Blackfriars Wynd, analyzed. By George Bell, M.D.

The Vale of Cedars; or, the Martyr. A Story of Spain in the Fifteenth Century. By Grace Aguilar.

Letters on Happiness. Addressed to a Friend. By the Author of 'Letters to my Unknown Friends.'

The Revelation of St. John; simply analyzed and briefly expounded. By Delta.

Wanderings in some of the Western Republics of America. By George Byam, late 43rd Light Infantry.

The Lyrical Dramas of Eschylus. English Verse, by John Stuart Blackie.

From the Greek. Translated into
Two Vols.

New College, London. Address of the Committee, and Preliminary Statement. With the Address delivered at the laying of the First Stone. By Dr. Pye Smith.

An Essay on the Opium Trade, as carried on in India and China. By Nathan Allen, M.D.

Regeneration, or Divine and Human Nature. A Poem, in Six Books. By George Marsland.

The Men of Glasgow and the Women of Scotland. Reasons for differing from the Rev. Dr. Symington's View of the Levitical Marriage Law. By T. Binney.

The Life of a Vagrant, or the Testimony of an Outcast to the Value and Truth of the Gospel. To which is added, a Brief and Original Account of Andries Stoffles, the African Witness.

The Norwegian Sailor. A Sketch of the Life of George Noscoe. Written by himself. With an Introductory Note, by Rev. Thomas Raffles, D.D. Fifth Edition, with an Account of his Death.

6

A Brief Notice of the Life of the Rev. Edward Bickersteth. By Sir C. E. Eardley, Bart. Reprinted from Evangelical Christendom,' with Additions.

Eastern Monachism: an Account of the Origin, Laws, Discipline, Sacred Writings, Mysterious Rites, Religious Ceremonies, and Present Circumstances, of the Order of Mendicants founded by Gotama Budha; with Comparative Notices of the Usages and Institutions of the Western Ascetics, and a Review of the Monastic System. By R. Spence Hardy, Member of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.

A Letter to the Rev. Jabez Bunting, D.D., President of the Theological Institution, suggesting 'A Plan of Pacification.' By William Harris, President of the Local Preachers' Mutual Aid Association.

Popular Elevation the Work of the People; being an Examination of the existing Elements for the Intellectual, Spiritual, Moral, and Political Improvement of Modern Society. By Rev. Brewin Grant, B.A.

An Inquiry into the History and Character of Rahab. By Rev. J. H. Caunter, B.D.

Three Sermons on the Doctrine of Justification, and its Results. Preached at the Evening Service in Lee Church, Blackheath. By Wm. Francis Sims, M.A.

ART. I.—1. Draught of a Bill for Abolishing the Payment of Fines and Stamp Duties on the Admission of Freemen of the City of London, and for Making and Keeping a Roll of the Citizens of the said City.' [Mr. Hume.]

2. Petition of Commonalty and Citizens of London, to be presented to: the House of Commons for Restoration of their Ancient Liberties.

3. What is the Corporation of London? And, Who are the Freemen ? By J. Toulmin Smith, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister-at-Law. London: Effingham Wilson.

4. Proceedings of Wardmotes in Farringdon Without, November, 1849 -May, 1850.

5. Corporation of London Reform. Letter to Sir James Duke, Bart., M.P., Alderman of the Ward of Farringdon Without. By J. Toulmin Smith, Esq., 3rd January, 1850.

6. Address of the Citizens of the Ward of Farringdon Without, in the City of London, to their Fellow-Citizens of the other Wards in the said City.

7. Memorial of the Citizens of the Ward of Farringdon Without, in Wardmote Assembled, 9th January, 1850, to the Lord Mayor,

Aldermen, and Commons, of the City of London, in Common
Council.

8. Abstract of Returns of the Number of Householders, distinguishing Freemen and Non-Freemen, together with the Numbers on the List of Voters, made under the Act 12 and 13 Vict., cap. 94. Presented to the Court of Common Council, 22nd November, 1849.

9. Report of the City Solicitor to the Court of Aldermen on the Stamp Duty, payable upon admission of Persons by redemption to the Freedom of the City. February, 1850.

THE abuses of the corporation of London have been a standing topic for declamation and satirical jocularity for a quarter of a century. The call for reform has been both loud and long; but like all popular demands, where earnestness of purpose and consistency of action were wanting, it was a cry, and nothing more. Men of keen moral sense were justly indignant at the mismanagement, jobbery, and tinsel extravagance, which have characterised corporate administration of corporate property under the oligarchic rule of the last one hundred and twentyfive years; and wrath found vent in the grumblings, loud and deep, of hard-taxed citizens, and in the lighter artillery of innumerable jokes and jokelets. Men only looked at the surface of the evil; they saw not the fruitful cause of abuse in the oligarchic usurpation of 1724, which, through fraud and force, subverted the free constitution of a thousand years, and constituted the metropolitan municipality a great central example of irresponsible misrule. And so will it always be, when empirical expedients are preferred to fundamental principles. In the pusillanimous and degenerate race,' who have supinely borne the accumulated abuses of the system, one can scarce believe he sees the descendants of the good men and true who did the commonwealth such service in stern times of old. Quiet men have lamented, and noisy men have declaimed, on these abuses, but the kingdom of Cockayne is still governed under the popular encroachments of the infamous Alderman's Act.' It is true that the city of London rejoices in the possession of the 'Reform Act' of 1849-the beautiful and consistent statute of 12 and 13 Victoria, under which a constituency which had grown small by degrees,' by a bound became so beautifully less,' that citizens of discernment have abandoned hope of preserving even the form of representation, for want of a constituency. In this state of affairs a reform,' as it is vaguely termed, or as we take leave to phrase it, a renovation of the corporation of London, has become a vital necessity.

