THE LAW OF THE LAND.

Wellington Independent, Volume I, Issue 61, 29 April 1846, Page 4

THE LAW OF THE LAND.

[Concludedfrom our last."]

But the dens where men who owed money to their fellows could be cast, would have been long since beaten down but for the peers. They systematically resisted every attempt to mollity the stronge st law. Through their imperious will, many a wretch has rotted debt-pent iv the jails of England. The representatives of the'land of England—the Souse of Lords, and we may add the Tory benches of the House of Commons, stuck long to their privileges. In 1787, and in the three following years, a series of measures passed the Lower House—not for the purpose of abolishing, but modifying, soothing, softening the rigours of the harsh law. The Lords threw them out. Protected themselves, would it not be making the atgis less precious to extend its influence to others ? Iv 1787 there were three thousand poor debtors languishing in the jails of England; the Lords, in answer to the Commons' supplication m their behalf, told them to languish on. , And as with imprisonment for debt, so with ninetenths of the unjust, impolitic Jaws with which we are or were oppressed. As they owed their birth to landowners, and were intended for their benefit, so every attempt at their modification oKrepeaiSiisresisted by the landowners represented ia"-the peers of England. Sometimes we see them standing, by royalty—sometimes ranged against it, but always constant to two things— *to the perpetuation ofrihe people's wrongs aud the gratification of their "own interests." The barons quarrelled with King John, and the people got Magna Charta—a striking realisation of the proverb, "that when rogues fall out honest men get their own." The wars of the Roses swept away a, tolerable portion of the nobility; but the first of the Stuarts, who wielded the sceptre of England, created so many new honours and titles, that placards were fixed upon St. Paul's, offering to teach the art of remembering the names of the new aristocracy. Their acts were soon to teach the memory of their names. Charles the First was a tyrant, and they naturally backed him. He attempted to put in force what his father used to vapour about royal prerogative and the divine right of kings, and his worthy Peers as natuarallylsupported him. The Commons took their grievances into consideration before granting supplies. Charles applied to the Lords, his good friends and trusty councillors ; but the Commons were getting sturdy and resolute, and neither the' King nor his Peeis took much by the motion. In the Long Parliament the Commons struggled for the religious, liberty of the subject and the curtailment in matters temporal of the powers of the bishops. The Lords, of course, supported the claims of the church over the riiential liberties of the people. Then came the crisis of the struggle

