The Sun.
London, England, 1859-05-05 00:00:00

yesterday in the Corn-exchange, at Devizes, before
Captain . Gladstone,. M.P., .High Sheriff of the
county. . There was no objection to the return of
the late members, Mr. W. Long and the Right Hon.
T. Sotheron-Estcourt ; and the proceedings were
therefore without the interest which attaches to a
contested election.
The usual preliminarieS having been gone through,
Mr. A. L. GODDARD proposed, and Mr. G. BROWN,
of Avebury, seconded, Mr. Walter Long, as a fit and
proper person to represent this division of the county
in Parliament.
Mr. G. H. W. HENEAGE nominated, and Mr. T.
CLARKE, of Trowbridge, seconded the Right Hon.
T. H. Sotheron-Estcourt, whose name was received
with loud cheers.
No other candidate having been proposed, the
HIGH SHERIFF declared that these two gentlemen
were duly elected to serve as knights of the shire
for the northern division of the county of Wilts.
Mr. R. LONG thanked the electors for the honour
which they had conferred upon his father, who was
prevented by illness from being present, by again
sending him to Parliament as their representative.
He had hitherto given to the Government of Lord
Derby a steadfast, hearty, and undeviating support,
and that course he would continue to pursue.
Mr. SOTHERON-ESTCOURT, who was received
with loud 'cheers, in acknowledging his re-election,
referred to the fact that only two months ago he
had addressed the electors from the same hustings.
He then told them that the Government were pre-
pared to stand or fall by the Reform Bill which
they had introduced, and which they sincerely be-
lieved to be a well considered and well digested
plan suited to meet the exigencies of the country—
(" The country di .l not think so")—and that if the
House of Commons should take a different view of
it they would give the country the opportunity of
expressing its own opinion. That meant a dissolu-
tion, and now they had it. He told them plainly
that that dissolution, disagreeable and inconvenient
as it was, could not possibly be avoided. (Cheers.)
There was enough good in the Government mea-
sure to prevent parties in the House of Commons
from resisting its progress in the usual manner, and
they, therefore, devised a crafty scheme in pursu-
ance of which, by picking out two parts of the bill,
they were enabled to obtain a majority against the
Government. There were then three alternatives
open to the Government, the adoption of any one
of which must have rendered a dissolution inevitable.
They might have accepted the propositions con-
tained in the resolution, and gone on with the bill,
which would have been no longer their own, but
Lord John Russell's; they might have resigned, or
they might, as they had done, appealed to the coun-
try. The first would have been a' discreditable
course, to which he for one would never have as-
sented% but even had it been adopted, the majority
would have said, " Go on with the bill with these
propositions." The Government would have resisted,
and the consequence would have been that upon the
first division they must either have resigned or
dissolved Parliament. Gn the other hand, had they
at once resigned, a new Government must have
been formed, and, as an inevitable and immediate
consequence, Parliement must have been dis-
solved in order that the country might give an
opinion upon it. (Cheers.) Therefore, according
to his understanding of what must necessarily
follow when the Government was placed in a
minority in the House of Commons, a dissolution was
inevitable. (Hear, hear.) He would not enter into a
discussion of the various provisions of the Govern-
ment Reform Bill, but would only refer to the ob-
jections which had been taken to 'what was called
the disfranchisement clause, and to the non-exten.
sion of the suffrage in boroughs. In his opinion,
both those objections were disposed of by the ques-
tion " Is it reasonable that we should deal with town
and country upon a different footing ?" (Cheers.)
The Government thought it was not ; and they
adopted what was called uniformity of franchise,
they thought that it was fair to deal evenly with
town and country, and to . give to one the same
franchise as was possessed by the other. (Cheers.)
With respect to secret voting he entertained the
same opinions as ha had alWays expressed. He in-
tended-to act upon them, and they would never find
hum voting for the ballot. (Cheers.) To improper
canvassing, unfair solicitations, undue influence, or
what was called " putting on the screw," he enter-
tained as great objections as any man could do ;
and he thought that the most reasonable mode of
getting rid of them was that included in the Govern-
ment measure, viz., the introduction of polling
' papers, because as a man was never solicited after he
had given his vote, he would, if he could send in his
voting paper immediately that Parliament was dis-
solved, escape all the evils of this improper canvas-
sing or solicitation. (Hear, hear.) However, if any
better mode except secresy could be devised for
effecting the same object he should be ready 'to give
it at least a very favourable consideration. dear.)
