PRO AND ANTI.
Two political declarations appeared yesterday. -The one issues from a society which publishes the names of its managers, and the place of its meeting; the other from certain individuals who say they are of the wealthy class, but who give no name either of leaders or followers. The declaration of the headless, bodiless, nameless gentry, lays—so a non.. subscribed circular informs the select—at the City of London Tavern. If it should hatch where it lays, the Tiniev says the chickens will be droll ones ;—we rather think that the eggs of the nameless will prove as addle as their pates.
ADDRESS OF THE PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES SOCIETY.
" The measures of Reform broueht forward by his Majesty's Ministers, which have been enthusiastically welcomed by the whole kingdom, will require the exer- tions of the people themselves to obtain the grand object of a legislative body iden- tified with the popular interest. " Hitherto, the men best fitted, by their intellectual and moral worth, to be representatives of the people, have usually shrunk from a popular election. The expense, corruption, and degradation attending on that hitherto debasing proceeding, have deterred the honest-minded, and but too often left the field open to those who have had much wealth to squander, and few scruples to overcome.
" It is hoped that this vicious system will no longer prevail; that places will be thrown open in which the honest candidate will have to stoop to no immoral acts, to practise no corruption, to truckle to no commands ; and that the people will be able to choose those who, by talent, industry, and probity, are fit to be popular representatives.
" This power, however, will be of little avail, it it be not judiciously exercised. Unless the electors be made acquainted with the character of the candidates who propose themselves—unless the men most worthy be brought to their notice—im- proper or inadequate selections will again be made ; the same neglect of duty, the same corrupt practices, the same extravagant expenditure, which have hitherto been our degradation and our curse, will continue. "To prevent this evi I, two things are required-1. To collect all necessary informa- tion respecting the character, talent, conduct, and connexions, of all persons who may be proposed as candidates for seats in the Legislature.-2. To lay this informa- tion, when obtained, before the public.
" Experience has taught us, that, separately, individualscannot perform this task. Applications for information have often been made by various bodies of electors, de- sirous of choosing honest and enlightened representatives ; but no one being prepared to answer their inquiries, the praiseworthy wishes of the electors have been frus- trated. The idle, vain, and profligate, have too often been chosen in the place of the industrious, upright, and enlightened. The unprincipled political adventurer. swayed only by personal interests, has usurped the post of the honest, single-minded patriot ; and a people harassed, plundered, and oppressed, have but too well attested the vicious operation of a badly-selected Legislature. Similar applications will. again be made ; and unless,,care be taken, they will again prove fruitless. • What individuals cannot perform, may be easily effected by an association; and for the purpose of obtaining the information required. and properly and ad- quately publishing it to the world, the present Association has been formed, under the name of the PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES SOCIETY ; and the persons above nether.' have been appointed a committee to carry the intentions of the Society into effect.
" The beneficial purpose here in view would be greatly aided by numerous local societies. But such separate yet connected bodies cannot be formed, since the 57th Geo. III. c. 19,s. 25, forbids all communication between them. A Society has therefore been formed, extending all over the country, of which any person may become a member on entering his name, address, and designation, in one of the Society's books, or by forwarding the same to the Secretary by letter ; and on the payment of a subscription of not less than Five Shillings to the funds of the Society for the current year. Tints the one body may extend to the most distant parts of -the country, and a correspondence carried on, to whatever extent may be desired, without any violation of the law. The whole people may thus act as a single body, aiding one another with their money, their labour, and their information, for the great and common end of obtaining a good government."
DECLARATION" AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
"We, the merchants, bankers, and others, inhabitants of London and its vicinity, whose names are hereunto subscribed, hare perused with .frelings of the deepest regret the details o f a bill which has been just submitted to the Legislature under the sanction of his Majesty's Government, for the avowed purpose of effecting an extensive Reform and alteration in the existing constitution of the Commons House of Parliament.
"While we should have been far from opposing ourselves to the adoption of any proposition, so recommended, of a temperate character, gradual in its operation, consistent with justice and the ancient usages of this realm, and having for its ob- ject the correction of acknowledged abuses, or any amelioration in the administra- tion of public affairs which might seem to be called for by the changes or the necessities of the times, we feel it impossible to regard in that light a mea- sure which, by its unprecedented and unneemary infringement on the rights and privileges of large and wealthy bodies of people, would go far to shake the foundations of that constitution under which our SOITITign holds his title to his throne, his nobles to their estates, and ourselves and the rest of our fellow-subjects to the various possessions and immunities which we enjoy by law—a measure which, while it professes to enlarge the representation of the kingdom, on the broad basis of property, would, in its practical operation, have the effect rif closing the principal avenues through which the monied, the funded, the commercial, the shipping, and colonial interests, together with all their connected and dependent interests, existing through the country, or dispersed throogh our vast empire abroad, have hitherto been represented in the Legislature ; and would thus in reality exclude the possessors of a very large propor- tion Of the national wealth from all effectual voice and influence in the regulation of the national affairs.
"The silence which the opponents of this project have hitherto felt to be imposed on them by their respect for the authority from which it emanated, so long, at least, as it was not before them in a defined and tangible shape, having been misconstrued by the ill-informed into an universal acquiescence in its principles and provisions, we deem it a duty which we owe to ourselves, to our country, and to posterity, at the earliest prarticable period after the printing of the bill, to protest against it by this public declaration, and to incite our fellow-citizens if all classes, participating in our sentiments, to unite with us in every practicable and lawful effort of temperate but determined resist- ance to the fiwther progress of a measure which, in our consciences, we believe to be rash and inexpedient in its origin, and tending to consequences equally pernicious and irretriev- able—menacing to the peace of the country, fraught with alarm and peril to .pninic and private credit, and calculated eventually to undermine and destroy all those' venerable institutions and establishments under whose influence and protection England has h;therto enjoyed a prosperity and maintained a station unexampled among the nations of the .world."
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