The Sun.
London, England, 1847-07-08 00:00:00

CANTERBURY ELECTION.
On Tuesday evening a numerous and influential meet-
ing of the electors of Canterbury was held at the Victoria
Rooms, in that city, at the invitation of the Honourable
rm s anu ;,‘
oaccount o f
suffrageshis s t ewa at r
thedsh stewardship," ''
G. P. Smythe, the present Member, in order that he
forth might
hisre nc
ldaei
and
approachingse
election. At half-past eight o'clock the hall wast
thronged with electors of every shade of politics, Whig,
Tory, and Radical, and on the motion of Mr. Sladden,
Mr. Wooton was called to the chair. Shortly after-
wards, Mr. Smythe, accompanied by several friends,
made his appearance, and was welcomed with loud cheers.
As the meeting was somewhat of a convivial character,
the Chairman opened the proceedings by proposing the
toast of " The Queen."
Mr. SMYTHE then rose, and was received with a
burst of cheering which lasted several minutes. He
said—Mr. Chairman and gentleman, it is impossible for
me to meet so many old laces once again without some-
thing of emotion, were it only gratitude for their at-
tendance here this evening.—(Cheers.) You know why
I have called you together this evening ; it is because I
understand that a resolution has been come to by a sec-
tion of the Conservative party, which states that my
anti-Protestant votes, as they are termed, incapacitate
me from receiving their support. I might, were I inclined
to bitterness, retort on these gentlemen, now my
opponents, of the Conservative Club, and remind them
that after I had recorded my vote in favour of the May-
nooth grant-. after I had voted in favour of the emanci-
pation of the Jews from Parliamentary and other dis-
abilities—l had their active support, as well on my
committees as by their votes at the poll.—(Cheers.) lu
3 our local history, in the records of your corporation, in
1:535, one year alter the great Reformation, I have
stumbled upon the following passage:—" Paid 14s. Bd.
for the expense of bringing a heretic from London; and
for one half-load of wood to burn him, 2d.; for gun-
powder, ld.; for a stake and staple, Bd."—(Cheers and
laughter.) I doubt not but there are some corporators
in Canterbury who would not grudge me the 14s. Bd.,
or even the additional 4d., which the South-Eastern
Railway would exact—(Cheers and laughter)—the gun-
powder, the stake, or the staple.—(Renewed cheers.)
But there is this difference between the two cases.
Whereas the victim of those days suffered for a creed
which he heroically witnessed, the victim of these
days suffers for a creed which he does not, cannot,
will not entertain.—(Loud cheers.) Nay, I doubt
whether, when the heat of this election shall
have passed away, when Lord Winchilsea's
letter, Sir Brooks Brydge's and Sir E. Deering's letter—
even a longer life shalt have been forgotten—when
national clubs shall be no more—and when even Conser-
vative societies shall have expired—(Great cheering)—
I think in that day they will almost doubt whether it is
not I who have been the better Protestant, in the inmost,
the highest, and the truest sense of the word.—(Re-
vowed cheering.) I, who against such odds assert the
right of private judgment, and the freedom of particular
opinion against those who in their aggregate infallibity
attempt to proscribe and persecute independence of
opinion as intolerantly, as unwisely, and as fruitlessly as
Rome ever did—fruitlessly, because I believe that if this
action of Conservatives could send whom they chose to
Parliament, the common sense of the House of Commons
would nullify that man's votes and shock him out of his
prepossessions.—(Great cheering.) lam not sorry this
resolution has been passed against me, because it gives
me an opportunity of answering charges which have
been brought against me week after week, in your local
papers and otherwise, for the last six years.—(Cheers.)
I shall not shirk them; but I believe they may be con-
densed into two accusations. In the first place, that I
have deserted the Tory party by the advocacy of
Liberal opinions ; and in the second, that I have
apostatised from my particular professions.—(Hear,
hear.) I give both these charges the most absolute, the
most complete, and the most indignant denial.—(Cheers.)
I must, I am afraid, bore you with much that is of a
personal nature; but when was a person attacked and
an English assembly refused to listen to his defence?—
(Cheers.) lam upon my defence.—(Renewed cheeing.)
I must recal to to your recollection the circumstances
of the ease. When lam accused of deserting the Tory
party, I can only regret the youth, the earnestness, the
energy, and the passion, with which as a mere boy I
asserted before you the seeming paradox, which the
Legislature has since confirmed in many an enactment,
namely, that the Tory party is the party of progress and
of the people.—(Cheers.) I came first before you al-
most a boy, though I felt, as I believe, that I had a true
theory and a true idea, which others, my contempora-
ries, had borne triumphant over an academical society,
and which a man of genius has since made familiar to
the public by his writings. I came before you at a time
when Lord Melbourne's Ministry was in the agonies of
dissolution; but did I then adopt one word or one syl-
lable of the vulgar slang which had gone abroad? Did
I say one word of " No Popery"—of a " bedchamber
plot"—or of "an Owenite Administration ?"—(Hear.)
Did I affirm any one of the enormous lies which drove
that Ministry from office ?—(Cheers.) My charge against
the Minister was that no man since the days of Lord
Carteret had put the Crown in so false a position. I
then used a figure to say, " That a horse which went
forward was a good horse; a horsewhich went backward
was a bad horse; but than any horse was better than a
dead horse."—(Cheers and laughter.) Such was the
reason of my opposition to the Melbourne Ministry.
You returned me to Parliament, and when there, I am
not ashamed to confess that I was awed by the Nemesis
of that great assembly, and that, in Parliamentary
parlance, " I broke down."—(Hear, hear.) Notwith-
standing this, your kindness shortly afterwards again
returned me as your Member at the head of the poll.
'laving gone through these disagreeable details—for

