The Sun. — London, England, 1859-01-29 00:00:00

-7- r7rr - ;4%, SIT U 1 GHT AT .ROCHDALE. Last evening a soiree was given to Mr. John Br i ght by his fellow-townsmen of Rochdale, in the public hall of that borough, when the hon. gentle man took occasion to make a further exposition of his views on Parliamentary Reform. The hall, although very limited in its dimensions, and in this respect presenting a marked contrast to the St. George's-hall at Bradford, where Mr. Bright first propounded his scheme of reform, is nevertheless the largest building used for public meetings in Rochdale, and it was filled to overflowing in every part. The audience comprised about 800 persons, and hundreds were refused admission owing to the want of room. The company assem bled at half-past five o'clock in an apartment situated below the hall, where they partook of tea and other refreshments. The more serious business commenced at seven, the chair being taken by Mr. Andrew Stewart, the Mayor. Mr. Bright was ac companied to the meeting by some of the leading reformers of the district, and on taking his place on the platform he was most enthusiastically cheered. Letters of apology for their absence were received from Mr. Cobden, Mr. E. Miall, Mr. W. J. Fox, M.P., Mr. Thomas Bazley, M.P., and other gentle men. Mr. Cobden's letter was as follows : " Midhurst, Jan. 18. " Dear sir —Circumstances, which I trust justified my 110 doing, led me to the determination to withdraw for a sea son:from public life. In order to fulfil this resolution, I was obliged to adopt a rigid rule of abstaining from all political meetings for a time. It would have been very pleasant to have made exceptions, and I need not tell you that your approaching meeting would have been one of the pleasantest, but I should not longer have the plea which I require to justify me in declining other invitations ; besides, I should really be wanting in something like veracity if I were now to appear at a public meeting, after the answers which I gave to the invitations from Manchester and elsewhere. You will, I am sure, therefore, not misconstrue my motives in declining to partake of the pleasure of your approaching meeting ; and with many thanks for the kind terms in which you have conveyed the invitation.—l remain, &c. " To Robert Mills, Esq." " R. COBDEN: The CHAIRMAN having opened the proceedings, Mr. W. FENTON moved and Mr. G. ASHWORTH, seconded the following resolution, which was carried by acclamation, viz. : " That this meeting desires to place on record the high esteem entertained for Mr. John Bright, M.P., by his fellow-townsmen. Born and educated among us, a member of a family noted for liberality and the care bestowed by them on the physical and intellectual improve ment of their numerous workpeople, he early developed, in the defence and advancement of local interests, those great talents and that high-minded integrity which have since, in a more extended sphere and on questions of national impor tance, gained him a world-wide and lasting reputation. Re • cognising these services, his fellow-townsmen have assem• bled on this occasion to assure him of the sympathy they felt for him in his affliction and temporary exile, how greatly they rejoice in his restoration to health and a seat in the British Parliament, and to express their fervent hope that ho may be spared not only to bring to a successful issue the gregt measure of Parliamentary Reform confided tohis care; 134 to seer the only reward he seeks in seeing it contribute in future years to the peace, happiness, and prosperity of his fellow-countrymen.' Mr. BRIGHT then stood forward to address the meeting, when the demonstrations of enthusiasm recommenced, and were continued for several mi nutes. Silence having been restored, the hon. gen tleman said—Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen —I wish I were able to convey some just idea of the feelings which crowd upon me at this moment. I cannot say how much I feel indebted to those who are here to-night, and to such of my townsmen as have promoted this assembly. It is to me not an ordinary public or political meeting ; it has another and a deeper significance, for I find myself sur rounded by my friends and neighbours, among whom I have lived from my youth, by those with whom I have acted on many questions—some of a local, and others of a more general character ; by those who have known much of my private and all my public life. I hope I may be permitted to accept this manifestation of your kindness as a token that you at least believe that I have in the main endea voured to pursue a course in unison with the best interests and the honour of my country. (Cheers.) I may, perhaps, also assume that with regard to recent proceedings, and to a great question with which my naive has been prominently connected, you are not in disposed to give the sanction of your high approval to those proceedings. (Renewed cheers.) This question of Parliamentary Reform, which some men speak lightly of, and which some writers write of as though it were of no moment, is of the highest moment to you and to this country; it lies at the basis of poli tical improvement, and from it and from its proper settlement alone is to be derived any sound and wise hope for the future power and prosperity of this great nation. There is a change, a noticeable change in the mode in which this subject is treated now, compared with that which it received but three short months ago. You recollect that three months ago I had the opportunity of addressing a meeting , composed of many thousands of my friends and constituents in Birmingham. You recollect the vio lent hurricane of abuse with which the facts and arguments I laid before that meeting were met by a portion of the public press. I afterwards attended an assemblage wonderful in magnitude and in influ ence in the city of Manchester. After, too, a meet ing scarcely less numerous in Edinburgh, I also attended another gathering of like importance in Glasgow, and only last week I spoke before a meet ing as numerous as any of those to which I have referred, except in the town of Bradford. Well, I now find that that which was revolutionary, and wholly to be condemned and repudiated, has begun to be regarded as something reasonable, which men may discuss without being considered outlaws in the country. (Cheers.) I have made no change since the hour that I applied myself to this ques tion in the Town Rall of Birmingham, three months ago. I have not made the slightest change in any single thing that I have said in connection either with the extension of the franchise, the mode of voting, or the manner in - which members of Parlia ment should be distributed among our various elec toral bodies. There is one portion of the press which I cannot in the least blame, which, consistently with the objects of the party to which it belongs, has always been opposed to Parliamentary Reform; there is another portion, which may probably be said to represent the late Govern ment more than any other party or section of a party, and which has not professed to s te alto gether opposed to reform, but of which one Wing is quite clear, namely, that it is very much opposed to reform not emanating from the old workmen of 1832. This portion of the press has no wish for any measure in the carrying or,in the proposition of which I may h ave ta k en a prchninent past,* and I do lyt wonder at this, for in this country, for much longer time than any of us can recollect, all these affairs have be en managed with great comfort and great profit by certain small sections of the commu nity, one calling itself Tor itself Whig ; and they have and t h e other calling to find this question taken uap v ery bth great objection e people them selves, or by anybody sprung froym, allie d Cheers.) to, bound up with, and faithful to the people. , ers.) They dislike to see a great measure of this n atur e taken out of their accustomed and orthodox hand discussion that has occurred during the last an s d three months months has materially changed all this, bound to say, so far a s I h ave seen the newspapers, —and they go far to mou ld or to follow public opinion—that they are beginning to take a view of this subject more consonant with the character they assume as public instructors, and more in accord ance with that which ought to belong to them as writers, full of patriotism, endeavouring to do the best they can for the legislation of the nation. I said that I have not made any change from the meeting at Birmingham down to the meeting at Bradford, or the meeting this evening. What is it that I have recommended on the question of the Parliamentary franchise ? I began by stating that I was in favour of the ancient franchise of the coun try, which prevailed universally until restrictions in later times had been imposed upon it. I con tended that every man whci`mras in such a position of independence as to be able and compelled to con tribute to the support of the more necessitous of his countrymen, might safely and rightly be placed on the list of electors in the boroughs of the United Kingdom. Now, the Reform Act treated this subject not indeed exactly in the way I would treat it, but as showing that it had regard to the ancient basis of the suffrage. The Reform Act insist d that every £ l O householder in the