The Sun.
London, England, 1867-02-01 00:00:00

Uncovering. Nelson's Lionr.

Titrd Edition of yeater-
TM following appinirod in oar
day STIMIDS :
It was generally believed that the uncovering of
the colossal lions that within the last few days
have been placed at
wthoeuibdasteakoef
pNlaeelsootn's o-mcoolrrumown:
little ceremony would be observed
ainudTrthafaatlgaaoruilaq
on the occasion, but such was not the arrangement.
This afternoon, Lord John Manners, Sir E.
Landseer and the Baron Marochetti being pre-
sent, a number of workmen commenced cutting
ot
fhethecorlidsons,thaantd baohuonrtdly tbheeforecandvasasks t
he coveringons,
which have caused such anxiety to the artist and
such numerous inquiries in the House of
ills Co-
mmons, were exposed to public view, W
workmen were engaged in removing the canvass, the,
a
number of people of course collected, and it was ex-
pected that some one of the gentlemen present
might make a few observations, but after the work-
men had accomplished their task, Lord John Man-
ners, Sir Edwin, and the Baron had a general
view of the Nelson monument with its latest
additions, and then quietly took their de-
parture. The unanimous opinion of the few
that had an opportunity of getting a view of the
lions before the evening set in was that they were
quite up to the work to be expected from such au artist
asSir E. Landseer, and that although they had been a
long time in preparation they were quite worth the
waiting for. If our recollection serves us rightly,
it was during the time that Mr. Disraeli was
Chancellor of the Exchequer that the money
for the lions was voted by Parliament ; and
it is rather a curious coincidence that the right hon.
gentleman,
masna,after
highoffice.
the lapsee of so many years, holds
now the

THE LORD CHANCELLOR'S CHURCH PATRONAGE.
—The Lord Chancellor has presented the Rev. Thomas
Cochrane, M.A., Head Master of Lord Leycester'd House,
Warwick, to the Rectory of Stapleford Abbots, near Rom-
ford, Essex, rendered vacant by the death of the Rev,
Charles Whitworth Pitt, M.A. ; the Rev. Grover Scan-,
M.A., of Trinity Colloge, Dublin, to tho vicarage of the
second mediety of the parish of Ruskington, Lincoln-
shire, in the room of the Rev. James Day Heckford, M.A.;
the Rev. G. -V. Heathcote, M.A., to the Rectory of West
Deeping, Lincolnshire; and the Rev. John TAgg, M.A.,
of Pembroke College, Cambridge, late incumbent of St,
John's Church, Buthual-,green, to the Rectory of Mellis,
Suffolk, in the room of the Rev. J. G. Cumming, M.A.

Dinner to Mr. Horsman, M.P.

Last evening the electors of Stroud gave a public
dinner to Mr. Horsman, their junior member, at the

Subscription-rooms. Mr. J. W. Halliwell presided,
_ .

and nearly 300 gentlemen, including the Moderate
Liberals and Liberal Conservatives of the borough,
sat down to dinner. On entering the hall, Mr.
Horsman was very warmly received. The customary
loyal and patriotic toasts having been duly honoured,
The CHAIRMAN proposed the toast of the even-
ing, " The Health of the Right Hon. E. Horsman,"

which was drunk amid the greatest enthusiasm.

111 r. HintsmAs, in responding at great length, said
he must leave it to themselves, who knew better

than he did the circumstances in which he stood

among them, to judge what his feelings must be on
that occasion, rather than attempt by any feeble
words to give inadequate expression to his deep gra-
titude towards them. He regarded that gatheri:lg as

a great public declaration on their part that they
wished their member to be truly a representative,
and not a delegate--(cheers)—and that while they

valued party ties there were still occasions when
great principles might override the exigencies- of
party ; that when the leaders of a party, from weak-
ness, from blindness, from selfishness, or any other
cause, entered into combinations at variance with
its true principles, then it was of advantage to have
a representative who would step forward to vindicate
the cause that was about to be betrayed, and who

would raise his voice to warn the country against

danger into which it was being plunged. He had
been a member of Parliament before many now in
that room were born, and during a period of great

labour, anxiety, and responsibility to public men ;
and, speaking for himself, he could say the highest
reward he could look to for any service that he had
rendered would be when he came face to face with
those whom he had been endeavouring to serve to be
told that in his past career there was no cause of re-

proach to himself or of shame to them, and that
their interests had not been prejudiced through hay.

