Topics OF TH DAY.

TIIE LORDS ANI) TILE COMMONS : TILE CENTRAL AND LOCAL SYSTEMS.

Timis.;; can be no ditibt that the Peers, led by Lord LYNontntsT, will adopt Lord Fit vNCIS EGERTON'S plan of Irish Municipal l)estruction, which was scouted by the I louse of Commons. Col- lision with the Natiuttil R.Tresentatives seems to be their object. Lci theta proceed : the time, as we staid 1101 1 le weeks ago, for ad- quarrel b;tweeit the Lord ml the Great Council of the Nation. The present icaeal hut, tiles III ',Folly well canvassed, will yet beat' examination. Towards a cotopiete explanation of what it is that the Lt t is propoFie for tlu• government of Irish towns', we contribute this wee:: some very interesting Mal 1..t, borrowed in fart fr(itit 1`, I 1 an or" mots patuchlet which was publishcd about two vcars and in hart front a capital article in the (;tole of 3iien1ay laat. Ever!, lacely knows that the object of Lord I,vsintuusT's pro- po-al is to phltql tltc t.)WilS of Ireland, now managed by 1,,cal institutions, under central governiii.Alt---to appoint the Ironic

Secretar and his clerks L:rcl Mayor and Town-Councillors fir all

Ireland ; hereaa the House of Collin:91,s deniali,' that the local.

insthuti,ns or Iralaral shall be preserved, aral only so far altered as to adinit--whoni:—the /fist', inhabitants of towns to an equal share of that local sol;:goVeriataellt. Which has hitherto been monopolizef 1 by the C'olctist race. Ilere follows a picture of the central and h.cal systems—the sysieni of the Lords, and the system of the Cu:unions.

all the ;ape., aitilla of delegat;Ini itto IWO opposite :lases,—those which are central, and those which are spe-,al, whatever ehe they may be,—it will IreCOMe CM' to Ustahnsh, that while in Tn, key and Mame central delega- tion of authority is a leading pia:Li:laic if government, special delegation of authority has for ages been Me leading principle of the Eritish constitution.

" The central systen1 was e.toblialied in Frartre by T'aapoleon, himself the seprena. ;Imhof ity ; who, delighting is the exercise Of power, could not bear that any other will tlia a his et: t1 should be exerted ; who, if it had been phy- sically possible, would have governed withoet delealtion ; and whose system of delegation was framed so as to reserve for him the power of constant inter- meddiing, least, with every thing tlort eoneerneil forty millions of people. ' c'est inoi ! lie is said to have repeated after Louis the Fourteenth ; and the Gland Turk i4 of the same opinion. His system is now in full

vigour, and is ruining the people submitted to it. he Freuch are very proud of having rill themselves of a political church and hereditary nobles ; but as ' King Stork made it appear that King Log had not heeu quite worthless, so in France, the old nuisances of priesthaod and nobility seem mild when compared with the modern curse of authority. In France,' said 1'. L. Courier, I the gendarmes have a finger in every thing. Charming nation, ruled by • beauty and the graces, you are a people of courtiers now more than ever. Ey the Revolution Versailles was melted into the nation : Paris is become the bull's-eye. In France everybody- pays court. You keep a school to teach the art of pleasing: it is the genius of your nation. The Englishman navigates, the Arab robs, the Greek lights to be free ; the Frenchman bows, and serves, or lungs to serve; he would die if he ilia not serve : you arc a people, not of slaves, but of footmen.' I larsh words, but trim ; for in France, as in Turkey, the only way to obtain distinction is by serving nailer Government. A French- man seithout a place, is nobody. And let us remark, in passing, that the Frenchman's lose worship of authority is by no means inconsistent with his love of equality ; for the central system, ordering all things alike for all people alike, makes a monotonous nation, who, being all the same, love to be so; and a stagnant nation, becatice always in leadings-taings, who therefore crouch to the one giver of wealth and honours. Va. slavish Turks also, being stagnant and monotonous, delight ill egllatity. Tile biota iliate cause in either ease, both of the servility, and tilt! love of sameness, appears to be one central autho- rity, acting in all fiir all, by means of temporary agents. " England, on the contrary, lata been, at least ever since divine right was banished with the Stuarts, ruled by means of a vast number of little govern- ments exercising- a delegated authority, often in perpetual succession, troth legislating and executing, and in each case with reference to some special object or some particular place. The examples are without end ; including, the Established Church, the Etat India Company, every trust for the improve- ment of a town or a road, every parish vestry, every canal, bridge, and railway company, the hundreds MIT thousands (if corporations that exist in Great Britain and Irefaud ; null, though last not least, the special and local sove- reignties by which the foiled States were called into existence. Called into existence—the term is good for another purpose. Self-government calls into existence qualities that never appear in him who has only to obey—an honour- able ambition' industry, quickness of perception, judgment, the love of order, a dispositiou to help and give assistance, constancy of purpose, self-reliance, and a hatred of oppression. Free-born Englishman, or sturdy John Bull, signifies one who has enjoyed self-government, or the exercise of delegated authority: it signifies a man, while slave is the proper name of him who has been always the subject, never the .possessor of power. Our national character is stamped with the mark of special and local self-government. At one time or other of our lives, all of us who are above the poorest class, engage in some kind of public business, and exercise some sort of authority ; hence the energy of Eng- lishmen, the spirit with which they set about any work of improvement, and their pride, which, not less than their activity, is unaccountable to most foreigners. A writer in the Edinburgh Review has puzzled himself extremely with trying to find out why it happened, when similar disasters had occurred to the French frigate the Aleduse and the English frigate the Alceste, that the French crew displayed every quality bad for the occasion,—such as insubordi- nation, the most reckless improvidence, the greatest cruelty to each other, and cowardly despair ; while the English crew exerted the opposite qualities,—obe- dience, forethought, mutual kindness, and the coolest bravery. What was the cause of the difference? This remarkable difference between the conduct of two sets of men placed under like circumstances of novel emergency, may be • " The Principles or Delegatal, Cenral, and Special Authority, applied to tl e Poor-Laws Amendment Bill."

