The Press. — London, England, 1858-10-30 00:00:00

1052 OFFICIAL RESPONSTEILITY. Mr. Bright then proceeded to show the absence of real official responsibility : I believe there is no country in the world that pretends to regular Government where there is less of real responsibility among high officials than there is in England. There is one case which I can not resist the temptation of citing as an illustration of what I mean. During the Russian war there were two points in which the interest of Europe was centred —one was Sebastopol, the other the city of Kars. I hope we have not forgotten all the geography we learnt during those calamitous times, for I believe it is the only really valuable thing we got by the war. You recollect that the city of Kars was besieged by the Russians, and that it was defended by Turkish troops, assisted and com manded, I think, by an Englishman—Colonel Williams. You have heard—and I am not at all prepared to dispute it—that Colonel Williams behaved, I do not say with great bravery, for that is common to almost all Englishmen, and, indeed, to the majority of men everywhere,—but with great sagacity and prudence, and showed the qualities of a commander. Eventually he was obliged to capitulate, and those who capitulated were treated in the most honourable manner by the Rursians who obtained posses sion of the town. At that time a nobleman of very high rank—no less a personage than Lord Stratford de Red cliffe—was ambassador from the Queen of England at the city of the Sultan. He had been there for nearly twenty Years. During the siege of Kars Colonel Williams wrote - and fcrwarded to Lord Stratford at Constantinople wore than sixty letters or despatches with reference to his position, stating how they were worn out with sorties and the attacks of the enemy, how long their provision and ammunition might last, sad urging him to take any steps which might be possible for the purpose of making a diversion iu his favour or of sending relief. All that was most proper for Colonel Williams to write and communicate to the ambassador of the Queen at Constantinople; but do you recollect the striking fact that Lord Stratford de Red cliffs did not reply to—did not acknowledge or take the smallest notice of—any one of these sixty or seventy despatches. He treated them as waste paper. He had been years at Constantinople, quarrelling with every Euro pean Minister there, and bullying the Ministers of the Sultan ; but when his own countrymen and their allies were shut up in the fortified town of Kars, besieged by a powerful and overwhelming force, driven at length to star ration, and finally to capitulation, this great official treated the whole thing as utterly beneath his notice. Subse quently, Colonel Williams came to England and was wade a baronet ; Parliament passed an act granting him a pension of 1,001)!. a year, and the Marquis of Lansdowne, one of the Cabinet Ministers of the day, brought him into the House of Commons fur his pocket borough of Caine, in Wiltshire. Colonel Williams has never opened his mouth in public in England on the subject of his treatment by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. while that nobleman, who had been guilty of this great neglect—l say this enormous crime— has since taken his seat in the House of Lords, has become a great authority, and has now been sent by the Govern ment on a special mission to Constantinople. I need not tell you that I was not in favour of any of that Eastern policy, but I presume Lord Stratford was; he was one of the great authors of it, and I say that any man who takes office from his Sovereign end his country as he took it, with a salary of 10,0001. a year, and expenses of almost like amount, for the Embassy at Constantinople, is guilty of a scandalous abandonment of the duty he owes to the Queen and to the country if he pays no attention to such letters as those which L. - ird Stratford received from an officer of her Majesty shut up with our allies in Kars. If Lord Stratford had been a Russian noble and had so be haved, before taking his seat in the House of Peers and going on a special mission to Constantinople he would have had the advantage of going on a special mission to Siberia ; while it be had been an ambassador of the United States of America—but I cannot follow out the illustration, because in the United States there is no family influence, there is uo power such as that wielded by our great pro vincial potentates—there is nothing in that country to shield an officer of the State from public reprobation, and therefore I am quite certain that no person deputed from the United States could by any possibility be guilty of the abandonment of duty which was manifested by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. Whenever you get a House of Commons that fairly represents the nation, with a Cabinet that fairly represents the House of Commons, if there be any other Lord Stratford I would not like to predict precisely what will befall him ; hut I believe that such a man, with such a temper—for it was a question of temper—will not receive under such circumstances high and continuous employment from the Government of this country. I say we have a right, be it in peace, be it in war, when we employ men in the service of the Crown and of the State, and pay them for their labour, to all their energies and to all their devotion. This question of par. liamentary reform, then, is a great and serious question. " A WORD OF WARNING." llr. Bright went on to say : r I want to give a word of warning to those persons who are now engaged, if there be any engaged, in constructing a Reform Hill for the next session. Let them not bring in a delusive end sham measure. Universal suffrage, equal distribution, vote by ballot—any of these points