The Sun.
London, England, 1831-03-05 00:00:00

'Wear, Lean) /am not cot of tiure tel,o would lightly'
'call on that name; end I regret that, in the anxiety of
the debate, any one should call that name in' quest4n
way that might le supposed 'to influen'te.' the ;Memberti;of
this House. But wlien'it saidl !hit• the name
Majestylsat b-eki owl th?. pul;,;c Press. I most Fr-
mark the; tb;? house is not responsible for that. We
have no controul over the Pre,s, and, therefore, neither
the House nor the Ministry are responsible. His Ma-
jesty's Ministers, most undoubtedly, have never made use
of such a word for the purpose of influencing Members.
But we have been told that my' Right Ht;n. Friend held
out the idea of a dissolution of Piktl!attoittt., IT, Right
Huh. Priem! /las "tottt,ittieqqiViteallycienisd that he had
made use of I.IIZ exPrtslon in.titztt way. But it .is, per.
haps, not going too far to .suppose,, that if the sense, of
this Home 51)91141 th.ctle against the present metrure, it
is not impossible, that reference ;pay be mole to the
opinion of the country. Put the P.,igh; lion. Gentleman
opposite has anto.7ered this with a counter threat. Ile has
said, you may disssolve the Parliament if you like ; and I
and the other one hundred and sixty-eight Members
will go back to our cousti!uents and say, we are the
defender, of your rights—we have stood up for your pri-
vileges, and we doubt not that you will return us again to
Parliament —(A cry of " No, no.") The Right Hon.
Gen;leman's own words were--,-'' I will t'o with yons 1311
its my hand—l place it betide them, and
Olen, tette'rn me again if you• wish to have yotir privileges
maintained, your rights guarded, and your franchise con-
tinued." This would he with them a very cogent argu-
ment no doubt, and those Hon. Gentlemen who were not

fortunate enough to have any constituents at all might use
the same argument with the patrotsa of the Boroughs they
represented..=::-(A laugh.) Bat I must confess that this
looks to me a little more like applying to the passions or
prejudices of a body than to the general interests and wel-
fare of the country.—(Cheers.) The Right Hon. Gell-
man had said—" Do not shift the responsibility to toy
shoulders." But no one bad said a word about the Right
Hon. :7;entleman personally or individually. Ail that had
been said was, that if the late GoVerhment could not
carry on the affairs of the State, because they resisted Re-
form—(Cheers)—and if in future they exerted themselves,
anti successfully., to bailie the endeavours of those who, in
accordance with the public opinion (and that public opi-
hion they had admitted, for if it had not b .en against them
they would not have cone out of office), then, indeed, they
must take on themselves the responsibility that attached to
the losing of this great question, in which the public anxiety
was so much absorbed. But the Right Hon. Gentle-
man says, that we have brought on this measure at a very
had time, and that we had better not hare chosen such an
Opportunity. But what was the very pledge on which we
came into office ?—(Cheers. ) It was because we deemed
Reform aec scary ; and my Noble Friend has stated, that
he would not have come in unless he had thought it ne-
cessary.—(Hear.) With these pledges on our lips, and
with this measure prescribed to us according to our bond,
to what does the friendly advice of the Right Hon. Gen-
tleman to us amount ? " Oh," says he, " now that you
are in office, say that the time is not cony, nient."—
(Laughter and cheers.) If Government had acted on that
advice, they would, indeed, be open to a fearful responsi-
bility, and with justice might hnve been charged with any
of the consequences that should arise from the expecta-
tions of the people being falsified by the conduct of those
on whom they had re!led.—(Hea.-.) I think that the
late-Gavel nment might have read something of a lesson
from the delay that had taken place in passing the Catholic
question.—(Cheers.) It that measure bad been carried
long before, not only would a protracted and bitter struggle
have been spared, but that feeling which now existed in
Ireland would never have taken ropt there---.that feeling
of restlessness which put the people of that country into
the hands of vet y men who wished to excite them, and
which accustomed them to lo k to other friends than those
whom they saw in that House, would never have had a
birth. Those things would never have taken place, which
had made the boon, when granted, of little value to what
it might have been.—(Cheers.) The case, Sir, appears
to me to he Very like that of the Sibylline books.—the

longer we refused to purchase them, the higher price we
had to pay for them, and the less was the value we got.—
(Loud cheers.) There certainly was a time when I
hoped that a gradual Reform might have been intro-
duced, by selecting one after another of the delinquent
boroughs..,-/Tht boroughs that were technically prove 1 to
he corrupt, but those great and notorious cases to which
no one could shut his eyes, and which, though not con-
victed on legal evidence, were morally so to all men's
understandings. This would have shown thlt we were
determined sub,Aantially to Reform the abuses of this
House, in which ease the people and the public opinion
would hare lem satisfied by a less sudden change than
that which is now contemplated. Put let any one look
back to the time, money, and abilities that had bevn ‘vasted
in canvassing the most paltry questions upon this subject
—such as, whether this man had received one guinea and

