peace; and they declared, without hesitation, that the discretion intrusted to government by the acts of the last session had been exercised temperately and judiciously, and that ministers would have failed in their duty, as guardians of the peace and tranquillity of the realm, if they had not exercised their powers to the extent which they had done. Neither report excited much debate when it was presented. Mr Tierney, however, made some remarks upon that laid before the Commons, which he concluded by observing that it was scarcely worth while to oppose seriously the motion for printing a document so absurd, contemptible, and ludicrous.' Meanwhile, on the 25th, a bill had been brought into the Lords, entitled 'A bill for indemnifying persons who, since the 26th of January 1817, have acted in apprehending, imprisoning, or detaining in custody, persons suspected of high treason or treasonable practices, and in the suppression of tumultuous and unlawful assemblies.' In the awkwardness that there would have been in any member of the cabinet proposing such a measure of wholesale sanction and oblivion for any irregularities that might have been committed by himself and his colleagues, this bill of indemnity was presented by the Duke of Montrose, who held the household office of master of the horse. It was warmly and repeatedly debated in both Houses; but all the attacks of the opposition were repelled by overwhelming numbers on the divisions. In the Lords, the second reading was carried, on the 27th of February, by a majority of 100 to 33 votes; and the third reading, on the 5th of March, by a majority of 93 to 27. If we may judge by the attendance, no very general interest was taken by their lordships in the matter: the number of peers present on the first of these two divisions was no more than 71, including only 15 opponents of the bill; on the second, there were 67 peers present, including 12 of the opposition. The task of supporting the measure was chiefly sustained by Lord Liverpool and the lord chancellor; the principal speakers on the other side were the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord Erskine, and Lord Holland. A long and strong protest was entered on the journals by these three and seven other peers, in which it was argued that there had manifestly been no widely spread traitorous conspiracy, nor even any extensive disaffection to the government; that tranquillity might have been equally restored by a vigorous execution of the ordinary laws; that the only legal effect of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus being that it suspends the deliverance of the accused, ministers were not entitled to a general indemnity for all the arrests that had been issued upon mere suspicion, or expectation of evidence which was never produced, and for all the numerous and long imprisonments that had followed, until an open and impartial investigation should have taken place; that, from the mistaken principle of the bill, illegal proceedings were equally protected by it, whether they had been meritorious or malicious; and that it was not the occasional resort to secret and impure sources of evidence in cases of clear necessity, but the systematic encouragement of that manner of proceeding, 83 that was sanctioned by such a bill as the present. In the Commons, the first reading of the bill was carried, on the 9th of March, by a majority of 190 to 64; the second reading, on the 10th, by 89 to 24; the committal, on the 11th, by 238 to 65; the third reading, on the 13th, by 82 to 23. Then, after one or two amendments had been negatived, the bill was passed, Mr Brougham declaring that, although he and his friends would not. again divide the House, they were as desirous at that moment as ever to avow their hostility to the detestable principle of the measure, and Mr Tierney following him with the declaration that he believed it to be one of the most detestable measures ever introduced into parliament. The discussions throughout had been conducted in a tone of considerable asperity, rising at times to passionate vehemence. The most remarkable speeches made against the bill were those of Mr Lambton (afterwards Earl of Durham), Sir Samuel Romilly, and Mr Brougham. The charge of the measure was taken by the attorney-general (Sir William Garrow); the other principal speakers in support of it were the solicitor-general (Sir Samuel Shepherd), Mr Canning, and Mr Lamb (late Viscount Melbourne), who on this occasion left his party, as he had also done in voting for the Suspension Bills of the preceding session. Canning spoke on the motion for going into committee; and one passage of his speech raised a great clamour, which was long kept up. Referring to certain petitioners who had come before the House with complaints of harsh treatment to which they had been subjected, after being arrested under the suspension, he designated one of them, whose case had been made the theme of much pathetic eloquence, as 'the revered and ruptured Ogden.' There was some controversy at the time as to whether the latter epithet was correctly reported; but there is no doubt that it was the word he employed. The fact was that Ogden, while he lay in confinement, had been cured of a rupture of twenty years' standing at the public expense, for which, and for his treatment in all other respects, he had at the time expressed