ing been confided to his keeping. (Cheers.) He en-
tered Parliament soon after the Reform Bill of 1832
became law, since whish time a greater number of
great measures had been passed than in any corre-
sponding period of profound peace in any country.
But they now had a school of politicians who said
that the Parliament reconstructed under the act of
1832 had done its work, was good for nothing, and

•
must be reformed ; while every man who stood up
for it was supposed to be a recreant to Liberal

principles. If; happened lately to come across
one of these unfledged Liberals descending

from a very old and official Whig stock,
who ran last summer into rather wild courses,
and said he thought the proposed Reform meeting
in Hyde-park ought to have been held there, and
that he himself, if his antecedents would have jus-
tified it, would have been ready to head the mob.
Thereupon he remarked that he thought the break-
ing down of the palings of the park in order to get
within the pale of the Constitution was rather an
irregular proceeding. (Cheers and laughter.) The
ardent young Reformer replied, " Oh ! your notions
are antiquated !" He then asked the youth whe-
ther he remembered Sheridan's rejoinder to a suck-
ling politician, who told him he was not a Reformer.
He said, " No." Well, he repeated Sheridan's

words to him, which were—" Sir, I began as a Re-
former before you were born, and I shall continue
a Reformer after you are hanged." (Laughter and
cheers.) The youth was silenced for the moment,
but returned to him next day, and asked him whe-
ther he really thought he should be hanged, to which
he replied, "No, and for two reasons—first, because
no Government would think you worth hanging ;
and, next, that happily we don't hang people now
for political offences, but if you go on as you have
begun, I may tell you for your own comfort that
you have a very good chance of being transported."
(Renewed cheers and laughter.) Now, if there was
one passage in his political life to which be could
look back without self-reproach it was his connec-
tion with the question of Parliamentary Reform.
That was a subject on which he had made great
sacrifices, for no other purpose except to proclaim
what he believed to be great principles, to defeat
intrigues, to thwart discreditable combinations, and
to save his country from the dangers into which

he thought she was about to fall. From the firs
his policy had been to effect what he felt to be
just and necessary reforms, without giving the
predominance to any particular class, and to
those principles he still earnestly adhered. Let
him remind them more particularly what those prin-
ciples were. By a curious coincidence it so happened
that in the month of January of 1859, and speaking
in that very room, and with Lord Derby then, as
now, occupying the post of Premier, he expressed
to his constituents his opinions on Parliamentary
Reform, which, as they would remember, had not
then become a party question. Everybody then, as
now, was asking " Is the Derby Government going
to introduce a Reform Bill?" and his answer to that
question was that he did not know, that they had kept
their secret very carefully. (A. laugh.) Then deal-
ing with the future of Reform he proceeded as fol-
lows :—" The difficulties in any plan of Reform that
had hitherto been proposed for the extension of the
franchise arose out of this :—The great defect of
the Reform Bill was that it established one uniform
franchise. Before the Reform Bill there were a
great variety of franchises, although, of course, they
were liable to abuse. In the excitement and hurry
of that time it was more easy to sweep away than
to repair and perpetrate them. Perhaps such a
change was inevitable ; but it left for the first time
this country a uniform franchise based on the
qualification of property. I will tell you why I think
that was defective—becaus?, if you have franchise
based on the property qualification, if you extend
that franchise, you can extend it only in one direction
—viz., by lowering that qualification. Well, Lord
John Russell in 1832 lowered the franchise and gave
it to the £lO householder. In his subsequent Re-
form Bill, 20 years afterwards, he proposed to lower
it to £s,but the same argument used in favour of
reducing it to £lO or £5 would equally apply for
reducing it to ss. or 5d.; and then you come to uni-
versd suffrage. Well, that is my objection and that
is my difficulty to every plan for the extending the
franchise which has hitherto been propounded." Now
those sentiments expressed by him in that room in
1859 were received with the unanimous approval of
his constituents, who gave him on the occasion
a vote of unqualified confidence. But Lord
Derby introduced in 1859 a Reform Bill which con-
tained no extension of the franchise, and which he
thought defective. He told his political friends that
they would be perfectly justified in the throwing it
out on the second reading, and that if they took that
course he would support them. But they might
amend the measure in committee and then cast upon
the Government the responsibility of accepting or
rej.2cting it in its improved form ; while if it was not
rejected, they would effect a permanent settlement
of the question, and admit a large portion of the
working classes to the franchise. In that course,
too, he was ready to concur. But there was a third
policy which he told them they might adopt —viz.,
by a faction movement to obtain the return of the
Liberal party to office ; and that crooked and mis-
chievous policy he was not prepared to countenance.
He warned them that if they pursued that course
they might drive the Conservatives from power and
take their places, but they would at the same time
commit themselves to a pledge which they would not
re,ieem, and undertake a measure that they could
not pass. The words he used on that occasion were
these When you have broken that pledge and
foiled in your ineaiure your Government will be
gone ; but Will the question of Parliamentary Re-
it will not be gone ; it will have
form be gong' No,
slipped from the hands of Parliament ; it will have
gone out of the hands of the councils of Cabinets,
but it will fall into other hands elsewhere. Legis-
lation you will have made impossible, but agitation
inevitable and successful. That agitation will
proceed year by year, with more and more party
dirt thrown upon it, with Ministers and Parliament,
and public men weakened, damaged, and discredited,
until a period shall arrive when the sky may not be
so tranquil, when commercial difficulty and manu-
facturing distress may dispose an ill-employed and
heart-wearied population to meet the tale of their
grievances half way ; and then, with tumultuous
gatherings in the provinces, with telling re-

