acceded to this suggestion; but Lord John Russell still maintained that
the provision contained in the clause was a necessary consequence of
adopting this new municipal franchise; and, if so, ministers were not
proposing it for the sake of altering the reform bill, but for the sake
of amending the municipal corporations. The amendment said that the
clause must not affect either the rights of property or the privileges
to which the freemen were at present entitled. Many of these rights
and privileges were of a description hurtful to the inhabitants of towns
generally; many of them consisted in a monopoly of trades; and many in
an exemption of tolls to which the inhabitants generally were liable.
Lord Stanley supported the amendment: he could not see how the clause
came to appear in a bill which professed to be a measure to provide for
the regulation of the municipal corporations in England and Wales. On
a division the clause was carried by a majority of two hundred and
seventy-eight against two hundred and thirty-two.

The question, however, was again raised by Mr. Praed, who moved the
following amendment:--"Provided always, and be it enacted, that in every
borough, whether the same be a county of itself or not, where the right
to vote in the election of members or a member to serve in parliament
for such borough, is, according to the laws now in force, enjoyed by
persons entitled to vote in virtue of some corporate right, nothing
whatsoever in this act contained shall in anywise hinder or prevent any
person or persons who now enjoy, or who hereafter, according to the laws
now in force, might have acquired such corporate right, from enjoying
or acquiring such corporate right for the purpose of voting in such
elections." In opposing this amendment, Lord John Russell denied that he
was interfering by this municipal bill with the parliamentary franchise:
he was not enacting that there should be no freemen; and, therefore,
though there would no longer be freemen voting for members of
parliament, that was only an incidental consequence of the principle of
the bill, which principle was again brought into action, not with a
view to parliamentary franchise, but solely with a view to municipal
government. The amendment was lost by a majority of two hundred and
thirty-four against two hundred and sixty-two. Another amendment, moved
by Mr. Ponsonby, for the purpose of protecting inchoate rights of
freemen, was equally unsuccessful,