§ Mr. Sharman Crawfordpresented a Petition from Belfast, in favour of the Municipal Reform Bill, and praying that a measure of Reform should be extended to Ireland on the same principles as those which have already passed for England and Scotland. The petitioners stated that they wished to have the town of Belfast included in the provisions of any Bill of that nature which might pass the House, as its corporation had been for a considerable period inoperative for any useful purpose, or for its good local government. He respectfully requested the attention of the House to the prayer of the petition. It would be in the recollection of hon. Members, that a petition had been presented a few nights ago by one of the Members for Belfast with a directly opposite prayer. The petitioners, whose wishes he now brought forward, had at first felt it unnecessary to trouble the House on the subject, confiding in the wisdom and justice of the legislature in extending to them a measure based on the principles of the Acts for England and Scotland. They did not intend to forward any petition until they had heard of that which was presented by the hon. Member opposite, and which he (Mr. Crawford) must say was smuggled through Belfast. That petition, doubtless, never saw the light of day until it was presented in that House. No notice of the intention to get it up was given, and the inhabitants of Belfast first 1302 heard of it from the notice given by the hon. Gentleman opposite of his intention to present it. The petition which he held in his hand reached him on Tuesday last, but too late to present it with that intrusted to the hon. Member for Belfast. That hon. Gentleman, when he presented his petition, stated that it was signed by 8,000 individuals. In this he thought there was a slight mistake, for, on inquiry at the Report Office, he found there were attached to it only 4,364 signatures. He was sure the hon. Member did not wish to deceive the House, but some person had deceived him on the subject. He would not compete with the hon. Member in the number of signatures to the respective petitions, but he would defy him to impeach the respectability of those who signed that which he was about to present. They were men of interest and weight in Belfast, and the hon. Member would see among the signatures the names of those with whom he had formerly associated in standing forward to assert the rights and liberties of the people. He would see the names of men who were his associates when he eloquently and determinately advocated popular rights. The hon. Gentleman had cast off the principles which he maintained in his juvenile days; he had cast off the friends with whom he associated in other times; and had discarded the principles of which he was once the assertor. He was not surprised at the manner in which the petition had been kept in concealment while it was within the limits of Belfast; he was not at all surprised that when the petition came to this country it should be the object of the hon. Member to increase its importance; but, notwithstanding all that had been done to hide it at home and magnify it abroad, he would fearlessly place the counter-petition, which he had now the honour to present on the table of the House, challenging any hon. Member to deny its respectability.
§ Mr. Dunbarsaid, it was not his intention, being a very young Member of the House, to trespass long on its indulgence; but he felt that he should not be discharging his duty to his constituents nor to the inhabitants of the borough of which he had the honour to be one of the representatives, were he to be silent on art occasion when their interests were so deeply involved. It would be in the recollection of the House that his hon. Friend and colleague had 1303 presented a petition a few evenings since in support of the present system in the borough of Belfast, bearing, as had just been stated by the hot:. Member opposite, upwards of 4,000 signatures, and comprising those of persons of the highest respectability and of different political parties. In the sentiments contained in that petition he fully concurred. The municipal affairs of the borough of Belfast had for some years past been managed by two Boards appointed under a local Act. These Boards were called "The Board of Commissioners," and "The Police Committee." Having been a member of the latter for the last two years, he was better enabled to bear testimony to the efficiency of the present system, and, perhaps, the best proof of its working well was the fact that there had never been one word of complaint against it by any party whatever until the petition now presented by the hon. Member for Dundalk, If he might be allowed to state one fact, which appeared to him calculated to show the purity of the motives and the anxious desire of the committee to give general satisfaction, he would beg leave to state that the town of Belfast was divided into seven districts; to each of these three members of the committee were appointed, for the purpose of superintending' the several duties connected with their office, such as lighting, paving, and local improvements, and to inquire into the merits of any petitions or complaints that the inhabitants in their respective districts might make on those and other subjects. Now, so anxious were the committee to provide for the strict and impartial discharge of their duties, that they passed a resolution that no member of the committee should be appointed to a district in which he possessed any property, lest he should be biassed in his decisions. The committee, he could assure the