The Sun.
London, England, 1867-03-06 00:00:00

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THE SUN, LONDON, WEI).NESDAY EVENING, MARCH 6, 1867.

NOTICE.

unity was maintained only by doing nothing. The
" fatal fifth Resolution" slipped in among the thir-
teen, if not without the knowledge of sonic of the
Cabinet, certainly without being understood by them.
General Peel objected to it, but was tell that it was
a matter of figures. It was not instil the 16th, or
four days after the Resolutions ware laid on the table,
that Lord Crauborne learnt the sense in which his
colleagues interpreted it. He thcn believed it was
abanloael ; but it appeared ag -in on the 19th, sup-
ported by statistical calculations, and from that time
till late on Sunday evening Lord Cranborne studied
them, finally arriving at the conclusion that he could
not support the Resolution. Lord Carnarvon, we
may suppose, arrived simultaneously at the same
conviction ; and General Peel, finding two of his
colleagues agreed with him, recurred to his original
opinion. It is not creditable to any one that vital
questions should be thus bandied about, at the
very time that Parliament was amused with a
show of action ; and the good-nature which
prompted Lord Derby to give up the plan of Reform
he thought best for the country in order to preserve
his colleagues was criminal weakness. It is by such
good-nature that Continents arelost, and Kingdoms
reduced to the verge of civil war. Lord North's
good-nature in carrying on the attempt to coerce the
American colonies, and Mr. Pitt's good-nattire in
sacrificing the Catholic claims to the prejudices of a
king, are properly reckoned as blots on their fame
as statesmen. Lord Cranborne himself declares that
he thought from the first Lord Derby's good-nature
was mistaken ; and the result shows that it only
served to postpone a decision which was inevitable.
The mischief has, however, been done; the mistake
has been made,' has been repented of, and, as far as
possible, has been corrected. That such an occur-
rence was possible may make us anxious for the
future, by filling us with doubt whether a similar
error may not at any moment be repeated ; but, ex-
cept as a warning against such a disaster, it is use-
less to dwell upon a transaction little to the credit
of English sagacity or English statesmanship.
THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE ON "Mn. BRIGHT S
SPEECHES."—The conditions of oratory and speech-
making are, no doubt, very different in England
at the present time from what they were in Athens
in the days of. Demosthenes. But there is one
thing in which there is little difference, and
that is, the enthusiasm with which eloquence
affects the audience that listens to it. Whether
it is that Mr. Bright finds his hearers benevo-
lent or makes them so, it is certain that those
who so frantically cheered him last autumn at
the Town Hall of Birmingham, the Free Trade
Hall of Manchester, and at the other great
meetings that were closed by the most triumphant
of all, that at St. James's Hall, on the 4th Decem-
ber, cannot at the moment have felt very differ-
ently from what the Athenian demos, felt in hear-:
ing the oration on the peace or on the affairs of
the Chersonesus. Mr. Bright's greatest oppon-
ents confess that he is one of the foremost of
English orators. It may be worth while to try
to find out what the character of his eloquence
is, and to show how far he has a right to such
high praise. With the cause he represents, we
have nothing to do at present, except to state that,
whatever may be its merits, it is at least not
transparently immoral, and therefore it can be
no bar to his being considered a great speaker.
