CHAP. I.]

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we did not want the interposition of the author to give that information. But though the author informs us there is redress at law, yet the person whose name he assumes has also informed us that "such redress would be a grievance, and that the city, after amusing itself for three years in the courts of justice, would be heartily sick of the experiment." Our respect for decency prevents us from going so far as to cast a damp and despondency on appealing to the law of the land, yet we do agree that the forcing the city to that appeal was a very great injury, because the redress might be very tedious the interim might be very disturbed, and the period of the mayoralty expire before the point could be settled.

There is a further objection-could we suppose the courts of law capable of a criminal decision, we have a ministry disposed to give them protection.

The author of the speech would teach us to believe, that the Chief Governor and Council decided in favour of Alderman James merely to put the question in course of trial; we are to understand, then, that there was no partiality in the Administration; that the castle, or the rash advisers of the castle, have espoused no faction in the city. When once the author of the speech can prove this, he will then, and not till then, have supported his credit for the veracity of this suggestion.

The author of the speech proceeds and says, that it remained for the sagacity of the Irish Whigs, to turn a mere right of approbation into a judicial power; but we must observe, that it remained for the ingenuity and temper of the author, to discover wherein the Whigs have made that confusion; for certainly in the resolution alluded to, they have not. We insert the resolution that the public may judge.

"That the Whig Club cannot possibly have witnessed what has lately passed respecting the election of a Lord Mayor, without expressing the deepest concern, and declaring that they will, both individually, and as a body, co-operate with their fellow citizens in every legal and constitutional measure, which may tend to vindicate the laws, and to support the rights of this metropolis."

We must observe, that the principal charge of ignorance, was founded, as appears in the speech, on this, our supposed confusion, of the right of approbation with a judicial power: here is the resolution, wherein appears not one

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VINDICATION OF

[CHAP. I. syllable to justify the comment, and hence the public will collect two things. First, the great and manifest presumption of the author, in making in so gross a manner so unfounded a charge. Secondly, his great and unparalleled folly, and temerity, in making that resolution the charge, when by the mere republication he could be so fully, so publicly, and so shamefully convicted.

In order to account for his observation, we must suppose the author of the publication to conceive that the charge of violating the laws implies, of itself, the exercising a judicial power; but the crime of dispensing with the laws, has not been confined to great lawyers exercising judicial power-the author of the speech might have read how James II. had dispensed with the Test Act, without resorting to the exercise of judicial power, but by mere executive act; he had 'tis true, the assistance of a great judicial character, his famous Chancellor, a great lawyer, and a melancholy proof, that the most dangerous instrument in the hand of oppression, is an arbitrary man, hurried away by a criminal disregard for his fellow citizens, and armed with the little points of his profession, to pervert the science of the law, and to assail the liberties of the people.

We have observed upon and examined the principal part of this poor and positive production-that affects to call itself the speech of the Chancellor. The public will judge whether it contains that extent of genius, solidity of argument, and profundity of sense, to justify a modest man in pronouncing that he would completely, and to the most unlettered person, convince the whole community.

We must observe, that in one point the author of the speech has shown diffidence; it is the only point in which confidence had been a proof of firmness, or an evidence of innocence, viz. the point in question, whether by the Act of Parliament the common council is obliged to assign corporate incapacity as ground of rejection: on the affirmative of this depends the innocence of the order of Council; and here the author has hung back. He allows that he has examined this point as much as any that ever came before him; he had three months to investigate it. The Government has taken a decided part,-the city has been put in a ferment-the administration overwhelmed in disgrace and now, it seems, the author will not venture to speak to the question,-and only diffidently tells us, that it did appear to him that Alderman James had the best

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colour of election ;-that from what he has heard hitherto, James has the best claim, without venturing to assign a single reason for such an opinion, or advancing one syllable in support of that novel construction which he must feel has involved us in such a train of consequences. We leave it to the public to decide whether this reserve in the author proceeds from moderation or defect.

We do not think it necessary now to go at large into the argument; but as, from the speech under our consideration, no trace whatever of the merits of the question appears, we think it proper to state from the Act of the 33rd of Geo. II. the following obvious inferences: That by the Act no man can be mayor of the city who is rejected by the Commons; that the right of rejection in the Commons is co-extensive with the right of election in the board, both being limited by one and the some proviso, which only requires that the board shall elect, and the Commons approve of some one of the board,-and subject to that proviso leaves both equally free; that there is not in the whole Act one single syllable requiring the Commons to assign corporate incapacities, the ground of rejection ;that the ballot clause makes such an assignment of reasons impracticable, and illegal; that such assignment is a new requisite, created by construction, to impose a forfeiture of the benefit of the act, contrary to the principles of criminal jurisprudence; that the proceedings of the privy council, under the new rules, which are conceived in nearly the same terms as the Act of Parliament, without the strong circumstance of the ballot, are a precedent against this doctrine, for the Council does not assign corporate incapacities as a ground of rejection.

