Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/540

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [10* s. m. JUNE 10, 1905.

'"for their authority to abolish the sending up of .Acts to the Council, and to give the Trades an uncontrouled power of choosing their deacons."

.An interdict in the Court of Session was

applied for by certain other members to restrain the enforcement of the Act of

Council, as

" it was not in the power of the Town Council to make any regulation for altering the constitution

of the City ; nor, indeed, in the power of any but the Legislature."

They were successful in their application, and

the matter lapsed.

Fifteen years later the question again came 'to the front. Letters urging reform appeared nn the press of Edinburgh and Aberdeen, the

object being to bring about

" an alteration of the right of election of the repre- sentatives in Parliament for the Royal Burghs, and the nature of reform proposed was that the right of election should be taken from the corporations of the several towns and diffused among the in-

habitants."

One writer, who signed his productions " Zeno," attracted particular attention. Addressing the citizens of Edinburgh, he wrote as follows :

"The time is now arrived when you have an opportunity to assert your claim to freedom, and shake off these restraints to which our fathers have been long subjected. To appoint their own legis- lators is the discriminating mark of a free people : to have them appointed by others is the charac- teristic of servitude. Why should one part of a nation possess this discriminating mark, and the other be excluded from the same privilege?"

As the outcome of the agitation, a meeting

of delegates for reform was held in Edinburgh in March, 1784. Representatives appeared from thirty-three of the Royal Burghs, this number afterwards being increased to fifty-

four. A committee was formed, and a -declaration of grievances drawn up, which was considered at a meeting in April of the following year. No stone was left 'unturned to make their case effective, with the result that the reformers were able in the end of 1785 to adopt measures for introducing into Parliament the Bill which had been pre- pared. They continued to collect as much

evidence as possible, procuring " setts " of the Royal Burghs, and a vast amount of historical evidence.

Meanwhile the Convention had not been idle. The subject had been frequently in- troduced by magistrates and town councils, as it was seen that the stability of their structure was in danger. On 3 March, 1787, Lord Provost Grieve as Preses issued a letter to all the individual town councils, claiming for the Convention

" the ultimate superintendence of their public accounts, which was now proposed to be placed in the Exchequer, and directing them to solicit their respective representatives in Parliament to oppose the introduction of the Bill."

A most elaborate case was prepared by the Convention, containing objections to the proposed reform Bill. After referring to some of the letters which had appeared, and which are quoted above, those who were advocating the cause of the Convention state :

" Men whose minds were heated by such high- flying theories, are not to stop at any one given point : every part of the Constitution must to them appear distorted."

" The principle of the Bill, though it may be true in pure speculation, is untrue or impossible in practice. Were it granted, that men had an equal right in the appointment of their legislators, it does not follow that they have the same right in the nomination of ministerial or executive officers; and no claims upon general principles of that nature ought upon any account to be admitted. They lead, by unerring consequences, to universal anarchy and disorder."

From these quotations it will be seen that a good deal of feeling was imported into the quarrel. Sheridan was in charge of the promoters' Bill, and after many delays he was able to introduce it on 17 June, 1788. It was read a first time, and ordered to be printed. By now the reformers had an idea of the opposition to be offered by the Con- vention, and steps were taken to combat the evidence put forward on its behalf. A great want of tact seems to have been shown by the officials of the Convention. Instead of conciliation, irritation seerns to have been the watchword. Lord Provost Grieve, in September of that year, issued a circular letter to the town councils, "requiring them to make a scrutiny into the names of persons affixed to the various petitions." This action, as can be easily imagined, provoked considerable offence ; but there is this much to be said, the magistracy in most cases discountenanced the order. Still, the sting was there, and the friction produced did not tend to heal wounded susceptibilities.

The second reading of the Bill was moved by Sheridan on 6 July, 1789, but it was met by an amendment that

" Mr. Sheridan should have moved for a previous committee of inquiry, and proved the grievances and necessity for reform, before he brought in his Bill."

It was a case of beginning de novo ; but as the parliamentary session was near its close, nothing further was done. At a meeting held in August of the same year in Edin- burgh, fifty-two of the sixty-six Royal Burghs