The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-29 00:00:00

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reason, why they find themselves in that house at
all. (Hear, hear.) Now, I have asserted, and I
am prepared to contend against all corn
comers, that the
House of Lords does.represent that which is strictly
the landed interest of the country, not the agricul-
tural, not the farming, not the county population
interest, but the landed interest—the interests of
the great territorial proprietors ; and if I wanted
an authority for it I might quote a member of that
house recently put into it, not because he is a
landowner, I. presume, but because he is sup-
posed to have done n his time great service to
the party who made him a Peer. In a speech
made during the passing of the last Reform Bill by
Mr. Macaulay, now Lord Macaulay, I find this pas-
sage Our decision
.(the decision of the House of
Commons) is the decision of the nation. The deci-
sion of their lordships can scarcely be considered
as the decision oven of that class from which the
Peers are generally selected, and of which they
maybe considered the virtual representatives—the
great landed gentlemen of England." Well, that is
what I have asserted—that the House of Lords was

intended to represent, and, I believe, does repre-
sent, with a considerable amount of accuracy, the
wishes, the prejudices, if you like, the opinions
of tho great proprietors of the soil of the United
Kingdom, (Cheers.) Now, will any man dispute
with me on this point—that all the interests of this
country—a free country—have not equal rights to a
fair representation in, and to a fair legislation from
both Houses of Parliament ? And if the land have
greatly the preponderance in one, which nobody
denies, it has no right to assume to itself—and we
bid them beware in time--(cheers)—it has no right
to assume that it should have also a preponderance
in the other house. These discriminations lead a
good way if people will but follow them. They lead
at any rate to the question of equal electoral dis-
tricts, which I have never mooted—(a laugh)—al-
though 50 newspapers in England have asserted
the contrary. (Hear,) They lead also to the ques-
tion of a constitutional change in the character of
the House of Lords—(hear)--a question which I
am not now about to discuss, and which is not now
before the public. In the first speech I made at
Birmingham I said the question you have to con-
sider in reforming the House of Commons is this—
whether the Lords and the great territorial pro-
prietors with whom they are allied, and whom they
represent—whether they are to rule the people of
England through the House of Commons, or whe-
ther the people of England are to rule themselves
through the House of Commons. (Cheers.) Now
let me toll you that this is not a question between
us the inhabitants of the towns and. the rural popu-
lation. The inhabitants of the small counties are
the small freeholders who were the backbone of
the friends of freedom before the Reform Bill; and
the farmers themselves make no complaint
against what we are doing, The great proprietors
complain, it may be, but the people of the counties
have made no complaint. Why, how can they ?
Look at the political condition of the farmers ; to a
farmer an election is not the pleasantest time in the
world. (Hear.) Unfortunately we know it too well
that to study politics, to form conscientious convic-
tions, to have a desire to exercise his franchise
honestly for his country, is very liable to subject a
farmer to a supervision akin to martyrdom. Do you
think that the farmers will ever get anything from
what are called the representatives of the landed
interest ?If they ever get freedom—if they ever get
anything—economy of expenditure, fairness of taxa-
tion, repeal of game laws, shelter of the ballot—if
they get any one of those things, they will never
get them or get it through th members for the
landed paoprietors in the counties ; but they will
get it through the power and combination and. re-
sources of the freedom•loving and freedom•earning
people of the towns and cities of the kingdom.
(Cheers.) Some years ago, as many of you know, I
took great interest in the question of the game laws.
I had a committee of the House of Commons upon
that question. We had examined before that com-
mittee many most respectable farmers. I had letters
from hundreds of them in all parts of the kingdom.
Do you believe that if the members for the counties
were the real representatives of the farmers—the
cultivators of the soil, do you believe that the game
laws, as they now are, would last for a single session?
(" No, no.") The farmer taking his farm, having it
stocked with animals which he dare not touch by
the proprietor of the farm, and himself or his son
not able to walk about the very land for which he
pays a rent but he must be dodged by the suspicion
and the espionage of his landlord's keeper? Why,
if you talk to all the farmers now, there is not an
intelligent man among them but will tell you that
his interests'and ours are precisely the same. He
was once deluded by his political landlords into the
belief that Prote6ion was of value to him. Now he
knows—and that enlightenment has gone so far that
the county members themselves not only know, but
admit—that the repeal of the corn laws has been a
great blessing to everybody connected with the
land. (Cheers) The farmer knows—pursuing his
industry as we pursue ours—that he has the same
interest, the same desire for freedom, the same wish
for a light taxation, the same longing for economy
in the Government—that, in fact, there is not a