manded, and "f "P" 1 * r d p ylf / wa B taken out t Se 30th of January t.iokled from a scaffold ( in Whitehall, laid it for a time. Years passed-a re-action came, and 'the Peers again were pre-eminent in station and -in power. The Commons wished to pass a bill of indemnity-, the Lords claimed that the relations of five -Peers who had fallen in the struggle should have the right; of singling out and excepting as victims to a bloody vengeance, five statesmen of the commonwealth. These men professed Christianity, aud robed bishops sat by their sides. In the time of the second Charles the Lords proposed to revive the Star Chamber. The motion was quashed in its birth. Charles amid his profligacy thought Catholicism the " only religion fit for a geetleman." He granted a " Declaration of Indulgence "to its professors. The Commons told him he had no right to suspend the laws. He applied to the' Lords, they stigmatised the decision of the Lower House as monsttum, horrendum, ingens, but the passing of the Test Act in the Commons answered the mutilated quotion. The Lords rejected it, certainly not out of love to religious freedom-; and when they were forced to pass it, . they attempted to make exceptions in favour of the members of their own body interested. Always the same—always urging exceptions in their own favour —in the stringent laws they passed 1 The Lords at first threw out the Habeas Corpus Act. In tbe expulsion of James they took little part. In William's reign they distinguished themselves in their usual style.by opposing extension of religious liberty. In 1692, they rejected a bill for " free and impartial proceedings in Parliament." In 1701, they baffled an attempt to inquire into the state of the public accounts--millions of money having been peculated. These were practices sure of receiving their protection. Shortly afterwards the Peers attempted to prevent the evasion of the statute conferring upon the death of a Catholic his property npon his Protestant heir. This was defeated, but they were more successful in resisting the efforts of the Commons, to limit the number of placemen sitting in Parliament. A bold stroke to render absolute the power of the oligarchary, by limiting their numbers, was defeated by the Commons. A Bill to secure freedom of election the Peers rejected in 1722—they repeated the game four years afterwards,and, shoi tiy before that epoch, a bill for vote by ballot met the same fate. On the downfall of the Walpole ministry, the alleged immense deficiencies in the Treasury were passed over without inquiry. About the middle of last esntury, two cases of personal injustice— one the execution of Byng, and the other the refusal of a writ of Habeas Corpus in favour of a gentleman who had been impressed,, were sanctioned and glosed overlay the Lords. Mansfield in vain pleaded the latter case before assembled hereditary clemency and wisdom. A few years thereafter, the Commons had to defend the liberties of the country against ge. neral warrants, the Lords obstinately battled for the iniquitious privilege, and a dozen of years afterwards stood out as strongly against relief to conscientiouß dissenters. In 1781, a liberal measure of Mr. Fox, declaring marriage to be simply a civil : contract, was rejected by the pious Lords; and Pitt's early reforms and Fox's East India bills met with the same fate. As determined in' Cruelt y/as deep in corruption, Wilberforce's first bill for the amelioration o¥ of the criminal code was lost in the Upper House. Our criminal laws at that period . were a disgrace to civilisation, therefore the Lords : kept them up. To the slave trade abo'ition bill, too, they appended certain modifying clauses. A curious specimen of* hereditary ways of legis- ; lationis afforded ia 1803 Two bills involving the liberties and the lives of a third of the empire —the suspension of the Habeas Corpus in, and the extension of military law to Ireland, were passed by the Lords, through all their stages, in one night; the standing orders having been conviently suspended for the purpose. After this feat of legislation—this wholesale sacrifice of liberty and life—the venerated legislators went comfortably home to supper 1 After this, it was of course to be expected that Romilly > s measure for abolishing the punishment of death for petty thefts in shops should be indigently kicked out of the House of Lords. The gallows has always been a favorite there; they have always loved Jack Ketch more than the schoolmaster. And then came another attempted piece of justice, ignominiously defeated. In 1814 Mackintosh and Romily proposed that freehold estates should, upon the death of their occupiers, be liable for simple contract debts. Here vv a s a blow at land. Was it to be endured that divinehedged acres should be placed in jeopardy for the mdre observance of contract ? that lands should be subjected to mere ordinary rule* of morality, and justice, and common sense ? No; if such a measure were to be the law of the hnd, it would not : be a satisfactory law for the land i and the Lords 'always were diligent in taking care that a proposal must be a bill in the latter sense ere it should become an act in the former. A bill for abolishing the cruel and degrading punishment of the pillory met with the fate to be expected in the House, of Lords. . Secure within their fortahce of exemption must the Peers have felt themselves, when the instinct of self-preserva-tion whispered not the the pillory Three years afterwards they refused to abolish hanging for thefts of five shillings and upwards: and it was only slowly and by most reluctant degrees that our sanguinary code was made less cruel. But there Breads which—not like the abolition of the slave-trade and the restriction of hanging—the the Lords passed with railway speed ; for instance, the infamous Six Acts of Sidmouth and Castle, reagh for the virtual quenching of liberty of word and of thought, and the absolute extinction of personal security. Passing to some of the landed aristocratic leets- , 6o°, n 5?", ° U , r ° wn da * let U8 "memfeer that in 1821 P.unket's attempt at Catholic Emancipation was defeated, and Lord John Russell's parliamen. tery reforms were of course equally successful. Mackintosh continued his efforts for the ameliora. ion of- the criminal code-the Lords perseverindy hwartingthem. Canning attempted to allow Catholic Peers to resume their seats in Parliament. Their charitable brethern would have none of them A modified general Catholic Relief bilj was lost in the Lords next year . Ia 1825 the Catholic Relief