It is obvious to remark, at starting, that Mr.
Bright speaks to the multitude. There are, how-
ever, two kinds of orators who speak to the
multitude—those who wish the multitude to do
something itself, and those who wish the mul-
titude to make some one else do something. In
other words, there are speakers who try to make
the people build up, and speakers who try to
make them pull down. It is needless to say
that the second class of orators has far the easier
task. Caius Gracchus, when he urged the Roman
plebs to demand their share of the public lands,
found it less difficult to make an impression than
Demosthenes when he pressed the Athenians to
tax themselves and march against Philip. Mr
Bright belongs, of course, to the second divi-
sion, and he seems to belong to it not merely by
the accident of finding it.in his way to conduct a
Reform agitation, but quite as much because it
comes natural to him to pull down and get other
people to pull down, and because it would require
rather an artificial effort than otherwise for him
to be'as vehement about building up. It is im-
possible to read these autumn speeches without
coining to the -conclusion that they owe as
much to the Tories, to Mr. Lowe, and to the
present social state of England generally, as they
do to their author, or even to their audience. It
is unpleasant to think how much we should have
lost in the way of withering denunciation, telling
facts and catching sarcasm, if Lord Derby had
continued a Radical, or if Mr. Lowe had never
uttered his so-called slanders on the working
class. No greater misfortune could have befallen
the present literary season than the passim" of
a satisfactory Reform bill last summer. Manches-
ter, Birmingham, and Glasgow would have been
stagnant, not in trade, but in speech ; the Re-
form platforms in their great halls would have
been packed away in pieces, like the French tri-
bune, and Mr. Bright would, perhaps, have gone
to America and by this time have quite cor-
rupted his pure English evil communications with
the House of Representatives. Happily for the
interests of oratory, the wooden dragon against
which it is his work to till is still erect in the
temple of the Philistines, and his blows may still be
heavy, straight and crushing, with the satisfactory
feeling that they are not beating the air. It is
no new thing to notice how a stout, hard-dying
abuse benefits the knight-errant who attacks it.
And the benefits that it confers are not at-
tended with many drawbacks. It is not neces-
sary that the champion put his neck or his for-
tune in danger, or that he betake himself to soli-
tude or asceticism. Abuses generally last by
they have few open personal
inherentfriends
; aod vitality ;
any
y
reformer who can hit suffi-
ciently hard and aim sufficiently straight is sure to
be backed both by those who want the abuse
knocked down because it is an abuse, and those
who, in a more artistic spirit, want it down
merely because it happens to be up. Mr. Bright
leads the way and shouts over his shoulder to
animate his followers to the attack of the great
Tory fortress of exclusiveness, and the few de-
fenders that show themselves on the walls either
querulously
expostulate and protest they are
coming
down to open the door, or indignantly call
the attention of neutral by-standers to the amount
of dirt he throws between the intervals of flourish-
ing his mace. This is very safe work. He
could only endanger himself by mere wantonness
of provocation. But though safe it is glorious
to a certain extent. Strength of any kind
is sure to command admiration. People who
admire Coeur de Lion crushing a Saracen giant,
with the possibility of the Saracen giant's crush-
ing him, will also admire the man who carries six

