Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-02-02 00:00:00

Lords said you shall not; we, the House of Lords, hold
the key of that House, and if you persist, as we can
keep the doors either shut or open, we will give the key
another turn and keep him out of the house, and you
have no means of redress. (Cheers.) Now what we
mean to say to the House of Lords was this—we will
let you alone in your House, but you must let us
alone in our house. (Cheers.) That, sir, is what
I believe Mr. Bright means. "What we want is to legis-
late in our own House, without let or hindrance.
But seeing that the power first comes from the people,
we choose to say to them that we will let them alone in
their own house if they will let us alone in ours.
(Cheers.) But, sir, with the present representatives of
the people—with the present distribution of seats, the
representatives of the landed population in the upper
House, are able to override the people and extinguish
their voices, and prevent any bill of theirs from passing.
(Cheers.) This has been done more than once in the
history of this country, and that too at no
very distant period. When the probate and legacy
duty. was first introduced into the House of Lords, it
was intended that they should be equally levied on all
property. (Cheers.) ;The Lords' that day, however,
said to the Ministry, " that is impossible ; you may tax
the people if you please, but before we can . support the
bill it must be divided into two—it must be made into
two bills—we will pass the one for the tax being put
upon the people, but if you attempt to put the
duty upon us, or on our freehold estates, we will
reject the bill altogether." Ultimately two bills
were brought in—one of them passed, but the other
was rejected, and it was the brother of my esteemed
friend, Mr. Gladstone, who has just addressed
you, who introduced into the lower House the
present measure, which was calculated to do a greater
amount of justice. It was he who first brought it into
the House, and ultimately passed it ; but if you have
Mr. Bright's Reform Bill, you will have' to have an
amended bill, for the present taxation does not correspond
with what it did half a century ago. Mr. Jeffery then
concluded by saying, that he most cordially supported
the bill, and would do all in his power to forward its
. success, and resumed his scat amid great plaudits.
Mr. James Thompson, of Wray, near Lancaster,
seconded the motion, which was put to the meeting and
carried by acclamation.
Mr. Bright rose and was received with enthusiastic
cheering which was long continued. After the noise had
subsided, he said, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen,—l can
corroborate that which was said by our chairman, that
looking back at all, or any of those meetings which were
held under the name of conferences, and called in the
middle of the day during the agitation of the Anti-Corn
Law League, I do not remember any one so nu-
merous. I remember none more entirely united
in opinion and enthusiasm as the influential
meeting which I look upon at this moment.
There are one or two points which have been referred to,
to which I feel constrained to take something like an
objection. It must be understood that, from the first, I
have never puf myself forward with any view of becoming
a great popular or parliamentary leader on this or any
other question. You are aware, I presume, how it was
that I undertook to prepare a bill, to be laid
before parliament, at the conference which was
held in London. Many influential men were there,
who represented many more, as they believed,
who were not present. They thought it would be de-
sirable that parliament should see a reform bill proposed
by an earnest reformer, and they did me the great honour
to ask tile if I would undertake, in conjunction with
others, to prepare such a bill, with a view to its
being laid before parliament. Well, I did not feel at
liberty absolutely to refuse, but I explained
clearly the ground upon which I intended to proceed. I
stated that I should not be expected to produce a bill
framed upon any programme or specifications produced
by any other person, or any Reform Association. I said
I would prepare one which should square with my own
conviction, and I would take the advice of some gentlemen
in whom I had great confidence on questions of this nature.
I did not propose to prepare a bill which would be
practically perfect. We are not landed from a colonisa-
tion ship in a new country about to arrange a constitution
without reference to the past. I have no wish at all to
be severed from the great past of this country ; but I
proposed to take this course : to prepare a bill just such
as in my conscience I believe it to be the duty
now of any minister of the crown really and honestly to
prepare and submit to parliament —not submit it to par-
liament for the sake of having a great field night, and
making great speeches, and taking a vote, and then the
' thine. being laid aside and never heard of again, until
the following session or some subsequent session—
but a measure which should have carried as far as
possible to all the interests .of the country —to
all that exists in the country, whether of fact or of
opinion, and happily, thereby, to combine in its favour
so large amount of public opinion, that it should finally
obtain the acceptance of the most influential of those
statesmen whose influence, of course, must vanish,
when they seat themselves permanently against
the power of public opinion in this country.
