The Sun.
London, England, 1865-12-01 00:00:00

Mr. Bright at Blackburn.

BLACKBURN, Thursday Night.
A public banquet was given this evening on the
occasion of presenting a testimonial to Mr. J.
Pilkington, late M.P. for this borough.
There was a large gathering of the most influen-
tial members of the extreme Liberal party con-
nected with this portion of the manufacturing dis-
_ _

tricts of Lancashire, including Mr. Bright, M.P.,
Mr. T. B. Potter, M.P., Mr. J. Cheetham, M.P.,
Mr. Barnes, M.P., Mr. Fenwick, M.P., Mr. Pender,
M.P., and Sir John Bowring. Mr. Pilkington,
however, was unfortunately not able to attend, in
consequence of the serious illness of Mrs. Pilking-

ton ; llr. Dugdale presided.
After the usual loyal and constitutional toasts,
which were most enthusiastically responded to, the
chairman presented the testimonial, which was re-
ceived and acknowledged on behalf of Mr. Pilking-

ton, by his brother-in-law, Mr. John Eccles.
The testimonial consisted of a large handsome
silver epergne.
Sir JOHN BOIVRING then proposed the toast of the
" Commons' House of Parliament." He paid a

warm eulogium to the memory of the late Mr.
Cobden, and expressed an earnest hope that the
good ship Reform, which was believed to be water-
logged by the cargo which the Conservatives,
assisted by some timid friends of the Liberal party,
had put on board, would now be relieved of the en-
cumbrance, and proceed with good speed on her des-
tined voyage. It was, however, for the people of
England to give the impulse and to trim the sails,
for there were many who talked about prudence,
and others who found nothing more comfortable
than rest ; but rest and prudence had never yet

won a great victory.
Mr. BRIGHT, on rising to respond, was very *cor-
dially received, the cheering being again and again
renewed. lie said—You will not be surprised
when I say that I attend this meeting with feel-
ings of a very mixed character. lam very sorry that
the opportunity should have arrived to give you
cause to hold this meeting for the purpose of show-
ing that, although your late representative is
no longer your representative in Parliament, you
entertain for him an undiminished respect; but I
am very glad to be here that I may add my share to
the general testimony of respect which we are pay-
ing to him to-night. You know Mr. Pilkington in
Blackburn, and I have known him for 18 years in
London, and 1 venture to say that I believe during

those 18 years there has not been a man in the house

who has more intelligently and faithfully fulfilled

his duty to his constituents than has your late re-

spected representative. He had that peculiar qua-
lity which my experience has led me to observe is so
of ten wanting in members of Parliament the
quality of an absolute and entire trustworthiness.
(Cheers.) I regarded your late election as what I
should call a blunder, but on the whole, probably
men who did not mean to do so much mischief as
they have done by bad management, have brought
a temporary catastrophe upon the borough ; and
although I have heard from Mr. Pilkington often
that the state of his health made it very doubtful
whether he could long remain in Parliament, yet I
venture to hope that at some not distant period his
health will still permit him to stand before you again
as a candidate to receive almost an unanimous elec-
tion from his fellow-townsmen and those who know
him so well. But whether your election was a blun-

der or not, I have asked myself how it happens that

there can possibly be in a populous manufacturing
town a Tory party strong enough to return two
members to Parliament, and I find that in this
county, which very ignorant people at headquarters
sometimes fancy to be very democratic, we have
three very great populations, each of which is repre-
sented by two Tory members--(hear).—the great
commerciality of Liverpool and the great manufac-
turing boroughs of Preston and Blackburn. Now,

if we did not know this to be the fact, we should
scarcely believe it to be possible, for hardly any-
thing can be made more strange, hardly anything
more discreditable, hardly anything which we can
scarcely account for, than that these great manu-
facturing and industrial populations should per-
mit themselves to be represented in the Imperial
Parliament by members of that party, whose whole
career has been one of permanent and virulent hos-
tility to commerce—(loud cheers)—thisTory party;
for it is extremely busy now, and has been for some
years, in depreciating the great body of their coun-
trymen, and denouncing them as unfit to vote for

