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    keeper walks the sfrofct with as bold a bearing as an American woodsman treads the forest path . Were it so , the ballot would not be needed ; but it is Hot so . In a country where the pressure of population ,, corn laws , and custom-houses reduces men to such a state of destitution , that large numbers of them consent to wear ,

    for the sake of food , the badges , and liveries , and patchwork garments of their richer fellows—in such a country free and sturdy independence cannot be a national characteristic , and the rich will contrive to oppress the poor , unless insurmountable difficulties be thrown in their way . In the United States there are no badgecoated white servitors , yet even there the ballot is considered the

    only effective guarantee of independence . How much more , then , must it be needed in a country like England , a huge den of aristocracy , where every man below the King is master and dependent in his own person at one and the same time . Not the will of the Whigs but the will of the people has forced on Reform ; the Whigs havedbne all they could to retard , and have yielded to necessity In yielding to it they have taken all possible pains to leave open

    the sphere of aristocratical influence . Why such a man as Francis Palgrave , a mere curiosity antiquarian , and at the same time the most inveterate public jobber a jobbing government could find , why such a man should have been appointed a commissioner of Municipal Reform can only be accounted for by supposing the Whigs anxious to make as-little-as-need-be a reform . But his protest has not availed ; antiquity is set at defiance , and reason is

    taken for the basis of future Municipal government without regard to prescription . All is fair on the surface , and it remains for the people themselves to defeat the sinister purposes for which the details have been improperly arranged . The people must bear in mind that the aggregate of town-governments serve to make up a general government , and that if the town-governments be corrupt , the general government will be corrupt likewise . If well managed , the local governments will form admirable schools for future

    legislators . If badly managed , they will merely be engines of more effectual misgovernment than the ancient corporations , inasmuch as the ancient corporations are glaring abuses which no one is deceived by , and the future Municipal governments will present a fair surface while all below is rotten—they will satisfy the sight and cheat the sense , a thing much to be deprecated , as the majority of human beings are but too apt to judge by externals , without usinc / the radical test of reason . There is an anecdote told of one

    of the Guelphs , which , whether real or fabricated , is much to the (purpose . Discussing the cause of Charles ' s head rolling on the scaffold , he remarked , Pooh I pooh ! Charles was a fool ; Charles was a fool ; Charles should have governed by his ( corrupt ) parliament . * Let the people beware * lest the apparent liberality of Whig Corporation Reform be intended to cowr a purpose of this description 4 l ^ t them watdh tbsxl there be , tiq i tt * ra' Chaados

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    Cevpofathn Reform . 477

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 1, 1835, page 477, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2647/page/41/