The Sun.
London, England, 1867-04-23 00:00:00

T. E SUN, LON LON, VUES E v ENING, APRIL 23, 1867.

frage. I ask any man wbs desires manhood suffrage
to come with me and m.y colleagues to sit for a
season with ns, and see what there is in front of us,
what there is behind, and what there is around us,
of rottenness and insecnrity—(cheers)—and when
you have seen all this, .1 will undertake to say that
you will be glad to strive for and to accept any real
great and substantial, gain for the people, although it
may not be the whole thing, or near the point to
which your aspirations extend. As my hon. friend
said in his speech, he could not find any sound por-
tion in the bill, as I might say figuratively,
" from the crown of its head to the sole of its
foot." I have spoken of the borough franchise;
so in the counties. Mr. Disraeli tells us how
many millions live in the counties. They live there
no doubt by no favour of his ; they have been there,
or their ancestors, much longer than he and his
ancestors have been ; but of all these millions, he
does not propose to enfranchise them—his affection
for them is wonderful, but it does -not go as far as
this. I recollect a story in an old French comedy,
of a bear who was very fond of a priest, and so fond
of him that he actually ate him up. In the same way
Mr. Disraeli 'is wonderfully fond of the inhabitants
of the counties. He tells us of their towns and their
large villages which are not enfranchised ; but now,
when he brings in this bill—although he himself in
1859 proposed to reduce the county franchise, al-
though the same franchise was proposed by the bill
of Loid Palmerston's Government in 1860, and in
the bill of Earl Russell and Mr. Gladstone last year
—he now proposes a £lO rating, which is really, as
I believe, little lower than a £2O rental in the coun-
ties. I would do rather more for. the counties, if I
were what they call a great statesman introducing a
Reform Bill, or else I would say rather less about
them. (Cheers and laughter.) There is another
proposition in the bill, by which everybody may vote
by what they call voting papers. They have been
introduced for the Universities, and 1 believe that
the electors for the Universities, who are for the most
part clergymen residing in differents parts of the
country, may send in their votes by letter without
its • being productive of any evil effects, and with
great convenience to themselves; but when it comes
to be proposed to do the same thing with the multi-
tude of voters, whether in the counties or in the
boroughs, I say you are not adopting the ballot, you
are adopting open voting, with all its evils, and
omitting whatever advantages there may be in it.
And I undertake to say, from an examination of it,
that from all I have heard from persons who have
seen it in operation, especially in elections for
guardians, it would not be possible to contrive
a system that could be more fairly styled bribery
and corruption made easy than this system of
voting papers. (Laughter and cheers.) And then
the next point is that of the distribution of
seats, in which there is the most transparent
job atttempted to be perpetrated that probably
ever was seen in a bill. There are 23 small boroughs
returning two members now, and Mr. Disraeli pro-
poses to take one from each of them. That gives
him 23 seats. He distributes them in this manner :
he gives 15 of them to the-counties, seven of them to
the boroughs, and one of them to the University of
London. But he sees that this is a great inequa-
lity, which is likely to be found fault with, there-
fore what does he do ? He finds that four boroughs
have been found out in doing what 40 others have
done—found out in having resorted to a discredit-
able amount of bribery and corruption—and he
proposes, without ever having the question discussed
as a separate matter in Parliament, to disfranchise
these boroughs ; but of the 23 seats which he takes
from the small boroughs, because they are so small,
he gives 15 to the counties and seven only to the
boroughs. I believe that the proposition of the
total disfranchisement of the four boroughs—with
respect to three of which I hold the proposition to
be altogether wrong—is made solely because it will
enable him to make a large and unfair distribution
of borough members to county seats in future. There
are men still—l mean the gentlemen who have had
salt put upon their tails—who fancy that this bill
can be made a good bill in committee ; they would
have to reject all except the preamble. The preamble
says, " And whereas it is expedient to amend the
representation of the people in the House of Com-
mons, be it enacted," and so on. We should begin
thus—the borough franchise we should have to alter,
the county franchise we should have to alter, the
lodger franchise to introduce, the voting papers to
extinguish, the distribution of seats to transform ;
and from the preamble of the bill to the last word
in it there is not a single proposition which any
real, honest, earnest, and intelligent Reformer
would consent to have in the bill. Mr. Scholefield
has told you that it was the view of Mr. Gladstone

