The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-11 00:00:00

MR. BRIGHT AT BIRMINGHAM.

Mr. Bright's position on Tuesday evening, at Ihimuge
ham, was very peculiar. He had to address gunmakers
He, "a man of peace," had to speak to those who werefed
by war. He had therefore to apologise somewhat, and to
declare that he really had no connection with them as
regards their trade. But he gave them something that he
knew would please when be said that he did not believe
in the Government itself making clothes for the army, or
building ships or manufacturing the arms. He quoted
Hume and Cobden with effect. "I have always
been of opinion," said he, " that it was a great mistake
for the Government to undertake the character of manu-
facturers ; I believe it is so with regard to the building of
ships ; I believe it is so with regard to the manufacture of
clothing for the army; I believe it is so likewise in
the manufacturing of guns ; and I recollect that so long
ago as forty years since a committee of the House of
Commons passed a resolution which seems to me to
include nearly all that can be said upon this matter.
Now, if I were to put into one sentence my opinion upon
this matter, I should quote the sentence which I find in a
speech—the most able speech on this question, I suspect,
ever spoken in the Hotise of Commons by my and your
lamented friend Mr. Cobden. On the 22nd of July,
within less than a year of his death, be delivered this
speech, and this is an extract from it. He says : ' This
is thevrinciple I have alwaysadvocated—the Government
ought not to be allowed to manufacture for itself any
article which can be obtained from private producers in a
competitive market, and if we have entered upon a false
system in this respect, we ought, as far as possible, to re-
trace our steps." From this subject to the estimates was
not a very long jump. Forthwith Mr. Bright began to
bewail the want of influence which would be felt by a
private member in trying to create any reduction. He
expatiated on the £26,000,000 which was spent for military
and naval purposes, and declared that there were too
many in power who were interested in that expenditure.
"Every man Ivho lives on the public expenditure, what-
ever be his services, comes naturally to have an interest,
a personal interest, *hid), if he is not very careful,
takes sides against the interests of the taxpayer. He is
looking for better wages,,better salary, higher promotion.
Such interests form necessarily a most powerful influence,
acting constantly upon the Executive and against
the interests of the taxpayer. Let me tell you
this, the present House of Commons, on its present
system, seems to be wholly incapable of contending with
this power—in fact, many scores of men are interested
in this expenditure—l suspect many hundreds who have
seats in that House ; and if you will trace for a moment
the manner in which the expenditure is determined on and
the estimates are proposed, you will see how difficult it is
for three members for Birmingham, or for thirty, to make
much difference in this matter. The heads of departs
meats—the Horse Guards for the army, the Admiralty
for the navy—produce certain proposals with regard to
expenditure which are laid before the Cabinet, but
the public are never heanj at the Horse Guards or at the
Admiralty. You have there men who are heard, whose
heads are filled from morning to night with the grandeur
and the glory and, the extent of the services, and many
of them &not appear to have any idea that it is of the
slightest importance that money is spent ; or they would
appear not to know that a tax taken from the people is so
much taken from their comforts. lam not blaming
them as though they bad any ill intention to the
people, but they are removed from contact with them;
their minds are filled by their own offices, their own
duties, their own responsibilities ; they are surrounded by
an atmosphere which shuts out from them altogether the
cry and the wail of the taxpayer ; and therefore, looking
only at what they conceive to be their own duty, they
seem to have no limit to the amount of expenditure which
they are prepared from year to year to recommend to
the Cabinet." " When these propositions," the hon.
gentleman continued, "come from the Army and
Navy Departments of the Cabinet, what happens there?
It is hardly anybody's business. The head of the Army
Department, the Secretary of War, and the First Lord
of- the Admiralty—these are men who probably have
only recently been put into their offices. Until they
were put there they knew nothing about them. They
have to depend upon what is said to them by those
below them. The Cabinet, as a whole, is disposed
greatly to leave each particular department to the headof
that department, and they all know that in the House of
Commons, with no end of generals and colonels and ad-
mirals and captains, and the friends of such, it is far
more easy to work the parliamentary machine by a
lavish expenditure of money than it is to procure or
promote or insist ur on any due system of economy.
They make things easy by what is called greasing
the wheels. Well, when the Cabinet has determined
upon certain estimates they are laid before the House,
and the House always accepts them. I believe there is no
man in the House of Commons who ever remembers
a time when an estimate was refused. The House can't
go into the details." Mr. Bright then eulogised the late
Mr. Joseph Hume, declariLg in effect that if his
influence was not sufficient to stop the excessive
expenditure, there was no one who could do so. And
he so often failed in his attempts. "You often hear com-
plaint. I have seen newspapers think it their interest to
find great fault with me. I have found them saying,
' Why does he not, instead of declaiming against the ex-
penditure in the Birmingham Town Hall, why does he not
attend the committees of the House and fight the esti-
mates ?' The man who can tell you that is either a
knave or a fool. Mr. Hume fought the estimates
for forty years, and they always grew, even in his
