secute them
for a corrupt neglect of their duty, a thing they would as soon
put their hands in the fire as do. Such is their position, so
dependent upon bad men, that they are compelled to treat with the
utmost tenderness all the enemies of the Constitution. There can
be no doubt that the appointments to the magistracy have been
fraught with danger, and made on a very monstrous principle. When
Lord John Russell resolved and avowed his resolution to
neutralise the provision of the Act which gave the appointment of
magistrates to the Crown instead of to the Town Council (as they
had proposed) by taking the recommendations of the Council, he
incurred the deepest responsibility that any Minister ever did,
for he took on himself to adopt a course practically inconsistent
with the law, for the express purpose of placing political power
in particular hands, to which the law intended it should not be
confided; and on him, therefore, rested all the responsibility of
such power being wisely and safely exercised by the hands to
which he determined to entrust it; and when he appoints such a
man as Muntz,[6] ex-Chartist and ex-Delegate, what must be the
impression produced on all denominations of men as to his bias,
and of what use is it to make professions, and deliver speeches
condemnatory of the principles and conduct of Chartists and
associators, if his acts and appointments are not in conformity
with those professions? Mr. Muntz, he says, has abandoned
Chartism, and is no longer the man he was: but who knows that?
For one man who knows what Muntz is, a hundred know what he was,
and in the insertion of his name in the list the bulk of the
world will and can only see, if not approbation of, at least
indifference to the doctrines such men have professed, and the
conduct they have exhibited to the world. It is the frightful
anomaly of being a Government divesting itself of all
conservative character, which constitutes the danger of our day.
As the 'Times,' in one of its spirited articles, says, this very
morning, 'that it cares not to see the Monarchy broken in pieces
so that they may hurl its fragments at the heads of their
opponents.'

[5] An instruction to the Committee to introduce a clause
allowing out-door relief in all cases of able-bodied
paupers married previously to the passing of the Act.

[6] [Whatever the antecedents of Mr. Muntz may have been,
he lived to justify Lord Joh