the franchise, and with the level and monotonous
aspect of the tract of language in which these
statistical plants grow. But a less superficial ex-
amination, and some little attempt to place one's-
self in the position of one of Mr. Bright's spe-
cial public, will show that such a judgment is
rniot only unfair, but contrary to sound; criticism.
There is no argument that carries such conviction
to the mind of a class unused to weigh argument
of any kind as an argument from arithmetic. The
plainest truths of the metaphysical order are slip-
pery in the grasp of the working man, and the
facts of physical science he disbelieves altogether
if they are at all out of the way; but with plain
figures there is no juggling and no escaping, and
they carry a sort of cabalistic fascination with
them, just because they are simple and plain.
The working man cannot understand Mr. Mill on
Representative Government, much less Mr. Disraeli
on the representation of minorities ; but the
argument that out of (every hundred Englishmen
only sixteen have the franchise stirs him up better
than any trope in all the old grammarians. Nearly
every one of these speeches puts this fact in a pro-
minent place ; indeed, it may be considered as Mr
Bright's wand with which he conjures and sum-
mons to his command the haply - slumbering
spirits that must do his work. But figures, like
fire, when they get the upper hand of their master
(and they. are very apt to do so) are sad tyrants.
A bad speaker cannot handle figures ; like a pack
of hounds with a new huntsman, they stray,
they lag, they go on ahead, they fall out and snap
at each other, but it is seldom they kill anything.
Mr. Bright is a master of his figures. Without
saying that he is perfectly impartial using
them, or denying that he sometimes uses only
those he requires, no one can read the speech at
Manchester, for instance, without feeling what
eloquence can bring out of figures. The " con-
firmation." used to be an important part of a
speech in the old masters ; and Mr. Bright's con-
firmation is often a bristling array of numbers
that break the enemy's line like the wedged attack
of the Theban phalanx. Next to this arithmetical
feature, must be noticed the exceeding plainness
and traightforwardness of the language. Speeches
with so little strain in them are hardly to be
named. There is no sentence that begins in the
middle ; none that has to distort itself in order to
get its feet on the ground again ; no barbarism
of phrase caused by want of an apt word ; no in-
tricate systems of conjunctions to run the speaker
out of breath. The last characteristic it is worth
the reader's while to verify. If any one, groan-
ing under the tyranny of " since's " and " not-
withstanding's," feels curious to see how speeches
of unusual power can be made with almost lite-
rally no assistance from these exacting servants
of . all work, let him spend half an hour over
Mr.kßright. He will rise refreshed, and, if he has
to write or speak, so will his audience when they
next meet him. To an unexperienced reader the
limpid clearness and easy flow of Mr. Bright's
oratory seems commonplace ; but the truth is
that this perfect concealment of all effort is just
one of those facts of genius that are the most un-
common things that happen. But patient and
skilful repetition of argument and lucidity of
language do not of themselves make a great ora-
tor. They are rather the tests that his work is
good and honest than the qualities that raise it
to the sublime or the beautiful. Without sacrific-
ing these necessary conditions, Mr. Bright goes far
beyond them. To read one of his speeches•is like
walking by the side of a • pleasant river and sud-
denly coming upon the thunder and majestic
beauty of a rocky fall or cataract. You are startled
and surprised into admiration ; yet when you look
back it is evident how gradually nature has risen
to her climax. If one or two passages in each
of Mr. Bright's speeches were cut out the speech
would not be greatly above the level of many
others ; it might possibly pair off with one of Mr.
Horsman's or Mr. Whiteside's. But it is just Mr.
Bright's power of rising to a climax that makes
his speeches what they are. A grand and elo-
quent passage, introduced in the right place, is
far more than a mere ornament to be looked at by
itself. It is the very life and soul of the previous
context. It is the centre and the focus that gives
meaning and vitality to everything. It is the
spark of electricity that fires the powerful elements
which argument has been silently evolving from
the hearts of the listeners. It is the stroke of
genius which turns calm admiration into frantic
enthusiasm, and makes an audience spring to their
feet in a tempest of irrepressible cheering. Such
is the now celebrated passage about the " vol-
cano," at St. James's Hall. Such are many of the
passages which conclude the speeches. We will
quote two, not perhaps the finest, but the most
ahraendeoyn;
preceding, and that it will not do to look at them
blreminding
dt hs eu
suppose
ao ds
ee ra,
ehhoawi
ne voefr , that th e
eloquencethey
Birmingham in last August. He has been urging
his hearers to union and energy, and he con-
cludes a powerful appeal thus :
" The address which has been presented to me has re-
ferred to 1832. I remember that time well. My young
heart then was stirred with the trumpet blast that
sounded from your midst. There was no part of this
kingdom where your voice was not heard. Let it sound
again. Stretch out your hands to your countrymen inevery part of the three kingdoms, and ask them to join
you in a great and righteous effort on behalf of that
freedom which has been so long the boast of English-
men, but which the majority of Englishmen have never
yet possessed. I shall esteem it as afr honour which my
words cannot describe, and which even in thought I
cannot measure, if the population which I am permitted to
represent should do its full duty in the great struggle
which is before us. Remember the great object for which
we strive. Care not for calumnies and lies. Our great
object is this : to restore the British Constitution in all
its fulness, with all its freedom, to the British people."
At Glasgow, on the evening of the 16th October,
Mr. Bright, after enlarging on the changes that
social and political reform would work in dimin-
ishing ignorance and misery, concluded as fol-
lows :
" I believe that ignorance and suffering might be les-
sened to an incalculable extent, and that many an Eden,
beauteous in flowers and rich in fruits, might be raised
up in the waste wilderness which spread before us. But
no class can do that. The class which has hitherto
ruled in this country has failed miserably. It revels
in power and wealth, whilst at its feet a terrible
peril for its future lies—the multitude which it has
neglected. If a class has failed let us try the nation.
That is our faith, that is our purpose, that is our cry
—let us try the nation. This it is which has called
together these countless numbers of the people to demand
a change ; and, as I think of it, and of these gatherings,
sublime in their vastness and in the resolution, I think I
see, as it were, above the hill tops of time, the glimmerings
of the dawn of a better and a nobler day for the country
and for the people that I love so well."