hands, and it can't be done in the House of Commons
on the present system ; and so conscious is nearly every
one of this that now, in committees of the House, when
the estimates are before it, scarcely anybody attends to
listen or criticise but a few gentlemen of the army and
navy, and their criticism almost always goes in favour
of increasing instead of diminishing the expenditure.
What you want is this—you should not accept what
the Horse Guards says or what the Admiralty says,
or what the Cabinet says, but you ought to have an
honestly chosen committee of the House of Commons,
to whom these matters should be referred, and that com-
mittee should recommend whatever changes it thinks proper
after taking evidence upon every point." They were not,
said the hon. gentleman,!to think the subject unimportant.
The 70 millions and the 700 millions of the ten years
;lave been produced, and every single sovereign of it that
was not expended for the true needs of the country was a
sovereign wrung from you, and which, had it remained with
you, would have added sensibly to the comforts of your
families and of your children. Bear in mind, too,
that the pressure of taxes is always felt heaviest by the
poorest of the people ; the rich are never ruined
directly, and they never suffer sensibly from taxation.
They may pay so much in the pound of income tax, or so
much upon a house duty. but there remains always what.
gives tuem woo and clothing anu shelter ; out the pressure
upon the great body of the people—those whose living is
their labour and their wages--is much heavier, and upon
the poorest of them it is absolutely crushing and destruc-
tive. It lessens the means of employment, because it
absorbs ell this capital, and it lessens the rate of wages,
because it diminishes and absorbs the capital, and
necessarily lessens the manufacturing power and
the exteuded commerce of the country." Mr.
Bright was very satirical about the Church of England
being a bulwark against Rome. " I wish they would tell
us," said he, " where the Church of Rome in England
gets all its converts from. I don't know in all my life
that I have met with more than one or two Noncon-
formists who have left the Church of their fathers
and gone over to Rome, but I constantly meet with
men who, lhaving been brought up in the bosom of
the Established Church of England, are now within the
fold of the Church of Rome • and you all know—you all
read the papers, and !you all that there is scarcely
a week, and never a month, for years past, that you have
not heard of some person of eminence, of wealth, or of
family, or of culture, or of standing in some way or other,
who has left the Church of England and gone over to
Rome. Even the families of the household of the
hierarchy are not free from the invasion of the
power of Rome. In the Established Church, by law
and by custom, and, I suppose, the canons of the Church,
every clergyman is made of a different order from the
laymen of his own Church, and from you and such as you
and myself—who are dissenters from that. He is
told that he is in a certain way higher and better than
other men. The orders into which he enters are indelible.
To enter into holy orders is a great thing, but when once
done can't, I believe, in this country, be undone. He is
not allowed to come to Birmingham and enter into one of
your trades. If you were to return him to
Parliament the doors of the House of Com-
mons would be shut against him. He is a man
different from other men, and taught that he is so, and as
among the clergy there is at least as large a proportion
of men with human frailties as in other classes of the
people, the clergyman necessarily feels himself elated,
elevated, distinguished from others. Even the humility
that ought to belong to his order and his calling is
scarcely able to keep him from these failings. He argues
that what the Church of Rome believes, for the most part,
or in some sort, is to be defended from the Prayer-book,
and thus step by step he muddles his way from a state of
mind in which he originally was, until he gets into
one which cannot be satisfied, contented, and appeased
except he advances further and lands himself in the Church
of Rome. Do not imagine that I am saying a word
of this to attack unfairly the Churches of England or
Rome. We are not discussing theological questions here,
but I am endeavouring to shew causes for that strange
tendency to Rome which has been witnessed of late
in the Church of England, and to shew you how
it is—for you know that it is so—that the Church
of England at this moment in its clerical ranks is not
in any degree a bulwark against the inroads of Rome.
Mr. Bright then declared over again once more that Mr.
Disraeli was responsible for Mr. Hodgkinson's clause
abolishing compounding in the Reform Act. He accepted
it as the original policy of Ministers. Then as to the Fac-
tory Act. He had been charged with opposition to it.
" You will probably be surprised to know—l have no doubt
but our Conservative-Liberal-Constitution al candidates will
be surprised to know—when, I believe in- that very year, I
went into the lobby against the Factory Bill whom 1 found
there. lam not positive as to all the men—l speak merely
from memory, and 1 have made no recent reference about
the matter—but I believe I was in the same lobby with
Lord Derby and Lord Chelmsford, then both in the House
of Commons, with General Peel, with Sir J. Pakington,
and many other of leaders of the Conservative party.
Perhaps it was b: d company, but at least I think the sup-
porters of those gentlemen now ought to admit that, if
they have nothing since then to lay to my charge, my
character will at least bear comparison with theirs." He
laughed again at the Conservative party, Constitu-
tionalists, Tories, Liberal-Conservatives, and Conserva-
tive-Liberals, as they called themselves. He scoffed at their
several watchwords. To-day protection, to-morrow a com-
pounding clause, and ecn hided by an appeal to them for
pupport hop, the aqlous of his Put Pl-0249 We.

