The Sun.
London, England, 1859-04-28 00:00:00

WOLVERHAMPTON.

On Monday evening last a meeting of the friends
and supporters of the Right Hon. C. P. Villiers
and Sir R. Bethell, the candidates for the represen-
tation of the borough of Wolverhampton in the
next Parliament, was held in the National School-
room, Coseley ; Mr. David Green in the chair.
Mr. VILLIERS, after referring to the various mea-
sures of a more or less liberal nature which the
Conservatives had of late years conceded to public
opinion, said they had to bid a little higher this year
for favour, and they had found, as they were told,
that one of the engagements with which they took
the Government was to bring out a Reform Bill.
(Cheers.) Now that was not an easy matter for Con-
servatives to do—(laughter)—and it required all
Mr. Disraeli's astuteness to devise a scheme that
would satisfy Reformers and not offend his own fol-
lowers. (Laughter.) Well, it was perhaps no argu-
ment against a man eminent in many things, that he
did not succeed on every occasion, and Mr. Disraeli's
Reform Bill was certainly not one of his successful
productions. It was a Reform Bill certainly, but
the part of reform was hardly apparent in it.
(Laughter.) The bill was introduced by way of
doing something in the line of reform, and so it
did ; but when reformers came to look at it very
closely, and pull it about, it was found to be doing
something the wrong way—it went backward as
much as it went forward—what it gave with one
hand it took back with the other. They pretended,
no doubt, to liberalise the county constituency, but
as they knew well, when they shut out freeholders
from voting who resided in a borough like that they
took away from the county more that was liberal
than what they gave. (Cheers.) Now he must
admit that there were several dodges of this kind
in the bill—and that the Liberal party were right
in being suspicious of the whole concern. (Hear.)
They saw it was not straightforward, and therefore
Lord John Russell, who was 'rather eminent as a
doctor in those cases, was called in—(laughter)—
and he prescribed a resolution—(renewed laughter)
—which put the subject to the test, and the result
was, as they knew, very adverse to the authors of
the bill. (Cheers.) However, he should have been
glad if a dissolution could have been avoided, and
he thought it ought to have been avoided. (Hear,
hear.) He thought the Government ought to have
amended their bill ; and as e rerybody professed to
be reformers, it was a sign of bad workmanship in
the house that a bill, meeting the requirements of
the country, should not have passed this session,
and the whole country should have been thrown
into confusion by a general election. (Cheers.)
Looking, moreover, to the state of affairs on the
continent, he could not think it was either
right or wise to dissolve the parliament.
The only advantage was that it gave him the
opportunity of visiting his constituents, which
he was always happy and ready to do.
(Cheers.) Upon the subject of reform, he was
bound to tell them, that great differences existed
amongst liberals in the House of Commons. He
thought himself that the condemnation of the late
House of Commons was carried too far by some.
He would not for any party purpose say what he
did not think, but he thought that, though there
were considerable defects in the constitution of the
house, yet they did not require any sweeping mea-
sure to rectify them. He should wish to see them
amended, but lie thought that when ascertained
they should proceed carefully though surely. He
desired to see extensive reform, but he was bound
to say there were few great reforms that under
great pressure the house would not yield. But the
house, in his opinion, ought to act spontaneously in
harmony with the wants and opinion of the coun-
try, and not always require a great agitation to
exact what was right to be done. He thought this
greatly arose from the county constituencies being
too agricultural, and from the small boroughs being
too many. (Cheers.) He thought those small
boroughs should have one or both of their members
transferred to large and intelligent constituencies,
either by adding to the number of towns now re•
presented, or giving the franchise to places unre-
presented. (Cheers.) He thought that when this
was done, and. the householders or occupants of £lO
value should be admitted into the county consti-
tuency, the opinions of the county members would
be brought more into unison with the feelings and
interests of the entire community than they were at
present. (Cheers.) The right hon. gentleman then
spoke of the propriety of admitting the working
classes to the exercise of the franchise, using the
same arguments as on previous occasions. His
opinion was, he said, that no people as a class
s
"altrbe excluded from the political franchise, and
should at 'once be admitted, when exhibiting the
intelligence and independence requisite to exor-
cise it with
as for the advantage to themselves, as well
good of their fellow-countrymen.

