The Sun.
London, England, 1865-11-02 00:00:00

Mr. Gladstone in Scotland.

GLASGOW, Wednesday.
The proceedings in connection with the visit of
the Chancellor of the Exchequer to this city com-
menced this morning with the presentation of an
address from the Parliamentary Reform Union, in
the Trades'-hall. Mr. Graham, M.P., occupied
the chair, supported by Mr. Dalglish, Mr. Lamont,
M.P., the Lord Provost, Admiral Erskine, Mr.
Moir, and Mr. Crum-Ewing, M.P.
_ _

The CHAIRMAN introduced the deputation of the
Reform Union, one of whom, Mr. Moir, read the
address
To THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE,

M.P., CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER.
" The members of the Glasgow Reform Union desire to
join in the welcome given to you on the occasion of your
visit to this city.:,They remember with pride your Scottish
descent, the connection of your ancestry with the shire of
Lanark, and that your high and honourable public career
contributes to the honour of Scotland, whose honour is
identified with that of all her sons. We also profoundly
appreciate the many happy results to the whole Empire
which have followed your financial and other measures,
liberating commerce from many restrictions, and pray that
you may be long spared to confer further benefits on your
fellow-countrymen by the same liberal and enlightened
statesmanship.
" We look forward with much hope to your wise policy
still further lightening the burden of taxation which yet
presses heavily upon the people, whose physical and moral
condition would become proportionally improved, and the
mass of pauperism which yet disgraces our country thus
be largely diminished.
"The members of this Union rejoice in your hearty ex-
pressions of trust in the people ; that your sympathies are
entirely with them ; and that your desire is to see a great
number who are at present debarred from citizenship ad-
mitted within the pale of the Constitution.!
"We rejoice that you have declared that If forty-nine
fiftieths of the working-classes are to be excluded from the
franchise it is upon those who maintain that exclusion that
it rests to show its necessity.' Holding the maxim of Sid-
ney, That the liberties of nations are from God and nature,
not from kings,' we regard the exclusion of the working
classes from political liberty to be a national injustice, and
its continuance therefore unsafe for the nation; that this
disfranchisement by those who are in power is in violation
of the law of Christ, who said, ' Whatsoever ye would that
mon should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.'

"We deeply regret that it should be necessary for Bri-
tish workmen to emigrate before they can obtain the status
of citizens,

" We believe that not until the interests of the working
classes are directly attended to by representatives in whose
election they share, will your noble effort for financial re-
form be duly supported to a legitimate extent, their ideas
of economy, acquired in the school of necessity, being very
different from tho ideas of those who at present control the
public expenditure.

"We therefore hope that in the approaching session of
Parliament a comprehensive measure of reform, extending
the franchise both in counties and boroughs, and providing
for a redistribution of seats, maybe introduced and success-
fully carried through by the Government of which you are
so influential a member. We believe that no other legisla-
tive measure will tend so much to the general elevation of
our fellow-countrymen ; that no other measure will so effec-
tually promote a truly national system of education for the
entire people ; that no other measure will tend so much to
sweeten the breath of society, and beget contentment, peace,
and the mutual reconciliation of all classes of the community.

"We pray, honoured sir, that your life's work may be
crowned by seeing the groat mass of your fellow-country-
men enjoying the dignified and ennobling position of citi-
zenship, their children having free access to all the means
of the highest,Christian civilisation, and Britain maintain-
ing her precedence of teaching nations how to live."
MR. GLADSTONE, who was received with enthu-
siastic cheers, said—Although the straits of restricted
time are hard upon me, although I feel it my duty
chiefly to endeavour to pay honour to the commu-
nity of Glasgow in that place where I am after a
few minutes to meet that community as a whole,
and as it is represented by those whom it has chosen
to high office, yet I could not reconcile it to my
feelings to quit this room without begging you to
accept my very cordial acknowledgments for the
address which you have been so good as to present
to me in a manner so gratifying to my feelings--
(cheers)--and while I feel myself bound to eschew
detail—even to request indulgence on account of
the necessity of the occasion—l must thank you,
and thank you very particularly, for reminding me
upon such an opportunity of my connection, not
only with Scotland at large, but I must even pre-
sume to say with the city of Glasgow, through the
medium of the shire of Lanark. (Cheers.) I think,
gentlemen, there are very few of those who can
claim a connection with Scotland who are indis-
posed to make that claim wherever they may find
themselves. If Scotland is not ashamed of her
sons, her sons are not ashamed of Scotland, and the
memory of the parents to whom I owe my being
combines with various other considerations to make
me glad and thankful to remember that the blood
which runs in my veins is exclusively Scottish.
(Cheers.) Gentlemen, you have touched in this
address on questions of the greatest importance
which I must not here endeavour to open, but, again

