MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS IRELAND).

HC Deb 09 March 1840 vol 52 cc1051-68

Viscount Morpeth moved the third reading of the Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Bill.

Sir G. Sinclair

said, that having rarely taken part during the last two sessions in any of the various debates respecting Ireland, he intended on this occasion to make some remarks upon the affairs and interests of that country—a country which during so many centuries had been groaning under the accumulated evils of misgovernment, or, in other words, had unhappily been cleaving to the ignominious thraldom of Papal domination, and which could never be permanently peaceful or prosperous without a repeal of the union, not between Great Britain and Ireland, but between Ireland and the see of Rome. He approached this task with unaffected reluctance, because he was afraid that some of the statements which he should submit, and some of the principles which he should avow, might not be assented to by many valued Friends around him, with whom he at all times deemed it an honour to act and accounted it a happiness to agree; but he could not, in the discharge or a public duty, allow himself to be so swayed by personal sentiments of deference and regard as to disguise the feelings of his heart and belie the convictions of his understanding. He was impelled to address the House on this subject by a deep and increasing persuasion—a persuasion not a little fortified by the menacing tone assumed, and the ominous prophecies uttered in quarters of high authority—that the Protestant institutions of Ireland, with which those of the empire stood indissolubly linked, were in fearful and imminent jeopardy. He believed that the very force intended to maintain tranquillity was so organised as to increase their danger. On the part of the Roman Catholics they beheld combination, energy, and success; whilst they too often found in the ranks of the Protestants dissension, supineness, and discomfiture. Each victory achieved by the former was an encouraging precursor of some new aggression, whilst every defeat sustained by the latter was the humiliating prelude to some fresh surrender. The potent screw of the 6,000,000 argument was as effectually wielded by the Roman Catholics as was that of the six Members' argument by an imperious boroughmonger for the purpose of extorting an unreasonable boon from the hard-pressed Prime Minister of a former era, whom he knew that he had at his mercy; so that the Roman Catholics were almost justified by the result of every past experiment in openly declaring to the imperial Legislature—"Because we are six millions, we must obtain whatever we ask, demolish whatever we dislike, and accomplish whatever we desire." It must, he thought, be admitted, that the Irish Tithe Bill, clogged as it was with so enormous a deduction from the incomes of the clergy, was wrung from their fears, and not conceded by their good-will. That deduction was rendered necessary by the culpable pusillanimity of successive governments, who ought to have enforced (as they would have done in the case of taxes, rents, or debts) the might and majesty of the law. But, though reluctantly assented to by the clergy, and on that ground alone not opposed by himself, it was in principle an act of sacrilegious injustice. They had been generous with other people's money, and he was convinced that through sacrifices which cost them nothing they had only purchased a hollow and precarious truce; by which the Protestants of Ireland had been discouraged in the defence of their not yet extinguished rights, and not yet confiscated property, while the Papists were stimulated to renew every menace, and persevere in every machination. No permanent advantage was ever secured by worshipping the goddess expediency; and a system of concession and compromise was seldom successful in the long run. In compliance with the wish, and in conformity with the example, of his right hon. Friend, he had abstained on several occasions from calling for a division when this bill was formerly before them. His un- feigned respect for his superior judgment prompted him to wish that he should enjoy the fullest latitude for trying his conciliatory experiment, of which, however, he not only doubted the success, but could not altogether admit the wisdom. His own hostility to this measure remained unmitigated and unchanged. Though the salutary amendments introduced by the House of Lords would have eliminated much that was noxious and much that was objectionable from the provisions of this bill, yet the reasonings so powerfully urged against its principle by his Protestant Irish friends had made so strong and indelible an impression upon his mind, as to convince him that by passing such an act in any form, they would furnish—not peace, but a sword; and thus not confer boon, but inflict a calamity upon Ireland. This bill, even when modified, could not fail to be received with jealousy and apprehension by a large proportion of the Protestant clergy and laity, the best and surest friends of British connection, and at the same time be viewed with perfect indifference by nineteen-twentieths of the Roman Catholic millions, for whose satisfaction it was said to be intended. He should never cease to think that Parliament would have exercised a more sound discretion by abolishing these corporations