The Sun.
London, England, 1861-04-06 00:00:00

A NEW VIEW OF THE HOUSE OF

COMMONS.

The Guildhall Assembly-rooms, Walsall, were
crowded to excess on Wednesday night by an audi-
ence composed of tradesmen and working men, who
met at the invitation of the Reform Association.
Mr. S. Cox presided, and there were also present
Mr. C. Forster, M.P., Mr. H. B. Sheridan, M.P, &c.
Mr. H. B. SHERIDAN, M.P. for Dudley, said he
felt very much flattered by the invitation to be pre-
sent that evening, and he supposed he was invited
because he felt a sincere and deep interest in the
question of Reform. (Hear.) It was a deadly-lively
question they all knew, and it was scarcely possible
to say whether it was an interesting subject or not.
A tranquil even surface was presented just then,
and therefore some contended there was no desire
for any alteration, but he believed such tranquillity
was dangerous. " Still waters run deep," and the
day might come when such tranquillity might swell
into tempestuous and troublous waves ; and doubt-
less it would come unless the rights of the people
were regarded more than they had been lately.
(Cheers.) When he entered the House of Com-
mons he went as the representative of a commu-
nity not in the habit of sending members, and he
entered it with the same curiosity as they would if
they had been in his position. He -went to repre-
sent the great community of Dudley, and the whole
of the inhabitants naturally had their eyes upon
him; but he did not know the difficulties that
would beset him and Burrowed his path.
He had read the history of the house, and
the political struggles that had taken place in it for
civil and political freedom, but beyond that he was
comparatively a stranger to the charmed circle en-
closed in the area of the House of Commons ; but
still—notwithstanding that he was charged with
being a person with no political views of his own,
no fixed ideas, and only a professing Liberal—he
thought he might, with an earnest and strong de-
sire to advocate the views of those who sent him,
eventually win his way in the assembly of which
he was a member. He pledged himself to none of
the great political parties in the house, and there-
fore, being unfettered, he thought that his evidence
would be considered as unprejudiced. If the meet-
ing asked him, as an unprejudiced and impartial
witness, what his opinion of the house was, he should
answer that he found it composed of two great fac-
tions—the Conservatives, as they termed themselves,
and the Liberals ; but both were struggling for
power and place, and both were to a great extent
insensible to the interests of those who sent them
there. (Hear.) The independent party he found a
very narrow and small party, and he found even
among them corruption and discontented followers
of faction, who thought by their defiant speeches to
intimidate those in office to make provision for
them. Therefore, seeing all these things,he thought
he might say there was a great deal of mockery in
the House of Commons. He found, as Mr. Bright
hall told them, that the house called the house of
the people of England did not represent the people
of England at all. (Cheers.) One half was filled
with colonels and captains, and the other half by
nobles and cadets ; and but few, to his mind, im-
partial, uncorrupted, and independent. Such being
the case, he felt the force of what had been said
about the difficulty of independent men making
themselves heard in the house, or enforcing the
views they were sent to advocate. If they turned
from the members of the house to the Administra-
tion, they found that matters were no better, for the
Cabinet so little represented the people of the coun-
try that they would be puzzled to put their finger
upon a name which had not some distinguishing
appellation, or agnomen, different from that which
might be supposed to belong to the Cabinet osten-
sibly representing the people. (Hear, hear.) So
they found that in the first place the house was
not in accordance with the views of the people, and
the Cabinet was totally at variance with them.
But, it might be asked, did not the two result in
one harmonious whole, and were not Acts of Par-
liament framed with wisdom, and carried out with
such regularity that the anomalies he had referred
to were not noticed P The answer to such a ques-
tion must be " No;" for it was said that the prin-
cipal gladiators who took part in the combats of
the house were those who had some handle or
prefix to their names, which showed unmistakably
that they did not belorg to the great body of the
people. (Hear.) The circumstance that struck him
the most forcibly, however, was the fact that when
a great grievance 'suggested itself to the mind of
an independent member, or made itself known
throrgh the papers of the day and came before the
House of Commons, a committee was appointed
to investigate it, and they found that the committee
was the shallowest mockery of the whole system ;
for, although the members of it were supposed to
be nominated by the men asking for it, it was in
reality nominated by the political chiefs on both
sides of the house. He had felt the effect of the
evil and spoken about it ; but it was an awkward
thing to speak disagreeably plain truths in the
House of Commons. If a man valued the opinions
of his constituency, he dare not make himself a
knight-errant, as it were, unless he had a handle
to his name. Mr. Sheridan went on to say that
the first consideration was, was reform in the House
of Commons necessary ? He thought he had shown
some reason why it was, for they had Cabinets
composed of Lords, and the House of Commons half
filled with lords, and a species of corruption in
almost every one of the details of that assembly
and an insufficient representation of the masses of
the country. (Hear.) After alluding to the
lordly influence exercised by the Sergeant-at-
Arms, who met members at the entrance to the
house, and seemed to look down upon the represen-
tatives of the people with the utmost disdain and
contempt, Mr. Sheridan went on to allude to
the Speaker and his influence, remarking that his
office of keeping order seemed to consist in wearing
spectacles when it was necessary to see his friends,
and having them off when independent members
presented themselves to his notice. (Laughter and
cheers.) That was the way in which the privileges
of the House of Commons were trifled with and
frittered away, bartered with and sold for political
purposes. (Shame.) The house no more repre-
sented the people of England than that meeting of
the people of England. He had thus gone into
• detail, because it was seldom that the people of the
sort ho belonged to went into particulars ; and he
would remark another circumstance which struck
him, and which was perhaps the greatest job of ell
—only 20 or 30 members out of 658 were chosen to
sit on committees, and they were shuffled like a
pack of cards, and dealt out into almost every com-
mittee that sat. Those 20 or 30 were well known
and trusted men, but they were not taken indiscri-
minately ; they would not take the member for
Dudley upon one; he had never sat upon a com-
mittee yet. (Laughter.) They were, no doubt,
men of honour and strict impartiality, but they
might not represent constituencies who were in-
clined to look with such a lynx eye upon the ques-
tion before them as some of the independent con-
stituencies were, and thus the Government purpose
was served. (Hear.) He also found that legisla-
'L tion was affected to a great extent by strong party
interest, and that there was a large number of
members of the house who seemed to have a happy
knack of knowing their own friends. The Conser-
vatives had a great many friends among the agri-
cultural classes, and so the Conservatives attempted,
' as soon as possible, to relieve the agriculturists from
taxation. He did not blame them for serving their
friends; but why should they do so to the exclusion
of a consideration of the general interests of the
' country ? The first duty of a member of Parliament
' was to seek the interests of the whole of the coun-
try, and that sacured, the particular isate,-se"'s of
his constituents. (Cheers,
TS the proposition he
had made we As;sl-tu, why did the Conservatives
saatade the agricultural classes from fire insur-
ance duty, while they did not •exclude the com-
mercial class ; or why should the latter class pay
half the impositions made ? The next question was
—was the country desirous of a change, and was
the new Reform Bill, so much talked about, due ?
Why should it not be due? Those who could
remensber the
know how great had been the increase of popalas
passing of the last Reform Bill would
tion, commerce, and trade since that period,.and
[
what gigantic figures now represented our exports
and imports. If these facts were compared to the

