The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1885-01-24 00:00:00

THE DISTRESS IN BIRMINGHAM.

A meeting convened by the Mayor was held in the
Birmingham Town Hall on Saturday to consider the
best means for alleviating the distress now exist-
ing among the working classes in the town owing to
lack of•employment. In opening the proceedings the
Mayor observed that the distress now existing wds
not like that which existed in the winter of 1878-9.
It was not so deep nor so widespread, but, on the
other hand, it was prevalent throughout a large
variety of occupations, and it proceeded, not, as then,
from the severity of the weather, but from the state
of trade generally. It had been suggested that there
should be a Mayor's fund, a general organisation for
relief throughout the different wards of the town,
and that the Corporation should provide work
for the men unemployed; but he did not approve
of either of these suggestions, more especially
as the latter proposal would be only to burden
the rates. His worship then went into details of a
plan of relief, which was to be worked out by the
otficers of the Charity Organisation Society. It em-
braced the offer of work at stone-breaking and the
raising of a special fund. The Mayor's suggestions
were approved, and a special fund was started, towards
which nearly £7OO were contributed in the room.
Returns issued by the Board of Guardians on Satur-
day last for the week ending January 10, show that
during that week the number of persons receiving out-
door relief was 3899, against 4503 in the correspond-
ing week of 1884, a decrease in favour of last week of
604. The number of persons in the workhouse last
week was 3729, against 3305 in the corresponding
week of last year, the indoor paupers havmg increased
1;y 424.

A society lady at the Catskills boasts of 177
different costumes, eleven trunks, two poodles, and
three maids. She also has a husband; but she doesn't
boast of him. And we shouldn't think he would
ben, .t of her.

MR. BRIGHT AND THE NEW VOTERS
-
The following letter from Mr. Bright deals with
"the work of the Liberal party during the last fifty

Rochdale, Jan. 17, 1385.
Dear Mr. TOWNSEND,—You suggest that I should
write something that may be of use to the new voters
under the Franchise Bill which has just become law.
If I were speaking to your new voters, and esp-cially
if to those who are farm labourers, I should say
something like that I am about to write.
I should tell them that there is a great difference
between the two parties which will ask for their votes
in the spring of 1886—a difference which they may
see in all things during the last fifty years. The
Reform Bill of 1832 was carried by the Liberal party
against the violent opposition of the Tories. It was
the first step, in our time, towards a better represen-
tation of the people in Parliament. In the year 1867,
now seventeen years since, the suffrage was first
given to working-men, when household suffrage v$ as
granted in our cities and towns. This was gained by
the agitation promoted by the Liberal party in the
country, and was pressed upon the Tory Government
during the discussions in the House of Commons in
the session of 1867.

The Liberal party in the country and in Parliament
has advocated household suffrage for the counties for
several years, during which the Tories have
constantly opposed it. Last year the bill giving
household suffrage in the counties became law not-
withstanding all the efforts of the Tories to ob-
struct it.

