A large majority of the little Irish boroughs were deprived of their parliamentary representation at the Union, but they retained their nominal municipal rights. They still remained under the control of the chief landed gentry; and they became, as indeed they had always been, centres of maladministration, corruption, and peculation of all kinds. When, after the passing of the great Reform Act of 1832, statesmen directed their minds to the questions of corporate and municipal reform in England, they naturally turned their minds to Ireland also, where this reform was notoriously still more imperative. After the publication of a masterly report in 1834-35, which thoroughly illustrated the whole subject, the abuses in the Irish corporations were shown to be such--they were enormous even in the cities and larger towns--that Peel, the leader of the Opposition, actually gave them up; he proposed to deprive the corporate towns of all municipal rights and franchises, and to place them under the authority of Commissioners appointed by the Crown. This plan, however, was rejected by the Melbourne Government, and was not sanctioned by the House of Commons; after a long and angry controversy, which continued for years, a measure became law as late as 1840; and by this, with the exception of ten, all the corporate towns of Ireland lost their municipal rights, and were thus left without any power of self-government. With respect even to the ten still enfranchised towns, their old privileges were greatly curtailed and were transferred to the Central Government; and their municipal liberties were restricted and narrowed. They retained, indeed, many rights of self-government; but the municipal franchise was placed at a high level; the great body of the townsmen did not possess it; and they were subject to the supervision of the Local Government Board, that is, of the Central Government, to a considerable extent at least. True municipal life, and the municipal sentiment, could not, therefore, become well developed, in the case of towns under such conditions; they showed but few symptoms of the wonderful growth of prosperity and power which has been such a marked feature in the history of the great corporate towns of England, in what may be called the Victorian age, though, no doubt, the cases were widely different--poor Ireland could not, in this respect, compete with wealthy and progressive England. The deficiency of corporate towns in Ireland was felt ere long to be such, that, in 1854, and subsequent years, municipal rights were, in some measure, extended to nearly a hundred of these towns. These places were governed by bodies called Town Commissioners elected by a kind of popular vote; but the authority of these bodies has never been large; the municipal franchise was very high; and these towns were also under the Irish Local Government Board.