circumstances under which the last Reform Bill
was passed, they would see that there was no reason
for saying that a new Reform Bill was not wanted.
To say so would be the grossest affront that could
be offered to those whose intelligence said it was
due. (Cheers,) The men who sent members to
Parliament bore no fair numerical proportion to the
population of the country, and the number of voters
was no fair criterion of the intelligence of the
country. The hon. member illustrated this point
shb referenceoooonly
layn Bdoaos
outrbou9hroibosa own
suburban
optoe boroughrpsunlogautl
aitpopulation
ondf
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withfDa
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populationyo h,
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more. After contrasting
inquiring whether this country, which had always
been supposed to be in the van of progress, was to
be behind Italy, which had at last struck an effectual
blow for freedom, or less wise than the Czar of
Russia, who, wiser in his generation than some
others, had liberated the serfs, the speaker went on
to express his opinion that between the "chattels
or things" called serfs in Russia and the unrepre-
sented people of England there was in reality no
difference. (Cries of " Bravo," and cheers.) An-
other reason why there was not so much agitation
now as in 1832 was that when the first Reform
Bill was passed there was no telegraphic com-
munication to call members of Parliament to their
constituents, no penny post, no such extensive
system of education as they now had, no domi-
nant and all-potent power of the press in
existence, the latter of which, as it lived upon
popular favour, must express popular demands:
They had none of those advantages then, but
now they possessed them all, and so the
people spoke through different channels, by means
of different organs and in different ways; but the
influence was still the same, and the feeling upon
the subject was still as great, inasmuch as the
eternal principles of human nature must necessarily
always be the same, and the desire for freedom and
just representation always as powerful. (Cheers.)
The hon. member, after alluding to the struggle for
liberty in Poland, stated that all the rights and
privileges the people now enjoyed had been7wrung,
by dint of great coast. and labour, from the titled
inhabitants of the land, who would not allow them
to breathe the air without taxation if they could
help it, and therefore it behoved the people of the
country to stand with their heads erect and say,
" We have a right to a recognition of our political
existence, and nothing short of that will satisfy
us." (Cheers.) The broken promises of statesmen
in connexion with the subject of reform, the effi-
ciency of the Volunteer force for defence, and the
necessity for keeping an army and navy, consider-
ing the present disturbed state of Europe, were the
next subjects touched upon—Mr. Sheridan remark-
ing that he could not go to the length the members
for some neighbouring places had, and call the
immense expenditure of the country the result of
profligacy, as the people had delegated some of
their best gifts to those who had naturally made
use of them to their own advantage. The late
election for Dudley was then adduced as an exem-
plification of the fact that noble lords, in addition
to the exercise of their own rights, sought to
exercise the rights of others; and Mr. Sheridan
went on to allude to the extravagance which made
iron ships cost three times as much here as they
did in France ; to the anomaly of Mr. Rowcliffe, a
a constituent of Lord Palmerston, being ridiculed
by some portions of the press for daring to interro-
gate his representative; to the fact that Lord John
Russell had disappointed the country by his treat-
ment of the question of reform ; and concluded a
lengthy speech amid loud and protracted cheers.