1826.] New Parliament. 5 
them? If so, we claim them, not as the recovery of a privilege, but 
as a right, calculated for the general advantage of society, and the main- 
tenance of its security. Time and temper have been lost in these idle 
squabbles, and the cause encumbered and degraded by them, 
But this extension of the elective right will involve a prodigious 
change, and infringe upon long-enjoyed privileges. What then? Have you 
only to usurp, to establish a right? Because you have long held to your- 
selves what belonged equally to others, have you obtained a right to keep 
that hold? The government— is it not of the Gentile as well as of 
the Jew? Yes, of the Gentile also-—for rights as well as for duties. 
Surrender then promptly and cheerfully, and think yourselves fortunate 
you are not called upon to indemnify. But how many boroughs are 
there for which large sums have been given? Would you snatch from 
them what you have allowed to become property ? — Is it not a maxim 
of legal and moral equity, that if private rights be sacrificed to public 
good, indemnity should be made? - Would you, for instance, manumit 
the slave, and not compensate the owner? Certainly not; but to the 
case before us the maxim will not apply. The laws have sanctioned the 
rights of the slave-owner; but what law has sanctioned the possessions 
of the borough-owner? No law contemplates borough-property—no, 
not even common law, we believe. It is a non-entity in the courts, and 
could not specifically be sued. Away with the pretended right, then ; 
it has no legal sanction, and its monstrous iniquity forbids us to consider 
it as an equitable one. But corporations—what of them? They are 
established by law. Well, law may un-establish them. ‘The privileges 
of these corporations were never destined for private advantages, but 
for public good. Prove them destructive of that public good, and you 
produce reason enough for their abolition, No indemnity, again, can 
be called for here. Their privileges were made with one breath, and 
they may be annihilated with another. Be their usefulness what it 
might originally, what is the good of them now? To protect their own 
monopoly. No stranger can open a shop without their permission, and 
the payment of fees. What claim, in reason or common sense; 
have they to such privileges? What equivalent have they given, or 
could they give? Why should not every member of the community be 
permitted to go where he pleases—where he can best earn his liveli- 
hood? Why isa town, when invested with the right of sending repre- 
sentatives, to have that right intercepted, as in many cases it is, by a 
score or two of corporators ?—Oh, but how is the police of a town to be 
managed without a corporation? Nay, how is it actually managed in 
towns of equal or superior magnitude, without corporate rights? But 
then the property bequeathed to corporations, what is to become of 
that? That property has been assigned by the donors to specific pur- 
poses ; and to those specific purposes it may still be applied, without 
maintaining the usurping privileges of corporations. But we have 
really just now no further concern with corporations, than as they inter- 
fere with the rights of suffrage, which we insist must be universal, to 
satisfy the exigencies of social rights. 
The variety of qualification is thoroughly ridiculous. If I take a 
house in Westminster or Southwark, I have a vote, and sometimes the 
opportunity of employing it. If I reside at Bath, I have none, unless I 
can squeeze into the corperation—which, of course, is not what every 
one would like to do; if at Malmesbury, squeezing into the corporation 
