The Sun.
London, England, 1870-09-22 00:00:00

Rev. Canon Norris.
At the evening meeting in the Town Hall, his Grace
the Duke of Northumberland (President ,of the Congress),
delivered the following address :—My presence here as
your president is owing to the pressing invitation of a
number of gentlemen (the chief of the municipality of
this great town at their head), and in deferring to their
wishes, I have been actuated at once by the desire to gratify
them, and to offer this mark of my respect for the Associa-
tion, of my warm participation in its efforts to forward the
improvement, and promote the welfare '.if the human race, ,
and of na) anxiety, in so far at least, to assist in the solu-
tion of the numerous and all-important problem which
such an undertaking comprises. The congress could
hardly select a place of meeting in which such questions
are more prominently brought into notice, or more
peremptorily require such solution, from the remarkUle
variety of causes affecting its social condition. There are
few counties or cities in the empire in which the present
holds out promise of so "mice future progresS—none in
which it is so strangely mingled with the past. To
this day ancient customs, habits, and phraseologies linger
amongst us, and curiously grafted onthem is the composite
structure of a population in which almost every part of tae
United Kingdom and most foreign nations have their, re-
presentatives. And in harmony with this fusion is the
quaint juxtaposition of the monuments of remote anti-
quity, to the edifices which mark the increase of the
wealth and the growth of the commerce of the present
day. Within sight of this hall, affording so noble a
proof of the riches and power of its founders, arises the
ancient castle which gives its name to the town, though
its title of " new " goes back eight hundred years, when
the son of the Norman Conquerer built it to secure his
iron rule over the ruins of a country which he had de-
vastated with the most ruthless cruelty ; the old Nor-
man bulwarks which have so often rolled back the tide ,
of Scotch invasion, and habitations still standing as later
specimens of the structure of a border town of the middle
ages. You may trace close by the wall built by the labour
of the German legions, and almost within its shadOw (if
the.exaggerated expression may be permitted to me) the
manufactories in which the greatest improvements in the
terrible apparatus of modern warfare have been originated
and perfected. The wild hills where for miles around no
sound save the bleat of the sheep and the cry of the moor
fowl is heard, give birth to the noble river at our feet, laden
with the merchandise and traffic of nations teeming with
human life, its crowded banks inhabited by men of all lan-
. guages, trades, and avocations. To the scanty but fierce
population which only maintained its existence of yore
under the conditions of being ever prepared to defend it-

self by the sword against the continual irruptions of an
irreconcileable enemy, has succeeded a generation leading
a life of laborious tranquillity, undisturbed save by the dis-
tant thunder of foreign strife, though it is not exempt
from sufferings of a less fearful description, among which
may, I fear, be reckoned that of having far outgrown the
means at present available for providing for its religious,
moral, and intellectual requirements, notwithstanding
the liberality with which modern bounty has supplemented
ancient endowments and foundations. Since you last
assembled, considerable progress has been made 'in the
changes in the social system, which have been, at divers
times, recommended by members of this society, and
•formed the groundwork of its deliberations, both as
regards our social economy here and our relations with
foreign nations. They are, doubtless, but forerunners of
still greater changes, the signs and indications of the
tendencies, whether for good or evil, which animate the
mass of our nation, of the educated as well as of the
uneducated classes. We are one people, united not only
by an equality in the eye of the law, which is perfect in
all respects, save where the necessity of the personal
independence of the legislator, elected or hereditary,
invests him with certain immunities; but we are bound
together by ties so close, by the interchange of duties,
by the requirements of interest, ambition, aye, and of
kindness and goodwill, that I believe neither ancient or
modern history can skew an instance of so mighty a
nation, composed of such various materials, and
animated by such a restless activity, where so
much real community of spirit has existed ; and
where, theoretically at least, if not practirally to the desired
extent, the interdependency between all classes is so fully
recognised—certainly none where so much independence
of action and idea was exercised, with the same entire
freedom, and with comparatively so little of the license
too often mistaken for it. Let me not, however, be
misunderstood—my words must not be supposed to
imply that I look on the present state of geneFal
society as by any means what it should be, or the feeling
between class and class as actually and entirely satisfactory.
I only mean that it is a mistake to insinuate the existence
of a rigid line of demarcation between the interests and
feelings of one class, and those of another, ascending and
descending as they do through an unbroken, though it may
be often an attenuated chain, 'from the highest to the
lowest. He who listens to the warning voice of political
foresight will hardly escape the conviction that we are
arrived at one of those periods in the history of the world
when a great change is impending. The impatience of all
authority which pervades society, the fluctuation of the
popular mind, unable to rule and unwilling to obey, are
universal. They are proclaimed in the successive trial
and failure of every form of government on the Continent,
and signs that we have not escaped the same influence are
palpable enough. The great moral earthquake of the
last century is still at work. Its miserable conse-
quences are but too strongly exemplified in the tre-
mendous conflict still raging in France, no less than
in the internal and social condition of that unhappy.
country; nevertheless, the warning avails not to pre
vent the impulse communicated by it from hurrying us
too forward to the extinction of the institutions, ideas, and
manners of our predecessors. Borne along by the rapid
course of modern legislation, while the direction of that
course can be but dimly foreseen and calculated, we can
estimate its rapidity by the disappearance in swift succes-
sion of the ancient landmarks, monuments of the political
and religious faith of our forefathers happily, however,
hitherto without the more baneful adjuncts which have
marked its progress in other countries. In this respect, we
have as yet enjoyed a happy distinction and immunity,
owing to the peculiar habits which those institutions have
created among us. These habits, it is to be hoped, will
survive and remain the best testimony to the intrinsic
excellence, as well as special adaptation to our national
character, of the institutions by which they were formed,
and will perhaps tend to perpetuate in some other shape
the benefits of which these institutions were formerly the
channels. That the labor is of this association may lead
to such a result, is the best wish that I can frame for its
future utility; that they may assist, by the light its dis-
cussions may throw on the necessities, desires, and tenden-
cies of society, the statesmen of the day to equalise the mo-
tion and smooth the track of the social machine, what-
ever may be the form and nature of the authority
which is. hereafter to direct it. The more the
legislating body partakes of the character which
respects nothing but the visible and the practical, the
more necessary it is that the local institutions, habits, and
ideas which regulate the social life of the nation should
be rooted in the affections of the people, and approve them-
selves to all minds as wholesome and beneficial, if they
are to survive the despotism of democratic legislation.
I am not, I think, diverging into political disquisition by
reminding you that, by the operation of recent enact-
ments, the whole power of returning the representative
portion of the Legislative Body of the kingdom to Par-
liament has passed into the hands of a class whose
numerical superiority constitutes their principal claim to
such a preponderant influence in the State, and that the
counterbalancing influence of wealth, knowledge, and
property, it has been the study of our legislators to render
nugator , To those who recognise the inevitable conse-
quence of the change which has taken place with respect to
the depositaries of that power, from which the governing
authority is, in fact, though not in theory, an immediate
emanation, it will appear most desirable that the depart-