THIRD E TIO
L •

SUN OFFICE, 7 o'CLOCK.

NOTICE.

The Third Edition of " The Sun " of last Evening, con-
taining the Shrewsbury Razes, &c., was published in
time for delivery in town at 7.15 p.m.

DISSOLIT rIoN OF PARLIAMENT.

BY THE QUEEN—A PROCLAMATION,
For Dissolving the present Parliament and Deelar-

ing the calling of another.

VICTORIA, R.—Whereas we have thought fit, by
and with the advice of Our Privy Council, to dis-
solve this present Parliammt, which stands pro-
rogue] to Thursday, the twenty-sixth day of No-
vember instant, We do for that end publish this
Our Royal Proclama‘ion, an] do hereby dissolve
the said Parliament a3c)rdingly ; and the Lords
Spiritual and Temporal, and the Knights, Citizens,
and Burgesses, and the Cornmissioners*or shires
and burghs, of the House of Commons are dis-
charged from their meeting and attendance on the
said Thursday, the twenty-sixth day of November
instant; aad We, being desirous and resolved as
soon as may be, to Meet Our people, and to have
their advice in Parliament, do hereby make known
to all Our loving subjects Our Royal will and
pleasure to call a new Parliament ; and do hereby
further declare, that, with the advice of Our
Privy Council, We have given order that Our
Chancellor of that part of Our United King-
dom called Great Britain, and Our Chancellor
of Ireland, do, respectively, upon notice thereof,
forthwith issue out writs in due form, and ac-
cording to law, for calling a new Parliament :
and We do hereby also, by this our Royal Pro-
clamation under our Great Seal of Our United
Kingdom, require writs forthwith to be issued
accordingly by Our said Chancellors respectively,
for causing the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and
Commons, who are to serve in the said Parliament,
to be duly returned to, and give their attendance
in, Our said Parliament ; which writs are to be
returnable on Thursday, the tenth day of December
next.

Given at our Court at Windsor, this eleventh
day of November, in the year of our Lord, one
thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight, and
in the thirty-second year of Our reign.
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.

BY THE QUEEN.—A PROCLAMATION.
In order to the Electing and Summoning the

Sixteen Peers of Szotland.

VICTORIA, R.—Whereas We have in our Council
thought fit to declare Our pleasure for summlnino•
and holding a Parliament of Oar United Kingdom
of Great Britain an.l Ireland, o.i Thursday, th 3
tenth day of December next ensuing the date hereof;
in order, therefore, to the electing and statism miag
the Sixteen Peers oZ Scotland, who are to sit i a
the House of Peers in the said Parliam mt, We
do, by the advice of Oar Privy Council, issea
forili this Our. Royal Proclamation, strictly
charging and commanding all the Peers of Scot-
land to assemble and meet at 11)1yrood House, in
Edinburgh, on Thursday, the 3d day of DecAn-
ber next, betwen the hours of twelve and two
in the afternoon, to nominate and ch 0033 the Six-
teen Peers to sit an I vote in the House of Peers iu
the said ecsuing Parliament, by open elec..,ion, and
plurality of voices of the Peers that shall be then
present, and of the proxies of such as shall b 3
absent (such proxies being Peers, and producing a
mandate in writing, duly signed before witnesses,
and both the constituent and proxy being qualified
according to law), and the Lord Clerk Register,
or such two of the Principal Clerks of the Session
as shall be appointed by him to officiate in his name,
are hereby respectively required to attend such
meeting, and to administer the oaths required by
law to be taken there by the said Peers, and to
take their votes; and immediately after such elec-
tion made and duly examined, to certify the names
of sixteen Peers so elected, and to sign and
attest the same in the presence of the said
Peers the Electors, and return such certificate
into Our High Court of Chancery of Great
Britain. And We do by this Our Royal Procla-
mation, strictly command and re faire the Provost
of Edinburgh, and ail other the Magistrates of the
said city, to take especial care to preserve the
peace thereof, during the time of the sail election,
and to prevent all manner of riots, tutnults, dis-
orders, and violence whatsoever. And We strictly
charge and command that this Our Royal Pro-
clamation be duly published at the Market-Cress
at Edinburgh, and in all the county towns of
Scotland, ten days, at least, before the time
hereby appointed for the meeting, of the said Peers
to proceed to such election.
Witness Ourselves at Windsor, this eleventh day
of November, one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-eight, and in the thirty-second year of
our reign.