The Sun.
London, England, 1855-06-28 00:00:00

class of men in the House of Commons, for depend upon
it, until you get men there who do not care about being
black-balled by the clubs, and who hr® indifferent about
admittance into Wesbend drawing-rooms, , we, shall
never get what we' want from the Legislature. (Hear.)
Let us have, say, a hundred spell men, and then we may
have some hope of effecting beneficial alterations.
(Cheers.) Look at the list of membei.s at the present
moment. First, there are the placemen, of course anxi-
ous to support the present regime ; then the- naval and
military officers, also willing tl Jet things remain as they
are ; and then the lawyers, who—xithaut meaning any
disrespect to such as may be present—l may say know
well the value of a little subserviency, and how a slash.
ing speech in favour of a Government often leads to re-

coiderships, or perhaps the post of Attorney-General.
Add to these 220 sons and. brothers •of peers, and the
marvel is that matters are not worse than even they are
at present. We mean to have all this altered. We cannot
hope to do it through the agency of the .boroughs where
the family interests prevail, but we shall appeal to the
large constituencies, and if they do not send the proper
men to Parliament there will be no use seeking for ad-
ministratiie reform. We therefore perseere in the
hope that the constituencies will be found faithful in the
day of trial. (Laud cheers.)
Mr. C. DICXEN3 next. presented himself to the meet-