House, was composed of individuals of different political sentiments, and yet he had never known the progress of the public business impeded on that account. The House would observe that his remarks had been solely" confined to the police committee, on whom the principal part of the business devolved. As to the Commissioners, he had every reason to suppose that their conduct had been generally satisfactory; and whatever differences might have occasionally arisen between the two Boards (and he believed that was all that was alleged against the 1304 present system by the petitioners) he did believe that the interest of the public had never suffered from them. This body, the commissioners, was also composed of persons of different political opinions; and he believed be was correct in stating that at present the majority of them were Liberals, and some of them very decided, as his hon. Friend and colleague could testify. The members of this Board were elected for life; whereas the members of the committee were elected annually. He could assure the House that in thus advocating the present system he had no self-interest to gratify, for he did believe that the proposed change would make no alteration in the political interest in the borough; but he was confident that the constant recurrence of elections would be a serious injury to the peace and prosperity of that rising town. As to the Corporation it was virtually defunct; but at all events he had no intention to say one word in support of it. He that morning, had received a letter from a noble Lord, who, from the situation of his property, might be supposed to have considerable interest in the borough, in which he stated, that he fully coincided in the view taken by the right, hon. Baronet, the Member for Tamworth, of Irish Municipal Reform, and would be happy to support him. He (Mr. Dunbar) felt it to be his duty to the hon. Member for Dundalk to call his attention to another petition which he lately presented on the same subject, as it appeared to him to contain a gross and wilful misrepresentation, and to reflect upon the character of a noble family, whose high and unimpeachable integrity required no eulogium from him. He alluded to the petition from Bangor in favour of Municipal Reform. The petitioners stated that the corporate bodies in Ireland had, in many instances, scandalously misappropriated the funds with which they had been intrusted for the public advantage, and had pursued for many years a system of wasteful expenditure and gross malversation, and it proceeded thus:—" That the Report of his Majesty's Commissioners will show that your petitioners have suffered grievously from those corporate abuses which have grown into rank luxuriance in the borough that they inhabit." He would now refer to the Report of his Majesty's Commissioners where he found the following:—" This Corporation presents a rare 1305 instance of a property preserved with care, and an income, generally speaking usefully expended, and satisfactorily accounted for." He (Mr. Dunbar) hoped the hon. Member would not suppose that he intended to reflect upon him, as he was sure, had the hon. Member read the petition, he would not have presented it. He would make no further remark, but leave it to the hon. Member to say which this House was to believe—the allegations contained in the petition, or the Report of his Majesty's Commissioners?
Mr. Emerson Tennantwould not waste the time of the House by replying to the very unhandsome personal attack with which the hon. Member for Dundalk had seen fit to favour them in his eloquent address—but with regard to the statement he had made of an error in the number of the signatures in the petition which he (Mr. Tennant) had presented on a previous occasion, he could only say, that if such an error existed, it originated with his constituents and not with himself. One would naturally suppose that the number of signatures attached to such declarations of opinion would be the most obvious test as to whether the contents were in accordance with the feelings of the community whence they emanated; and if the hon. Member for Dundalk conceived, on Monday last, that a petition with between 4,000 and 5,000 names attached to it was an evidence so contemptible and fallacious as not even to deserve to be laid on the table of the House, the hon. Member did not surely come down to-day in order to ask them to attach greater consequence to the document which he presented, and which scarcely contained one fifth that number. The circumstance of the getting up of this petition was, in his opinion, a prospective illustration of what might be anticipated from the workings of that party spirit which existed, not only in Belfast, but in every town in Ireland, and which would be called into vigorous and permanent action should the present Bill pass into a law—a party who were already prepared to make factious contest about every question, however beneficial or harmless, so soon as the setting up of Municipal Corporations should have established annual struggles for religious and political ascendency throughout every at present peaceful community in Ireland. If there ever was a petition emanating from a commercial body which, more than another, might have 1306 been thought likely to be unanimously adopted, inasmuch as it excluded all topics of political discussion, it was the petition which he had presented on Monday last, and when he had presented that petition on a former day the hon. Member for Dundalk had risen, and, in language more forcible than courteous, called upon the House not to