that in a bill of this nature the only proper way to
deal with it was to deal with it on the second
reading. I was very strongly of that opinion, and
I stated it at the meeting of the Liberal party at
Mr. Gladstone's house. However, I don't set
my opinion against the opinion of a large num-
ber of those with whom I act. It was no
use fighting against a numerous section—it might
be of the party ; and I am always willing—admit-
ting that we are not doing anything contrary to
what is honest and sound in principle—l am willing
in any matter of procedure to move cordially along
with the party with whoml am connected. (Cheers.)
Then we come to the instruction that Mr. Coleridge
should have moved. There was a trouble about that,
and it was said, " Oh, let us get into committee ; in
committee every clause will come before us ; we are
a majority of the house, we can make the bill any-
thing that we like." If that instruction of Mr.
Coleridge's had been carried the result would have
followed inevitably that the formation of the bill
thenceforth would have been in the hands of the
Liberal party, the friends of Reform—(hear, hear)
—instead of being left, as it now is, in the hands of
its enemies. (Cheers.) Well, we went into com-
mittee, I took the liberty of saying at the meeting
at Mr. Gladstone's that the determination they were
coming to was exactly that which, if Mc. Disraeli
were there, he would advise them to come to ; and
I said further that the exclamation that would pass
his lips or come to his heart or to his head
(laughter—the moment he heard of that determina-
tion would be this, " The Lord hath delivered them
into my hand." (Laughter and cheers.) Well, now
for the result. The bill has gone into committee, and
the first vote in the committee has confirmed the
very first feature of the bill ; and the Liberal party
has, by the treachery of some of its members, abli-
cated its functions, made it impossible for it to con-
trol the future fortunes of the bill, and have handed
it over just as it is, and in all probability just as it
will be, to the friends of the bill, who are not
the friends of Reform. (Cheers.) I am sure you
will wonder how it can be that such a thing could
happen amongst the Liberal party. I will tell you.
This House of Commons, I will undertake to say,
is by far the most corrupt that has been elected
and assembled since the Reform Bill. I am
not able to say what it has cost to seat
these 650 members in that house, but if I said
it had cost them and their friends a million
of money I should be a long way under the mark.
I believe it has cost more to seat these 650 men there
than it has cost to seat all the members of all the
other representative and legislative assemblies in the
world that are now in existence in different countries
of the globe ; and without a man's intending to be
corrupt this state of things makes him inevitably
corrupt. Mr. Scholefield and I are in a position to
take what some would call too favourable or too
severe a view of this matter. We come here and
don't meet with a contest, and are not asked to pay
expenses, but there are many members who ply al-
ways from £l,OOO to £1,500 for their election, and
although there are men in the House of Commons
who are too honest, I believe, to be swayed by that
consideration, still there are great numbers, I am
satisfied, who are willing to take almost any kind
of measure on any subject from any Government
rather than go back to their constituents with the
chance, first of all of not coining back to the House
of Commons at all, and with the certainty that if
they stand a contest they must lessen the balance
at their banker's by several thousand pounds ; and
so they are willing to tolerate a Tory Government
and Tory Reform Bill, to break up the Liberal party,
to do. anything whatever, as tliey say, to settle the
question in the House of Commons, in the Commons
•style and fashion, in this Farliatnent, and during

the present session, and not as the great body of the
people wish it to be settled ; and they are ready to
bear all this rather than have a dissolution of Par-
liament. There were many honest meu amongst
those who met in the tea-room, but there were some
of whom I should not like exactly to say that,
There wire some who were ignorant of party tactics,
and who fancied that if the bill could be got into
committee we might somehow or other manage to
improve it better than in the whole house ; and the
men who met there are responsible for the division
which took place subsequently, for if the instruc-
tion of Mr. Coleridge had been put I believe it
would have been carried, and if it had been car-
ried the disposal of the question of Reform would
have been i❑ the hands of Mr. Gladstone and the
Liberal party, instead of being, as now, in the hands
of Mr. Disraeli and his reluctant followers. Now

