The Sun.
London, England, 1835-11-13 00:00:00

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jeen disfranchised—( Hear, and laughter)—not from any act
of his own—not even of omission, for he had complied
with all the provisions of the Reform Bill, and had voted
at the first contested election after its passing, for that ve-
nerable champion of their rights, Colonel Gore Langton, to
do which he was carried from a sick bed to the hustings.
No ; the overseer of his parish had forgotten to put—not
his (Colonel Napier's), but his own name at the foot of
the paper purporting to be a list of the voters in the dis-
trict ; and the Revising Barrister had consequently not
only disfranchised him, but all the parish !—(Loud laugh-
ter.) Now, these Barristers cost the people about 50,0001.
a-year ; and as he had never yet heard that they took any
extraordinary pains to seek out coy and reluctant voters, he
"1'94 'ratified to sarstkat.the-- rra fzn i..e peofetrpaY them
when an " unwashed partisan —to use a
Tory phrase—could do the work at half the cost ; more
especially when all he had to do to disfranchise a parish
was, not to make a stroke with his pen, but to make no
stroke at all.—(Loud cheers and laughter) ? The Greek
philosopher Plato had defined man to be an unplumed biped ;
he hoped he might, without offence, just for the sake of
il-
lustration, be allowed to designate an overseer a bribeable
biped.—(Laughter.) If he were, might not any body of
men, with a great object in view, and plenty of money—
the Carlton Club for instance—be pleased to bribe the
bipeds until they had disfranchised all the Liberal voters.—
(Cheers)? And might not the Liberal interest go on bribing
in all the Tory counties until they arrived at the very happy
conclusion of having no voters at all?—(Great cheering and
laughter.) He might be told that this was an extreme case ;
but in East Somerset alone no fewer than twenty-eight
parishes had been already disfranchised on a similar ground,
not through the bribery of the overseer, but owing to his
negligence. He mentioned this, to show them bow much
they had yet to do to carry out reform in their own way ;
and to give weight to his advice, that while they were true
to the men who had been true to them, they would be true
to themselves.—(Cheers.) There was another great ques-
tion with which Reform was intimately connected—he meant
the Church of Ireland. In other matters the axiom was,
that the few should give way for the benefit of the many ;
in this case it seemed to be reversed—the principle ap-
peared to be, that the many should suffer and starve, to
support the few in idleness.—(Lo&l cheers.) Yes, the
ministers of a Christian church in Ireland revelled in the
wealth wrung from a starving people, while the doctrines of
the religion they professed to teach taught them that po-
verty best befitted their holy calling.—(Cheers.) The
clergy asked the people what business they had to interfere
with their spiritual concerns ? Let the people ask the
clergy whether they had not interfered with their temporal
concerns ?—(Cheers.) Did they not meet with them at
every corner—artisans, magistrates, sportsmen, courtiers,
besetting the ears of Royalty, always sounding the trumpet-
of war, and never whispering the notes of peace ? Was not
" Church and State" a connection of their own forming—
was it not their delight, their watchword, and their care ?
Had they not adored it far more than they ever adored their
God ?—(Great cheering.) In England the people wanted
a zealous, pious, and useful clergy—not State-fed dignita-
ries, in purple and fine linen. And while they would have
this in England, they would not have in Ireland savage men
calling themselves the most holy, who, amidst the moaning
of bereaved mothers, and the shrieks of wailing infants,
grasped their beloved tithes with their bloody hands.—
They would have no Orange domination--(Loud cheers,
and cries of " Never.") They would not have William
IV. deposed because he had passed the Reform Bill. They
would not have the succession to the Crown changed—no
not even for a Grand Master.—(Loud cheers.) They
would have equal laws for poor and rich. They would
not have the Dorsetshire labourers sent to Botany Bay,
while Princes of the Blood Royal only went to Kalisch.—
(Tremendous cheering.) And that they might have all
this constitutionally, they would have a shortening of the
duration of Parliaments, an extension of the suffrage, and
vote by ballot.—(Loud and prolonged cheering.) But
the ballot was un-English. Was it? Its object was to
protect the poor and humble man, in the exercise of his
right, against the rich and proud. Was that un-English
If it were, it followed, as a matter of course, that to be a proud
oppressor, to be wicked as well as wealthy, to trample on
all the just rights of your country and your neighbour; and
to make a man dishonest because he was poor, was per-
fectly English. Could a greater libel on the national cha-
racter be coneei-Jed, or could it be necessary to pursue the
disgusting absurdity further ?—(Cheers, and" No.") Well,
then, English or un-English, they would have the ballot—
and what was more, they would have a strong infusion of
Democracy into the Comtitntion—they would have a House
of Lords amenable to the wishes and feelings of the people
at large—they would have that, or they would have no
House of Lords at all.—(Enthusiastic cheering.) Now,
he knew he might be told here, that a Noble Lord—one of
the heads of their own party, and a Minister of State—of
whose company that day they had been disappointed, de.
precated such language as this, and was opposed to all "or-
ganic changes."—(Cheers ;' a voice, " Never mind that.")
