The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-22 00:00:00

•

JANUARY 22, 1863,

The Members for Marylebone and their

Constituents.

Lord Fermo7 and Mr. Harvey Lewis, the mem-
bers for Marylebone, met their constituents last even-
ing at the Literary Institute, Edward-street Port-
man-square. Mr. Peter Graham presided on the
occasion.

Lord FERMOY, who was warmly received, said
there could be no more agreeable duty to a repre-
sentative who had acted rightly in Parliament than
to meet his constituents and give an account of his
Parliamentary conduct. He came there to make a
clean breast of it, and he had no hesitation in tell-
ing them that he had felt bound to give a general
though sometimes qualified support to Lord Palmer-
ston. (Hear, hear.) That noble lord did not go
quite so far as he should wish ; but he believed him
to be a thoroughly honest Englishman—(hear, hear)
—he believed he loved his country well, and that
her honour was safe in his hand. (Cheers.) It was
true that the present Government had not dealt
with the Reform question in the manner which the
constituency of Marylebone would have wished, but
he felt that there was no choice for him, as one of
their representatives, between supporting Lord
Palmerston's Administration and assisting to bring
in a Tory Government, and the latter was a thing
which he would never do. (Cheers.) Coming to
purely metropolitan matters, he thought he
might congratulate the electors of Marylebone on
what was done by Parliament in respect to the
Thames embankment. The attempt to spoil that
great work by bringing it to an abrupt conclusion
at the Duke of Buccleuch's had been defeated, and
the execution of the work la ,c 1 been secured for the
Metropolitan Board of Works. (Hear, hear.) It
would be necessary to bring under the notice of the
House of Commons early in the ensuing session the
question of the road which had been formed through
Hyde Park during the Exhibition, but which had
since been closed. (Hear, hear.) In reference ta
general business, he might observe that during the
last session no less than 114 public Acts were passed.
Among them was that very important measure, the
Land Transfer Act, which got rid of most of the
troublesome forms that had hitherto been necessary
in cases of transfer of real property. If that Act
proved in the working to be what its framers de-
scribed it to be, it would confer on the landed inte-
rest of this country many of those advantages which
the Encumbered Estates Act had conferred on that
of Ireland. Another Act connected with title to
land was expected to go on all fours with the mea-
sure to which he had just referred. He was of opi-
nion that a great improvement would be effected by
the bill amending the law with respect to the inflic-
tion of corporal punishment on criminals; and, keep-
ing in mind the importance of a good education for
the children of the poor, he thought they would ap-
prove his vote in favour of the bill permitting guar-
dians, under certain circumstances, to educate pauper
children outside the walls of workhouses. (Hear.)
He now came to a measure which had his unqualified
condemnation—he meant the Night Poaching Act.
(Groans.) He was fond of field sports himself,
and therefore he could not find fault with those who
liked to: gee plenty of game; but he thought the
bill in question was unconstitutional, and a disgrace
to the statute-book. His only consolation in respect
to it arose from his belief that the measure would do
great injury to the Tory party, who passed it. He
believed the result of the East Kent election might
be attributed to that bill, and he was glad that the
Tories had wound up the Session with such a mea-
sure. They heard nothing of "good old Tories"
now, though there were plenty of them. They now
called themselves the "enlightened Conservative
party ;" and Sir Stafford Northcote, who was so
great on finance that he would swallow the multi-
plication table—(a laugh)—had recently told a pub-
lic meeting of the services that party did in the
House of Commons on Wednesday mornings. What
did they do on such occasions ? They came down
to prevent a settlement of the church-rate question,
to oppose all progress, and to establish in this coun-
try an oligarchic system of government, such as
that under which other nations were now groaning_
That being so, though he was sorry the measure it-
self had passed, he was glad that the Toiy party
had displayed their true principles by the Night
Poaching Act. (Hear.) He believed that the time
would soon arrive when the constituencies of this
country would be afforded an opportunity of ex-
pressing their opinions by means of their votes, and
he had no doubt that, by an unmistakable majority,
they would show that their sympathies were not
with the Tories. (Hear.) Referring to the American
question, he did not believe that the civil war had
been brought about by a republican form of govern-
ment. Oa the contrary, he believed that under any
other than a republican system of government the
Union would have been broken up years ago. He
said that, though he was of opinion that for Great
britain there was no form of government equal to
the limited monarchical system as it existed here.
(Hear.) The conduct of the operatives of Lancashire
was beyond all praise, and showed how worthy the
working people of England were of having the
electoral franchise more widely extended among
them. (Cheers.) The Tory party had been endea-
vouring to make great capital throughout the coun-
try cut of the American question ; but he had no
doubt that the people approved the non-interven-
tion policy which had been acted on by Lord
Palmerston. (Cheers.) With regard to the cotton
supply, the West having failed us, we ought to
turn to the East. Austria was a great country
which was following our example, by establishing
constitutional government. There were 35 millions
of people in that country; it produced most of the
raw materials which England wanted, but it was in
its infancy as regarded manufactures. He should
like to see some great politician open up commercial
relations for the people of this country with Aus-
tria. (A Voice—" Hungary !") His friend Dr.
Uhallice said " Hungary." It was true that Austria
had acted towards Hungary as England formerly
acted towards Ireland ; but he believed that she
was now anxious to follow our example in respect
to the sister country, and to give Hungary represen-
tative institutions and a constitutional government.
(Hear.) It was, however, to a commercial point he
wished to address himself. Banking advantages
were almost unknown in Austria, and he thought the
present was a favourable opportunity for England to
establish commercial relations with her. (A Voice
—" Venetia and Poland.") They would aid these
portions of Europe by extending the advantages of
a free commerce to Austria; for a commercial coun-
try was sure to become a free one. (Hear, hear.)
Before concluding, he could not refrain from refer-
ring to the great social question connected with the
treatment of our convicts. The English system was
condemned by the press, and there was a cry for the
adoption in England of Sir Walter Crofton's sys-
tem. As a commission was about to sit on the subject,
he would have the pluck to declare his firm conviction
that this system would fail in England. He was not
prepared to say that it was not better than the Eng-
lish plan, but it would fail with the formed cri-
minal. The men on whom it had hitherto 'been
successfully tried in Ireland were, very many of
them,men whom it had been necessary to try,convict,
and sentence in vindication of the law, but who
were not formed criminals, or criminals at all in the
ordinary sense of the word. They had been con-
victed of aheepstealing, and other such offences,
committed during a time of famine, and when dis-
charged from prison they were received by their
friends and the population at large as men on whom
there was no enduring taint of guilt. To this cir-
stance might be attributed the great success which
had hitherto attended Sir Walter Crofton's system
in Ireland. His conviction was that for the formed
criminal there was only one system—that of carry-
ing out to the full the sentence inflicted on him.
Hear, hear.) Let there be no coming over chap-
lains or chiseling of doctors—(a laugh)--but, by an
imprisonment for the full term prescribed by the sen-
tence, they might hope to see an end to garotting.
(Hear.) He knew he should be abused for what he
had just stated; but he believed he had told them
more truth about their prison systems than ever they
had been told by those officially connected with our
prison machinery.
The noble lord concluded his
observations by
expressing his confidence in the
continued progress of this country, and in the ex-
tension of the Free-trade principles which she bad
been foremost in establishing.
Mr. HARVEY LEWIS then addressed the meeting.