wish to evade no mortification—lwill now allude to an
attempt frequently made, no doubt in Canterbury as
well as elsewhere, to represent that dissolution as caused
solely and exclusively by the principles of free trade
and protection being at issue. I challenge even the
shadow of a shade of discrepancy between my votes in
Parliament and my professions at the hustings. I came
in, as I have said, with others, full of hot thoughts and
ardent speculations, and we sat by men who now, ibr-
sooth, are patriots, but who then had but one rule,
which adapted itself to all things, to all measures, to all
debates, and to all votes—the will of the sole Minister.
I spoke, perhaps, of some ancient privileges, and the
most intrepid thinkers would shake their heads and say,
" Listen to Sir Robert Peel," and the less intrepid
thinkers would shake their heads and say, " Listen to Sir
Thomas Fremantle."—(Laughter.) When persons were
thus substituted for principles, personalities became a
duty with those who wished to substitute principles for
personalities. " I am no more ashamed," said Mr.
Southey, " of having been a republican than of being a
boy." And lam no more ashamed of having used strong
language against the Minister than I am of being a boy.
—(Hear.) But now that" I appear before you to render
an account of my parliamentary conduct, I would fain take
this public opportunity of making an apology to a great
man, and I cannot be suspected of adulation, for he has
arrived at an age when no man except one ever led the
House of Commons—a great man who has since shown
that bis heart was all the while with the people. In the
year 1842 I had just come from witnessing all the horrors
of starvation in the manufacturing districts, and I sup-
ported the Corn Bill of that year as an instalment of a
wiser policy; but I attacked the Minister because it was
only an instalment. In the year 1846 I had the satisfac-

tiori of joining a dying Administration, which only
sought to live for the purpose of perfecting that measure
of tree trade of which the other was the instalment.—
(Cheers.) In 1843 I almost seceded from the party of
Sir Robert Peel in consequence of his Irish policy.
In 1845 Sir Robert Peel changed his policy to-
wards Ireland, in the sense of which I had pre-
viously voted and spoken, and I had the satisfaction
of voting for that increased grant to Maynooth which
I had been the first in the last Parliament to recommend.
I have disproved by date and fact and circumstance
the charge of inconsistency.—(Cheers.) But, having
said that, I say frankly I care very little whether the
charge be true or not true—(Loud cheers)—for there is
nothing more admirable than for a man to change his
opinions upon conviction.—(Cheers.) If I had changed
my opinion from conviction, I would gladly have pleaded
guilty to -the charge, but as it so happened that I had
not, 1 could not permit that charge to be made without
refuting it.—(Cheers.) But while I know nothing more
admirable than for a man to change upon conviction, I
know nothing more ridiculous than the infinitessimal lit-
tleness of Parliamentary politics, and the boast of having
been perpetually either Tweedledum or Tweedledee.—
(Loud cheers and laughter.) There is a man, the wisest
of modern times, a German, named Niebuhr, who says
that the English of the present day are like the Romans
of the third century. With all due deference to so great
an authority, I am more reminded by them of the
Greeks.—(Hear, hear.) In an old city, older than Can-
terbury, once upon a time, grave men, grown men, illus-
trious senators, spent their whole lifetime in disputing,
and they took great pleasure in the dispute, upon the
relative merits of blue and red and green.—
(Hear, hear.) But the people of Byzantium were
wiser than the people of England; for there at
least the colours were salient and the dresses new; but
in our time and in our country, the dresses are so worn
that you can no longer distinguieh the colours.—(Cheers
and laughter.) The next point of any moment is the
question of education.—(Great cheering.) lam bound
to say I looked with little satisfaction on the scheme
proposed and inaugurated the other day by Lord John
Russell. I think it was meagre as a measure of state,
and offensive as a matter of religion.—(Cheers.) I think
that it acceded what to all intents and purposes amounted
to a monopoly to that Established Church which has, by
the confession of the best and wisest of her ministers,
been guilty of neglecting for certainly more than a
century her only duty, that of teaching her own chil-
dren.—(Loud cheers.) And why has she been guilty
of this ? Because she is lying bound down and
fettered, as our northern neighbours would say, in the
lowest dungeons of Erastian imprisonment--because
she has been compelled to accept the alms of the
State without its confidence ; moneys upon moneys,
but at the same time disfavour upon disfavouorti
But some may ask why, with these opinions,
_did
e.
not vote against the measure? I tell
your fraantkliYr: this
cause I believe the want of education is sog!e scheme,
country, that any scheme of education, event this
with all its vices, was better than none
been
There is another subject which has ;riegTierZetin2
much canvassed of late hear.) I am in
—the endo_v_vz.nt of the Roman
Catholic priesthood in Ireland. (H
principle opposed in this our..eetti.smoe toI twhiellanllo-tgesnayer.atol en-
dowmentsthe of religions.—(Cheers.)
partial payment of all rgoonent to general endow-
ments. (Cheers.) eli ionaries, for there may arise
particular provincial and _
colonial cases of necessity ;
but in principle I am an pp
In the old days the priest was
neon the re resentativeof
public toP truth,
thought by the
and the state, its vicar, sequently, and logically
enough, punished Dissenters as it would have punished
criminals. In these days the priest is thought to be the
representative of heaven, and the less he has to say to
I anything under the earth, and in earth's bowels, in the
gape nain,eralip the better.—(Leughter.) 'There wee
- • ... .