himself in the highest degree grateful; yet he had afterwards declared, in his petition, that the disease had been brought on the first day of his imprisonment in Horsemonger Lane jail, by the ponderous irons with which he was loaded on his journey thither from Manchester; and that, after being allowed to remain in agony for sixteen hours, he had with difficulty prevailed upon two surgeons, who were sent for the next morning, to perform an operation, under which they declared that, from his age, seventy-four, there was every reason to apprehend that he would die. His petition was made up for the greater part of an elaborate description of the said operation, garnished with every detail that could most excite horror and disgust. In reality, the operation had not been performed till after he had lain in confinement, and been released from his irons, for more than four months. These facts Canning stated to the House in the same sentence in which he employed the contemptuous expression that was so eagerly taken hold of; but they were as carefully kept back by the parties who so perseveringly quoted and repeated his words for their own purposes, as they had been by Ogden himself. Yet their truth never has been called in question. It was not only in the great debates on the address and the Indemnity Bill that ministers were put upon their defence. The opposition took advantage of many other opportunities of attacking their recent conduct. Hone's case, and the general question of informations ex officio, were brought before the Commons on the 3d of February by Mr W. Smith, and shortly debated. On the 10th of the same month, Lord Archibald Hamilton brought forward the subject of the late prosecutions instituted against state-prisoners in Scotland, by moving that there should be laid before the House a copy of the proceedings on the trial of Andrew M'Kinley before the Court of Justiciary on the 19th of July. The motion, besides being introduced by a long speech from his lordship, was ably supported by Mr.J. P. Grant and Sir Samuel Romilly, but was negatived on a division by a majority of 136 to 71. The following day, another debate of considerable length took place on a motion of Mr Fazakerley, that the committee of secrecy should be instructed to inquire and report whether any and what measures had been taken to detect and bring to justice the parties described in one of the reports of the secret committee of last session, as persons who might, by their language and conduct, in some instances have had the effect of encouraging those designs which it was intended they should be only the instruments of detecting. The principal speakers were, in support of the motion, Lord Milton (now Earl Fitzwilliam), Mr Bennet, Sir S. Romilly, and Mr Tierney; against it, Mr Bathurst (chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster), Mr Wilberforce, the Solicitor-general, and Mr Canning. Wilberforce, however, expressed his strong disapprobation of the employment of spies in any circumstances. The numbers on the division were, for the motion, 52; against it, 111. The debate, however, brought out the general course of Oliver's proceedings into tolerably clear daylight. On the 17th, Lord Folkestone (the present Earl of Radnor) moved the appointment of a select committee to inquire into the truth of the allegations of Ogden and other persons who had petitioned the House, complaining of their treatment under the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act. What they chiefly complained of, however, was their having been imprisoned at all. His lordship's speech was answered by Lord Castlereagh, Mr Wilberforce, and the attorney-general, and the motion was supported by Sir Francis Burdett, Sir S. Romilly, and other members; but it was negatived on a division by a majority of 167 to 58. Two days after, in the Lords, a motion by the Earl of Carnarvon to refer certain petitions of other imprisoned parties, which had been presented to that House, to the secret committee, was negatived without a division, after speeches in its favour from the mover, from Earl Grosvenor, Lord King, and Lord Holland; and against it, from Lord Sidmouth, Earl Bathurst, and the Earl of Liverpool. Finally, on the 5th of March, another debate on the proceedings of the government spies and informers was brought on in the Commons by Mr G. Philips, who, after referring to certain petitions—one of these was from Samuel Bamford-presented on previous days, moved that it was the duty of the House to investigate the nature and extent of the practices therein alleged to have been pursued by Oliver and others. The votes upon this motion were, ayes, 69; noes, 162. In the debate it was opposed, as the others of a similar character or tendency had all been, by Wilberforce, notwithstanding that Tierney, who spoke before him, had expressed his full concurrence in the doctrine that the employment of spies and informers by a government was indefensible in any circumstances, and his vote had been distinctly claimed as due to that principle, which he had been the first to proclaim. He objected to the motion as loose, vague, and indefinite. Let a definite motion be made, he said, and he would support it. He could compare the present motion, and some others like it, to nothing else than a pack of hounds in full cry, scouring the fields and starting a hare in