If that Noble Lord had been present, he (Colonel Na-
pier) had intended to ask him what greater organic
change could be imagined than the establishment of
such a doctrine as this for the people of England ?
—(Hear, hear, hear.) " You cannot hate Reform, you
cannot have change, you cannot have improvement, because
one hundred and seventy Lords have set their faces against
all change."—(Cheers.) T}iis would be, indeed, an organic
change—a change from light and life to darkness and death.
—(Cheers.) He was about to speak somewhat irreverently
of these Lords—he might do so still, it was impossible to
say—but before he proceeded further, he must exempt one
man, whom he should be the basest and meanest of human
beings if, to gain any temporary popularity, be sought to
depreciate, for an instant—a man of whom be never spoke
but with feelings of reverence and esteem, not for his poli-
tics, but his heroic actions—he meant his old General, the
Duke of Wellington. He had seen him in the field, wise,
able, enduring, and brave ; he had seen him leading on the
. armies of England from victory to victory, more like a god
than a man. He bad no hesitation in saying, that however
gallant, however brave, however invincible the English ar-
mies were in the Peninsula, they owed at least as much to
the Duke of Wellington as he owed to them. But because
he (Colonel Napier) said this, did he call upon the meeting
to submit to his politics? No ; he was there that night
for no other purpose than to call upon them to oppose
them. Let them, however, meet him as honest and true-
hearted Englishmen ; not by insulting him, not by depre-
ciating his talents, but telling him foot to foot and face to
face that he was in the wrong course ; and that if he pur-
sued it, be would make the people his enemies. Let them
say, " Duke of Wellington, conqueror in Spain, conqueror
in France, conqueror in Portugal, conqueror in India,
conqueror at Waterloo—you shall not be a conqueror in
England !"—(Tremendous cheers.) But to return to the
170 Lords : let him ask the meeting what were they that they
were to be treated with so much deference ? Were they wiser
or more patriotic than their neighbours ?—(Cheers.) What
were they but servants—upper servants if the meeting
pleased—to be treated with all respect when they did their
duty, but when they turned upon those they ought to serve,
to be rebuked, and reminded for their edification that Eng-
land once did very well without Lords, and might do so
again ? And if this lesson—and a mild one he called it,
considering the great wrongs they had offered to the
people—failed, they must be sent to learn in affliction
the lesson they had despised in prosperity—namely, that
their titles, honours, wealth, and station, were not of
their own, but the people's production.—(Loud cheers.)
Let them convince their representatives that night, that
in their honest and zealous endeavours in the people's
cause, the electors of Bath were ready to support them
to the utmost. Thus encouraged, he had no doubt they
would gain for them the object of all their wishes—a
really free and equitable constitution ; not the constitu-
tion which held forth the cup of liberty in one hand,
and the cup of religion in the other ; and when the poor
man came to taste, filled the one with despotism, and
tinged the other with blood, and, amidst the brutal cheers
of his heartless oppressors, dashed it from his lips.—
(Cheers.) Among poor men he included the helpless, de-
fenceless, and injured negro, for whose freedom and happi:
ness Lord Stanley, with his usual statesman-like policy and
foresight, had made the people pay twenty millions sterling,
and who was, after all, about as happy and free as the
chained dog at the heels of a malignant master.—(Cheers.)
Considering this as a political dinner, got up for political
purposes, he had expressed his opinions thus openly, and at
this length, preferring rather to be in bad taste than in bad
politics. He would only now thank the meeting for the
honour they had done him, and the patience and attention
with which they had heard him, expressing the delight with
which he looked around him, and hoping their Members
might meet them, and they their Members, until the hair
on all their heads grew as grey as his own.
The Gallant Colonel resumed his seat amidst protracted
cheering, which was renewed again and again.
The CHAIRMAN next proposed " The healths of Gene-
ral Palmer and Mr. Roebuck, the liberal and independent
Members for the City"--(Great cheering)—and in doing
so he could not help congratulating the large body of elec-
tors who had assembled on that occasion upon the fact, that
they had now two firm and steady and unflinching Re-
formers as their representatives.—(Cheers.)
General PALMER, who was very cordially received, re-
turned thanks in a very few words. He had never before
had an opportunity of meeting so large a body of his con-
stituents upon any similar occasion, and he hoped it would
be unnecessary for him to state that he felt deeply grateful
for the compliment they had paid him. After alluding to seve-
ral of the contested elections which had taken place in that
tle Gallant Officer observed, that although looking
at the interests of the city itself, he could wish that his
Hon. Colleague (Mr. Roebuck) had become the represen-
tative of another place ; yet, in electing that Hon. Gentle-