C. F. HANCOCK, SON,"& CO.,

JEWELLERS AND SILVERSMITHS TO THE QUEEN AXD

PRINCE AND PRINCESS OF WALES,

And by Special Appointment to the principal Sovereigns

and Courts of Europe,

Beg respectfully to state that their only Address is
33 & 39, BRIHON-STREET,
CORNER OF BOND-STREET.

AWARDED TO C. F. HANCOCK :
Great Exhibition, 1851—Council Medal fur Originality and
Taste. Paris Exhibition,lBss—Gold Medallic) d'Honnour.
International Exhibition, 1862—Prize Medal, for great
Excellence of Design and Manufacture.

No doubt, other causes besides merely literary
ones are to be counted among the reasons of Mr.
Bright's popularity. Verba placent, et vox, et
quod corrumpere non est. He says what his
audience like to hear, and his physical qualifica-
tions are eminent, and he is believed to be thor-
oughly honest. Unpalatable truth is not often
cheered, and that is one reason why, it is gene-
rally uttered with such little heart ; for eloquence
requires an audience as well as an orator. If Mr.
Bright were to cast another,-and perhaps a more
genuine, kind of pearls before the men to whom
he is so fond of appealing, they would not impro-
bably turn upon him and tear him. As to hon-
esty, it may be remarked that people who wear
and walk 'about in the shaggy coat of rough
vituperation often get an easy reputation for
being honest, as long as there is nothing to do but
denounce, and as long as their honesty confines
itself to being very candid about the failings of
their
audience's opponents. Perhaps Mr. Lowe's
opinion of Mr. Bright's singleness of purpose, and
uncoloured veracity of assertion, . would not be
.so flattering as that of his admirers at Man-
chester and Birmingham. But whatever may be
said of his matter and his honesty, there is no
question about his elocution. If it be a physical
pleasure to listen to a good voice even with the
drawback of moral pain from the conviction that
it is uttering nonsense, what must it be to listen to
such a voice as Mr. Bright's rolling in the full
sweep of one of his magnificent perorations? No
wonder that people go to Reform meetings " to
hear Bright ?" Beaks, strong in academical
,hon-
ours,Th Dickson, used to command men, even e
O'Donogliue, full of native fire, must yield the
palm, like old Timothcus, for whatever feats they
may perform in raising their fellow-mortals to the
skies, none but Mr. Bright can draw down visita-
tions of honour from the divinities of the floor
and the galleries, and from the rather surly angels
of the literary press. It would be advisable that
when Mr. Bright speaks no other bark should be
heard ; much less that, according to recent prece-
dent, three or four speakers should hold forth
simultaneously with him in the same room. In
order to deter Mr. Beales or Mr. Potter frombeing
so imprudent as to try this in their next pro- ;
gramme, we recommend to their notice an an-
ecdote from Quinctilian :—" When Trachallus
spoke ha seemed to tower above all competi-
tors ; his height was great, his eye glanced
with fire, his presence was commanding, his ges-
tures admirable, and his voice not, as Cicero
wished, equal to tragedian's, but better than. any

