The Sun.
London, England, 1847-09-21 00:00:00

registration courts—many as are the little boroughs
which maintain their existence, and exercise that
power, against which the whole country so loudly
protested a few years since—infinite as is the amount
of sinister influences, and direct intimidation of the
soul and character-corrupmg-power of bribery—still
with all these mischiefs, and all these defects, the
people are still making progress in their influence
upon the Government and the legislation of the day,
and showing that, like an infant Hercules, they can,
while only in their cradle of political being, strangle
the enemy which threatens to sting them to death,
and prey upon their very heart's blood.—(Cheers.)
Let us, then, not spend our strength in unavailing
regrets, but rather let us strive for the possession of
our liberties and rights by the means which are
already provided for us, and although the registra-
tion court is a low, dark, tortuous, and contemptible
thing, yet through this, as through the shed or the
workshop, the nation may yet advance till it enters
the magnificent temple of liberty and public justice.
—(Loud cheers.) Encouraged thus, let our motto
be still " Onwards, onwards," to their full realization
—" Onwards" with the extension of the suffrage, till
the right of its exercise, and the capacity for its wise
and just exercise, shall be universal throughout the
land. " Onwards" with the cause of elucation, till
light shall be kindled up in the remotest district of
our land, and until upon all shall dawn the beaming
lustre of intelligence, and its rising sun, gladdening
with its beams the face of nature, shall show varied
objects of beauty, harmony, and gladness, which till
lately were shrouded in darkness. •" Onwards" with
the cause of humanity, till every prison shall become
a reformatory school, and the gibbet be no longer the
strange symbol of civilization, but only a dark
memorial, a tradition of an existince linking us with
past ages of barbarism and vindictiveness. " On-
wards" with whatever tends 'to refine and exalt
humanity, till we find in equality of taxation the full
development of free-trade principles. " Onwards"
in the return of one after another of those who are
one with the people, till we find that not only the
barriers of the Legislative body are not insuperable
wherever there is talent, integrity, and appropriate
mental power, and free choice on the part of the
people, but till talent finds its way still further than
this, for the reformation of the Commons House of
Parliament will be incomplete till the people's work
is done by the people's men of business, and till
those who give their toil shall have the honour
and emolument as well as the labour.—(Cheers.)
Why the veriest showman who travels through the
street with his little theatre upon his shoulders, and
with his cabinet of curiosities in his pocket—the man
who sets up his theatre and gathers a troop of boys
around him, who moves the wires of his puppets and
pulls the strings which makes them squeak and
gibber and beat one another, and who conducts their
little wooden drama to its final catastrophe—why he
has the pennies, the halfpence, and the farthings
which his exertions call forth from the admiring
spectators—the money goes into his own pocket, and
the case is only altered when the occupation of the
travelling showman is exchanged for the government
of a great country.—(Laughter and cheers.) It was
a grand and encouraging instance for the people of
this country that that great ecclesiastical power which
had so often trodden down liberty in the dust, which
had so often waged a deadly warfare against the
freedom of mind and conscience, which had upon so
many occasions been the ally of tyrants—that that
power now gives the watchword of liberty, and that
the hearts of millions beat responsively to its sound ;
and if we of this country are making a peaceful pro-
gress, if we can work our way by the fight, not
of the battle-field, but of opinion, let us not
judge too closely or sternly of those who may be dif-
ferently situated, let us not be ready, as some are, to
take up the cry, and say, " How these people damage
the cause of liberty by their violence ! Why are they
not quiet, why are they not as peaceful in one part
of Italy as in others ? Why are not the people of
Messina as quiet as the people of Turin ? Why do
they not keep their rage within bounds ?" Why,
they have endured the grinding yoke for ages, and
God grant them strength now to achieve their
triumph ; and if barbarism will enter the field with
civilization, if all that can be done to put down liberty
shall be done, why, then when they have an oppor-
tunity, let the people of Italy show that they have as
strong feelings in the cause of liberty, and those,
combined with the strong arm of material power,
shall succeed in obtaining for them the noblest
triumph—the triumph of freedom—and thus make
their country again " great, glcrious and free, the
gem of the earth," the delight and glory of all
nations.—(Cheers.) Onwards may the spirit of
Italy yet drive ; though her chariot be the war car, it
is not the car of conquest, which drags after it the
mangled remains of the innocent and oppressed—it
is not the car of the id©l Juggernaut, which more
completely crushes the votaries who pay it
their homage in the dust—their car is the
car of freedom followed in its course by
millions, and its journey is from bright to
still brighter scenes. It proceeds with the power of
our locomotives, and like them it drags its multitude
towards the peaceful delights of home, and the sojourn
of happiness amid friends and neighbours. May that
time be arrived for Italy, and may England in sym-
pathy with her, make still further and still more rapid
advances in the career of liberty.—(Cheers.) What-
ever may be the occasions for other nations repelling
force by force, we have no such necessity, we have no
need of raising the song, " 0 give us death or liberty."