boroughs should be rated to 9 1 ,.. e J 300 r. That Act, not as it originally stood, but ""t now works, gave a period of six months, be tween the sth Jan, and the 20th of July, in which every it assu me d that .ry man's rates would be paid who was ever likely to pay them ; and if all those whose rates du© on the sth Jan. w ere p a id by th e 20th of July r ight to have their names placed vote rs on the registe r o f was conceded, provided always they liv e d in houses of the ann ua l va l ue o f £lO. Now, what I propose do is to strike out the restriction of £lO, an to do never wished to re . go further than to leave the of these proposi oduld then tions standing on the footing theysizve occu py. But the question may b e a months, ‘o‘rWhy keep no the condition as to the six why take odly those who during that or some other per i od shall pay their rates ? I put it t o every man, whatever whatever be his theoretical notions, whether he be lieves it Would be beneficial throughout the b orougl of the kingdom for the constituency as a whole to include some scores in a very small borough, some hundreds in others, and a few thousands, perhaps, in the largest, of a class of which unhappily there are so many among us, I mean the excessively poor, some of them intemperate, some profligate, some it may be only unfortimate, some naturally incapable; but all in a condition of dependezlce, such as giye,s us no reasonable expectation that they would be able to resist the many temptations which richer and unscrupulous men would offer them at elections, in order to induce them to give their votes in a man ner not consistent with their opinions and their consciences, if they have any in the matter, and inconsistent also it may be with the interest of the representation of the town or city in which they resided. It is curious that among the thousands of letters which I have received on this question during the last three months, I have had more applications from working men, asking me to specify my views on this particular point,than I have had from any other class. (Hear, hear.) One man writes to me —" I am in favour of the widest possible suffrage to every one of whom it is presumed that he is in the least independent," but he adds, " I don't think that a man in my neighbourhood who is so idle, so profligate, so intemperate, and so abandoned, and who so neglects his family that there is not a single duty of citizenship which he ever undertakes or performs—l don't think that las an industrious, frugal, and striving working man have any interest whatever in such a person being placed on the elec toral list, knowing as I do that when his vote comes to be exercised he will be open to every possible evil influence that can be practised upon him." (Cheers.) That, of course, is a question which will be for the ultimate determination of Parliament, as indeed all these questions will be ; but whether we take the proposition of household suffrage or rating suffrage, there is a difficulty which must be met in consequence of the different modes in which the subject of rating is treated in various parts of the country. In Scotland, for example, I found that in Edinburgh, and I don't know whether it is exactly the same in Glasgow, it is not the custom to rate any body who lives in a house of lower value than £4 a year ; the reason is this—that persons who occupy houses of lower value than that, being the most helpless and poorest of the population, it is found impossible to obtain one-tenth probably of the amount of rate from them which it would cost to collect it. The landlords not paying the rate as is the custom here, it was found impossible to collect it from tenants of this poor and suffering descrip tion. Therefore, a rating suffrage in Edinburgh would at once exclude all that class. Well, lam prepared to maintain that it is consistent with the establishment of the bestconstituency, and consist ent also with the public opinion certainly of the present electoral body in this country, that persons who are in a condition so absolutely dependent — many of them, perhaps, begging from house to house, many of them receiving parochial relief, all of them living from day to day in a state which we must all deplore, but which puts it wholly out of their power to act an independent part in almost any relation of life—should not be admitted upon the electoral roll. The difficulty is not with regard to Edinburgh, because you will observe that my plan of rating franchise would of itself exclude all those who were not rated on account of their extreme poverty, and from whom no rates can be raised; but when you come to Lancashire, and other parts of England, you find, to a large extent, that a custom has prevailed, sometimes by law and sometimes by agreement, by which the landlords pay the rates even upon the poorest and lowest class of dwellings. Thus you will see that a rating fran chise would admit a class to a franchise in England which the same clause in a bill would exclude in Scotland. That is a distinction which, of course, Parliament would not be expected to sanction, and which certainly would not be just, because it would grant the suffrage to a considerable section of the community in one part of the kingdom, and with hold it from the same section in another. Then comes the question whether you. are to lay down some rule by which that unfortunate class in Scot land is to be admitted, or one by which the corre sponding class in England is to be shut out. Now I should recommend a plan something like this : It is, I fear, almost impossible to make the matter quite clear to everybody, but I have received so much correspondence about it, and I find it to be so much the subject of discussion, that I think it necessary now, which is perhaps the only oppor tunity I may have before Parliament assembles, to meet this question, and briefly to discuss it. (Cheers.) I think it is extremely likely that if Par liament were to entertain a proposition so extensive as I have suggested, they would say that it is far better the corresponding class in England, whom you acknowledge to be utterly dependent in Scot land, where your own plan excludes them, should also be excluded in England ; and they might pro pose that the clause should enact that down to a certain point of assessment, as low as they like to descend, whether the tenant pays the rate or whether the landlord does so, the tenant should be enfranchised, but that below that line, which is supposed to set apart the very dependent class, every man who is ambitious to have a vote must go to the poor law officer who manages the rating, and tell him that he wishes not only to be rated, but wishes as tenant and occupier himself to pay his own rate, the amount of which might of course by some arrangement be deducted from his rent, and then he should be as free as any of those above him to be placed on the electoral register. If a system like that were devised—and I am only suggesting and discussing it—you will see at once that, what ever may be the number of the class that is ex cluded, there will be no single individual among them who had paid, perhaps, but 4s. or ss. in the course of a year in the shape of rates, and who had had the industry first to acquire, and then the fru gality to save that sum, and who also had the ambition to become an elector—that no such person could possibly, or at least necessarily, be shut out from the franchise which I propose. Another point on which I have received a great number of letters relates to the line to be drawn for the county franchise. I am constantly asked what is the reason why a man living in a house of £4 or £5 rent in a borough should be allowed to vote, while the man who lives in a house of the same rate in a county is not to be allowed to vote ? I can only give the answer which I have given elsewhere, that I be lieve myself this is the least defensible part of the proposition which I have submitted to the public —(hear, hear)—and the more I examine the ques tion, the more I am satisfied it would be desi rable to bring the franchise in the counties to a lower standard than I have fixed - upon. I have not the smallest doubt when the next Reform Bill passes, if it does establish the county franchise at a rent of £lO that only a few years will elapse be fore motions will be made in the House of Commons -for the purpose of bringing it down, if not to the ,safile level as the franchise in boroughs, at least, to aTliiwer point than thiit laid - down by the coming measure. The fact is, the niore people look at this question of the franchise, -handle it, and see its working, the more their fears wgkanishb-The fear 'M the rich and the great at the iotes of the people arises from a suspicion, based I believe almost en tirely-upon an ignorance, first, of the character of the people, aad, next, of the effect which the pos session of a vote has on the mind and on the actions of every man intrusted with it. (Cheers.) I have spoken of a £lO county franchise simply on this ground. I believe there is a majority of the House of Commons in its favour. There would probably not be a majority for anything below that. It is that which public opinion has fur several years rested upon with respect to the counties, and I am anxious ineverything not to go impractically, as it were, a-head of wTiat the