The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-06 00:00:00

TRH SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, JANUARY 6, 1859.

FOREIGN

ShLre Railways. I Paid. Closing I Business
Price. Done.
10 Antwerp & Rotterdam all 44 54 1
20 Ardennes all p
20 Balt.&S.Fran.,Lim.7p.c , 3 Id par 24
5 Belgian East. Junction all i 11
23 'Beaters to Graissessac all 71 8
5 Carmeaux Mine & Rail all 2a 2
20 Dutch Rhenish
6 Eastern of France all 26 27
20 Euphrates Valley — p
20 Great Central of France all
20 Gt. Luxem., Con. shs all 71 71
10 Italian Junction 8
20 Lake Constance & all
20 Lierre and Turnhout._ all
20 Lombardo Venetian 8 2 24 p
20 Lucca & Pistoja, 5 p.c.pf all
20 Lyons and Geneva all 231 241
331 Maria Antonia all
20 Do. do. New —
20 Namur end Liege all 91 94
20 Do. do. 6p. e. Pref. all 21i 22
16 Northern of France all 39 394 38
20 Do. New Shares
10 Norwegian Trunk Pref all 81 91
20 Ottoman, gud. 6 per cent 7 3
20 Paris, Lyons, and Medit. all 341 311
20 Paris and Orleans
20 Recife& S. Fran. (fern.) id lip
gua. 7p. ct. (Lim.)
20 Riga and Dunaburg 4 --
10 Rome and Frascati
20 Royal Danish all
5 Royal Swedish
4 Do. 7 per cent. Pref. all
20 Sambre and Meuse. all 79 8
10 Do. 54 per cent. Pref.
20 Southern of France
82 West Flanders all 51 6k
10 Do. 55 p. c. Preference
20 W. & N.W. of France all 23 241
20 Western of Austria
20 Western of Switzerland all
6 Wiesbaden
6 Do 8 per cent. Pref all
20 Zealand all

Till? A COW EN2' A 21 TEL 14 L TE
INSTITUTION.

2EPOR2II IiIIe.MING AT .DURHAM.

On Monday evening a meeting of the inhabitants
of Durham was held in the New Town Hall of that
city, to consider the question of parliamentary re-
form. The mayor occupied the chair.
The following resolutions were adopted :

"That a reform in the representation of the peop!e in the
House of Commons is imperatively required, the present
limited distribution of electoral power precluding large
masses of the people from giving practical effect to their
opinions on public affairs, which is necessary to the good
government, the well-being, and the prosperty of the na-
tion."

"That a re-distribution of seats in the House of Com-

mons is much needed, owing to the large development of
the resources of the country since the passing of the last Re-
form Bill; and it is also desirable that the boundaries of
boroughs and large populations around them should be
widely extended."

" That in order to electors giving a free and unbiassed
expression to their opinions it is necessary that they should
have the protection of the ballot; .and that no pleasure of
reform will be satisfactory to the country which does not
include vett, by ballot."

" That a petition of the inhabitants of the city of Dur-
ham to .the House of Commons, embodying the previous
resolutions, be prepared, and after being signed be forwarded
to Mr. Atherton for presentation."

W. ATHERTON, Esq., M.P., said it was good that
constituencies and bodies, as individuals, should be
heard to speak for themselves ; and it was not
convenient that any person—however able, or
zealous, or eloquent—should at all times be per-
mitted to be adopted as the mouthpiece of others. He
made this remark because of an allusion having
been made to a very eminent politician of the day
--a gentleman formerly connected politically with
that city—he alluded to Mr. Bright, who had been
referred to as having been up to the present mo-
ment, for want of such demonstrations and public
meetings, as the person by means of necessity
adopted as the mouthpiece, as it had been called, of
the Reformers of England. He yielded to no man
in his admiration of the talents amid of the per-
severance of Mr. Bright; he yielded to no man in
his gratitude to Mr. Bright in connection with the
repeal of the corn laws; but he must be permitted
to say, with that freedom and independence which
characterised Mr. Bright himself, that he would
not wish every observation and sentiment uttered
by Mr. Bright in the course of his numerous, long,
and eloquent harangues on Parliamentary Reform,
should be set down at his door. There were differ-
ences upon matters not essential to the question of
reform, but what might be expected to be found
amongst men where the various parties thought in-
dependently for themselves, and, therefore, it was
he repeated, better that neither Mr. Bright, nor
any other politician, however eminent, should be
adopted as the mouthpiece of the people. When he
should have the honour of being entrusted with the
petition from this meeting, if it should be said to
him that the reformers of Durham adopted the
opinions of that gentleman at that time, and then
another at another time, he should say the electors
of Durham had recordedC their opinions in the
resolutions in that petition ; and he had the
honour and privilege of attending the meeting
at which that petition was adopted ; and he
heard there expressed, in eloquent language, in
tones of the utmost sincerity, a desire for a truly
expansive measure of reform—a measure which
should gather within the walls of the constitution
large masses of industrious and intelligent men at
present excluded from their confines. Those were
the feelings of the people of Durham. They had,
wisely, he thought, in their petition, confined them-
selves to general terms, because precise details of
length assumed the form of a particular measure,
in which it could not be expected that any great
number of men could precisely concur. He there-
fore felt pleasure in being entrusted with that
petition. The propositions which it contained were

those to which he most sincerely subscribed ; and
he believed there was not one of them to which he
did not give plain expression of his opinion in that
hall on the very first night of his addressing them.
He had always gone for a re-arrangement of seats,
or a division into electoral districts, because he
thought our constitution—if Mr. Banks was correct
—was of Saxon origin, and was at least 600 years
old from the time of the Great Charter of 1216. He
did not, however, desire to see those old distinctions
of county and borough removed and the counties
split up into squares or parallelograms of electoral
districts. He preferred—and individuals in this
country preferred—that they should retain the old
distinctions, and thereby give to far greater num-
bers an interest in the government of the country,
which was likely to lead to the result in which
they themselves were interested. The bon. member
concluded by moving a vote of thanks to the Mayor
for his conduct in the chair, and the meeting
separated.

THIS DAY S A RKETS.