The Sun.
London, England, 1856-09-26 00:00:00

MR. W. J. FOX M.P., AT OLDHAM.

lOn Wednesday evening, Mr. W. J. Fox, M.P., ad-
dressed a very crowded meeting of his constituents and
supporters in the Oldham Town Hall ; Mr. Councillor
Leach presided.
Mr. Fox, who was most enthusiastically received, said-
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,—l am here, according to
promise, and according to custom, to render my annual ac-
count, and that annual account is, on the present occasion,
no very difficult task ; for I am somewhat in the position of
those parties who are occasionally called upon to make re-
turns, who receive large sheets of paper, all ruled in co-
lumns, in which they are to enter their returns, and who
in each column have nothing to put down but the single
word nil. (Laughter.) It has been a session of nonentities.
The House of Commons has been doing nothing, and the
House of Lords has been helping it. (Laughter.) We have
heard of a class of people drilled " waiters upon Providence"
—people who are not given to exertion, bat lounge about
with their mouths open, expecting that something good
will drop in, who are ever reckoning, not upon their own
efforts, but on the expectation that something will " turn
up ;" and such waiters on Providence have the two houses
of legislature been for the last session. I call them waiters
on Providence, but I should rather call them waiters on Pal-
merston —(laughter)—for to him they have been looking,
knowing that with his word he could send them all about
their business, to render an account of their " no doing" to
their constituents. (Hear, hear.) The House of Commons
has been waiting for the people to agitate for reforms, and
the people have been waiting for the House of Commons
to originate reforms. The House of Lords has been wait-
ing for bills to be sent up by the House of Commons, and
the House of Commons have been waiting for their bills
to be rejected by the Lords. (Hear, hear, and laughter.)
The Church less been waiting for the resignation of two
bishops, and the bishops have been waiting for the
security of pretty handsome pensions before they sent in
their resignation. (Cheers and laughter.) In short,
there has been nothing but " waiting" all round. The
house has been waiting for a dissolution, and Lord Pal-
merston has been waiting to be put into such a minority,
on a party question, as would warrant him in dissolving.
Of such a state of things what can I say ? I have no par-
ticular account to render, for the same questions have been
discussed as in former sessions, and I have given the same
votes upon those questions. Mr. Fox then more particu-
larly noticed the motion of Mr. Munta, for a revision and
the re-adjustment of the income tax. He had supported
that proposition, because such a tax ought to be levied im-
partially, whether regarded as a war tax or as a peace tax.
It was not so difficult, this. Everybody knew the differ-
ence between money which came to a man as the fruit of
his hard earnings, by his brain or by his hands, and money
which came to a man with no other trouble than signing
a receipt ; between money that was contingent upon the
continuance of health, of labour, and of profit, and money
that was contingent upon nothing at all, but which re-
mained a secure and permanent income. It was not fair
that the one of these sources should be taxed in the same
way, or to the same degree, as the other. (Cheers.) More-
over, the tax fell most heavily in proportion to the narrow-
ness of the income, because we had to reckon all the other
deductions from income which are made by indirect taxa-
tion. Look at the proportion of the income of a millionaire
which is taken from him for the necessaries, and even for
the luxuries, of life. What was it ? It was a sort of infini-
tessimal quantity—a taxation that did not affect him, that
did not affect his efforts, his prospects, or his influence.
But look at the poor man, with his comparatively few shil-
lings a week ; the tax upon the necessaries of life was a tax
upon his income, sometimes to the amount, not of 3 or 6
per cent., but of 20, 30, or 40 per cent, and somas higher
than that. (Hear.) Now., even if we saw at a yet remoter
distance the prospect which Mr. Gladstone sometime ago
held out of the complete abolition of the income tax, then
the more remote was that prospect, the more pressing was
the necessity of adjusting it fairly and equitably. Mr. Fox
then referred to his support of Mr. Miall, the member for
Rochdale, in his motion for inquiry into the ecclesiastical
revenues of Ireland, with a view to their redistribution.
He took that motion to be one of the most remarkable that
had been made in the House of Commons for a considerable
period. It was treating the subject in a different manner
from those frequent and tiresome discussions on the grant
for Maynooth. It was not singling out one party, one re-
ligion, one denomination, to cut it off from receiving any-
thing out of the public purse ; it made no invidious dis-
tinctions, but it asked for an inquiry into all the money
which went in Ireland for religious purposes, and an in-
quiry as to the wisest manner of administering those funds.
