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

Mr. Neate,

Lblic Affairs.

Yesterday the 59th or Oxford Lodge of the An-
cient Order of Druids, according tolong-established
custom, celebrated the opening of the new year by
a banquet held in the Town- hall, Oxford. The re-
presentatives of the city are usually invited to these
banquets, but only one of them (Mr. Neate) was
present on this occesion, Mr. Cardwell being now a
sojourner, with many of his late colleagues, in Italy.
Brother Wells presided, and was supported by the
mayor and other members of the corporation, Capt.
Fane, Capt. Mallam, Mr. J. Dudley, and Mr. Towle.
After the usual preliminary toasts, the Chairman
briefly gave the health of the members for the City
of Oxford, expressing his regret at the unavoidable
absence of Mr. Cardwell.
The toast was received with great cordiality.
Mr. NEATE, on rising to respond, was received
with loud cheers, and after excusing the absence of
Mr. Cardwell, proceeded to say that if there was
any particular in which he himself had any advan-
tage over his right hon. colleague, it was that, hav-
ing filled no official position, he was always willing
• and at liberty to tell them the little he knew upon
public affairs. At the present time that little was
very little indeed. Men talked of the progress of
civilisation and the spread of knowledge ; but he
thought there was an increasing darkness over the
land at that moment. Nobody now knew what
hardly anybody else was going to do. If they asked
a Conservative what thepresent Ministry were likely
to do—whether they were likely to introduce a very
large extension of the franchise, he would reply that
he could not say, but he might at the same time tell
them that a very large extension of the franchise, if
managed by Conservative hands, would probably
prove a very Conservative measure. There was, how-
ever, a party which did not shrink from speaking
out. He referred to the advanced or popular party ;
and here perhaps he was trenching on what was some-
times deemed at these meetings forbidden ground.
(No.) There was a party which stated that what it de-
sired was residential manhood suffrage. He was
not going to say whether he was prepared or not to
vote for that; but he thought he might say, with-
out committing himself too far in that direction,
that if Mr. Gladstone would propose a measure for
establishing manhood suffrage, and Mr. Cardwell
supported it, he, too, would be ready to vote for it.
(Hear.) He would not presume to question the
right of the English people, whether they were with-
in or without the pale of the Constitution—as far as
the pale of the Constitution was confined to those
who possessed the franchise—to meet together and
express their own sentiments, or to hear from the
leaders in whom they trusted that counsel by which
they were willing to be guided; but he must say that
at some recent meetings the House of Commons had
been treated in a way which it hardly deserved.
They were all concerned, no less than he himself as
one of its members was, in seeing that the house of
Commons, which was partly their work, should have
fair play in those public discussions which he had
no wish to restrain. He repeated that he did not
believe the House of Commons had been fairly
dealt with on many of those occasions. He had
thought, for one, until that year that the highest
honour which had been conferred upon him in all
his life was done him when they made him their
representative. But he had observed at different
times of late that the house of Commons had been
spoken of in the presence of large assemblages of
Englishmen in a manner which, if justified, would
warrant him in asking them what they had seen
about him which made them think him worthy to
be placed in so disreputable a body. (Cheers and
laughter.) It had been spoken of that a man, in-
stead of being proud, should be ashamed of being a
member of it. Now, he did not defend the present
House of Commons through thick and thin. He
thought it had failed to a great extent in its duty in
the last session. Yet, after all, there was no very
great reason to complain of the way in which it re-
ceived the proposed Reform. It was a very exten-
sive measure, and nobody liked to be reformed.
It was like a dose of physic. The best
boy, no doubt, was he who took his me-
dicine with alacrity the first time it was ten-
dered to him ; but still they did not call a boy a very
bad boy because he refused to take it at once, or even
because he might rejoice to see the nauseous potion
spilt. (A laugh.) Well, the manner in which the
house of Commons received the late proposal of Re-
form was not at all inconsistent with the respect
which it was bound to have for the will of the people,
whether that will was the will of those who elected
it or that of those who had an equal interest in its
deliberations. But it was to be regretted that, from
the course which the Reform debates took, they had
no opportunity of hearing what the opinions enter-
tained on both sides were. The Ministry stated their
views, and the then Opposition, now the present
Ministry, would have had to state theirs ; but unfor-
tunately they were relieved from the necessity of
doing so by finding that there was a division on the
Ministerial side. And thus the country had seen a
Ministry turned out for supporting a particular bill,
while it had not had any statement of the principle
on which that bill was defeated. But he did not find
fault with any criticism that had been passed upon
the action of the House of Commons ; and no man
could be less disposed than he was to object to the
free expression of public opinion by meetings or
otherwise. Still less did he object to the great leader
who had been selected by the popular party as their
chief organ. He thought that if they wished to
measure the progress they had made in civilisation
there would be no surer way of doing so than by
comparing the present great popular leader with
any that had preceded him. They found in the great
popular leader of the day, however much they might
differ from him, a higher tone of morality, a juster
consideration of the rights of others, and a greater
unwillingness to mislead than was exhibited by any
popular leader who has gone before. (Hear, and
some dissent.) He spoke with pride and pleasure of
Mr. Bright as his friend, although it was well known
that he cad not agree with him on many points.
He was not prepared to adopt all his principles or
to assent to all his facts ; but at the same time he
must say that all the meetings in which he had taken
part a higher tone of morality had been evinced,
and those who attended them had felt themselves
raised into a higher atmosphere of thought and feel-
ing than that to which they had been accustomed ;
and, although they. might have gone away with a
higher notion of their rights, yet if they had listened,
as they ought, attentively to the great orator they
must also have carried away with them a higher
notion of their duties. But there was, nevertheless,
a difference between argument and intimidation—a
difference between meetings held for purposes of dis-
cussion and mere demonstrations of numerical force.
Against such demonstrations as the latter—although
they might be held in the country with less danger
—against such demonstrations, if any such were in-
tended to take place in the metropolis of the king-
dom, he must enter his most decided protest. He
should hope that the wisdom and good sense of the
leaders of the popular party would prevent them
from attempting anything further of the kind. (No.)
But he was quite sure that the Liberal party would
not participate in any such demonstrations, that they
would support any Government who would put
them down. (No, no, and cheers.) Let people only
consider how great was the danger of bringing
together in the largest city in the world any tumult-
ous assemblage. If, therefore, at the meeting of Par-
liament no one else took that line he should himself
be prepared to ask the Home Secretary what course
he had adopted, or was ready to adopt, supposing
such demonstrations, of mere numbers as were still
talked of to be persevered in, in order to protect
the freedom of the House of Commons and the peace
of the metropolis. (Cheers.) Ile would now turn
from subjects in which he was sorry to see there was
not entire agreement between himself and all those
present, only remarking that his past career would

prove that be bore no hostility to popular rights.
Before sitting down he wished to say something
upon foreign politics, in which Englishmen of
.all parties were, he hoped, disposed to concur. A
vast change had taken place in Germany since
they last met there, and the Italian kingdom,
too, had been completed ; results with which they
were doubtless all much gratified. He trusted that
the Pope would be allowed to spend in peace the
few further years of life which might remain to him,