The Sun.
London, England, 1851-12-19 00:00:00

member of the Society of Friends, from whose in-
teresting narrative we have already quoted.
Having already exceeded our limits in this notice,
we dismiss the subject for the present, purposing to
return to it upon an early occasion.

MANCHESTER REFORM RESOLUTIONS.

The Stockport Reform Association held its annual
so:ree on Tuesday evening, in the County Court Hall.
Mr. BRIGHT, M.P., was the first speaker, and in
responding to the sentiment given from the chair
(occupied by Mr. Hampson), "Mr. John Bright,
and speedy success to the scheme of Parliamentary
Reform so ably expounded by him at the late delegate
meeting in Manchester," said—The last time he met
the Reformers of Stockport was about six years ago,
and the sentiment with which his name was coupled
led him back very naturally to the consideration of
one or two points with regard to that period. In 1845,
and about this period of the year, it was first an-
nounced that Sir Robert Peel had determined—of
course because Sir Robert Peel had so determined—
that the corn-laws should be abolished. Now this
was about seven or eight years after the League had
first discussed the question, and brought it promi-
nently before the public. Now he should like to ask
them what was the reason that it was required that
the struggle should be maintained for seven years
before they could obtain the abolition of the corn-laws?
The reason was a very simple one. If they could step
inside of the House of Commons, as it had been his
fortune to do almost every day for six months in the
year for the last nine years, they would perceive that
their opinions were not prevalent opinions there, ard
that their in prosentatives, or those who spoke their
sentiments in that House, or the sentiments of the
great mass of the population, were not in a majoriry,
or in any great number in that House ; but they
would find that representatives of an entirely different
class, and in numbers a very small section of the
community, were intrenched in both Houses of Par-
lament; so that, without some great and long-con-
tinued agitation, it was impossible to overcome them
or to convince them. When he spoke of convincing
them, it was not convincing their reason so much as
convincing them that they must be compelled to sur•
render.—(Cheers and laughter.) Well, now, at this
very moment there were many things which the
people of this country thought were wrong in our
Government or in our Administration, and they
perceived, or were beginning to perceive, that
the very reason why so little could be done
in Parliament to improve any of our institutions
was precisely the same reason which made it so
extremely difficult to abolish the corn-law. The
House of Commons was considerably more the
representative of the House of Lords and of the great
landed proprietary than it was the representative of
the property, the industry, and intelligence cf the
whole people of this country.—(Hear, hear.) Now,
the sentiment which had been read referred to the
resolutions which were passed in Manchester, less
than a fortnight ago, at a conference of gentlemen
assembled chiefly from Lancashire and Yorkshire.
From the accounts in the papers they would know
that the conference was of a very iufluential cha-
racter ; that it was composed of men of education,
property, and influence, and all those qualities which
gave men standing in this country. The resolutions
passed at that conference were passed in the belief
that a law based upon them would give to the people of
this country that representation to which they were
justly entitled. Their object was not to take care
that every particular individual in the country had a
vote, nor that every Member of Parliament should
have precisely the same number of constituents ; but
they were prepared with the view of obtaining the
sanction of the good, the liberal, the well-intending
portion of every class of society ; andjudging from the
mode in which they had been received, he was happy
to believe that the conference bad not wholly failed in
the object which it had in view.—(Hear, hear.) With
regard to the franchise, the resolution proposed that
the principle which had existed from time immemo-
rial in this country should be adopted—the principle
of voting within parishes, which he believed no one
ever complained of as being too extended or too
contracted a suffrage, that every person liable to rat-
ing, every person rated in fact, every person who has
a right to have his name on the rate-book by virtue of
any occupation he might hold, should have the fran-
chise; that, in point of fact, the rate-book should be
the register of electors. If that had worked well in
all the parishes in England, if it had been the fran-
chise adopted in municipal boroughs and had worked
well in poor-law unions, he could not see why it
!should not work equally well in electing Members of
'Parliament. And this conference proposed, and a
great meeting in the Free-trade Hall sanctioned the
same evening, the proposition that it was desirable
that a measure should be introduced by the Govern-
ment, of which they had some faint promise, and that
it should be based upon that most efficient and ad-
mirable franchise, which, while generally speaking,
it admitted every settled inhabitant to vote,
wherever it excluded men did not exclude them
because they belonged to a particular class in society.
The next proposition of the conference was the
establishment of a system by which voters could go
to the poll without compulsion and without fear, the
vote by ballot.—(Loud cheers.) He met a gentle-
man the other day who was a candidate at the List
general election for a borough in Yorkshire. That
gentleman was not understood to be of the political
party to which he (Mr. Bright) was supposed to be-
long, but he said he thought he ought to be in favour
of the ballot, because when he was a candidate at the
last election he only lost by a very small majority,
and no less than 44 of the voters who had signed the
requisition to him ultimately voted for his opponent.
They voted of course under more or less of compul-
sion or influence, which the ballot would shield elec-
tors from. Ile did not know what had been done in
Stockport, but he saw a great many very large fac-
tories as he came over the great bridge, and large
factories had come to give very much the same power
in their locality as large landed proprietors had in
other districts. And although he believed there
were in all towns many who, through possessing
great influence, yet scrupulously abstained from
using it upon any elector, yet whenever any
of these large establishments, whether land or mills,
came into the hands of a man who was not just or
conscientious, it could then be exercised, and often
was exercised, against the interests of the consti-
tuency and against the public interests.—(Hear.)
He should like to find a man who could give an argu-
ment against the ballot. He had heard it discussed
repeatedly in the House of Commons ; he had heard
one of their representatives speak of it; but he never
heard an argument against it. The only thing that
had been said only showed that there was no argu-
ment. It was said to be an un-English way of
voting. But if there was one thing worse than an-
other, according to the spirit in which the Govern-
ment of this country was established, it was that a
man to whom the constitution professed to have given
a vote should give a vote not in accordance with his
honest convictions, but in accordance with the dic-
tates of an employer, a creditor, a customer, or some-
body who had some influence over him. It was a
notorious thing that in almost every borough in Eng-
land—certainly with the exception of the largest
boroughs—this influence was used to a great extent
at every election. He had been himself on election
committees, and he would show them how it was
managed. He had felt humiliated many a time to
see the course that appeared to be absolutely necessary
to be taken in order to work an election at all, where