altogether; they would thus have placed all parties on a footing of perfect equality, and prevent those scenes of almost Guelph and Ghibelline discord and ferocity to which struggles for municipal ascendancy would give birth in many towns and cities throughout Ireland. The hon. Member for Dublin possessed a kind of magical kaleidoscope, through the medium of which he represented the state of Ireland under the most opposite aspects, according as it suited his convenience. At one time it was a paradise of quiet, at another a pandemonium of disturbance. For his own part, he fully concurred in viewing that country as a volcano, and he believed, that the embryo corporations would serve as so many craters to inundate the whole district in their respective neighbourhoods with the lava of sedition and discontent. Abolition was all that the Roman Catholics themselves had asked at no very distant period. But he had seen with sorrow and surprise, that their pretensions had always risen in the ratio of their power; it was even openly and ostentatiously affirmed, that they cajoled us when they were weak, and coerced us when they were strong; and now they were intent upon effecting not a mere annihilation of Protestant influence, but a palpable transfer of supremacy. There were only two classes of politicians who would derive any benefit from the new-fangled corporations, or who took any interest in their establishment, and those were intriguing priests and turbulent demagogues—the very persons whose despotism he, for one, was most anxious to control or to extinguish. There was one annual, or rather perennial, assertion of the noble Lord, upon which he should take the liberty to comment, because it greatly enhanced the alarm with which he viewed the relative position of Popery and Protestantism in Ireland. "The English," said the noble Lord, "have obtained Municipal Reform, because they are Englishmen; the Scotch have obtained Municipal Reform, because they are Scotchmen; the Irish have not obtained Municipal Reform, because they are Irishmen." He could only characterise such a position as most unfounded and unfair. For his own part, at least, he was opposed to the constitution of these Normal schools of agitation, as they had been so often and so emphatically termed; not because the corporate offices would be filled by Irishmen, but because the new system must increase the power of a party, in his opinion, the most inimical to the true welfare and permanent tranquillity of Ireland—a party who made no secret of their eagerness to overthrow the Protestant Church, and who would not scruple for the sake of effecting that unrighteous object to contend for a virtual dismemberment of the empire. Was the noble Lord prepared to follow out his reasoning to its legitimate conclusion? Supposing that in the next epistolary anathema addressed to him by Archbishop M'Hale, that Ajax Flagelisses of modern polemics were to say, "the Episcopalian English have obtained an Episcopalian Church establishment, because they are Englishmen; the Presbyterian Scotch have obtained a Presbyterian Church Establishment, because they are Scotchmen; the Catholic Irish have not obtained a Catholic Church Establishment, because they are Irishmen." According to the noble Lord's doctrine he could see no confutation of this analogy, and as he had furnished the argument, he trusted he was, prepared to supply the answer. He had at all times cordially supported the principle of converting upon fair terms the tithe into a rent-charge; but he must confess, that he had not been led to form a very high or sanguine estimate as to the amount of security which that sacrifice was likely to purchase for the Established Church. It would prevent direct collision between the Protestant clergyman and the Roman Catholic occupier of the soil, an object unquestionably of the greatest importance; but had it appeased the inveterate enmity of the Popish priest? Had it silenced the inflammatory invectives of the Popish agitator? Did any one dream that the object for which these conspirators against Protestantism had been striving was to procure for the heretical incumbent an easier and more regular payment of his due, and to extort for the landlord an usurious per centage in his new capacity of banker or tithe-proctor to theclergy? Let the House listen to the terms in which the hon. Member for Tipperary, had denounced the Church of Ireland, that Church which he had sworn at the Table of the House not to weaken or to impair, and then judge whether that hon. Member, and those who thought as he did, could regard the Tithe Bill as a satisfactory and final adjustment. The hon. Gentleman described it in very different terms from those which he would have ventured to employ in 1828. The Roman Catholics were wise men in their generation. They knew exactly what claims it was expedient, under any given circumstances to advance, although the ultimate object of annihilating the Protestant religion was never absent from their thoughts, being not only cherished as a desire, but inculcated as a duty. "This," says he, "is the Church on which a faction fattens, by which a nation starves; the Church from which no imaginable good can flow; but evil in such black and continuous abundance has been for centuries and is to this day poured out, the Church by which religion has been retarded, morality has been vitiated, and animosity has