of our patriots have suggested for effecting what they have so greatly desired, the colonization of Africa, in the manner proposed, presents the fairest prospects of success. But if it be admitted to be ever so doubtful whether this happy result shall be the reward of our exertions, yet, if great and certain benefits immediately attend them, why may not others, still greater, follow them? it may be thought to require and de serve. Your memorialists further request, that the subscribers to the American Colonization Society may be incorporated, by an act of Congress, to enable them to act with more efficiency in carrying on the great and important objects of the Society, and to enable them, with more economy, to manage the benevolent contributions intrusted to their care. JOHN MASON, In a work evidently progressive, who shall assign limits to the good that zeal and perseverance shall be permitted to accomplish? Your memorialists beg leave to state, that having expended considerable funds in prosecuting their inquiries and making preparations, Washington, Feb. 1, 1820. they are now about to send out a colony, and complete the purchase already stipulated for with the native kings Committee. and chiefs of Sherbro, of a suitable ter ritory for their establishment. The REPORT of Scotland. THE Select Committee, to whom the several petitions which have been presented to this House from the Royal Burghs of Scotland, during the years 1818, 1819, and 1820, were referred, to examine the matters thereof, and to report their observations and opinions thereupon to the House; and to whom the reports which, upon the 17th day of June, 1793, and the 12th day of July, 1819, were made from the Committees appointed to examine the matters of the several petitions from the Royal Burghs of Scotland, were also referred, have considered the said petitions, and have agreed upon the following Report: number they are now enabled to trans- On the Constitution of the Royal Burghs port and provide for is but a small proportion of the people of colour who have expressed their desire to go; and, without a larger and more sudden in crease of their funds than can be expected from the voluntary contributions of individuals, their progress must be slow and uncertain. They have always flattered themselves with the hope, that when it was seen they had surmounted the difficulties of preparation, and shewn that means applied to the execution of their design would lead directly and evidently to its accomplishment, they would be enabled to obtain for it the national countenance and assistance. To this point they have arrived; and they therefore respectfully request, that this interesting subject may receive the consideration of your honourable body, and that the executive department may be authorized, in such way as may meet your approbation, to extend to this object such pecuniary and other aid as Your Committee, in offering the result of its labours, feels it necessary to bespeak the indulgence of the House, for the limited progress it has made in the inquiry intrusted to its charge; and such indulgence will, perhaps, ap pear but reasonable, when the House shall advert to the peculiar circumstances under which your Committee was appointed, and has continued to sit, during the present Session. Your Committee was appointed on the 4th of May; since which time the press of public business has been almost unprecedented in amount, in importance, and peculiarity of interest. Numerous other committees, of local as well as of general importance, have occasionally called its members to other inquiries, who have, besides, been subject to their full share of the imperious claims upon their time, and attendance on the committees relative to matters of election. Your Committee being early impressed with the impossibility of extending its inquiries, by oral testimony, into the minute detail of all the sixtysix Royal Burghs of Scotland, in reference to the various matters complained of by the petitioners, with any prospect of concluding such inquiry within a moderate period of time, have adopted the classification of the allegations of the petitioners, detailed under eight separate heads of complaint, in the Report of last year, as their guide in conducting their present course of investigation; subject, however, to such occasional deviation as circumstances, disclosed in the progress of their inquiry, or arising from some inherent peculiarity of case, might point out. Your Committee have been confirm ed in this arrangement, and in their adoption of documentary, in preference to oral testimony, by observing the extreme inconvenience to which the witnesses summoned to give evidence from a distance of from 400 to 600 miles, are necessarily subjected, besides the loss of their time, and interruption to their professional employments; for which, the mere payment of the ex pences of their journey, and of their residence in London, (which is all your Committee have thought themselves warranted to allow,) affords but a very inadequate compensation. Under this impression, your Committee have proceeded chiefly by the help of documentary evidence; but feel it due to the petitioners, whose allegations they have been appointed to examine, as well as to the House, which has devolved to them an important trust, to state here the two following material considerations : 1st, That the documentary evidence obtained is necessarily made up by the very official persons whose conduct the petitioners arraign; and, 2dly, That such evidence is made up from records under the exclusive inspection and control of the same official persons. From these documents, however, it will appear, that the allegations