country is prepared for, but get as much of public opinion as I can to go with us in doing the greatest and the best thing that is possible in the day in which we live. (Cheers.) I shalt not detain you by any discussion on that ques tion,which is not one of degree, but one which a man must say either Aye or No. I mean whether voting shall be made compulsory open, as it is now, or shall be conducted by secret ballot. (Cheers.) I believe no meeting has been held during the last three months, and I have read the.accounts of nearly all of them, at io when h a s e tno there e r p e a r l i l et b y e of g iving ther e a p pears t o h ave b een any difference of e further x shelteretens extension the o ballotp f the suffrage. I h o ld the ballot a n y to be inevitable. It is not i n th e power of any party in the House of Com mons to prevent it—(cheers)-230 members of that assembly are at present in its dd favour; every dissoluti on of Parliament must proposition from an ya to its suppo r t ers . A ny Government to bring in a Reform Bill considerably suffrage would, I believ ber widely ext en di ng th e with out enthusiasm, almost with distaste, if it did no t received flatly, offer the ballot along. with it . (Cheers. ) I come now to a question which I Was aboutt o is much more important than e ith er of the sayotler but which has been very - little discu sse d at p ublic s meetings; that is the mode in whi c h the seats should be distributed among the constituencies. Let me tell you, as I have told other assemblages, that the working men who are now enfranchised should Particularly study this point, that although to give a man a vote may be to please his sentiment of in dependence and equality, and he may like to go up and poll with his richer and more free :neighbour, yet, as regards the legislation and the composition of Parliament and the action upon your Govern ment, by giving a man a vote or 1,000,000 of men votes may be made of no effect, no value what ever, unless that which I call the soul and jewel of your representative system be fairly considered and equitably adjusted. (Cheers.) The other day at Bradford I laid before the meeting and before the public certain schedules, showing what number of boroughs I should propose to disfranchise, what number of seats I should obtain from that process, andd how th ose sea t s were i n my v i ew t o b e dis tributed anion.. the old and new electoral bodies throughout the kingdom. Now, I am bound to state—and I think I say no more than the truth when Ido so—that the reception which thats c heme has has met with generally from the public has been much more favourable - than otherwise. (Cheers.) Of course those persons who said that I was going to turn everything upside down pretended remarkable astonishment, and even satisfaction that they were not about to be turned out of the windows. (A laugh.) They said, "Why, this is not at all like the violent speeches which were made at Bradford and at Man chester !" But the fact is there never were any vio lent speeches. (Cheers.) The violence and the folly, and the misrepresentation and the misstate ments of facts, and the iteration of all that was illogical and absurd, were found day after day in the leading articles of newspapers and nowhere else. (Cheers and laughter.) I shall refer to the criticisms of only one journal, and that notoriously the most important and most influential in this kingdom—the Times newspaper, as you know. (Cheers, and some hisses.) I would not express any disapprobation, because, after all, the Times newspaper will, no doubt, do your cause great ser vice, and it will begin to do it, and to do it ear nestly, the moment it sees that you are in earnest. (Cheers.) The Times said the other day that it did not find much fault with my scheme of disfranchise ment, but that my distribution of the members gained from the disfranchised places was very un fair ; I think. it said that it was " a gigantic fraud," and that to take 87 seats as proposed from the boroughs by Schedule A from one side of the house, or from one interest in the house—the landed in terest—and to put them on the other side, meaning the side of the commercial and the popular interest made a difference in a division of 174 votes ; and the Times assumed that those 87 seats were all seats for very small constituencies connected with what they call the " agricultural interest," although there is not the smallest connection really, or, at all events, it is a very trifling connection, between what is called the " landed interest" and the " agri cultural interest." Now, the Times has a very short memory. Six weeks ago in that newspaper there was a proposition which I was very glad to see, although I thought at the time that the editor was rather extreme in his views. (Cheers and a laugh.) He proposed to disfranchise every borough with less than 10,000 inhabitants, and that boroughs with less than 25,000 inhabi tants should not return more than one member. If that plan had been carried out he would have obtained from the disfranchised boroughs not less than 47 seats more than I have obtained. The Times also proposed that 20 or 25 new mem bers should be given to the counties. Now, when my plan came out—which is really a more reason able plan, a much more reasonable plan than that of the Times, for I disfranchise only up to 8,000, and I take only 120 seats, whereas he would have taken about 170—forgetting what he had written six weeks before, he condemns my plan as very.ex treme, and happily for us he produces a rival scheme of his own. (Hear, hear.) lam told that in the Times of to-day—for I have not seen the paper—there is a considerable correction of that rival scheme. That scheme was, in fact, what is called a.plagiarism; it was, not to speak offensively, stolen from my schedules. They:got my child, and they took off its decent clothing—(cheers and laughter) ;—they put on it rags of their own, and they marred its countenance that it might excite pity. (Renewed cheers.) Leading articles, you know, may be written almost anyhow—that is, they are published this morning, and are forgotten when the paper comes out to-morrow morning, and it does not always matter whether everything that is in them is very correct ; but when you come to figures and to give us tables there is an amount of truth in the multiplication table which even great authorities like the Times cannot wholly dispute, and their blunders are easily detected. Now, the Times complains of this—that in distributing the members which are obtained from the disfranchised boroughs I give far too large a population to the towns and far too small a proportion to the counties, and he says that in his scheme he gives to every county with more than 160,000 inhabitants an extra member. But how does he make out his list for those counties ? I will illustrate his mode of doing it by a reference to the se counties Which I have before me, and I believe there are others of the same de scription. We will take Berkshire, Buckingham shire, and Oxfordshire, and all of which are much under the population to which I propose to give an additional member. And how does he make them up to this amount ? He forgets that the boroughs in those counties are represented, and he includes in the population of the counties the population of the boroughs. For example, take the county of Berks, in which the principal proprietor of the Times has an estate, and on which he is very much to be congratulated. (A laugh.) The population of that county, exclusive of the boroughs, is 131,000 ; the Times calls it 170,000. The popula tion of the county of Bucks, in the same way, is 129,000; the Times calls it 164,000. The popula tion of the county of Gloucester again, exclusive of the boroughs, is 250,000, but the imes calls it 458,000. Well, a man might make a mistake in a figure, and one would not complain of or condemn upon that account a great scheme ; but when such a huge and absurd blunder as this has been made throughout the whole of his table, as I believe it has, I must say that, instead of proposing schemes of reform, the Times had better take to some other occupation for which it is better fitted. I could show you a great many other faults in that scheme. The town of Chatham, for example, to which he proposes to give an additional member, making two ; and the town of Rochdale, to which I pro pose an additional member, are within some 2,000 of the'same population. But it happens that Rochdale is the more populous place of the two. The Times, however, drops one member for Rochdale, and keeps one member additional for Chatham. Now, Chatham is to a large extent a Government borough, and you had much better have one member and Chatham one, probably, than that you should have one and Chatham two; and the object, no doubt, of leaving a member to Chatham and taking him from Rochdale is that the power of the Minister of the day, and not the power of the people, should be strengthened. There is another borough which is particularly favoured in that scheme, and that is the borough of Nottingham. I don't know at all, of course I can't even guess, with any certainty whence that scheme comes. But when one finds that the county of Berks, where the proprietor of the Times has a fine estate, and the town of Not tingham, which he happens to represent, are espe cially