The Sun.
London, England, 1859-05-02 00:00:00

The election of a representative for this borough
took place un Saturday. Sir J. Pakington, who
arrived from London on Friday evening, met his
supporters at the George Inn on Saturday morning
at ten eclock, and, accompanied by a large number
of thri electors, proceeded to the Town Hall, the
building in which the elaction was to take place.
The right hon. baronet was loudly cheered on the
Way.
of Droitwich presided at the
electi The Mayor
on, and the town clerk read the writ.
Mr. Beacroft proposed, and Mr. Clay seconded,
the nomination of Sir John Pakington.
There being no other candidate, the right hon.
baronet was declared duly elected amid great en-
thusiasm.
Sir JOHN PANINGTON then rose amid cheers, and
having paid an eloquent tribute to the memory of
Mr. Ricketts, who had been his proposer at all his
former elections, proceeded to say—Mr. Mayor and
gentlemen, I am happy to say on this occasion that
I have a privilege that does not always attach to a
member of Parliament, viz., that of addressing you
as brother electors of this borough. I now come
forward to make my acknowledgments for the great
honour which you have confered upon me,
and I
assure you that I am afraid I shall be obliged to do
so in an imperfect manner. I have to thank you for
this honour under circumstances which may well
excite varied and deep emotions, and which at any
moment might render it extremely difficult for any
one, however accustomed he may be to address public
assemblies, to give utterance to language at all
adequate to express the feelings which he must en-
tertain. (Hear, hear.) Gentlemen, I assure you that
for the last few days, and up to the hour at which I
left London last evening, my labours, owing to the
present state of public affairs, were so heavy and of
so anxious a nature, that really I have been unable
to meditate even for a single moment on what sub-
jects I ought to touch upon to-day, and I can only
ask your forbearance while I throw out such
thoughts onjthe state of public affairs as may suggest
themselves to my mind while I thus address you.
Gentlemen, having said thus much, I must now ad-
vert to that which has been alluded to by my
friend Mr. Clay, who has, under somewhat pecu-
liar circumstances, seconded my nomination to-day.
I must refer to the fact, and I think I may refer to
it not idly, or in any vain feeling, but as a source
of honest pride, that I believe my situation is alto-
gether unparalleled in the House of Commons, or if
it has parallels it has certainly very few. I have
now represented you for 22 years, and you have
elected me on eight different occasions, including
two occasions when I came down for re-election
upon being appointed to office under the Crown,
and during all that period I have never had to stand
a contested election. (Hear, hear.) I doubt if th:re
be a parallel case to that among the members of the
late or any Parliament of recent years. It is to me
a most gratifying fact, and I confess I regard with
feelings of very great pride the fact that, owing to
your kindness and good opinion of me I stand here,
I may say, unanimously supported, and receiving
th• confidence and support—the kind and cordial
support—even of many who do not belong to the
same political party with which it is and has long
been my pleasure to act ; for in passing through
the town last week, whilst paying my respects to
the electors of this borough, I met with what I am
entitled to call a unanimous support. (Cheers.)
Nothing could have been more gratifying to a
public man than the manner in which I was then
welcomed in every house ; and amongst those who
so welcomed me were many who said, " Yes, sir,
Ire shall give you our support. We do not profess
your public opinions ; we do not belong to the same
political party that you do ; but we feel a respect
for you personally, and for your public conduct,
and on that ground we will give you no opposition."
That is the feeling with which my friend Mr. Clay
comes forward to-day, saying truly that the elec-
tors of England have something to look to besides
political feeling, important as that may be in consi-
dering and deciding whom they will send to Parlia-
ment. Having a connection of this nature with the
borough of Droitwich, I think it will be no surprise
to you to learn that when I received, as I think
it right frankly to tell you I have received, in•
vitations from several quarters—l may say from
four or five quarters, including some of the
largest and most important constituencies in Eng-
land—requesting me to allow myself to be put in
nomination for those places, I at once, and in every
case, declined. (Cheers.) Amongst those places I
would allude particularly to the port of Liverpool.
The overtures I received from Liverpool were of a
most flattering character, and were made more for-
mally, and perhaps more pressingly, than those
which were received by me from any other town.
