The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-18 00:00:00

MR. COBDE N AND THE " TIMES."

We publish today another instalment of this
most unnecessary correspondence :
To JOHN T. DELANE, ESQ.

Sir,—l have received the letter dated from your
private residence, and bearing your proper signa-
ture, in which you take on yourself personally the
responsibility of the interpretation put by the limes
on the speeches of Mr. Bright and myself at Roch-
dale—namely, that we proposed " a division arrong
the poor of the lands of the rich." Your letter to
me says :

You attribute to the Times a deliberate misrepresentation
of your meaning, and that of Mr. Bright, as to the means
of amending the unequal distribution of the land between
the rich and the poor. I repeat that certain passages in
your speeches will, in my opinion, bear no other interpreta-
tion than that ascribed to them.

This is a grave accusation. lam told that, if
proved, it would bring Mr. Bright and myself
within the provisions of the Act 57th George 111.,
cap. 19, and render us liable to the penal conse-
quences of transportation for seven years.
I will not believe that you can be so wanting in
the respect due to others, as well as yourself, as to
have addressed this accusation to me, unless with the
belief that you have evidence to substantiate it.
I call on you to give me those " certain passages"
to which you refer, and which are really now the
only quest:on at issue between you and me. That
there may be no excuse or ground for delay, I accept
the report which appeared in your paper as an ac-
curate version of my speech ; and to aid you in your
task I have cut from the Times the entire passage
which contains all I said in reference to the condi-
tion of the, whole people, or to the agricultural
population and the land question in particular. But
let it 'be distinctly understood that I do not confine
you to this passage, but that I give you the entire
range of my speech.
Before giving the passage I will say a few words,
which, although I do not in the slightest degree
claim for them the character of evidence, may have
interest in some quarters.
It is known that I am not in the habit of writing
a word beforehand of what I speak in public- Like
other speakers, practice has given me as perfect
self-possession in the presence of an audience as if
I were in my closet. Now, my one constant and
overruling thought while addressing a public meet-
ing, the one necessity which the long experience of
the arts of controversialists has impressed on my
mind is to avoid the possibility of being misrepre-
sented, and prevent my opponents from raising
a false issue—a trick of logic as old as the time of
Aristotle. If I have, as some favourable critics are
pleased to thick, sometimes spoken with clearness,
it is more owing to this ever-present fear of mis-
representation than any other cause ; it is thus
that the most noxious things in life may have their
uses. When in my speech at Rochdale I came to
touch upon the subject of the land, the thought in-
stantly flashed through my brain—and none but the
'public speaker knows with what velocity thought
moves when in the presence of 4,000 listeners—that
I was dealing with a question about which there is
a superstition in England unknown elsewhere, and
lhat the enemy would raise the cry of agrarianism
against me, and hence my denunciation of agrarian
outrage, which will be found in the following ex-
tract. Had I been inspired with the faculty of se-
condsight, to have foreseen the Editor of the limes
sitting bodily penning his criticism on my speech,
I could not have more completely refuted and con-
founded beforehand the charge now brought against