While now you will observe that, I said, even at that
time, that anybody who is disposed to cavil may cavil at
the propositions I bring forward. Anybody may cavil at
the Reform Bill of 1832, but it was a great measure,
notwithstanding, and it passed; and anybody who is not
now honestly in favour of reform, or who has any personal
dislike to the prominence I have taken in this question, can
of course, if he likes, find fault with many of the
arguments which I propose, but I do submitt to my
countrymen these measures as well founded, upon broad
and easily understood principles, recognising the great
rights of this great people, stepping not to the right hand
nor to the left to favour particular interests, or
particular localities ; and I offer this measure to
them as measures which, if they shall become law,
are calculated, I believe, to give them fair and equal, and
a complete control over the legislature and government
of the country, which our constitution say we ought to
possess, and which the experience of the past shows to
be necessary for our welfare in the futire. With regard
to the question of parliamentary suffrage, I do not include
everybody ; I scarcely know any suffrage which could ;
but I think I can fairly say that no class, and no man of
any class,. can stand up and say, " Your bill is to exclude
me whilst it is intended to include somebody else." Its
exclusions are of that nature that they affect equally all,
and its invitations to come within the pale of its
constitution are broad and general to all classes
of the people. (Cheers.) Well then, you ob-
serve, there is not very much discussion at
this moment, as to the question of franchise ; the
discussion now turns upon the mode in which I have
endeavoured to arrange the distribution of members
after having disfranchised a certain number of boroughs,
and obtained certain numbers of seats. I am told,
with great pertinacity, in some quarters, although
with great feebleness of proof, that I have been
greatly unfair to what is called the landed iuterest of
the country. Now I suppose it is intended that the dis-
tinction between boroughs and counties is still to be kept
up. I proceed upon au observance of a regard for the
ancient custom and landmarks of our system. If anybody
wishes to sweep them all away, and to arrange something
else, let him try ; but I understand that the great body
of the thinking people of this country prefer something
built up as it were upon the ancient foundation, rather
than that he should clear the ground of stone, of brick
and mortar, and everything which existed heretofore,
and begin a new building upon an entirely new theory.
Now, it is essential that the public should be convinced,
if they are to support the bill, that I have dealt fairly
with the different classes of the country. (Hear, hear.)
Observe that nobody has found fault with the figures.
You have seen the list of the schedules. You know that
somebody has spent days and nights, almost weeks, in
arranging those schedules and those figures. Nobody
has yet undertaken to show that there arc any serious
errors of any kind in them, from which you may well be
assured that great care has been taken in their arrange-
ment before they were submitted for public approval.
But the charge is that we are lifting the great power
which is now on the side of what is called the
landed interest and placing it on the side of the
commercial interest, and that whatever is the present
disproportion and want of balance, if this bill passes
we shall have an equal disproportion and want of balance
with that which now exists, but upon the other side of the
house, or upon the other interests of the country. I
showed, upon a very late occasion, that, so far as the great
towns are concerned, the purly agricultural counties,
accepting. their whole population—although, bear in
mind, their whole population is neither enfranchised now,
nor is it intended wholly to enfranchise them—the purely
agricultural populations have more members in propor-
tion to their numbers than the populations of the great
towns to which I propose to give three, four, or six
members each—that if there are any counties not suffi-
ciently represented they are those which have great
manufacturing and mining populations, which are
obviously insufficiently dealt with, and have
far too few members—such counties as Lan-
cashire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, Middlesex,
and Surrey. (Hear, hear.) But it is very difficult to
get men to look at questions with anything like fairness.
Some one sent me, yesterday, an extract from a paper of
large circulation, published in the town of Liverpool.
That paper goes upon this simple statement : If the
population of the counties is so much, and I propose to
leave to them so many members ; if the population of
the boroughs is so much less than that of the counties,
and I propose to leave to them so many members, much
more than to the counties, then I would be treating the
things counties
ws injustice.grossly
unjust,B t w
alicact irsd
itohge st toa t
teh
ao
tf