The Sun.
London, England, 1868-10-31 00:00:00

MR. BRIGHT AT BIRMINGHAM.

Mr. fright's speech at Birminghtini on Friday was
directed against " the evils of the ratepaying clauses," and
the "monstrous minority scheme." He related at length
how the former measure came to be accepted, and
denounced Mr. Disraeli very energetically. "I under-
stand," said he, "that our opponents and their orators in
the borough and their newspaper writers lay the blame
on Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal party for the abolition
of compounding, and for the infliction of so much
suffering and hardship upon a great many thousands of
the cottage occupiers in Birmingham. This is what Mr.
Gladstone said when Mr. Hardcastle made his pro-
position : "My hon. friend offers us, at the expense of
an economical and social inconvenience—at the expense,
at any rate, of foregoing an economical and social advan-
tage—he offers us, instead of an extension of the fran-
chise which we conceive to be limited and unequal,
equivocal and dangerous, as tending ,in many parts
to corruption—he offers an extension of the franchise
which is liberal and perfectly sound. I am sorry,
in deference to what seems an unwise judgment of
the House, it is necessary to interfere with a system of
composition which exists throughout the country. I
must choose, however, the lesser of the two evils.' After-
wards, on another occasion, when Mr. Gladstone made a
proposition to discuss the question, he made use of these
words. He said, I have deprecated it all along, and
have consented to it as I would consent to cut off my leg
rather than lose my life, on the principle of choosing the
lesser evil.' Well, what was the greater evil ? It
was that there should be no enfranchisement ; and,
unless for Mr. Gladstone's opposition to that bill, sup-
ported as it was by me and the great bulk of the Liberal
party, that bill might not have passed, and you
whom I now see before me, and 30,000 and more out-
side of this building, within the limits of our town, would
have been still knocking at the doors of a Reformed
Parliament, and asking for admission there. The
Government—Mr. Disraeli is the Government—and
the party by which the Government is supported are
solely responsible for that measure. That harshness would
never have been inflicted if it bad been left in the bands
of the Liberal party ; and I believe I may say, with con-
fidence, that, if ever the grievance is remedied, it will be
remedied, not by the Tory, but by the Liberal section of
the House." In concluding with the subject, Mr. Bright
exclaimed : "I hope I have shewn you clearly the diffi-
culty of the circumstances under which that grievance was
inflicted—that the Government, and the Government
party only, are responsible for it ; -that without
Mr. Hodgkinson's clause without the abolition of
compounding, in the then attitude of the Government—
one of two things must have happened, either that the
bill must have been wholly lost for the session, or the great
bulk of the householders below £lO-476,000 of them—
must have remained without enfranchisement. I did all
I could for your sakes in the matter, and have done all I
can since, with a view to inform the public opinion ; and
when any rational and just remedy is proposed to the
House of Commons I need not tell you that if you send me
there I hope to be there to support it." Mr. Bright
was also very fiery in his oppcsition to the minority clause.
Here is one of his arguments: "If," said he, "we have the
nomination outside— which in fine weather would be very
pleasant and very grand—l daresay nearly every elector in
Birmingham will go there, perhaps 35,000 men, and it will
be a grand and magnificent sight—the mayor will put to
you the different candidates, and you will have to hold up
your hands for each candidate as he is named to you, and
the mayor will have to decide which three candidates out
of the five have the majority ; he will declare that
A, B, and C, are duly elected, and then possibly—l am
not sure of it—but possibly somebody will ask for a poll.
But when you hold up your hands, can't the mayor
say to you, You must only hold up your hands
for two ?' Here we are three candidates on the
Liberal side, and you would only be able to hold
up your hands for two of us, if it were not that the law
says nothing about the holding up your hands. Your
duty at the nomination is as it was before the Act passed,
and you will be permitted to hold up your bards freely,
if right, fur the three candidates of your choice. What is
it that a poll is for, the day after? Simply for this: to
prove whether the show of hands did really express the
opinions of the constituency. The candidate who has the
minority says : 'I have canvassed all the borough, and
have got a great number of promises, and I believe,
if we go to the poll, that I may still have a
majority ; therefore, I am not satisfied with the
show of hands, and, Mr. Mayor, I demand a poll.'
And the poll is accordingly granted ; and how is it
that one of you electors, being only allowed to vote for two
candidates to-day, can correct or in any way shew the pro-
priety and the truth of the great demonstration ? Is it not
quite clear that our ancient constitution is entirely de-
parted from, and that the principle of the law, as passed