every corner. The most sober, and perhaps the most sensible, view was that taken by Lord Stanley (the present Earl of Derby), who said, that he should support the motion, but not on the ground that ministers were guilty of employing spies for the purpose of fomenting disturbances in the country. His belief was that Oliver and others had been solely employed to discover what was doing in the disturbed districts. Where blame was fairly to be cast on ministers was, he thought, in the manner in which those spies were chosen. Though ministers did not warrant the fomenting of disturbances, yet they left it in the power of those acting under them to do so. ... He thought ministers had been much culumniated; but they would be most so by themselves, if they refused to inquire into those acts, when inquiry, according to their own statement, would fully acquit them of the charges laid against them.' Such was the course of the main struggle in which the two parties tried their strength: for the history of the remaining business of the session a summary of results must suffice. Many subjects were taken up, and, no doubt, something was effected by the mere discussion of several of them; but very few were actually legislated upon. Early in the session a committee was appointed by the Commons to consider the state of the poor-laws, on the motion of Mr Sturges Bourne, who had officiated as chairman of a similar committee in the preceding session; and three bills were afterwards brought in on the recommendation of the committee; one for the establishment of select vestries, another for the general amendment of the poor-laws, a third for the special regulation of the law of settlement. But it was soon agreed to postpone the Parish Settlement Bill to the next session; the Poor-law Amendment Bill, after having passed through all its stages in both Houses, was lost through a disagreement between the Lords and Commons in regard to one of its clauses; the Select Vestries Bill alone became law. In the beginning of March, the select committee of the House of Commons on the education of the lower orders, which had already pursued its important inquiries for two sessions, was reappointed on the motion of its chair CHAP. XIII.] SESSION BUSINESS-SCOTCH BURGH REFORM. man, Mr Brougham. Besides two reports, which were presented and ordered to be printed towards the end of the session, it originated a bill for appointing commissioners to inquire concerning charities in England for the education of the poor,' which passed into a law, though not without suffering some curtailment and mutilation in the Lords, where, indeed, the motion for going into committee upon it was opposed both by the chancellor and Lord Redesdale, but was carried nevertheless by a majority of 10 to 8. In conformity with the recommendation contained in the speech of the prince-regent at the opening of the session, an act was passed 'for building and promoting the building of additional churches in populous parishes,' by means of a grant of one million sterling, to be applied under the direction of commissioners appointed by the crown. Of various attempts made to reform the criminal law, none of any importance were successful, with the exception of a bill brought in by Mr Bennet for establishing a better system of rewarding persons who had been instrumental in apprehending highwayrobbers and other offenders; and another brought in by Mr G. Bankes for making it illegal to buy game, as it already was to sell it. Sir S. Romilly carried a bill through the Commons for taking away the penalty of death from the offence of stealing from a shop to the value of five shillings; but it was thrown out on the second reading in the Lords, on the motion of the chancellor. The same potent voice prevailed upon their lordships to reject at the same stage, by a majority of 31 to 13, a bill introduced by Lord Erskine, to prevent arrests on the charge of libel before indictment found.' In the Commons, however, the government only succeeded in defeating a motion of Sir James Mackintosh, for the appointment of a select committee to inquire into the forgery of the Bank of England notes, by proposing an address to the regent, requesting his royal highness to issue a commission under the great seal for the same purpose. A select committee was appointed, on the motion of Mr Sergeant Onslow, to inquire into the effect of the usury laws, which reported in favour of their repeal; and the honourable member gave notice that he would early in the next session bring in a bill to carry that recommendation into effect. A bill for the amendment of the election laws, brought in by Mr Wynn, was negatived on the third reading in the Commons by a majority of 51 to 44; as was another for the alteration of the law relating to tithes, brought in by Mr Curwen, by a majority of 44 to 15 on the second reading. Repeated discussions took place on a bill introduced by Sir Robert Peel (father of the present baronet), for limiting the number of hours during which apprentices and others employed in cotton and other mills and factories should be permitted to work: it passed the Commons, but it was at last dropped for the present session, after being committed, in the Lords, where it had encountered a strong opposition, counsel having been allowed by their lordships to be heard, and evidence to be brought forward against it. Mr