THE NEW TOIir REFORM GOVERNMENT. 9 



" I take, first, the inquiry into municipal corporations. It is not my in- 

 tention to advise the Crown to interrupt the progress of that inquiry, nor 

 to transfer the conduct of it from those to whom it was committed by the 

 late government. For myself, I gave the best proof that I was not un- 

 friendly to the principle of inquiry, by consenting to be a member of that 

 committee of the House of Commons on which it was originally devolved. 

 No report has yet been made by the commissioners to whom the inquiry 

 was afterwards referred, arid until that report be made, I cannot be ex- 

 pected to give, on the part of the government, any other pledge than that 

 they will bestow on the suggestions it may contain, and the evidence on 

 which they may be founded, a full and unprejudiced consideration." 



Could anything have been written less, or less satisfactory, or more 

 vague, without any necessity of being so, than this declaration ? we 

 will give the evidence on this subject " a full and unprejudiced con- 

 sideration." Why not have added only that the necessary vague- 

 ness was a necessary condition of his accepting office ee with a view 

 to the correction of monstrous abuses, which are notorious as the sun 

 at Midsummer." This" I'll think about it" " I'll not fail to bear 

 it in mind" kind of policy is not altogether the thing for the 

 English people. 



" I will, in the next place, address myself to the questions in which those 

 of our fellow-countrymen, who dissent from the doctrines of the Established 

 Church, take an especial interest. Instead of making new professions,, I will 

 refer to the course which I took upon those subjects when out of power. 

 In the first place, I supported the measure brought forward by Lord Al- 

 thorp, the object of which was to exempt all classes from the payment of 

 church rates, applying in lieu thereof, out of a branch of the revenue, a 

 certain sum for the building and repair of churches. I never expressed, 

 nor did I entertain, the slightest objection to the principle of a bill of which 

 Lord John Russell was the author, intended to relieve the conscientious 

 scruples of Dissenters in respect of the ceremony of marriage. I give no 

 opinion now on the particular measures themselves ; they -were proposed by 

 Ministers in whom the Dissenters had confidence ; they were intended to 

 give relief, and it is sufficient for my present purpose to state that I sup- 

 ported the principle of them. I opposed, and I am bound to state that my 

 opinions in that respect have undergone no change, the admission of Dis- 

 senters, as a claim of right, into the Universities j but I expressly declared 

 that, if regulations enforced by public authorities superintending the pro- 

 fessions of law and medicine, and .the studies connected with them, had the 

 effect of conferring advantages of the nature of civil privileges on one class 



M.M. No. 1. C 