Die for liberty! why you get a great deal more of it
by living for it! It was a wholesome rebuke con-
tained in the posthumous works of the late Rev.
Sidney Smith, when he said, " What trash to be
brawling in the streets about the bold anthem of
' Erin go bragh,' a far better anthem would be
' Erin go bread and cheese.' " Let us endeavour to
obtain some tangible good; to retain something within
our grasp. Let us aim at obtaining a system of
equalised taxation, at removing all causes of oppres-
sion, striking off the fetters from industry ; let us
strive to deal with the poor , in charity and Christian
kindness, let wealth have its proper scope, and
by every possible means endeavour to improve
the condition of mankind and of society. With
respect to the recent election at Oldham, there
are one or two points upon which it would not be-
come me to be silent. Till within the last ten months
I had never set foot in that town, I had no personal
acquaintance with a siugle individual there ; some
copies of my lectures delivered at this hall had found
their way to that town, they made me known, and in
one district, that of Reyton, so much sympathy had
they produced, that out of 120 votes I received 90.
The persons who first introduced me were persons of
humble station, and at the first scarcely expected to
see their lanours crowned with success. A commit-
tee was at length formed, with no external influences
to cheer them, with most powerful interference to
contend against, with nothing personally for them-
selves to gain or to hope for by the result ; they
struggled night and day, they canvassed the con-
stituency entirely themselves. I never asked a single
person for his vote, I never thanked a single person
for his vote, and I never expended a single shilling or
sixpence throughout the whole contest.—(Loud
cheers.). They bore the whole brunt and burden of
of it, they did so most truly, most nobly, and at the
conclusion of the contest there is (pointing to a gen-
tleman standing near him on the platform) the honest
hand that gave me the railway ticket to bring me
home from Oldham.—(Loud cheers.) I do think,
therefore, that I have reason to be proud of the result
of an election which was thus begun, thus carried on,
and thus completed. I feel that the honour is the
greater, because tendered to me upon grounds so
pure, so simple, and so truly consistent. .I would
not say anything disrespectful of the power against
which I had to contend, but this I will say, that it
conveys this lesson, that failure in such a case has no
claim for respect.—(Cheers.) For my future course
my object will be never to show myself unworthy of
the true-hearted sympathy which demonstrates itself
so strongly, so overpoweringly around me this even-
tflinrnugeen;_my aim will be till I die, as it has been through
na y liohfeee,,arblt to
to
menas dso assume any position of leading or in-
fluence,
which
uthyasas
existedonofe i
thuat
allb anadgeosf
although it has borne different denominations at
diffe-
rent times, and has apparently been devoting its
efforts
dutyto
idft eh ra et
bt
aoubjects..
oldenuata
I would endeavour to do
our country took the wCihTil:ti
the pains and penalties of martyrdom trend:el;
os sooner than
equivocate or abandon what they held
cheerfully to the dungeon, the scaffold, or the stake,
and would not compromise what was dear to their
love of truth, which, in later times, we see in the
Barons of this country, asserting the principles which
were then limited in their application, but which, in
their nature, embraces the whole or the principles of
liberty, claiming from despotism " that justice should
not be bought, sold, or delayed, to any one"—that
band and spirit appearing again in the Protestant
Reformers, those who would not bow their con-
sciences to the yoke of priestly domination, who
boldly asserted their own individual right to think,
to read, and to judge for themselves, and
who claimed the liberty to pray and praise
according to the dictates of their own re-
ligious opinions—that spirit which, in still
later times, showed itself in the Commons of Eng-
land, subjecting to legal responsibility even the
Crown itself, and erecting within a few years the
Commonwealth of England, which in the promulga-
tion of its first laws anticipated almost all the mighty
advances which have since been made from that period
to the present—that spirit which has obtained for this
country its bright crown of literature, and which
shines so splendid in the pages of Milton, of Aken-
side, and Burns, in the noble speculations of the
ITespie " of More, that. 144:y gloq.uence of -Godwie,
and other great writers,'f'ormed to advocate the rights
the priviliges of man—that spirit which became in-
carnate in Tooke, in Thelwall, and in Hardy, which
became incarnate in the spirit of those who, led by

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