the constituency was small, and where majorities
were not large. When the election came pretty near,
and the canvass was tolerably well finished, and every-
body that could be seen had been seen once or twice
or three times, and when the names were finally
written down of the people who were to vote for A
or for B, then there was a list made of persons who
were not yet pledged. Every one knew that some
were not pledged because they were dishonest, and
thought they could make something by holding back
till a late hour. Others were not pledged because
they felt themselves under a pressure which they
doubted very much whether they would be able to
escape, and they had not yet made up their minds
whether they ought to stick to their virtue and vote
conscientiously and make the sacrifice, or whether they
would become the tools and instruments of some per-
son who had power over them. The list was made
out, and before a large committee it was read over,
and it.wa3 asked then whether anybody knew any-
body who had influence with this elector; and some
one who was his employer or his customer, or who
lent him money when he was in distress, or who had the
dispensing power of some charity was pointed out as
most likely to influence this man's vote, and his name
was put down as a memorandum opposite to that man's
name on the list. And so to every man's name there was
another's name placed opposite, of the man who was sup-
posed to be master of his vote. Well, these men
were requested by the committee to exercise their in.
fluence over these unhappy voters, and, if possible, to
get them to pledge and take care they did not escape,
but come up on the day of election. Then they
were told that the ballot could not be without its ob-
jections, because a man who was in these difficult
circumstances, and who now was forced to vote as
somebody else wishes him, would go to the poll and
vote for A, telling Mr. So-and-so that be voted for
B; telling the gentleman who had influence over him
what was untrue, and, therefore, deceiving him, and
being guilty of falsehood and a species of treachery.
In the first place, that gentleman had no right to ask
him.—(Cheers.) But they must bear in mind that
whatever result of this nature might follow, either to
the extent of deceit or falsehood, which in certain
cases might arise, yet that whatever it was it would
be no more than the measure of the oppression which
was now practised upon the electors • and that every
elector who, under the ballot, would' thus deceive a
man who asked him how he voted, would, if there
was no ballot, be the servant of that' individual, and
be guilty of lie
by voting contrary to the =vie'

