The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-01-29 00:00:00

MR. BRIGHT AT BIRMINGHLM.

Mr. John Bright, Mr. Dixon, and Mr. P. H.
Muntz, the members for Birmingham, addressed a
great meeting of their constituents in the Town Hall
last Saturday evening. Mr. Bright spoke for one hour
and ten minutes, a large portion of his address being
devoted to a criticism of Lord Derby's recent speech to
the working men of Edinburgh. The following is an
extract therefrom
You probably recollect that a very eminent member of the
Government—no less a person than the Foreign Minister—
spent a few days lately in the famous city of Edinburgh, in
which city he spoke three speeches : one of them to the
students of the University, to which I need not further
advert; another of them to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh
and his friends when they presented to him the freedom of
the city, which I thought sensible and highly judicious; but
the speech to which I wish particularly to advert is the one
he addressed to a large meeting, said to be composed of 3,000
persons who were styled Conservative working men of the
city of Edinburgh. Now, whether there were or were not
3,000 present at that meeting I do not know; but I doubt
extremely that they were 3,000 Conservative working men
(a laugh) for this I know—that when a General Elec-
tion is held the Conservative working men in Edinburgh
don't appear to be at home. (Cheers and a laugh.) There
are very few of you who have had the opportunity of hearing
a Conservative statesman make a speech to Conservative
working men. If you had you would have found the extreme
difficulty he was in. Ile was obliged to deny or to forget
history, and his speech for the most part, instead of inform-
ing his audience, appeared generally as it intended to mis-
lead them. (Cheers and interruption.) lam afraid you are
too closely packed to be comfortable. It makes me uncom-
fortable even to see it ; but I will ask you to be as patient
and quiet as you can, in rder that you may hear the few
remarks I have to address to you. (Cheers.) I was telling
you of the speech of Lord Derby to "the Conservative
working men of Edinburgh." If you read it, as I hope you
did, you will find that he made this observation: he said,
"When people ask me why should a working man not be a
Conservative, I answer, Why should he not?" Then he
went on to make this extraordinary remark. He said,
"Popular politicians "—I don't know to whom he refers;
I suppose he did not refer to his own colleagues (a laugh) :
they would not be of the "popular politician" kind
(laughter)—" Popular politicians never gave any man better
wages or a better house to live in. They may, indeed, pro-
fess to remove grievances of a kind such as law can deal
with, but where are those grievances with us?" Well,
from this it is obvious he intended to say that, so far as
the working classes are concerned, one Party is just as good
as another, and you may be just as happy and as contented
with Conservative as with Liberal legislation and administr a
Um. He went on to say that the working man at present
has no taxes to pay—(laughter)—unless on the articles of
tea, tobacco, and intoxicating drinks. But he did not tell
you that thirty-five years ago there were more than 1,200
articles on which taxes were levied, and that it was only
after three years of persistent agitation of the Anti-Corn
Law League that they began to remove those taxes, and
that when Sir Robert Peel adopted the policy of reforming
the tariff every step which he made lost him a portion of
the confidence of the great Party of which he was then
the leader and the Minister—(cheers)—and when he came
to the greatest of all the articles—namely, the articles of corn
and your daily bread—they quarrelled with him bitterly and
Vindictively, and drove him from power, and there was no
Obloquy and no contempt which they did not heap upon his
character and statesmanship. (Cheers) Well, Lord Derby
Says again, "Howls the working man situated with regard
to the distribution of political power?" He says he is master
of the situation. His class can, if it choose, outvote all
other classes put together. Having under the British Con-
stitution, as it exists, supreme pelitical power in their hands,
why on earth should working men be otherwise than Con-
servative when that Constitution is concerned? Well, but
in private life character is supposed to go for something.
(Cheers.) If a man chooses a wife, or if a woman is deliberat-
ing whether she should accept such a man as her husband,
or if you engage a servant, or an agent, or a trustee, surely
character goes for something. I have known it go so far—
at any rate, if I am not mistaken in my reading of the
police: reports, it makes all the difference between six
months' imprisonment and seven years' penal servitude.
("Hear," and a laugh.) Now, consider all that has been
done in these measures—the 1,200 articles of the tariff that
have been swept away—the change that has been made in
the value and importation of corn. Consider that one ques-
tion. Look at the harvest we have had this year, which, a
very extensive miller told me the other day, was the worst
we have had for 40 years; he had not, he said, ground a
single quarter of English wheat since harvest. Why, if
the policy of these men had remained our policy now,
the food of half the population would have been some-
where beyond the seas, and absolutely inaccessible to the
people of Englatid. (Cheers.) It is the same with sugar.
Who abolished the monopoly of sugar? Who abolished the
monopoly in ships? Who abolished the monopoly in news-
papers? Now you get one of your admirable papers for a
penny every day, whereas when the Liberal Party took that
question in hand there was on every newspaper a stamp of
4d. Volt did not get half so good a paper for 7d. as you get
now for a penny, by which you know every morning what is
going on all over the world. (Cheers.) Take the question of
the Commercial Treaty with France, which has done so
much for commerce between these two countries (cheers),
which has made us much more friendly and peaceable than
we ever were before, and which has been the forerunner and
the cause of many other Commercial Treaties between
European countries. (Cheers.) That Commercial Treaty
was opposed by almost the whole Tory Party, led on with
his utmost force by the present' Prime Minister of the
Party. (Cheers.) But go to the qtiestion of political power
of which Lord Derby has spoken. He says that you have
political power in your hands, and that you can outvote all
other classes. Well, that is not true (a laugh) ; but, if it were
true, you have not to thank Lord Derby for it. (Cheers.) When
toe Bill of 1866 was introduced by Lord Russell and Mr.