favoured, one cannot help thinking that somehow or other the person who concocted that scheme has not been so impartial in dealing with all places a nd all interests as I have been in the scheme which I have proposed. But there is another great error in the proposition which has appeared in the Times, to which I must call your attention, and which is of a much more serious character. He disfranchises all these boroughs in England and Wales, and he distributes the mem bers in England an Wales; he has made no pro vision for an extension of the number of members to be granted to that part called Scotland or to Ireland. He gives to Liverpool and to Man chester, as I proposed to give, six members each, but he does riot propose to given even an additional member from those disfranchised boroughs to the great city of Glasgow, possessing a t thi s momen t 400,000 inhabitants. But are Edinburgh and Glas gow not parts of this United Kingdom as much as Manchester and Liverpool ? I propose to disfran chise a less number of pqces than the Times, and I propose to give to Scotland—l forget the exact nurnbcr, but I think 18 nr 1 7—additional members (Cheers.) The justice that I would do to Scotland touches the heart of Scotchmen everywhere, and do you think for a mome n t th a t 3,000,000 of en lightened people north of the Tweed, who pay in proportion to their population as much of the taxes of the United Kingdom as any other portion of the kingdom, will be content with a proposition which leaves them as they are now and have been here tofore, and wholly ignores the eno rmous s t r id es which that portion of the kingdom has taken in all that constitutes the wealth and strength and prosperity of the empire ? Well, but now we will come to the real question of the proposition which I have made, and that is, whether I have dealt unfairly to the counties of the United Kingdom. I can hardly hope that this part of my subject can be very- interesting to every body, but I assure you that it is of the very pith and marrow of the question before the public. The statement which the Times makes, and which others make who object to my scheme, is, that I disfran _ _ chise a great number of small boroughs which it is generally admitted ought to be disfranchised ; that I get in England and Wales—l leave out of view Ireland at present, and in Scotland I disfran chise no boroughs-121 members, for whom it is necessary to find constituencies, and that in finding those constituencies I show great partiality to the towns, and do great injustice to the counties. That is the case against me. In England and Wales, though there are but 52 counties, there are 81 either counties or divisions of counties, many of the larger counties, as you are aware, being subdivided. Let us see, then, what the facts arc. I have taken those counties that are purely agricultural—for it is that great landed interest that complains—(a laugh) —and I have taken those that are to a con siderable extent manufacturing and mining; and I have taken the county of Lancaster and the West Biding of Yorkshire alone,.as being exceptional to all others from the vast population and the enor mous manufacturing interests which they contain. Of the purely agricultural divisions there are 62 out of the 81. They would have by my scheme, which is pronounced to be unjust to the agricul tural interest, 128 members, and the average num ber of persons, men, women, and children, to every member would be just 55,000. I come, then, to the manufacturing and mining counties, of which there are 16. They return 36 members, and the ayerage population to each of them is 66,000. You will observe, therefore, that the purely agricultural counties and divisions are much more fully represented than the manufacturing and min ing counties, inasmuch as a population of 55,000 to a member is better than one of 66,000 to a member. Then, with respect to Lan cashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, which I call three divisions, because I divide the former into North and South Lancashire, I propose that they should return 13 members, and the average to each member would be 137,000. Therefore, you will see at once that at any rate I have not shown any partiality in the distribution of members to the three divisions of North and South Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. (Hear.) Now I must compare these with the 'great boroughs, be. cause that is the question of the counties alone, the purely agricultural are much the most represented, and those that are manufacturing and. mining are less so, and Lancashire and the West Riding are much less represented than any other counties; now I come to the consideration of 17 of the largest boroughs, 12 of which, according to my scheme, were to receive four members each, and five six members each, in all 78 members, and every one of those 78 members, representing the largest 17 boroughs in the kingdom, would have the constitu ency, or rather a whole population of 62,000 ; therefore, inasmuch as every member of any purely agricultural county has but 55,000 of a population, and every member of those large boroughs would have 62,000, you see that I do not give to those large boroughs an amount of representation equal to that which the agricultural counties would have. So far, then, as these large boroughs are concerned, the answer is complete to the Times, or to anybody else who calls in question my impartiality. (Hear.) But I come now to consider other boroughs, be cause as we descend the list we shall find many smaller boroughs than those to which I have re ferred, and with them the representation appears to be considerably in excess. You will recollect I stated that the Times asserted that taking 87 seats from those disfranchised boroughs was taking 87 seats from the landed interest, and transferring them to the commercial interest. I want to know whether there are no boroughs left —still called boroughs—which are just as much county seats and connected with the landed interest as those which I propose to disfranchise. Take the county in which we live ; many of you know the town of Clitheroe, it's a small town. The last time I was through it I am sorry to say that it looked less prosperous than even when I knew it many years ago. But the town of Clitheroe does not return the member for Clitheroe. I saw yester day, in a very influential paper in the north of Lan cashire, the Preston Guardian, an article on the subject, and it states, and I presume that it is true, that the borough of Clitheroe is 14 miles long, and that there are in that neighbourhood, and chiefly within the borough, not less than five landed pro prietors whose united income from land is about £45,000 a-year, and the incorporation of all that land with the little town of Clitheroe gives their representation into the hands of the proprietors of the soil. The member for Clitheroe, therefore, is just as much a member of the landed and what they call the county interest, as the member for any county in the kingdom. Take, again, the borough of Lancaster, which, I see, the Times proposes to treat more hardly than I did, for I proposed to leave it as is, and he wishes to take one member from it. The borough of Lancaster, I learn from the same authority, is united with about 20 townships ; all that land, therefore, which lies adjacent to the borough gives great influence in. the elections for borough; and boroughs of that nature may in con sequence be regarded as more connected with the landed interest than they are with the commercial and manufacturing interests. Although in the vicissitudes of party, you find, of course, occasion ally the land triumphant, while at other times the independence of the population makes head against landowners, and members of another character are returned. I have looked over my three schedules B, C, D, and I have marked no less than 47 seats. I believe there are far more, but I have been ex tremely careful in my marking, which my scheme leaves as they now are, every one of which may be considered to be connected, directly and insepar ably, with the countyrepresentation of the country. The Times ignores that. lam charged with trans ferring all those little boroughs and their seats from the land to trade. But lam told that I leave 47 seats—and I may say nearly 60 seats in the small boroughs, which may be said to be generally as much connected with the landed interest in the counties in which they are situate as the majority of those boroughs which are proposed to be disfran chised. Now, let us see how the figures stand. If I take all the population of the counties of England and Wales, exclusive of Lancashire and the West Riding, and if I add to that the population repre sented by those 47 seats, and if I divide that whole population by the members for those counties, added to the 47 seats, I show that the representation of the counties stands thus—that there is one member for every 45,400. I will not confine myself to the great boroughs which I spoke of before. I will take the boroughs with six members, those with four members, and those with three members,, being al together 147 seats, and adding to the counties those boroughs the increase of population since the last census was taken it becomes capable of demonstra tion and cannot be contradicted that those 147 per sons