GOVERNMENT BY COMMISSIONS

ILLEGAL AND PERNICIOUS.

THE NATURE AND EFFECTS OF ALL

COMMISSIONS OF INQUIRY

AND OTHER CROWN-APPOINTED COMMISSIONS.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES OF

TAXATION;

AND THE RIGHTS, DUTIES, AND IMPORTANCE OF

LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT.

By J. TOULMIN SMITH, Esq.,

OF LINCOLN'S INN, BARRISTER-AT-LAW.

"It is not almost credible to foresee, when any maxim or FUNDAMENTAL LAW of this
realm is altered, what dangerous inconveniences do follow."-Coke, 4 Inst. 41.
"New things which have fair pretences are most commonly hurtful to the Common-
wealth;
for commonly they tend to the grievous vexation and oppression of the subject,
and not to that glorious end that at the first was pretended."-Coke, 2 Inst. 540.

LONDON:

S. SWEET, 1, CHANCERY LANE.

1849.

Ref. -Stacks
Harding

5.25. 54
88004

PREFACE.

THE present work gives the result of no sudden impulse. The rapid strides which CENTRALIZATION has been making in this country for the last few years can have been viewed by no one who has carefully studied the history of the growth and development of the national energies, and who indulges any generous feelings, without profound anxiety. The deep impressions thus derived have led me, on some recent occasions, to make what efforts an individual, unaided and at his own expense, was able, to oppose certain measures having this centralizing tendency. The circumstance of my having thus sacrificed no trifling amount of time and money, without the slightest prospect or probability of any personal remuneration, will at least be evidence of the earnestness of those endeavours, and of the present one.

It was impossible for me, in the course of those efforts, to shut my eyes to the fact, that, though the instinctive sense of the iniquity of a course which is