ferences to official speeches delivered for one
purpose, but now available for another, with the
table of that House laden with petitions, and its
avenue thronged with excited crowds—then even
the hon. member for Birmingham mar be
looked to as a preserver, and his Bill accepted as a
compromise against the angry passions which your
blindness and folly will have done so much to stimu-
late and influence." (Cheers.) Well, eight years
had passed since then, and now he appealed to them
whether his warnings had not been justified, and
his predictions fulfilled ; and whether those who
followed Lord Russell in 1859 in his factious and
selfish course had not proved themselveS to be the
real obstructors of Reform ? (Cheers.) Well,
he had afterwards opposed Mr. Baines's Franchise
Lill ; but for many years he had enjoyed the
general confidence of the Liberal party in Stroud—
being supported by the mo lerate section of it,
because they regarded his opinions as, on the whole,
orthodox, and also by the advanced section of the
party, because they approved his independence—a
quality which some of them declared they valued
above all things. (" Hear, hear," and a laugh.)
He had, however, more recently discovered that the
notion of some of those latter gentlemen was that
their member was to be independent of everybody
but themselves—(laughter)—while some of the mo-
derate party thought teat a Liberal member ought
always, whether his conscience was for it or against
it, to go into the Ministerial lobby, in obedience to
the Treasury whip. Now, he had rather spurned the
yoke, believing that the House of Commons was
not an assembly of delegates, but a council of rulers
selected to deliberate and decide, not because their
understanding and their attainments were on a level
with those of the multitude, but because—perhaps,
from some special advantages of early training, or
study, or opportunity—they were greatly superior
in those respects to the multitude. (Cheers.) He
was told that he had been forgiven many of his
faults, but that he had gone on from bad to worse,
and he was more particularly charged with having
opposed the Reform Bill of last year. Now, as Mrs.
Malaprop said, he owned:the soft impeachment—
(laughter)—and, if the opportunity recurred, he
would repeat his offence. (Cheers.) His reasons
for opposing the Bill was that it was a bad Bill ;
that it established the principle of government by
numbers, and was attempted to be carried over the
feelings and opinions of the majority of the House
of Commons by means of the extreme minority. He
heard politicians assigning different grounds for the
failure of the Bill of last Session, and he must say
he thought one of those grounds was very shabby
and ungenerous. It was said that it was all Mr.
Gladstone's fault ; that he showed a great want of
tact and temper, and that if it had not been for
him the measure would have passed. He could not
agree either in that criticism or in that censure.
Mr. Gladstone had the conduct of a Bill which
sought to be carried against the conviction
of a majority of the house and the country ; but if
he had had the charge of a good bill, and had had
the country at his back, they would not have heard
anything about hie tact or temper. But it was be-
cause he had to advocate a bad bill, on which his
Whig supporters were a good deal too cold, and his
Radical supporters a great deal too hot ; and so
going on from day to day, beaten in argument,
driven from one weak point to another, compelled
more and more to rely on allies who must havebeen
especially distasteful to a man of his high moral
character and genius, if he did throw away the
scabbard and yield to impulsiveness, one of the
weaknesses of human nature, why, let any man in
that room who was not liable to such imperfections
cast the first stone at Mr. Gladstone. Ile, certainly,
was not the man to do it. (Cheers.) He had wit-
nessed his efforts in favour of that bill ; he had lis-
tened to his brilliant oratory, and especially to his
speech at the close of the debate on Lard Grosve-
nor's amendment, which would live as an imperish-
able record of British eloquence, for there was to his
mind in the annals of Parliament nothing more
powerful and magnificent. (Cheers.) But the fact
was that, with all his extraordinary eloquence and
almost superhuman efforts, Mr. Gladstone attempted
an impossible task. The bill was ill-timed, ill-con-
