The Sun.
London, England, 1856-02-07 00:00:00

E! ECTION INTELLIGENCE.

LEEDS.
The Right Hon. M. T. Baines, who had vacated his
seat on accepting the office of Chancellor of the Duchy
of Lancaster, was yesterday !Wednesday) re-elected for
Leeds without opposition.

Prior to the eleCtion the right hon. gentleman met a
numerous party of his constituents at breakfast, at the
-White Horse Hotel.

The nomination took place at 11 o'clock, in the 3 ard
of the Coloured Cloth-hall. Mr. Baines was proposed
by Mr. Alderman SHAW, and seconded by Mr. Alder-
man WILSON. After being declared elected,
The Right Hon. M. T. Baines, M.P., rose, and was
most warmly applauded. He said :—Mr. Mayor and
gentlemen, the only regret I feel in this day's pro-
ceedings is this—that I should have been, however
innocently, the cause of bringing you out in weather
such as this, and from which some of you may suffer,
I fear, serious inconvenience. (A. Voice : " Never
mind, we're happy to meet you." " Hear, hear.")
Well, I am sure I feel happy to meet that gentle-
man. We are met to-day to perform one of the most im-
portant duties that can devolve upon Englishmen. By
a very wise and salutary principle of the constitution,
whenever any member of the House of Commons ac-
cepts office under the Crown, the immediate effect is,
that he has to vacate his seat, and thus has been given to
the constituency who sent him originally to Parliament
the power of declaring whether or not their confidence
in him continues. If you, as a constituency, have rea-
son to think that in accepting office he has been influ-
enced by selfish, unworthy, or corrupt motives—if you
think that he has played false to the great principles that
he was electeel to represent—you have the right to reject
him when he offers himself again as a candidate for re-
election. This is the principle of our constitution, and I
think you will consider, with me, that it is a wise and
salutary one. By that principle I am here again standing
before my friends and fellow-to amsmen :horn I have
represented so long in Parliament, and the honour of
representing whom in Parliament I consider greater
than any other honour that has fan upon me. (Ap-
plause.) Here I stand to ask any rasa if he can impute
to me any unworthy, selfish, or corrupt motive in
taking the step I have, and accepting office ? (Hear,
hear, and applause.) When I was invited to take a
place in the present Administration, with a seat in the
Cabinet, it became my duty to consider very (carefully
how far I should be promoting, or otherwise, those prin-
ciples which I knew most of you had at heart, which I
had professed originally to you, and which I had been
sent to Parliament to advocate. (Hear.) Now, with
regard to all domestic policy I do not propose to go
into details here, because you had an opportunity for-
merly of hearing my sentiments on these subjects. I
expressed them to you with the utmost distinctness, and
with all candour, when I was first elected ; and they
have undergone no change since. (Applause.) I have
oonstantly acted upon them. I have never swerved
one hair's breadth from the principles on which I
had the honour of receiving your confidence ; and I be-
lieve they aro already perfectly well known to you all.
(Hear, hear.) The question, I say, which presented it-
self to my mind, when I was called upon to join the
Administration was this—how far I should be giving
effect to the principles which you know me to entertain?
With regard to all questions of domestic policy, I could
have no doubt, when I looked at the composition of
the Cabinet, that I should be giving greater effect to
the principles I have always espoused when I joined
that Cabinet. I saw that it consisted of men who were
advocates of civil and religions freedom, and therefore
there could be no inconsistency in joining them. In
such a Cabinet it will be almost invidious to mention
names ; but there was one man whom I could look to
with great eonfidence, and whose name never fails to
elicit the approbation due to a long life of unblemished
honour and patriotism—l allude to the Marquis of
Lansdowne, who though not now holding office,
nevertheless bas a seat in Lord Palmorston's Cabinet,
and giving it the benefit of his high character and
counsel. (Hear, hear.) Lord Lansdowne is a man
who for fifty years has lived in the sight of the public,
maintaining a character of the utmost possible consis-
tency, whose character has been unblemished, whose
conduct has never been suspected in the smallest degree,
and who has ever been the champion of those princi-
ples and liberal tendencies which meet with your appro-
bation and mine. (Hear, hear.) And this gave me the
strongest assurance that those principles would receive
the concurrence of the Cabinet which I was invited to
enter. (Hear, hear, and applause.) Gentlemen, there
was another man—unfortunately now passed away
from us—whose presence in the Cabinet had great
weight with me. The late Sir William Molesworth
was well known in this borough. You once elected
hint to represent you in Parliament ; and I believe a
more honest and enlightened man did not exist. (Hear,
hear.) He was a member of this Cabinet up to the time
of his death, which took place about the time I joined
it. His presence in the Cabinet had great weight with
me, and I think you will concede that it also had some
weight with you. (Applause.) Gentlemen, on questions
of domestic policy Ido not trouble you further ; but I
come at once to that which presses most upon the minds
of all men—a matter which bas arisen since I filet ad-
dressed you in this place ; for none of us then dreamt
that war was at hand. (Hear, hear.) liTow, however,
we are engaged in a war. Gentlemen, I have never
had an opportunity of stating to you what my opinions
are of the origin of that .war. You have a right to know
what these opinions are, and I am delighted to have an
opportunity to state these with that unreserved confi-
dence and frankness which should always exist while we
re connected as at present ; for as long as I seek to