bill was thrown out In the game house. The,.., 3 game was refused to be legaliseda year>o r tw '111 terwards, and the Anatomy Regulation bin 08 ''^ equally scouted the Lords hot being troubled ,5 II any foolish predtlectiou for medical br anvJi N science. : ' 'm » M What has been done In our own day J s Bt j|.. 'p| in our minds. We have seen every popul ar sure, every proposal In favour of extended nom,?' 83 lights, combat ted inch by inch by the heredit representatives <rf the land j their tardy assent i?' $1 ingat length wrung, not from their goodwill | I S fiom their ftars. We have seen the despera-eh r^ tle'fought for rotten boroughs, the stand made?' rotteness in every shape, the contest Urged betw £! the claims of intelligence and the grasping of n perty. The declaration of one magnate of the« ffl tern that do what he liked with his o» • r*s to wit, the opinions and the consciences of higrT W low-men—has been echoed bymiie threat of anot that he would send his black footman into ths tW -^ of Commons-; and, in order that 'the Bench mbu not be behind the Senate, we have heard of a era and ermined'judge solemnly laying it down fa fs. the judgment-seat that only land'hsfl a right to SPI represented in Parliament. %*$ And certainly whatever may be the de jure stat of the question, there can be little doubt of t ae ?&*|i facto. The House of Lords is exclusively landon ing and hereditary. The House of Commons tCI deeply impregnated with the same leaves. Half! ?| its seats at'least are held under immediate i! P* fluence of Peers. More than thirty per cent, of it ml members are directly connected with the peerae.! IP and the spirit of aristocracy broods over it—enei vating and enfeebling, if not paralysing' and rottinrPl Notwithstanding this, however,—-small as ft^l centuries was the inflnence of the people in tb fi! chamber in -which they were thoretically represen ted,—we have seen that in it almost every liberal' ising, humanising, civilising measure originate/H and it was by it that, in despite of the overwhelm!!?! ing power of aristocracy of acres, every such'll measure wara battled into law.' There was truth m on the side of the weak—falsehood on the tide ol ( the strong. So may the contest between migbt £ and right ever terminate ! 9 But if the star of our heriditary legislation bg £ wanting, if'the spread of books, and newspapers, asj p magazines bedimming and destroying itsiuflueneell —if the printing press, the worst enemy it e^if saw, be assaultiug it, and doomed ultimately'toil cast it from the sphere it has so long wandered 'all —if rising intelligence, and awakened inquiry, anijj vivified and vivifying spirit be everywhere plannißM and plotting against it—when it does give war,h vast will be tbe spoil which it will have accumu!lj lated duringits 'lung and iniquitous reign. Brind.pl ley looked upon rivers as intended by nature toB feed navigable canals—a celebrated beri.djitary If frm lator loosed-upon trees as " excrescences upon'thiji earth," intended by nature Tor the payment bjß gentlemen's debts;—but in one view our titWp lawgivers have long been unanimous—in that dp regarding the public purse as their own privatiSf property. The words place and pension areaijj naturally associated with those of Lorn and Duke,lj as roast goose with apple sauce. Wherever we£ find the one. the other is sura to 'be near at hand.fj •' I have no property myself, 0 said a Lordlin&£ explaining 'his "expectations" to the father of «■ ; lady he had wooed and won, ''bat I have familjH i connections with the Grenvilles.' 1 ' Of course tnii!B s was quite satisfactory. We have heard of iir" " order " naturally in'ended for the service of th«*^ state- It would be more correct to talk, an order';;" ; naturally intended for the plunder of the public,[■?; The army, the navy, the church have all one granite object besides the three great ones—they are jevf.f.. rally destined to serve, Livings, ships, andregi-f'" ; ments are bought and sold. Tbere is nothing- : that the spirit of aristocracy cannot convert imo ? * I property. It has made the wild things of th)' ' . earth property. It deals and traffics in the unlf iof men. It battens upon what was to be taught.- . without money and without price. It makes thai- ; church of God the profit and the property of mar, r But let the church take care. Aristocracy profei." * ses for it I -great reverence and a great love. Tit church is wealthy. It was more so once, and aritd " , tocracy and roydiy fell Jointly upon it—upset tb« : t fabric, and 'devtded the spoil. Pleasant occupatioj - . r and a richer pleasantry still—they said they di'f- , it for religion's sake 1 As they fed upon th- ? r church, they feed upon the state. The peerage** , drams upwards of three millions of money in pen-P , mom and places. Well may we be a «'«pensive'" , public.'' r h>

For land then, and by land, has the whole fabric of our laws and constitution been built. For land, does the com law famish its yearly victims; for and, does the game law demoralise districts; foi and, does the law of primogeniture set aside thl law ot natore; for land, does the law of entail defeat the plain rules of justice} for colonial hnd.au we hampered by numberless paralysing fi.-cal restri* tions j for land, is the absurd distinction diawn between personal and real property-always careful to protect the one at the expenseof the other; W the sake of land, the goods of a sub-tenant maybi seized for the non-fulfilment of a contract to whit* he was no party; for the benefit of land, the scrapri up pittance devised to widows is pillaged, while m princely estate passes free from sire to son; far! land, we live move and have our being ; land governs us; land taxes us; Atlas-like the land weigh! us down. Judge-made law may be bad, but land' lord-made law is worse. Morally, we are still a* scnpti glefoa— The Law ofthe Land is the Law for the Land! "From Douglas Jerrold's Magazine.