represent each a larger number of population than each of the counties and the small borough members to which I have referred. (Hear.) But there is another point in which this should be viewed ; take the 42 counties of England alone for example (I call them 42, because Yorkshire counts as three), take them and reckon any county with all the population in it, both borough and county, with all the members, both borough and county members, and how do the counties stand ? They stand in this position—that there are six of these 42 counties that have their exact number of members— that is, the counties and the boroughs within them. There are also nine of them that have somewhaj, less than they ought to hav e ; an d, ag ain, there aig 23 that have more, and some of them considerably more than they ought to have, while there are four that are greatly deficient—namely, Lancashire, which according to my scheme would still be eight membe-:s deficient; Middlesex, which would be nine deficient ; Surrey, which would be six deficient, and the West Riding of Yorkshire, which would be 11 deficient. Thus these four po pulous counties would be 34 deficient, and these 34 members are really distributed among "those 23 other counties which, as I have stated, have really an excess of representation. (Cheers.) Now, I shall be met by the argument that it is not fair to take any given county with the boroughs in it, and add all the members together and say that this county is fairly represented in its county interest. But I would ask you to look over the counties of England, so far as you are acquainted with them, and then you will find that there is a great union of interest between any particular county and the boroughs in that county. Is there no community of interest between the agriculture, such as it is, of Lancashire and the manufacturers of Lancashire ? A very strong blending of interest we find everywhere. And, in like manner, if you go to a purely agricul tural county you will find the little town in that county has strong . affinity with what may be called the agricultural interest that surrounds it. The people in the town are relations of the people in the country. The people in the country come into the town to make their purchases. Their interests are greatly blended together, and therefore, in looking over the general representation of the whole kingdom, I think it is quite fair to draw the line that I have adopted, and to show that, taking every county by itself, its county population with its borough population, and its county:members with its borough members, all these counties have a fair distribution of members ; and these only have any real or important deficiency—viz., the Vest Riding, Lancashire, S urrey, and Middlesex. And if the county gentlemen of England and the Times wish to give more members to these four counties, for my part I have not the smallest objection. (Loud cheers.) But now there is another point. The landed proprietors of England may be styled " the leisure class of England ;" they are not half so busy as merchants and manufacturers tied to their counting-houses or to their mills from morning till evening. The landed Classes are those who offer the greatest number of their members as candidates for Parliamentary honours, and you find that in a great number of boroughs which may be said to be a sort of neutral. territory, for you don't know whether they are for trade more particularly or whether they are for land. These are represented in vast numbers by gentlemen connected with the landed interest, and whose sympathies are altoge ther opposed to any policy which may be deemed adverse to that interest. (Hear, hear.) I believe that when this scheme of mine shall be more thoroughly understood, or completely understood by any impartial person, he will come to the con clusion that if it were passed into law the landed interest would still have—l will not say a great preponderance in the House of Commons—but that it would have a power in excess of anything that it could justly claim. (Hear.) But then we have another question, which is the character of the House 101 Lords. I want the Times and theme gentlemen who are complaining of injustice to the landed interest—l want them to give us some explanation of this case. The whole mass of the Lords is territorial. There are a few lawyers and a few soldiers—(laughter)—and a few men who, from one cause or another—but a most insignificant number—are_put into that house little Connected with the land. But nineteen-twentieths of them are distincly - and closely connected with the land, and that is the original reason, and the still ezbtaut reason, why they find themselves in that house -at all. (Hear, hear.) Now, I have asserted, and I am prepared to contend against all corners, that the House of Lords does represent that which is strictly the landed interest of the country, not the agricul tural, not the farming, not the county population interest, but the landed interest—the interests of the great territorial proprietors; and if I wanted an authority for it I might quote a member of that house recently put into it, not because he is a landowner, I presume, but because he is sup posed to have done in his time great service to the party who made him a Peer. In a speech made during the passing of the last Reform Bill by Mr. Macaulay, now Lord Macaulay, I find this pas sage :—" Our decision (the decision of the House of Commons) is the decision of the nation. The deci sion of their lordships can scarcely be considered as the decision even of that class from which the Peers are generally selected, and of which they may be considered the virtual representatives—the great landed gentlemen of England." Well, that is what I have asserted—that the House of Lords was intended to represent, and, I believe, does repre sent, with a considerable amount of accuracy, the wishes, the prejudices, if you like, the opinions of the great proprietors of the soil of the United Kingdom, (Cheers.) Now, will any man dispute with me on this point—that all the interests of this country—a free country—have not equal rights to a fair representation in, and to a fair legislation from both Houses of Parliament ? And if the land have greatly the preponderance in one, which nobody denies, it has no right to assume to itself—and we bid them beware in time—(cheers)—it has no right to assume that it should have also a preponderance in the other house. These discriminations lead a good wayif people will but follow them. They lead at any rate to the question of equal electoral dis tricts, which I have never mooted—(a laugh)—al though 50 newspapers in England have asserted the contrary. (Hear.) They lead also to the ques tion of a constitutional change in the character of the House of Lords—(hear)--a question which I am not now about to discuss, and which is not now before the public. In the first speech I made at Birmingham I said the question you have to con sider in reforming the House of Commons is this— whether the Lords and the great territorial pro prietors with whom they are allied, and whom they represent—whether they are to rule the people of England through the House of Commons, or whe ther the people of England are to rule themselves through the House of Commons. (Cheers.) Now let me toll you that this is not a question between us the inhabitants of the towns and the rural popu lation. The inhabitants of the small counties are the small freeholders who were the backbone of the friends of freedom before the Reform Bill; and the farmers themselves make no complaint against what we are doing. The great proprietors complain, it may be, but the people of the counties have made no complaint. Why, how can they ? Look at the political condition of the farmers ; to a farmer an election is not the pleasantest time in the world. (Hear.) Unfortunately we know it too well that to study politics, to form conscientious convic tions, to have a desire to e xerc i se hi s f ranc hi se honestly for his country, is very liable to subject a farmer to a supervision akin to martyrdom. Do you think that the farmers will ever get anything from what are called the representatives of the landed interest ?If they ever get freedom—if they ever get anything—economy of expenditure, fairness of taxa tion, repeal of game laws, shelter of the ballot—if they get any one of those things, they will never get them or get it through the members for the landed paoprietors in the counties ; but they will get it through the power and combination and re sources of the freedom•loving and freedom .earning people of the towns and cities of the kingdom. (Cheers.) Some years ago, as many of you know, I took great interest in the question of the game laws. I had a committee of the House of Commons upon that question. We had examined before that com mittee many most respectable farmers. I had letters from hundreds of them in all parts of the kingdom. Do you believe that if the members for the counties were the real representatives of the farmers—the cultivators of the soil, do you believe that the game laws, as they now are, would last for a single session? (" No, no.") The farmer taking his farm, having it stocked with , animals which he dare not touch by the proprietor of the farm, and himself or his son not able to walk about the very land for which he pays