members of Parliament. I shall take the trouble to
look back for a little over what the Americans would
call the rewards or awards of this party. The great
charge which I have to make against this party is
this—that it has been as long as it has endured in
our history opposed to rights, to justice, and to mo-
rality in all legislation and administration of the
affairs of this kingdom. We need not go back to
1760, when this party, as it now is, first took shape,
and obtained possession of power, which it continued
to hold almost uninterruptedly for about 70 years.
The history of that Administration is the history of
almost continuous war, of enormous debt, of crush-
ing taxes, of wide-spread pauperism, and during its
later years especially, the later years of the war, and
the years which succeeded that war, a period of al-
most the extinction of freedom in this country. It
is not necessary to go back so far. We need only go
back to the times which are clearly in the recollection
of all of us, something less than 40 years. There is
not a single question on which we now pride our-
selves as an intelligent, an advancing country, there
is not a single great question which has administered
to the welfare of the great body of the people which
has not been systematically opposed by the Tory party.
(Cheers.) Not 40 years ago there existed on the
statute book of this country laws which were enacted
in the time of Charles IL—laws which were intended
to weigh with especial force on members of the Ro-
man Catholic Church, and upon all persons connected
with the Nonconformist and Dissenting Churches. I
allude to the acts called the Test Act and the Corpo-
ration Act. The objects of those acts were these—of
the Test Act that no person should hold office, or re-
ceive emolument, or perform duties under the Crown
of this kingdom except by taking certain tests, which
neither Roman Catholics nor Dissenters could take.
The object being absolutely to exclude them from
the rights of citizenship, from its duties, from its
honours, and from its rewards. The Corporation
Act was intended to exclude the same portion of
the population from all participation in the muni-
cipal government of the various towns and cities of
and yet when it was
the kingdom; proposed in
1828, so short a time as that, that these Acts should
be repealed, and a bill for that purpose was pre-
pared by the present Prime Minister, the whole
Tory party and the Tory Government of that day
were opposed to the repeal. Then, if you come to
the next year, there was another great measure
touching on a similar question—the question of the
relief of the Roman Catholic population, which
being six millions in number in Great Britain and
Ireland, was not permitted to have in Parliament a
single representative a member of its own church ;
and when it was proposed that that monstrous and
iniquitous system should be abolished, it was done
in the teeth of the Tory party, by what they call
the treachery, but welcall the inevitable concessions,
of their leaders, who, as we all know, forfeited for
a long period the confidence of their supporters by
the measure of justice which they accorded to the
Roman Catholic population of the kingdom.
(Cheers.) Three years after
rs atter there came that other
great measure, which gave a share in the represen-
tation to the town of Blackburn, with its cotton
factories, its steam engines, its large chimneys, and
its great population ; but at the time, as you well
know, every Tory—l speak of them as a party—
every Tory yearned towards rotten boroughs, and,
denied the right of the people to be heard in P
liament, and with such persistency and resolution
did they do this, that they drove this country to
within 24 hours of a revolution. (Hear.) Indeed, it
was not till there was a manifestation of opinion and
of power, for which they say they are waiting now,
that they consented that the Reform Bill should pass;
and, if you have ever seen a picture—au engraving
of which I have in my house—of the passing of the
Reform Bill, and of the Royal assent being given
to it in the House of Lords, you will find that the
Ministerial side of the House is full of Whig and
Liberal peers, while the benches of the Tory and

Opposition side are entirely empty. They did not
give their countenance, their noble countenance, to
confer on the people of this country the mcst plain

and undoubted of all their constitutional rights—

hat of being represented in the House of Com-

mons. In 1835 the Bill passed which corrected the

corruptions of our municipal and corporate system,

and gave to all our towns and cities the power to
become corporate boroughs for the purpose of self-
government, but these measures, which I hold to

have been of the greatest value and importance,
were opposed by this party with the same determina-
tion, and I am happy to add with the same want
of success. (Cheers.) In 1839 there was the ques-
tion of education, and the Tory party had great ob-
jection to voting the public money to be dispensed
through other channels than those of the Estab-
lished Church, and they almost prevented the
establishment of the present system of national help
to education on account of their differences with
the Government of the day in particular. lam not
here to defend the present system, which I think
has many defects and may be easily improved. It
shows the truly selfish, unwise, and anti-national

policy, and the purely sectarian objects of the Tory
party when they refused to allow Parliamentary
votes to be distributed among the various denomina-
tions for the purpose of the improvement and edu-
cation of the people. We now come to the next

great measure, that of 1846, which repealed a law
that I venture to say was the most odious, the most
obviously unwise that in modern times, and among

