The Sun.
London, England, 1841-07-03 00:00:00

TOWER HAMLETS.

OFFICIAL Di.CLARATION OF THE POLL.
Yesterday having been appointed for the official declaration of
the poll for this borough, a large but very orderly crowd as-
sembled in front of the hustings on Stepney-green. The
several candidates, with their respective friends, were early in
attendance.
Alr. P. Thompson was accompanied by his father, Colonel
Peyronet Thompson.
At one o'clock the Returning Officer announced the num-
bers to be as follows :

Mr. Clay 4,706—( Cheers. )
Col. Fox 4,096—( Cheers. )
Mr. Robinson 2,lB3—(Cheers and groans. )
Mr. Hutchison 1,775 —( Cheers and groans.)
Mr. P. Thompson 831—( Cheers from the Chartists.)
The Returning Officer then declared, amidst cheers and up-
roar, that Wm. Clay, Esq., and Chas. Richard Fox, Esq., a
Colonel in her Majesty's service,
were duly elected to repre•
sent the borough in the ensuing Parliament.
Mr. CLAY then came forward, amidst much cheering and
some confusion, to address the meeting. He offered them his
heartfelt thanks for the high honour they had done him in again
electing him as a Member to serve them in Parliament.—
(Cheers and uproar.) That result was doubly gratifying in-
asmuch as it again placed him in his former proud position,and
gave their sanction to his past services.—(Cheers and uproar. )
So little preparation had there been for canvassing in his
favour, that each elector had not been solicited for his vote;
but where his friends had made such solicitations they had
found that almost every elector had been canvassed by his op-
ponents. Notwithstanding these circumstances, let them
look at his position on the poll.—(Loud cheers.) The
Times Newspaper had declared that the result of the election
would show that he would be " excavated " from the borough ;
but the event had proved that it was not easy to " excavate "
the Clay of the Tower Hamlets.—(Loud cheers and
laughter.) He had no recourse to unfair means for the
purpose of defaming his adversaries ; and he regetted that
seeing the placards that emanated from their committees,
he could not say they had imitated his forbearance.
Mr. Robinson had thought fit to attack him upon the hustings
without the slightest provocation, and while he (Mr. Clay)
had no opportunity of making a reply. Mr. Robinson had
called him a placeman ; but he had not adduced any instance in
which he had sacrificed their interests for the advancement of
his own.—(Loud cheers.) He had supported Earl
Grey's Government until he felt himself bound to differ
from them upon their policy with regard to Ireland. He had
joined the present Government when he found they had made
the Ballot an open question, and that they had united them-
selves more sincerely than ever with the people. He did not
think his acceptance of office could militate against him; and it
was the opinion of the greatest statesman that the servants of the
Crown should be chosen from those who had enjoyed the confi-
dence of the people.—(Cheers.) If he wished to retaliate he
might find much that was contradictory—much that was amus-
ing in the conduct of his Hon. Friend--(Cheers and laughter)
—from the first moment he had supported the Reform Bill
until the present hour, when he had put himself for-
ward as the Tory candidate for the 'Power Hamlets.
He might also find much to comment upon in the conduct of
his lion. Friend in Parliament, where one vote clashed with
the other, and where each sentence in his ingenious speeches
confuted its predecessor—where a bit of Liberalism was stuck
side by side with a vast lump of Toryism—and where the
prini;iples of free trade and monopoly were mixed together in
most admirable and remarkable confusion—(Cheers and laugh-
ter )—but he would pass from these topics, and he believed his
Hon. Friend had received a sufficiently significant lesson at
their hatids, and to their tender mercies he wil-
lingly consigned him.—(Renewed cheers, and laughter.)
lie could not but congratulate the electors on the brilliant re-
sult of that struggle, a result which would have a most im-
portant
influence on the decision of those great questions upon
which an appeal had been made to the country.—(Hear, hear.)
He did not say that solely because the constituency of the
Tower Hamlets was the most numerous in the kingdom,
and equal to any for wealth, intelligence, and respectability
—(Hear)--but became the electors of that
.borough were
beyond all comparison the best test in the
kingdom of the
opiniuns of the middle classes of society—(Cheers)—too
wealthy, too numerous, to be purchased ; too proud, too
spirited, too independent, to be intimidated; safe from the in-
trusion of an insolent and domineering aristocracy ; not over.
shadowed t.y some vast lord of the soil, nor exposed to the visits
of fine ladies in their carriages, who came round to the trades-
men at the other end of the town, and in exceedingly
"
soft and dulcet tilhes, but in language which, though it
appeared to be a request was something occasionally like
a menace.—(Cries
election
C was a
fsar better
of near, hear. ) The decision of
that criterion of public opinion, and
ef unjust monopolies. With
would go far to seal the doom
those monopolies England could no longer maintain her proud
position. The day of her decline might be distant, but if we
continued our anti-commercial policy, it was fixed in the book
of fate. The Hon. Gentleman then proceeded to address the
operative electors, and to defend himself from the charge of
being harsh and cruel t, the poor. To prove the
injustice of the charge, the Hon. Gentleman referred to the
part which he had taken in establishing schools for the poor in
Bethnal-green, to which he had subscribed hundreds of pounds
within the last few years. With respect to the Poor-laws, he
was quite prepared to enter fully into that question and to
listen to every case of oppression. He had opposed the old
system because he believed it to be harsh and oppressive to the
poor, and he was quite prepared to oppose whatever bore a
similar character in the new Poor-law.—( Cheers.) He be-
lieved, however, that those who had agitated that question
were influenced only by a desire to divert the attention of the
people from the real cause of distress. The great question
upon which the prosperity of the working classes depended was
the Corn-laws. The Tories asked the working classes to
sacrifice the substance for the shadow. They wished to reduce
them to the condition of beggars, and then they would dole
out to them a beggar's alms. The Hun. Gentleman concluded
by thanking the electors for tha supper): which had been