ceived, ill-conducted, and therefore ill-fated. In all
the provincial meetings during', the last six months
not a whisper had been heard in its favour. Every
one of the processions of the League had trampled
upon and despised it ; as being no settlement of the
question, as only enfranchising some 2 per cent. of
the enslaved five millions of whom they heard so
much. Two fatal blunders were committed by the
principal supporters of the bill in the House of
Commons. In introducing the measure Mr. Glad-
stone said the Government had considered whether
they should have a £6 or a £7 franchise, and that
they fixed upon a £7 franchise because a £6 one
would have swamped the existing constituency ;
but though that was an objection in the eyes of
others it was none in his. That was a frank
and manly declaration of opinion, but it cut
away from Mr. Gladstone the sympathies of the
House of Commons, because that House had a very
great objection to swamping the present constitu-
encies. Again, Mr. Bright, in a speech at Roch-
dale, apologising for his acceptance of the bill, said
he accepted it as " a lever," with which he hoped to
obtain a great deal more. That cut away the
ground from under the feet of those who advocated
it as a moderate and honest measure for the settle-
ment of the question. A friend of his met one of
the then Ministers soon after this avowal, and asked
him what he thought of Mr. Bright and his " lever."
The Minister's answer was, " Confound him ! his
lever' has done for our bill." (Laughter.) Some
persons ascribed the failure of the measure to the
action of the horrible Cave of Adullam ; but did
anybody believe that if the country had really been
in its favour some 30 or 40 members of the Liberal
party could have stopped the prpgress of the bill or
defeated it ? Why, all that Government had to do
was to dissolve Parliament and send members to
their constituencies, and the Cave would have been
nowhere. But, in fact, the Cave represented a much
larger force behind. (Three cheers were here given
for " the Cave.") The hearts of a large section of
the Liberal party were with it. They worked for
it and canvassed for it ; but many of them were
hampered by pledges, or by what were construed
as such, and were coerced to give their votes
against it. When the Cave was first formed
the application for lodgings in it were so nume-
rous that they thought they would be compelled
to enlarge it. (A laugh.) But he was told
that in London there was connected with a par-
ticular ❑ewspaper, the name of which they would
all guess, an &Ice in which was kept a book con-
taining the names of every extreme Liberal in
every constituency in the empire. For instance,
supposing there should be 200 Radicals in Stroud
--rather, perhaps, a large calculation—(a laugh)._
their names would be inserted in that selected list.
Well, if any member for any constituency hap-
pened to betray symptoms—not, perhaps, of insur-
rection, but of doubt as to the wisdom of the course
taken by Government, whether by giving notice of
an amendment, making a speech, or even in con-
versation—a telegram, as he was told, went down
to the one man who worked that particular consti-
tuency, and almost by return of post the member
had a letter from nearly every Radical elector in the
borough. That system, he believed, had been brought
to bear upon seven or eight Liberal members, who
had indicated certain divergencies of opinion in the
ways he had mentioned, and before their notices or
speeches had been in the papers 24 hours, those gen-
tlemen came down to the house andrecanted. (hear,
hear, and laughter.) The result of the course adopted
by the Liberal leaders in 1859 was the indefinite
postponement of a settlement of the question of
Reform and the agitation which the country was
now experiencing. Mr. Bright now said that man-
hood suffrage was imprudent, unwise, and at this
moment impracticable ; and he recommended the
Liberal party to take its stand on household suf-
frage. What was household suffrage? Why,
nothing more nor less than the swamping of the
present constituencies, and establishing the go-
vernment of numbers. What would be its effect in
Stroud ? Mr. Gladstone's return, presented last
session, showed the present constituency of Stroud
to consist of 1,483 voters. But according to
.the
same return 1,771 new voters, or about 300 more
than the whole existing constituency of Stroud, and