(Cheers.) lie believed the opinions of this
borough were reasonable on the subject of reform.
He had been in London within the last few days,
and found that the views held in this borough
corresponded much with the views held in other
places. When Parliament met, therefore, they
might, no doubt, agree on some reasonable course
to be adopted on that subject. He feared, however,
that a question of graver importance would require
their attention even before reform, or even before
the assembling of Parliament—that was the ques-
tion of peace or war. There was great anxiety and
excitement now in the metropolis owing to the news
which had lately arrived. He was happy, how-
ever, to think that if there was war on the continent
that, so far as he had been able to collect the opi-
nions of the leading men, it was one that England
would have but little to do with. (Hear, and cheers.)
The parties engaged in the struggle, which it was
probable would soon commence, were those whose
objects they were obliged to question—their past
history cast great suspicion on what they now pro-
fessed—and inasmuch as no English interests were
at present involved, and as he trusted this country
would never sympathise with despotism in any
shape or form, he hoped there would be reasonable
and just ground for keeping entirely aloof. (Cheers.)
With the cause of the dispute they were no doubt
pretty well acquainted. The opposing parties were
France and Austria and the dispute had arisen
respecting Italy. As' far as he knew, France and
Austria had been agreed for the last eight years
in subjecting Italy to the dominion of their armies.
The armies of both nations had been in occupation
of the centre of that country, where neither had any
right to enter ; but by means of which force every-
thing like liberty or the free expression of opinion
had been entirely suppressed, and it was only now
that a dispute had arisen between these two nations,
who were equally regarded as oppressors by the
people at Rome. The leading men of this country,
however, would probably regard a strict neutrality
on the part of England as the proper course to be
pursued, and he believed that the people generally
would endorse that opinion. (Cheers.) Mr.
Villiers, after alluding to the great questions
that would engage their attention in the next
Parliament, concluded by referring to the emi-
nence and ability of the hon. and learned gen-
tleman, Sir Richard Bethell, who had come
forward to solicit the suffrages of the electors in the
place of their late respected member, Mr. Thornley,
and sat down amidst loud applause.
Sir R. BETHELL, on rising to address the meeting,
was greeted with the same cordial reception which
had been manifested at previous meetings at which
the right hon. gentlemat had addressed the electors
of this borough. He considered there was hardly
ever a period more unfortunate for an appeal by the
ministry to the people of England than the present
particular crisis. They were all aware to a certain
extent what was the nature of the controversy be-
tween the two great contending hosts. His right
hon. friend Mr. Villiers had stated with great ac-
curacy the nature of the impending struggle, and
undoubtedly it was difficult to determine which of
the two contending parties to prefer. On the one
hand there was Austria, which had oppressed the
whole of Italy with an iron rule—(applause)—
whiled the other there was the great French na-
, tion (gound down by the despotic sway of a most
absolute monarch), which in 1849, when there was
a rising in Rome to redeem Rome from that ter-
rible sway which still exists there, and when re-
publicans had got possession of the country and
were about to establish a better form of govern-
ment, sent down its armies and besieged Rome,
drove out the advocates and friends of liberty, and
re-established that most terrible form of ecclesias-
tical despotism. The only consolation, if it were
proper for any friend of humanity to entertain such
a thought, would be that the might of the one des-
pot and the might of the other would be opposed to
each other, and that they might possibly mutually
crush each other, and that in the weakness of the
two the lovers of freedom and of civil and religious
liberty in Italy might obtain those glorious privi-
leges which they were so nobly contending for.
