The Sun.
London, England, 1841-11-27 00:00:00

t/ e 7

MORNING SUN.

received with several rounds of enthusiastic applause,wavl
ing of hats, and clapping of hands. When this manifesta-
tion of feeling had subsicied,he said—Mr.Chairm an, Ladies
and Gentlemen—l receive with feelings of the deepest
gratitude the splendid testimonial of the confidence and
esteem of my friends, my constituents, and my fellow-
townsmen.- It has been the ambition of my life—l
hope not an ignoble ambition—to deserve the confidence
of those among whom that life has been spent, and to
merit the estimation of those who have had the best
opportunities of appreciating my character and conduct.
—(Cheers.) And I am happy to say, that this day
that ambition has been gratified to the highest pos-
sible degree. Sir, you have been pleaSed, in the in-
scription on this tablet, to declare that for forty years
I have been the zealous advocate of civil and religious
liberty.—(Hear, hear.) I hope without undue arrogance,
that I may venture to appropriate to myself that distin-
guished.complituent. I have advocated those principles
by my pen, by my press, in the Senate, and in the
social intercourses of society.—(Hear, hear.) Those
principles have been the polar star by which my political
career has ',teen directed. Stupendous changes have
taken place within these forty years, changes unexam-
pled in any former period of British history, and abuses
have beee uprooted, the growth I centuries, which no-
thing but the spirit
.of liberty could have destroyed.
(Hear, hear.) My.excellent friend, Mr. West, has al-
luded to the abolition of slavery; not only has the slave-
trade been abolished, which originated in the time of
"good Queen Bess," but slavery itself has been expelled
from all the colonies under the sway of the British em-
pire.—(Hear, hear.) My Rev. Friend, Mr. Hamilton—.
by whose expression of private friendship I feel highly
honoured—in his usual eloquent style, has dwelt upon
the establishment of religious liberty—not religious tole-
ration, but religious libertywe contended for nothing
more, and we could be satisfied with nothing less.—
(Cheers.) We have seen our fellow citizens of the
Roman Catholic persuasion freed. from the disqualifica-
tions under which they had laboured ever since the Re-
storation, and invested with all the civil rights and
privileges of their Protestant fellow-subjects.—(Cheers.)
We have seen the holy sacrament freed from the pro-
fanation to which it had been exposed for nearly two
centuries, by being made the test for secular office, and
the Protestant Dissenters, of whom I glory to see
so many around me, admitted to an equality of
rights with their fellow subjects of the Established
Church.—(Loud cheers.) We have seen effected, after a
mighty struggle, the great change of all—l mean the
reform of Parliament, which may not be inaptly de-
scribed as the master key of all succeeding reforms—
happily effected by the sweeping away of a system of
rotten borough nominations the growth of four centuries,
and a system of sound Parliamentary representation
established in this and all the great cities and towns of
the kingdom.—(Loud cheers.) We have seen abolished
the prolific causes of strife and discord between reli-
gious pastors and their flocks extending through the
tens of thousands of parishes in England and in Ireland,
and which had existed from time immemorial, under the
designation of Tithe in kind, and a state of harmony
and peace introduced, by the substitution of a system of
equitable Tithe Commutation.—(Hear, hear.) We have
seen another abuse partially abolished, which has been
complained of ever since the Reformation—l allude to
the former condition of the labouring part of the clergy.
They were deprived of that station in society which they
ought ever to occupy, and placed in a state of com-
parative indigence, whilst the dignitaries of the Church
were sustained by means even too lofty for their
order.—(Hear, hear.) 'We have seen the additional sum
of 130,0001. a-year appropriated to the purpose of aug-
menting the livings of the poor clergy, not by extracting
that sum from the pockets of the people, but from the
surplus revenues of the most richly endowed ecclesiasti-
cal establishment in the world.—(Cheers.) After cen-
turies of neglect and destitution, unequalled in any
country in Europe, we have seen a legislative provision
made for the destitute poor of Ireland, by rates on the
possessions of the resident and absentee proprietors of
that country.—(Hear, hear.) We have seen all the
close Corporations in England, Ireland, and Scotland,
' principally held by charters granted in the arbitrary
times of the Stuarts, opened to all the burgesses in their re-