explained by allowing for that difference of national character which makes the English the best, and the French the worst of colonizers. The Englishman

has been accustomed to rely upon himself for a thousand things which, in France, are managed by the yendarmes. While the Frenchman clings round authority, calls himself loyal, and is helpless when left unsupported, John Bull stands on his own foundation, brags that he is free-burp, and is able to shift for himself. The one is a machine, the other is a power. And here we see why the French fail, and the English succeed in the planting of colonies; a work wherein all, except the ground to atom' upon, is originated or created. " In the United States, the principle of government, us respects means, is special delegation : central authority derived floin the sovereign people is the exception, never resorted to, apparently, but in cases of neces t). Thus each of the twenty-eight states of the Union is a separate government, both legisla- tive and executive, and contains within itself a great number' of separate governments for various special and local purposes. Nothing is ordered or done at Washington, the seat of federal government, that may be as well done or ordered by the state governments; and of the small number of func- tion., whether executive or legislative, performed by the central authority, there does not appear to be any that could be as well perfornual by each state for itself. As .-oon as any poi tion of the Weston wilderness contains enough inhabitants to form a state, it obtainsfiont the supreme authority, the sovereign people, a delegatbsi of power for local self-government, becoming a separate and independent state for till those objects, whether legislative or executive, which the federal or central govetninent does not accomplish fur any of the other states. The United States were founded by di-ligation of special autho• city, and they seem to have improved upon the principle."

The tract which we have quoted appeared before DE TOCQUE- VILLE'S Democracy in America: our extract would almost seem to have been written by that philosophical Frenchman. Has the same hand been at work in the Globe?

" Tories are fond of alluding to the failure of all attempts, by nations on the Continent, to establish a constitution like that of England. The truth is,

however, that no such attempt has been made. The French, the Spaniards, and others,. adopted the forms of the British constitution, but had no mice's. tion of its essence. Liberty is not ;emitted Mr by three estates. Two Houses of Parliament and a King are as good instruments of despotism as a great standing army, provided that the people have no institutions for local self-go- vernment. The witty Paul Louis Courier makes Louis the Eighteenth write to Ferdinand the Beloved, saying—' Take iny advice; I speak five, experience: have a nice constitution with two Chambers; there is nothing like it fur keep- ing down the canaille and making them pay ; the Grand Turk would have one if he did but know its value.' Frenchmen have not obtained English li- berty with the forms of our constitution : Tut key would not be a free country though her Divan should be turned into two Ilmews of Parliament. Wanting local institutions of government, which teach the people to think, to combine, and to act, a constitution of general government, however free in appearance, is sure to be used for the most despotic purposes : it is like a tree without loots, which, though called a tree, would bear no fruit—like a dead body or a statue, having the human shape, but without a soul. The democracy of America con- sists not in a President, with a Congress elected by ballot and almost universal suffrage, but in this—that the general government of the Union does nothing for the people, which they can .ol.etter for the , selves by means of institutions on the spot where each thing is to be dune. The free general constitution of America owes its life, its reality, to innumerable supports, partal-ing of its own character, and spreading by highni a) s and byways into every nook and corner of the laud. And where did the Americium find that principle of local self- government which they have carried into complete effect ? They found it iu those Eny/ish charters under n bush our colonies in America were planted. William Penn and b's followers, Lord Baltimore and his the London Company which established Virginia, all, without exception, of the English founders of colonies in America, carried with them parchments which contained a demo- cratic constitution for their government, or rather which entitled them to ma- nage their own immediate affairs in their own way,—that is, to local self-govern- ment. American democracy was born in England. ' Magna vision mater!' exclaims ..clam Smith, when boasting, as well he might, that England is the only country which could have produced the men fit to e.tablish liberty in Ame- rica. Thirteen is the number of carters for local self-government which the founders of the United States took with them from England. But how many did they leave behind them ? Hundreds, nay, thousands, if we include, as is but fair, all corporations for special as well as local purposes. And these existed before England had obtained a free constitution of general government. As liberty was long pieservtil in America without any general constitution what- ever, by the mere force of local institutions, so numerous delegations of autho-