Now that he bad, from the position which he filled
in the Government, obtained a certain amount of
power, he was determined to do his best to settle
some of those questions which had long agitated
the public mind ; such for instance as those of
church rates, of beerhouses, and of the regulation
of the great corporation of the city of London.
They would not expect that he should inform
them how any of these matters were to be dealt
with, but within a month they would, in some
shape or other, see what had been the result of
the best consideration which he and his colleagues
could give to these subjects. (Hear, hear.) At
this moment, however, domestic questions, interest-
ing as they were, faded into comparative insignifi-
cance by reason of the dreadful war which was at
this moment impending over Europe. To him it
appeared most shocking that after 40 years of peace,
during which the arts of peace had been cultivated
and its blessings enjoyed both in Europe and Ame-
rica, when even in Italy a chance had been given
for the spread of constitutional doctrines by means
of the example of Sardinia, all this should be
checked and the world should be thrown into con-
fusion—fol.' what ? He said most distinctly, for
nothing that was apparent, for nothing in truth but
the selfish ambition and love of aggrandisement of
two despotic kingdoms. (Cheers.) What had been
the attitude taken by the British Government ?
They had been like a mutual friend, attempting—
attempting, he allowed, in vain—to prevent two
bullying fellows who were determined to have a
scratch at each other from fighting. Austria and
France had clearly resolved to have a turn at each
other; and probably their militaryforces, the result
of peace, had at last got to such a head that they
could not keep them down ; 500,000 men ready for
strife was too great a power for the Executive of
either country to keep in order. But althoUgh we
might all agree, and he believed we did, as to the
folly, the wickedness, and the shame of a general
European war, what was our duty as Englishmen ?
Our first duty was to do our best to part the com-
batants; our second, to be well prepared to repel
aggression. (Cheers.) There were those who called
themselves exclusively the friends of peace—who
told us that it was enough for a great country like
Great Britain to hold its hands and take care to
give no offence. (Cries of "So it is," and " Bosh !")
He said that he who held those opinions was the
man whose property would be first taken from him;
and that, living as we did with angry passions all
around us, there was only one course by which we
could hope to preserve our independence, our
property, our lives, and all that we hold dear,
and that was to be well prepared, not for aggression
but for defence. (Cheers.) Speaking for the Go-
vernment, he said that they had done their utmost
for both these objects. They had spared no
pains, by representations, by proposals, and by
every legitimate and ordinary course by which
nations communicate with each other, to show to
these hostile countries the full wickedness of their
proceedings, and to endeavour, as it were, to bind
them down to keep the peace towards each other.
It was not their fault that they had not succeeded,
and when Parliament met they would lay before
it documents by the dates of which the country
would see that for the last three months, ever since
war first loomed in the distance, the British
Government had performed a truly British part in
endeavouring to separate the combatants. (Cheers.)
They had also, as far as possible, taken care that our
means of defence should not be wanting, and since
the period at which Lord Derby took office the
available effective navy of this country had been
exactly doubled in amount. (Cheers.) What course
was the Government going to pursue in the future ?
The same which they had adopted hitherto. They
would of course, since war had begun, cease their
attempts to keep the peace. Those who rushed
into it must submit to the loss which it entailed,
and the best wish which we could have must be that
both parties might soon be so far financially ex-
hausted as to compel them to put an end to the
struggle. (Cheers.) The Government would take
care to go on with their defensive preparations,
and the country might rest satisfied that there was
nothing which could fairly be undertaken by the
Executive which would not be done. When Parlia-
ment met the Government would ask for an indem-
nity for any act which they might have done beyond
the strict letter of the law; and he was quite sure that
neither Parliament nor any Englishman would
grudge any money which might be required to insure
the country against danger. Among other things,
he would take that public opportunity of saying,
that if in that county and in any others there
were any gallant spirits ready to enrol them-
selves in rifle corps or similar volunteer bodies
the Government would be glad to receive the
assurance of their willingness to do so, and, as far
as they were concerned and as Parliament would
sanction the measure, they would be glad to
afford them countenance and goodwill. (Cheers.)
The real question which the next Parliament
would have to determine would be who §hould