The Sun.
London, England, 1833-12-24 00:00:00

REPRESENTATION OF MANCHESTER.

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PUBLIC DINNER TO M. PHILIPS, ESQ., M.P.,
AND THE
RIGHT How. C. POULETT THOMSON, M.P.
(Abridged from the Manchester Times.)
The public dinner to the two distinguished Represen-
tatives of this Borough, as announced in our last paper,
was given on Thursday evening in the large room of the
Exchange Buildings. A very numerous and highly-re-
spectable company assembled on the occasion, upwards of
three hundred tickets baying been taken. Benjamin
Heywood, Esq., discharged, with urbanity and effect, the
duties of Chairman; on his right sat Mark Philips, Esq.,
M.P., Joseph Brotherton, Esq., M.P., Thomas Potter,
Esq., and Robert Philips, Esq. On his left he was sup-
ported by the Right Honourable Charles Poulett Thom-
son, M.P., Richard Potter, Esq., M.P., J. C. Dyer, Esq.,
John Shuttleworth, Esq., Thomas Harbottle, Esq., and
Edward Baxter, Esq.
The cloth having been removed, the President rose to
commence the proceedings. He said—Gentlemen,—As we
are met for the purpose of rational enjoyment rather than
noisy conviviality, will you concur with me in the sug-
gestion that, instead of the usual clamour of three times
three cheers in reply to our toasts, you substitute the
clapping of hands.—(Loud claps, and cries of " Hear, hear.")
National Anthem is-." God save the King."
" The Queen."
Air—" Here's a health to all good lasses."
" The health of that hearty and unflinching friend of
the people, in all times, His Royal Highness the Duke of
Sussex."—(Tremendous applause.)
Air—" We shall ne'er see his like again."
" The land we live in." (Cheers.)
The PRESIDENT—Gentlemen, I am much mistaken if
the Mist which I am about to propose be not received
with the liveliest enthusiasm—it is the health of his Ma-
jesty's Ministers.—(Great applause for some time, accom-
panied with waving of handkerchiefs.) You know, gen-
tlemen, the pledges which Ministers gave when they took
office, and you have seen how, under unexampled difficul-
ties, they have fulfilled them ; you have seen the work of
retrenchment commenced with a vigorous hand, and you
have some evidence of their sincerity in this respect, when
you have seen them begin it by cutting off their own
salaries.—(Hear, hear.) You have seen, too, by them,
the accomplishment of that basis of all other reforms—re-
form in the representation of the people.—(Applause.)
You have seen also, what the first session of our reformed
Parliament has done, and I confess that I cannot conceive
how any man can be disappointed at the result.—(Hear.)
Let us drink the health of his Majesty's Ministers, and if
you please, in this case, we will break the rule, and drink
the toast with three times three.—(lmmense applause.)
The Right Hon. C. POULETT THOMSON mounted the
table, in order to acknowledge the toast, and was received
with loud applause. The address of the Right Hon.
Gentleman, as nearly as we could collect from the low tone
of voice in which he spoke, was as follows :—Mr. Chair-
man and Gentlemen, in coming before you to-night as a
member of the Administration, I beg to return you their
most hearty thanks for the honour you have just now done
them. It will be most satisfactory to my colleagues to
learn from me the kind manner in which you have been
good enough to receive the toast that has been proffered
to you ; and they will consider it with the utmost satis-
faction as a pledge of your continued confidence in them ;
and it will at once afford them the best reward for their
past services, and the most powerful incitement for them
to continue those services for the future.--(Loud applause.)
That Administration, gentlemen, I sin satisfied, will con-
tinue to be guided by the same principles which directed
the Reform Bill that assembles us here to-night. I know
we have been vigorously attacked in our progress from
many quarters. lam perfectly satisfied that the intel-
ligence and enlightened intellect of those who have the
true interests of their country at heart, of those who have
nothing to gain by disorder, by the disorder of confusion,
or by the disorder of public pillage,—l am satisfied, I
say, that these will yield, as you have had the goodness to
do, their tribute to our honest endeavours, and will con-
tinue us as yet deserving of their confidence.—( Hear, bear.)