his position is enfeebled. Mr. Hardy had—what
shall I say?--the effrontery to taunt Mr. Gl ldstone
with being the leader of a portion of a party. There
are little difficulties on the Government side to
which I need not now refer. Mr. Disraeli the other
night spoke of Mr. Gladstone as the one person in
the house with whom he would not deal on this
question. (Cries of "Shame," and hisses.) He
treated him as the representative of a faction and of
party strife; and said'he would discuss the matter
with him in a different manner and on different
terms. And these renegades from the Liberal party,
some of the men who met in the tea-room, some
Radicals who voted last Saturday with the Govern-
ment, heard this taunt of Mr. Hardy ; they heard
the insulting observations of Mr. Disraeli, and al-
lowed their leader, in the face of the country, to be
thus insulted without having the self-respect or the
manliness to resent it. What shall I say of that
leader ? Is it not, as you know, my practice to
speak of the official politicians and the statesmen of
this country with exaggerated eulogy ; but I will
venture to say this of Mr. Gladstone—and there is
no man in either house who undertakes to deny it—
that since 1832 there has been no man of the official
class ()frank, and no statesman who has imparted
into this question of Reform so much of conviction,
so much of, earnestness, so much of zeal, as has been
imparted during the last two years by the present
leader of the Liberal party. (Cheers.) Who is there
in the House of Commons who equals him in know-
ledge of all political questions ? Who equals him
in eloquence ? Who equals him in earnestness ?
Who equals him in eloquence ? Who equals him in
courage and fidelity to his convictions ? (Loud
cheers.) If these gentlemen who say they will not
follow him have any one who is his equal, let them
show him. If they can point out any statesman who
can add dignity and grandeur to the stature of Mr.
Gladstone, let them produce him. (Cheers.) It is a
deplorable thing that last year a small section of 40
men, or thereabouts, of professing Liberals destroyed
an honest and acceptablel speak of the people,—
an acceptable bill of the late Government,and with it
theyalso destroyed the Government which proposed it.
About an equal number have this year to a great ex-
tent destroyed the power of the Opposition; and
may assist an anti-reforming Government to.pass a
very bad measure on the greatest question of our
time. And having done all the mischief which they
could, they begin to write silly letters to their con-
stituents. What can 'be done by Parliamentary
parties if every man isto pursue his own little game ?
A costermonger and his donkey, although they
would take a week to travel from here to London,

running athwart the London and North-Western
line might bring to total destruction a great express
train ; and so very sm ill men, who during their

whole political lives have not advanced the question

of Reform by one hair's breadth or by one moment
in time, can at a critical hour like this throw them-
selves athwart the objects of a great party, and
mar, it may be, a great measure that ought to affect
the interests of the country beneficially for all time.
(Cheers.) Now, I believe that when I see men leave
their party in this way, not because the party is
going contrary to its acknowledged principles, but
not going with them, that there is not much of
principle and not much of patriotism, and not much
of love of Reform in their conduct. I suspect there
is something worse than all this, smaller and meaner,
concealed under a conduct like this ; and I say that
it becomes the constituencies of the kingdom to as-

certain what are the motives of their members, and
whether this question of Reform is thus to be baffled
by them in. future. But whatsoever is true, or
whatsoever is false to the question, it remains for
the people of England to demand its honest settle-
ment, who will, I believe, never withdraw from that
demand. Last year,- when • Mr. Disraeli and his
friends-rejectea Mr. Gladstone's bill, on that very
night. of that last division I said, " Destroy this bill,
destroy the Governtnent—but there remains yet
the question. of Reform, and there remains out-
side a great, an. earnest, and a noble people,
who :will still demand that this question shall
be settled." I believe so now. Ido not

