eration and the careful examination which many of its enactments
would require. Lord Lyndhurst especially called the attention of the
house to the tendency of those provisions which had a retrospective
operation. After the bill, therefore, had been read a second time, it
was referred, with the acquiescence of ministers, to a select committee,
which committee made various amendments upon the bill, all of which
were agreed to by the house and adopted into the bill. The commons, on
receiving the bill back again, agreed to all the amendments except two.
The first of these was an amendment on the provision, that when the
town-council was equally divided in the election of mayor or alderman,
these officers should be chosen directly by the constituent body. The
lords had altered this into a provision that, in case of equality,
the town-council should first of all name by lot one of this number to
preside at the meeting, and that their presiding councillor should have
a casting vote. The second amendment consisted in the insertion of a
clause to continue for another year the arrangement contained in the
municipal act for the management of charitable trusts. No portion of
these new institutions had produced greater jealousy between parties;
the popular party were eager to get hold of them, while the other
insisted on some arrangement which would prevent the funds of charities
from being prostituted to party and political purposes. This jealousy
was not set aside by the municipal bill, which left those charitable
trusts in the hands of the persons then administering them, till the
1st of August, 1837, unless parliament in the meantime should otherwise
provide, and if it did not, then the lord-chancellor was to appoint new
trustees. Previous to this Mr. Smith had brought in a bill to administer
these trusts by a system of popular election. The town-council of each
borough was to fix the number of trustees, and then the trustees were to
be chosen by the municipal electors, each elector voting for only half
of the number, in the idea that this would give both parties an equal
chance. The trustees were to be elected every three years. This bill
had not passed when the municipal bill was sent up to the lords; and it
proceeded upon a system which their lordships were not likely to approve
of. The lords, therefore, had inserted in the municipal bill a clause
continuing for another year that administration of these charitable
trusts which