The Sun.
London, England, 1834-12-06 00:00:00

Lord Joirm RUSSELL rose to acknowledge the toast ; he
was prevented from proceeding by an overpowering burst of
applause, that broke forth on his rising, and laste several
minutes. As soon as it had subsided, his Lordship pro-
ceeded to speak nearly as follows :—" Although greatly
overcome by a feeling of gratitude for the manner in which
you have received my health, yet having noticed during a
part of the speech of my Honourable Friend, your Chair-
man, that there were more than one or two persons who
disagreed with. him, and who probably have disapproved of
my conduct—may I request the favour, that if any of those
gentlemen have any objections to state to my conduct, or
the conduct of the Ministry to which I belonged—( Hear,
hear !)—they will do me the favour and ypt, the justice to
state their sentiments. that I may, if possikle,lave an op-
portunity of answering them." The Noble Lord sat down.
The CHAIRMAN—iII the gentlemen do us the favour
of coming forward and stating their objections?--(No
answer.)
A person of the name of Oldrieve was called on by se-
veral persons to stand up and declare his objections. One
gentleman proposed that he should be put on the table vi
et arnzis ; but Mr. Oldrieve declined accepting the offer
thrown out. The father of the misguided young man is
steward to Captain Bastard, of Sharpham—to Mr. Bastard,
of Kitley—and to Governor Holdsworth also ; gentlemen,
who, having each formerly had the honour of representing
rotten borough constituencies, could not feel very comfort-
able with the author of the Reform Act in their neighbour-
hood. It may be presumed that a little of their chagrin
had been imparted to the steward and his family, and that
the hopeful son of the latter personage had chivalrously
determined to break a lance with the champion of the Bill ;
be this as it may, he did not accept the gauntlet, but shrunk
from the lists dejected and dismayed, " a wiser and a sadder
man" than when he rushed so heedlessly into the fray.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL—If no one is willing to come for- '
ward to statedtkose objections which he may feel and enter-
tain to my conduct as your representative, I trust that
having refrained from so doing, he will allow me an oppor-
tunity, without interruption, to state to you the circum-
' stances in which I have felt compelled, by a sense of duty
towards you, and by a sense of duty towards the kingdom at
large—(Hear, hear)—to pursue the course which I have
done in Parliament.—(Cheers.) Gentlemen, you must per-
mit me, although it was a time when I was not your repre-
sentative, to go back to some circumstances which took
place as early as 1828 ; for we are now living times when
those who were supposed to be the enemies of Reform,
come forward in the character of new Reformers.—(Hear,
hear, and cheers.) Not content with promises for the fu-
ture (which, I think, you will find vain and unsubstantial),
they refer to their past acts as proofs of their attachment
to Reform ; yet I think I shall demonstrate to you, that
they were only proofs of their inability to resist Reform.
—(Hear, hear, and long-continued cheering.) Gentlemen,
it happened that in 1827, I requested by those who re-
presented the Protestant Dissenters in London, to under-
take the charge of a Bill for the repeal of the Corporation
and Test Acts.—( Hear, hear, hear, and great applause.)
