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

gracious P Ia it the Creator, omnipotent and bene-
volent ; or is it man, with his crimes and his blun-
ders, that hrds occasioned these evils ? Who have
been your rulers for generations back ? Who have
squander
your money ? Who have shed your
blood ? For whom have the people of England
toiled and sweated and bled for generations back—
aria with what result ? Why, to be insulted now
in the year 1859, and told with a lordly arrogance,
that it is not fitting that they should be admitted
to the franchise in this kingdom. (Hear.) Why,
I am charged with stating unpleasant facts with
regard to the aristocracy of this country. We have
had them our rulers for long periods, and we see
the result. At least, if I have said anything against
them, they and their defenders have avenged them-
selves
in the wholesale detraction which they have
passed upon the character of the great body of the
people of England, of whom they say that it is
not safe to give them the franchise, and that if
they had it England would be a country of tur-
bulence and violence, not of order and of peace as
we now behold it. (Cries of " Shame !") Now,
don't let us pursue the question of reform without
understanding that there is a result to follow from
it. If you want any great measure now, what is
the process for obtaining it ? You generally have
to contend for it up to the point of civil war. This
has become so much the custom in this country,
that the ruling class never believe that we are in
earnest until you get up to that point. Now, they
tell you the people don't care about reform. You
don't find 100,000 men assemble on Newhall-hill, in
Birmingham—you don't find men assemble in vast
multitudes in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and
threaten that if the bill be not granted in the course
of a week's time they will be on their march to
London. Of course not, and I hope nothing of the
kind will come, for I hope nothing of the kind will
be necessary—(hear)—but the fact that they taunt
us with the absence of this is a proof that they are,
however unconscious of it, influenced bythe notion,
and in fact by the knowledge, that no great thing
is ever wrested from the Government of this country
by the people, except it be at the point of violent
action. We are like subjects contending with a
conqueror—like the Irish Catholics contending with
the invading and subjugating Protestant—like the
Lombard, if it be so, contending with the Austrian.
When you got the Reform Bill you were within 24
hours of a revolution. When you got the Corn
Bill in 1846, you had the help of the most stupen-
dous famine that for many hundreds of years had
visited any civilised country of the world. And now,
if you want a measure, how do you get it ? Take
now the questions of minor importance. Take
Church-rates, for example, which is much more a
matter of sentiment than pecuniary importance to
anybody. It is a mark of subjugation, and there-
fore we resent it—(cheers)—but for 20 years the
Church-rate question has been debated in the House
of Commons. The argument was as plain 20 years
ago as it is now ; but the rate was not abolished.
Take, again, the question of the ballot. Imme-
diately after the Reform Bill the speeches in
favour of the ballot were as overwhelming in
point of argument as they have ever been
since. Nothing has exceeded the logic and power
of argument displayed by Mr. Grote upon that
question after the Reform Bill ; but the ballot is
not yet the law of the land. The House of Lords
and its three-fourths of the House of Commons,
vote, year after year, anything they like. --There
may be an enormous . majority of the people in
favour of any particular course, but you want= a-
majority which almost comprises the whole, with
your present distribution of members, to carry .any
great measure of reform in the House of Commons.
(Cheers.) Before Sir R. Peel repealed the Corn
Laws Mr. Villiers, I believe, never had the votes of
more than 100 members in favour of the repeal, and
yet everybody knows that, although 100 members
do not represent one-sixth of the House of Com-
mons, five out of six of the actual population of the
United Kingdom had long condemned the Corn
Laws. (Hear, hear.) This is a proof that we have
not at present a real representation of the people.
What we want is, not that you should transfer
great political power from the great landowners to
great merchants or great manufacturers, or to the
owners of great factories ; but that equally through
all parts of the kingdom, all interests, all opinions,
all wishes, should affectthe Legislature, that mem-
bers who sit in Parliament should feel that they
are not the members of any section, but of the great
body of the people ; and you would find that as
opinion grew and consolidated itself throughout
the nation, it would act gently, steadily, omnipo-
tently on the House of Commons. (Cheers.) In-
stead of our having to contend with our rulers as if
they were a foreign conqueror for every change, we
wish we could find one soul animating the Parlia-
ment, the people, and the Crown,and the Government
would be stronger and more honoured, and the peo-
ph would be happier and more contented. (Hear.)
Now, I ask you, is it to be deemed a heresy to hold
these opinions and to preach this doctrine ? Is it not
rather to follow the labours of our fathers and to
complete their work ? Am I to be charged with
setting class against class when I wish to break down
the wall of partition by which classes are created,
and to make all Englishmen brethren before the
paw and in the eye of the Constitution of their
' country? (Cheers.) What have been the objects
of my political life ? You, my townsmen, know it
perfectly well. (Cheers.) I call you as witnesses
on my behalf. (Protracted cheering and waving of
handkerchiefs.) I have laboured with an earnest
and successful band—with Villiers, and Cobden, and
Gibson and George Wilson, and many others
whom I cannot mention, but who live, and who
ever will live, in my remembrance. (Cheers.) I
laboured with them to give the people their daily
bread, and now 20 millions' worth of food finds its
way every year to your shores which but 14 years
ago you were not allowed to speak of without being
charged with treason to your master class. (Hear,
hear.) I laboured with earnest men to strike the
stamp from newspapers, and to establish a free
press, and I am told that since the abolition of that
stamp 300 cheap newspapers have sprung into life,
conveying information on every topic every day to
' almost every house in the kingdom. (Cheers.) I
have striven, but I grieve to say without success,
that the precious earnings of the people, and their
still more precious blood, might not be squandered
by guilty statesmen in guilty wars, and now—con-
sistently, as I believe, with all the past—l ask for
my countrymen that which is the promise of their
Constitution,—that they shall have a fair and full
representation in the House of Commons. (Cheers.)
It is a just demand. (Cheers.) I ask you—l ask
all my countrymen, to speak for it with no falter-
ing, with no uncertain voice. Speak, and you will
be listened to. Ask in tones that cannot be mis-
understood, and that which you ask will certainly be
granted. If you come of a great ancestry, as your
historians say you do, do not disgrace it now ; and
if you are, as you boast yourselves, the heirs of free-
dom, rise, I beseech you, and take possession of the
heritage that is yours.
The hon. gentleman resumed his seat amid loud
and continued cheering.
It was moved by Mr. HEAPS, and seconded by
Mr. PETRIE :-" That this meeting is of opinion that
the time has arrived when a large and comprehen-
sive measure of reform should be granted to the
people, and pledges itself to support Mr. Bright in
his endeavours to procure the passing of a Bill
through Parliament in the ensuing session which
shall secure to the people their just political
rights."
Mr. WILSON and Mr. Alderman LIVESEY also
addressed the meeting, and the resolution was
unanimously agreed to.
Mr. BRIGHT moved a vote of thanks to the
mayor for presiding, and the meeting concluded
about half-past nine o'clock.