receive it, as it did not fairly express the real feelings of the people of Belfast, on this question. The hon. Member also said, that he was instructed to state, that in the course of a few days a petition was to be forwarded to him for. presentation, which would really embody the genuine sentiments of the people of Belfast relative to the Reform of their Corporations. The petition which the hon. Member had just presented he (Mr. Tennant) presumed to be the one he had then announced. He would almost venture to say, that from the sentiments of that petition, notwithstanding the presentation of the present one, even the hon. Member himself (Mr. S. Crawford) would hardly dissent. In that petition the bankers, shipowners, merchants, and shopkeepers—all those who had the most direct interest in the prosperity and peace of the town besought the House to secure to them but two objects—first, a well-regulated, efficient, and economical system of municipal government; and, secondly, an assurance of quietness and repose in its enjoyment and administration. The first of these they stated that they already enjoyed under the operation of their present Local Acts, by the provisions of which every municipal function was satisfactorily discharged, without encountering the slightest opposition or deriving the slightest benefit from their existing Corporation. The petition just presented by the hon. Member for Dundalk stated that the machinery of these Acts was insufficient, complicated, and embarrassing. These, he confessed, were complaints which he, as the Representative for Belfast, had never heard of till that evening, although they might have reached the ears of the Representative of Dundalk; and, even supposing such defects to exist, it was surely a more simple course for that House, to simplify their intricacy, and to extend them when insufficient, than to abolish the system altogether, as the present Bill proposed, instead of amending some of its details. And as to the second object of the petitions—peace, unanimity, and good order 1307 in their town—to these they were prepared to bid an eternal farewell, as soon as a Municipal Corporation, with all its noisy machinery of canvassing and contests, councils, and committees, was set into full play in the midst of them. And yet what was the conduct of the so-called liberal party on this occasion, as stated by the hon. Member? No sooner had the inhabitants generally expressed a wish that their present Corporation should be abolished, and that they should be left to regulate their own affairs by Local Boards, popularly elected, as at present, than this liberal party, they who have been always the loudest to denounce the existence, suddenly muster their forces, and forward this petition to the hon. Member, to perpetuate and continue it. He did not object to the petition presented by the hon. Member for Dundalk, so far as it went to the abolition of the abuses at present existing in the Irish Corporations. On the contrary, so thoroughly convinced was he of the total inapplicability of the corporate system, in the present state of society in Ireland, to answer any purpose of useful and impartial government, that he should be delighted to see them annihilated altogether. His hon. Colleague (Mr. Dunbar) had alluded to the petition which the hon. Member for Dundalk had presented on a previous night, from the village of Bangor, in the county of Down, praying for a re- form in its corporate affairs. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence for the credit of other petitions in favour of this Bill that the first, or among the very first, presented in its favour, was that petition from Bangor, the only Corporation in Ireland of which the Commissioners have spoken with unqualified praise, as answering every end of good government, and exhibiting in action at the present moment all that this Bill proposes, namely, judicious management, equitable expenditure, financial publicity, a corporation in which the funds are "carefully preserved, usefully expended, and satisfactorily accounted for." Now, with regard to the village of Bangor, he (Mr. E, Tennant) must say, that if there was one incident in the Bill more preposterous than another, it was the idea of erecting such a hamlet into an actual Municipal Corporation. The right hon. Gentleman, the Attorney-General for Ireland, could not surely have known the actual insignificance of this place, when he included it in a Bill like 1308 the present. The House must know that there were two little bathing villages on the shore of the Bay of Belfast, which were the summer resort of the inhabitants, one at the distance of four miles from the town, called Holywood, the other, this Bangor, about six miles farther. Of these, from its vicinity and thriving condition, the most important by far was Holywood—the former had not above 2,500 resident inhabitants, if so many; and yet this pleasant little village was forthwith to have its Corporation reanimated, and all society enlivened under the auspices of a mayor, four aldermen, and twelve common councillors. He would really appeal to the hon. Member for Dundalk himself, who knows the village well, whether it would not be actually a standing jest in the north of Ireland, to speak of the mayor and aldermen of Bangor. He had no objection to the prayer of the petition presented from Belfast by the hon. Member for Dundalk, further than he had stated. He objected to its being considered as representing the feelings of the town, and not merely of the few individuals whose names it bore.
§ Petition laid on the Table.