The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-05 00:00:00

sponsibility, their sense of responsibility then. Look
at the moderation of the bill which was brought in
by the late Government ; look at the fact that if
anything was to be done at all, if the slightest step
was to be taken to improve the representation of
the people and extend the suffrage to the now unen-
franchised, was it possible for the greatest modera-
tion to have proposed a more moderate measure
than that one was ? Well, but what happened ?
Why, the Parliament of landowners and rich men
either were wholly ignorant of, or they wholly de-
spised, that great national opinion which has been
exhibited during the last three or four months ; and
they resisted that bill with a pertinacity never ex-
ceeded, with an amount of intrigue, with an amount
of unfairness to the Goveument which they durst
not for one night have attempted if they had ever
felt any real responsibility to the English nation.
(Cheers.) And now they resist up to this moment,
and for aught I know they may possibly resist
when they meet at the beginning of next February,
until the discontent which is now so general
shall become universal, and that which is now
only a great exhibition of opinion may become neces-
sarily and inevitably a great and menacing exhibi-
tion of force. (Loud cheers, accompanied by the
waving of hats.) And those opponents of ours—
many:of them in Parliament openly, and many of them
secretly in the Press—charge us with being the pro-
moters of a dangerous excitement. They say that
we are the source of the danger which threatens ;
and they absolutely have the effrontery to charge
me with being a friend of public disorder. (Hisses
and cheers.) lam one of the people. (Renewed
cheers.) Surely, if there be one thing in a free
country more clear than another it is that
any one of the people may speak openlya
speak
to the people. (Hear, hear.) If I pek
of their rights
c ta
ht e
to them the way to secure them—if e
to the people
iansid)
eakntclio
monopolists of power of their danger, am I not a
wise counsellor both to the people and to their
rulers ? (Loud cheers.) Suppose that, standing
at the foot of Vesuvius or Etna, I saw a hamlet
or a homestead situated upon its slope, and I said
to the dwellers in that hamlet or that homestead,
" You see that vapour which ascends from the sum-
mit of the mountain. That vapour may become a
dense black smoke that will obscure the sky. You
see that trickling of lava from a crevice or fissure on
the side of the mountain. That trickling of lava
may become a river of fire. You hear that mutter-
ing in the bowels of the mountain. That muttering
may become a bellowing thunder—the voice of a
convulsion that may shake half a continent. You
know that at your feetis the grave in which lie buried
great cities, for which there is no resurrection, as
history tells us that dynasties and aristocracies have
passed away, and their name has been known no
more for ever"—if I say this to the dwellers upon
the slope of that mountain, and if there comes here-
after a catastrophe which makes the world to shud-
der, am I responsible for that catastrophe? I did
not build the mountain, or fill it with explosive
material. I merely warned the men who were in
danger. (Loud cheers—a portion of the assemblage
rising and waving their hats enthusiastically.) So
now it is not I who am stimulating men to a violent
pursuit of their acknowledged constitutional rights.
We are merely about our lawful business—(cheers)
—as citizens of a country that calls itself free, but
citizens to whom is denied the greatest and the first
blessing of the Constitution under which we live.
If the truth must be told, the Tory party is the tur-
bulent party in the nation. (Cheers.) I left Par-
liament last session just about the time when the
Present
accededent Ministers, succeeding in their intrigues,
to office. I left Parliament with a feeling
of sadness, of
disgust, and of apprehension. I said
to myself, «I may as well judge of the future by
the past. The Parliament of England will not do
justice to the peopleopen
there happens something
that will suddeny
remem-
bered what tookl
Duke of Wellington said, ,‘ year. 1829, when the
Either
Place -inn theits eyes."
power and representation, through give political
Catholic. Kingdom,
gdmem-
bers, to the Catholics of the United Km
or
encounter the peril and the loss of civil
war in Ire-
land" (cheers)—and up to that moment Parliament
had refused to do it. Then Parliament consented,
and the thing was done. Again, in 1832, you were
within 24 hours of revolution in this country. The
great class which sits omnipotent in the one house,
and hardly less so in. the other, might then, and
would probably, have been extinguished ; and what
there would have been left, except the people, it is
difficult to imagine. (Laughter and cheers.) Again,
in 1846, although every intelligent man in every
country in the world admitted the justice and the
force of our arguments against the corn law, still it
required the occurrence of a crushing and desolating