THREE:The measure, which was founded on the recommendations of the report, was advocated principally by Lord John Russell, Lord Melbourne, and Mr. C. Hobhouse. The plan was intended to provide for 183 corporations, extending to a population of at least 2,000,000. Many of these corporations governed large and important towns, of which they did not sufficiently represent the property, intelligence, and population. In Bedford the corporation composed only one in seventy of the people, and one-fortieth of the property. In Oxford there were only 1,400 electors, and seldom more than 500 voted at an election. In Norwich 315 of the electors were paupers. In Cambridge there were only 118 freemen, out of a population of 20,000; and while the annual rental was more than 25,000, the property of freemen amounted to little more than 2,000. These were only samples of the strange anomalies that everywhere prevailed. It was obvious to every one that corporations so constituted were altogether unfitted for the objects which they were originally designed to answer. On the contrary, they tended directly to frustrate those objects, and to render the proper government of towns impracticable. They engendered jealousy and distrust between the small governing power and the body of the people. A few persons carrying on the government for their own benefit were connected with a portion of the lower classes, whose votes they purchased and whose habits they demoralised. With such a monopoly the grossest abuses were inevitable. Charitable funds, often large in amount, which had been left for the benefit of the whole people, were either lavishly distributed among the venal dependents of the governing body, squandered on civic feasts, or spent in bribing the freemen in order to secure their votes. In short, the general if not the universal practice had been to use the powers of municipal corporations, not for the good government or benefit of the towns over which they presidednot in order that they might be well and quietly governed in the terms of the charters, but for the sole purpose of establishing an interest which might be useful in the election of members of Parliament.Another topic of the speech was the mental derangement of the king, which was now asserted, on the authority of the physicians, to be more hopeless; Mr. Perceval argued, therefore, the necessity of arranging the Royal Household so as to meet the necessarily increased expenditure. Resolutions were passed granting an addition of seventy thousand pounds per annum to the queen towards such augmented expenditure, and to provide further income for the Prince Regent. Two Courts were to be maintained, and the Regent was to retain his revenue as Prince of Wales. The Civil List chargeable with the additional seventy thousand pounds to the queen was vested in the Regent; and no sooner were these particulars agreed to than he sent letters to both Houses, recommending separate provision for his sisters; so that the Civil List was at once to be relieved of their maintenance and yet increased, simply on account of the charge of a poor blind and insane old man, who could only require a trusty keeper or two. The separate income agreed to for the princesses was nine thousand pounds a-year each, exclusive of the four thousand pounds a-year each already derived from the Civil Listso that there was needed an annual additional sum of thirty-six thousand pounds for the four princesses, besides the sixteen thousand pounds a-year now being received by them. Some members observed that the grant to the Regent, being retrospective, removed altogether the merit of his declaration during the last Session of Parliament that, "considering the unexampled contest in which the[23] kingdom was now engaged, he would receive no addition to his income." In fact, little consideration was shown by any part of the royal family for the country under its enormous demands. It was understood that there was once more a deficiency in the Civil List, which would have to be made up.
Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per
THREE:Whilst the Opposition was in the dejection of disappointed hopes, suddenly there arose an explosion of popular opinion against the Catholics, stimulated and led on by an insane fanatic, which threatened the most direful consequences, and produced sufficiently frightful onesthe so-called Gordon Riots.
THREE:
THREE:[445]