These offers were repeated to me on more than one
occasion. The first answer which I gave, declininc,
to comply with an invitation, was not accepted);
and the matter was still pressed upon me, and
pressed under circumstances that entitle me to say
that I feel no doubt whatever—although these
things cannot of course be calculated with mathe•
matical accuracy—that if I had accepted the invi-
tation I should have been returned for the great
commercial community of Liverpool. (Hear.) No
doubt it is a very proud position for any public man
personally to receive any invitations from a great
constituency like that, and to be selected solely for
his political conduct. It has been over and over
again considered by the most eminent public men
that to be selected as a representative of so large a
constituency and so important a place as Liverpool
was a matter of just pride, and no doubt it would
be a matter of importance to the Government of
which I am a member to have one of the members
of that Government returned triumphantly for such
a town. But, gentlemen, upon full deliberation, I
distinctly and finally refused that invitation. And
now, if you will allow me, I will read to you a few
words which I found the other day in a letter writ-
ten by Mr. Thomas Baring, who has long repre-
sented the borough of Huntingdon, in reply to the
invitation addressed to him to stand for the city of
London, in conjunction with my noble friend Lord
Stanley. Mr. Baring says—" From them (the electors
of Huntingdon) I have received repeated proofs of
confidence, of which I am justly proud; for, however
inferior in numbers my constituents may be to the
electors of the City, purity of motive, honesty of pur-
pose. and consistency of conduct, are happily in this
country not confined to large constituencies ; and I
feel naturally most unwilling to sever a connection
which has been most honourable and independent
for me." (Cheers.) I feel that although Mr. Baring
only wrote in the very same sense and to the same
effect as I wrote to those from whom I received the
invitation from Liverpool, he expressed those sen-
timents in language so much more happy than I
could command that I could not better express my
feelings to the electors of Droitwich than by read-
ing this extract from his letter. (Hear.) It was
precisely for those reasons, then, that I preferred to
remain at Droitwich; and I may say now, and I
think I have given proof of it, that I think
there is no seat that can be offered me in this
kingdom which I should have more reason to feel
ustly proud of being elected to fill than this of the
borough of Droitwich. (Cheers.) I am not a
stranger to any of you. ou are acquainted with
my every-day life—with almost every habit of my
life ; and so knowing me, you have proved your
confidence in me by sending me year after year,
Parliament after Parliament, to represent you in
the House of Commons. (Cheers.) I can only say
that I heartily thank you ; and, perhaps, I may be
allowed to add that my only desire for my son is
that his public career may be as successful and gra-
tifying to him as mine has been to me. (Har,
hear.) Now it does so happen that the commence•
ment of my public career was precisely the same as
his. I commenced my career by being beaten for
the eastern division of Worcestershire. [A female
voice, " We'll have him yet—Pakington for ever."]
(Loud laughter and cheers.) I remember hearing
those words, and in the very same accents, on former
occasions. I heard the cry of " We'll have him"
applied to myself when I was a candidate for the
eastern division of the county ; but it so happens
that they never yet have had me. (Laughter.) I
hope, however, that Mr. Pakington will not receive
it as a bad omen for the future that, commencing
exactly at the same age as I did, he too has been
beaten for the eastern division of the county.
(Hear.) I believe that it is a wholesome thing to
be beaten sometimes ; that it is not a bad " start"
for a young man ; that it prevents him from
being too confident, and too triumphant in any-
thing that he is called upon to do. I can look
back to the defeat which I then sustained as the
forerunner of my political career, and I hope I may
do so without being ashamed of what has followed.
(Cheers.) It was said by my hon. friends who have
Pr°l3osed and seconded me that they abstained from
touching on the present aspect of-political affairs
because they felt that I should deem it to be my
duty to do so. and probably you would feel disap-
pointed, and
think that I was hardly fulfilling my
duty towards you a,your representative and as
one who has the hoi rof being a mei of her
Majesty's Governm:olti
f I did not more or less
touch upon that stibijl4l But with one or two ex •
ceptions, I hardly in tn. y. life recollect the com-
mencement of a new Parliament,r in which there
were so very few leni °dative measures of domestic
interest which was incumbent
either for a Minister
or, indeed, for any candidate,
touch upon at
length. Generally, before the commencement of a
new Parliament, we have had sera, exciting topic
largely agitating the public mind, and up
fully and
on which
it was necessary that a candidate should
frankly express the views he entertained.
(Hear.)
Sometimes it has been a great political struggle on
the subject of gariiamentary reform, You Will
re-