appealing to your indulgence, I will simply say one

word upon them taken in the mass. In the first
'place, I am glad that you have expressed with
manly, outspoken plainness and distinctness the
sentiments which you entertain upon subjects of
great public interest and importance. It is by this
plain outspeaking of sentiments, by reserving no-
thing, by keeping in your breasts no silent grudges,
by bringing out into the light alike our subjects of
satisfaction, our wishes for improvement, and, if
there be such, our causes for complaint, that we in
this happy country make common stock, as it were,
of the whole of our public ideas and feelings, and
lay a foundation upon which those who represent
you and those who advise the Crown may pro-
ceed with some confidence in their endeavours to
suggest measures for the benefit of the country.

(Loud cheers.) And, gentlemen, you are well aware
that as the proposition which I have just ventured
to state applies to every question, so it applies with
even still greater force to those that are of the most
difficult character in themselves, and to those upon
which, although not very difficult in themselves, an
extensive variation may prevail, although it may be
foreign to the merits of the question itself. With
regard to the great subject which gives its title to
your association, I simply beg you to put faith not
so much in a man, not so much in a set of men, not
so much in the chosen representatives of the people
at any given moment, as in the institutions and
habits of the country. (Cheers.) Whatever wants
are deeply felt, whatever convictions are widely and
profoundly entertained, we may be assured, for we
know it from a long and extensive experience, these
wants and these conditions will make their way to
the surface, they will do themselves justice, and the
results of that free bearing and free discussion which
every opinion from every quarter maintains among
us is sure to be, not perhaps as quickly as the more
eager among us could desire, but yet, if slowly, on
that account all the more securely, a settlement
conformable upon the whole to public justice.
Without in the slightest degree attempting at the
present moment to foreshadow or to forecast any
method of proceedings—nay, even admitting the
discouragement that may have arisen from former
events with regard to the particular subject of the
franchise, with unbounded confidence I am per-
Iva that whenever Parliament shall find the
°PPortunity of addressing itself to the consideration
of that question, and will approach it in a spirit on
the one hand of prudence, and on the other hand of
manliness and courage, the end which they will pro-
pose to themselves will be public justice, and they
will seek, by any provisions they may incorporate in
the law, neither to continue,
nor to set up, nor in
any manner to favour dominion, or the undue in-
fluence of one class as compared h
with another, but
in a fair adjustment of common
interests to make provision for theg tlsiaspnpdinceosms common
for thecheers.) strength and prosperity of the country.
(Loud
The proceedings terminated in cheers for Mr.
Gladstone, the chairman, and Mr. Daloish.
Leaving the Trades-hall at half-past one o'clock
Mr. Gladstone drove to the Central Cooking Depot
inspected which he proceeded
in 'Tollgate, having
to the City-hall, where the ceremony of presenting
him with the freedom of the city was to take place,
and every part of the hall was crowded. Mrs. and
the Misses Gladstone, Ladyßlantyre, and the Mar-
quis of Lorn occupied seats in the front gallery.
On the platform were the magistrates and members
of the Council, Mr. Dalglish, -M.P., Mr. Graham,
M.e., Sir E. Colebrooke, Mr. Crum-Ewing, M.P.,
Mr. Merry, Al.p., Capt. Spiers, M.P., the Dean of
Faculty, &c. At two o'clock, Mr. Gladstone, ac-

companled by the Lord Provost, appeared on the

platform, and was received with loud and con-
tinuous cheering.
The Loin PROVOST, in presenting the freedom of
the city to the right hon. gentleman, referred to the

distinguished services which Mr. Gladstone had ren-

dered to the country, and the important changes

which he had effected in our financial system for

the relief of our home trade and manufactures.

