The Sun.
London, England, 1852-10-07 00:00:00

EVENING,

OCTOBER 75

loom, cut the canals tlngiugh the kinedeoo, constructed
your doelne railways, built your cities, sad brought
your cotton, cloth, and iron mo.nufoctures to such
perfection ? It wao the democracy. Who have made
your fashionable attires in cotton, and silk, and wool ?
It has been the democracy. From what did we derive
all the power of a nation, and enabled the Govera•
went to tax a people, and to exhibit the grandeur of
princes and of kings ? Was it not from the labour
of the democracy ?—(Loud cheers.) Now, I want
the people to know their own power, not for the pur-
pose of disturbing the public peace—but for maintain-
ing and strengthening that great democratic element
which happily dwells amongst us, both by tradition
and sentiment, ay, and by partiality tee. I have said
I will support the present Government, if they will
support those great democratic principles :to which
the word demagogue is not applicable. And
yet there is a class, there are certain great
mea—aristocrats—who call the mere men of
the democracy, the men of the people, dema-
gogues and destructive's. Never was there such
a great delusion and satire. I am sorry to say that
in the history of Scotland there has not been such
progress in democracy as in England. In England,
when the Magna Cherta was extorted from King
John, the aristocracy and the clergy were in the as-
cendancy, the great multitude of the people were serfs,
or the few men who were possessed of large landed
properties were dominant, and the nation was in ser-
vitude, but no sooner did the people become free than
from time to time they struggled until they got the
Bill of Rights forced by the long Parliament from
Charles 1., the Habeas Corpus Act from Charles IL,
and the declaration of rights to which William the
Third was compelled to accede in 1688, when he re-
cognised the great principle that the people should
not be taxed without being represented. I know the
details may be rather tedious, but I hope you will
bear with me.--(Renewed cheers.) In the year 1830
the whole of Scotland was a great rotten borough,
and I am sorry to say that looking at Scotland
from the annexation, from the union of the two
countries under one Crown in 1707, we did not
secure those rights which we ought to have done.
—(Hear, hear.) Formerly we allowed the Par-
liament of England to tyrannise over us, and we
had ministers who gave cur countrymen situations
in India, and thus bribed our members and leading
men into submission. Fortunately we are now in a
different position—we will assert those rights which
essentially belong to us. We are not fairly repre-
sented ; and it gives me the greatest possible pain
that we are not justly represented. We are not pro-
perly represented in Parliament, neither are we re-
presented in the Government of England. Ireland
has a Lord-Lieutenant, and a Secretary of State,
who has the same salary as the Prime Minister-
-5,0001. a year. Now, I don't want a Lord-Lieute-
nant for Scotland, but I want a Secretary of State
for Scotland, who should take cognisance of all the
circumstances connected with Scotland, and who
should hold office near the Crown, so that we may
be properly represented in the Government. True,
we have a Lord Advocate in the Parliament House of
Edinburgh, who spends his time there, taking his
fees, when he ought to be watching the affairs of
Scotland in the Parliament at Westminster.—
(Hear, hear.) I find that there are 67 burghs in
England that have exactly the same population es
twice that of the Gorbale, and these send 134 Mem-
bers to Parliament, each of whom has as much power in
the House of Commons as each of the Members for
Glasgow, and I say that it is, therefore, the more ne-
cessary that the resolution proposed to you to-night
should lay down, as it has done, that no Ministry will
have the confidence of this country if they do not
bring forward a great measure of Parliamentary Re-
form. I have now spoken in a decisive and frank
manner, and I trust what I have stated will be cte-
rectly reported. Among other grievances, the county
courts are really in a most imperfect state in Scotland.
In England the county courts give cheap and imme-
diate adjudication on matters of great moment, but in
Scotland such adjudication frequently amounts to much
more than even a denial of justice. This is a matter
requiring a speedy remedy, and 1 hope it will receive
prompt attention. Having made these observations,
which may have been tedious, I trust you will allow
me to make a few remarks upon the present condition
of the country with regard to its government.
We have a Government that lately came into office
by sufferance, and by sufferance we allowed it to finish
the last session of Parliament. The Chancellor of
the Exchequer received great credit for the statements
he made with regard to the budget. It was not his •
budget. He found it at the bottom of Downing-
street ; but, in order to get over the session, we
agreed to the income-tax, and voted it for one year.
We are to meat Parliament, and, with regard to the
taxation of the country, with scarcely any knowledge
whatever as to what the Government is going to do ;
and the Chancellor of the Exchequer tells us that he
has a relief for the agricultural interest in compensa-
tion for their pretended losses by free trade—some-
thing extremely pleasant and agreeable, looming in
the future.—(Laughter.) Now, if what he has