a rent but he must be dodged by the suspicion and the espionage of his landlord's keeper ? Why, ' if you talk to all the farmers now, there is not an intelligent man among them but will tell you that his interests and ours are precisely the same. He was once deluded by his political landlords into the belief that Protection was of value to him. Now he knows—and that enlightenment has gone so far that the county members themselves not only know, but admit—that the repeal of the corn laws has been a great blessing to everybody connected with the land. (Cheers) The farmer knows—pursuing his industry as we pursue ours—that he has the same interest, the same desire for freedom, the same wish for a light taxation, the same longing for economy in the Government—that, in fact, there is not a single thing which the electors or the populations of the towns can fairly ask, or even do ask, but in which the great bulk of the farmers of the United Kingdom may not join with as much earnestness and readiness as we ourselves. But with the county members, so long as they represent the great pro prietors,-th6 ease is wholly different. They are the ruling class; therrnake the government, they en joy the patronage,. and they profit by , the expendi ture. (Hear.) What do the sons of men in this meeting expect to do in Rochdale ? Your manufac turers' sons becothe manufacturers ; those who have shops in the town, according as their capital be large or small, look to . some industrial pursuit for their children ; but the great landed proprietors— they never look to Manchester, or to Leeds, or to Liverpool, or to the City—l. mean the commercial part of London ; but their yoga der sons look almost invariably to the great depart ekts.and services of the State, for which your 40 millions of taxes, be yond paying the interest of your debt, are e2cpended. This is the great patrimony of the younger sons of this class. (Loud cheers.) Let me tell the farmers from this platform that there is not a man in all the thousands that I have addressed during the last three months, nor in all the hundreds of thousands that have had the opportunity of reading what I have spoken in the towns of. the north of E ng l an d —there is not a single man who would not hold out his right hand to every farmer in the kingdom, and say, " You are a son of industry as I myself am ; you live in a country aiming to be more free; you have an interest in a good and economical govern ment, in peace, just laws, and a happy people; be my friend and brother for ever, and secure the blessings for us all." (Great c h eer i ng ) N ow, I ask you, is this great reform that w e are di scuss i ng, —i s it worth the notice—is it worth the struggle which a people must ever make t o secure or t o en l arge i ts freedom? It is for the towns to decide this with such help as the county populations can give them. lam told that things are so comfortable that people don't care about political reform ; but those people in the west end of London, who walk from great houses in Grosvenor-square to still greater houses in Pall m9.ll, they don't know all that is passing in the minds of the people in Yorkshire and Lancashire, and all the populous parts of the kingdom. (Hear.) I have seen more persons met together within the last three months than anybody else has. I know the sympathy that ha s b een ex p resse d on thi s ques tion. I have seen the light, the fire in thousands of eyes. I know that the people do care for this ques tion, and I know that they are sensible that they have reason to care. Are we not the most industri ous people on the face of the earth ? Have we no more steam-power, more perfect machinery, more complete means of locomotion, more productive agri culture and manufactures, more of that which de velopes wealth than is to be found among any other people of equal population or of any population on the face of the globe? (Cheers.) And yet at this moment, with all our boasted civilisation and free dom, I believe we have a greater number of paupers than we have of electors. We bury every 20 or 25 years 1,000,000 of paupers, but there is always a new crop, always a substratum of society - , deplor able, lamentable to contemplate, which hitherto we seem to have been able to produce no sensible change in, and that million of paupers is a very inadequate representation of the suffering that exists. When a man is once a pauper, when he gets rid of the feel ing of aversion to a state of dependence, when he feels no longer that it is a position somewhat degrad ing, and finds himself secure of a living for the rest of his days, it may be in the workhouse, it may be in some hovel where he puts himself, and where the guardians allow him - some out-door relief, he is free from anxiety with regard to the future. But leave the million of paupers, and cast your eye for a moment on the million ,just above them, who have not lost self-respect which makes a man contented with pauperism, who have families and homes, who have around them those dearest to them in life, expecting from day to day at their hands their daily bread, who have employment—it may be pre carious and small, and often inadequate wages— who find themselves now a little more comfortable, and again depressed and verging upon the very brink of pauperism —imagine the suffering in those families, imagine these men struggling —struggles which we in other circumstances know nothing of —then, I say, having formed an inadequate con ception of all this as the human mind can only accomplish, let us ask ourselves " Why is it that all this exists in this country, with our magnificent power of production, with our ability to invite in every clime under leavtn the surplus of every people, to add to the luxury and the comfort of every home in England ?" (Loud cheers.) Is it Heaven that is in fault ? Has God forgotten to be '.gracious ? Is it the Creator, omnipotent and bene volent ; or is it man, with his crimes and his blun ders, that has occasioned these evils ? Who have been your rulers for generations back ? Who have squandered your money ? Who have shed your blood ? For whom have the people of England toiled and sweated and bled for generations back— and with what result ? Why, to be insulted now in the year 1859, and told with a lordly arrogance, that it is not fitting that they should be admitted to the franchise in this kingdom. (Hear.) Why, I am charged with stating unpleasant facts with regard to the aristocracy of this country. We have had them our rulers for long periods, and we see the result. At least, if I have said anything against them, they and their defenders have avenged them selves in the wholesale detraction which they have passed upon the character of the great body of the people of England, of whom they say that it is not safe to give them the franchise, and that if they had it England would be a country of tur bulence and violence, not of order and of peace as we now behold it. (Cries of " Shame !") Now, don't let us pursue the question of reform without understanding that there is a result to follow from it. If you want any great measure now, what is the process for obtaining it ? You generally have I to contend for it up to the point of civil war. This has become so much the custom in this country, that the ruling class never believe that we are in earnest until you get up to that point. Now, they tell you the people don't care about reform. You .don't find 100,000 men assemble on Newhall-hill, in Birmingham —you don't find men assemble in vast multitudes in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and threaten that if the bill be not granted in the course of a week's time they will be on their march to London. Of course not, and I hope nothing of the kind will Borne, for I hope nothing of the kind will be necessary—(hear)—but the fact that they taunt us with the absence of this is a proof that they are, however unconscious of it, influenced by the notion, and in fact by the knowledge, that no great thing is ever wrested from the Government of this country by the people, except it be at the point of violent action. We are like subjects contending with a conqueror —like the Irish Catholics contending with the invading and subjugating Protestant—like the Lombard, if it be so, contending with the Austrian, When you got the Reform Bill you were within 24 hours of a revolution. When you got the Corn Bill in 1846, you had the help of the most stupen dous famine that for many hundreds of years had visited any civilised country of the world. And now, if you want a measure, how do . you get it ? Take now the questions of minor importance. Take Church-rates, for example, which is much more a matter of sentiment than pecuniary importance to . anybody. It is a mark of subjugation, and there fore we resent it—(cheers)--but for 20 years the Church-rate question has been debated in the House of Commons. The argument was as plain 20 years ago as it is now; but the rate was not abolished. Take, again, the question of the ballot. Imme diately after the Reform Bill the speeches in favour of the ballot were as overwhelming in point of argument as they have ever been since. Nothing has exceeded the logic and power of argument displayed by Mr. Grote upon that question after the Reform Bill ; but the ballot is not yet the law of the land. The House of