But before Lord Grey quitted office his government had also called the attention of Parliament to the necessity of a large municipal reform, which, indeed, it seemed to them that the Reform Bill had bound them, in all consistency, to introduce.  In the speech with which the King had closed the session of 1833, he had informed the Houses that he had “directed commissions to be issued for investigating the state of the municipal corporations throughout the United Kingdom, the result of whose inquiries would enable them to mature some measure which might seem best fitted to place the internal government of corporate cities and towns upon a solid foundation in respect of their finances, their judicature, and their police.”  He reminded them that they had recently passed acts “for giving constitutions upon sound principles to the royal and parliamentary boroughs of Scotland,” and warned them that “their attention would hereafter be called to the expediency of extending similar advantages to the unincorporated towns in England which had now acquired the right of returning members to Parliament.”  The commission of which his Majesty thus spoke had now presented its report, strongly condemnatory of the existing system in almost every point of view; of the constitution and mode of election of the existing corporations, and of their government of the towns over which they presided.  It declared that “even where they existed in their least imperfect form, and were most rightfully administered, they were inadequate to the wants of the present state of society.”  But they charged them also with positive offences of no venial kind.  “They had perverted their powers to political ends, sacrificing local interests to party purposes.  They had diverted from their legitimate use revenues which ought to have been applied for the public advantage, wasting them in many instances for the benefit of individuals; sometimes even employing for purposes of corruption funds originally intended for charitable uses.”  And they asserted that this too common misconduct of these bodies had engendered “among a great majority of the inhabitants of the incorporated towns a general and just dissatisfaction with their municipal institutions, a distrust of the self-elected municipal councils, and of the municipal magistracy, tainting with suspicion the local administration of justice.”  And therefore they “felt it their duty to represent to his Majesty that the existing municipal corporations of England and Wales neither possessed nor deserved the confidence and respect of his Majesty’s subjects; and that a thorough reform must be effected before they could become what they ought to be, useful and efficient instruments of local government.”