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

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 30, 1858

Reformers ; it will render a feeling which is now
not bitter both bitter and malignant, and within
twelve months after the bill has passed and the
cheat is discovered we shall be entered in all
probability upon another agitation, but an agitation
of a very different character from any we have
yet seen. Let us have a real bill, a good bil:,
or no bill at all. The question at this moment is
in the hands of the enemy. We stand the risk of having
brought before us what I will describe as " a country
gentleman's Reform Bill." The country gentlemen have
not been notorious fur their sympathies in favour of
reform. We have always been carrying on for the last
thirty years and more a steady and perpetual war against
the predominance and the power of the country gentlemen
in Parliament. If we look at their past policy we shall
not have much confidence in their proposed measure.
Their wars, their debts, their taxes, placed upon the
bulk of the people, their stout opposition to the Reform
Bill of 1832,—a1l this leads us greatly to suspect them ;
and T confess for my own part I wish the question of
reform were in the hands of Reformers—in the hands of
men of whose sympathies with respect to it we could not
have, from their past lives, the shadow of a doubt. I have
great fears that until you have a Ministry in which there
are men who are really in favour of reform, and of an
honest reform, you are not likely to get any such measure
as the most moderate among us ought to be in the least
satisfied with. I must warn you against one phrase which
I find our friends—we cannot now call any of them our
opponents—the bewildered Reformers are beginning to
use. They say we must not on any account " Arne.
ricanize " our institutions. Now, I know only one insti-
tution in America of which the Americans need to be
very greatly ashamed—and that institution was established
under the Monarchy, although, unfortunately, it has lived
and flourished under the Republic. They tell us that in
America numbers overwhelm property and education.
Well, but numbers have not overwhelmed property and
education in England; and yet look at legislation in Eng-
land. Look at our wars, look at our debt, look at our
taxes, look at this great fact—that every improvement of
the last forty years has been an improvement which num-
bers, and numbers only, have wrested from the property,
and what they all the education of the country. Our
education is fairly represented by our Universities, but
say now, as I have said before, that if the Legislature of
England, if the Parliament of England, had been guided
for thirty years past according to the counsels of the re-
presentatives of the Universities, England instead of being
a country of law and of order would have been long before
this a country of anarchy and of revolution. America is a
strange bugbear. There are thirty-two at least, it not
thirty three, independent and sovereign states in the
United States of America. Now, I ant not one of those
who believe that you cannot be free and happy under a
monarchy such as ours. lam not proposing—l tun the
last person to propose—that the institutions of this country
should be modelled upon the plan of some other country,
because it is the plan of some other country; but I ray
that if we are at liberty to draw science, products for our
manufactures, and literature from ever) country in the
world, why should we not., if we see anything good in
the politics of another country, be equally at liberty to
take a lesson in that respect also? Speaking generally,
in all the sovereign and independent States of America
there is a franchise as wide as that which I have pro-
posed tonight ; there is an exact equal allotment of
members to the electors, and there is throughout most
of the States the protection of the ballot. Yet, in Ame•
rica we find law, order, property secure, and a popula-
tion in the enjoyment of physical comfcrts and abundance,
such as are not known to the great body of the people
in this country, and which never have been known in
any country in any age of the world before. Now,
will any man dare to tell me in the presence of this
audience that the English nation in England is a
worse nation than the English nation in America?
Are we less educated, are we less industrious, are we
less moral, are we less subject to the law, are we less
disposed to submit to all the just requirements of the
Government? If we are so, and if the English nation
in America excels us in all these particulars, does it not
look very likely that the institutions in England are not as
good in the training and rearing of a nation as the insti-
tutions in the United States ? I do not say that, but those
persons who say that the franchise, the distribution, and
the ballot, which operate so well in America would be
perilous in England, do what I will not do—they libel the
people of this country, and they libel our institutions.