MR. BRIGHT AND REFORM.

(From the Morning Herald.)

Few of Mr. Bright's ardent admirers could have antici-
pated that his great Reform Bill would be a nine day's
wonder, and nothing more; that the agitation inaugurated
at Birmingham by two aggressive orations on all our insti-
tutions, and carried with such vigour to the populous centres
of commerce, Manchester, Glasgow, and Bradford, could
turn out a mere flash in the pan I Who would have
imagined that the measure solemnly entrusted by the ad-
vanced Liberals, the veteran Roebuck, and the London
Reform Association, to the legislative care of the member
for Birmingham, would come still-born into light, and ere
the echoes which welcomed it into the world had died away,
be consigned to the limbo of disappointed hopes and abor-
tive schemes ? Yet such is the sad history of the Bradford
plan now chronicled in the catalogue of popular delusions
and frustrated designs. We speak not of ourselves, who
inserted the bill in one column and its sentence of condem-
nation in another, who pointed out the worm of unfairness
eating at the vitals of the Quaker's gourd; nor of the
slower, utterance of the oracle of Printing-house-square,
which, after three days' ominous silence, terminated the
suspense and perplexity of its tantalised votaries by charac-
tensing the bill as "a gigantic fraud to be practised on one-
half of the people for the alleged benefit of the other half ;"
but of most of the Liberal papers, several of which declared
the project to be an attempt to make the factory, chimne s
the centres of political power—an attempt certain to
mis-
carry, because the rest of the nation would not stand it.
It becomes an interesting speculation to inquire into this
state of things. How can we account for the curious phe-
nomenon that the man s3lected by experienced members of
the House of Commons, and keen business men in London,
Lancashire, and Yorkshire, as most fitted to prepare a plan
for remodelling our representation, should have failel so
utterly in his efforts at legislation ?
At s Parliamentary
speaker Mr. Bright has won his way
y otr fehefaorleremssonsetsras
andnks
in the Conmions and the country , for
independence of character he stands pre-eminent; the fierce
passion of his oratory moves ; his deep pathos melts ;
his biting sarcasm wounds; but there we pause,
Successful as a speaker, he has broken down as a legislator.
His barren triumphs as a demagogue cannot retrieve his
utter failure as a statesman. Mr. Bright will continue to
be what he has been—a brilliant meteor, giving forth flashes
which dazzle for a moment, but affording no steady and
certain light—to be gazed at, but never to be followed.
Three months ago he was chosen as the leader of the Itudi-