The Sun.
London, England, 1865-12-15 00:00:00

on the Great Western
to pensions of £lO per
A vote of thanks to

Railway, were then elected
annum.

the chairman concluded the

proceedings.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

-

TIMES.—A great orator is, by the necessity of his
position, almost obliged to speak without provisoes
or limitations, and a thousand errors have arisen
from forgetting this self-evident fact. When Mr.

Bright or any other popular speaker is addressing a
crowd of four or five thousand persons, assembled
for the single purpose of hearing him speak,
he must trust to the simplest agencies for pro-
ducing his effects ; refined argument or delicate
satire would be lost upon such an audience ; and

the distinctions and differences which the -thinker
insists upon in his closet must be dismissed, as
sure to be misunderstood, if understood at all.
The orator is like a scene-painter, bound to pro-
duce an effect upon a multitude able to appre-
ciate broad masses of light and shade, but un-
able to examine in detail the elements which make

up the picture ; his drawing may be all wrong, his
colouring forced and crude, his painting may be done
with a mop instead of a paintbrush ; it is enough if
at last something is produced which strikes the
popular imagination, and raises it, if for a brief
space, out of the slough of contentment in which
it is generally willing to abide. This is the explana-
tion of much that is otherwise unintelligible in the

speech which Mr. Bright delivered at Birmingham
on Wednesday. It was primarily intended to be
heard at Birmingham. Itsimmediate effect was very

properly the first thing attended to by the speaker.
Regarded as a political essay, the man who quietly
takes it up after breakfast in London cannot help
noticing the defects of its structure and the flaws in
its argument. What, for example, is the meaning
of that long.digression about Mr. Adderley and Sir
J. Pakington ? These Conservative members are
doubtless of some importance in the neighbourhood
of Birmingham, and they are presentable officials of
the second rank anywhere ; but it is at first sight
strange that Mr. Bright should devote an hour to
exposing their errors and deficiencies. There are
some things which may be taken for granted, and
we should, instead of dwelling upon them, pass by
to matters of more importance. Mr. Bright,? how-
.

ever, attacked Sir J. Pakington's harmless sugges-
tion of a coalition between the Opposition and the
more moderate members of the Liberal party as if

he were actually afraid it was going to happen. We
should be at a loss to understand this, did not the

real cause presently appear. Sir J. Palington, mis-
led like so many of his countrymen by the strong
expressions which Mr. Bright is forced to use, had
alluded to him and his immediate followers as mem-

bers of a Republican party. This was the secret of
Mr. Bright's indignation. It is true that he has
said many things which might give some reason for
the epithet ; it is true thatin the speech at Birming-
ham itself Mr. Bright described the Government of
the United States as " the freest and most powerful