Gentlemen, I have the honour to appear before you this
evening in a double capacity. I am a member of that
Government whose name you have been good enough to
receive with so much honour. I stand also in a higher
and a far dearer character towards you, namely, as the
representative of the vast community which encircles
without these walls.—(Cheers.) How have our pledges
been redeemed ? With what justice can the Ministry now
call upon you to confirm their acts by your verdict ? And
with what justice, too, can the first reformed Parliament
lay claim, from the noble support which they gave to the
administration of the country, to a renewal of confidence
at your bands?—(Cheers.) I am satisfied, gentlemen,
that both may claim it here. To us the possession of
power, whose energies were spent in the glorious struggle
—the achievement of that which had been justly charac-
terised by the chairman as the first of all things necessary
—the means to the end—rearm in the representation of
the country.—(Loud cheers.) But what have been the
acts of the first session of the Parliameut thus assembled ?
Great was the impatience of the first reformed House to
redeem their promises, and great was the impatience, and
the natural impatience too, to show within the walls of
the House of Commons that the promises made without
should not remain unfulfilled. A natural snxiety was
manifested to bring forward subjects of every description,
and a great, and in many respects doubtless a most sincere
desire to effect good and produce speedy advantageous
results. But this very ardour rendered it difficult to those
who had this zealous, but perhaps too intemperate body to
lead into a path of utility yet more difficult. What was
the course, therefore, pursued by the Administration? Had
they been dishonest in their love of liberty, had they been
insincere in the desire really to promote the great improve-
ments which the country called for, they might easily have
allowed these zealous, but perhaps too impatient spirits, to
have produced from the vast mass of new matter disorder
and confusion, which would have resulted in the pro-
duction of no perfect measure. They took, however, a
more honest and a more sincere course. Careless of the
sneers of some and the taunts of others, regardless of
endangering some little passing popularity, they endea-
voured to lead the minds of those who meant well, but
who were perhaps not so well acquainted as themselves
with the means of carrying their wishes into effect, to
those great points and to those great practical grievances
which could be fairly and perfectly considered and
ably discussed, that at the (dose of the session the
result might be that sound practical benefits might
accrue to the people, in order that it should not be
said our labours had been in vain.—(Loud applause.)
Proceeding as we were, it became the imperative duty of
Government to go forward, and Commissions on various
subjects were matters of mature deliberation. Commis-
sions were therefore issued for inquiring into those great
practical grievances the Municipal Corporations of this
country—(Cheers)—upon the poor laws, that most intri-
cate and difficult subject ; upon the poor laws in Ireland,
another and not less difficult question ; upon fiscal admi-
nistration in the Excise, in which abuses bad existed for
ages to which no Government ever before ventured to ap-
ply the pruning knife. Here, then, I think, are proofs
of an earnest and sincere desire to effect some reform at
least; and bow has the pledge of retrenchment been re-
deemed ? This is not a place in which details are to be
entered into, but I may state that Government, in the short
period of three years, upon an expenditure of little more
than sixteen millions which came within the control of
Parliament, has been enabled to effect a reduction to the
extent of three millions. They cannot therefore, I think,
be fairly accused of having abandoned this pledge. Whilst,
too, on the one hand, Government has been enabled to
introduce economy in its own affairs, it has been enabled,
on the other, by applying a portion of the results of this
economy to the relief of those classes which form the
ground-work of the structure of all society, upon whom
we all rest, in order to enlarge and increase their comforts,
and by devoting the remainder to the relief of productive
industry, at once give a spur and stimulus to that, thus
affording indirectly to every class the best relief thay can
obtain at any time, the increase of employment necessarily
arising from such distribution. I speak this with more
pleasure, because addressing such an assembly as that now
before me, there can scarcely be a remission of any tax
which does not apply to it ; and 1 feel peculiarly gratified
in being able to include in this the article in which ou
are so much interested, and for the relief of which I Just
my own efforts were not entirely unavailing.—(Cheers.)
The third and last pledge of Ministers was the preservation
of peace, that greatest blessing to mankind—that benefac-
tress of civilization. It has been preserved unbroken un-
der circumstances of difficulty scarcely to be conceived by
those who are unable to enter into all the circumstances
affecting it. Has, then, that pledge been maintained ? The
flag of England--her commercial flag—still flows peaceably
in every port of the world ; her merchants may now
stretch forth the right hand of friendship in every part of
the civilized universe, and in my conscience I believe, that
the power of England to avenge an insult, to aid the feeble,
or protect the oppressed against the despotism of tyranny,
Was never greater than at this hour.—(lmmense applause.)
The sword of her sons still sleeps in the sheath, and those
mighty engines which at the call of honour and duty,
would again be ready to send forth their thunders from
shore to shore, or bear her victorious flag triumphant over