The Sun.
London, England, 1842-01-18 00:00:00

THE BANQUET.

The company assembled in the City Hall, in the evening, at
six o'clock, amounted to upwards of 2,000 persons, and a great
number of applicants were disappointed in not obtaining admis-
sion. Independent of the mere numbers, the meeting was by
far the most influential of the kind ever held in Glasgow, both
in point of wealth, talent, and general respectability. The
Chair was filled by James Oswald, Esq., M.P., for the City.
We gave yesterday the names of the gentlemen present.
The CliAlltAlA N, after praising Mr. Johnston, who was to
have presided, said—You are aware you are come here to
demonstrate your hostility to the present Corn and Provision-
laws—( Great cheering)—and I hope and trust that the de-
monstration in Glasgow will have a decided effect on other
parts of the country where that subject has not been taken
up. In this large city many have maturely considered the
subject, and I believe I do not say too much when I say the
opinion increases every day that:the present Corn and Provision-
laws are both impolitic and unjust.—( Cheers. ) Perhaps I
may be told that we ask too much in asking a total repeal of
these laws. Gentlemen, there might have been a time, there
was a day when much less would have satisfied us.—( Hear.)
But I believe, if we look back, we will find that the supporters
of these laps have all along resisted—not only the slightest
change—but the slightest inquiry into the subject ; and we
ask, therefore, now, what we have a right to obtain—and whe-
ther we obtain it er not, we will stand to our plea as founded
in justice.—( Great cheering.) Gentlemen, before I sit down,
I ask you to fill a bumper, and a bumper to a toast it is not ne-
cessary to say one word upon to induce you to receive it with
a shout of exultation and triumph. Gentlemen, " The
Queen."—( The toast was drank with great applause.)
" The Prince of Wales," and " The Princess Royal, Prince
Albert, and the other Members of the Royal Family," were
drank with all the honours.

Mr. EwaRT, M.P., was received with the most enthusiastic
plaudits. lie said he had been called on to propose to the
meeting the toast of " the Total and Immediate Repeal of the
Corn-laws."—( Immense cheering.) He felt that in connec-
tion with a mighty demonstration such as the present, the
moving spirit should come, not from a few Members of Parlia-
ment who might be summoned to attend the assembly, but from
the mind of the country itself. Personal and party influences
must be fleeting and evanescent ; but he saw that this vast
movement, which was animating Scotland, came from a deeper
and more enduring source. It proceeded from a conviction
deeply formed in the minds of the people of this country—slow
to act, but strenuous and energetic to perform—who, when the
mature time for exertion should come, would rise superior to
any extraneous influence, cone from what quarter it might.
—( Continued cheering.) Since he had been lately in
Scotland, it had been his lot, at the Conference inrdinburgh,
and now at the Delegate Meeting at Glasgow,. to hear more
of the condition if 'the mass of the people than he had known
before ; statements which it was impossible for him or for any
of his friends to hear withoutteelrngs of the deepest pain. The
manufacturers and the delegates, at the meeting of this day,
had unfolded to them the short and simple, but, he was afraid,
he must add the melancholy, annals of the poor. It was im-
possible to convey their situation in words more touching and
descriptive than in those of Dr. Johnson, and the truth of
which must have been confirmed by their own observation,
on which he says—
" Where penury retires to pine,
And labour steals an hour to the."—(Applause.)
What had been the nature of the evidence brought before them
in Edinburgh and Glasgow? There were three points which
powerfully arrested his attention. The first was the sleep
despondency which seemed to hare:seized upon the minds of
the people—a despondency amounting not only to idleness and
listlessness, but to apathy. It must have appeared, from the
description of the ministers and others most familiar with them,
that, in the language of Milton, "despair attends them from
couch to couch, and that it seems by its deadening touch to
have dulled their sympathies, till they are silent, not from the
absence of suffering, but from the severity of its pressure."—
( Hear, hear.) There yet remained another darker shade to
be drawn across this already darkened picture, and this was
again found in the evidence of the ministers of religion and
others, who had assured them that day, that in several of the
towns in this country, from inability to pay them, their me-
dical advisers had been foreed to' leave the place. So extreme
was the destitution, that the healing power itself had deserted
the spot, from inability in the wretched population to main-
tain it.—(Hear, hear.) The :Honourable Gentleman
made a long and eloquent speech, and concluded thus-
-1 trust that instead of following the bigoted and intolerant
part of the landed interest, that the labouring classes, and par-
ticularly those of our large town, will devote themselves to
those sources of real power, based upon moral and religious
ascendancy. And I hope that we of the middle classes will
ce-operate with them, and they with us, and that by agitating
for this great national object, we must ultimately triumph.—
( Hear, hear.) Yes, Gentlemen, the conflict will then become
apparent.—( Cheers.) It will be moral power and right reason
on the one hand, against prejudice and selfishness on the other;
and there can be no doubt which will triumph. The triumph
will be yours.--( Applause. ) Selfish interests will fall before
you, and titles, rank, or legislative ascendancy will no longer
prevail against the voice if a united people !
" Despite their titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch concentered all in self,
Living shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down,
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhenour'd, and unsung "
The Hon. Gentleman concluded by proposing the to ast.
Mr. WALTER. Buclia KAN, who was received with applause,
said he claimed a bumper to the next toast, whi, ch was the
,
health of the Hon. Charles Villiers, the mover of the ques-
tion for the consideration of the Corn-laws, and the other