The Sun.
London, England, 1847-11-05 00:00:00

TESTIMONIAL TO MR. ROEBUCK.
BATH, THURSDAY AFTERNOON.
Since the defeat of Mr. Roebuck at the late elec-
tion a numerous body of his friends and supporters
determined upon presenting him with some testimo-
nial of their respect for his past services, and this day
was appointed for that purpose.
The late Member arrived by the express train from
London, and was received at the station by a large
body of? his supporters with a band of music, who
escorted him in procession to the Guildhall, where
the presentation was to take place, the large banquet-
ing room of which was crowded by more than two
thousand persons, the gallery being filled by well.
dressed ladies.
Upon Mr. Roebuck's entrance he was received
with deafening cheers, which lasted for several mi-
nutes. After which, Admiral Gordon having been
called to the chair, the business of the day com-
menced.
The CHAIRMAN said they had done him the honour
to place him in that chair, and he now stood in the
very same place in which he had stood eight years
since for a precisely similar purpose, and on
which occasion they had presented their then re-
presentative, Mr. Roebuck, with a magnificent service
of plate. The committee, therefore, had now thought
it right to present their testimonial in sterling coin,
enclosed in a cabinet the workmanship of Bath artists
of elegant design, and emblematic of political liberty.
The Gallant Admiral then alluded to the valuable
services of Mr. Roebuck in Parliament, in his oppo-
sition to slavery, and to his powerful assistance ih
frittering to the winds the shackles which had bound
them ; to his opposition to the renewal of the East
India Company's charter, which gave them a mono-
poly of the trade of India and China; to the Bank
Charter Act ; to his advocacy of a reform of the
abuses in the Court of Chancery ; to his assistance in
obtaining the Municipal Reform Act, by means of
which they (the burgesses of Bath) had now the
management of their affairs in their own hands; to
the establishment of the Local Courts, which had
brought cheap and speedy justice to every man's
door; and to a variety of other measures, the advo-
cacy of which (said the Gallant Admiral) stamped
Mr. Roebuck as one of the most useful men in
Parliament, and showed him to be the friend of civil
and religious liberty.—(Cheers.) Indeed, many of
those who opposed Mr. Roebuck, and who had been
the means of unseating him, had expressed their wish
that he should have a place in Parliament, though not
for Bath, declaring that he was too useful and too
valuable a man for them to wish him out of Parlia-
ment. The address accompanying the testimonial was
then read as follows :
" Sir,—We, the burgesses and inhabitants of the
city of Bath, respectfully tender for your acceptance
the present testimonial, expressive in some degree of
those sentiments of esteem, confidence, and regard
which we so cordially entertain for you.
" The many years you represented ua in the House
of Commons are associated with recollections of
talent, consistency, and public usefulness on your
part that can never be erased from our minds, while
the political views and sentiments which you declared
upon first coming among us, so friendly to the wel-
fare of the people and the growth and spread of
rational liberty, have been rendered doubly valuable
by the faithfulness with which you have upheld
them as our representative, and the material assist-
ance you have rendered in applying them to some of
the most important interests and institutions of our
country.
" We did indulge the hope that you would again be
our representative, that services so important and
faithful would have their proper weight with the
constituency, and that the predilections and prejudices
of party would yield to claims that have been little
less than universally recognised.
" In this, our just expectation, we have been pain-
fully disappointed, and we now urge your acceptance
of the present testimonial, which has been contri-
buted to, not only by the 1,093 who faithfully voted
in accordance with your claims, and their own con-
victions, but also by very many other inhabitants of
our city anxious thus to testify their opinions of the
integrity and fearlessness with which you have ever
discharged your duty as a representative of the people,
without regard to either party considerations or per-
sonal interest. With this inadequate expression of
our esteem and regard, you may well believe that we
associate our most earnest wishes for your continued
public usefulness. We trust that some other consti-
tuency, more justly appreciating your worth, will
enable you to resume your place in the House of
Commons ; and, while we fervently trust that every
blessing will rest upon your personal and domestic
interests, we cherish the hope that you may yet be
made largely instrumental in promoting the pros-
perity, the strength, and happiness of the empire.
" Signed, on behalf of the meeting,
" HENRY GORDON, Chairman."
The Gallant Admiral then made the presentation of
the cabinet, which was of carved oak, and highly
emblematic in its design, and contained, as we were
informed, 500 sovereigns in gold.