spective municipalities, and placed, as my esteemed friend
Mr. Alderman Goodman has said, upon the broad basis
of popular representation, with a franchise co-extensive
with the paynnt of borough rates.—(Hear, hear.) We
have seen the chartered monopoly of the East India
Company abolished, and that vast region with its
100,000,000 of inhabitants, at the end of nearly 200
years opened to British skill and enterprise. I may
mention another subject in which the inhabitants of this
borough took a deep and general interest, and in which I, as
their representative, exerted my best energies in Parlia-
ment; we have lived to see the day when our civil and
military functionaries in the East Indies have been freed
from the degradation of all connection with, and all par-
ticipation in, the idolatrous worship of the Ilindoos, by
which they had been obliged to degrade themselves and
their religion ever since the conquest of that country.-
-(Loud cheers.) I will mention one other, and only
one other subject in this selection of the reform of ancient
abuses. It has been our happiness to live to see the day
when the criminal code of this country, so long re-
sembling the code of I)raco, has been divested of its
sanguinary character, and made worthy of a Christian
nation.—(Cheers.) I may illustrate the contrast by one
fact : in the century between the year 1678 and 1778
there were in this country no fewer than 70,000 public
executions, Using nearly two executions for every day,
while in the year 1837, about an average year of the last
5, there were only 17 executions. I have spoken of forty
years as the era of these reforms, becausethat time is in-
scribed upon this tablet, but it must be borne in mind that
for 30 of those years we were preparing the ground and sow-
ing the seed, in which your worthy Chairman with myself
and some of the senior members of this assembly laboured,
and that it has been principally within the last ten years,
under liberal, enlightened, and paternal Government,
that the nation has reaped this rich harvest of reforms.—
(Loud and repeated cheering.) The brilliant trophy
before me is principally valuable in my estimation, be-
cause it is an indication of the bloodless victories that
we in common with our fellow-subjects of like principles,
have won for this age and for posterity.—(Loud cheers.)
These are the triumphs of " truth," animated by the spi-
rit of " liberty," and directed by the even hand of jus-
tice," which figures you have so appropriately chosen
to indicate the past, and to point out the future course
by which the favour of the friends of freedom in
this extensive borough is to be obtained.—(Loud
cheers.) Much has undoubtedly been done in the cause
of Reform and for the improvement of our social system,
but much remains to be done. My highly respected friend,
Mr. Alderman Bateson, has very properly descanted
upon the principles of freedom of commerce, and in com-
mon with my other friends who have spoken this day,
has taken too favourable a view of my services in that
cause. Can any of you doubt, judging from the past,
that a system of commercial freedom will, if we perse-
vere in our efforts, ultimately be established in this coun-
try ?—(Cries of " No, no.") Can you doubt that the
corn field to supply the wants of the continually increas-
ing population of these islands will ultimately become as
wide as the range of British commerce itself ? Can you
doubt that the pressure of taxation will be arrested in
its course, and that the system that has been disclosed
to us of augmenting the public revenue by diminishing
the
cipublicres boufr.d,eN, nso will?—(Re-
newed
.ulti.wmaitthelyrebgearacilotpotethdissuperb
service of plate, the manifestation of your friendship and
confidence, I have no words adequately to express the sense
of obligation that I owe to the Committee, and to the contri-
butors. You, I know, are as little disposed to receive
posere s s
uomeefho)
ma
sl
fl
common
eitevohnenendytses
country—(Loud
at our
nen,dtpr3rb,
(e shallsneerLft
as lam to offer the incense of flattering adulation. I
shall, therefore, ouly add, that so long as it may please
nperigs
be directed lido rycsieiate.ends)m—ttoo'
ett hhneed stseherarvi
nt'lictecheessi
shall
ooabffl rlYiolluivar'n t
descendt r i
thou t
me
yw
pi t
ohs t
ewhicht3, u your
nhi as
hv have pre-
sentedd,
a s
political the G r Great
et
a stimulus and a guarantee for the maintenance of the
principles of civil and religious liberty by which it was
won.—(Renewed and long-continued cheers.)--[We are
happy to observe that this speech was delivered with a
firmness of tone; and an energy of manner strongly in-
dicative of returning health.]
The proceedings of this interesting meeting were
brought to a close about half-past two o'clock.