"-] COLDNESS OF WHIGS FOR LOOAL SELF-GOVERNMENT. I 25

Proceeding in these Corporation affairs. It is quite certain
that they are willing we should be put to quite as much
trouble by the Tories, as that party is able to impose on
US. Tn the case of the Sheffield petition, I do not think
the Charter will be granted at all, merely because the Tories
have contrived to get a greater number of ragamuffins to
S180 against it, than have subscribed for the Charter. 1
WW one of the deputation to-day, who is quite disgusted
With the whole set ; and Scholefield of Birmingham told
Me that if he and Attwood had not bullied the Whigs, and
threatened to vote against them, the Birmingham petition
Would not have been acceded to. They are a bad lot, and
the sooner they go out, the better for the real reformers.” *
“That truckling subserviency,” he writes later in this
year, “of the Ministry to the menaces of the Tories, is
just in character with the conduct of the Whigs, on all
questions great or little. Without principle or political
honesty, they are likewise destitute of any atom of the
courage or independence which honesty can inspire, and the
Party which bullies them most will be sure to command
their obedience. In the matter of municipal institutions
their hearts are against us, C. P. Thomson ?® told us plainly
*hat he did not like local self-government, and are his Whig
colleagues more liberal than he? Tam sorry Iam not at
home to give a helping hand to my old colleagues. 1 will
never desert, and if the matter be still in abeyance when
U get back, I shall be ready and willing to give my
assistance ?

1838.
Ar. 84

? To PF. W. Cobden London, May 4, 1838.
} Charles Poulet Thomson, afterwards Lord Sydenham, wag one of the
*Cpresentatives of Manchester from 1832 to 1839. On the reconstruction
of the Whig Government under Lord Melbourne, he was appointed to be
President of the Board of Trade—a post which he afterwards gave up, in
order to go out as Governor-General of Canada. As we shall see in a
later chapter, he has a Place in the apostolic mcoession of the Board of
Trade, after Huskisson and Doncon Hama