J. Smith obtained leave to bring in a bill for the amendment of the bankruptcy-laws; but it appears not to have been persevered with. Nor did anything come of a bill 85 to amend the Copyright Act of 1814, which was brought in by Sir Egerton Brydges, and carried over some stages in the Commons. But a select committee was afterwards appointed to consider the subject, on the motion of Mr Wynn, which recommended that the Copyright Act should be repealed, except in regard to the delivery of one copy of every new work to the British Museum, the other public libraries being compensated by a fixed pecuniary allowance. On the 2d of June, Sir Francis Burdett brought forward a scheme of parliamentary reform in a series of twenty-six resolutions-the last divided into six heads-comprising the principles of universal male suffrage, equal electoral districts, elections all on the same day, vote by ballot, and a fresh parliament once in every year at the least; the motion was seconded by Lord Cochrane (the present Earl of Dundonald), who observed that it might probably be the last time he should ever have the honour of addressing the house on any subject, and alluded with great feeling, and apparently amidst the general sympathy of the House, to his own cruel case; afterwards Mr Brougham, Mr Canning, and Mr Lamb, all spoke at considerable length; and then, the vote being taken on the previous question, which had been moved by Canning, the numbers were found to be 106 to none-the two tellers, Sir Francis Burdett and Lord Cochrane, being left alone on their own side. About a fortnight before this, Sir Robert Heron had moved for leave to bring in a bill to repeal the Septennial Act, and the motion had been supported both by Sir S. Romilly and Mr Brougham, but it was negatived on a division by a majority of 117 to 42. Most of the leading Whigs voted in the minority. There was one question about which the keenest interest had suddenly sprung up in Scotland in the course of the preceding year-the reform of the constitution of the burghs of that part of the kingdom. The Scotch burgh-system, as it still existed, had been established by an act of parliament passed in 1469, the general operation of which was to perpetuate in the government of the burghs, if not always the same individuals, at least the same party, and even personal and family interests, by the simple expedient of giving the retiring office-holders in the corporations, or town-councils, the power, for the most part, at the end of each year, of electing their own successors. They generally, of course, either re-elected themselves, or, where that could not be done, brought in, upon a well-understood and rarely violated arrangement, certain confederates or doubles of themselves, who, in like manner, at the end of another twelvemonth, gave place again to their predecessors, and retired for a season into private life. Some constitutions, or sets, as they were called, were not quite so close as others; but the slight infusion that was permitted of the popular element was in no case sufficient to give the general body of the burgesses any control over the management of affairs. The reform or breaking up of this close system had been one of the principal objects pursued by the liberal or democratic party in Scotland, in the political agitation that spread over the interval between the American and French wars; but this, like the other projects of change among ourselves which the success of the American revolution had brought forth and fostered, was smothered for the time in the horror and terror produced by that of France, and in the new interests and passions with which the new war filled men's minds. Now, however, after the return of peace, the former zeal upon this subject, reawakened by what may be accounted an accident, was kept alive and diffused by a remarkable concurrence of circumstances. The movement took its beginning from a singular and unexpected catastrophe which befell the burgh of Montrose. The opposition party there, in the early part of the year 1817, made application to the Court of Session, the supreme civil judicature in Scotland, to reduce or declare invalid the last election of their magistrates, on the ground of certain formal irregularities, and, probably, not a little to their own surprise, obtained a decision in their favour. The effect was to leave the burgh not only without a town-council, but without any means of creating one till it should get a new charter from the crown. In this state of things, application was made to the privy-council; and that body, or, in other words, the government, instead of merely reviving the old constitution, as it might have been expected to do, was induced to hazard the experiment of allowing a certain number of the new magistrates to be elected, as the inhabitants had petitioned they might be, by the general body of the burgesses. This example of a poll election immediately produced the strongest excitement in all the other burghs. Meanwhile some other events contributed to blow the flame. The burgh of Aberdeen found itself compelled to declare itself in a state of bankruptcy, with liabilities to the amount of some hundred thousands of pounds; and the magistrates accompanied this announcement with an address, in which they declared it to be their decided opinion, that the existing mode of election of the