been engendered." He avowed without hesitation, in the face of his country, that he could neither justify nor account for his past or present opposition to the Municipal Reform Bill for Ireland, on any other ground than one which he deemed to be paramount and conclusive—namely, a determination on his part not to strengthen by any act of his the hands of the Roman Catholic faction in Ireland, who, he was persuaded, were unanimous in their wish and unchangeable in their design to overthrow the edifice of our Protestant Established Church, for the purpose of building up a Popish fabric on its ruins. The state of Protestant feeling throughout this Protestant country was not fairly expressed or adequately represented in that House. He believed, that the Protestants of Ireland were much less dismayed by the unscrupulous activity of their enemies, than disheartened by the paralysing apathy of their friends. The lamp of Protestant light would indeed burn with a dim and feeble flame if it were not supplied from other sources—extraneous to the British Parliament—with the pure and holy oil of devotedness, zeal, and affection. Those who taxed him for giving utterrance to those opinions with intolerance or exaggeration, indirectly charged our illustrious ancestors, the martyrs of Protestant truth, and the victims of Popish tyranny, with all the rancour of bigotry and all the rashness of fanaticism. His disappointment at the results which had flowed from the Roman Catholic Relief Act was perhaps even more poignant than that of his right hon. Friend who introduced that Act in 1829, as the preferable alternative in a choice of evils. He, when first elected a Member of that House, in 1811, declared himself a humble but zealous champion of that measure, as being in itself a positive good. For the sake of contributing, as he fondly thought, to the welfare and happiness of Ireland, he forfeited the goodwill of an Anti-Catholic Cabinent, and gave up all hopes of personal advantage by voting in favour of Mr. Grattan's motion in the spring of the following year. But he was compelled to acknowledge, with deep humiliation and regret, that not one of his predictions had been fulfilled, nor one of his expectations realised. And were such complaints peculiar to himself? He could not, on this subject, help alluding to a very striking contrast which he had seen illustrated by multiplied examples. He had the honour to be well acquainted with many politicians, who, like himself, were from the earliest commencement of their public career most strenuous advocates of the Roman Catholic claims. He had heard not a few of them lament the fatal error into which they were betrayed by false promises and specious misrepresentations, and a still greater number their grief and indignation at the extent to which solemn pledges had been broken and fresh pretensions urged by those whose cause had been espoused, on the ground of their repeated asseverations, that when the privileges then contended for had been conceded they would prefer no ulterior demands. On the other hand, he also knew many equally conscientious and intelligent persons who opposed these measures up to the latest moment, and he never found that one of them experienced the least compunction for the conduct which he pursued, or manifested the slightest astonishment at the evils arising from the concessions which he had deprecated and resisted. Not one of them had ever exclaimed, "Well, I am really lost in wonder when I reflect upon my own blindness and obstinacy. I am quite ashamed when I contrast the gratitude of the Roman Catholics towards their supporters, the abstinence of the priests from all interference in the turmoil of secular politics, the undisturbed tranquillity of Ireland, and the entire security of the Protestant Church, with all my gloomy anticipations, and all my exaggerated fears." Another objection which he had to this measure was the apprehension that it would ere long be followed up on the part of her Majesty's Ministers by further concessions to Roman Catholic importunity. On this head he was convinced that there was no finality. The principle on which they acted in all their negotiations with the movement party seemed to be this—"We will concede nothing that you will allow us to withhold, but we will withhold nothing that you insist upon our conceding." All the enemies of the Church were their friends, and most of the friends of the Church were their enemies. The news of their resignation was received last year with delight by the Protestant clergy throughout the realm; their return was hailed with a delirium of joy by the priests and precursors of Ireland, and why? Because the former anticipate extreme danger to our ecclesiastical establishment from their continuance in place, while the latter were led to hope that there was some prospect of obtaining through their instrumentality a portion, at least, of those objects which their leaders so strenuously insisted upon out of doors, and within the walls of Parliament as studiously abstained from urging. It was admitted and even contended by their own partisans that any alternative was preferable to that of resignation. The principle of maintaining a Protestant Church in Ireland was already made an open question in the Privy Council, by the admissions of the right hon. Member for Tipperary, and might become so, ere long, in the Cabinet. There