The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-08-13 00:00:00

great industry and energy, of greater devotion to the
public service; and in saying this I do not desire to
make any exception as to any qu- rter of the House.
Of course, I am bound to give the palm to our own
friends and our own supporters, who have, I must say,
throughout this trying Session, shown the most Atra-
ordinary patience, forbearance, moderation, and self-
sacrifice. (Cheers.) But although I give them the
palm, I do not make any exception in regard to any
quarter of the House. (Hear, hear.) Well, then, to
what conclusion are we to come? Are we to suppose,
are we to believe, that because the House of Commons
composed of such excellent materials, has failed
adequately to do the work which it was sent to
do, Parliamentary institutions as now consti-
tuted are no longer competent to meet the .wants
and requirements of the county? I ean fh,r- ?from
forming any such conclusion. (Cheers.) I believe
that in every engine the first essential is to have
adequate power and good m sterials, but that
however adequate your power or however excellent
your materials, the engine cannot be an efficient
one unless it has received from the aid of the
mechanic all that nice adjustment of its parts and
movements which is necessary for its harmonious
working. (Cheers.) And so it is in the. case of this
State legislative machine. I believe that we have all
the power behind us in the expressed will and voice of
the people that is required for efficiency. (Hear,
hear.) I have said that we have within our walls the
best materials that can be required; and all that is
needed is the application of the mechanic's art in order
to put into gear and render more harmonious the
working of some parts of our legislative machine,
which are no longer competent for the work they have
to do. (Cheers.) We can have no better wish for the
House of Commons and no better wish for the country
than that during the recess, which I hope we may
shortly be permitted to enjoy, we may have the
leisure, and I trust the ability to devise these reforms
which are necessary to restore the House of Commons
to its ancient efficiency. (Loud cheers.)
Mr. Bright, yielding to loud and persistent calls for
a supplementary speech from him, said think, my
Lord Mayor, I have some right to complain of the
state of disorganization, I will not say of the City, but
of that portion of your subjects who are assembled
here to-night. (Laughter.) It was perfectly well
known that you had an arrangement upon a sheet of
paper according to which you asked certain members
of the party to address the company. I had expected
not to be one of the speakers, and the pleasure of
being permitted to enjoy that tranquil obscurity in
which persons have the advantage of listening
and the privilege of remaining silent was one to
which I thought on this occasion I might aspire.
(Cheers and laughter.) But I observe that the
members of the Government wise, have already
spoken—the Prime Minister, Lord -Hartington, and
Lord Kimberley—have come hot from the Houses of
Parliament which they represent. (Cheers and
laughter.) They remind me of an anecdote which my
dear friend the late Mr. Cobden once narrated to me.
He told me that at the end of a Session a member of
the House who had a yacht, and who spent the
autumn in the Mediterranean invited him to go
with him, saying that he would invite three or four
other members of the House, and that they would all
have a nice time of it. Mr. Cobden replied that he
had seen so much of hon. members during the Session
that he did not wish to see another for other six
months to come. (Laughter.) However, I have also
come in some degree hot from one of the Houses of
Parliament; and I feel disposed, with your permis-
sion, to make a few observations as to the length of
the Session, the arduous nature of our • work,
and the generally unproductive way in which
much of our time has been expended. In fact, we
begin to think that the House of which we are
members—which is a very respectable, and is con-
sidered historically to be a very honourable body—is,
after all, a little too old, and wants repairs of an ex-
tensive character. (Cheers and laughter.) We know
that in times past the House of Commons had little
to•do except to engage in faction fights. (A laugh.)
In those days—the days to 'which the Prime Minister
has referred—when our great Colonial Empire did not
exist, the House had much less to do than it has now.
The United Kingdom was much less populous, its
trade was much less, or colonies, for the most part
did not then exist as such; and not very long ago even
our Indian Empire did not exist under the authority
of the British Crown. At that time the House itself
was composed of not quite 500 members, and its posi-
tion was very curious. I can give you an anecdote
about that which may be a little amusing. A good
many years ago now, Lord Palmerston made an extra-
ordinary speech in the Honse of Commons when a
vote of censure had been passed against him by the
House of Lords in connexion with one of those mistakes
—one of the good many mistakes—which he made in his
foreign policy. He spoke for four hours and 40 minutes.
Somebody said—l think it was Mr. Gladstone—that he
spoke from the end of one day to the dawn of the next.
The day after that great speech I went to Mr. Lee,
then a clerk at the table of the House, and d very old
man, and I said to him—" How do you judge of that
speech of Lord Palmerston's as compared with the
speeches of men whom we have been taught to believe
were the giants of the past generation?" Mr. Lee
said, "I think not one of them ever made a speech
equal to that," and after a pause he added, But
in those days there were only half a dozen men in
the House who could make a good speech, and there
were not more than a dozen or two who could under-
stand them when they did so." (Laughter.) I will
not say whether Mr. Lee was accurate or very
generous in his estimate of our forefathers (laughter),
but I mention this anecdote to you as indicating
what the business of Parliament was then as com-
pared with what it is now. It was then almost
more like the business of a vestry than like that of a
Parliament. Now we have 650 members in the House.
I believe that if the present front benches were to
appear no more after this Session, you would next Ses-
sion have front benches that would be pretty nearly
equal to those we have now, and that in the course of
two or three Sessions you would have business carried
on with a capacity which would satisfy the country.
There is far snore ability in the House of Commons
than there was in those ancient days. Still there
remain there certain vices which belong to the human
race. One of them is the failing which I suppose all of
us are a little touched with—namely, vanity. (A
laugh.) Another failing is that af obstinacy, and
another is one of whi:-.1 I would speak with hesita-
tion and would call spite. (Hear, hear.) There
are likewise the inducements of party fights,
which bring men into conflict and, necessarily,
delay the business of the House. It is almost impos-
sible—in fact, it is not possible—that the tremendous
amount of business which the Empire brings before
the House con be disposed of Session after Session
with anything like the rapidity and completeness
which the country would expect. (Hear, hear.)
I have said that the machine is respectable, but it
wants mending, and I do not believe that mere oiling
of it will suffice, (A laugh.) I suspect there will have
to be considerable changes made by which Bills will
not have to go through so many stages; that the
debates will by some means have to be shortened; that
when men have said enough, or as much as the Mouse
wishes to hear, there should be some mode of requesting
them to be silent (a laugh) ; but, above all, it seems to
me necessary that the House, if possible, should be
composed of men of a gentlemanly spirit. (Cheers.) I
do not mean by that expression men of rank, of wealth,
or of University education. There are men in the
House at this moment who have been working-men,
who represent working-men, and who are as much
gentlemen in their conduct and in the part which these
take in its deliberations as the highest, the best, and
most experienced persons in that assembly. (Hear,
hear.) But if there be men in the House who have no
respect for it, who think obstruction a pleasure, who
look even upon the degradation of the House as a
pleasing object of. contemplation; if there be what
you may term a hostile element in Parliament, then
you may nave the freedom of Parliamentary debate
and Parliamentary arrangements turned into a weapon
by which Parliament itself may be w:unded and
almost destroyed. (Cheers.) I think there can be no
doubt that there is a general feeing in the House of
Commons, and believe also throughout the country,
that the time has come when it will be necessary for
some party, or for all parties who have any regard
for Parliament and for the Empire, to take steps to
make it more possible to work the Parliamentary
machinery, and to save Parliament from further
humiliation and discredit in the eyes of millions of our
people. (Cheers.) As to the one greatquestion which we
have been engaged upon this session, I need not say how
great are the hopes, and yet to some extent how great
are the fears with regard to it. But I believe it is not
possible for legisiation to do a more complete act of
justice to the tenant-farmers of Ireland than the Go-
vernment has intended and Parliament has nearly
accomplished in the Bill which is now almost ready to
receive the Royal assent. I have been for the last
thirty years asking Parliament and the country to
make certain changes with regard to the tenure of
land in Ireland. I have paid great attention
to the subject: I have felt upon it about as
strongly as I have ever felt upon any political
question, and I am free to say that I believe
that this measure is as great and as noble a mea-
sure on that question as it would be possible
for the English Parliament to pass ; that it is one '
which it is impossible; when it becomes law, that the
Irish people should not discover to he a great measure
of satisfaction and redemption for them, unless they
are unable to understand a policy intended directly
for their benefit. (Cheers.) I have said that there
are fears. I have fears. After the state of things
through which the Irish people have gone in so many
successive periods, it is not, perhaps, quite certain
that all remedial measures are not too late. I will not
express a strong fear that such is the case; on the con-
trary, I will express a strong hope that such is not the
case. It may be that some would say that—
" True reconcilement user can grow

Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep,"
But, as generation after generation passes, governed
by a monarchy kindly, liberal, beneficent like ours,
legislated for by a Parliament anxious to do justice to
all the people unc4er its sway, I will not doubt,
I will believe, that whatever may be the passion,
whatever the frenzy in the minds of the Trial people,
whatever the gloom that now rests on that country,
all this may pass away, and that the time may come,
and c me soon, when in Ireland it shall be felt as
much 48 it is felt in England that, with all our faults,
our Government does intend to do rightly by the Irish
people. (Cheers.) Therefore, looking on the Session
now drawing to a close, terrible as has been the work,
long as have been the hours and the nights of its toil,
often as we have been shocked by conduct in the House
that has been distasteful and distracting to us, never-
theless, I live in the hope that meb will look back to
the Session of 1881, and will say that if we had the
greatest of statesmen to guide our affltii,s, in that year
was passed the greatezt of measures in order to bring
about tranquillity, peace,
.and union in the greatest
empire on which the sun shines. (Loud cheers.)

[Among the many interesting objects displayed at
the Guildhall for the entertainment of the guests, the
chandelier on the staircase was, perhaps, the most
noteworthy. This was illuminated with the contents
of a box of electricity sent down to the Guildhall only
the previous morning from Kensington. Instead of
ope large light, as is usual with this new illuminating
agency, a multiplicity of little jets served the purpose.
These were remarkably steady, and it was noticed that
the light was softer and lesi glaring than generally is
the case with electricity.]