believe • in the passing of this bill in the shape
in which it is now before us. I believe it is a
fraud of the very worst and of the most insult-
ing character. I say, try it not by the " unerring
instincts" of a corrupt House of Commons, but by
the " unerring instincts" of an incorrupt people,
anti you will, I believe, ascertain its true character,
and you will insist upon its rejection. Why there
has not been throughout the country—though after
what I am about to say, doubtless an effort will be
made to disprove what. I say—:there has not been
throughout the country a single meeting of any
kind at which there has been any record in the
papers that I see in favour of this bill. Last year
there were a thousand.ineetings in favour of the bill.
There has not been this session a single petition
presented to the House of Commons, so far as 1
have heard or read, in favour of the Government
bill. Last session the petitioners came there in one
single fortnight by many hundreds of thousands. It
,is the bill of the Tory party, for the phrpose of the
'Tory party. It is not the bill of the peiege of Eng-
land, nor is it intended. to consult thelr wishes or
their interests. (Cheers.) Mr. Scholefield said he
would leave it to me to say what should be done—
his modesty rose with his lengthened experience,
and he left it to me to give the advice which, I will
not say he was not disposed to give, but which per-
haps he thought might in some degree have more
weight with some persons if I were myself to give
it. But really the advice to give, whether from him
or from me, is so clear, that it does not require to
be given ; for the sense that would make me give
it is the sense that it would make every one of you
accept it, though I did not speak. What has hap-
pened during the last ten months—what happened
from the Hyde Park meeting, and your own meet-
ing, the South Lancashire meeting, the meeting in
South of Scotland, and a thousand oilier meetings ?
They have driven the Tory party from its anchorage
as the professed and open opponents of Reform ;
and you have only to do now what you have
done hitherto. 1 will advise no course which
might present a difficulty to the minds of ear-
nest and enthusiastic men, but which in this
country probably never will be necessary, and
certainly cannot be necessary now. I said before
in a speech in St. James's Hall in winter—" What
comes in every country where there is a manly spirit
if justice be perpetually denied ?" But the question
of force was settled in this country in the year 1832.
There is no power in Lords or Commons to resist
your peaceful expression of your opinion—and there-
fore that which you have done during the last year,
and which has produced so great a result, requires
only to be continued, and a further and more com-
plete result is certain. The richer classes in this
country—the comfortable Classes—they are not bad
men; they don't want the country ill-governed; they
like political power in their own class, which "is not
unreasonable or uncommon ; but at the same time
they do not want, either as individuals or as bodies
of men, injustice and oppression to be felt, or to be
believed to be felt, throughout the country. The
rich people of this country, as a mere matter of wish-
ing, would desire that everybody should be satisfied
and cveryb ,dy should be comfortable. But the rich
people in the west-end of London cannot stand per-
petually the exhibition of 50,000 or 100,000 or 150,000
men coming out and saying, " We are shut out from
the Constitution of ourcountry. We are not seeking
to injure you ; we are not men of violence of whom
you need be afraid ; but there is the Constitution,
and we claim under that Constitution to have tl4 right

to vote for members of the House of Commons." Let
Mr. Beales and his friends in London—let the work-
ing men everywhere, by great meetings—the greater
the better—peaceful and orderly meetings—pass
sound, rational, and firm resolutions ; let them make
it appear to every person, from the humblest in the
land to the Queen upon the Throne, that there is a
general, a wide, a universal, and a strengthening
sentiment that what exists is no longer tolerable, and
that something better must be estardished, and I give
you my word—l never said anything with a more
perfect confidence, and I speak the truth—that you
have only thus to meet, and thus to speak, and the
barriers which stand before you will fall at your
words, and before long—it may not be this session,
it may be next—you will be admitted to a frank, and
generous, and liberal, and satisfactory exercise of the
electoral franchise, guaranteed by the Constitution
of your country. (Loud cheers, in the midst of
which Mr. Bright resumed his seat, having spoken
• for exactly an hour and a half).

The resolution was unanimously agreed to, and
the proceedings were soon afterwards brought to a
close.

1111?. COLERIDGE'S UNIVERSITY BILL.