Lords and its three-fourths of the House of Commoni vote, year after year, anything they like. There may be an enormous majority of the people in favour of any particular course, but you want a majority which almost comprises the whole, with your present distribution of members, to' carry any great measure of reform in th e H ouse o f C ommons. (Cheers.) Before Sir R. Peel repealed the Corn Laws Mr. Villiers, I believe, never had the votes of more than 100 members in favour of the repeal, and yet everybody knows that, although 100 members do not represent one-sixth of the House of Com mons, five out of six of the actual population of the United Kingdom had long condemned the Corn Laws. (Hear, hear.) This is a proof that we have not at present a real representation of the people. What we want is, not that you should transfer great political power from the great landowners to g reat merchants or great manufacturers, or to the owners of great factories ; but that equally through all parts of the kingdom, all interests, all opinions, all wishes, should affect:the Legislature, that mem bers who sit in Parliament should feel that they are not the members of any section, but of the great body of the people ; and you would find that as opinion grew and consolidated itself throughout the nation, it would act gently, steadily, omnipo. tently on the House of Commons. (Cheers.) In stead of our having to contend with our rulers as if they were a foreign conqueror for every change,-we wish we could find one soul animating the Parlia ment, the people, and the Crown,and the Government would be stronger and more honoured, and the peo ple would be happier and more contented. (Hear.) Now, I ask you, is it to be deemed a heresy to hold these opinions and to preach this doctrine ? Is it not rather to follow the labours of our fathers and to complete their work ? Am I to be charged with setting class against class when I wish to break down the wall of partition by which classes are created, and to make all Englishmen brethren before the law and in the eye of the Constitution of their country ? (Cheers.) What have been the objects of my political life ? You, my townsmen, know it perfectly well. (Cheers.) I call you as witnesses on my behalf. (Protracted cheering and waving of handkerchiefs.) I have laboured with an earnest and successful band—with Villiers, and Cobden, and Gibson and George Wilson, and ma n y o th ers whom I cannot mention, but who live, and who ever will live, in my remembrance. (Ch eers .) I laboured with them to give the people their daily bread, and now 20 millions' worth of food finds its way every year to your shores which but 14 years 'ago you weie .not allowed to speak of without being charged with treason to your master class. (Hear, hear.) I laboured with earnest men to strike the stamp from newspapers, and to establish a free press, and I am told-.that since the abolition of that stamp 300 cheap newspapers have sprung into life, conveying information on every topic every day to almost every house in. the kingdom. (Cheers.) I have striven, but I grieve to say without success, that the precious earnings of the people, and their still more precious blood, might not be squandered by guilty statesmen in guilty wars, and now—con sistently, as I believe, witll4ll the past—l ask for my countrymen that Which is the promise of their. Constitution,—that they shall have a fair and full representation in the House of Commons. (Cheers.) It is a just demand. (Cheers.) I ask you_l ask all my countrymen, to speak for it with no falter ing, with no uncertain voice. Speak, and you will be listened to. Ask in tones that cannot be mis understood, and that which you ask will certainly be granted. If you come of a great ancestry, as your historians say you do, do not disgrace it now ; and if you are, as you boast yourselves, the heirs of free dom, rise, I beseech you, and take possession of the heritage that is yours. The hon. gentleman resumed his seat amid loud and continued cheering. It was moved by Mr. HEAPE, and seconded by Mr. PETRIE :-" That this meeting is of opinion that the time has arrived when a large and comprehen sive measure of reform should be granted to the people, and pledges itself to support Mr. B r i g ht i n his endeavours to procure the passing of a Bill through Parliament in the ensuing session which shall secure to the people their just political rights." Mr. WILSON and Mr. Alderman LIVESEY also addressed the meeting, and the resolution was unanimously agreed to. Mr. BRIGHT moved a vote of thanks to the mayor for presiding, and the meeting concluded about half-past nine o'clock. MR. BRIGHT AND REFORN. (From the Morning Herald.) Few of Mr. Bright's ardent admirers could have antici pated that his great Reform Bill would be a nine day's wonder, and nothing more; that the agitation inaugurated at Birmingham by two aggressive orations on all our insti tutions, and carried with such vigour to the populous centres of commerce, Manchester, Glasgow, and Bradford, could turn out a mere flash in the pan I Who would have imagined that the meas ure so l emnly entrusted by the ad vanced Liberals , the ve t eran Roebuck, and the London Reform Association, to the legislative care of the member for Birmingham, would come still-born into light, and ere the echoes which welcomed it into the world had died away, be consigned t o th e li m b o of disappointed hopes and abor tive schemes ? Y e t such i s the sad history of the Bradford plan now chronicled in the catalogue of popular delusions and frustrated designs. We speak not of ourselves, who inserted the bill in one column and its sentence of condem nation in another, who pointed out the worm of nnfn.irness eating at the vitals of the Quaker's gourd ; nor of the slower utterance of the oracle of Printing-hour-square, which, after three days' ominous silence, terminated the suspense and perplexity of its tantalised votaries by charac terising the bill as "a gigantic fraud to be practised on one half., of the p eo pl e f or t h e allege d b ene fit o f th e o th er half but of most of the Liberal papers, several of which declared the project to be an attempt to make the factory chimns the centres of political power—an attempt certain to mis carry, because the rest of the nation would not stand . it. statelt b o e f c t o hi m n e g s s. an i H nte ow res c t a i n w ng r a e c e c ul o a un tio t n fo tro the m curiousqmrephhe into this - nomenon that the man selected by experienced members of the House of Commons, and keen business men in London, Lancashire, and Yorkshire, as most fitted to prepare a plan for remodelling our representation , . should h ave failed so utterly in his efforts at legislation As a Parliamentary speaker Mr. Bright has won his way to the foremost ranks in the Commons and the country; for fearlessness and independence of character he stands pre -eminent ; the fierce passion of his oratory moves ; his deep pathos melts • his biting sarcasm wounds ; but there we pause' Successful as a speaker, he has broken down as a legislator'. His barren triumphs as a demagogue cannot retrieve his utter failure as a statesman. Mr. Bright will continue to be what he has been—a brilliant meteor, giving forth flashes which dazzle for a moment, but affording no steady and certain light—to be gazed at, but never to be followed. Three months ago he was chosen as t 149 loader of the THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, JANUARY. 29, .1859. cab ; already has he shown his inability for the post of command. The Liberal press, the skirmishers of his little band, have mutinied, and deserted their chief ; and he is is direct antagonism with his lieutenant, Roebuck. If we seek to account for this, the answer is simple. The reason is found in the character of the measure. The bill is the offspring of the demagogue, not of the statesman ; of the Birmingham orator, not of a far-seeing legislator. It appeaV the passions and selfishness, ignorance and pre judices of a packed a udi ence , no t t o t h e calm j udgment 01 posterity, nor to the intelligence of the enlightened com munity, nor to the solid interests and high destinies of Great Britain. Take the Birmingham speech, with its =- candid suppression of all the good deeds and active philan thropy of our aristocracy and upper classes—conduct vir tually rebuked by the well-merited eulogium pronounced upon them by Mr. Roebuck at Sheffield. Take the Brad ford ;address, with its ludicrous arguments against a fran chise of intelligence, property, and prudence, its wondrous, fiction of the Hou se o f L or d s represent i ng the land, and then compare the measure, with its partiality to one class; its application of the population theory only just so far as suits party purposes ; its ignoring of the educated in favour of the uneducated classes • its flagrant favouritism to the towns, to the excl us i on of the counties,—and we must NO of the bill and its demagogic author— " The child is genuine; you may trace Throughout the sire's transmitted face." Nor is it to be wondered that the Bradford scheme so constituted has, met with this fate. The Reform Bill of 1832 was. styled the child of aristocratic condescension. It was a great deed," says Miss Martineau, "to see noble men and gentlemen of high family laying down heredifin9 possessions