The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-23 00:00:00

it may be said, who
,possess these great terripm4es,
and so, perhatisi they would be if it were
vissible for any. man, however.wellslispose4ade
quately to answer the responsibilities which such
.possessionslay-upon him:- Yoh find-on these" vaSt-
estates rury few tenants, and generally few of an
aftiebilualTopulation tit all. There is little social
freedom—there is little industrial freedom—there
is still less political freedom in districts such as
these lam describing. I don't know myself very
well how men can breathe freely when they find
themselves continually—but I suppose habit helps
them to it—on a soil not a niorsel of which can
they call their own, nor can they ever hope to call
any of it their own, until they take their last long
sleep in that which society shall allot them. lam
no advocate for laws to force a division of land. I
do not want any landlord to be compelled to have
a greater or smaller number of tenants; but I say
that a system of legislation in laws of primogeni-
ture and in laws of entail, which is intended to
keep vast estates in one' hand through successive
generations,, to prevent that occasional dispersion
and change of property which is found so advan-
tageous in every other kind of property—l say
that state otthings is full of the most pernicious
consequences not only to the agricultural classes,
but to all other classes of our countrymen, for all
are affected by it. (Applause.) I recollect seeing
a farmer one evening riding away from an inn that
I was staying at in the Highlands, and I asked his
namo. They said he was a farmer in some neigh-
bouring glen, and that he had a prodigious farm.
At one time my informant said he recollected there
were 14 good farnis on that farm, and that these
14 families always managed to send at least one of
their sons to get a first-class university education.
I don't want any law to strip that one farmer of
his farm and restore the 14, but laws that interfere
with the free course of transactions in. land, which
aid and keep up such transactions in an estate,
giving to one man the power over a whole terri-
tory, whereby he has at his disposal tenants and
labourers alike, is a state of things not consistent
with that freedom which the people of England
and Scotlawl, in my opinion, are alike entitled
to. (Applause.) . Your agricultural ' population
have no chance of rising in the world. They
can come to Glasgow, as scores of thousands of
them have - come here from the Highlands and
L from Ireland, and, forced by the unfavourable cir-
. .

cumstances in which they find themselves, that

they may become exiles from their native country,
and may form colonies in the far Pacific or beyond
the Atlantic. But I think we are bound as free-

men---4ind we in this town. are especially bound, for
we only have the power, to take the initiative in
this great question, so far as we are able by our re-
presentatives in Parliament, and I have no doubt
it would be one of the consequences of a real Reform
Bill, to apply those great principles of political
economy which are the gospel and .charter of indus-
try as fully to the great property in land as we
have already applied them to property enjoyed in
trade. (Applause.) There is one other point to
which I must ask your attention, in answer to the
question, What is the good which the working
classes, or any claSs,will get from a wider extension
of the franchise ? Now, there is one great qnestion
which the public have. no sort . of' hold over. The

present Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Disraeli,
an eminent member of the House of Com Mons, a
leading member of the Government, and a man of
genius, whose position, I may say, is a proclama-
tion to the world of the incompetency of the Con•
servative aristocracy aid of the country gentlemen
of the United Kingdom—(applause)—and, what is
still more to be remarked, is the evidence which
this shows of the humility which adorns their
character—(laughter)--in thus permitting it—Mr.
Disraeli said on more than one recent occasion,
that expenditure depends upon policy, and he
meant by that that our public expenditure depends
upon our foreign policy. Now, our past foreign
policy has been of a very questionable character.
It has landed us in a permanent payment, from
which there is no honourable escape, of the sum of
£28,000,000 sterling per annum—(hear, hear)—and
our present:foreign policy, and matters connected
with it, involve us in a present payment of
£22,000,000 per annum in our great military and
naval preparations and expenses. Now, lam not
about for a moment to discuss the question of whe-
ther our foreign policy has been, or is now, good,
bad, or indifferent, because that does not very much
affect the question to which I want to call your atten-
tion. Now, in our home affairs we have a very open
system of Government. If the Home-office is
going to do anythin somebody hears of it, and
somebody approves or somebody objects. On all
matters connected with our freedom, with the ad-
ministration of justice, on things which may be
called internal, we have the freest opportunities of
obtaining information and expressing our opinions
arid enforcing our views upon the Government,—
that is, the freest that is possible so long as our re-
presentation is as imperfect as it now is; but when
you come to our foreign policy you are no longer
Englishmen, you are no longer free. You are re-
commended not to inquire ; if you do you are told
that you cannot- understand it,--you are snubbed,
hustled on one side, told that it is a matter too deep
for common understandings like yours ' • there is a
great mystery about it. We have what is called
diplomacy,—we have a great many Lords engaged
in what they call diplomacy. (Loud applause.)
We have a Lori in Paris, we have another in Ma-
drid, another in Berlin, another (at least we have
had up till lately) at Vienna, another until lately
at Constantinople, another at Washington—all over
the Continent particularly, and where the society
is the most pleasing andthe climate the most agree-
able, there is always an English nobleman to repre-
sent the Foreign-office. (Laughter and applause.)
But you never know what he is doing. You have
three or four columns in the Times newspaper
nearly everyday, and in almost all the rest of the
London papers, and not a little of this is copied
into the provincial papers, all about foreign affairs;
but, notwithstanding that, . you are seldom a bit
more acquainted with them when you read these
things—if anybody ever does—than you were be-
fore. But yet out of all this has come this great
fact of the £28,000,000 which you have paid since
1815, for more than 40 years—a thousand millions
of money paid out of. the industry of your people.
And out of this comes now the supposed necessity
for armaments twice as large as were considered
necessary 25 years ago; and yet you have
no control over this, and you positively
kriow nothing whatsoever about it. There is
no population equal to this in Russia, Austria,
or France, that knows less about the foreign
policy or foreign affairs of Russia, Austria, and
France, probably than this nation knows of the
foreign affairs of England. Lately, your Minister
of Foreign, Affairs was candid enough to tell you
that the Government drifted—you know what they
mean when. a ship drifts—into war ; and these
Foreign Ministers have drifted us into a great many
wars ; and I suspect if some change is not made
with regard to this matter, they will find it very
convenient, or find that they cannot avoid it, from
some cause or another, to allow us to drift into war
in future. I won't talk about what war is ;we
have had a specimen. Be it necessary, be it unne-
cessary, be the quarrel just or be it unjust, be it for
the rights of a nation, or be, it to gratify the
stupidity of a Monarch or the intrigues of a Minis-
ter—war, nevertheless, is one of the greatest cala-
mities which can ever afflict any kingdom of the
human race. (Loud applause.) But your people
arc ignorant of the steps by which you are dragged
into war. A Scotch duke—rather a sprightly duke
too—lately took me to task for something which T
said in a public speech. L called in question the
wisdom of these enterprises abroad While the people
of Ireland had a shilling a-day of wages, and great
numbers of families in the Highlands of Scotland
had two or three meals a-day consisting only of
oatmeal. Why, what is the answer, the triumphant
refutatitm—that"was-" a wholesome diet.
(Laughter.), If I had said that the duke's dogs, at
Inverary Castle werefcd with oatmeal the answer
would have been perfectly w-itisfactory. (Loud
and repeated cheers.) But I am told further by
these great authorities that though the country
does occasionally become involved in the calamities
of war, the people are as fond of war as their
rulers, and that even.the House of Lords was less
disposed to the• last war than the people. Well, if
they sorrowed for the wars, all I can say is they
never told their grief." So far as can recollect
there was but one member of the House of Lords
—and I hold him in the highest honour for his
courage, and, as I believe for his wisdom—that
boldly declared the non-necessity of the contest
into which we were drifting. • But is the
people, are we, the nation, who• know nothing
about these foreign affairs, to have the blame
of these calamities thrown on us when
they do occur ? Who form your Cabinets ? Glas-
gow mercharits, or shopkeepers, or artisans, or the
farmers 'of. your counties ? No ; but members of
the peerage of the Uriited Kingdom. The half of
your Cabinet is alwaTs in your House of Lords,
and the half that is in the House of Commons is
more than half always connected with the peerage.
Don't let us have the same men for generations—
men of. one class, of a few families holding these
high positions, enjoying their vast emoluments,
standing before their country honoured with all its
dignities, and when some one such as I am steps
forward to point out the grievous blunders they
have made, and the crimes that some of them have
committed, and the fearful 'and incalculable suffer-
ings which their countrymen have endured—suffer-
ings which never will- be revealed to us here, but
are known only, and will be recorded only, on the
everlasting tablets of the Eternal : I say, when we
point at these, don't let them turn round and say
that we were in the Cabinets, we received the elm-