endments to be viewed in a more unfavourable
light than would have belonged to them, if they had merely been the
result of calm deliberation. The question, however, for the house was,
whether the bill even as altered, might not be moulded into an efficient
instrument of good municipal government. He would not recommend the
adoption of the amendments by which town-clerks were made irremovable,
and by which borough magistrates who were now justices by virtue of
their offices, should continue to be so. Neither was he favourable
to the provision inserted by the lords, that a certain number of
councillors, under the name of aldermen, should be elected for life; he
would rather propose that the same number of members of the town-council
as the lords proposed should be elected for life, should be chosen for
a period of six years, and that one half should always be made at 'the
expiration of three years. Another amendment, from which he did not
intend to dissent altogether, regarded the divisions of towns into
wards; he proposed that instead of six thousand inhabitants there
should be nine thousand in any borough so divided. As regards the lords'
amendment, which gave the crown the power of nominating justices, he
proposed that the house should not agree with the alteration. In most
of the other amendments he concurred; but he would not ask the house
to accede to the provision which limited the exercise of ecclesiastical
patronage to such members of the town-councils as might belong to the
church of England, or to that clause which perpetuated the exemption
from toll enjoyed by freemen in certain boroughs. The radical section
of the commons blamed ministers for conceding too much, and indulged in
violent language against the house of lords. Mr. Roebuck asked why the
real representatives of the people should bear the insults of the lords,
when they had the power to crush them? He was an advocate for democracy,
and the sooner they brought the matter to an issue the better. It was
necessary to stir up the people upon this subject to something like a
revolution. On the part of the conservative members of the house there
was, also, a difference of opinion; some thought that the amendments of
the lords should be preserved in all their integrity, while others
were of opinion that the modifications proposed by ministers should be
adopted.

Sir Robert Peel, after entering at length into the merits of the
amendments adopted by the lords,