The Sun.
London, England, 1866-06-01 00:00:00

Conservative Dinner at Harwich.

HARWICH, Thursday.
The dinner last evening in honour of Major Jervis,
M.P., and Mr. John Belk, M.P., was the occasion
of speeches of some little interest from both hon.
members. Mr. J. C. Cobbold, M.P. for Ipswich,
presided, and proposed the toast of the evening in
very complimentary terms.

Major JERVIS, M.P., in responding, said Har.
with had reached rather a critical period in its his
tory. Bad as the Referm Bill of 1832 might have
been, it still considered that the position which Har-
wich occupied in this part of England entitled it to
a share in the representation of the country. Dur-
ing the years which had since elapsed, Harwich had
wonderfully improved in respect to population and
business, and yet it was removed from amongst the
constituencies of the country. Improved as Har-
wich had been by the industry of its inhabitants
and by its commerce, he (Major Jervis) thought it
was the very last town the Government of the
country ought to attempt to obliterate. As time
rolled on, and as population, trade, and commerce
varied, it might be necessary that there should be
an alteration in the representation, in order that
the constituencies of the kingdom should represent
the feelings of the people to the fullest extent ; but
in the face of the fact that the county of Essex had
increased by over 100,000 inhabitants since the
Reform Bill of 1832, while its wealth and trade
had nearly doubled, he would ask whether the
present was a proper time in which to deprive
Essex of one of the ten members who represent
the county ? It was idle to talk of any great
difference between county members and town
members ; the members for Essex constituen-
cies had always been the ten members for the
county of Essex. If it were really for the interests
of the county that Harwich should be disfranchised,
he did not believe there was any borough the inhabi-
tants of which would more readily come forward
and ask their representatives to vote for the Re-
form Bill, although it might disfranchise them. But
there was no such necessity. He remembered that
when Mr. Campbell first appeared as a candidate
for Harwich he was good enough to say that if a
Conservative were returned Harwich would lose one
member, while if he (Mr. Campbell) were returned
it would keep its two members. He (Major Jervis)
thought this was rather curious language coming
from a Radical, but the result proved that Mr.
Campbell was right, and that he (Major Jervis) was
wrong. Mr. Campbell was perfectly in the secrets
of his party ; Reform with them was merely a little
bye play to enable them to get into power. (Laugh-
ter.) It was his (Major Jervis's) firm belief that
the Reform Bill of 1866 was also only a little bye
play ; it kept the newspapers and the two political
parties going, but there was not the slightest inten-
tion that the bill should be carried. One of the
first to get up in 1859 to oppose Lord Derby's Re-
form Bill was Mr. Campbell, who strongly objected
to Harwich being disfranchised any more than Mr.
Campbell would. He did not know how long this
little game was going on, but he thought the time
was come when Parliament ought to look seriously
at the state of affairs. In the present financial con-
dition of England, and when there were rumours of
war throughout the length and breadth of Europe,
he thought Parliament might talk about something
better than whether some small place in Yorkshire,
the name of which he forgot, should have two
members instead of Harwich. For his own part
he considered that at a time like the present the
leading men on the Conservative side of the
house, and the leading men who sat on the other
side of the house under the name of Whigs, should
drop their little quarrels and pull together for the
common good. (Cheers.) There was such a thing
as falling to the ground between two stools, and if
the Conservatives and the Whigs got quarrelling
such men as Mr. Bright might get a great deal more
than they deserved to get. (Hear, hear.)
Mr. KELK, M.P., also replied, and said the House
of Commons consisted of a small portion of mem-
bers who talked, a small portion of members who
worked, and a large portion of members who neither
talked nor worked. (Laughter.) He hoped he might
claim for himself a humble position in the second
category. (Cheers.) He stood there that evening
in a proud position. Many of his constituents had
no doubt watched with interest the election petitions,
and had noticed that great havoc had been made
among some of the purest members. (Laughter.)
The petition against his gallant colleague and him-
self was the first which the House of Commons had
stigmatised as frivolous and vexatious, and dismissed
with costs. lie felt proud of this result, as it was
no less a vindication of himself than of his suppor-
ters. We were in the middle of a political crisis as
dangerous to the Crown and constitution as the
anarchy in the financial world had been to those en-
gaged in commerce. He and his colleague had voted
against the fragmentary measure offered in the shape
of a Reform Bill ; they declined, as Mr. Lowe ably

put it, to allow the constitution to be knocked down 1
to the lowest bidder, although believing that some
fair moderate measure of reform might be advisable.
They declined to support sweeping measures, whether
brought forward by the Treasury, or Messrs. Bright
and Company. He for one could see no logic in the
Government Bill. They proposed to give excessive
power to the working classes, while at the same time
they disfranchised the very elite of that body, those who
worked in the Government dockyards. It was al-
most unnecessary for him to say that the proposal
of Mr. Gladstone to marry the borough of Harwich
to that of Maldon, and to take three members from
the two boroughs, should have his most determined
opposition. When Lord Russell introduced his Re-
form Bill in 1832 he said every working man might
get the franchise if it were reduced to £lO. Since
then the wages of mechanics had been increased
over 30 per cent., while the price of tea, sugar,
coffee, &c., had all been reduced, so that if it was
the opinion of Lord Russell iu 1832 that a man
might raise himself to a £lO franchise, it ought to
be the noble lord's opinion now. (Cheers.)
Other toasts followed.