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

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 may be
looked to as a preserver; and his Bill accepted as a
compromise against the angry passions which your
blindness and fglly 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 i❑ 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
Bill ; 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, o❑ 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 that 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—
(latiahter)—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 biz 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. He, 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 Lord 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 iu 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 th at
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 progress 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 newspaper, the name of which they would
all guess, an office 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-
ilemen came down to the house andrecanted. (Ilear,
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.) He, 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 assigned
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, " I 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 felt 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 haud,
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 thatquestion 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 10 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 18G6 with that in favour of the

leform 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-

logics 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
constituencies in which one class had an overwhelm-
ing preponderance. Returning to his own views on
Reform, be said he had never uttered a word of
disparagement against the working classes, whom
he was not afraid to meet face to face, although
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. Beales
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—
principle for which they had already a pre-
ci;aand one with which they were all familiar
pre-
cedent, n t
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 indignation was freely expressed by
the assemblage. Fora minute or two apause 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. llorstnan 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