of their own, while requiring the same sacrifice from others, to see the privileged c l asses di vest i ng them selves of privilege for the sake of the people, for the honour and integrity of the country. It was a great deed, and pos terity will declare it so. But where is the generosity or even fairness of our modern Reformer? Can anything be more unjust than the treatment of the landed interest, or more palpably absurd than the excuse that they are repre sented in the Lords ? Is this the real representation which Mr. Bright boasted he would * accomplish ? What is repro: sentation but an exact reflection of the thing represented r But is that a faithful copy of the body politic of England which omits the chief interest of the realm ? When a aide face is a true representation of the human countenance, and a half-length portrait of the whole figure ; when Ireland stands for Great Britain, or the United States for the whole world, then will Mr. Bright's scheme be accepted. It makes Birmingham, Bolton, and Manchester, and the whole realms of Calicopolis ten thousand strong in the Commons, but banishes the representatives of the agriculturists to " another place." It were idle to waste words on such a selfish attempt to take from the thirteen millions •of the counties all political power, and to give to the eight millions of the great towns a majority of members. And yet such is the barefaced attempt to misrepresent the nation ; to give the commission to govern to the Democracy, vice Aristocraci cashiered. Fair play has ever been the boast of Englishmen; truth and fair play, even to a fallen adversary, the bright jewels of the national character. Oppression raises a storm of indignation everywhere. Now Mr. Bright, clever though he is, has never understood this. He accordingly forfeited his popularity by siding with the Russian bully against the prostrate Turk. He opposed with terrible tenacity Lord Ashley and Sir lir. Fielden's efforts to ease the overworked children of the factories ; and nowt too, he leads the many -headed monster, an d by bluster would frighten the community into a cow pliance with his demands. To this end he thinks that Manchester will take the sop of six members for it 5514 .0043, and then turns a deaf ear to the-remonstrances of Devon shire and Durham, complaining that with half a m illion they shall have each but four I Is a dweller in Petticoat lane so superior to a denizen in Somersetshire or Wiltshire ? Does living in the close streets of the Seven Dials constitute a proper training for the electoral prerogative ? Is the ac cident of never seeing a green field to over-ride the inalieu" able capacity of the citizen ? That Mr. Bright should dia . ; like a "fancy" franchise—a franchise of intelligence and property—is natural enough. Quake rs h ave an i ns tinctive antipathy to many colours, and friend John shows it to a varied qualification. Numbers is the drab—numbers the eternal drab of the Quaker Reform Bill. Talk to him of intelligence—he would disfranchise Locke himself if he lived on Salisbury-plain I Give scientific men votes I a Lancashire weaver outweighs a whole legion of Newtons. Unfairness, inconsistency, and party selfishness appear in' each portion of the scheme, and Mr. Bright little u nder.. stands his own countrymen if he thinks they will tolerate such injustice. His bill has failed, because it disregard° truth, justice, and fair play ; and though Englishmen may be carried away for a time by the passionat e i nve ctive 4 , unscrupulous eloquence, yet their hearts are i n the lie!: place. Their ears are open to the truth, and they will visit with unsparing condemnation the man who seeks to traffic' upon narrow prejudices. Such has been the fate of the Bradford measure; it has run its nine days' course, and will soon be forgotten. Let it go • but its author may lean ] . a_useful lesson from its short-lived existence. CO UIVTR Y MAR IC T LIVERPOOL—JAN. 28. The wheat trade is dull to-day, and even in the retail business prices must be noted the turn in buyers' favour. The same may be said of flour. Indian corn a slow sale , with a decline of 6d per qr. Oats and oatmeal held firmly► but little inquired. Several large sales of Egyptian beano were induced by holders submitting to a reduction of 6d to 9d per qr ex ship. Peas and barley dull. WAKEFIELD-JAN. 28. A fair arrival of wheat, but most of it in poor condition, at last week's prices. Fine barley in fair request at lots prices. Beans fully as dear. In oats and shelling there is little change to note. The following are the quotations :"; —Wheat, per qr. of 8 bushels 601 b., Essex, Suffolk, an Kent, white, old, 46s to 49s • new, 46s to 495; ditto, red old, 40s to 43s ; new, 40s to 425. EXETER-JAN. 28. At the opening of the market samples were few and out of condition, and millers seemed indisposed to purchase 14 the following prices : Wheat, white— 5s 3d to 5s 4d I Barley.. 3s 9d to 4s Od Ditto red 58 Od to 5s 3d Oats 2s 6d to 20 vu _ _ Flour, fine, 29s to 30s ; seconds, 28s to 29s per sack. CATTLE.—The market was well supplied with stock, especially sheep, .but a small attendance of farmers. rot carcases a large supply. Fat beef,p score,9s6d to 10s6d Ewes, per lb ....6d to Oa Pork carcases, do 7 s od t o 7 s 6d W ethers, d 0.... .. 60 to TA , Lambs, per lb .. Od to Od Fat cares, d0....6d to Oa Rough fat, 4-id per lb. BRISTOL SUGAR—JAN. 28. Owing to the exhaustion of supplies in first hands, the sales this week h ave b een un i mportant. The dealers, hole ever, still show a disposition to keep up their stocks, and very full prices have been paid for the few lots which have appeared at market. The refined market is steady, but there is still a want of activity in the demand. R um con tinues in fair demand, at about 2s 3d per proof gallon for Demerara. COAL MARKET—JAN . . 26. (Prices of Coal per Ton at s. d. Wylam l4 9 Haswell Gas. 13 0 Byass's Bebside West Hartley l4 9 Walker Primrose 12 9 Davison's West Hart ley 15 0 Lambert's West Hart ley ..14 9 Tanfield Moor Butes .. 12 0 Buddle's West Hartleyls 3 the close of the market.) Walls End. 0. 4: South Kelloe l7 ',.: Hetton 1 lB " . , 0 Tees 18 . Russell's Hetton 16 Heugh Hall 16 it Whitworth 14 " ft Nixon's Duffryn 21 'i n Nixon's Merthyr 21 ,',' Powell' s Duffryn Steam 21 v. Cassop Byron l7 0 Gosforth . .15 9 Harton e South Durham... 16 ." Montague Garesfield .. 12 6 00—Sold, 81. Walls End. Kelloe l7 0 Riddell 15 ' 9 Ha5we11...,,, 18 0 Ships at market, LOCAL SHARE MARKETS. LIVERPOOL—JAN. 28. The market was dull most of the day, but improved at the close. Berwicks, 9 3.931-Leeds Northern, 48 48 Eastern Counties, 121 9-16 Midland, 102 1, — Chester and Holyheads, 48 I—Caledonians, 86 861 —L ancas b:ra and Yorkshire, 97$—London and North-Westerns, 96j East Lancashire, 951 6--Dutch Rhenish, 41 I dig.- - Grand Trunk of o Canada, 81 Bl—Great Western, 55/ Great Western of Canada, 16k 16I—Dovers, 2215-16-- —North British, 621 3—Y or k and North Midland, 77 k. MANCHESTER—JAN. 28. There was not much business doing, but prices were steady. Leeds, 97—Dovers, 24—Eastern Counties, 121 —East Lancashire, 95—Trunk Div. Debentures, Sheffields, 38/ 3 4—Canada,..new, 4t dis—Leeds, new to shares, 7-16 dis. BIRMINGHAM—JAN. 28. Business continues dull, and prices of railway shares have a tendency downward. The transactions were chiefly in local stocks. Great Western Birmingham Pref. shares were dealt in at 10i—Great Western closed 65f—Midlands at 1021 to 10 3—Londons, 96 to 96k. BIRTHS. BARRY.—On the 22d inst., at the Cottage, Southgate, Mid dlesex, the wife of Arthur E. Barry, solicitor, of Gray's' inn, of a daughter. BERESFORD.—On the 28th inst., at 20, Regent's Villsof Avenue-road, Regent's-park, the wife of Marcus Beres noithaes°2ll6th inst., at Aldershott, the wife of p L yowfiromii Beres ford, Esq., Lowry, 47th Regt., of a son. e On the 27th inst., at Eaton-place, Brighton, the Rd Yt o f Francis L. Pym, Esq., of a son. MARRIAGES. CRANE—GOODWIN : —On the 27th inst., at St. Mary% Lambeth, Mr. William Crane, C.E., son of Commander P. Crane, R.N., to Emma Clara, eldest daughter of Win. Goodwin, Esq., Chief Clerk to H.M.'s Privy Seal. Cox—HEAP.—On the 27th inst., at Great George-street Chapel, Liverpool; George R. Cox, Esq., London, to Harriet, third daughter of Joshua Heap, Esq.. Fuiwood park, Aigburth, near Liverpool. DEATHS. DALTON.--On the 27th inst., at Morden College, Black heath, Joh n D a l ton, Esq., aged 86. DA.vas.--On the 26th inst., at Epsom, Mrs. Drusilla Davies, aged 83. ELLWALL.—On the 25th inst., at Denmark-row, Camber. well, Matthew Ellwall, Esq., aged 76. POREES.—On the 9th ult., at the British Legation in Dresden, the Lady Adelaide Dorothea Forbes, aged 70. GR/ITINHOOFE.-011 the 22d inst., at Dover, the Rev. T. Sparkes Griffinhoofe for 47 years vica r of Arkesden and Mayland, Essex, aged 77. PELLEW.—On the 6th ult., at Lucknow, of dysentery, Major the Hon. Barrington Reynolds Fellow, of the Royal Rifle Brigade, aged 26. WALTER.—On the 25th inst., at the Rectory, Hasibury Bryan, near Blandford, the Rev. Henry Walter, 8.D., F.R.S., aged 74. LONDON : Printed and Published by MTTRDO YOUNG, of No. 112, Strand, Printer, at The Suit Office, No, 112, Strand, in the Precinct of the Savoy', in the county of Middlesex, Saturday, January 29,. 1859. - f to m. tic th( bu los se ) gr( th; No rov opi dot city 1.31)(