every important measure had both in its supporters and its opponents. It was a kind of concordia discors, where they were usually six of one side and half a dozen of the other. The only maxim to which all must adhere was this, that duty must be sacrificed at the shrine of interest, and office retained' at the expense of principle. He was aware that it was quite hopeless to oppose the further progress of this bill; but he believed that, with all the most honest and zealous Protestants of Ireland it was not less unpopular than the most obnoxious of its predecessors. Her Majesty's Ministers boasted much of Irish tranquillity, which he placed on a level with Ministerial consistency; both were temporary and conditional, both depended entirely for their continuance upon considerations of policy and convenience. This bill must necessarily tend to increase Papal influence in Ireland, and to undermine British supremacy. It was a bill investing Daniel O'Connell, Esq., M.P. with the office of Lord Mayor of Dublin, quamdiu se male gesseret, and for enabling him to appoint vice-agitators to every office in every municipality in order that meetings might be annually held, and petitions annually voted, for the conversion of the rent-charges of the Protestant Church to secular purposes. It was a bill, not for dismantling certain time-honoured fortresses, but for compelling the Protestant troops to evacuate them, that Papist troops might take their place. His noble and right hon. Friends near him might ere long have cause to lament that they abandoned the high 'vantage ground of principle, and allowed themselves to be entangled in the narrow defile of detail amid the miry marshes of expediency. It must be allowed that their conduct was at all events most disinterested, for they would find, if they traversed the whole length and breath of Ireland, that while they had not conciliated a single opponent, they had damped the energy and outraged the feelings and forfeited the confidence of many a stanch and steady friend; how many true-hearted Protestants would now be induced to exclaim, "Why should we take an interest in the Conservative cause? Why should we canvass? Why should we vote? why should we register? why should we incur obloquy? why should we expose ourselves to danger? The incomes of our clergy have already been diminished by one fourth, our corporations are now recklessly transferred into hostile hands. How long will our Church itself be spared, why may it not also be made over to Popish tyranny and superstition? Our intrepid ancestors engraved on their banner the champion's legend, "No surrender." We their degenerate descendants, must ere long efface that inscription, and substitute in its place the cowards motto, "No resistance." He was persuaded that many a Protestant would ere long contemplate, with patriotic anguish and generous indignation, the processions of the Roman Catholic Lord Mayor of Dublin, in all the splendour of his official insignia, from the Mansion-house to the Mass-house; and he could wish no severer punishment for his hon. Friends near him, who had in this instance deserted the Protestant cause than they should be present as guests or as spectators at this inaugural banquet which would follow. There, "My Lord Mayor O'Connell" would in the first instance, propose "The health of his Holiness Pope Gregory XVI, and may be soon extend his paternal sway over an entire nation of united Irishmen," Next will follow, "Her Majesty the Queen," with, all the honours accompanied by a silent but very general supplication that her Majesty might in due time, like her illustrious predecessor Queen Mary become a nursing mother of the true Church, Then, "Her Majesty's Ministers, the Liberal Members of the House of Commons, and the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the appropriation clause," After that would be proposed, "The healths of the Duke of Wellington, Sir R. Peel, Lord Stanley, Sir J. Graham, the Recorder of Dublin, and the non-Liberal Members of both Houses, without whose generous co-operations we never could have ousted our bigoted predecessors, or attained those high offices which it is our pride and our happiness to hold." What the fifth toast might be he did not pretend to divine, but it certainly would not include Sir G. Sinclair or Sir B. Inglis. This bill could not fail to gratify the ambition, to further the interests, and to consolidate the power of a faction which cherished a deadly hatred to the Protestant faith, and was resolved to leave no means untried for overturning the Established Church—whilst at the same time it must enhance the mortification, endanger the security, and annihilate the influence of a party heartily devoted to the Protestant religion, and uniformly attached to British interests. It might, with a few alterations, be described in the emphatic language applied by a right hon. and learned Privy Councillor to the Church—it was a bill by which a faction would triumph and a nation be disturbed—a bill from which no imaginable good could flow, but evil in black and continuous abundance—it was a bill by which religion would be retarded, morality vitiated, atrocity engendered: and, therefore, after respectfully tendering to the House his acknowledgements for their indulgence, he fell the greatest satisfaction in having the honour to move, that it be read a third time this day six months.

