Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-01-19 00:00:00

THE NORTHERN TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19, 185

lse specially, but that they represented all the interests
of the country, and that they sat by ancient right which
nobody had power to call into question. I don't doubt
it in the least. They do sit by ancient right, by law,
and by the consent of the people ; and I am not proposing
to disturb them. (Hear, hear.) I have an extract from
a remarkable act —an act of two parliaments, I think---
which will tell us whether the Peers represent anybody
or not. It is from the Act of Union, and the 4th article
of that act :

"That four lords spiritual of Ireland, by rotation of
sessions, and twenty-eight lords temporal of Ireland,
elected for life by the peers of Ireland, shall be the
number to sit and vote on the part of Ireland in the
House of Lords of the Parliament of the United King-
, dom ; and that one hundred commoners'sbe the number
to sit and vote on the part of Ireland in the House of
Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom."
Scotland sends sixteen peers to Parliament, elected by
the Scottish peers, and elected, too, as members
of the 'House of Commons, ,are elected, for one
Parliament only. You have in the House of Lords
thirty bishops and archbishops, called up by the
fiat of the Crown: Do they represent anybody ?
Ask the Independents, the Baptists, the Methodists, do
they represent any of them ? No, they represent the
members of the clergy and the interests of the Established
Church—(hear, hear) ; —and they have just about, and no
more, the same connection with representing the
interests, I will not say of dissenting bodies let us
get rid of that word—(hear; hear) - but the interests
of the free- churches of the United Kingdom, as the
peers have; or their friends pretend they have, .vith
representing the general interests of the country
and of trade as much as land. (Applause.) The peers
have another great advantage as representing the land.
They do not sit with us in the House of Commons.
• I was almost going to say I wished they did. (Langh-
: ter.) They would not then get home to dinner every
evening at seven o'clock; and the course of debate- would
not always run so smoothly as it does in their serene
atmospheres. They sit in a house by themselves:; and
what is the result ? Representing one great interest and
one only, they have infinite power in defence of the rights,
or privileges, or monopolies of that interest They have
ten times more power than they would have if they sat
with us ; for you cannot pass the smallest law without
their having, by the constitution, as absolute a veto as
the House of Common's itself. (Hear, hear:) Whenever
the• counties claim —and they have not yet claimed,
for I have seen no great meeting of farmers—
' (laughter)—or of small freeholders, and I do not
believe the farmers consider it any advantage, as things
have gone hitherto, to have frequent elections or
many members to return—but whenever the counties
shall claim and obtain a proportion of members of the
House of Commons in accordance with their population,
then the time will come when the towns. will ask why the
counties should be the sole constituents for the members
of the House of Lords. (Hear, hear, and applause.)
You have had two gentlemen on this platform to-night,
who moved and seconded the resolution which you have
been so good as to pass, welcoming me here, and if the
House of Lords is to be representative of all the great
interests of the country, not of the land exclusively, you
would find there, not barons, and marquises and dukes,
but men like them, princes of manufactures and of indus-
try. Ido not wish to open this question. I am so far
Conservative as to be willing to retain the institutions
which I find in my time, so long as they can be made to
work without obvious and serious damage to the interests
of the country. (Hear hear, and applause.) Let us go
on with the House of Lords, by all means ; but let us have
a real representation in the House of Commons. (Hear,
hear.) And when we get that, the Lord's will wake- up, rub
their eyes, and discover that they have been mistaken in
several important particulars. (Hear, hear.) They will
not exactly turn their backs upon themselves, but they
will look upon popular interests and popular sympathies
with a different eye, and feel towards them with a different
heart ; and you may have for a long time to come such
harmony between the two houses, in legislating for the
conntry, as you have had in times past. (Hear, hear. In
considering this proposition, we must ask ourselves two
questions: —ls the representation, as it at present exists,
very defective ? And if it be—ls the full time come for
applying a remedy ? I think the whole country is agreed
that the representation is defective. We have the
authority of Lord Aberdeen. one of' the most experienced
and most temperate, and still liberal statesmen we have;
we have the authority of Lord John Russell, who is well
acquainted with this question ; we have the authority
of Lord Palmerston, whose friends say that he does not
regard it as so important as some of his fellow states-
men ; and we have the authority of Lord Derby.
There never were more than four men in England
at once who were thought fit to be prime minister—
