The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-05 00:00:00

question. I have taken the number of votes given
at the last election held for every borough andcounty
in the United Kingdom which was contested—the
last of all those elections which have been held since
the passing of the Reform Bill, and I find that there
having been as far as I know, or nearly so, at least
one contest in every place since that time—though I
am not sure that I am absolutely correct in that—l
find that the whole number of votes given at a con-
tested election in every borough and county is short
of the number of 900,000, which is really about one
in eight of the men in this country ; and if you de-
duct from that number the double votes—that is,
men who may vote for more than one county, or may
vote for a county and borough—in all probability
there would not be recorded more than 800,000 votes
at a general election in the United Kingdom were
there a contest in every county and every
is
borough.
Well, I take the election of 1859, which the last
of which information is given in the "Imperial Poll-
book," and 1 find there that the whole number of
votes recorded, so far as I could make them out at
the general election of 1859, was under 370,000.
Now, deducting double votes from these, in all pro-
bability there would not at that general election, or
at the general election last year, be more than 300,000
or 320,000 men who would record their votes. Some
other allowances must be made, because there are
boroughs and there may be counties in which opinion
flows so much on one side that there could be no
chance of a contest; as, for example, in the borough
I am permitted to represent, there would be no
contest, and that borough would not supply any
figures to those I am quoting ; but there are many
boroughs, as we all know, in which there is no con-
test—small boroughs because there is no freedom of
election there—(cheers)—and there are many coun-
ties also in which there is no contest, because there
is no freedom of election in thosecounties. (Cheers.)
I quote those numbers to show to you that when the
Queen orders through her Ministerswhat is generally
called an appeal to the country—(cheers)—it is at
the very utmost an appeal to 800,000 electors, and
and in all probability that appeal is answered by
the registered voters to the number of from 300,000
to 400,000. (Cheers.) Well, after this, then, I
undertake to say that the people are not, in the
sense of our constitution, a party to the laws, and
that the Government of the United Kingdom, inthe
sense indicated in the quotation I have made from
William Penn's preface to his Constitution, is not
free to this people. (Cheers.) And let me tell
you, what doubtless many men have not thought of,
that there is no form of government much worse
than the government of a sham representation.
(Cheers.) A Parliament like our Parliament has
numbers enough, and just enough of the semblance
of representation, to make it safe for it to do almost
anything it likes against the true interests of the
nation. There is nothing so safe in a Parliament
like this as the commission of what is evil ; but there
is not representation enough to make it truly re-
sponsible to the intelligenci,, and the virtue, and the
opinions of the nation. (Cheers.) Take the case
which is in the recollection of all of us—is there one
who believes that any monarch who ever sat on the
British throne would dared in 1815 to have passed
the Corn Law—to have brought into force and into
action in this city of London horse, foot, and artillery,
to have surrounded his own palace, to have beaten off
the people who were protesting against the enactment
of that law? But the Parliament of England did that,
and a Parliament of landowners, for the express and
only purpose of increasing their own rents by the
sacrifice of comfort, and plenty, and health, and life
among the great body of the people. I won't go
back to the time before the Reform Act, but only

to the last session of Parliament. Look at their re-
& sponsibility, their sense of responsibility then. Look
at the moderation of the bill which was brought in
by the late Government ; look at the fact that if
anything was to be done at all, if the slightest step
was to be taken to improve the representation of
the people and extend the suffrage to the now unen-
franchised, was it possible for the greatest modera-
tion to have proposed a more moderate measure
than that one was ? Well, but what happened ?
Why, the Parliament of landowners and rich men
either were wholly ignorant of, or they wholly de.
spisel, that great national opinion which has been
exhibited during the last three or four months ; and
they reiisted that bill with a pertinacity never ex-
ceeded, with an amount of intrigue, with an amount
of unfairness to the Govenment which they durst
not for one night have attempted if they had ever
felt any real responsibility to the English nation.
(Cheers.) And now they resist up to this moment,
and fur aught I know they may possibly resist
when they meet at the beginning of next February,
until the discontent which is now so general
shall become universal, and that which is now
only a great exhibition of opinion may become neces-
sarily and inevitably a great and menacing exhibi-
tion of force. (Loud cheers, accompanied by the
waving of hats.) And those opponents of ours—
many:of them in Parliament openly, and many of them
secretly in the Press—charge us with being the pro-
moters of a dangerous excitement. They say that
we are the source of the danger which threatens ;
and they absolutely have the effrontery to charge
me with being a friend of public disorder. (Hisses
and cheers.) lam one of the people. (Renewed
cheers.) Surely, if there be one thing in a free
country more clear than another it is that
any one of the people
may speak openly
to the people. (Hear, hear.)
if I speak
to the people of their rights and indicate
to them the way to secure them—if I speak to the
monopolists of power of their danger, am I not a
wise counsellor both to the people and to their
rulers ? (Loud cheers.) Suppose that, standing
at the foot of Vesuvius or Etna, I saw a hamlet
or a homestead situated upon its slope, and I said
to the dwellers in that hamlet or that homestead,
" You see that vapour which ascends from the sum-
mit of the mountain. That vapour may become a
dense black smoke that will obscure the sky. You
see that trickling of lava from a crevice or fissure on
the side of the mountain. That trickling of lava
may become a river of fire. You hear that mutter-
ing in the bowels of the mountain. That muttering
may become a bellowing thunder—the voice of a
convulsion that may shake half a continent. You
know that at your feetis the grave in which lie buried

great cities, for which there is no resurrection, as

history tells us that dynasties and aristocracies have

passed away, and their name has been known no

more for ever"—if I say this to the dwellers upon

the slope of that mountain, and if there comes here-
after a catastrophe which makes the world to shud-

der, am I responsible for that catastrophe? I did

not build the mountain, or fill it with explosive

material. I merely warned the men who were in

danger. (Loud cheers—a portion of the assemblage

rising and waving their hats enthusiastically.) So
. __. ..

now it is not I who am stimulating men to aviolent
pursuit of their acknowledged constitutional rights.
We are merely about our lawful business—(cheers)
—as citizens of a country that calls itself free, but

citizens to whom is denied the greatest and the first

blessing of the Constitution under which we live.

If the truth must be told, the Tory party is the tur-
bulent party in the nation. (Cheers.) I left Par-
liament last session just about the time when the
Present Ministers, succeeding in their intrigues,
aofectiedneztos, Ooilif ce. I left Parliament with a feeling
‘, I disgust, and of apprehension. I said
to myself, may as well judge of the future by
the past. The Parliament of England will not do
justice to the people
there happens something
that will suddenlyle until
its eyes." I remem-
bered what took price eeinn the year 1829, when the
Duke of 'Wellington said, " Either give political
power and representation, through Catholic mem-
bers, to the Catholics of the
Unitedcivillingdona, or
encounter the peril and the loss of
(cheers)—and up to that moment Parliament
in
Ire-
land"
had refused to do it. Then Parliament consentedou
and the thing wars y
s done. Again, in 1832, were
within 24 hours of revolution in this country. The
great class which sits omnipotent in the one house,e
and hardly less so in the other, might then, and
would probably, have been extinguished; and what
there would have been Lit, except the people, it is

difficult to imagine. (Laughter and cheers.) Again,

in 1846, although every intelligent man in every
country in the world admitted the justice and the
force of our arguments against the corn law, still it

required the occurrence of a crushing and desolating