That the spirit and meaning of the Act is against it, which must be defeated by such construction, inasmuch as such a construction would take from the Commons the right of rejecting; for if they could reject no man but one who laboured under corporate incapacities, they could reject no man that was not before ineligible, and who could not be Mayor, though the Commons approved; and all the other aldermen elected by the board must be Mayors, though the Commons rejected them. There is every reason to believe that there is scarcely to be found at present one alderman that labours under a corporate incapacity; of course, under this construction, there is not one alderman whom the Commons could refuse. This construction,

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VINDICATION OF

[CHAP. I. therefore, for so much, makes the Act of Parliament a delusion.

We, therefore, with all due deference to legal authority, when it shall keep itself within the bounds of law and decorum, have republished our resolutions, and beg leave to add, that the act of the Council, to which we do acknowledge the Lord Chancellor, and we are sorry to see it, has put his hand, is an arbitrary act-imposing on the city, as far as it can have effect, an illegal magistrate, and depriving the common council of Dublin of a right they derive under Act of Parliament.

The author of the speech puts a question-Who most invade the laws, the Lord Lieutenant and Council, or they who appeal to the Whig Club? Since we are called upon, we answer, the Lord Lieutenant and Council. The Lord Lieutenant and Council, says the author of the speech, who send the matter to a legal decision? They do so, we allow it. They oblige the party, by an arbitrary act, to seek redress at law, as any man who commits a violence on another may be said to send the matter to a legal decision. But we never heard it pleaded as a proof of the defendant's regard for the law, that he had, by an assault on the plaintiff, sent the matter to a legal decision. This puerile interrogatory is calculated to move our scorn.

We confess we have not forced the citizens to such a tribunal, for we have not injured them; but so far from dissuading from seeking legal redress, we are ready to assist the City in demanding it.

We associated to preserve the laws and constitution against the attacks of the present administration, who invaded both, and who were pronounced to have done so by Parliament. We associated when the privileges of both Houses had been questioned. When the Minister was exhorted by his unconstitutional adviser to insult the legislature; when the two Houses pronounced that Minister and his advisers to be arbitrary and unconstitutional men; -when a number of new places, pensions, and salaries were created, for the purpose of corrupting Parliament;— when peerages were sold for procuring money to be expended in the purchase of seats for the dependents of the Castle, in the assembly of the people ;-when the liberty of the press, and the personal liberty of the subject, by holding him to arbitrary and excessive bail, were attacked; -when we had a Minister ready to screen such attack

CHAP. I.]

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from Parliamentary inquiry ;-when a Place Bill, a Pension Bill, and every other constitutional bill made necessary by the corruption of the present Ministers, were rejected by their influence-when these things took place, we assembled-we assembled when the nation was told (by authority) that in order to defeat the opposition of the aristocracy in Parliament, the Minister had, in the Government of the Marquis of Townshend, expended half a million, and that in order to defeat the present aristocracy, must expend another half-million, which was to inform us, that the nation had been by his Majesty's Ministers bought and sold, and must be bought and sold again.

We appeal to the people of England, whether, if they were informed by a great officer of state that their country had been bought and sold for half a million, and must be so again, to carry the Minister triumphantly through Parliament; whether they would not, like us, have associated in common defence: and if the people of this country, being once possessed of this alarming and dreadful secret, have gone no further than bearing their humble testimony against Ministers, it is because the people are not as rash as those Ministers, either in their conduct or declaration.

That we have been charged by the author of the speech with the crime of looking to power, we make no assertion. Instead of assertion we set forth the following measures, to which we are all pledged

A Place Bill, a Pension Bill, a Bill to repeal or modify the City Police Bill, a Bill to restrain the Minister from arbitrarily extending the Country Police, a Responsibility Bill, a Bill to disqualify the dependent Officers of the Revenue from voting for Members of Parliament. We are pledged to disallow the corrupt charges of the Marquis of Buckingham and his successor. We are pledged against the sale of peerages, and for the liberty of the press, and the personal liberty of the subject against arbitrary and illegal bail. We are pledged to the principles whereon the late Parliament addressed his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to take on himself the Regency, and against the assertions and principles that advanced and maintained, in the appointment of a Regent, the authority of the Parliament of another country, and would have denied to the Irish Crown its legislative power, and of course its imperial dignity. We are pledged against an Union; we are pledged against the memorable Propositions; and we are now