The Express.
London, England, 1866-09-25 00:00:00

What will be the second ? The second will be that

the working men of England, finding themselves in a large
majority of the whole of the constituency, will awake to •
full sense of their power. Theywill say, "We can do better
&Yourselves. Do not let as any longer be cajoled at elections
—let us set up shop for ourselves; we have objects to awry
as well as our neighbours, and let us unite to eery those
objects ; we have the machinery, we have our
Vadat unions ; we have our leaders all ready."
There were loud opposition cheers to that. (Laughter.)
Re goes on, "We have the power of combining, as we
have shown over and over again, and we have a prise to
fight for ; we will bring it to bear with tenfold more forte
than ever before." Perhaps the hint that you have your
h•des unions, and your machinery, and your leaders—a
hint which I offered to you some years ago, may have
some effect coming from such lips. (Laughter.) But you

see the whole tenor of these observations ; and there are
men to whom I should attribute no blame for uttering
them, or for holding them ; but the whale tenor of these
observations is to show that a great body of the working
classes are in a degraded position. I find that
the bill only proposed, according to Mr. Gladstone's
. .

estimate (which in my opinion w an ensue-

rated estimate) to admit 200,000 of the working
clause to the franchise, and these observations rest upon

the-opinion that, when the great body of the working
classes are in that condition of ignorance and degradation,
and also of hostility to the existing institutions of the
country, it would not be safe to admit to the franchise
even 200,000 out of the 5,000,000 who are now excluded.
Now, I said in Birmingham, and I say here, that in every
workshop, in every room, in every factory, in every club-
house of every trade, there ought to be a card hung up
with these remarks, or rather slanders, upon the working
men, there suspended. (Cheers.) If these slanders be
true, hang the card up there that you may see in that
mirror what you are, and reform yourselves. (Cheers.) If
the charge be false, se I hold it to be, then read
whet it is that is said of you by those who are
hostile to your political rights ; then draw your ranks
closer together, and make a more resolute and determined
fight to change the state of things in this country.
(Cheers.) Some of the newspapers have said, 'Woe my
speech at Birmingham, that it is very unfair to try and
paste this upon the back of the tory party. Why did they
cheer it? (Hear, bear.) Why have their newspapers
said, " Here is a great man come down, as it were from
the clouds, to tell us all about the constitution of the
country !" I say that the doctrines of Mr. Lowe, uttered
in that speech, are in the main the doctrines upon
which the, tory party have acted for generations ab-
solutely ; although there are not many men in the
house probably of that party who would dare to say what
he said, and I fancy there is hardly one of them who
could say it so welL Now I want to ask you a question.
I don't know how many thousand people there are here
to-night, and I don't know how many people have been
attending your great demonstration in Manchester ; buttl
put the question to them through the gentlemen below
me, to whom we give so much trouble, and to whom we
are so greatly indebted—l put this question to them. If
this argument of ignorance and drunkenness be true, what
does it show ? There is a newspaper in London, the
Morning Herald, which the other day, I am told, wrote
some hints for me for my speech on this
occasion. The Morning Herald is a paper which pro-
fesses to be in some sort the organ of the tory party,
but I have had it from the best authorities that the leathan
of that party very rarely read it. (Laughter.) The
Morning Herald pointed to a fact which I stated with
great amplitude at a meeting of Sunday school-
teachers in Rochdale, I think on Good Friday last, that a
very large portion of the children of the working clauses in
Manchester, a poor and deplorable class, was growing up
without any school provision made for them. The Morning
Herold states also that in Manchester there is a great deal
of drunkenness, although I believe all the facts show that
there is less drunkenness in Manchester, probably, than in
any other town of equal magnitude in this kingdom.
(Cheers.) I will asssume the ignorance for a moment,
I will assume the drunkenness, and I will assume the
degradation to be true; what, then, shall I say of the
government which has permitted it? (Cheers.) What is
that government' What is that party which is supreme
in this country ? It holds all the land, or nearly so ; it
bolds the revenues of the richest church that the world
has ever seen ; it has both houses of parliament to do its
bidding ; it has two ancient and noble universities ; in
fact it has everything of power in this country, and yet.
according to the showing of this writer, the people are
ignorant, and drunken, and degraded. It must be to an
extent far more than that of almost any other corm.
try, because in almost every other constitutional country
the franchise is more widely extended than it is in this
and that without the slightest danger to dynasty or to
order. (Cheers.) Why is it, I ask you now, that the
Englishmen in England are not so well educated as the
Englishmen in New England? In the New England States
of North America there have been seven generations of
men who mine originally from this country, who have
been thoroughly and fully instructed, and now in every
free State, in every State that was free before the late
war, there is a wide suffrage, schools are universal, and
all the people have the fullest opportunity of being
thoroughly instructed for the purposes of life. (Cheers.)
Why in this country whet are we doing? (Avoice—" Came-
keeping," and laughter.) No, we are doing something
besides that. The people who have matter in their
hands, and who could settle it, are discussing questions
of catechisms, the thirty-nine articles, end what they call
conscience clauses. (Laughter.) They are all engaged in
worrying some dry bones of this kind, while the great
body of people, and especially the poorest of the people,
are left wholly unprovided for. (Cheers.) I venture to
say it—l would stake everything I have in the world upon
it—that if the platform of the National Reform League, or
any platform which gave us a substantial or real repre-
sentation of the whole people, were embodied in an act of
parliament there would not pass over three sessions of par-
liament, before there would be a full provision for the
thorough instruction of every working man's child in the
kingdom. (Cheers.) But there was another argument that
was very often used in the House of Commons, which is
even more extraordinary, coming from the quarter from
whence we heard it, and it was this—that the country is
so prosperous, proving that it is so well governed, that
really there is not only no occasion for anything more, but
nobody has any right to ask for anything more. It was one
of the arguments, I believe, of the gentleman from whom
I have quoted, that we have a right, of course, to be well
governed, but that the right to govern us exists and rest'
much higherup. (Laughter and cheese.) Now, we are as am-
bled here in a building which recalls saved manymemories,
if one had but the time, and I had the voice to dwell on
them. But may I ask you why it Is that we are prospe-
rous ? You recollect, many of you that are bare, 25 years
ago, in the year 1841, this country was subject
to desolation and to famine ; and it is only since
1846, since the abolition of the corn laws, since the general
°hangs to a tree-trade policy, that there has been conti-
nually growing up that prosperity which is now brought
against no and used as an argument why there should be
no further reform in parliament. (Cheers.) Suppose you
had the corn lima now, with the August we -have h►d and
the September we are having ; gold would be going a* of
the country, the rate of interest would be rising, the
wages of the people would be falling ; the wages they'
receive would be absorbed in the purchase of dearer food,
and generally over the country there would come a state
of things which would give the greatest them to the