last year, is directly in the teeth of all the principles in
this matter which have governed our elections for six hundred
years past ?" Here is another of Mr. Bright's contentions
on this subject. " What would happen," he asked, "in
places where there is only one seat ? I presume, if the
minority is to be represented, that the majority is to be
got rid of ; or else you must have that sort of two-faced
man who can suit two parties and look two ways
at once ; but he would hardly be able to go into
both lobbies at once in a division in the House ; and
what are you to do in boroughs where there are two
members and two seats ? Clearly, if you give one to the
minority the borough is neutralised, and is in the position
of many boroughs of which we now speak with a sort of
pity and contempt. It would return one man to say
' Aye ' and another to say No ;' therefore the borough
would count for nothing, and, politically, it might just
as well be extinct." The original clause which Mr.
Lowe proposed next came in for condemnation.
Mr. Lowe (said the speaker) had since repented
in sackcloth and ashes for the course he took on
the Reform question. " But he proposed—in this
borough, for example—that every man should have three
votes, and that he should give all his three votes to one,
or divide them among myself and my colleagues, or to Mr.
Sampson Lloyd. What would have been the result? It
would have been just this, that if Mr. Lloyd had
been the only candidate on the Tory side, and supposing
that he could poll 10,000 votes in Birmingham, if every
one gave him three he would really record 30,000 votes,
and therefore, although he was a candidate who only had
10,000 supporters out of 40,000, he might come in even at
the head of the poll. That, I think, I once described, as
reminding me very much of a donkey race, where the
last is expected to win." That proposition, however,
was rejected, and when the bill went to the Lords, this
" infamous clause" was not carried. On coming back to
the Commons it was accepted, through the desertion of
some fifty Liberals, who ought to have known better.
"It is not a matter of the slightest importance as
regards the two parties in the country; the minority
clause will not at present, and I believe it will never,
seriously affect the balance of power in the House
of Commons. At present, as far as lam informed,
it is probable that the Liberal party will gain
something from that clause, but it may have a very
grievous effect in places like Liverpool, where no one
knows where the majority lies. Each side will bring two
candidates forward, and one of the two twos will be left
out; but when it is clearly decided where the majority
lies, unless the majority is very enormous, as I hope it
will be in Birmingham, it will put an end to contests
altogether, and these large constituencies will become
as sleepy and dead as some of the county consti-
tuencies which are under the thumb of the landlord."
Mr. Bright could not understand how anybody could
believe in the scheme at all. "I do not understand how
any elector of Birmingham—unless his politics are of the
most rabid and blind and unreasonable Toryism and
Orangeism—l cannot understand how he can support
men who have publicly avowed their approbation of
this clause, and one of them, at least, had expressed
a hope that it may be widely extended to other con-
stituencies. Every man of you comes to this election
with one hand tied behind his back. Every man of you,
but for this clause, would have voted freely for three can-
didates, and you would have carried your men to Par-
liament with a triumphant and undoubted majority.
Even with this clause you are fighting, doubtless, a
successful battle ; but it is a battle in which you are
obliged to spend the large costs of an election, and an
enormous sacrifice of the labours of hundreds and thou-
sands of your fellow-townsmen." Mr. Bright continued :
" I hold that clause to be one of the most outrageous
heresies against the popular representative system ever
propounded in the Legislature. I do not care whether it
has the support of aged statesmen or dreamers, or men
who dream of political theories in their closets. I say
that it is a fraud on the great constituencies. I say,
further, that it is the duty of every Liberal elector to
represent to every candidate who supported that clause
his own opinion of its wrong, of its unconstitutional
character, and of its injustice, and to urge him by all the
arguments he can bring to bear upon it to recant his
opinions, and to vote for the abolition of that clause.
There are great men—men for whom personally I have
great affection—who voted for that clause. I hate the
clause no less ; but I think I have the right to say that it
may be the duty, and is the duty, of every Liberal con-
stituency—l don't say to cashier men for one error they
may have committed, hut to urge them in a friendly and
earnest manner to consent to the abolition of that clause
on the first opportunity when it shall again come before
Parliament. Don't let us have any newfangled ideas;
your fancy franchises, which we kicked to the winds;
your minority clause, which ought to have come, not from
the representatives of the people, but from Bedlam, or a
region like that."

The Rev. Dr. M'Neile, the new Dean of Ripon, was
talled at the Cathedral on l'hur ay,