other men on his back, with no danger except,
perhaps, to his burthen. In a crowd of would-be
competitors, Mr. Bright shoots with a bow that few
can bend except himself, and, though there is no
danger of anything serious being shot back, peo-
ple undeniably admire the shooting and go to see
it. Something to pull down, and safety to ac-
complish thep oratory
lishit,s seem
mofth be the favourable conditions
for a demagogue. Not but what
there are plenty of examples of demagogues throw-
ing consequences to -the winds and running the
most momentous risks ; but this is generally
when there are two demagogues in the field,
and the question is, which is to be sacrificed.
As a rule, the demagogue who forgets the great
rule of pulling down, or the great postulate of
safety., either loses his public or disappears him-
self with more or less violence. Cleon, prince
and prototype of demagogues, got on well enough
until he unluckily involved himself in an engage-
ment to do something better than some one else.
He had been abusing the military authorities,
and imprudently uttered the gratuitous bounce
that he could handle an army better himself.
Nicias, the general, took him at his word ; what
was worse, the Athenian people, incorrigibly fond
of a joke, took him at his word also; and Cleon,
after an ineffectual attempt to shuffle out of it, had
to begin military life as commander-in-chief. The
consequence was that, after encountering some
little blind good-luck, he got miserably de-
feated and lost his life. Let this be an awful
warning to Mr. Bright Let him never pledge
himself to conduct a Reform Bill, or to carry a
scheme of tenant-right. If he does, he might
possibly be taken at his word, and then, in the
perils and anxieties of construction, he will sigh
for the pleasant days of safety and demolition.
The reader who takes up these speeches with the
eloquenceexpectation ofwill
revelling
probably in passages of exciting
be disappointed. Even
after making due allowance for the difference
between Mr. Bright in print and Mr. Bright on
the platform, he will be inclined to rate them as
possessing no higher claims to oratory than a
fluent arrangement of figures, not of speech, but
of arithmetic. He will be bored by a continual
repetition of calculations as to how many of the
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/ t/ - t.. afaelnalVlAgelECWeeipt of your letter of yosteikly's Op, S -
requesting his Excellency to bring under the notice of their
-......._____80yal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales
proposed cattle and horse show of Ireland, in the hope
....
that theirßoyalHighnesses might be induced to be present
on the occasion.
" His Excellency desires me to state, in reply, that it
will afford him groat pleasure to accede to your lordship's
request, and that he will not fail to submit the matter in
due form to his loyal Highness.
" I have the honour to be, my lord, your lordship's
obedient servant,
• "G. Dusos.
" The Right Hon. the Lord Mayor."
Shortly after 11 yesterday the various regimentsof the gt r riso n , under the command of their res,,ec-
tive colonels, were marched to the Fifteen Acres,
for the purposl of being r,:viewed by General
Cunyngliaute. Several thousand persons hail as-
sembled. The Lord Lieutenant was present, wish
Lord Claud Hamilton, M.P., Ladies Maud, Al..
bertha, and Georgina Hamilton (on horseback),
attended by Lieuts. Wodehouse and Oswald, Aides-
de-Canis. The Marchioness of Abercorn, Lord.
and Lady Alexander Russell, and Mrs. Willis were
in two carriages, with four horses and outriders. .
The Vartry reservoir has been completely emptied,
without any inconvenience. The engineers will
soon find the cause of the leakage.
General Massey, of the United States army, said
to be commander-in-chief of the army of the Irish
Republic, was arrested yesterday at the Limerick
Junction, and brought to Dublin.
Troops have been concentrated at the Limerick
Junction.
Chests sufficient to fill ten large floats arrived by
steamer to-day, containing breech-loading guns.
JacEson, lately arrested in a collier, is Captain
M'Cafferty, who was to lead the Fenian army.
1 he Government gets information of every move-
ment.

