The Lord Chancellorsaid, he was intrusted with a petition from the city of Edinburgh, signed by upwards of 21,700, which he believed to convey the sentiments of all the inhabitants of that city, with the exception of a few individuals, who, amidst the general change which had taken place in the feelings of the country, still held out and retained their old opinions. The petition was very short, but he would not trouble their Lordships with having it read, as he could state in a single sentence its import. They stated, that in Scotland the Representation was entirely a mockery; and that by law, all the Members could be returned by persons who never saw the soil of the country. The petitioners further stated (he used their own words) that the effect of this system was, to degrade the people, to render Members unaccountable, and Parliament corrupt, and they prayed their Lordships to remedy the evils created by the system in Scotland, by adopting some plan for the improving the Representation of that country. In that prayer he cordially concurred. Independently of his connexion with his Majesty's Government, he was now, as he always had been, an advocate for a temperate, safe, and effective Reform, at the same time that he was a friend to all the established forms of the Constitution, and an enemy to rash and untried theories on this, as he would be on matters of far less importance. He rejoiced that a system of Reform, such as he alluded to, had received the unanimous support of that Government of which he had the honour to be a member. To state at present any thing of the nature of the intended plan of Reform, would be to depart from that resolution which Ministers had taken, as well firmly to press it on the attention of Parliament, as not to divulge any part of it to any man until the time should arrive when the whole would be submitted to Parliament,—a course as wise as it was respectful to Parliament itself. It was wise that to Parliament the first communication of the plan should come, except the respectful communication to a high quarter—that gracious Prince 663 whom his colleagues and himself had the honour to serve, and of whose assent to the whole plan they were entirely and confidently assured.
§ The Petition to lie on the Table.
The Lord Chancellorsaid, he had now another petition to lay before their Lordships, still more numerously signed than; the last. It was from the Merchants, Manufacturers, and Inhabitants of the City of Glasgow,—a city which had still more reason to complain of the state of the Representation of Scotland than that of Edinburgh. The latter city was said to have the choice of one Member—he did not say it had—and to state that the inhabitants of Edinburgh sent one Member to Parliament was only a fashion of talking, for that Member was not the choice of the 140,000 inhabitants of the city, but of thirty three gentlemen, very respectable, no doubt, in their way, but he would venture to say, that a man might visit Edinburgh over and over again without ever once hearing the name of any member of the Town Council, by whom this one Member was sent to Parliament. These respectable gentlemen took upon themselves the task of saving their fellow-citizens the trouble of selecting a fit and proper person to represent them in Parliament. They also managed the fiscal affairs of that city, just so well as to preserve its Corporation from becoming bankrupt, after the fashion of some other Corporations in that county,— whose leading members, the bailies, as they were called, when they contrived to involve the affairs of the town in complete ruin, left the people to get out of the scrape as they could. By good fortune, however, this was not the case in Edinburgh. But while Edinburgh enjoyed the nominal advantage of having one Member to represent it, Glasgow, with its population of 240,000 and upwards, had only a fractional part of a Member—being only a fourth or a fifth,—the other fractional parts, constituting one whole Member, being shared by other burghs, some of them very ancient, no doubt, but numbering very few inhabitants. The petitioners prayed the House to adopt some measures for removal of the evils of which they complained; and, considering the nature of their grounds of complaint, he could not but admire the calmness and temperance with which they presented their case to the House.
§ Petition to lie on the Table.