their delicate susceptibilities and æsthetic tastes, to stand face to face with their fellow men upon the hustings. Let such men be left to their æsthetics and rose-water. It were better that they should not contaminate the atmosphere in which freemen, conscious of their responsibilities to each other, live and act. It has been well said by an able weekly journal, in reference to another matter, in which a similar temper has been shown to that which certain London worthies now show, that "what is wanting is, less of that social hauteur which adds the antagonism of caste to that of interest, and bars and blocks up intercommunication of mutual wants, instead of freely opening every avenue and egress for them." Pity it is that a journal that can write such sound truth should lower itself to swell the vulgar cry against the Corporation of London.

The present Lord Mayor of London is an importer of teas. I cannot, for the life of me, discover why such a man is not every whit as good as he who imports currants or exports calicoes. I do indeed, perceive,—and take this to be the real meaning of the presumptuous sneer of the latter-that the former has been BO absurdly foolish, so utterly unmercantile, so recreant to the class," as to have given up, for some years past, a good deal of the time he might have given to mere money-hoarding, to inquiries and publicly beneficial labours in reference to prisoners and their management, and other matters; to his usefulness and ability in which, the Chief Baron of the Exchequer bore testimony on the 9th of this month. Such labours, such a subtraction of time from self, would, of course, have been considered by many modern merchant princes as beneath them,"the suggestion of it "an insult; "-certainly they could not "stoop to it." The public affairs they can alone condescend to take part in, are such as they hope may help to put an eighth per cent. on to the price of calicoes and sugar-bags. What are the liberties of nations, or the honour of their country, or the welfare of their fellow men, to them? They rush to subscribe to Austrian loans; they dread all institutions, at home

or abroad, that can serve to remind men that they owe duties to their neighbours and to society, and which stand as a perpetual rebuke to those who grasp at time and life, as given for nothing but to be engrossed with material selfishness. They are careless of the dishonour of their country or the overthrow of nations, so that what they call "Peace" can be maintained; by which they mean, and can conceive, nothing more than the continued opportunity to barter their wares in ignominious subserviency. They are loud in their indignation at whatever may, as they phrase it, "interrupt business" for an hour; however much tens of thousands may enjoy the rare opportunity of relaxation, and be wholesomely reminded by it, that the world has heretofore recognised other social duties than mere moneygetting, and rewarded their fulfilment.

The merchant princes of London were used, not later than a generation back, to regard their wealth as the means enabling them to discharge worthily their duties to their fellow citizens. The doctrine is now sought to be enforced, that the discharge of his duties to his fellow citizens is a thing which a London merchant ought to hold aloof from. To the neglecters of their own duty, the hatefullest of all sights is that of duty done by others. Hence, hugging their own real degradation, they say:-" Go to, now:-These things remind us of what our fathers did: the sight of them is an offence to us. Have we not helped to crush liberty throughout Europe: have we not helped to set up functionarism throughout England: have we not gotten the teachers of the people to proclaim that there is but one God, Mammon, and that all men must worship him only? And shall we suffer it, that in London there shall remain anything which may yet give a lesson and a hope to any that love law and freedom, and would have men discharge their duties to their fellows? Let us have no temples but the temples of the great God Mammon whom we worship. Then shall we reign alone as his priests, and all men shall be slaves to us."

This, if there be English in their language, is what is being now taught and preached by those who decry the Corporation of London. They would set up a mere purse-aristocracy to rule exclusively. A new serfdom is to be reared up. A few, to sustain themselves in glittering degradation, are seeking to enforce the keeping of all others back from every opportunity of fulfilling any of those functions and duties which are most worthy of men.

What every real statesman will continually aim at, as his chief work and duty, will be, to keep all men constantly reminded, and possessed of the fullest opportunity for discharge, of the responsibilities that attach to every member of the community, and which can never be really and properly discharged except by those who know, immediately, the circumstances and conditions, and are most immediately interested in their well management. Thus will every man become attached to the institutions which surround him:-Intelligence and enterprise will be continually prompted:-No room will be left for discontent at the neglect of funetionaries, or at the insolence of irresponsible officials.

Instead of this, the present day witnesses a ceaseless premium held out to the neglect, by every man, of all his duties. The invitation is given to every man to wrap himself up in an absorbing selfishness, while functionaries are spread in every corner, whose business it is at the same time to suppress all wholesome independent action, and irresponsibly themselves to make a parade of some procrustean system. The next attempt in this direction is to be the superseding of the locally managed police throughout England by a centrally controlled one; for which the pretence has been already got up, in the usual fashion, by the array of a blue-book of exparte picked evidence. And every incident is being carefully distorted, in order to bring the public mind to submit to this design. The Corporation of London would, no doubt, be an obstacle to the carrying out of this scheme. So it cannot too soon be got rid of. And the more irregular and unlawful the means (seeing no others are available), the more likely is the end to be accomplished.

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These are some among several equally worthy motives, that are now prompting the "infinite endeavours and artifices" (to quote a document I have already referred to), openly used to destroy the customs, privileges, charters, and government" of the city of London. The Government of England, "in imitation of its brother of France, strives to bring all the offices and magistracy of the kingdom, that were legally of the people's choice, to be solely and immediately depending on its absolute will for their being." Were not such the motives, every aim would point simply to re-invigoration; not, as it does, to destruction. It were as wise to pull down a house when a joist or two decays, instead of replacing these, as it is to propose, and insist on, as is being done, the sweeping away of the Corporation of London because there are men in London who neglect their duties, and because there have been certain legislative tamperings with the constitution of the Corporation of London which have had a pernicious effect.

And this last is a point to which, in connexion with what I have already said, I desire to ask attention before I conclude.

I alluded, in my last, to proceedings taken, about three years ago, by the Ward of Farringdon-Without, in reference to the Constituency of the Corporation. Those proceedings were neither hasty nor ill-considered. They were reported in your journal at the time, and extended over a period of more (I think) than six months. The main point which I urged during those proceedings, and which the Wardmotes confirmed and adopted as the basis of action, was,— that the great mischief that had befallen the Corporation of London, and to which all the other and unquestionable existing defects might be traced (either as the direct source, or as the cause of their delayed removal), was the interference, by certain acts of Parliament, with the actual rights of the Constituency of the Corporation. It was urged, and determined, that the great point ought to be, to insist on the restoration of their rights to the full constituency. Other things needed would then follow as