The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-30 00:00:00

BRIGHT AT BIRMINGBAM.

BIRMINGHAM, TUESD VT EVENING.

X. great meeting was held in the Town-hall this
over ting, at which the members for the borough,
Ni.. Scholefield and Mr. Bright, addressed their
constituents ; the Mayor (Mr. Arthur Ryland)
:presided.
The hon. gentlemen met with an enthusiastic
.2eception.

Mr. SCIIOLEFIELD, as senior member, spoke first. I
lie referred to the great increase which had taken
plaee in public taxation during the 14 years he had
been in Parliament, and particularly to the enor-
mous expenditure on the army and navy. He
believed that a considerable saving might be made
on both those services without impairing their
efficiency. The state of Europe was alarming, but
he hoped that the policy of non. intervention would
be maintained. As to a Reform Bill, he said, unless
the Government introduced a measure of that kind
in the ensuing session they would neglect a great
opportunity, and the time might come when it
would be too late. No Reform Bill could be satis-
factory which did not give a large accession to the
number of voters, which did not make a material
alteration in the distribution of seats, and secure a
full protection to the voter in the shape of the
ballot. (Cheers.)
Mr. BRIGIIT then rose, and was received with
loud and protracted applause. He said, he looked
to that assembly with more than ordinary interest
and apprehension. The House of Commons of
late years had presented itself to them as a
body caring little for the great internal interests
of the country—reckless and profligate in its ex-
penditure ; if that were so, and if he could judge of
what was passing in the public mind, he was forced
to the conclusion that the question of taxation and
expenditure was that to which men were look-
ing at the present moment with the greatest in-
terest. The past year had been one of unusual
prosperity, and heavy burdens had been borne
without much complaint ; but there wore clouds,
particularly in the west, which promised a great
change of circumstances, and the question was
passing from mouth to mouth, "How long will the
Chancellor of the Exchequer be able to raise
£70,000,000 in taxes on the people of this coun-
try ?" He was about to make a complaint against
the governing class, which was, that it was guilty
of a wasteful expenditure of the public resources.
He was as anxious as his hon. friend that no body
of men should effect a hostile landing on this coun-
try, but there were foes of their own household, as
well as those who were such in a political and na-
tional point of view, and he would point out some
of the worst. In 1830 the expenditure, including
the cost of collecting the revenue, amounted to
£53,000,000, £28,000,000 being set aside for the
debt incurred in those vile intermeddlings which
our forefathers undertook in the affairs of conti-
nental Europe. In 1834 the expenditure fell to
£49,000,000. At that moment there had been an
enormous cry of peace, retrenchment, and reform.
They got a partial reform, and some retrenchment.
-So long as the popular voice was so raised the ex-
penditure was reduced to something like a mode-
rate amount, but, as political feeling subsided and
the Tory party came into office, the expense began
to creep up. Whenever the people took their eyes
off it the expenditure began to rise. In 1839 to 1841
the expenditure rose again to £53,000,000, and in
1844 to £55,000,000, and remained at that amount.
or thereabouts, until 1853, with the exception of
the years 1848 and 1842, when there were revolu-
tions all over the continent ; and our Government
always took the opportunity when anything was
going on upon the continent to ask the people for
more taxes. (Cheers.) He now came to the year
1854, when the Russian war broke out. Some
people had a habit of fancying that war was so
inevitable, so natural, that they spoke of it
just as they do of scarlatina or smallpox.
(Laughter.) The cholera broke out ; the Russian I
war broke out. (Laughter.) In 1854 the expen-
diture went up to £65,000,000, in 1855 to
£83,500,000, and in 1856, the year the war closed,
it fell to £75,500,000. Look at that enormous ex-
penditure. It was like a man taking a big house
and setting up his carriage and servants when he
had not the wherewithal to continue it honestly, but
lacked the firmness to bring himself to his original
and due proportion. In 1857 and 1858 the expen-
diture was £65,000,000, in 1859 £64,000,000, and
in the past year it would be something like
£71,000,000. Thus in the 26 years which had
elapsed since 1834 the expenditure had risen
£22,000;000. But that did not give an adequate
idea of the case. In 1834 the Government spent
£21,000,000 in keeping the peace, in dispensing
justice, in preparing what was necessary for the
defer ce of the country. In 1860 it spent £43,000,000
for the very same purposes, being more than double
the sum spent in 1834 ; and if they returned to the
expenditure of that year they might abolish the
ineome•tax and the duties on tea and sugar, and at
the same time a vast sum might be saved as a sus-

tentation find, out of which hundreds and thou•

sands might obtain more steady employment and a
higher rate of wages than they can attain at pre-
sent. Somebody, he did not know who, made a
remark in the autumn, that he was not in the house
when they were discussing matters of a few hun-
dred pounds. Now, he had spent week after week
backing Mr. Ilume in an endeavour to diminish the

estimates; but he had never seen in the House of
COMM9IIS approaching success against any of those
cnormo:is estimates for the military services, and it
was not very inviting when he saw millions run-
ning► away, and nobody caring for it, that ho should
spend evening after evening in discussing a ques-
tion of XlOO. But this £70,000,000 was something,
though the House of Commons did not believe

it. Ho would give two illustrations of
what, it was. Probably there were about a million
agricultural-labourers in England and Wales whose
average income did not amount to more per head
than £25 per annum,so that the wages of the whole
body were not more than £25,000,000 per annum,
being about three times lessthanthe Parliamentary
votes for the year. And if they added Scotland and
Ireland, it was not more than half the taxes which
their rulers had the conscience to ask, and they had
the patience to pay. (Loud cheers.) Take another
illustration. In Lancashire there was the most stu-
pendous manufacturing industry which the world
bad ever seen, which produced at this moment, at
the period of its greatest and most astonishing ex-
pansion, £70,000,000 worth of yarn and manufac-
turing cloth. Well, then, our governing classes, our
rulers, with the most doede, the most industrious,
and probably the most church and chapel going
people in the world, devoured every year, this year
and last yemr, certainly more than the whole pro-
duce of the most,gigantic industry the world had
ever seen. (Applause.) How was it done ? He
would tell them, and also who did it, and more, he
would tell them how it happened that up to the
present moment it had been done with apparent
impunity. Parliament was composed of two houses,
one of them was separate from and had no responsi-
bility to the people. The House of Commons was
more especially intended to take care of the people
and especially of their pockets, though last year it
ventured to lox their pockets with the greatest
audacity. Ire had never heard the feeblest protest
raised in thellou se of Lords against the extravagance
of the GOTP4toent. It was worth their while to know
that with few exceptions the members of the present
peerage owed their peerage to creation within the
last hundred years. The origin of many of them
arose from the rotten borough system • any man
who could get four, five, or six seata in 'the House
of Commons fit his command to serve the Govern
meat of his day could, by ways known toSuch gen-
uemen—(langhter)—prooure to himself in all pro-
bability to be made a peer. He told them this to
show that when they were asked to examine into
the conduct of-;the Moose of Peers,they were not
to look at it as unything as old as tf,n Monsrchy of
England ; they might single out a few families who
bad come down from remote times, the majority of
whom had generally shown themselves considerate
and just to the people of this country; but all the
modern peerage was bred in the slime and corrup.
tion of the rotten borough system, and they need
not look to a house so constituted for any great
anxiety to save the pockets of the nation. Coming