Accordingly, gentlemen, in 1828, under the ministry of the
Duke of Wellington, I brought that question before the
House of Commons, and was fortunate enough, after a
single night's debate, to carry the question by a majority of
forty.—(Cheers.) Gentlemen, the Government of the Duke
of Wellington, finding they were beaten, then proposed to
me, in the House of Commons, through Sir Robert Peel,
that I should consent to the suspension of these intolerant
Acts, instead of their repeal.—(Hear, hear.) That I re-
sisted—(Cheers)—l insisted on their total repeal, and Sir
Robert Peel, being unable to contend against, the majority ,
of the House, that went with me, left the house. But
knowing as I did, and as he did, that they had then, as they
have now, a majority of the House of Lords, including the
Bishops—(Hear, hear)—ready to resist any Bill that might
be sent up in favour of religious freedom,—it was proposed
to me, on the part of the Government, that the House of
Lords, and especially the Bishops, would consent to the
Bill, if it were clogged with a declaration which was pro-
posed.—(Hear.) I stated at once, both to the Government,
and to the Dissenters also, that I considered that declaration
a clog upon the Bill.—(Reiterated cheers)—that it was
inefficient and needless—{ Hear, hear)—but at the same
time the body interested, acting by my advice, consented
to ti.at declaration, and allowed it to be inserted ; and ac-
cordingly, with the full consent of the Dissenters, I as-
sented to that clog, and the Bill was passed.—(Continued
cheers.) But, gentlemen, I think that you will think with
me, that it was not the Duke of Wellington that repealed
the Test and Corporation Acts—( Hear, hear) ; but that,
on the contrary, he resisted it. To mistake him for the
person who repealed them, was as if one were to mistake
the governor who surrenders a town by capitulation, for
the general who takes it.—( Loud cheering.) Gentlemen,
this is the history of one of the Acts by which the differ-
ence between the old and new Reformers was seen.—
(Cheers.) In the next year the Duke of Wellington pro-
posed another large measure in favour of religious liberty.—
(Hear, hear.) Gentlemen, that was a measure which
those with whom I had acted had always proposed and
defended, as a concession they owed to justice and reli-
gious liberty.—(Cheers.) In our view, it was a measure to
unite in equal freedom and joint affection to the constitu-
tion, the inhabitants of that part of the empire in which
the Catholics predominate, with the inhabitants of this
country. But, gentlemen, these were not the grounds, these
were not the motives stated by the Duke of Wellington.—
(Hear.) He stated that he was going to propose that mea-
sure, because he was alarmed at the agitation—he was
alarmed at the disaffection prevailing in Ireland—( Cheers)—
and that it was the only alternative, in order to avert civil
war.—( Hear, and cheers.) Gentlemen, although entirely ap-
proving of his concession, yet I shall always lament that
that concession had not been made sooner to justice, rather
than later to force—(Reiterated cheers)—and, gentle-
men, I think that in many of those questions respecting
Ireland, which have since troubled the councils of the
country, we have to trace much evil to the persuasion, that
the concession engendered in the minds of the leaders
of the popular party in Ireland, that it was of no use to
send petitions to Parliament, that it was of no use to urge
the claims of justice, but by force and resistance to
law the remedy of their grievances was alone to be ob-
tained.—(Cheers.) This was the second act of Reform
to which I meant to allude, in which you will see, that al-
though the measure was the same, yet it was grounded
on a different view of circumstances to that which we
of the old Reform maintained—we rested our cencession
upon what we thought right, upon what we thought just ;
and it is a totally different thing from this to yield, by
giving in at the moment only when you feel yourself un-
able to resist.—(Great cheering.) Gentlemen, however,
such a concession having been made by the Duke of Wel-
ington's Government—yet, when it was proposed to me
by one of that party, which I think a very honest party,
though I think it a very injudicious party—the old Tories ;
when it was proposed to me, I say, to renew a motion for
a reform in Parliament, which I had very frequently made
before for a reform in Parliament, with a promise of in-
creased support—( Hear, hear)—I told him that I did not
wish to embarrass the Government or the Duke, by seeking
the aid of his ultra-Tory opponents, even on a question in
which I felt so deep an interest.—(Continued cheers.)
Gentlemen, on the following year, being still anxious for a
reform in Parliament, I proposed that the towns of Man-
chester, Leeds, and Birmingham, should be allowed to send
representatives.—(Cheers.) I looked at this as a begin-
ning of reform, which, if cordially embraced by the Legis-
lature might have led gradually and smoothly to more
comprehensive measures.—( Hear.) Gentlemen, I think
you will not deny that in that I was not going be-
yond the bounds of moderation—(Certainly not)—and
I believe that if that measure had been conceded,
I should have been willing, after the concession, to
give any general support to the Duke of Welliaj-
ton's Government, which, with my views and my
politics, I should have been able conscientiously to
do.—(Hear, hear, hear.) But, gentlemen, the Duke
of Wellington and his Government opposed that measure.
(Hear, hear)—they defeated my motion in the House of
Commons ; and, in the following November, the Duke
stated that the borough system, with its Gattons, its Sa-
rums, and its Brambers, was the most perfect system that
the wit of man could devise ; and that, while he was in
power, he should oppose any change.—(Cheers.) Gentle-
men, this brings me to the formation of Lord Grey's Go-
vernment, at which time I became the member of a Com-
mittee, to whom the proposition of a plan of reform was