that man five—when it was as notorious as the sun at
noon-d iy that the boroughs were bought and sold in the

market like other vendible commodities. And after all this
painful, minute, and laborious reeearch which had been
gained in the way of Parliamentary Reform, not one great
town or important district had been introduced into that
House; I may also say, that scarcely one corrupt borough
has been deprived of the power of selling its corruption.
But the Ri.zht Hen. Member for Wareham says, that he is
ready to concede to the just demands of the people.
Mr. CALCRAFT —1 said that Burke 'said so.
Mr. S FANLEY—I am glad to have such good autho-
rith. That is very good authority indeed. But then
why do lion. Gentlemen hold op their hands and say,
" Good God, the demands of the people!" Is it for the
people in bondsmen's key to sue for those privileges which
they tray demand as a right ? If it is not inconsistent
with the privileges of that House for ahe Bill of Rights to
have the words inserted, " demand, claim, and insist on,"
surely any member of this House may say, that the people
demand their tights at your hands. But the Right Hon.
Member for Wareham thinks that this measure is to ruin
the King and the Lords; and considering that he opposes
us on principle, I cannot help thinking that he has made
rather large conctssions. The Right Hon. Member says
that lie is ready to give up non-resident freemen, but
must insist on keeping the resident, freemen of Wateham.
—(Laughter, and hear, hear.) He says that he is re tdy
to admit large towns to the right of representation, and to
agree that scene boroughs—some boroughs, Sir—should
he disfranchised- to make way for those large towns. But
the main feature of his arguments seems to be, not
that see should disfrancltise. those boroughs that are node •
2,000 inhahitants, hut those that are under 1931.—(L00d
alters.) This certainly is a nice line of distinction; but I
cannot think that he has a right to come against as on the
principle of our Bill, and quarrel with our line of demarca-
tion, when it turns out that his own line is within a hun-
dred of ours ; for though it might be imagined that it is
possible that the Right lion. Member for Wareham is
interested in his line of 1931, no ingenuity can assume
that the Noble Lord has the smallest personal interest in
fixing his line where he has.—(Loud cries of " hear,
hear, hear.")— But, let me ask, is no line to be fixe I in
these cases? And while on this point I may observe that
Mr. Pitt thought it expedient that a line should be fixed ;
for, in one of his speeches, he contends that " some no-
tion on the subject should prevail, and the representation
rescued from that accident and caprice in which it was
involved ; there should he an eternal axiom in represen-
tation, and its law should not depend on locality or name,
but on number and condition as the etandai•d."—
(Checrs.)—With ell possible respect, therefore, for the
worthy and of comae independent Member for Warham, I
think that, front the circumstances which we have
ti,
the though
c I
,171vdi
dat note vouchtogo
o there,or the
taketr truth,
occa-
sionally beard, it may he stated that Wareham is a decayed
l
f
borough, not sty jetty representing the voice of the people.
certainlyt?ith is ave
cetealn fur
,to heard,
his hat, make a civil how, and propose himself to the elec-
tors—(A laugh)—and an Hon. Friend of mine,who once
sat for that borough (there is no umd for alarms, for
I am not going to tell any secrets), when he was being
chaired in great triumph, heard one of the assembled mul-
titude—of course not one of the electors, for they were
rather scarce—ask another, who was standing near,
" Pray, who is the new Member ?" To which the other
replied, "1 am sure I don't know. Mr. Calcraft is one,
and the other is a friend of his ; but 1 don't know his
name, and I never heard it." - Now, though no doubt the
being a friend of the Right Hon. Gentleman must le a
very great recommendation, yet this certainly did look
very much like a gratuitous perception of merit on the
part of the electors. But the Right Hon. Gentleman says
he has no objection to the punishment of delinquent bo-
roughs, only let them he proved to be so. Now surely it
would be a task of no small difficulty to prove delinquency
against the three niches in the wall of Midhuret (as we
understood the Right Hon. Gentleman), or against the
green mound at Saruin ! The delinquency
can he !tone;
and, therefore, if there be a population elsewhere, taking
a miserable bribe, that is to be called delinquency, while
these other places are the essence of purity, because there
is not a soul in them to be corrupted.—(A laugh, anti
bear, hear.)-1 will not go into the question of corpora-
tion-robbery, for what with Mr. Pitt, the Hon. Member
for Corfe Castle (Mr. G. Bankes), and the Hon. Member
for Westminster (Mr. Hobhouse), 1 think that the argu-
ment has been as completely set aside as any I have ever
heard.—(Hear, hear.) But when we are going to the
question of delinquency, I must ask whether that alone is