single thing which the electors or the populations
of the towns can fairly ask, or even do ask, but in
which the great bulk of the farmers of the United
Kingdom may not join with as much earnestness
and readiness as we ourselves. But with the county
members, so long as they represent the great pro-
prietors, the case is wholly different. They are the

riling class ; they make the government, they en-
joy the patronage, and they profit by the expendi-
ture. (Hear.) What do the sons of meti in this
meeting expect to do in Rochdale ? Your manufac-
turers' sons become manufacturers ; those who have
shops in the town, according as their capital be
large or small, look to some industrial pursuit for
their children ; but the great landed proprietors—
they never look to Manchester, or to Leeds, or to
Liverpool, or to the City—l mean the commercial
part of London but their younger sons look almost
invariably to the great departments and services of
the State, for which your 40 millions of taxes, be-
yond paying the interest of your debt, are expended.
This is the great patrimony of the younger sons of
this class. (Loud cheers.) Let me tell the farmers
from: this platform that there is not a man in all the
thousands that I have addressed during the last
three months, nor in all the hundreds of thousands
that have had the opportunity of reading what I
have spoken in the towns of the north of England
—there is not a single man who would not hold out
his right hand to every farmer in the kingdom, and
say, " You are a son of industry as I myself ;
you live in a country aiming to be more free ; you
have an interest in a good and economical govern-
ment, in peace, just laws, and a happy people • be my
friend and brother for ever, and secure the blessings
for us all." (Great cheering) Now, I ask you, is this
great reform that we are discussing,—is it worth
the notice—is it worth the struggle which a people
must ever make to secure or to enlarge its freedom?
It is for the towns to decide this with such help as
the county populations can give them. lam told
that things are so comfortable that people don't
care about political reform ; but those people in the
west end of London, who walk from great houses
in Grosvenor-square to still greater houses in Pall-
mall, they don't know all that is passing in the
minds of the people in Yorkshire and Lancashire,
and all the populous parts of the kingdom. (Hear.)
I have seen more persons met together within the
last three months than anybody :Joe has. I know
the sympathy that has been expressed on this ques-
tion. I have seen the light, the fire in thousands of
eyes. I know that the people do care for this ques-
tion, and I know that they are sensible that they
have reason to care. Are we not the most industri-
ous people on the face of the earth ? Have we not
more steam-power, more perfect machinery, more
complete means of locomotion, more productive agri-
culture and manufactures, more of that which de-
velopes wealth than is to be found among any other
people of equal population or of any population on
the face of the globe? (Cheers.) And yet at this
moment, with all our boasted civilisation and free-
dom, I believe we have a greater number of paupers
than we have of electors. We bury every 20 or 25
years 1,000,000 of paupers, but there is always a
new crop, always a substratum of society, deplor-
able, lamentable to contemplate, which hitherto we
seem to have been able to produce no sensible change
in, and that million of paupers is a very inadequate
representation of the suffering that exists. When a
man is once a pauper, when he gets rid of the feel-
ing of aversion to a state of dependence, when he
feels no longer that it is a position somewhat degrad-
ing, and finds himself secure of a living for the rest
of his days, it may be in the workhouse, it may be
in some hovel where he puts himself, and where
the guardians allow him some out-door relief, he is
free from anxiety with regard to the future. But
leave the million of paupers, and cast your eye for
a moment on the million just above them, who have
not lost self-respect which makes a man contented
with pauperism, who have families and homes, who
have around them those dearest to them in life,
expecting from day to day at their hands their
daily bread, who have employment—it may be pre-
carious and small, and often inadequate wages-..
who find themselves now a little more comfortable,
and again depressed and verging upon the very
brink of pauperism—imagine the suffering in those
families, imagine these men struggling—struggles
which we in other circumstances know nothing of
—then, I say, having formed an inadequate con-
ception of all this as the human mind can only
accomplish; let us ask ourselves " Why is it that
all this exists in this country, with our magnificent
power of production, with our ability to invite in
every clime under Heaven the surplus of every
people, to add to the luxury and the comfort of
every home in England ?" (Loud cheers.) Is it
Heaven that is in fault Has God forgotten to be