. _
modern nations, existed on any statute-book ; it was
a law which condemned the people of this country to

periodical states of famine. We all recollect perfectly

well that in those times the population of the ma-

nufacturing districts after one or two bad harvests

were plunged into a state of suffering more extreme

and intolerable than anything endured during the
last few years, until the wretchedness and necessity

of Ireland compelled the Government of Sir Robert

Peel to abolish the Corn Laws. The Tory party,

cruel, selfish, and unrepentant to the last, quarrelled
with that great statesman, inflicted upon him sum-
mary vengeance, and in their bitter animosity to a
change so beneficial to the country even, in their
desperate passion, shattered their own party.
(Cheers.) The sugar monopoly came next. In
1840 the people of the country paid six millions ster-

ling more for their sugar than it was worth in the

world's market, and they did not get nearly as much
as half what they would have consumed had it been
cheaper. The sugar monopoly wasmaintained for the
benefit of spendthrift and bankrupt West India pro-
prietors, and the sugar monopoly, of course, was
always strenuously supported by the Tory party.
The navigation laws, which were intended to make
the transit of every article of your manufactures to
the other parts of the world and of those things
which you received in return unnecessarily costly,
--the navigation laws, of course, were supported
strongly by the Tory party ; and when we come to
those various tariff reforms, some of the most ex-
tensive of which were begun by Sir Robert Peel,
and by which he greatly lost the confidence of his
party, and others which have been carried out by the
present Chancellor of the Exchequer, all those mea-
sures have received either a most reluctant and cold
support, or a strong opposition from a considerable
portion of the Tory party. (Cheers.) Let us take
now another question, the question of newspaper
taxes. There never was anything in this country
that was intended to live so taxed as a newspaper.
(Laughter and cheers.) Every advertisement paid
a tax of ls. 6d., every newspaper paid a tax of one
penny. Thirty years ago it was much higher, and
the paper itself was taxed enormously by the Ex-
cise. You know the fight was hard in the House of
Commons to abolish what were called the taxes on
knowledge; the very last measure we carried, the aboli-
tion of the duties on paper, the Tories made a great
party question ; they told you the finances of the
country would be disordered, and the credit of the
nation destroyed by the abolition. (Laughter.) They
did not care one single farthing about the grAt
question of education, nor did they understand their
own position, for they did not know that there were
not 500 men in the whole country to whom a cheap
newspaper was more necessary than themselves.
(Laughter.) When the House of Lords threw out
the bill for the repeal of the paper duty, thus break-
ing in upon the recognised and undoubted privileges
of the Commons, I saw many leading men of the
Tory party stand up at the table of the house and
express their thankfulness that the House of Lords
had dared to take the step they had taken ; and
then we come to that other great measure—the
French treaty. There could not be a measure more
calculated to add power and influence to the cause
of free trade than that treaty, and yet, as you all
know, the Tory party, not quite unanimously, for
some of them represented constituencies that would
not permit it, but, on the whole, speaking of the
bulk, they pertinaciously opposed every measure that
was necessary to enable the Government to carry
that treaty into effect. Now the Tory party have
opposed all these measures on principle, not as two
men of the same party might differ as to whether
the time was suitable to propound a certain measure,
or whether it was the proper degree to which it
ought to be carried ; they did not say that these
measures should not be proposed now, but at some
future time, but they opposed all, on the ground
that their opponents were wrong, would continue to
be wrong with respect to them, and that Parliament
was not acting wisely in taking them into conside-
ration, with a view to the settlement of them. We
may, therefore, now very fairly come to the conclu-
sion that if the Tories had been dominant during the
last 40 years, as they were during the preceding 40
—if their policy had been sustained by Parliament
and the country, everyone—certainly almost every-
one—of these measures would not have been car-
ried. To this, however, the Catholics and the
Dissenters would have been, if not persecuted, at
least, under the Test and Corporation Acts, exposed
to continual insults and degradation. To be exposed
to continual insult and degradation is, I think, the
same as to be persecuted. Rotten boroughs have
existed all over the country—there are some of them
even now—but if these gentlemen had had their
way, they would have been universal, not the excep-
tion, as in past times. The old corporations would
have remained as they were in the hands of the lords
of the manor or the half-dozen gentlemen who ma-
naged all the affairs of the town, and who did the
jobbery and corruption of the neighbourhood. The
Corn Laws would still have been on the statute-
book, we should have continually been in fear of
famine, and no doubt, in every portion of the country,
at periods of two or three years, we should have had
conspiracies and insurrections which would have
been from the state of things now existing, at least
in Great Britain. If the newspapers had now sold
for 6(1. instead of ld., it is quite obvious that there
would have been more ignorance, and where there
areignorance and suffering together, there is much
more discontent ' • and I undertake to say that during
the last few years the extension of the newspaper
press hasbeen of signal importance, and has explained
to the great mass of the people when they have been
suffering truly and distinctly the causes of that
suffering. The newspapershave
given them patience,
and the grounds of hope to tolookfoerawdyard
arrived,
betterwe
times, which, if they are not
already
Tmraesrby hadelieve will
soon approach. If the French
Treaty not been passed, our intercourse with
France, as the intercourse of our forefathers had
been, would have been one of suspicious hostility.
Now it is one of constantly-increasing friendship.
I may ask you if the Tory party—which is a super-
cilious and insolent party—(laughter and cheers)—
who is it that treats the masses, through the mouths
of its orators and through the pens of its writers,
as though we were not Englishmen, loving our
country and anxious for its welfare ? Where should
we have been now—where would this country have
been—if that Tory party for the last 40 years had
been dominant in England, and if the principles it
has avowed had been continually sustained by Par-
liament and the Government ? Nothing can be more
certain than this—that there is, and has been, no
anarchy in Europe that could have matched the
anarchy that must have existed in this country.
(Hear, hear.) The people would have been by mil-
lions and millions in a condition of poverty and
abject degradation. If your Queen had been pure
and just, as one of the angelic order, her Throne
would not have been safe under suchastateof things
as I have pictured ; and, as for the members of the