represent you, you should knew who and what the man
is you are seeding to Parliament. (Hear, hear.) With
regard to the war, then, I have been of opinion from the
first that that war was a strictly just and necessary one.
(Great cheering.) I believe it was a war forced upon
this country by the unprincipled and dangerous policy
which Russia had thought fit to adopt. The immediate
object of that war, as you know, was the protection of
the Turkish empire against the aggressions—which had
then become perfectly plain—on the part of ffeeseia. It
was abundantly manifest that Russia was intending,
with as little delay as possible, to take possession of
Constantinople. This, though involving the integrity o
the Turkish empire, and the independence of an ally of
ours, would not have been the only conseqoonce of the
success of Russia ; because the immediate consequence
of her taking possession of Constantinople would have
been that it would have given to Russia such a prepon-
derance in Europe that it would have brought the
greatest possible danger on the rest of Europe, and
particularly on those states whose advanced civilisation
and free institutions would have been most likely
to be obnoxious to a power like Russia. Upon these
considerations, I think you will concur with me in
regarding the present as a just and necessary war on the
part of this country. (Cheers.) Therefore, 'when I was
asked to take a place in the Administration, I thought my
sentiments were in unison with those of the Cabinet in
respect to the origin of the war. (Hear.) And now with
regard to its conduct. I saw at the head of the Cabinet a
nobleman who about a year ago was called by the almost
unanimous voice of the people of this country to form a
Cabinet for the purpose of carrying on the war with vigour
and efficiency. The public voice pointed out Lord Palmer-
ston—(hear, and applause)—as the fittest man for the post
—and he was so distinguished, not only from the extraor-
dinary abilities he possesses, but by his gallant spirit and
his unrivalled acquaintance with foreign affairs, acquired
during a long life passed in the transactions of our foreign
affairs. (Hear.) I had every reason, therefore, to be-
lieve that the head of the Cabinet would carry out the
war upon those principles which I believed to be right,
and those principles were these. At the time I joined
the Administration there seemed to be no prospect
of peace. There was no hope that the infatuation of our
enemies was likely to give way ; and it was under that
conviction that I expressed the opinion, in the address
which you may remember I put forth at the time, that
the true course for England to pursue was, to prosecute
the war with the greatest energy, decision, and vigour,
as the truo means, not of prolonging the war, but of
bringing about a peace, and of bringing about a pace as
would be worth having. Now, gentlemen, we might
have had a hollow and unsubstantial truce—discre-
table in itself, and to be broken as soon as it suited the
convenience of the enemy to break it. That, however,
would have been putting a most unsatisfactory conclu-
sion to the war ; and therefore I thought the only
course was to carry on the war with vigour, decision,
and energy. These were the principles which I enter-
tained when I took office ; these were the principles
which I knew were entertained by the Cabinet ; and
I thought there could be no reason against my join-
ing a Cabinet with whom I agreed upon principles
of foreign and domestic policy. In November, when I
came into office, preparations were going on, and have
been continued, to enable us to prosecute the war with
the greater energy ; and I am happy to tell you that
there never was a time in the history of this country
when both the land and naval forces in this country
were in a state of greater efficiency than they are at this
moment. The preparations for war are not relaxed, but
are proceeding with vigour. And now, gentlemen, we
come to a particular period of time when a new state of
circumstances has arisen. You are all aware that a
short time ago Austria thought proper to submit to Rus-
sia certain propositions as the groundwork of a general
pacification ; and that Russia had thought fit, some-
what unexpectedly, to accede to these propositions.
The question then immediately arose in our Govern-
ment what was to be done in regard to these pro-
positions ? lam quite sure that whatever any of
us may think of war, or the necessity of prosecuting
it with vigour while it lasted, no man could think
that the British Government would have done their duty
if they bad turned a deaf ear to any propositions which
seemed to involve the chance of attaining a safe and ho-
nourable peace. It was their duty to attend to these
propositions, to weigh them carefully, and to give effect
tothem, if they would secure the only peace which the
Government, the Parliament, or the people of this coun-
try would ever be likely to accept—a safe, a tasting, and
n honourable peace. (Hear.) Well, gentlemen, nego-
tiations are about to be commenced. I may assure you
that, so far as England is concerned, these negotiations
will be conducted in the meet frank and straightforward
manner. (" Hear," and applause.) England has never
had any sinister object to gain by the war. (Hear.)
She undertook it on principle, and will
She maintain o
it
nto in
will i
the same spirit, and also, on principle, g
these negotiations with a disposition to do that which is
eight—to aim at no sinister advantages for herself, but
with an endeavour to carry out the greatobjifecit tutswrenout
had
in view in the outset. (Hear, bear.) And
—as I hope it may—that the great object of the war can
be gained by the negotiations, I ant sure you will think
with me that the war ought to terminate, and that we
should be restored to those blessings which we cannot
value too highly—the blessings of peace. But this peace
must be made upon such terms as will insure its endur-
ance. Such a peace it will be the anxious endeavour of
tho Government to bring about"; any peace but thatthey