Mr. Rosnuew. then rose, and was greeted with a
torrent of applause, and a. ter a few words of caution
for them not to stamp on the floor, as so many feet
doing co might, as the authorities conceived, render
it dangerous, he said he had now to offer to the
Gallant Admiral and to them all the expression of
his most grateful acknowledgments for the mode
which they had taken to give expression to their kind
feelings towards him.—(Cheers.) They would pardon
him for hesitating in his speech, for his mind was at
present made up of so many mingled emotions that
he scarcely knew how to give to them expression or
utterance. It was made up of mingled pleasure and
pain, of resentment and of gratitude. Pleasure he
must feel in having thus tendered to him the testi-
mony—their unbought and unsolicited approbation
of his public conduct ; and the services which he had
long rendered to them were now repaid and re-
warded in the only way which was lett to them to
express their approbation.—(Cheers.) There was a
time when, not by them, but by others, it might
have been differently expressed.—(Hear, hear.)
For, he could not forget that in his person the
good feeling of his country had been outraged
and insulted. He was not vain, nor was it vanity
when he said that he could not help feeling, as
the result of the late election for Bath, that an
honest man, serving the people honestly and faithfully.
and serving the people only, could not retain his hold
upon a large constituency by whom, for years, he had
conscientiously performed his duty. They would
pardon him, but his mind was now a tangled skein,
and if they would grant him their patience, and bear
with him for a while, he would endeavour to unravel
it, and in doing so he must enter upon a retrospect
of his public career. And he felt that he ought to do
so, inasmuch as he was now addressing what might
be his last words to them.—(" No, no.") There
were times when a man must turn his mind inwards
upon himself, and this was one of those times. When,
fifteen years ago, he made his first public appearance
in the city of Bath he made to -them a statement of
his political sentiments; and he then made his first
public political appeal to a constituency of the greatest
people ever known ; and they would believe him when
he said that, in making that appeal, he had duly and
maturely weighed and had a due sense of the respon-
sibility, the heavy responsibility attaching to a repre-
sentative in Parliament of the people. He had, how-
ever, offered himself upon mature consideration, after
a youth spent in the necessary education, because he
had early made up his mind that politics should be the
future study and profession of his life. And he was
bold to aver that since that period he had in no wise
changed his principles, but he had asserted them honest-
ly and faithfully, though perhaps sometimes warmly.
They then heard his declaration of political princi-
ples, and they approved of them—(Cheers)—for fifteen
years they approved of them; he thought, therefore,
that he had a right to claim and to demand a reward
for faithful and long-continued service.—(Cheers.)
But, instead of this claim being conceded, he wes
met by a storm of virulence, invective, and calumny,
and then was charged with intemperance and abuse,
because he had warmly and sharply rebuked those
who had thus calumniated him. But was it to be ex-
pected, he would ask, when thus attacked, and with
a weapon in his hand, that he should decline to avail
himself of its use to answer ?—(No, no.) The answers
he gave hurt the feelings of some persons in the town
who were his calumniators; and, from that time to
the present, they had never forgiven him. The prin-
ciples he then propounded he still adhered to, and what
was more was, that although they were then deemed
revolutionary and ultra-demagogical, yet they were
now adopted by his opponents, and avowed by every
thinking politician.—(Cheers.) He had maintained
those principles fearlessly, and in order that he might
do so he had not allied himself with any party ;
for this also he had been blamed— (Cries of
"No, no.") If he had allied himself to the party of
Sir Robert Peel, it was true that he might have stood
higher as regarded wealth and station, but he should
have been obliged to follow them through paths of
diplomacy and policy with which he did not and could
not agree.—(Hear, hear.) Then if he could not ally
himself with Sir R. Peel, it was asked why he had
not joined the party of the Whigs. Why for
the very same reasons—because he could not
agree with them in all their varied measures ; for he
had not changed, although by slow degrees the
Whigs had come round to him ; and if his senti-
ments, as expressed by him in 1832, were now read,
it would be found that there were very few of those
sentiments that had not been adopted, even by the
Conservatives themselves.—(Cheers.) His Gallant
Friend said, that the very men who had opposed his
(Mr. Roebuck's) return had told him (Admiral Gor-
don) that they wished him (Mr. Roebuck) to be in
Parliament, though not for Bath ; but he would tell
those who said so, and who thought that he ought to
be attending their balls and their parties, that they
very much misunderstood the duties of a representa-
tive in Parliament if they thought that he ought to
employ his time in bringing down parties to belle