The Liberal party gave to all voters the protection
of the ballot, which the Tory party strongly opposed.
Every voter is now able to vote as he wishes. No
landlord, or farmer, or employer of any kind can
know how any vote is given, and now the poorest
man is as safe in giving his vote as the richest. This
is a great safeguard for the voter. The bill for the
rearrangement of seats now before Parliament is the
work of the Liberal party. The Tory party when in
as did not propose it, and it is only under a Govern-
ment of Liberals that so great and wise a measure
could have been passed into law.
Political freedom, therefore, and a real representa-
ton of the people, rich and poor, the country owes to
the Liberal party. But we owe much more to the
Liberal party.
We owe to it the repeal of the cruel Corn Law, ard
the removal of the hindrances to trade caused by
monstrous taxes on almost everything brought from
foreign countries. The Corn Law, by shutting out
foreign corn, was intended to keep the price of wheat
at, or near, 80s. the quarter; its natural price without
Corn Law is probably about 40s. the quarter.
Bread is, and will be, about half the price at which
the Corn Law intended it to be in all years when Eng-
lieh harvests were not good.
A great Minister, Sir Robert Peel, repealed the
Corn Law. The agitation of the Anti-Corn Law
League, the Irish famine in 1846, and the help and
votes of the Liberals in Parliament, with the support
of a portion of the Tories, gave him power to repeal
this wicked and cruel law. Some of the Tories are
now proposing to restore it, and again to make the
labourers' bread dearer, so that farmers may he able
to pay rents which they say ale too high unless the
law is put in force to raise the market price of wheat
and the baker's price of bread! The Tory party and
country gentlemen were very angry with Sir Robert
Peel because he would not maintain the Corn Law.
His party deserted him, and drove him from office
and from power, because he preferred the interests of
the nation and the comforts of the labouring classes
to dear bread and high rents for the landowners
When the Ccrn Law was gone other bad things
went with it. The Liberal Government which came
in after Sir Robert Peel destroyed the monopoly in
sugar. Other great changes have been made, chiefly
by Mr. Gladstone, supported always by the Liberals.
The new voters who are not young will remember the
price of bread in former days; they will know that
sugar is about one-third of the price it once was, and
that they now can buy three pounds for the price they
formerly paid for one pound; and they know that tea
costs less now than the tax alone which was imposed
upon it before the Free-traders began the reform in
our tariff and the repeal of duties on imports from
foreign countries. And during these years there has
been a general and large rise in the wages of working-
men and labourers in all parts of the country. Farm
labourers' wages have risen one-half or more, and in
some counties they have nearly doubled since the
days of Protection and the Corn Law.
But the Liberal party has done more than give the
mass of our people a real representation and a real
power in Parliament. It has done more than give
them freedom for their industry. It has given them
the means to umierstand what Parliament is doing,
and what it ought to do, for it has given them the vast
advantage of a free press, and to their children the
not less vast advantage of cheap and good schools.
Now almost every labourer can have an admirable
newspaper weekly for a penny, or every day one some-
what smaller in size, but not less admirable in quality,
for a halfpenny. Newspapers, not so large and not so
good as these, cost 7d. when the Liberal party began
to deal with this question. The taxes on paper and
on the printed newspaper strangled the press, and the
tax on advertisements was as great when a gardener
sought a situation and employment as when a rich
man advertised a mansion or an estate.

All this is gone—these scandals and cruelties of the
past are gone. The Liberals spoke and worked, the
Tory Opposition step by step was vanquished, and one
after another these great evils vanished, and no longer
disgrace English legislation.
And what of the cheap and good schools? The
child of the labourer may gain an education that will
give him as good a prospect, as regards labour and
trade, as the child of a richer man has. He will grow
up with a sense of self-respect; he will see before him
path along which he may find independenc3 and
comfort. The present gain of this is great; the future
gain is beyond all we can estimate.
. And what of the future? What will household
suffrage in counties and the new arrangement of seats
do for the new voters, and especially for the farm
labourers? If the new voters know their interests,
and if the Liberals are returned in great power to the
new Parliament, two things will have a chance of being
done. The land laws will be reformed, and much of
them reformed out of existence. In past times and
now our land laws have been framed to protect the
great estates of great families. Great estates lead to
great farms, and great farms lead to the result that it
is almost impossible for farm labourers to become
farmers, and thus the path of the intelligent and
Lard-working labourer to an improved position and
condition for himself and his family is barred and
blocked. The holding of great estates under entails
and settlements, and often heavily mortgaged and
buraened, makes it impossible for them to be well
cultivated, and thus the demand for labour is lessened,
and a better rate of wages is prevented. The whole
system of land laws must be broken down, and the
new and great reform will do little if it does not get
rid, as far as possible, of the mischiefs of the past.
The Game Laws, too, will come under revision.
Parliament may accept the principle that the
creatures which live on and from the land are the
property, if there be any property in them, of the
t:arraer at whose cost and by whose labour the farm
ie cultivated. When this principle is admitted in our
law, then what is called "preservation of game "may
cease; murderous conflicts on game preserves may be
no longer known, and labourers may not have before
them an almost constant and irresistible temptation
to become poachers, and breakers of the law. If the
new voters will help the Literal party, the Liberal
landowners, the Liberal farmers, the Liberal shop-
keepers and tradesmen, in the towns and villages of
the counties and county divisions, we may see much
good done by a new Parliament.
If what I have written shall give information or
useful counsel, I shall be glad. I have for more than
40 years endeavoured to press forward in the country
lad in Parliament the changes to which I have
referred. They have all, so far as they have been
effected, in my view, been of great service to the
country. The period of reform' is not yet ended, it
will rest, in no small degree, on the good sense of the
new constituency, combined with what is intelligent
and just in the old b xly of electors, whether, as on
two past occasions, in 1832 and 1867, a large measure
of electoral reform shall be followed by great measures
of improvement in the legislation of our country.
Perhaps I have written at too great length in reply to
your letter—if so you will forgive me. The subject is
too grave and too great to be treated in a paragraph.
—I am, very truly yours, JouN
T. S. Townsend, Esq., &c., &c.