An address having been read by the Town Clerk,
the freedom of the city, inclosed in a massive gold
box, was presented by the Lord Provost to the right
hon. gentleman, who, on receiving it, warmly shook
hands with the chief magistrate, and then turned to
address the meeting, by whom he was received with
loud and long continued cheering. The audience
rose to greet him, and for some moments there
was a complete:ovation, the ladies in', the gallery
waving their handkerchiefs, and the gentlemen their
hats. Silence having at length been restored,
Mr. GLADSTONE said—l need hardly tell you
that it is with the liveliest and deepest feelings of
satisfaction that I accept from your hands, my lord,
the gift you have been pleased to present to me, o
°. be preserved, I hope, for many long years anion
the records and the treasures of my family. (Cheers.)
I have no doubt, indeed I feel too well assured that

a critical judgment might find ample scope for re-
mark upon the too flattering terms in which you
have been pleased to advert to my public conduct,
but still I presume to say that such acknowledg-
ments as you are pleased to make on occasions like

the present of the feeble and humble efforts of any
individual to render services to his country are the
choicest rewards that we can receive for the past,

and are the greatest encouragements and incentives,

the greatest and most powerful aids for the future.
(Cheers.) But such occasions lead us to review the

position in which we stand, and to reflect upon that
which has been and that which is to la e ; and per-.

haps it might at first sight appear strange if upon
an occasion so joyous, when I have received at your
hands an honour so deeply valued, I confess to you
that a powerful, perhaps a predominant feeling in
my mind at the present juncture is a feeling of
solitariness in the struggles and in the career of

public life. (Hear, hear.) The Provost has alluded
briefly, but touchingly and justly alluded to the loss

we have just sustained, and has intimated to you

that the covenant which brings me before you was a
covenant concluded before that loss had taken place;
but indeed the retrospect of the last five years is in
this regard a touching and melancholy retrospect.
Sad, numerous, and wide have been the blanks which
death has made in the ranks of our public men,
and not alone of our official public men, for many
in this country is the public man, many is the

statesman who renders true and vital service to the

land, but who has never touched a public salary.
(Cheers.) Within these five years we hare lost him

whom I must name as the most illustrious in his

position and his office—the beloved husband of our
Queen, revered, admired, loved by all classes of the
community, and one whose departure from this
mortal home has inflicted on the Sovereign so dear

to our hearts a loss that never on this side the grave
can be repaired. (Hear, hear.) I pass from the

Prince Consort to another name, widely, indeed,
separated from him in social rank, but yet a name
which is great at this moment in the esteem of the
country, and which will be for ever great in its

annals—l mean the name of Richard Cobden—

(loud cheers)—so simple, so true, so brave, and so
far seeing a man, who knew how to associate him-

self at their very root with the deep interests of the
community in which he lived, and to whom it was
given to achieve, through the moral force of reason
and persuasion, numerous triumphs that have made
his name immortal. (Cheers.) But if I look to the
ranks of official life, perhaps it may cause even sur-
prise, though we know that our losses have been
heavy, when I say that my own recollection supplies
me with the names of no less than 17 persons who
have died within the last five years, and whose duty
and privilege it was to advise the Sovereign as mem-

bers of the Government of this country. (Hear, hear.)
As to the last of these men, the distinguished man
whose loss at this moment the whole community
in every class and in every corner of the land
deeply and sincerely deplores, we have this
consolation—that it had pleased the Almighty to
afford him strength and courage which carried him
to a ripe old age in the active service of his coun-
try. (Hear, hear.) It has not been so with all.
It has been my lot to follow to the grave several
of those distinguished men who have been called
away from the scene of their honourable labours—not,
indeed, before they had acquirei the e3teem and
confidence of the country, but still at a period when
the minds and expectations of their fellow-country-
men were fondly fixed upon the thought of what
they might yet achieve for the public good. Two
of your own countrymen, Lord Elgin and Lord
Dalhousie, Lord Canning, Lord Herbert, Sir Geo.
Cornewall Lewis, and the Duke of Newcastle, by
some singular dispensation of Providence, have been
swept away in the full maturity of their faculties
and in the early stages of middle life—a body of
men strong enough of themselves in all the gifts of
wisdom and of knowledge, of experience and of elo-
quence, to have equipped a Cabinet for the service
of the country. (Cheers.) And therefore, my lord,
when I look back upon the years that have passed,
though they have been joyful years in many re-
spects, because they have been years in which the
Parliament of this country has earned fresh and
numerous titles to the augmented confidence of its
citizens, they are also mournful in that I seem to
see the long procession of the figures of the dead,
and I feel that those who are left behind are in one
sense solitary upon the stage of public life. (Cheers.)
But, my Lord Provost, it is characteristic of this
country that her people have been formed for many
generations in those habits of thought and action
which belong to regulated freedom, and one happy
and blessed result of that description of public edu-
cation is that the country ceases to be dependent for
its welfare upon this man or upon that. There never
has yet been in the history of the world a nation
truly free—l mean a nation that is free not only in
laws and institutions but in thoughts and acts—there
has never been a nation in this sense possessed of
freedom, and which has likewise had large and
spreading and valuable interests, which has found
a want of men to defend them. Nor, my Lord Pro-
vost, I am thankful to say, have we yet been reduced
to this extremity, and I trust that I am not going
beyond the liberty of an occasion such as this when,
standing before you at a moment of such public in-
terest, I venture to express my confidence personally
in the state of the Government and the country.
Her Majesty,
ch.
andcolslea: from wiselyvare of the heavy loss which we
have sustained,
aexineorncisginthge statesmen
epnre-
rogative, has of
the country Earl Russell to fill the place of Prime
Minister. (Loud cheers.) I know well the inclina-
tion of those whom I am addressing, n
whole community, to trust more to the
also o
eevidencfethoef
facts than to that of words, which may be idle and
delusive—(hear, hear)—and I presume to say before
you that the name of Lord Russell is in itself a pledge
and a promise to a people. (Cheers.) A man who
fought for British liberty, for our institutions, and
for our laws, but with a view to the strengthening
of those laws, who has fought on a hundred fields
for their improvement, is not likely now, when in
his 73d honourable year, to unlearn the lesson of his
whole life, to change the direction of his career, and
to forfeit the inheritance which he has secured in the
hearts and memories of his countrymen. (Cheers.)
Therefore, my Lord Provost, I venture to think that
the country has reasonable assurance in the name of
the person who has for the second time assumed the
responsibility of guiding the councils of a Crown,
with the aid of many experienced and distinguished
persons whom I am happy to call my colleagues—l
therefore hope that the country has reasonable as-
surance that the same wise and enlightened spirit
which has for the last 30 or 35 years distinguished
in the main the policy of British legislation and the
conduct of the Executive Government will still con-
Provost, and
thing to be exhibited by those who will have the re-
sponsibility
Lord
through which we have
in-
deed too numerous t‘ vebeen
The acts of legislation
my share has
secondary—
those acts of legislation
direction of public affairs. My
if we look to the acts of the period
passing, they are o
allow of reference in detail.
been,_a_nd of government in which
if earnest, yet
and government have