Mr. E. Tennent

, in seconding the motion, would not take up the time of the House by reiterating the arguments which from the very first had induced him to oppose to the measure; but the question had been under consideration for so many years, and had been discussed in all its bearings in so many successive Sessions, that there was no Member, the most indifferent, who must not have had it forced upon him to form some opinion concerning it, and to become, in some degree, decided as to its bearings. He was not content to rest his opposition to the bill on the same grounds taken up by some of the gentlemen in the corporation of Dublin, whose alarms regarding its political and sectarian effects he could not but regard as highly excited and exaggerated; but these had been so repeatedly canvassed in the House, that be would abstain altogether even from stating the proportion of importance which did attach to them. In Dublin it might, and be had no doubt the change in those respects would be very considerable; but ha did not believe so of Belfast, and the other important towns in schedule A. But independently of these considerations, there were other and important grounds on which he had from the very first resisted the introduction of the measure, and on which be was still as strongly at ever op- posed to it, namely, its practical working, its turmoil, excitement, and expense—all points so objectionable in a mercantile community; and its cumbrous inapplicability at the present day to the objects which it was designed to accomplish, and which could be far more satisfactorily compassed by simpler, cheaper, and more rational arrangements. It was contrary to all experience to say that institutions and forms of municipal government, which might have been very necessary during the middle ages, and very suitable to a turbulent state of society, in which commerce was insecure and social relations undefined, must as a matter of course be indispensable or even applicable to the same objects now, when all these evils had disappeared, and when the functions of municipal government were confined exclusively to those arrangements which are essential to the health, the cleanliness, and the comfort of the municipal communities. He spoke, of course, of the form of government contemplated by the present bill, which was one referable to very remote antiquity. When the trading portion of the population first congregated into towns, and, separating itself from the agricultural, purchased or obtained the rights of self-government, the form which from vanity perhaps more than utility they chose, was an imitation of a limited monarchy, the mayor representing and frequently even to the present day assuming the very title of the sovereign, and the aldermen and common council representing the two Houses of Parliament, whilst the other attributes of government, the administration of justice, the maintenance of an armed force, the levying of taxes, and the state of royalty, each found an imitation in the recorder and his prison, the local police, the borough rate, and the corporate officers. All this might then, perhaps, have been desirable as well as imposing, but would any man in his sober senses say, that all this array of assemblies and independent departments was either desirable or suitable to the present times, or that a simple committee or a body of elective commissions would net much more effectually accomplish all that was to be achieved? Would any man say that it was essential to the well-being of Ireland that her towns should be watered and watched by a balanced constitution, or their streets paved and lighted on the principle of a limited monarchy? One great mistake had clearly been made when the corporations of England were under revision—that this absurd system had not been swept away altogether, and the functions of municipal government handed over to a body of the citizens chosen by the community at large and acting for the general good, without ostentation or turmoil or self-interest. But the commission of that error in England had led to a similar infliction upon Ireland in the shape of the present bill; and his opinion had from the first been, as it was now, in favour of sweeping away this absurd and antiquated machinery altogether. On this broad and intelligible principle, he, as representing a business-like and active community, was opposed to the present bill, as one utterly unsuited to their wants, and actually hostile to their peace. He had on a former occasion pointed out, that besides overthrowing a system of municipal government which at present existed to the perfect satisfaction of his constituents in Belfast, simple, cheap, and effectual, and substituting in its stead this complicated and extensive, and turbulent code, the new corporation, when elected, would in reality have not one single function to perform in that town. Its whole affairs would still be managed as heretofore, by boards chosen under local acts which were not to be repealed; and the new corporation, after all its noisy and angry elections, its costly and turbulent contests, would have an absolute sinecure. Such would likewise be the case in Dublin, so far as regarded municipal functions, and on the same principle many of the other great towns, of Ireland, Galway, Sligo, and Clonmel, were, if not avowedly hostile, at least very dubiously inclined towards it. In this way, available for no useful purpose, power would not fail to be perverted to political mischief, and the augmenting of that which but too loudly called for diminution—the bitterness of religious and political asperity and contention in Ireland. Now, if there was one town in that country in which more than another, he looked with indifference as to any positive power of accruing, in the end, to the Radical party by the bill, it was the town of Belfast; but he did see in it an inducement in the meantime to agitation, and a premium to discord, which would not fail, whilst they lasted, to be highly detrimental to the public peace: and to show the House the spirit with which one party at least word already preparing to carry the new law into execution, he would read an extract from the Belfast Vindicator, a Roman Catholic newspaper of great ability, and certainly of great candour and openness of purpose, which within the last few days contained the following exhortation to the new municipal constituency. The hon. Member was proceeding to read an extract cut from a copy of the abovementioned journal, when

The Speaker

said, that it was not competent to any hon. Member to read a newspaper in the House.

Mr. E. Tennent

replied, that he was about to read an extract from a newspaper as part of his speech—that he had cut out from the paper a slip of the portion to which he wished to call attention, and he conceived that he should not be out of order in reading it.

The Speaker

was sure the hon. Member himself must see that a slip was equivalent to a newspaper.

Mr. Hume

thought it would have the effect of depriving the House of many facilities in the transaction of business if they were prohibited from reading printed papers in that House, and he conceived that if they were denied permission to read an extract from a newspaper, it amounted to a prohibition against all printed papers.

The Speaker

understood the rule of the House to be, that unless a Member got up in his place to complain of a breach of privilege, he was not entitled to read a newspaper, and as a slip was equivalent to a newspaper, it appeared to him that the hon. Member for Belfast could not be in order when he read to the House, as he proposed to do, the extract in question.