tions of his heart.—(Cheers.) His own opinion was,
that no moral or religious man who examined thesys-
tern of our electioneering could feel less than the
deepest humiliation et the scenes which took place all
over the country ; and he could not conceive how
such a man could refuse his assent to the establish-
ment of the vote by ballot. He should say that any
Minister who was really anxious to improve the r.e-
presentation of the people would most signally fail in
the performance of his duty if he did not connect with
the measure, whatever it might he, the shelter of the
ballot. He believed that any Minister who withheld
it from the electors, after the experience of so many
years, preferred that the votes should be given under
theseimpure and immoral influences, rather than
under the impression of intelligent and conscientious
duty on the part of the elector who was intrusted
with that vote. Another proposition of the conference
was t.hat, we should have a considerable alteration in
the distribution of the franclaise. In Stockport, he
membershnd3o o ,otoooPaa Parliament
iammoernet,
believed, there were about 60,000 inhabitants. There
were. many boroughs with not more than 5,000 inha-
absitasnttosckwp-hoortredtiudr.nmedannscimienstneyr
000111 t rs
and only returned two members, from 12
while Stockport, with only 1,300 or 1,400 electors,
returned as many. These inequalities actually deprivedo
them of what real representation there was. Out
every seven men they met, six of them had no vote at
all, and the number of electors all over the country
amounted to less than 1,000,000; and the Members
who went to Parliament were so distributed among
these that all their great seats of population, wealth,
intelligence, and power, were deprived of power in
the Government, and were matched end even out-
balanced by little paltry boroughs in different parts of
the country—half a dozen of which might be carved
out of Manchester, and Manchester would not appear
less than it was now.—(Hear.) He hoped that the
propositions sul,mitted by the conference in Manches-
ter would meet with the approbation not of this meet-
ing only, but of all the population of this town. The
Minister had during the last session of Parliament dis-
tinctly declared that at the opening of next session he
would be prepared to submit a measure of reform to
Parliament. They believed he would keep his pro-
mise. His measure might be a very small one,
which would ba very unstatesmanlike, or it might
be one of substantial improvement. If it were the
latter, of course they who were in favour of Par-
liamentary reform would give it all the support in
their power. But it must be borne in mind that
a large section of the House of Comtnoee, as in
1830 and 1831, wanted no reform at all. The House
of Lords did not want reform ; and it was not quite
clear that all the members of the Cabinet wanted it.

If they went to the House of Commons they might
make whatever speeches and give what votes they
liked, but if there was not a manifestation of opinion
out of doors they would see at once that they were
utterly incapable—they who were in a minority—to
cope with this banded and confederated monopoly of
power arrayed ogainst them.
Mr. KERSHAW, one of the Members for Stockport,
was the next speaker, and congratulated the Reform
Association on its growing power and on the improved
position of the register. He announced his intention
of offering himself for the borough again at the next
election, and was loudly cheered in making the an-
nouncement. He said they had already heard of the
Reform Conference at Manchester, and a more influ-
ential body he thought he never saw assembled than
that conference,or men actuated with more zeal in the
cause of reform than were at present at that meeting.
But the present meeting was alai, doubtless, aware
that Lord John Russell had promised, in the next
session of Parliament, a Bill on the subject of Par-
liamentary Reform, and it became a matter of anxiety
in the country of what complexion and character that
Bill would be. He did not expect it would be of too
liberal a character, though he would do his Lordship
the justice to say that he agreeably disappointed even
the Reformers of this country some twenty years
ago, when he brought forward his first Reform Bill.
—(Hear, hear.) If his Lordship's new measure,
however, was of a liberal character, he hoped it would
be received as it ought to be. But suppose the Go-
vernment were to propose a little, meddling, insig-
nificant measure, whose fault would it be ? He was
convinced that the people would never consent to go
unrepresented as they now were, and if that was
their determination they ought to make their opi-
nions felt by the Government.
Several other gentlemen addressed the meeting.

INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS.
On Tuesday, Sir William Cubitt, President, in the
chair, the paper read was " On the Alluvial Forma-

tions and the Local Changes of the South-Eastern
Coast of England ; First Section, from the River
Thames to Beachy Head," by Mr. J. B. Redman,
M. Inst. C. E.