ing, and was received with loud and protracted cheering.
He said he could not better express his sense of the kind
reception that had been awarded 'to him by that great?
assemblage, than •by promising to compress what he
should address to it within the closest possible limiti.
It was more than eighteen hundred years since there
was a set of men wild thought- that they should
be heard for much speaking. As they had profited
by the privilege very much since that time, and, as he
observed, they flourished at the present moment to a
surprising extent about Westminster, he would do his
best to avoid adding to the number of that,prolific race.
I The noble lord at the head of the Government, when
he wondered in Parliament, about a week ago, that
Mr. Layard did not blush for having stated in that
place what the whole country knew perfectly well
to be true—(cheers)—and what no one could by possi-
bility better know to be true than those distinguished
supporters of the noble lord who bad the advantage of
hearing him and cheering him night after night when he
first became premier, namely, that he did constantly joke
at a time when this country was plunged in deep dis-
tress and disgrace—when the noble lord wondered so
much that the man of this age who had, by his earnest
and adventurous spirit, done the most to distinguish
himself and it, did not blush for the tremendous auda-
city of having so come "between the wind and his
nobility," his lordship finished with an airy period about
the private theatricals at Drury-lane Theatre. 'He (Mr.
Dickens) had some slight acquaintance with theatricals,
both private and public, and he would accept the figure
of the noble lord. He would.not say that if be wanted
to form a company of her Majesty's servants, he
thought he should know where to lay his hand on
the " comic old gentleman"—(loud laughter)—nor
that if he wanted to get up a pantomime
efficiently, he should know to what establishment
to go for tricks and changes, as also for a considerable
troop of supernumeraries, to trip up another in that con-
tention with which many of them were familiar, on
those and other boards, and in which the principal mat-
ters thrown about wereloaves and fishes—(loud laughter)
—but he would endeavour to give the noble lord some
reasons for these private theatricals, and why, however
ardently his lordship might desire to " ring the curtain
down," there was not the faintest chance of these per-
formances coming to a conclusion. (Cheers.) The rea-
son was that the public theatricals whinh the noble lord
was so condescending as to manage, were so intolerably
bad, the machinery was se cumbrous, the parts so ill
distributed, the company so full of " walking gentle-
men," the manager had such a large family and was so
bent on putting that family into what was theatrically
called " first business," not because of their aptitude,
but because they were his family; it was for these rea-
sons that they felt obliged to organise an opposi-
tion. (Hear, hear.) They had seen the " Comedy of
Errors" played so dismally like a tragedy that they
really could not bear it, and therefore had felt themselves
obliged, in their own defence, to get up "The School of
Reform"—hoping before the play was over to improve
the noble lord considerably. If he objected that they
had no right to improve him without his license, they
ventured to claim that right in virtue of his lordship's
orchestra, consisting of a very powerful piper, whom
they always paid. (Laughter.) As this was thel first
political meeting at which he (Mr. Dickens) had at-
tended, and as Ws trade and calling was not associated
with politics, perhaps it might be useful in him to show
how he came to be there, since the reasons that had in-
fluenced him might be still balancing in the minds of
other men. He wanted at all times and places sincerely
to do his duty by his countrymen. If he felt an attach-
ment towards them, there was nothing disinterested or
meritorious in that, for never could he sufficiently ac-
knowledge the confidence and friendship which they had
long placed in him. (Loud cheers.) But he had a sphere
of action which he eould never change, nor overstep fur-
ther, nor for a longer period than that night ; for
whoever devoted themselves to literature must be con-
tent to do the public setviec by literature, for he could
not effectually serve two masters. Within his sphere of
action, he had, however, endeavoured to understand our
social grievances, and to help to set them right. When
the Times proved its then almost incredible case, in re-
ference to the costly absurdities of that great labyrinth
of misplaced men and misplaced things which had made
England unable to find on the faceof the earth an enemy
one-twentieth part so potent for misery and ruin as in
some things she had been to herself, he believed that the
gloomy silence into which the country,fell was by far the
darkest aspect in which a great people had been exhibited
for many years, with shame and indignation lowering
amongst all classes of society, with little adequate expe-
rience of the general mind, or apparent understanding of
it in Parliament, with the machinery of government and
legislation going round and round, and the people falling
from it, and standing aloof as if they left it to its last ref
maining function of destroying itself, when it had se-
cured the destruction of so much that was dear to them.
When he said this he did believe, and he believed still,
that the only wholesome turn a state of affairs so mourn-
ful could possibly take was in the wakening up of the
people, the outspeaking of the people, the writing of the
people in patriotism and loyalty to effect those constitu-
tional changes which were necessary in the administra-
tion of their own affairs. (Cheers.) At such a crisis the
Administrative Reform Association arose, and at such a
crisis he (Mr. Dickens) joined it. He had heard three
main objections advanced by the opponents of the move-
ment. The first was that the association proposed to
exert its influence through the constituencies over the
House of Commons. (Hear.) He admitted that it was so.
Be had no hesitation in saying that he bad not the small-
est possible amount of faith in the House of Commons as
it at present existed ; and he considered, therefore, that
the exercise of such influence was highly necessary for
the welfare and honour of the empire. (Hear, hear.)
Two hundred years ago, Pepys, writing of the political
abuses then prevailing in the House of Commons, said,
" Roger Pepys tells me that it is matter of the greatest
grief to him in the world that he should have been put
on this trust of being a Parliament man, because he says
nothing is done, that he can see, out of any truth or sin-
cerity, but all out of mere envy and design." Now, how
it came to pass that after 200 years—and especially so
many years after the passing of the Reform Bill—the
House of Commons had so little changed, he would not
stop to inquire. He would not ask how it happened
that bills that cramped and worried the people, and re-
stricted their enjoyments—(loud cries of "Hear, hear")
—passed so easily, and that measures conducive to their
interests were so very difficult to get through Parliament.
(Cheers.) He would not attempt to analyse the confined
air of the lobby, and reduce to their primitive gases that
deadening influence which there operated upon the me-
mory of the hon. gentleman who was so short time ago
a candidate for "our vote and interest," or ask who was
that tecratorial figure ever flitting about them, and
whose blandishments were always so irresistible ; or
Linn, it always happened that those personal altercations,
which invoived all the movements and modifications of
Shakspere's Touchstone-1" the quip modest, the retort
courteous., the reply churlish, the reproof valiant, the
countercheck quarrelsome, the lie circumsta:tialr
and the
lie direct." (Laughter.) He would not stop to as:: how
it was that such altercations always commanded immea-
surably greater interest in the House of Commons than
matters involving the health, the education, and the taxa-
tion of the whole people. He would not attempt to pene-
trate the mysteries of that secret chamber in which the
political Blnebeard strangled public questions, strictly
charging his last bride not to open the door, lest she
should too soon discover what would be her own probable
fate. He would not inquire into any of these matters, but
would merely put it to the practicalexperience, recent and
remote, of every one present whether the House of Com-
mons was not occasionally a little hard of hearing, a little
dim of sight, and somewhat slow of understanding; in short,
that sufficientlyinvalided condition that required very close
watching, and occasionally, at least, the application of
the sharp stimulant of popular agitation. (Hear). He
believed that, in order to preserve its real usefulness and
independence, tne people must always show themselves
watchful and jealous of it—to jog its memory, and keep
it awake ; or when it happened to take too much of the
ministerial narcotic, to shake it and move it about in a
friendly way, for the purpose of restoring its functions
to their healthy exercise. (Hear, hear.) Then it was ob-
jected that the tendency of this moment was to set class
against class. But did it do so 1 On the contrary, its
tendency was to bring classes together, and to unite
them in harmonious action for the common interest.
He wished especially to avoid placing in opposition the
two words, aristocracy and people. He could well be-
lieve that each bad its peculiar virtues, and perhaps its
peculiar vices ; but he would elevate or depress neither
at the cost of a single vested right of either. (Hear.)
Instead of the terms aristocracy and people, he would
use the terms the governors and the governed—but
between these two bodies the association found a gulf in
which lay buried thousands upon thousands of the
bravest and most devoted men that even England ever
had. (Hear.) It was to prevent the recurrence of in-
numerable similar evils of which that gloat calamity
„to