of fact, made by the petitioners, are very generally and substantially true; whilst the allegations of inference may excite considerable diversity of opinion. Thus, with reference to the allegation of the mode of forming and continuing the councils of the burghs, the mere fact, that these councils do generally possess and exercise the powers vested in them by existing laws, of self-election and self-continuance, (applying these terms to the bodies corporate, and not to the individual members) admits of no doubt; but the allegation of inference, that to this cause is to be attributed mismanagement and abuse, when they exist, is indeed matter of opinion, and can be best ascertained by patient and minute investigation. The same persons are indeed generally found to compose the council of a burgh for a series of years, with merely such partial change of official station as the set of the burgh or convenience of the ruling party may re quire; until the adverse party gains the ascendancy, when a similar system of self-formation and self-election in the body of the council continues, until again displaced by a similar cause; however the persons or parties may change, the system continues the same. And it is here most essential to remark, that in many burghs it constantly happens, (and in all of them it may happen) that persons not qualified to be chosen into the council of a burgh are so chosen; and yet there seems much reason to doubt, whether such unqualified persons, after being there sixty days, can be displaced by any proceedings of law, but such as are so tedious and expensive, that they are never likely to be resorted to. Indeed, a recent case of this abuse has been stated, in a letter addressed to the Chairman of the Committee, which is given in the Appendix relative to Kirkcudbright. In that burgh, a person avowedly not qualified by the set (or constitution of the Burgh) to sit there, was lately elected into Council; an action was brought to displace him in the Court of Session. But the judgment pronounced in that Court was in substance to this effect, that a person who could not legally be elected into council, having obtained admission there, and the illegality of his election remaining unchallenged for the space of sixty days, such person is not removable by the ordinary course of law. Another case of a different description has lately occurred, as appears from the evidence of Mr Kennedy, a member of the Committee, in which it was held, that an idiot knowingly appointed to the office of town-clerk by the magistrates of a royal burgh, was not removable at their suit. Again, the fact of large alienations of property from most of the burghs is manifest, from the documents before your Committee; as also the frequent expenditure beyond income, and in several instances the accumulation of debt. But the inference drawn by the petitioners, that these things result from the mode of forming and continuing the councils, is a point on which the Committee, not having fully considered it, have forborne to decide. Under these circumstances, your Committee have thought it would be most satisfactory to its own Members as well as to the House, to include in their Report, not only the evidence, but also the several distinct resolutions it has come to in reference to these matters; and to express their hope, that if the House shall think proper to appoint the same or another Committee upon this subject, in the next Session of Parliament, this and the remaining allegations of the petitioners may undergo a full and adequate consideration. Your Committee cannot omit to notice in their Report the evidence subjoined relative to the burgh of Cupar. An inquiry into the particulars of this Burgh was instituted, and witnesses summoned, in consequence of a specific allegation of the petition from thence, That seats in the council of that burgh had frequently been bought and sold: and that the system of alternate election and re-election between individuals, by bargain, in continual succession to each other, prevailed there, among the merchant-councillors, as a constant and uniform practice. Your Committee lament to report, that the evidence has fully confirmed this allegation; that these proceedings, so gross and iniquitous in their nature, and so injurious in their effects, have been fully established; nay, even admitted to be true by the very persons themselves who took part in them, and who were in fact the principal delinquents. The evidence relative to other matters in this burgh is indeed somewhat contradictory. But your Committee conceive, that some of the ill effects of these bad practices are too apparent from the evidence to admit of any doubt. It appears that Mr Fergusson was in the council of Cupar eighteen successive years, of which he was, during ten, successively Provost ;-that artifice has been resorted to, successfully, to prevent a fair and just exposition of the pecuniary accounts of the burgh; that persons not resident are frequently chosen into council, who rarely attend council-meetings, except on the day of the annual election ;-that the audit of the accounts of the burgh expenditure have not been regular, but have been occasionally delayed for several years. Your Committee, however, deem it of no great consequence to unravel and appreciate the contradictions of the witnesses in the case of Cupar. The proof, or rather the admission of the sale of seats in the council, and bargains between individuals, of alternate election and re-election, exhibit such a corrupt and improper practice in the formation and maintenance of the council, as to make the subsequent conduct of that body, in reference to the objects of this