It was, in fact and in spirit, a motion for the separation of
the Established Church of Ireland from the State. (Ap-
plause.) If ever such an experiment could be tried under
propitious circumstances it might surely be tried at the
present day in the sister country. Ireland was ripe for
the establishment of universal religious equality, and uni-
versal religious freedom. And where should we think of
ever trying such an experiment if not in a country where
the established religion was, after all, but in a pitiful mi-
nority ; in a country where the established clergyman re-
ceived his hundreds of pounds per annum for indoctrinat-
ing some dozen of hearers, while the Catholic priest re-
ceived only his dozen pounds per annum for teaching his
two or three thousand hearers—a country where the expe-
rience of three centuries had set the brand of failure on
the Established Church—a country where every ecclesias-
tical building belonging to the Established Church was in
fact a monument of a victory and an insult to the great
mass of the population—a country where the.e could be
neither rest nor peace till that monster nuisance was
abated. (Cheers.) Mr. Fox then adverted to the Police
Bill—a bill which, as extending a system of centralisa-
tion throughout the country, he had felt it his duty to
oppose in every stage. He thought our municipal insti-
tutions ought not to be so lightly dealt with. Those
institutions were older than the church, older than
the aristocracy, older than the monarchy itself. (Hear,
hear.) They existed in the time of our Saxon ancestors,
when every man belonged to a tithing, and every tithing
belonged to a hundred, and every hundred belonged to a
county ; and they, in their own right, chose their own
officers, to entrust with the management of their affairs.
The granting of charters was an innovation which suc-
ceeded to the Norman conquest ; it was an innovation
upon that inherent right which gives to every municipa-
lity the power of self-government. He could not quietly
see this infringed upon, nor was there any reason for it.
The counties were bribed—bribed by the offer of the pay-
ment of 2J per cent, of their police expenses out of the
public purse; and the county members, with all their
boast of independence, accepted this bribe, and gave in to
the propositions of the Home Secretary. The boroughs
stood out more manfully ; they had always been the for-
tresses of freedom. The bill, however, had become law
and they must make the best they could of it. At any
rate, he thought the boroughs would not be so burdened
as was at first contemplated, because it was evident that
the smallness of the police in many of the manufacturing
boroughs was not a fault to be corrected ; it was a testi-
mony to the general good conduct of the inhabitants of
those boroughs, showing how small a force is sufficient, in
times when there is not some great excitement, to keep
up all the requisites of order, propriety, and safety,
(Hear.) Ono other topic he would advert to as having a
local interest—tho controversy as to the shipping dues
which are levied on the port of Liverpool. They were
upon the whole adjacent country, a tax which penetrated
even into the very bowels of the land. All that portion of
our commerce which came through the port of Liverpool
paid dues to the corporation of Liverpool, which could not
bat operate as a general taxation upon commerce
The contest bad begun, and it would continue until
the commerce of this great tract of country should be en-
tirely emancipated from the self-directed taxation of the
borough of Liverpool. (Hear, hear.) Speaking again of
the general state of political affairs, Mr. Fox observed it
had been made clear that the tories, the Derbyities, the
tonservAtives —call them what we would—could no more
govern in this country. (Hear.) And, in addition to these
It had also been made clear that some broad hints
had been given to Lord Palmerston as to the manner
in which he must set about governing the country.
I refer (said Mr. Fox) to several divisions in the course of
the session, of which I have made a minute. They occurred
in pretty rapid succession. I have in my hand my "list of
warnings to Lord Palmerston, by the divisions which took
place in the House of Commons." The first warning was
the division on the ballot. The question was lost, but it
was lost by 113 against 153, a minority of 40 only, which
there were absentees who ought to havo converted into a
majority ; and in that, I apprehend, Lord Palmerston may
read an indication that the people of this country will not
be content without some reforms. The next was the ques-
tion of the civil service—an endeavour to remove that ser
vice from Parliamentary patronage, and to throw in open
to competition. On that question the Government were
beaten by 110 to 89; and although public offices are not
open to all who may be desirous of competing, yet theyare
now to a certain extent removed from Parliamentary pa-
tronage, and persons who are nominated to them have to
undergo an examination which shows their capability of
fulfilling the duties. That was a warning that the coun-
try desires administrative reform, that we wish the busi-
ness of the nation to be conducted by men who understand.
business ; that we look for such administrative reform not
only in the higher offices of the state, but through all the
departments of the public service, and that we are no lon-
ger content that patronage should give away places, and
that Governments should gain votes from those through
whom the places are bestowed. The third warning was a
division upon a question which may seem only a local and
trivial ono, at first glance, that of the removal of the Na-
tional Gallery to Kensington, in which the Government
was beaten by 155 to 147. But this question is of more im-
portance than it appears. Royal likings, princely prefer.
ences have been understood to be engaged in the desire for
this remove/. The interest of artists who want daily ac-
cess to copy the paintings in the National Gallery ; the
interest of men of business, who like to have them in a cen-
tral position, where occasionally, when
they can rescue
half an hour from the toils of the day, they may enjoy the
sight of them ; both these great interests were in opposi-
tion ; and Parliament supported those interests, in defiance
of the leaders both of the administration and of the opposi
tion. It was a lesson to Lord Palmerston not to be too