may or may not be perilous ; hut if there be one thing mr.re distinctly perilous than another to the ►uling classes in this country it is that now, when they are committed to at I. eat a temporary—l wish it were ■ permanent—settle ment of this great question, they should bring forward and pass a bill which, while it offers you something great in the way of constiuitional freedom, is found immediately after it has passed to be nothing but s delusion and a sham. will disappoint averybody; it will esitsperate all tba THE PRESS, OCTOBER 30, 1858 Reformers ; it will render a feeling which is now not bitter both bitter and malignant, and within twelve months after the bill has passed and the cheat is discovered we shall be entered in all probability upon another agitation, but an agitation of a very different character from any we have yet seen. Let us have a real bill, a good bil:, or no bill at all. The question at this moment is in the hands of the enemy. We stand the risk of having brought before us what I will describe as " a country gentleman's Reform Bill." The country gentlemen have not been notorious fur their sympathies in favour of reform. We have always been carrying on for the last thirty years and more a steady and perpetual war against the predominance and the power of the country gentlemen in Parliament. If we look at their past policy we shall not have much confidence in their proposed measure. Their wars, their debts, their taxes, placed upon the bulk of the people, their stout opposition to the Reform Bill of 1832,—a1l this leads us greatly to suspect them ; and T confess for my own part I wish the question of reform were in the hands of Reformers—in the hands of men of whose sympathies with respect to it we could not have, from their past lives, the shadow of a doubt. I have great fears that until you have a Ministry in which there are men who are really in favour of reform, and of an honest reform, you are not likely to get any such measure as the most moderate among us ought to be in the least satisfied with. I must warn you against one phrase which I find our friends—we cannot now call any of them our opponents—the bewildered Reformers are beginning to use. They say we must not on any account " Arne. ricanize " our institutions. Now, I know only one insti tution in America of which the Americans need to be very greatly ashamed—and that institution was established under the Monarchy, although, unfortunately, it has lived and flourished under the Republic. They tell us that in America numbers overwhelm property and education. Well, but numbers have not overwhelmed property and education in England; and yet look at legislation in Eng land. Look at our wars, look at our debt, look at our taxes, look at this great fact—that every improvement of the last forty years has been an improvement which num bers, and numbers only, have wrested from the property, and what they all the education of the country. Our education is fairly represented by our Universities, but say now, as I have said before, that if the Legislature of England, if the Parliament of England, had been guided for thirty years past according to the counsels of the re presentatives of the Universities, England instead of being a country of law and of order would have been long before this a country of anarchy and of revolution. America is a strange bugbear. There are thirty-two at least, it not thirty three, independent and sovereign states in the United States of America. Now, I ant not one of those who believe that you cannot be free and happy under a monarchy such as ours. lam not proposing—l tun the last person to propose—that the institutions of this country should be modelled upon the plan of some other country, because it is the plan of some other country; but I ray that if we are at liberty to draw science, products for our manufactures, and literature from ever) country in the world, why should we not., if we see anything good in the politics of another country, be equally at liberty to take a lesson in that respect also? Speaking generally, in all the sovereign and independent States of America there is a franchise as wide as that which I have pro posed tonight ; there is an exact equal allotment of members to the electors, and there is throughout most of the States the protection of the ballot. Yet, in Ame• rica we find law, order, property secure, and a popula tion in the enjoyment of physical comfcrts and abundance, such as are not known to the great body of the people in this country, and which never have been known in any country in any age of the world before. Now, will any man dare to tell me in the presence of this audience that the English nation in England is a worse nation than the English nation in America? Are we less educated, are we less industrious, are we less moral, are we less subject to the law, are we less disposed to submit to all the just requirements of the Government? If we are so, and if the English nation in America excels us in all these particulars, does it not look very likely that the institutions in England are not as good in the training and rearing of a nation as the insti tutions in the United States ? I do not say that, but those persons who say that the franchise, the distribution, and the ballot, which operate so well in America would be perilous in England, do what I will not do—they libel the people of this country, and they libel our institutions. A REFORMER'S SUGGESTION. The action of Reformers was thus indicated by Mr. Bright : Now, I have a suggestion to make, which T hope some body will act upon. The Reformers now are more numerous than ever they were before. Why should they not by some arrangement have their own Reform Bill— have it introduced into Parliament and supported with all the strength