those 1,771, all of one class, would be admitted
by the principle of household suffrage. But that

was not all. The returns showed ,that at present
the operative class were about 25 per cent., or one

quarter of the present constituency. A quarter of
the present constituency was 370, and, adding that
number to the 1,771, who would be admitted under

a household suffrage, they would have in that
borough 2,140 voters of the labouring class, or
nearly two to one, as compared with all the rest of
the electoral body. (Cheers.) lie, therefore, called
that not an enfranchising but a disfranchising

measure, and one that would reduce them to the po-

sition of Marylebone or New York, in the latter of
which places the cry was " For God's sake contract
the constituency." Why in their new Reform Bill

were the existing constituencies to be disfranchised,
intelligence discredited, property disqualified, and

the Government of the country handed over to the

dominion of numbers? What reason was msigned
for substituting household suffrage for the £7 fran-

chise scheme of last year? It was said, "Look at the
magnificent processions you have had, and the order

and respectability of those who walked in them !"
He did not deny their order or respectability, and

he must say he thought the body of those processions
a great deal more fitted for political power than their
leaders. (Hear, hear.) But, after all, it was ridi-

culous to assign such a reason as that for giving one
class a practical monopoly of political power. But

the leaders of the masses were very fond of contrast-
ing the state of things in France, Germany, or even
Russia with that which prevailed in England. Those
gentlemen had better try the experiment of living
in those countries, and let them know the result.
(Hear, hear, and a laugh.) Suppose some Mons.

Beales went to the Prefect in Paris and said, " I
want you, on such a day, to stop all the traffic on
the Boulevards, in order that 100,000 of the friends

of liberty may parade there." Or suppose some
newspaper editor were to go to Count Bismark and

say, 1 intend on a certain day to have 10,000 or
more petitions presented, and I shall publish a copy
of these petitions," as mischievous in their terms as

they could be and as seditious as they dared. Or
suppose again that some Mr. Leicester went to St.
Petersburg and said the Emperor's Council were a
set of squint-eyed scoundrels, and that the Emperor
was unfit to govern his empire because he could not
blow a glass decanter— (a laugh)—what would be
the result. His own impression was that those
gentlemen would soon prefer being free men in
England to being slaves on the Continent, and
would have very little more to say about the bless-
ings of universal suffrage. (Cheers.) Liberty in
France meant the fiat of the Emperor and his