House of Lords, in all human probabilitytheywould

long ago have been emptied into tlie Thames. (Loud
laughter and cheers.) I take upon myself to charge
this great party, heretofore so powerful in the Go-
vernment of this country, with a general opposition
to right, to justice, and to morality in the course
they have adopted in public affairs. Would it have
been just and right and moral thus to persecute the
Catholics and Dissenters ? Would it have been right
and just and moral to defraud the whole people of
representation by the permanent maintenance of
rotten boroughs ? Would it have been just and right
and moral to have maintained wherever they existed
the corrupt corporations which existed in this coma-
' try previous to the year 1835 ? Would it have

been right and just and moral to raise the rents of
the landowners for ever, by inflicting the sorrows
and the sufferings of famine upon the great body

of the working people of this nation ? Would it, I

may ask, be right and just and moral to strangle

the press with taxes that the people might be kept

perpetually in ignorance ? I will say more, and
I ask you, as almost their very last crime, would
it have been right and just and moral to refuse to
ratify the treaty with France, a treaty which, I will
say, is one everlastingly honourable to the memory
of him who made it, and blessed for ever as widen-
ing the circles of good which it has conferred on two
great nations, and which it is destined to confer on
all the nations of Europe ? (Cheers.) Well, if it
was right, moral, and just to have passed all these
things, then am I not correct in saying that the Tory

party for the last 40 years have been continually at
war with right and justice and morality? (Cheers.)
Now there is another peculiarity connected with this
party ; it never seems to learn anything, and no w
they are equally disposed to evil, or, I leave them
the option, they are equally ignorant. I look to their
conduct. During the very last session they opposed

a matter of such obvious justice as the repeal of the
law under which church rates are collected ; they

opposed the abolition of certain tests by which the
universities, those great and noble institutions for

the promotion of learning, are made sectarian,when
by right they ought to be really and truly national.
(Cheers.) They opposed also a proposition of great

importance towards settling the affairs of Ireland
by diminishing or abolishing all establishments of
the Episcopal Church in that country. They won-

der that in Ireland there should be constant discon

tent and constant conspiracy and insurrections.
There is no part of this earth on which there has

been put so gross and so scandalous an insult.
(Cheers.) You may try batches of Fenians in Cork

and in Dublin, but every few years there will be
another crop of conspirators as long as universal
discontent prevails, and that discontent is founded
on such a just complaint. This Tory party is now
opposed to any improvements in the representation
of the people in Parliament. Sir John Bowring did
not say much about his toast. His toastwas " The
Commons House of Parliament." I shall not say
much about it, but I may confess that this is the
first time that I ever was asked to return thanks for
the House of Commons. (Laughter.) I have been
a member of it for about 22 years ; I ought therefore
to know a gooddeal about it, and I can say that a
great many very good measures have passed that
house since I was a member of it—l am afraid very
few of them because they were good. (Laughter.)
But they have passed, and I rejoice in their passing.
At this moment there is a general impression that
however much men may speak in favour of the Eng-