of this great national party ; and if it be a bill sensibly better than the bill that is being prepared for us in Downing-street, why should we not, with all the unanimity of which we are capable,—by public meetings, by petitions, and when the proper time comes by presenting ourselves at the polling-hooths,—do everything in'our power to pass that measure into law ? I say that we are great in numbers; that united we are great in strength ; that we are invincible in the solidity of our arguments ; that we are altogether unassailable in the justice of our cause. Shall we then, I ask you, even for a moment be hopeless of our great cause? I feel almost ashamed even to argue it to such a meeting as this. 1 call to mind where I am, and who are those whom I see before me. Am I not in the town of Birmingham—England's centnil capital ; and do not those eyes look upon the sons of those who, not thirty years ago, shook the fabric of privilege to its base? Not s feu of the strong luta of tbst time are now white with age. They approach the confines of th— mortal day. Its evening is c h eere d w i th the remembranceeir of that great contest, and they rejoice in the freedom they have won. Shall their sons be less noble than they/ Shall the fire which they kindled be extinguished with you ? Why, I see the answer in every face. You are resolved that the legacy which they bequeathed to vou you will hand down in an accumulated wealth of freed om to your children. As for me, my voice is feeble. I feel now sensibly and painfully that I am not what I was. I speak with a diminished fire; I act with a lessened force; but as I am, my countrymen and my constituents, I trill, if you will let we, be found i n your ranks in the impen. ding struggle. The hon. gentleman sat down amid great cheering, which was renewed again and again, the audience rising and waving their hats and handktrchiefs in the most enthusiastic manner. Alderman Mewrox, in moving a vote of thanks to Mr. Bright for his excellent address, expressed the pleasure he felt in reflecting th a t he was instru• mental in introducing the bon. gentleman to the constituency of Birmingham, and he hoped be would long continue to fulfil the duties of his present situation. Mr. G. EDMONDS seconded tho motion, which, upon being put by the Mayor, was carried mind protracted acclamations. Mr. BRIGHT briefly acknowledged the vote, and thanks being voted to the Mayor for his conduct iu the chair, the immense assembly separated. ttrapalitan. THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY will hold its opening meeting for the session, at halt.past eight p.m., on Monday, the Bth of November, at Burlington. house, Piccadilly; Sir Ro:lerick T. Murchison, Wei. dent, in the chair. The following papers will be read :-1. Journey through the Mountainous Districts North of the Elburz, and Ascent of Demanend, in Persia, by R. F. Thomson, Esq., and Lord Schoenberg Kerr. Communicated by the Earl of Malmesbury.- 2. Journey from Moreton Bay to Adelaide, in Search of Leichhardt, by A. C. Gregory, Esq. (Gold Medal list, R.G.5.).-3. Explorations of the Murchison, Lyons, and Gascoyne Rivers in Western Austrslia, by F. Gregory, Esq. THE NATIONAL GALLERY, which was reopened to the public on Monday, the 25th inst., has during the recess been thoroughly cleansed, and presents a considerably brighter appearance than formerly. Some of the pictures have been placed In more ad vantageous positions and better lights thrown upon them. The days for the public admission hence forward will be Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays—Thursdays and Fridays being set apart for the admission of students only. The Vernon Collection at Marlborough house, Pall-mall, was also reopened to the public. There was a large attendance at both places. THE BIRTHS of 819 boys and 846 girls, in all 1,095 children, were registered in London last week. The death', which showed a slight decrease on the previous week, were 1,113. SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM was visited during the week ending 23rd October by 4,840 persons. V rothttial. THE AIITIIORTTLES OF NEWCASTLE have presented Count de Maricourt, the French Consul, with an address expressive of their confidence in the denial which had been given by the count to the charge of Interfering in the municipal elections, of their personal esteem for himself, and their wish that be might continue to exercise his functions at the port of Newcastle. The niayor, in presenting the address, expressed the strong personal gratification which be experienced in being made the bearer of this address, which be trusted would be some consolation to the Count de Maricourt for the annoyance and vexation he must have suffered in connection with recent occurrences. A Rome:inn ELOPEMENT is thus recorded in the Moffat Times:—Our community has been thown into a state of excitement by the elopement of a young lady, daughter of a member of one of the learned professions in Edinburgh, who, with his family, lice taken up his winter residence in one of the neat villas, Well-road, Moffat. The bold Lothano, who appears to be a very young man, with a "military cast". tit his habiliments, had been for some days concocting measures for the issue that has now been arrived at; for on ilia night of Wednesday last a conveyance was ordered from Mrs. Cranstoun's to convey a party to the mail-train due at Beattock at 10 . 41 p .m. the conveyance was ordered to remain at a dista nce from the lady's residence, the gentleman keep in g wa t ch and ward over it, while the driver, acting under in structions, went for sundry pieces of luggage , wh ich were concealed among the fine shrubbery winch the taste of the proprietor has panted round the house. The luggage and lady being duly deposited 11) 14° 4