army. All history taught them that the working
class in any country, standing by itself, did not
understand liberty, and had never done anything
for liberty unless under the guidance of other classes.
standing by itself, it had invariably been blind and
helpless, and it had ever been the first aim of de-
magogues and despots to destroy that great middle
class which in every age and nation had been the
true champion of freedom. (Cheers.) But the
season of demonstration was drawing to a close, and
the season of deliberation approaching. They all
asked what Lord Derby's Government was going
to do. As in 1859, when the same question was
asked, he must say he had not the least conception.
Nobody knew, and, as far as the public prints as-
sisted them to an answer, they had no very direct
or convincing proof that the Government knew it
themselves. (A laugh.) But he would tell them
what the Government ought to do, and on
that point he filt no hesitation. If they saw
their way to a just, an honest, and a sanguinary set-
tlement of the question of Reform, it was their duty,
without losing an hour, on the first day of the Ses-
sion to announce it. (Cheers.) On the other hand,
if they did not so see their way—if they could not
master the question, as the late Government could
not master it—then he said it was a matter which
they should not trade with, and they ought not to
postpone all the other important legislation of the
country to the agitation of a question to the settle-
ment of which they did not see their way. Two
things had been decided by the debates of last year,
the one was that that question ought not to be evaded
or postponed, and the other was that the late Go-
vernment were utterly incompetent to settle it. The
agitation in the autumn had not been favourable to
its settlement. The recent demonstration had shown
that as far as the plan of the Reform League was
concerned the nation was entirely averse to it. One
class alone had joined in the agitation, all the other
classes standing quite aloof from it. Let them com-
pare the agitation of 1866 with that in favour of the
Reform Bill of 1832 and iu favour of Free Trade in
1846. In both cases the landowners, the great mill-
owners, and, above all, the great middle class parti-
cipated in one common movement, the nation was
converted, and its convictions were embodied in legis-
lation. How different was the case now. Even Mr.
Bright, the great leader of the movement, was shunned
by every member of Parliament invited to its meet-
ings. It was a most interesting thing to read the apo-
logies of those gentlemen for not attending the de-
monstrations in the Great West Riding, the centre of
so many great movements, and in Durham. All
those tremendously earnest Reformers, when invited,
began with one consent to make excuses. (Laughter.)
Mr. Horsman then proceeded to answer the charges
made against the House of Commons in regard to
the question of education (in respect to which
he gave in his adhesion to a compulsory system), the
question of the Irish Church, the question of economy
and retrenchment, and other subjects, maintaining
that the advanced Reformers were either " conspi-
cuous by their absence" or their silence when those
topics were discussed in that Assembly, or that they
showed themselves signally incapable of propound-
ing any practical measure for their satisfactory
settlement; but that any proposal made there always
received a fair hearing, which was more than they
could safely reckon upon in a Chamber elected by
s althougho
constituencies in which one class had an overwhelm-
ing preponderance: Returning to his own views on
Reform, he said he had never uttered a e
s word
whomrd of
isas
pwaragneomt enaftraaigdaintsot
mtheeetwfoarokeinto face, classes,
la
disparagement
their leaders were afraid of meeting him. (Loud
cheers.) He had ever steadfastly resisted, and must
still resist, the degradation of the franchise towards
the principle of numbers. Various schemes of Re-
form were before the country ; that of Mr. Beaks
went for manhood suffrage, and a complete answer
to it was supplied by the Registrar-General's report,
which stated that from 20 to 30 per cent. of the
adult males in this kingdom could not read or write.
His own opinion was in favour of a plurality of
votes—a principle for which they had already a pre-
cedent, and one with which they were all familiar
in the elections of vestries and poor-law guardians.
They ought to have their representation based on
three great elements—viz., numbers, intelligence,
and property—and if they wished fairly to balance
those three elements they must give one-third of
their electoral power to each of them. They must
in some way find a mode of harmonising the exten-
sion of the franchise to the masses with a just regard
to the rights and interests of other classes ; and he
knew of no plan of doing so better than by giving a
plurality of votes proportioned to education and
property. In that direction, he believed, the solution
of the problem would ultimately be found.
At this point of the proceedings a crash was heard
at one of the windows in the hall, caused by a stone
thrown by some mischievous person outside. The
missile struck a gentleman sitting at one of the
tables a violent blow on the head, making it bleed
profusely, and apparently stunning him for the mo-
ment. General indi.Tnation was freely expressed by
the assemblage. Fora minute or two a pause ensued,
to see whether this outrage was meant to be carried
further, and several of the guests took the precau-
tion of putting on their hats as a partial protection
against that contingency, but no further disturb-
ance happily occurred, and the wounded gentleman
was led out of the room. (Cries of "Go on" were
then raised, and Mr. Horsman resumed amid cheers.)
What had just happened, he said, told them that a
great principle was involved -- (cheers)—and he
must take the liberty of making that the sub-
ject of the remark with which he meant to con-
clude. As far as the question of Reform was
concerned the ground was now clear, because there
was no Ministerial Bill to stop the way ; old falla-
cies had been exploded, and everybody who had a