Mr. Hume has undertaken to introduce a bill into the House of Commons for abolishing the payment of fines and stampduties on the admission of freemen of the city of London, and for making and keeping a roll of the citizens of the said city.' Brevity and perspicuity have long been lost sight of in the mechanics of law-making. It is a relief, therefore, to turn from the mighty maze of our statute-book since the days of the Revolution, illustrating so copiously, as Sheridan once remarked, legislation on the-house-that-Jack-built' principle,* to a bill of three clauses, which seems to meet all the requirements of the time, and to provide legitimately for the wants and wishes of those concerned, not by experimental enactments in the set phrase of parliamentary verbosity, but according to constitutional principle, and with the forcible brevity of a declaration of rights. Mr. Hume's-or, if parliamentary conventionalism will permit honour to whom honour is due, Mr. Toulmin Smith's bill, is not only a model bill, but, in the Baconian sense, an exhaustive measure; it is at once radical and conservative-radical, in uprooting the excrescence of class-rule, by which abuses were fostered and maintained; conservative, in restoring to the commonalty their precious birthright of self-government.

The bill declares, that by the ancient common law of England, every man who has been an occupier within any city or borough for the space of a year and a day, becomes thereby a free man, entitled to the exercise and enjoyment of all the rights and liberties, and liable to the discharge of all the duties and obligations, of a citizen and freeman, within such city or borough. It then sets forth, that in restraint of the said good and wholesome law, certain fines have been imposed and levied, and stamp-duties - exacted in limitation of the number of those entitled to the rights of citizenship, and liable to the discharge of the co-ordinate duties. The bill, therefore, provides for the total repeal of these impositions, municipal and legislative, and declares and enacts that every man who shall occupy, on his own behalf, either separately or jointly, and either by way of residence, or for the purpose of carrying on there his own proper lawful business, calling, or profession (and not merely as the servant, or in the pay of another person), any house, part of a house, chambers, or other premises within the city of London, for the space of a year and a day, is, and shall thereby become a citizen and free man, and member of the body corporate of the said city,' entitled to all the rights and liberties, and to vote at every election for alderman, common councilmen, and all other functionaries and officers whose election is usually made in wardmote. The second This is a law to alter a law to improve a law to add to a law that Jack

made.'

section provides that a roll of the citizens and freemen shall be kept by the alderman of each ward, and that wardmotes shall, 'for the above, together with such other purposes as shall seem good to the occupiers within each ward,' be held four times in each year; namely, in March, June, September, and December, when the roll shall be amended and made good. In this clear and concise measure are embodied the leading principles of the admirable system of self-government on which English liberty depends.

The corporation of London, notwithstanding its oligarchism and abuses, which are rather to be considered as excrescences than constitutional defects, is justly entitled to the respect and regard of all free men. It is an epitome of the ancient popular constitution of England, against which so many sneers have lately been directed by mere party politicians, through ignorance of its true character and worth. The corporation of London is the most complete representative left in this country of that sound and wholesome system of local self-government which formed the basis of our Saxon institutions, and which existed in full activity and healthy vigour throughout the whole land. In the popular passion at the present day for submitting everything, from man's birth to his burial, to the legislative pleasure of Parliamentthe result, not the source of power-we have lost sight of the great fundamental principles on which our Saxon ancestors built English freedom. It is not very surprising, therefore, that politicians, who go no further back than the revolutionary settlement of 1688 for their 'constitutional principles,' should occasionally indulge in hackneyed sneers at the wisdom of their ancestors. Nothing can be clearer to him who reads constitutional history aright-not in the treatises and essays of modern compilers, but in the originals of our records-that the Saxon constitution embodied as perfect a system of popular selfgovernment as was ever tried in any country, or at any time. The system of local legislation, which Milton propounded as an element in his ideal of a perfect commonwealth-although the practice had in his day become disused, under the successive encroachments of kings, nobles, and parliaments-was, neverthe less, then actually in legal existence by the common law of England. It is only necessary now to refer to the progressive development of self-government, from the family to the whole commonweath, in the institutions of the tythings, hundreds, shires, and common council, or parliament, of the whole realm. This was the practical application of the two great fundamental principles of the constitution, everywhere apparent in our ancient laws that all law must spring from the people, and be administered by the people; principles the establishment of which