embraced almost every subject that can be of inte-

rest to a free and civilised community. In the period

which our own recollection comprehends we have

seen the popular franchise wisely and temperately,
yet boldly, enlarged ; we have seen the education of
the people immensely extended, with, at the same
time, all due regard to the sanctity and integrity of
religion on the one hand, and to the feelings of pri-
vate conscience on the other—(hear, hear)—we have
seen religious disabilities, for the most part, swept
away ; we have seen questions of social policy deeply
interesting and deeply momentous asserting from
year to year greater and still greater importance ;

we have seen, as I have said, the principle on which
and the method by which taxes are taken from the
people largely reconsidered and revised ; and we
have seen all these changes made with a view to the

promotion of one great end—the freedom of inter-
course not only among the various members of our

own community, but also among the various mem-
bers of the great human family, the nations of the
world. (Cheers.) Well, my Lord Provost, in my
prime I have taken part in the struggles of political
parties, and it may be my lot to continue to bear a
share in them, and I will not disavow nor under-

value the use of party combinations. It is by means

of party combinations as a general rule, and by those

means alone, that the matured convictions of expe-
rience can find the final and distinctive expression
in the form of laws and institutions ; but yet party
is only an instrument ; it is an instrument for ends
higher than itself, and those ends are the strength,
the welfare, and the prosperity of our country.
(Cheers.) We may now presume to say that it is the

peculiar felicity of our time that the good of each to
the country is not now to be regarded as it was in

old times, as something distinct from the good of the
rest of mankind ; but, on the contrary, when we la-
bour for the advancement of our countrymen we la-
bour likewise for the advantage of the whole world.
(Cheers.) Therefore, my Lord Provost, when I
look back on the numberless changes in these various
chapters of legislative and constitutional improve-

meat, I confess that the most fertile result of all—

although I have no desire to disparage the others,
for they are intimately woven together, as it were,

with a silver cord—the most fertile result probably
is that which I may describe in the well-known
familiar and beloved words—the promotion of free
trade. (Cheers.) It is quite unnecessary before

this audience—l may venture to say, it is unneces-
sary before any audience of my countrymen—to
dwell at this period of our experience upon the
material benefits that have resulted from free trade,
upon the enormous augmentation of national power
which it has produced, or even upon the increased
concord which it has tended so strongly to promote

throughout the various sections of the community.
But it is the characteristic of the system which we

so denominate, that while it comes forward with
homely pretensions and professes, in the first in-
stance, to address itself mainly to questions of

material and financial interests, yet, in point of
fact, it is fraught and charged throughout with im-
mense masses of moral, social, and political results.
(Cheers.) I will not now speak to the very large
measure of those results which are domestic, but I
would ask you to consider with me for a few