We hope, and, indeed, there is every reason to
expect, that this bill will be thrown out by the

House of Lords. An English Catholic must ever
feel the keenest interest in the state of religion
among English Protestants; and it would be deplor-
able-if the great Protestant universities were sunk,
more deeply than they are even now, in the mire
of rationalism and indifferentism. Already Mr.
Mill is able to declare them " the great foci of
great and manly inquiry ;"and we know what is
meant by that eulogy proceeding from Mr. Mill.
But what would be their plight if they were
assimilated—as Mr. Coleridge avowedly wishes—
to the godless universities of Germany '?
In every age of the Church there is some one
doctrine especially imperilled for the moment ;
some one doctrine which evil men are conspiring
to assail, and-, round which supporters of the
truth cluster in its defence. In one century the
doctrine thus assailed is our Lord's Divinity; in
another His perfect humanity ; in another the
true nature of Divine faith. At this particular
time misbelievers hardly care to assail any par-
ticular dogma ; rather they despise the dogmatic
principle itself. But there are two great verities
which God's enemies attack with every weapon
both of violence and treachery; while good Catho-
lics unite in struggling for them as for a matter
of life and death. There are (1) the dogmatic
principle, and (2) the intimate and indissoluble
connection between things sacred and things secu-
lar. Intellectual education divorced from religion

tends directly to the overthrow of both these veri
ties ; and you can well understand,. therefore,
why it is that the Church seems to express herself
on this particular matter even more energetically
and (if we may so speak) more clamorously than
at any preceding period. Resistance to mixed
education, in every imaginable shape, may just
now be, called the badge of a good Catholic.
Now, in proportion as Protestants are trained in
the dogmatic principle, they are really, however
unconsciously, moving towards the Church ; in
proportion as the opposite takes place, there
ensues the opposite • result. Dr. Newman says
most truly that the National Church has hitherto
been a. serviceable breakwater against doctrinal
errors more fundamental than its own, and the
longer it can in any degree so continue, the better
for the good of souls. _ _

Those converts who remember the state of Ox-
ford some .twenty-five years ago will emphatically
testify how singularly beneficial were the dogma-
tic influences of the place in helping them forward
towards the Church. • On this head, again hear
Dr. Newman's testimony : " Had I not come to
Oxford," he says, 4, perhaps I should never have
heard of the Visible Church, or of Tradition, or
other Catholic doctrines." How, then, can it be
otherwise than a cause of great grief to Catholics,
if that large number of young men which will
ever frequent Oxford and Cambridge, should
find those universities simply saturated with a
worldly and a profoundly anti-Christian atmos-
phere ? Yet such is the miserable issue to which
every year brings us nearer, and towards which
Mr. Coleridge's Bill would frightfully accdle-
rate the progress. _ _

We have been very glad to find the Times writ-
ing with really much 'sense on Mr. Coleridge's
project. It points out that the university is a
place primarily for education ; and that the
at large, but
question for practical men to consider is not how
it may be made most serviceable towards the ac-
tqouwisairtidosn
trainingo of truth
af
no
d
r the world
disciplining
the youthful
mind jwithin its walls. For ourselves, of course,
we think that the method of free and independent
inquiry is as fatal to the former purpose as to the
latter ; but, as we cannot expect the Times to
agree with us in this, we are at least grateful for
that amount of concurrence which we can obtain.
If any ordinarily pious Protestant would have a
still stronger conviction on the odiousness of Mr.
Coleridge's bill, let him read the Pall Mall Gazette
of last Saturday in its defence.
a
The various considerations which wehveex-
pressed imprint a deep and peculiar brand of tur-
pitudelvho (incredible
etdhieb
lconductof
mightti os
appear)
unhappy
send their Catholics
sons to Oxford in defiance of the Church's warn-
ing. They arc in quite a special sense traitors to
their religion ; for they are abandoning that one
principle of it which at this moment is bearing the
whole brunt of attack. They are deserting to the
enemy in that very manner which will give the
enemy his greatest possible advantage from their
adhesion.