Sir R. Peel

said, if he recollected aright, the rule applicable to the reading of newspapers in the House was this—that Members, on account of the indecorum and the inconvenience that would result from any such practice, should not be at liberty to read newspapers in the House which had no reference to the matters under consideration; but he doubted whether it would not be drawing the rule too tight to say that a Member was not at liberty to read an extract from a newspaper as part of his speech. Suppose a public meeting had occurred, the resolutions of which were thought to be of suf- ficient importance to deserve the attention of the House, and that an hon. Member found reading from a newspaper to be the most convenient mode of putting the House in possession of those resolutions, were they to say that such a proceeding would be out of order? Could they establish a rule prohibiting such a reference? He knew it was irregular to refer to a report of a speech appearing in a newspaper, and purporting to have been delivered in that House; for of course hon. Members could not be held responsible for anything which they had not themselves formally authorized. Reports appearing in newspapers of speeches made in that House were undoubtedly matters which could not be referred to as authorities; but he thought it would be inconvenient if hon. Members were not at liberty occasionally to make extracts from newspapers a part of their speeches. The House could not distinguish between newspapers on the one hand, and pamphlets, reviews, and books on the other; and he presumed it would not be said that they were to refer to no printed paper.

Lord J. Russell

said, he did not see any difference between printed books and. newspapers, so far as the reading of extracts was concerned; and he must say, that he had seen the reading of such extracts allowed, though it certainly was contrary to the strict rules of the House. If, however, an hon. Member made an extract, whether printed or written, whether from a newspaper or from a book, a part of his speech, be the strict rule what it might, the practice had of late been to leave such a matter to his own discretion.

Sir R. Peel

observed, that on a late occasion large passages from newspapers were read in the House, containing a correspondence between Messrs. Fox and Forsyth, respecting the frontier of New Brunswick, which contained information of great public importance. He should, of course, treat with the greatest possible respect any opinion coming from the chair; but he never before had heard, that the reading of extracts was contrary to order.

Lord J. Russell

remembered some years ago, that he had occasion to refer to reports of considerable importance respecting the conduct and treatment of prisoners, that the Speaker of that day held he was out of order, and said, that such extracts as those which he had pro- posed to read, were out of order, and could not be read without the permission of the House.

Mr. E. Tennent

then resumed, and proceeded to read in the following terms the extract to which he had previously referred. As regards Belfast, we have looked closely into the probable state of the franchise in the different wards, and we can safely promise to Reformers a decided majority in the council. It is time to consider what proportion of that majority, or rather of the candidates hereafter to form it, will be selected from the Catholic body. If the 30,000 Catholics in Belfast be permitted, without the heat and excitement of a contest to select eight councillors and two aldermen out of the forty gentlemen to be chosen by these officers, we can promise that they will seek no more; it would not be candid to omit adding, that they will be content with no less. The Catholics of the town will speedily meet to put forward their views in a more distinct manner, and to arrange de-details important to success. An appeal will then be made to Protestant Reformers, the result of which we heartily trust will be a warm co-operation between both. It would seem that this honest avowal of the Catholic organ had excited the alarm of the more wily ministerial paper in Belfast; for in the next publication of the Vindicator appeared the following:— The Northern Whig of yesterday, referring to our late articles on the municipal question, deprecates the idea of sectarianism having any influence on the selection of corporators in Belfast, and declares that people will care little for the religion of the parties if they be otherwise qualified. This would be sad drivel, if it were not something worse. No question was ever agitated from the beginning, not even the question of Catholic emancipation, more completely in reference to sectarianism than this one. And so the writer proceeds to justify the determination of the Roman Catholics to make it, not a municipal, but a religious and political question. Now, he (Mr. Tennent) had already said, that the issue of such a struggle he held in utter contempt. The Radical and movement party would in the end make nothing by the strife; the influence of property and the good sense of commerce and business would in the end prevail, and keep each party in its proper place; but at the same time he could not express in too strong terms his disapprobation of a measure which, without any practical or beneficial result, would lead inevitably to such a course of contention and heartburning, and animosity intermediately. He saw in it a system unsuited to the altered circumstances of modern times, and effects highly detrimental to the public peace, and chiefly on these general grounds, though not irrespective of others, he gave his hearty support to the motion of his hon. Friend, that the bill be read a third time on this day six months.