The paper stated that the passage of shingle along
the English coast, due, as was generally believed, to
the action of waves alone, took on the south coast, a
course from west to east, and on the east coast, from
north to south ; during certain winds the shingle was
heatipel/41 up coincident with their direction, and re-
peated withdrawals and renewals (the latter being the
most frequent), caused a lee ward movement of the ma-
terial, forming it at the same time into a series of
triangles, of which the shore W2s the base. If any
natural or artificial projection intercepted this motion,
an accumulation, which would increase and be held
in check, according to the state of the wind, took
place up to a certain point, or until the angle formed
was filled up, when the shingle would pass round.
With groynes, by far the most common action was,
unless they were of great height, or short length, for
the shingle, after accumulating on the weather side to
the level of the top of the groyne, to pass over it, and
then travel to leeward.

The degradation of the north shore of Kent, the
local formation of shingle around the Isle of Thanet,
by the wasting away of that chalky promontory, and
the retention of large masses of alluvial matter in
Pegwell Bay were dwelt on. The main belt of
shingle lying to the south of Deal, and extending
from thence to Dover, with its early and present
effects on the harbour at the latter place, were then
described; also, the early condition of Folkestone
harbour, the large accumnlation of shingle arrested
to the westward of that haven, by the projection of a
low-water pier, or groyne, at right angles to the
harbour, and its effect upon the shore to the eastward,
by retarding the progressive motion of the shingle in
that direction. Further en, the curious formation at
Dungeness Point, which it was reasonable to suppose
did not, at one time, exist, as the parallel " fulls"
of beach between Romney and Lydd, and ex-
extending from Wincheleea on the west to Hythe
on the east, seemed formerly to have constituted
the sea coast. The rectangular " full," running
from the banks on the west side of Lydd towards the
point, might have been created by an accumulation of
shingle travelling from the westward, held in check
by the outfall of the river Rother ; the angle con-
tained by this spit and the coast to the westward be-
coming gradually filled up with shingle, a silty deposit
would take place on the east side, consequent on the
gradual loss of Romney harbour, and the length of
the spit would be increased by the parallel ridges of
shingle periodically added to, and travelling round it.
Numerous examples, extending over two centuries,
showed that the average annual increase was six
yards, reaching over certain periods, an average of
eight yards per annum—the absolute increase since
the time of Elizabeth being nearly one mile; and
they proved conclusively that the average progress
seaward, producing a determinate aggregate elonga-
tion in a south easterly direction, was much greater
than had been generally assumed, though not re
gular, fur the Ness had even been stationary during
certain periods.
The gradual decadence of the ancient ports of
Hythe, Romney, and Lydd, to leeward of this point,
were than alluded to, as also the diversion of the out-
fall of the river Bother to Rye, once an estuary of
the sea, and then forming Romney Harbour ; the
great increase of shingle to the westward; the early
and abortive attempts to form a harbour at Hastings ;
the vast abrasion of the coast along Pevensey Bay,
the harbour of which place had been lost by the
elongation and extension of Langley Point. Be-
tween the origin of this point and that of Dungeness
there was a remarkable similarity, both having
originally had a tidal haven to the leeward, eventu-
ally choked up by the elongation of these spits across
their outfalls ; both had pools, or mores, arising from
the landlocked waters, and in both cases the modern
"fulls" of shingle could be plainly distinguished from
the more ancient, by their forms and direction. The
remarkable decrease of this point, about three-eights
of a mile, during the last century, appeared to
principally from Old Brighton beacharise
af-
fording
early conditionthenecessa and presentsupplyry of
lii
stateno longer
ngle.
The of Cuckmere
and Newhaven harbours, the great degradation of the
coast at Rottingdean, the sweeping away, during
Elizabeth's reign, of the beach
and town of Old
Brighton, then standing on the site of the present
chain pier, the materials from which formed the spits
to the eastward, were then described.
The author bad personally inspected the whole of
this coast, the different sections of which he _ pro-
mised to give in succession, and had also examined
the earliest accessible maps, and the works of the best
topographical writers, who were frequently referred
to, in elucidation of the subject, which was one of
vrafsitaiennicp:rttaoncteheincomnsatrriuncetieonng engineering, er ing
barbours especially
and coastin
1(s of defence • as he submitted that it was most
and the many instances of the compensating
warns
that such' natural agencies as had been de-
scribed,
effects of alternating loss and gain, should be cor-
rectly understood.
It was announced that the annual general meeting
would be held on Tuesday, December 23, when the
annual report would be read, and the ballot for the
President, Vice-Presidents, and other members of the
council, would take place ; and, also, that at the
meeting of Zie§day, jAngary 13, 1852, the Recucl