10 DECEMBER 1831, Page 14

PRECEDENTS.

THE perfectly conclusive argument against such a creation of Peers as would have enabled Ministers to pass the last Reform Bill was, that there was no precedent for creating Peers to carry a solitary bill. Peers might be created to support the Minister, for this supposed the advocacy of many measures ; but it was unprece- dented to create Peers to support one of the Ministerial measures only. We might send up to the House of Lords any number of men whose whole course of policy had been previously chalked out; but we must not send up one man whose course was chalked out in one instance and left free in others. Such an act was bad in itself, as unprecedented ; it was yet worse, because it would lead to acts of a similar character. In a word, nothing that is ori- ginal is to be at any time tolerated,-Imo, because that which is first is not preceded by that which is second ; 2do, because that which is second is not followed by that which is first. We must not do right now, because we did not du right before; we must not do right now, because we shall in that case be compelled to do right some time hence. "We need not observe, that the argument from the propriety or impropriety of the creation of Peers, differs toto cock from the precedent argument. He who attempts to set- tle the question by the former, must weigh evidence, balance rea- sons, must judge it on its abstract merits, and as modified by times and circumstances : he that attempts its settlement by the latter, has only to consult his Parliamentary register, or rather its index, and if the case does not appear there, to close the book and the discussion together. The precedent argument is not confined to the creation of Peers. Sir CHARLES WETHERELL was. very anxious to be included in the Special Commission appointed to try the Bristol rioters.; and in the debate on Tuesday, he complained bitterly that he had not been included. How did Ministers answer. his complaint ? Did they tell him, that, implicated as he was in the origin of these riots, justice, decorum, feeling, opposed his sitting in judgment on the rioters ?—that the people, not of Bristol only, but of England, would rise in indignation against an attempt to violate the first principles of law and justice, by such a barefaced mockeiy of both ? —No : Mr. LAMB gave him a precedent for the exclusion. Truth, reason, decorum, were consulted as little, it appears, by the Minis- ters as by Sir CHARLES; they had recoarse to the index for a so- lution of their doubts, and luckily they found one. JEFFERIES had decided that the Magistrates and Recorder of Bristol should not act as judges in their own cause : J3FFERIES, however, was a rogue, and his precedent was of small value; but then DUNNING had made the same decision, and DUNNING was a respectable man. Sir CHARLES was of course silenced, and the Ministry jus- tified, not because they had done right, but because they had done what somebody else had done before them. The finest specimen, however, of the precedent argument, was given by Sir ROBERT PEEL. Previous to 1797, three weeks' no- tice of the reassembling of Parliament, ' after adjournment, was required by law ; in 1797, on the express ground that three weeks was an inconveniently long period, the law was altered, and a fortnight's notice allowed. Yet, because since the law was altered, only one instance, except the late one, has occurred in which it was necessary to take advantage of the alteration, Sir ROBERT deprecated the fortnight's notice for the reassembling of the present Parliament as a dangerous precedent ! It is dangerous in England to afford men a precedent even for obeying the law of the land ! Every thing with us has such a tendency, when once put in motion, to move in a right line, whatever be the circumstances that counsel deflection, that the only safe plan would be to constitute the vi s inertia the sole power of the empire, and never to move at all! There is indeed another. The danger of precedents is doubt- less great, but the more we multiply them the less formidable will it be. Let us only diffuse the precedent of Reform, for instance, throughout all the arteries and veins of the empire—to use Sir CHARLES WETHERELL'S anatomical figure,—and the precedent of reforming the House of Lords will be lost in the number of its companions.