The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-17 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 17, 1867.

ward and threatening to overwhelm us; but while
I shall ever be the advocate of an open field, fair
play, and no favour, I trust the result will be bet-
ter art, and a friendly, peaceable, and even affec-
tionate rivalry. I will now give place to others who
are better able than I am to inform you as to the
details of the working of this admirable institution
—but before I sit down, allow me to express the
hope that those ladies who have gained prizes to-
day will continue to reap fresh laurels, and that the
younger students will never flinch from the
labour which is necessary to acquire excellence.
(Loud applause.)

Mr. WESTMACOTT, R.A., made a few observa-
tions, in the course of which he dwelt with especial
emphastia upon the advantages which the school de-
rived from the superintendence of Miss Gann, than
whom it was impossible to find a more able or de-
voted teacher. (hear.)

The proceedings closed with a vote of thanks to
Sir F. Grant, which was moved by Mr. REDGRAVIi,
R.A., and seconded by Mr. O'NEILL, R.A.

MR. OTWAY, M.P., O.N POLITICS.

Last evening Mr. A. 0 tway, M.P. for Chatham,
addressed his constituents in the Lecture-hall of
that town, which was well filled. The chair was
taken by Mr. Vincent Hills, Mayor of Rochester,
who briefly introduced the hon. member.

Mr. OTWAY commenced his address by denying
Admiral Elliot's statement that he had neglected
local interests. The hon. member quoted as the
witty saying of a learned man, that all that the Re-
form Act contained of the Reform Bill was the word
" Whereas," and said that the bill belonged to the
Government and the act to the House of Commons,
and that all the improvements made in the bill were
due to the Liberal party. The act was by no means
perfect. In the November session he had pointed
out a serious blunder, corrected by the first act of
the session—(laughter)--and no doubt in February,
many shortcomings and defects would be made ma-
nifest and corrected. There must be a larger re-
distribution of seats, and the compound househol-
der, although said to be dead, was certainly not
buried. (Laughter, and " Hear, hear.") The lat-
ter question was one of peculiar interest in the
borough, and a gentleman acquainted with the local
working of the Small Tenements Act, wrote him that :
" The parish of Chatham contains about 1,200
houses that formerly came under the Small Tene-
ments Act, the landlords paying the rates. Now
this burden is thrown on the tenants, the collectors
have called on these people for the money, they will
not pay (possibly cannot) ; appeal days have been
fixed for those persons to appear before the guar-
dians who are too poor to pay. I have, as their
clerk, attended ; hundreds upon hundreds have been
down ; in fact, the crush has been so great that the
assistance of the police has been called in to pre-
serve order. I have repeatedly called appellants'
attention to the fact that by the guardians excusing
them any portion of their rates they would not be
on the Register of Voters at the next election. To
this in every case their reply was, We can't pay,
we do not care about our vote ;' and not in half-a-
dozen cases that have come before us have the
guardians thought it right to wake an order on these
people." This was a most unsatisfactory state of
things ; an enfranchisement of the people was con-
ceded with such conditions as made it unacceptable
to them. Mr. Gladstone was throughout right
in the view he took of the matter. (Cheers.) The
personal payment of rates, as a principle of the Act,
was doomed to disappear. The statement that the
Conservatives were Liberals at heart, and from 1859
had made up their minds to household suffrage, was
refuted by the fact that Lord Derby, when called to
power, asked the co-operation in office of Mr. Lowe,
who was opposed to any reduction of the suffrage.
If Lord Derby had been in favour of household suf-
frage he should have applied to Mr. Bright. (Cheers.)
Lord Derby in his time had made one or two un-
fortunate party statements. In 1852, when the
question of Protection was alive, he said he was
looking to the time when he conldsay to his followers,
"Up Guards and at them." Before 1859 he said it
was his mission to stem the tide of Democracy.
Neither statement could be compared with that made
with reckless firmness in 1866 that his determination
was to convert a minority into a majority rather than
to maintain any principles. These had been sacri-
ficed to maintain place—(hear)—he would not say
power. The conduct of the Conservative party last
Session had struck a fatal blow at the confidence
people had for some time reposed in public men.
The question arose what was to be the limit of the
policy Lord Derby had adopted in order to carry
the Reform Act. Was it to be adopted in the
settlement of all the great questions now at issue ?
Were church-rates to be opposed to the last and the
Church then thrown over? The question might
appear unimportant at Chatham, which had no
church-rate for many years ; but the people of
Chatham had some feeling for their fellow country-
men. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in reply to
a question, said that a man imprisoned for nonpay-
ment of church-rates had been ill-advised by his
lawyer ; but the House of Lords was more " ill-
advised" when it threw out the bill for the abolition
of church-rates. (Cheers.) Was the Government's
majority principle to be applied to the questions of
the Irish Church and the government of Ireland ?
The population of Chatham would abhor and
stigmatise as cruel, barbarous, and horrible the
diabolical outrage perpetrated by Fenian conspira-
tors in London—(hear, hear)—and would detest
and execrate Feniauism, asait had showed itself, as
an insane and wicked conspiracy ; but who could
conscientiously say that we had not committed
wrong towards Ireland ? On this question was the
Liberal party to be opposed to the last, and then
more than it had advocated conceded by the Go-
vernment in order to convert a minority into a
majority ? In such a policy there was no states-
manship, which determined what was right and
just, and yielded to reasoning and not to agitation
and violence. Such a motive animated the Liberal
party, of whose cause he did not despair, for its
mind was made up on the questions of the day,
and it wanted to deal with them in a large sense.
On the questions of church rates, the Irish
Church, Irish tenant right, and education
—(cheers)—the Liberal party had a programme
distinct from that of the Conservative party,
so that there must be antagonism between them.
It was said that the passing of the Reform Act
would make the country Conservative ; but three
out of four late elections—those for Leicestershire,
Coventry, and Manchester—had resulted in Liberal
victories and the displacement of Conservatives.
(Cheers.) In one respect the Liberal party con-
trasted unfavourably with the Conservative party,
and that was in acting as a clique and not acknow-
ledging great services—but this fault he hoped
would be corrected in future. Referring to the
increase of the income tax, he said commerce was
not flourishing and the trade of the town was de-
pressed, so that it was an unfortunate time to aug•
ment the tax. With regard to the Abyssinian
difficulty, he admitted that the present Govern-
ment ',inherited it, and that we were bound to
demand the release of Mr. Rassatn—first by ne-
gotiation, and that, failing, by force ; but he
thought it would have been strange if King
Theodore, with whom he had entered into rela-
tions, had not been offended at the non-receipt of
answers to two letters which be had addressed to
the Queen. One of these bad been mislaid, the
King had not been answered, and we were at war.
It was the old story—some one had blundered, and
the English people had to pay. It was hard upon
them that they should be plunged into a war in
which they had no interest because slights had been
put upon a King like Theodore through the negli-
gence of the Foreign-office. It would have been
better if Government had revealed its intentions to
Parliament before the close of last session ; but
Lord Stanley's explanation had gone far to excul-
pate the Government in this respect. On the autho-
rity of Sir Samuel Baker and of the Belgian diplo-
matist who had resided in Abyssinia two years, and
whose despatch to the Government was given in
the Blue-book, he held that our greatest danger
was in a large expedition. It was said the King
had not the means of putting 1,000 men
in line at any time, and that there was
no possibility of opposing the march of 500