Gladstone, though it only proposed to enfranchise down to £7
householders, yet Lord Derby and his friends opposed it
to the very utmost. Lord Derby himself either moved
or seconded an amendment intended to destroy the Bill'
and the whole Party voted for the amendment which did
ultimately destroy the Bill and the Government. They
destroyed the Bill because they said it was not safe to go
down to a £7 franchise—it would admit too many of the
working classes, would give them too much power; and then
the Government having resigned, this reactionary and ob-
structive Party coming into power, for no other object that I
can see but the hope of being six months longer in power,
and taking the chance of what might turn up in the mean-
time, they agreed to the very measure they had condemned
as destructive of the Constitution of the country. (Cheers)
But it is a fact worth observing that with regard to the
question of the franchise, at the present moment, you ob-
serve, the household franchise extends only to the boroughs,
It does not extend to the counties. If there are 13,000,000
living in boroughs, there are 16,500,000 that live in the
counties, and in the counties working men have no votes at
all. (Cheers.; The landowners, of course, have votes and ,
great power. Farmers if they are rated at more than £.12
a year also have votes, and all other persons who are rated
as high as £l2 a year. But I suppose there are, probably,
one hundred boroughs in the United Kingdom of nearly
W,OOO inhabitants having no franchise lower than a £l2
rating, and that is equal to about £l6 of rental: so that
while in your town, and in many others, every man who
has a house and is rated has a vote, in other parts of the
country not within the limits of boroughs he must be rated
at £l2, paying a rental of £l5 or £l6, before he can have
a vote for the county. (Cheers ) Now, it is quite clear
that this statement of Lord Derby is not to be received wfth-
out great exception. (Cheers.) If you take the borough
numbers throughout the kingdom, you will find there was a
majority of Liberals of nearly 50 at the last election (cheers) ;
but in the counties the Conservative majority was above 100.
It was in the constituencies where all the working people
are excluded that the Conservative majority was returned—
not in the boroughs, where the working people have votes.
(Cheers.) Now, il;) the speech which I am criticising Lord
Derby went on to another question—he was anxious, ap-
parently, to find out it there was anything in the country that
would justify a working man in being a Liberal rather than a
Conservative ; and he made this observation—he said, "Great '
stress has been laid by a certain class of politicians on the
supposed fact that only a rich man has the °hence of
becoming an owner of the soil, and that is held up as one of
the wrongs which ought to be redressed before any man
should call himself a Conservative. Ile says this is a great
exaggeration. Ile says it has been asserted over and over
again, and even Mr. Mill and Mr. Bright had endorsed the
assertion, that the whole soil of the country is divided
among 30,000 proprietors. He says he was instrumental
in obtaining a return, which I believe is complete as
regards Scotland, but not as regards England, from
which he thinks it will be found that, one way or
another, the
30,00
hepeor: but
petormmao.
nent.wlyeliln, tewreestaeldl
kinootwhetshoaitl
Rill b
of the soil (a laugh):
seovmereybwoadyy
oart
athoeothenedr, oinf will be permanently, in
nill
and it would have been almost as reasonable for Lord
Dtgrhaotunevderyof
theer by
universal
e defended
possession
oofu
land,our land laws
d f
rom
t heen f atchte
one must expect to have a grave (a laugh), as to say that
there is at present that kind of possessien of land by the
people which was indicated by the statement he made.
Then he says,' Why should we stop here? What is there
in the nature of our law to prevent there being far more
proprietors than there are? He says no one who reads the
advertisements in the newspapers can doubt that there is land
enough for sale to meet every possible want. Why, if there
had been no corn earning into the country, bad as the harvest
has been this year, there would still have been corn to be
bought by those who had the money and could pay the
price. There is a story of, I think, a French Princess who
was very much astonished to hear, when there was some
revolutionary or riotous movement in Paris, that the
people were clamouring for bread. She said, "Why don't
they buy cakes ?" (A laugh.) She saw plenty of cake in the
confectioners' shops. (Laughter.) Lord Derby says. if
there Is a desire to purchase land, why not form companies
to buy properties and divide them? Then he concludes,
" There is no obstacle in our law to make its gratification
impossible or difficult." Now, let me ask your attention to
this point for a few moments. Lord Derby is a man very
sedbweeinth
minadnuystprirox.diellese. is I waemll
oinoftormsdreed.whelit
superior to many of his order and his Party. (Cheers.) He
hnasot terolvvuelel
eheirs
he has strong convictions (cheers and a laugh), but I know
that on many questions he has held liberal
opinions (cheers),
and I confess I am astonished that he should haveidared to
make statement& with regard to the land such as he has
made with the knowledge he ought to possess even to the
so-called 3,000 Conservative working men in the city of
Edinburgh, and that he should have made such a statement
In that city and country, where the monopoly of land is the
closest probably of any part of the United Kingdom.
(Hear, hear.) Why, from the very return he has obtained
it turns out that 5,000,000 acres out of less than
19,000,000, or considerably more than one quarter'
of the whole of Scotland, are in the possession of twenty-
one persons; ghat 8,000,000 acres, or not far short of one-
half of Scotland, are in the possession of 49 persons; that
14,660,000 acres, or more than three-fourths of all Scotland,
are in the possession of 583 persons' and if you take all
the square miles of all the estates, all the farms, all the
acres on the-surface of Scotland, 17 out of 19 are in the
I possession of 2,583 persons. His return shows that there