inquiry, a matter of minor importance. Whether the evils which have resulted from such proceedings be more or less, may in deed admit of some dispute; but there seems little doubt, that the system under which such evil practices have grown up and become matured into activity, and under which no adequate remedy is to be found for such evils, when detected, must be in some material points either unsound in princi. ple or defective in operation. Your Committee cannot conclude their notice of the evidence, without calling to the attention of the House the very extraordinary facts disclosed by Colonel Francis William Grant, a Member of the House. It appears that Colonel Grant was Provost of the Burgh of Elgin, during the years 1816, 1817, and 1818; also Provost of Forres, during two of these same years, 1816 and 1817; and also in the council of the burgh of Nairn, from the year 1812 to the present time, inclusive. It is required by the sets of three out of the four burghs, of which Colonel Grant was in council at the same time, that the members of council should be merchants or traffickers within the respective burgh. It must be superfluous for the Committee to observe, that these four burghs are so far distant from each other, as to render the observance of this provision of the sets of three of them wholly incompatible with the facts detailed in evidence. Whatever degree of culpable irregularity these disclosures may exhibit, your Committee are inclined to impute its existence rather to the defects of the system, as exhibited within these four burghs, and to the disregard to the strict terms of the sets, so prevalent in many of the royal burghs, than to any particular culpability in the individual here concerned. The Resolutions of your Committee, alluded to in the former part of this Report, are as follow: Resolved, That the Committee will examine, in the first place, into the allegations of the petitioners, as to the system of self-election. Resolved, That it appears to the Committee, that the mode of election of the town-councils in nearly all the Scottish burghs, is founded on the general principle recognized by the Act 1469, c. 30, viz. That the old council shall choose the new council, restricted, however, in its application by the set or constitution of each burgh, both in respect to the preparation of the old council eligible to reelections, and in the latitude allowed to the old council in selecting the members of the new. Thus, the sets of some burghs, as Renfrew and Lanark, admit of the annual re-election of all the members of the old council to seats in the new. Those of the greater number of burghs limit the number of old councillors, who may be re-elected; but at the same time require or admit of a majority of the old council being continued in the new; while the sets of some others require, that the majority of the new council shall be different persons; and in a few instances, to such an extent, as almost entirely to destroy the effect of the principle of the Act 1469. The sets of many burghs leave the nomination of the new members of the new council entirely to the old council. According to those of others, the old council must select a portion of the new, from lists furnished by the several corporations; or furnish lists from which the corporations themselves elect; or must shorten lists furnished by the corporations, who finally elect from these reduced lists. And, in a few instances, the corporations have the direct nomination of a certain number of the members of the new council. Resolved, That the allegation of the old council choosing the new, urged by the petitioners to prevail in the town-council, does appear to the Committee to be generally warranted by the law and the practice of the burghs. Resolved,―That it is the opinion of this Committee, that the burgesses not incorporated have no control over the expenditure of the revenues of the burgh, or over the sale of the common good or property of the burgh; nor any power of preventing the magistrates and council from contracting debts for which the common good is liable. Resolved, That it is alleged by most of the petitioners, that the community are liable in their property and persons for debts contracted by their magistrates; but the Committee have not been able to ascertain whether such allegations are founded in law or not, the Committee not having found any decision of any court upon the subject. Resolved, That it is the opinion of this Committee, that the burgesses and corporations have no power to compel their magistrates and council to account for the management of the revenues and funds under their charge. Resolved, That in the opinion of this Committee, it has been clearly proved in two instances, about ten or fifteen years ago, that seats in the council of Cupar have been sold; and from the evidence before the Committee, there is reason to believe that several other instances have occurred, the last of which took place six years ago. Resolved,That, in the opinion of this Committee, the practice prevails generally in the burgh of Cupar, for each of the thirteen merchants' councillors to have what is called neighbour councillors, who alternately elect and re-elect each other by individual choice, which, as a point of honour, continues during the lives of the parties; and, in many cases, this agreement of alternate election has extended, in case of death, to the sons or nearest relations of the deceased neighbour councillor. Resolved,-That it does appear, from the Report of the Committee last year, and the evidence then taken, that a waste and mismanagement of charitable funds, placed in the hands of the magistrates as ex-officio trus |