moments the effect of the system of unrestricted
intercourse upon the happiness of the human family
at large. Now, as far as that happiness is connected
with the movements of nations, war has been its
great implement. And what have been the great
causes of wars ? They do not come upon the world
by an inevitable necessity or through a providential
visitation. They are not to be compared with pes-

tilences and famines, even ; in that respect, though
we have learnt, and justly learnt, that much of

what we have been accustomed to call Providential
visitation is owing to our neglect of the wise and
prudent means which man ought to find in the just

exercise of his faculties for the avoidance of calm

mity ; but with respect to wars, they are the direct
and universal consequence of the unrestricted, too
commonly of the unbridled, passions and lusts of

men. If we go back to a very early period of
society we find a state of things in which, as be-
tween one individual and another, no law obtained
—a state of things in which the first idea almost of

those who desired to better their condition was
simply to better it by the abstraction of their neigh-
bour's property. (Laughter.) In the early periods
of society piracy and unrestrained freebooters among
individuals were what wars, for the most part, have
been in the more advanced periods of human his-
tory. Why, what is the case with a war ? It is a
case in which both cannot be right, but in which
both may be wrong. (Laughter and applause.) I
believe if the impartiality of the historian surveys a
very large proportion of the wars that have deso-
lated the world—some, indeed, there may be, and
undoubtedly there have been, in which the arm of
valour has been raised simply for the cause of free-
dom and justice—that the most of them will be
found to belong to that less satisfactory category
in which folly, passion, greediness, on both sides,
have led to effects which afterwards, when too late,
have been so much deplored. We have had in the
history of the world religious wars. The period of
these wars I trust we have now outlived. lam not
at all sure that there was not quite as much to be
said for them as for a great many other wars which
have been recorded in the page of history. The
same folly which led to the one led in another
form to the other. We have had dynastic
wars, wars of succession, in which for long periods
of years the heads of rival families have fought
over the bleeding persons of their people to deter-
mine who should govern them. I trust we have
outlived one period of wars of that class. Another
class of wars, of a more dangerous and yet
a more extensive description, have been territorial
war. No doubt it is a very natural, though it is a
very dangerous and a very culpable sentiment,which

leads nations to desire their neighbours' property,
and I am sorry to think that we have had examples
—perhaps we have an example even at this moment
before our eyes—to show that even in the most
civilised parts of the world, even in the midst of the
oldest civilisation upon the continent of Europe,
that thirst for territorial acquisition is not yet ex-
tinct. (Cheers.) But I wish to call your attention
to a peculiar form in which during the latter part
of human history this thirst for territorial acqui-
sition became an extensive cause of bloodshed.
It was when the colonising power took possession
of the European nations. It seems that the world
was not wide enough for them. One would have
thought, upon overlooking the broad places of the
earth, and thinking how small a portion of them is
even now profitably occupied, and how much smaller
a portion of them a century or two centuries ago—
one would have thought there would have been
ample space for all to go and help themselves; but,
notwithstanding this, we found it necessary, in the
business of planting colonies, to make those colonies
the cause of bloody conflicts with our neighbours ;
and there was at the bottom of that policy this old
lust of territorial aggrandisement. When the state
cf things in Europe had become so far settled that
that lust could not be as freely indulged in as it
might in barbarous times, we then carried our ar-
maments and our passions across the Atlantic, and
we fought upon American and other distant soilsfor
the extension of our territory. That was one of the
most dangerous and plausible, in my opinion, of all
human errors ; it was one to which a great portion
of the wars of the last century was due; bat had our
forefathers then known, as we now know, the bless-
ings of free commercial intercourse, all that blood-
shed would have been spared. (Cheers.) For what
was the dominant idea that governed this policy ?
It was this, that colonising, indeed, was a great
function of European nations, but the purpose of
that colonisation was to reap the profits of extensive
trade with the colonies which were founded (hear),
and consequently it was not the error of one nation
or of another—it was the error of all nations alike.
It was the error of Spain in Mexico, it was the error
of Portugal in Brazil, it was the error of France in
Canada and Louisiana, it was the error of England
in her colonies in the West Indies and her posses-
sions in the East ; and the whole idea of colonisa-
tion, all the benefits of colonisation, were summed
up in this, that when you had planted a colony on
the other side of the ocean, you were to allow that
colony to trade exclusively and solely with your-
selves. (Hear.) But from that doctrine flowed im-
mediately all those miserable wars, because if people
believed, as they then believed, that the trade with