Mr. Shaw

regretted that his hon. Friend had made the present motion, and he hoped that his hon. Friends who had moved and seconded the amendment would be content with having delivered their speeches against the bill, and would not press the amendment to a division. He felt quite assured that if they did, the division would be misunderstood, and the conduct of those on that side of the House who voted against his hon. Friend's amendment would be subjected to being both misinterpreted and misrepresented. If, however, a division was pressed, then he must act under the circumstances in the way which he believed to be the most consistent with the course he had hitherto taken, and with the general views which he entertained on the subject of the bill, and that would be by voting against the amendment. He might have absented himself altogether, but he was adverse to shrinking from the responsibility of taking one line or other upon a question of so much importance, and in respect to which from first to last he had been obliged by circumstances to bear an active part. He was free to admit to his hon. Friends that he did not approve of the bill in its present shape, and that if the question was whether or not it should in that shape pass into a law, he should vote against it. [Hear, hear, from Sir G. Sinclair.] His hon. Friend cheered, and true it was, that according to the mere technicalities of the House, he might on that account be expected to vote for the amendment of his hon. Friend, but he was not prepared to sacrifice substance to form, and the practical question that would be decided by the vote of that night was whether or not the bill should be sent to the House of Lords for the purpose of being amended there, and then so amended passed in the present Session. He had, in strictness, no right to assume that the amendments which he had proposed in that House would be made elsewhere; but that question was not a new one; they were well acquainted with the stages through which it had already passed, and he particularly bore in mind that those amendments for which he contended had last year been made in the other House of Parliament, and that the noble Lord opposite, the leader of the Government (Lord J. Russell) had subsequently declared in the House, and in his presence, his willingness to accept of the bill thus amended. Considering then, that the noble Lord was bound by the same honourable obligation, upon which he and others on his side of the House had acted in reference to that same measure, to adhere to the spirit of the declaration he had thus made at the end of the last Session, he felt it his duty not to oppose the hill being forwarded in order to that end. He would not then further advert to those implied pledges or public declarations which had been made on both sides of the House than to say, that if he was released from any share in them, which, after the statements made by the leaders of the Conservative party in both Houses of Parliament, and the condition of the two other Irish measures then in operation having been granted, he did not feel any Member of that party who had not dissented from them well could be, yet he was unwilling to rest his conduct upon that narrow ground; and even if he was free from all such honourable engagement, he should be prepared to say upon the intrinsic merits of the question itself, that he would regard it as more conducive to the public good and to the welfare of Ireland, that the question should be settled on the principle that had been agreed on by both Houses of Parliament, than that it should remain any longer in its present unsettled and most unsatisfactory condition, and they seemed to be reduced to that alternative, for none of his hon. Friends who had objected to his course had themselves proposed to substitute any other; and as his hon. Friend had dwelt so much upon the Protestant interests of Ireland, to which, he trusted, he was as firmly attached as his hon. Friend or any other Member of that House, he could not help saying, that he considered the true interests of Protestanism in Ireland to be rather prejudiced than served by the patronage and advocacy of those injudicious and irrational persons into whose hands some of the present corporations bad too much fallen of late, owing prin- cipally, he believed, to the fact, that the legislation of the last five years had so crippled the powers of the existing corporations, in regard to the management of their property and the appointment of their officers, as to have driven from all share in their control, the most respectable and influential persons who had been previously in connection with them, and to have prevented all others of that class from joining them. Under all these circumstances, if a division was pressed, he must vole against the motion of his hon. Friend to postpone the consideration of the question for sis months more; but he had principally risen to deprecate any division being taken in that particular stage of the measure, as being calculated to produce misunderstanding, and to countenance the appearance of a difference of opinion which did not really exist on the opposition side of the House.

Colonel Perceval

wished to arrest the course of this pernicious measure, and should, therefore, support the amendment. None of those amendments which even his right hon. Friend, the Recorder of Dublin, had considered necessary had been carried. The bill would take the government of the corporations out of the hands of those who were friendly to the connection with England and to the institutions of the country, and put it into the hands of those who were desirous to overthrow those institutions and to destroy the English connection. It was true that the Bill would be purified of much of its dross in another place; but no change which it would undergo there would render it a good measure. He was bound, however, as a Member of that House, to deal with the bill as it then was, without looking to any probable alteration elsewhere, and he would, therefore, vote against the third reading.

Colonel Maxwell

would also vote against the third reading. If he had been able to attend when the question was put upon the second reading, he would have voted against it.

The House divided on the original motion:—Ayes 182; Noes 34:—Majority 148.

List of the AYES.
Adam, Admiral	Baines, E.
Aglionby, Major	Baring, rt. hn. F. T.
Ainsworth, P.	Barron, H. W.
Anson, hon. Colonel	Bellew, R. M.
Bailey, J. jun.	Bernal, R.

