POLITICAL SERVICES OF LONDON CITY.
LONDON CITY has really clone good service in its time ; an earnest correspondent is anxious to convince us of the fact. Well, every body body knows and is prepared to admit as much already. It would be stated as an historical fact by the proposer of a bill for abolish- ing that meritorious municipality. But our correspondent insists that general truth has little force i it is the particulars that carry conviction home to the English mind ; and unless you recapitulate what the City has done in times past, the public is not adequately
convinced of the value of that incorporation which the Govern- meat is about so materially to reduce. There is some force in this, and much force in the real effect that the City has had in times past. Not to go back long before the
IReform Bill sera, we shall find that, with all their faults, the Li- very—the great Commons of the City—were, as in many other pub.. ho questions, far ahead of Parliament or of all but a minority even in the Commons. So early as January 1817, we find the Common Hall convened " for considering the alarming state of the country, and petitioning Parliament for a reform and retrenchment in the public expenditure, and a reform in the representation of the pea ple in Parliament." The reader will go back to the time when Henry Hunt was playing the part of an English O'Connell, and when, instead of following the advice of the City and bringing forward a bill for the reform of Parliament, Ministers were re- sorting to extraordinary measures of repression. In February of the same year, the Common Hall was summoned to resist the measures proposed by the Government for suspending the Habeas Corpus Act and restricting the liberty of the subject ; and again in May it petitioned against the suspension of the Habeas Corpus.
When Queen Caroline was put upon her trial to pay the penalty of sins which others shared, and to be sacrificed to the personal convenience of " the first gentleman in Europe," while she found counsel in Brougham and Denman, she found a champion in the City. On the 27th of June 1820, the Common Hall assembled " to consider of the propriety of presenting a dutiful address of affection and congratulation to her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Caroline on her accession to the throne, and her safe arrival in this country " ; and in the January of the next year the Livery were resisting by petition further proceedings against her Ma- jesty.
In March 1822, the Livery met to consider the distressed con- dition of the country, and to adopt measures to promote a reform in Parliament, as the only means of obtaining redress. Again in March 1831, we find the Livery meeting " to assist Members in the reform of Parliament " ; and in April expressing their disap- pointraent and regret at the loss of the Reform Bill, giving their support by addresses to the Minister and the King. In the same year, they reelected Sir John Key "for his services in Reform " ; and in 1832 they "implored the King to create more Peers to insure the passing of the Reform Bill." We got the Reform Bill, and it would be ungrateful to deny that the continuous and opportune support offered by the City had materially assisted in carrying that measure. einare now enjoying a free trade commenced by the repeal of the Corn-laws ; but amongst the first who denounced those exclusive laws was the City, which met in September 1826 to petition for their repeal. We are advocating improvements of the law ; we have effected many improvements of the law of debt : but in De- ()ember 1827 the Livery were protesting " against the excessive charges and the great privations to which persons under arrest from debt are subject." At the time of the Calthorpe Street riot, the Livery pronounced censure on the conduct of the Police, and insisted on the necessity of having magistrates elected by the peo- ple. We have an annual petition in Parliament for completing the extension of a complete equality to persons of the Jewish race ; but it was the City which in 1835 elected a Jew for Sheriff. Everybody remembers the manner in which the Sheriffs vindicated their office in 1840, how they were placed under arrest by the House of Commons, and how they were strenuously supported by the Livery. These are only some out of the many acts of the City ; the re- cords of its Courts would tell many others. It may be said that these services are no more than a prominent pushing of " Radical" polities. Possibly, while we had a Radical party. But we might consult the history of the City both before and after ; and the point is this—the Livery has always been found among the earliest advocates of the principles afterwards adopted by the Legislature. In remoter tunes it was Protestant; in Beckford's day it was constitutional ; in our own day it is for material im- provements and a liberal but discreet foreign policy. Indeed, it may be said that there has scarcely been an important movement either to favour an extension of public rights, or to resist an inroad upon ancient rights and upon popular interests, but the City has come forward as a champion. Foreign Ministers, the Law Amendment Society, our own Ministers when their conduct has been in question, have found in the Mansionhouse that neutral ground, and that open occasion for making opportune demonstrations and enabling the public to understand some present questions, which they did not find in the ordinary political arena. It is undeniable that this ground would be removed if the capital of the commercial world were reduced to the condition of an ordinary Town-Counoil ; and really the records of the City do enforce a very prevalent feeling, that we ought to think well before we consent to a project for positively abolishing the municipal constitution as it exists now and has existed from ancient times.
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