lish House of Commons it is an institution tha
might be in some degree altered, and in a very great
degree improved. (Laughter and cheers.) One of
the objects of this meeting, I take it, is this, that
whereas we admit that the House of Commons is
the great security this country has, among all its in-
stitutions, for its freedom, it is still its bounden duty
to make that freedom more extensive, and, if pos-
sible, to lay down for it more enduring foundations.
Out of about six millions of men in this country—l
believe there are really seven millions of grown-up
men—only 1,300,000 have their names on the re-
gisters of counties and boroughs. Of these, 300,000
are down twice ; andprobably, even with the greatest
expenditure, it would not be possible to bring to the
poll more than one million voters. Then would there
be much harm in permitting another half-million, or
even a million, to exercise that privilege ? There
would still be five millions left out. 1 hope they
are not worthy of that depreciation and bad lan-
guage which we sometimes hear applied to the un-
enfranchised, but there would still be four or five
millions left out. The Government scheme of 1860
proposed to bring down the franchise from £5O in
counties to £lO, and from £lO in boroughs to £6.
I have heard a good many members of the Radical
party object to that bill as being a very small and
unimportant one, as not being worth fighting for.
Now, I entirely 'differ from such au opinion. We
must bear in mind in this country that we can only
go on in the manner the general opinion of the pub-
lic in the country will sanction ; and as I regard the
Reform Bill of 1832 as a measure of prodigious value,
so I regarded that of 1860, and I would regard now
that proposition, if it were enacted by Parliament, as
a measure of very large inportance and very large
purport indeed to the object we have in view—
namely, the fair and honest representation of the
people in Parliament. (Cheers.) The Tory party
oppose it, and their pretence is that they fear very
much for the ignorance of the working man. You
must bear in mind, however, that they always point
to that most unfavourable specimen of the working
man, who does not save any money, and who never
works on a Monday. (Laughter.) If this bill had
passed, and a portion of the working men had been
let in, some of them might not vote very wisely—
nay, even a percentage might vote for a Tory can-
didate, but if I were told, and if it could be demon-
strated beyond all dispute, that the class which we
propose to admit would as systematically vote wrong
as the Tory party have done for the last forty years,
my anxiety to have them admitted would be much
diminished. For forty years the Tory party have
been always wrong. The State chariot, laden with
good and evil, has been by them impeded at every
step and every revolution of its wheels. Their deeds
are so patent to all their countrymen and to the
whole world that they never can be unwritten, and
by Englishmen should never be forgotten. (Cheers.)
This same party, who are deemed by every writer
of ordinary intelligence to have been wrong on all
these questions, are now coming forward with
measureless effrontery, and asking us to refuse to
admit the working man, who has never even had
the chance of doing wrong, for fear, if admitted,
he should not always support those measures which
are for the true interest of the country. Take Lord
Derby himself for an example. He is the eminent
leader of this most obtuse, incorrigible party, and
for the last thirty years his opinions, his speeches,
and his votes have in the main been directed against
all that policy, which the vast majority are tho-
roughly convinced has been for the true interest
of the country. There is a great Italian writer,
Machiavelli, who has expressed an opinion which,
I think, applies very well to this particular case.
He is, as you are aware, a very illustrious writer,
but he is often very much abused, as all men
are, I suppose, if they say something that is not
pleasant. He says in the capacities of mankind
there are three degrees. One man understands things
by means of his own natural endowments, another
understands things when they are explained to him,
and a third can neither understand them of himself
nor when they are explained by others—(loud laugh-
ter)—and he says, further, that the first class are
rare and excellent, the second have their merit, but
the last
Tory
stare worthless. (Great laughter.) Now, I
should like to ask you, looking back at the annals
of the
worth o
of f the
party party for the last 40 years, what is the
thet political capacity and the political
career
to the country in which they
live ? Happily for us this Tory party is now a de-
caying faction. It may seem an odd thing to say in
a town like Blackburn, in which the Tory party are
for the moment triumphant, but I, nevertheless, re-
peat it, that in this country the Tory party is but a
decaying faction, and the Liberal party, composed
of the most intelligent and just of the aristocrats,
with the great majority of the middle classes, and
the most instructed and advancing of the working
men, is rapidly becoming, and, indeed, has now be-
come, the growing powers in the nation. (Cheers.)
At this moment, perhaps, more than ever this is ap-
parent. We have just had an election, and there is a
large majority pledged to Liberal principles. The