rity from the Sovereign to the people, for local and special purposes, made England a free couutrv,—theonly free country in the world except her colonies in America,—long before 1688, the dated that, her general constitution, which the French and others have pretended to imitate. She obtained and has pre- served her general constitution by mean.; which the Continental nations have never so much as imagined—by countless isatitutions of local self-government. This it is which peculiarly distinguishes the English from all other nations ex- cept the Anglo-Americans ; this it is which has made England still England, notwithstanding conquest and revolution ; this is an English attribute derived

front the Saxons, by its own nature indestructible, and powerful to preserve what it creates—the national qualities of manly vigour, sound judgment or common sense, self-reliance, generosity, and love of freedom. John Bull stands forth, different from all but his brother Jonathan, the creature of local self-govern- ment."

The influence of local self-government upon the character of those who enjoy it, and its tendency, through combination, to bestow strength upon the weak, is thus illustrated-

" The English conquerors of Ireland, like the English colonizers of America, carried with them, and have preserved institutions for local self-government. The corporation of Londonderry has been another corporation of London. The Milesian rare, feeble for want of local self-government, became an easy prey to men armed with the means,—the very cause of political combination and self. reliance. A handful of Saxons—Saxons less by blood than through their institutions—have held the Irish nation in slavery. The conquerors have naturally monopolized that powerful instrument to which they owe their supre- macy : but there it is, perfectly efficient for the good of all who shall use it."

To what do the Cantons of Switzerland owe their success in struggling fur liberty? to their mountains, or to local self-govern- ment? Let us ask General EVANS; who, in his recent letter to

the Electors of Westminster, says-

" The laws, manners, and customs of the small mountain provinces in this corner of the Peninsula, in which alone the insurrection continues with any de- gree of consistency, have no affinity or resemblance whatever to those of any other part of Spain. They comp ellend a fiftieth part of the population, and sot a hundredth part of the territory of the kingdom. Acknowledging osten- sibly the authority of the Sovereign, the civil and financial administration has is reality been for ages in the hands of a few dozen of the more wealthy families, who hold their offices by election. This total pectdiarity of systems together with an almost recognized monopoly of smuggling at the expense of the national treasury, has produeed local interests and feelings, correspondingly distinct from and at variance with those of the rest of the country : thesepro- vinces, therefore, afford no index of the disposition of the people south of the Ebro."

A little band in one corner of Spain, fighting, like the English colonists of now independent America, for their chartered rights of local government, are found to be unconquerable. Nis- POLEON, in the height of his power, could not thoroughly subdue the Tyrol, which is studded with local governments. If Poland had been blessed with a system of local self-government, the Partition might not have taken place ; and any attempt to restore Poland as she was, would be like the grand blunder of the French Revo- lution—like planting a tree of liberty without roots.

The present question, then, between our Lords and Commons is, whether what the writer in the Globe terms " the marrow of the British constitution " shall be preserved in Ireland, and ex- tended to all alike, or shall be entirely obliterated, so as to reduce both races to the servile condition of the bulk of the people in France and Turkey. Preserve and civilize, is the motto of the Commons : that of the Lords is, Destroy and enslave. Mile- sian O'CONNELL wants Saxon institutions for Ireland : Anglo- American LYNDHURST, having ratted from his early democratic opinions, plunges like a renegade into the opposite extreme, and upholds the French or Turkish system of centralization. Saxon England—England, made what she is by local self-govern- ment—will know which side to take.