looming in the distance will relieve the agricultural
classes in this kingdom, without imposing an equal
amount of restriction upon the industrious and menu-
featuring trading classes, he will receive my support;
but if ILad it merely a shifting of taxation i order
to give a portion of the indirect taxes (that it, the
taxes you pay upon your tea, sugar, soap, end other
articles) for the relief of the rural districts, we will
oppose him if we should divide the House twelve
times every night, and we will defeat him finally
if he should attempt anything of the kind.
—(Loud cheers.) What I would suppose is
this—that he expects from the increased revenue
upon articles of consumption that we shall be
enabled to relieve the farmers of the local rural taxes
which they think heavy, from the Consolidated Fund.
Now, I would wish you to know what the applying
any portion of the Consolidated Fund means. It
means that a portion of what is contributed by the
consumers to that fund should he appropriated to pay
rural burdens. Very well, if we could afford to do
so. I should like that very much, only when I con-
sent to relieve rural burdens by such means I should
also extend the same relief to towns.—(Cheers.) I
may be tedious, but, at the same time, I wish to be
instructive.—(Cries of No, no.) Now, we will not
consent to anything like indirect burdens on free
trade. If there is a surplus revenue, I want to apply
it to other purposes—to those general purposes from
which the whole population will derive an advantage.
I wish that the people of this country should have
their tea as cheap as the people of the United States
of America and of Australia. At present tea is sold
at three handred times more than its value ; that is to
say, that you pay 33. upon every one shilling's
worth of tea to the public treasury. I want to reduce
it in price, and instead of drinking, as a friend of mine
termed it, stained or coloured water, I want the
people to have good wholesome tea. I think the sur-
plus revenue should be appled to reduce the tea and
other duties on articles of consumption.—(Cheers.)
There is nothing in the world so obnoxious as dirt.
At present we have to pay 1,500,000/. for having our
linen and our skins clean—that is the duty upon soap.
That duty ought to be abolished. I will not give the
surplus to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the
purpme of relieving the agricultural classes, because
I deny that the agricultural classes have any peculiar
burdens at all. I crave the attention of the meeting,
because from the dryness of the subject it must be
tedious in itself ; but I wanted to go into this question,
for I know that what I have said will be reported
elsewhere, and I do not only wish that it will be re-
ported elsewhere, but I know that I will be able to
defend anything I am now saying.—(Cheers.) I
know also, that the schoolmaster is abroad ; and when
I speak of the schoolmaster, I don't speak of the man
who is merely a teacher in a school. This meeting
is a school, the Crystal Palace was a great university,
the men who are employed building ships, &c.,
on the Clyde, the industry that sets in opera-
tion the steam press and the railway, and the
steam- ships that cross the Atlantic—all these opera-
' tions form the gigantic schoolmasters going forth to
instruct and to civilise the world. I now come to the
meeting of the next Parliament. We are now going
to meet a Parliament and a Minister under very ex-
traordinary and peculiar circumstances. The First
Minister of the Crown has stated that his policy
would be to resist the dangerous current of demo-
cracy that was invading our institutions. If he per-
sists in that he shall have my determined opposition.
He stated also that he would have no educational
soybsetdeinaenetheat
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(Hear, hear.) In that he shall have my strenuous
hand, great
butgre alt
I do not ex-
and determined opposition.—(Cheers.)
he will
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p mis-
treucstt oofthtehre
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yd
that they are sincere in their
dings for political capitallrloimberanliepmribneeripsloesf
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shallGcv e Government eenl
delighted
inht theed t
o democratic aspirations, but I shall never consent to give
them power, but I would like first to form a social
contract with them, that will prevent them from form-
ing family clique or compact, which the moment
they get into office would despise the actual wishes of
the people, inasmuch as they have a hereditary tra-
dition which leads them to entertain the idea that
they alone have a divine right to breed the statesmen
of the British empire. I want to show them that such
a Government cannot now possibly exist in this
country. After a feeling tribute to the memory of
the Duke of Wellington, Mr. Macgregor concluded
by saying, as far as his humble endeavours could as-
sist them in the cause of reform in the House of Com-
mons, they were placed at the disposal of the consti-
tuency.

Mr. Mom, in moving a vote of thanks to the Mem-
bers for the city, said that he was still as firm a
Chartist as ever, and would stand up for the Charter
entire, but that he came down to this association in
order to conciliate the middle classes, in order that
they might get at least a portion of their demands.
He concluded by moving a vote of thanks to Messrs.