Bewes, T.	Hutchins, E. J.
Blake, M. J.	Hutton, R.
Blake, W. J.	Irving, J.
Bowes, J.	Knight, H. G.
Bridgeman, H.	Lambton, H.
Briscoe, J. I.	Langdale, hon. C.
Brocklehurst, J.	Lascelles, hon. W. S.
Brotherton, J.	Lemon, Sir C.
Browne, R. D.	Liddell, hon. H. T.
Buller, Sir J. Y.	Lister, E. C.
Busfeild, W.	Loch, J.
Campbell, Sir J.	Lockhart, A. M.
Clay, W.	Lushington, C.
Clerk, Sir G.	Lushington, rt. hon. S.
Clive, E. B.	Lynch, A. H.
Clive, hon. R. H.	Macaulay, rt. hon. T. B.
Collier, J.	M'Taggart, J.
Coote, Sir C. H.	Mahon, Viscount
Corbally, M. E.	Marshall, W.
Craig, W. G.	Martin, J.
Curry, Serjeant	Marton, G.
Dalmeny, Lord	Maule, hon. F.
Darlington, Earl of	Melgund, Viscount
Davies, Colonel	Miles, P. W. S.
Denison, W. J.	Milnes, R. M.
Divett, E.	Morpeth, Viscount
Donkin, Sir R. S.	Morris, D.
Douglas, Sir C. E.	Nicholl, J.
Buncombe, T.	O'Brien, W. S.
Dundas, F.	O'Callaghan, hon. C.
Du Pre, G.	O'Connell, M. J.
Eaton, R. J.	O'Connell, M.
Eliot, Lord	O'Conor Don
Elliot, hon. J. E.	Ord, W.
Ellice, right hon. E.	Paget, F.
Ellice, E.	Parnell, rt. hon. Sir H.
Evans, Sir De L.	Patten, J. W.
Evans, G.	Pattison, J.
Evans, W.	Pechell, Captain
Feilden, W.	Peel, rt. hon. Sir R.
Fenton, J.	Pendarves, E. W. W.
Fitzalan, Lord	Phillips, Sir R.
Fort, J.	Philips, M.
Gisborne, T.	Philips, G. R.
Gladstone, W. E.	Phillpotts, J.
Gordon, R.	Pigot, D. R.
Goring, H. D.	Pinney, W.
Graham, rt. hon. Sir J.	Planta, right hon. J.
Grattan, J.	Ponsonby, hon. J.
Greene, T.	Price, Sir R.
Grey, rt. hon. Sir G.	Price, R.
Grimston, hon. E. H.	Protheroe, E.
Guest, Sir J.	Pryme, G.
Hall, Sir B.	Pusey, P.
Hardinge, rt. hon. Sir H.	Rae, rt. hon. Sir W.
Harland, W. C.	Reid, Sir J. R.
Hastie, A.	Rich, H.
Hawes, B.	Roche, W.
Hawkins, J. H.	Rumbold, C. E.
Hector, C. J.	Rundle, J.
Hill, Lord, A. M. C.	Russell, Lord J.
Hobhouse, rt. hon. Sir J.	Rutherford, rt. hon. A.
Hollond, R.	Sanford, E. A.
Horsman, E.	Scrope, G. P.
Howard, hon. E. G. G.	Seymour, Lord
Howard, F. J.	Sharpe, General
Hume, J.	Shaw, rt. hon. F.

Sheil, rt. hon. R. L.	Vigors, N. A.
Slaney, R. A.	Villiers, hon. C. P.
Smith, J. A.	Vivian, Major C.
Smith, A.	Vivian, rt. hon. Sir R.
Somers, J. P.	Wall, C. B.
Somerville, Sir W. M.	Wallace, R.
Stanley, E.	Warburton, H.
Stanley, Lord	White, A.
Stanley, hon. W. O.	Wilbraham, G.
Stewart, J.	Williams, W.
Stock, Dr.	Williams, W. A.
Strutt, E.	Wilsbere, W.
Sturt, H. C.	Winnington, Sir T. E.
Style, Sir C.	Wood, C.
Sugden, rt. hon. Sir E.	Wood, G. W.
Surrey, Earl of	Worsley, Lord
Tancred, H. W.	Wyse, T.
Thornley, T.
Troubridge, Sir E. T.	TELLERS.
Turner, E.	Stanley, hon. E. J.
Turner, W.	Parker, J.

List of the NOES.
Blackstone, W. S.	Mackenzie, T.
Broadley, H.	Maunsell, T. P.
Castlereagh, Lord	Maxwell, hon. S. R.
Chute, W. L. W.	Neeld, J.
Darby, G.	Palmer, G.
Dick, Q.	Perceval, Colonel
Dunbar, G.	Pigot, R.
Duncombe, hon. W.	Polhill, F.
Duncombe, hon. A.	Pringle, A.
Fector, J. M.	Richards, R.
Fox, S. L.	Sheppard, T.
Grimsditch, T.	Shirley, E. J.
Hamilton, Lord C.	Waddhagton, H. S.
Henniker, Lord	Williams, R.
Hodgson, F.	Young, J.
Hodgson, R.
Houldsworth, T.	TELLERS.
Jones, Captain	Sinclair, Sir G.
Knox, hon. T.	Tennent, E.

Bill passed.