town-council, and the management of the town's affairs, were radically defective and improvident, tending to give to individuals or parties an excessive and unnatural preponderance, and to foster and encourage a system of secrecy and concealment, under which the best intentioned magistrates might be prevented from acquiring a sufficient knowledge of the true situation of the burgh. A similar declaration was soon after publicly and formally made by the ruling party in the burgh of Dundee, where also dissatisfaction with the established system had long been general, although the pecuniary concerns of the burgh had not been so grossly mismanaged as in Aberdeen. From this time meetings of the burgesses and inhabitants began to be held, not only in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, and the other principal burghs, but in many also of those of inferior importance; and the most strenuous measures were taken for bringing about what the Aberdeen magistrates had declared in their address to be imperatively called for-some change in the manner of electing the town-councils, and the securing to the citizens an effectual control over the expenditure of the town's office-bearers. In this state matters were when Lord Archibald Hamilton brought the subject before the House of Commons on the 13th of February. The professed object of his motion was to obtain a copy of the act or warrant of his majesty in council, dated in the preceding September, by which the poll election of magistrates at Montrose had been authorised, and the set of the burgh altered. He did not object to the poll election; but he contended that the granting of the new constitution, while he admitted it to be an improvement upon the old one, and a benefit to the burgh, was the usurpation of an unconstitutional and illegal power on the part of the crown. By this time, in fact, the leaders in the movement had extended their views much beyond the amount of alteration that had been conceded in the case of Montrose, and had also come clearly to see that the reform of the burgh-system could not be left in the hands of the crown, but must be sought from parliament. Lord Archibald acknowledged that his present motion was merely preliminary, and that his intention was, having got this point of the legality of the Montrose warrant settled, to call the attention of the House to a more extensive consideration of the subject after Easter. The motion, however, after a short debate, in the course of which ministers contended that Scotch burgh-reform was little else than parliamentary reform under another name, was negatived without a division. Later in the session, the lord advocate (Mr Maconochie) brought in a bill for the better regulating the mode of accounting for the common good and revenues of the royal burghs of Scotland, and for controlling and preventing the undue expenditure thereof.' But this proposed measure was found to give no satisfaction to any party; and the bill, after being read only a first time, was withdrawn. Nor did Lord Archibald Hamilton introduce the subject again in the present session. Unsuccessful attempts were also made by Lord A. Hamilton to urge on the government the abolition of the Scotch commissary-courts, in conformity with the recommendation of a commission of inquiry appointed by royal warrant in 1808; by General Thornton, to repeal the declarations required to be taken in certain cases against the belief of transubstantiation, and asserting the worship of the Church of Rome to be idolatrous; and by Dr Phillimore, to amend the Marriage Act of 1753, in respect of its making the marriages of infants by licence, without consent of parents or guardians, void ab initio, if a suit for the avoidance of them should be commenced at any time during the lives of the parties. The principal taxes that were made the subjects of assault were the saltduties, the leather-tax, and the Irish window-tax. Ministers made no opposition to Mr Calcraft's motion for a select committee on the salt-duties; and a bill afterwards brought in by the honourable member, on the recommendation of the committee, for reducing the duty on rock-salt, used for agricultural purposes, from £10, to which it had been reduced in the preceding session, to £5 per ton, was passed. Ministers also offered Lord Althorpe a committee on his moving for leave to bring in a bill to repeal the additional duty upon leather CHAP. XIII.] THE BUDGET-BANK RESTRICTION ACT. had been presented; but his lordship persisted in going to a division, and the motion was carried by a majority of 94 to 84. The bill, however, was thrown out on the second reading, the numbers on that occasion being-ayes, 130; noes, 136. A committee to consider the expediency of repealing the Irish window-tax was moved for by Mr Shaw; but, after a debate of some length, the motion was negatived by 67 votes to 51. Finally, it may be noticed, in connection with this subject, that after several remonstrances from Mr Brougham, ministers agreed to see that proper measures were taken for carrying into effect the destruction of all returns under the abolished income-tax. This had been promised by the chancellor of the exchequer two years before, but the directions then issued had, it appeared, been very imperfectly complied with. The budget was brought forward by the chancellor of the exchequer on the 20th of