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PRICF 4d.
STAMPED sd.

tragedian's I ever heard. Ile was once pleading
in the Julian Hall ; four cases were going on at
once in different parts of the building, and there
was a great noise ; but I well remember that all
the foul' audiences heard, understood/ and ap-
plauded him, to the great disgust of the other
speakers. 'But this,' concludes the Roman critic,
aimiriagly ; this is a thing to dream of, and
one hasn't often such ruck." It is quite possible,
however, that Mr. Bright might have it. So let
the League be warned,in time!

The Clerkeuwell Casual Wards.

Last evening the guardians of Clerkenwell were
engaged in another investigation with regard to the
management of the casual wards, when some facts of
public interest were detailed. Complaints have been
made from time to time of the refusal of the persons
placed in charge of these words to carry out the
law by admitting the applicants for relief, and the
reply given on nearly all occasions has been that
the casuals have been intoxicated, and the persons
interceding for the casuals have been insulted. The
present complaint was made by Mr. Bassinger, a
parishioner of Clerkenwell, who stated that on pass-
ing the wards one wet evening, about 9 o'clock, he
saw a woman outside, to whom the superintendent,
Runciman by name, was refusing admission. Mr.
Bassinger and other persons applied to the superin-
tendent to admit the woman, but Runcimau told
them to go away, accompanying his demand by the
assertion that they were costermongers and crimi-
nals, acting, so the witness described, in a filthy
manner towards Mr. Bassinger's son. This led to
high words, in the midst of which some of the guar-
dians came up, one of whom afterwards said the
woman was not intoxicated, and she was then taken
into the wards. The evidence of Mr. Bassinger was
corroborated by Mr. Dalton, a person residing in the
neighbourhood, who said he was in the habit of passing
by these wards and had often seen persons refused re,
lief, and hadseen disturbances there. The woman, he
said, was not intoxicated, and hefelt very indignant
to think that a woman should be kept out on the wet
stones. It was elicited by Runciman himself that he
had been heard by the witness using shameful lan-
guage to the casuals. Mrs. Gibbs, a resident in
Clerkenwell-close, near the casual wards, also de-
posed to hearing the bad language used by Rand-
man. She deposed to Runciman's violent and in-
sulting behaviour towards herself on more than one
occasion, and then proceeded to give a remarkable
piece of testimony, from which it was gathered, to
the evident astonishment of the guardians, that the
casuals had to pass naked through an open yard in
therear, where they could be seen by the neighbours,
and she had had to move in consequence, as she had
a growing family. The guardians, from some re-
marks which were made, seemed to wish it should be
inferred that this degrading and cruel custom was not
now practised. Runciman brought as his witnesses
the porter William Taylor and a police-constable
named Walter Colby. Both thes3 denied hearing
any bad language used by Runciman, but the former
was not present the whole time, and the latter gave
his evidence in such a manner that the guardians
said they had heard enough. Runciman then de-
clared solemnly that he had not used the words at-
tributed to him, and afterwards that he did not be-
lieve he used them. He declared also that the woman
was " beastly drunk," Mr. Glover moved that
Runciman and his wife should be immediately dis-
missed, and expressed himself shocked with the evi-
dence which had been brought forward by Runci-
man. Mr. Drayton seconded the motion, which
was supported by Mr. Croucher and Mr. Poley. At
the request of several guardians the motion was
altered to one calling upon Ruuciman and his wife
to resign immediately, and this was carried unani-
mously. A resolution was also moved that
Taylor should be reprimanded for the manner
in which he had given his evidence, but this
was lost on a show of hands, the guar-
dians desiring to proceed to the next business. At
one stage of the proceedings an endeavour was
made to close the proceedings to the reporters, a
motion being made by Mr. J. W. Hopkins that the
inquiry should be conducted in committee. This was
not seconded.