in the world," thereby impliedly preferring it to the

one under which he lives. But all these statements

are to be understood with reference to the exigencies
of an orator. All that Mr. Bright meant was that
'the Federal Government is very free and powerful;
his own principles are strictly monarchical. Indeed,
the views which he expressed at Birmingham of
the functions of the Sovereign are almost alarming
to moderate Constitutionalists, from the excessive
power which he attributed to the Head of the Legis-
lature ; and in the matter of the House of Peers
Mr. Bright professes the old Tory notion that a re-
striction might beneficially be put upon its numbers.
Mr. Bright's speech is, however, something more
than an idle criticism of Sir John Pakington and
Mr. Adderley. Ile deserves credit for having stated
with considerable plainness his wishes and his hopes
on the subject of Reform. There are, in fact, two
classes of Reformers between whom it is necessary
to distinguish, and Mr. Bright helps us to divide
them. Both agree in regretting the exclusion of so
many Englishmen from the franchise, and both
would admit a certain portion of the excluded with-
in the electoral body. There their agreement stops.
The one party is content with altering the electoral
machinery ; the other desires an alteration in the
members elected. The one is satisfied with our
existing Legislature, and deprecates any consider-
able change in its character ; the other has a long
string of measures ready to be passed, and a list of
institutions waiting to be abolished. It is almost
unnecessary to add that Mr. Bright casts in his lot
with the second party. A mere alteration in the
electors, without a corresponding alteration in the
Legislature and in the Statute Book, he denounces
beforehand as a juggle, and he sketches with his
accustomed vigour the work which a reformed
House of Commons might accomplish. The repeal
of the Game Laws, a system for the education of
the children of the poor at the national expense,
the abolition of the Irish Church, some undescribed
legislation in favour of the tenant against landlords,
and the extinction of pauperism, are a few of the
things which might be at once set about. Reform, if it
comes at all, is merely a means to these ends. It is
in order that such things may be done that a million
voters should be added to those already on the register,
and it would seem that were it not for the accomplish-
ment of objects like these,Mr. Bright would regard the
complaint against the narrowness of the electoral
body as a senthnentalgrievance unworthy of serious
consideration. We do not imagine that any pro-
posal will be made, much less carried, which will put
a million of new voters on the register ; but even if it
were done, it would be doubtful whether it would pro-
duce an alteration in the Legislature sufficient to pass
the measure Mr. Bright desires ; and it is certain
that the measures themselves, if passed into law,
could not bring about the social consequences he
longs for. There is an English society the Conser-
vatism of a thousand years, which has gradually ac-
cumulated, just as the heat of distant ages has been
stored up in our coalfields. The national equililsrium
is so stable that a movement almost revolutionary
in its character would almost be followed a slight
temporary rocking, soon to be succeeded by the re-
establishment of the old equilibrium. This is what
happened after the bill of 1832, and, if Mr. Bright's
Reform Bill became law, it would happen in a more
marked degree after the milder measure. The same
governing classes would be found wielding the same
power and enacting much the same laws as before.
But, in truth, no Legislature could fulfil Mr.
Bright's desire. In an eloquent peroration, which
had the single defect that it was thoroughly un-
practical, Mr. Bright dwelt on the hopeless toil of
the millions at the base of English society, which he
appeared to think new laws could cure. A hapless
Dorsetshire labourer working for eight shillings a
week, who on the strength of that income had mar--
ried and begotten seven children, but after twenty-
four years' labour had been convicted of stealing a
wooden hurdle of the value of sixpence,was the text
of his discourse. It is no doubt that the Dorset-
shire labourers receive other wages besides wages
in money ; but, allowing this correction it is not
easy to see what the Birmingham audience found
laughable in the narrative. Even Mr. Bright must
know that the existence of such wages depends
ultimately on the fact that Dorsetshire labourers
can and do marry and rear families of seven
children upon them. Legislation cannot pre-
vent a scandal which has its origin in the degrada-
tion of human nature. As long as men are content
to live upon such terms, public help and private bene-
volence are alike vain ; for the objects of bounty,
national or domestic, will reproduce and perpetuate
the evils which others are struggling to remove. All
that can be done is to put before the labourer a
standard of existence higher than his own, to instil
in him a desire to attain it, to lead him to feel new
wants, and to undergo abstinence and privation in
order that they may be satisfied. If this, which is in
truth the ultimate end of education, be in some
measure attained, and the labourer be free to carry
his labour to any market, he must for the rest be
left to himself. The result may seem harsh, if not
hopeless, to those who wOuld• by a clause in the
Statute Book suddenly raise the poor out of the
mire; but it is the -only way of accomplishing the
object which can be followed without fear of disap-
pointment.
POST.—When railways were first inaugurated,
their lines concentrating on London stopped short
at the outskirts of the City. We do not mean the
City in any Lord Mayor's sense, but we would be
understood to refer to the great aggregate of dwel-
lings which in the two counties of Middlesex and
Surrey give shelter to almost three millions of in-
habitants. The case is very different now. There
has been a civic invasion of railroads. Onward and
inward they go indomitably, irrepressibly. Local
difficulties of site are overcome by engineering skill.
Vested rights of place and occupation are set aside
by Act of Parliament, the assumption being that the
property of every individual disturbed is to be made
good by the award of a jury, if arbitration should
fail. Thus far in theory; but in practice there are
many conditions under which the good intent
fails, and amongst these two especially manifest
themselves. It is unfortunately a principle of
business Action that people shall stand up for
their own interests, defending them before the
tribunals of public appeal, the bestowers yielding
as little 'as they: can, the receivers obtaining no
more 'than they can claim by award. To put the
matter much shorter, and even more clearly, the
principle that rules is identical with that enunciated
by Rob Roy, and by him and his caterans scrupu-
lously followed out—
" The good old rule, the simple plan,
That those should take who have the power,
And those should keep who can."
Subjected to the r uling of this principle, and under
City railroad administration, two classes of persons