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    perform the best work . Mere amateurs are not remarkable for being- the most skilful workmen . Amateur lawmakers hare done much mischief in the great national council , and they are not likely to do less in the local councils . Butchers , and bakers , and tailors , and carpenters do most justice to their customers when

    they have efficiently learned their trades ; and surely the business of lawmaking does not require less study than the mechanical arts , whether it be lawmaking on the local or general scale . The proposed plan of electing a large number of persons , will serve to produce a mob of squabbling debaters , but not a body of wise councillors . It will be an assemblage of squads , each of which will have a particular interest to advocate without regard to the others ,

    as is the case with the House of Commons squads . Where people are forced to serve against their wills , they will assuredly indemnify themselves in other modes , and if they seek for the office , without any apparent recompense , they will generally have some sinister end in view . The Scot in the story did not care for the 4 pennie fee , but just contented himself with * the wee things he could peck up about the house , ' which amounted in value to the pennie fee many times told .

    The advisable principle is simple—elect just as many councillors as may be necessary to transact the business in hand , and pay to each an adequate salary , not so large as to tempt jobbers , nor so small as to expose respectable men to temptation or exclude them from office . The power of annual removal by annual

    election would be a sufficient responsibility for their good behaviour . Were the local governments thus arran g ed , in a very short time the most efficient men would be found to hold the seats of legislation . They would study the rationale of lawmaking ; and as it would be their interest to be honest , so it would be the interest of

    those who employed them to continue them in their offices throughout their lives . Such a system once established , we might laugh to scorn alike the aristocracy of rank and of wealth , and triumph in the aristocracy of mind . The whole of the boroughs would become nurseries of future national legislators , the wisest men would have a career of usefulness before them , and legislative talent be

    advantageously appropriated instead of being wasted as is at present the case . By the Act it is provided that the mayor for the time being , shall , in virtue of being a mayor , become also a magistrate or a judge so long as he may continue mayor . That is to say , he shall pretend to be a judge , by being the mouthpiece of certain dicta

    spoken in his ear as he tits , by a salaried lawyer , called a town clerk or city solicitor . It is too ludicrous for gravity to reflect on the 4 Banquo ' s issue' of lord mayors , who have defilad through th * London Mansion House as gilded speaking trumpets for toe we of that legal oracle Mr . Hobler . What a l y ing farce baa it been I Why not at once have made Mr . Hobler . the legal as well as the real judge ? It would have destroyed one of the beautiful fictions

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    Corporation Reform . 4 * 79

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 1, 1835, page 479, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2647/page/43/