April. The greater part of the navy, army, ordnance, and miscellaneous estimates had been already voted; and Mr Vansittart now stated that the vote for the army, which had last year been £9,412,373, would this year be £8,970,000; that the vote for the navy, which had last year been £7,596,022, would this year be £6,456,800; that the vote for the ordnance, which had last year been £1,270,690, would this year be £1,245,600; that the miscellaneous estimates, which last year amounted to £1,795,000, would this year amount to £1,720,000-without including, however, the million granted for the building of churches, which was to be provided for by an issue of exchequer bills. Altogether, with the addition of £2,500,000 for the interest on exchequer bills and a sinking fund attached to them, and one or two extraordinary items, the total amount of the regular supplies for the service of the year would be £21,011,000, the amount for the last year having been £22,304,091. This was, of course, exclusive of the interest of the debt, which at this time was not quite £30,000,000. No new taxes were proposed, nor the repeal or reduction of any old ones. The principal feature of the finance minister's announcement was a scheme for forming, out of the 3 per cent. stock, a new stock bearing interest at 3 per cent., by which a sum of £3,000,000 would be raised for the public service of the year. It was proposed also to fund £27,000,000 of the floating debt, which had accumulated to the inconvenient amount of about £63,000,000. The session had scarcely commenced when ministers were asked in both Houses whether it was intended that the resumption of cash-payments by the bank should really take place on the 5th of July, as then fixed by law. In reply it was stated that the bank had made ample preparation for resuming its payments in cash at the time fixed by parliament, and that the government knew of nothing in the internal state of the country, or in its political relations with foreign powers, which would render it expedient to continue the restriction; 'but that there was reason to believe that pecuniary arrangements of foreign powers were going on, of such a nature and extent as might probably make 6 87 Mr it necessary for parliament to continue the restriction so long as the immediate effects of those arrangements were in operation.' This explanation was treated by the opposition with great contempt. 'The truth was, as it appeared to him,' Mr Tierney observed, that there were some persons in this country very much disposed to continue the restriction if they could find any excuse for it; and as such excuse did not offer itself at home, they looked abroad for it.' In the other House, Lord King declared that the reason assigned by ministers was so extraordinary in itself, and so unintelligible to the country, it being impossible to conceive how in reality the negotiation of foreign loans could tend to prevent the resumption of cash-payments by the Bank of England, that it could only be considered as the ostensible reason, and not the real one.' Nevertheless there can be no doubt that the explanation thus denounced was perfectly correct. Mr Tooke shews that by the latter part of 1817 the value of bank-paper had been virtually restored, and that the bank was then in a position to resume cash-payments. 'And the directors,' he adds, so far from taking advantage of the prolonged term of the restriction, were adopting measures for anticipating it; for in the months of April and September 1817, they actually undertook by public notice to pay, and did pay, a large proportion of their notes in coin.' It is understood that the payments in gold in pursuance of these notices exceeded five millions sterling. Tooke blames the bank and the government for co-operating to reduce the rate of interest on exchequer bills in the summer of 1817, while it was notorious that negotiations were going forward for the raising of loans to a very large amount by France and others of the continental states. 'The government,' he argues, ought to have taken the opportunity of the comparatively high price of stocks in the summer of 1817, to have diminished instead of increasing the unfunded debt; and the bank, instead of extending its advances upon exchequer bills at a reduced interest, ought, with a view to counteract the effect, which would otherwise be inevitable, of the tendency of British capital to investment in foreign loans, not only not to have extended its advances, but to have diminished its existing securities.' But now commenced both a depression of the exchanges and a diminution of the circulation from the operation of a fresh set of disturbing causes. Foremost among these causes,' Mr Tooke continues, 'doubtless were the large loans negotiated for the French and Russian governments, the high rate of interest granted by them, and the comparatively low rate in this country, holding out a great inducement for the transmission of British capital to the continent. The importations of corn in the latter part of 1817, and through the whole of 1818, were on a large scale and at high prices, our ports being then open without duty. And there was at the same time, as has before been noticed, a very great increase of our general imports; while a great part of the exports of 1817 and 1818 were speculative, and on long credits, the returns for which, therefore, |