(laughter) ; and we have the authority of all of them
for the fact, that the representation is defective, and that
the time is fully come when a *Tat improvement ought to
be made. If the time is come,Thall we do it, or half do it,
or just nibble at it, and scarcely do it at all? There is a
certain evil in stirring these questions. lam one of those
who believe that stability in a government has great advan-
tages, even when that government is far from theoretically
perfect; but any government may be shaken down, and
any constitution frittered away, if you will continually dis-
turb it. I want to have a government that has the respect
and the confidence of the people; and unless we are ready
to have a good bill, let us have no bill at all. (Hear.) A
bad bill is a revolutionary bill ; and a little bill, though
it spay not be revolutionary, is of no good, and is very
perilous. From the moment these bills, or either of them,
is passed, you must begin again, motions in Parliament,
discussions in the country, until at last people get dis-
gusted with the utter want of sympathy between the
ruling class and themselves, and some opportunity may
come, some period of' great excitement, when peers and
the upper and governing class may be treated witk a
hand far less tender, far more rude, than that which I
would now apply to them, in the measure which is now
before us. (Hear, hear.) Is this bill worth moving
for ? (Applause.) Is less than this worth the country
making a great effort to secure ? (No, no.) When I was
asked to prepare a bill, I said, "I will be bound by no
man's programme. I will act upon my own conviction ;
obtain advice wherever -I can ; and I will not try to
draw a bill that shall be theoretically perfect, but one
that shall be practicable, that shall meet the necessities
of the case, that- shall invite the moderate to support
it, and that shall go far to satisfy the ardour even of
the most earnest." (Hear, hear.) I do not want this
bill to be merely the subject of a night's debate, and
then to be thrown into the waste basket of the House
of Commons. I bring it forward because I believe such
a measure is necessary, and that it ought to pass ; and
I hope the people of England will so approve of
it that they will enable it to be passed. (" Hear,
hear," and applause.) The towns of England have
it in their own power. Let them meet ; let them
resolve ; let them petition ; let them represent to
their members what are their wishes upon this
great question. You know that lam not—l believe it
has been decided by several editors of newspapers that I
am not—a statesman. (Laughter.) I never pretended
to be one. I am a citizen —one of yourselves. (Loud
applause.) lam powerless in this matter if alone. But
do not suppose that I shall be alone if the people will
speak out. There are eminent men whose sympathies are
with us, watching events, looking for to-morrow's papers,
looking for the reports of meetings during the next
month, all of which will go far to decide the course that
they will take. If you speak out, they will come. If there
is a great army, there will be captains and leaders. (Hear,
hear.) Do not suppose that there are not amongst the
aristocracy families, more than one or two, who will not
betray or belie the historic reputation which belongs to
them. (Applause.) Let the nation speak esst, ant its
fiat will certainly be obeyed: For myself, I have been for
three months the subject of much misrepresentation and
slander ; but I have gone through all that before, and in
another form. (Hear, hear, and applause.) When last
I spoke to the people of Bradford, I stood shoulder to
shoulder with a political friend and brother, a man of
deep sagacity, of calm judgment, of extensive knowledge,
and of persuasive speech. (Applause.) Were we not
subjected to the same charges and to the same slanders ?
Did we not succeed ? (Hear, hear, and cheers.) Have
we not now, as a compensation for all that, the price-
less thought that there is no hand in this country that
wipes the sweat from the brow of toil, whose labour is
not lightened, whose reward is not, increased, by the
sacrifices we then made ?—(Loud cheers, the audience
rising ; followed by " Three cheers for Cobden.")
In the speeches I have lately delivered, I have
abstained from assailing any single individual. (Hear,
hear.) I have been met by certain members of the
aristocracy in a manner I scarcely expected. One Scotch
lord told a great audience that I ivas afflicted by a
Visitation of Providence, and that I was suffering from
a disease of the brain.—(Cries of " Shame.") Well,
his friends can tell whether that is a complaint with
which he is ever likely to be attacked. (" Hear,
hear," and laughter.) Another, destined one day to make
laws for you in the House of Peers, says that I
am a destroyer of property, and a traitor to my class. I
stop not to answer language like this. (Hear, hear.)
There are some great men, and there are many good
men, in the ranks of the English aristocracy ; there
are among them who would be nobles though coronets
and privilege were things unknown. But even their
virtues cannot long sustain their order against the
perilous-defence to which it is now. exposed. (Hear,
hear.) And I warn them to call back the champions
who, in every display of their prowess, exhibit here-
ditary nobility allied with intellectual poTerty, and