Let them, then, that being the true state of affairs,
inquire whether there was anything on the one
side or the other to call for the interference of
England. He (the speaker) would say undoubtedly
not. So far as France was concerned, so far as
Austria was concerned, it was utterly impossible to
have anything in common with the views of
the one or with the views of the other. It
was undoubtedly true there was the little king-
dom of Sardinia, in which there was unquestionably
the tree of civil and religious liberty planted—(ap-
plause)—and with that kingdom they would desire
to sympathise. If she had been content to develop
and promote her institutions, and hadnot giveaway
probably to feelings of revenge, and called on the
French nation in the hope of revenging herself on
the Austrians for the defeats which she suffered in
1848, if it were possible indeed to control or to in-
fluence, one would have liked, and this a strong
Government might have done, to have said to Aus-
tria, you shall withdraw your armies from the rest
of Italy, you shall permit Italy to establish a differ-
ent Government at Rome, and to have full liberty
to do so ; but they were aware that for these 40
years past, whenever a gleam of freedom had shone
over any part of Italy, it had at once been put out
by the iron tread of an Austrian army sent for that
purpose. He earnestly hoped, therefore, that it
would be the unanimous opinion and the united
voice of all the electors of Wolverhampton, that in
the event of such a war between such parties, Eng-
land ought to have no part whatever. (Loud
cheers.) Let them thank God for their insular
position, as well as for the other advantages which
they possessed ; and when those great combatants,
neither of them having any feeling whatever of
sympathy with the real interests the human
race, when they became exhausted, then England
might probably interfere, and compel something to
be done by treaty and by remonstrance that might
produce some good out of the evil, and might make
the condition of the exhausted combatants minister
to the purposes of truth and justice. Having thus
made known his opinions upon this subject, in
which it gave him great pleasure to find his col-
league, Mr. Villiers, concurred, he could now only
hope that those opinions would meet the approval
of the electors of this borough. Now let them look
a little at their own domestic state of things. His
right hon. friend had referred to the ostensible
cause of the dissolution which had led to the pre-
sent meeting. Unquestionably the ostensible
cause had been the rejection of the Govern-
ment Reform Bill, and his right hon. friend
had said, with great reason and truth, that that bill
was not only a mockery, but that it was a thing
which was in reality intended to serve and promote
an end different from that which its title would
seem to imply : in fact, that it was no reform mea-
sure at all. The Government bill was constructed
with great art, nay, (said the hon. speaker) it was
constructed by its chief author with the deliberate
avowal that its chief purpose was to roll back the
tide of reform, and to accomplish some object
through the medium of that bill which should re-
store power to the Tories, and place them in the
same prominence in which the Liberals were placed
by the act of 1832, the moment that by that act
the voice of the country could be heard. This woul
have been the effect of the bill ; but the device,
although cunning, was too transparent to admit of
concealment. It had been properly defined by a
certain eminent statesman in the House of Com-
mons the other night as " a thing too cunning by
half," and the result of that subtlety was that the
bill crumbled beneath the first touch ; and when
the resolution was applied to it in what he (the
speaker) considered was a most just and fair spirit
—(hear)—because, as they wece aware, the resolu-
tion defined two things which must be essential
conditions in every real reform question, and the
resolution accordingly put to the House of Com-
mons wasp was it or was it not their deliberate opi-
nion that there should be a reform bill that did not
seek to accomplish those two purposes ? But, said
the hon. gentleman, they were aware that, the Mi-
nistry endeavoured to escape from the contest upon
the merits of the resolution by pretending it was a
work of faction, of intrigue, and of party ; but if it
were so, he (the speaker) never saw any resolution
less likely to accomplish the end, for if the Minis-
try had only dealt with it as they did with the
suggested resolution upon their India bill, if they
had only agreed to take the sense of the House
of Commons upon it, all the present disgrace
would have been saved from the turmoil attend-
ing a general election. Could there possibly
have been anything more dishonest on the part of
the Ministry to profess one course and then
almost immediately afterwards abandon it, and
advocate another ? 'Why were they to have
confidence inhLouorrdp they up
Derby,llslo or Lord Derby's Go-
Cleirlianingeeliint Pan Did pwo seer
ethato r
da mDaeirlb
ycould
the present Conservatives ? Why, said the hon.
gentleman, they were the legitimate heirs and the
direct descendants of the Tories of old. With whom
was it they had fought the great battle of free
trade ? With Lord Derby and his confederates.
(Hear, hear.) Did they believe they had converted
them in reality. (Cries of "No, no.") Did
they
think they had rescued them from the darkness of
paganism ? No, said the speaker, they were unwill-
ing converts, and they still retained about them
much of the old leaven. (Applause.) He could not,
therefore, looking at past events, say that he was
disposed to place implicit confidence in Lord Derby.
Why did Lord Dorby dissolve Parliament but be-
cause he believed it was elected under peculiar cir-
cumstances at the time of the China war ? and he
thought he could so manage the election as to give
himself an unfair majority; therefore it was that he
refused in his Reform Bill to attack these nomina-
tion boroughs. Why did he refuse to attack these