The Sun.
London, England, 1820-03-31 00:00:00

FRIDAY, MARCH 31, M2O.

SPEECH Oil MR. 'CANNING

AT THE DINNER OF His FRIRNDS AT LIVEAPOOL,
MARCH le, I X2O.

GENTLFMEN—Short as the interval is Since I
last !net you in this place on a similar ccaiion,
the .events which have filled up that interval have
not been unimpurtiont. The great moral disease
►vhich we theu talked rat as gaining ground on
the community, has, since that period, arrived at
its most e,xtratri.)gant height ; 80, since that period
teinedirS have been applied to it, it not
of permanent cure, at least of temporary

Gentlemen,
,%Viai respect to those remedies,. I
incan with respect to the trausactiorrs of the last
short Session of Parliament previous .to the dis-
solution, I feel that.-it is my duty, as your Repre-
sentative, to render to you some account of the part
which I took in Ant assembly to which'you de-
puted inc i I tee!. JtAty Auty so:, as '4l M ember of
the Giiirirfitli:eliEbY'vihich those measures were
•advised. •Upon occasions of such trying exigen-
cies as those which we have lately experienced,
I hold it to be of the very essence of our free andH
popular Constitution, that an unreserved inter-
chonge of sentiment should take place bet‘Veen
the Representative and his Constituents ; 'and if
it accittentany happens, that he who addresses you
as your it:presentative, stands also io the situa-
tion of a responsible adviser of the Crown, 1 re-
co4trise in that occurrence a rare one indeed, a
not less striking or lesi valuable peculiarity of
that reviled Constitution under e,hich we iaave the
happiness to live : by which a Minisier of the
Crown is brought into contact the great
body of the community god the service of the
King is strewn to be a part of the service of the
People.
Gen-lemen, it has been one advantage of the
transactions of the last Session of Parliament,
that while they were addressed to meet the evils
.
which had grown out of charges heaped upon the
Howse of Cifintnons, they have also, in-.a great
measure, falsified the charges themselves. 1
would appeal to the recollection of eve; y man who
now hears me, of any the most careless estimator
of public sentiment, or the most indifferent specta-
tor or public events, whether any country, in any
two epcbs, however distant, of its history, ever
presented such a contrast with itsult as his cou try
in November 1819, and this country in January
1820

What was the situation of the country in No-
vember 1819 ?—Do I exaggerate when I say, that
there was not a mart of property who did not
tremble for his possessiont..? :hat there was .not
a man of retired and peaceable habits who did not
(remble for the tranquillity and security of his'
nom:: ) that there was not a man of orderly and
religions principles who did not fear that those
principles were about to be cut from under the
feet at succeeding generations ) Was there any
mart who did no, rear that the :',rown was in dan-
ger ? Was there any man attached to the other
branches of the Constitution who did not eon-
tempiate, apprehension and dismay. the rapid
and, apparently, irresistible diffusion of doctrines
hostile to the very existence of Parliament as at
resent constituted, and calculated to excite not
hatred and contempt merely, but open and audaci-
ous force, especially against the House of Com-
mons ?—What is, in these respects, the situation
the count!), now ) Is there a man of property
who does nct feel the tenure by which he bolds
his possessions to be strengthened Is there a
wan of peace who does not feel his domestic tran-
quillity to hare been secured ? Is there a man ot.
moral and religious principles who does not look
forward with better hope to see his children edu-
cated in those principles % who does not look, with
renewed confidence to the revival and
went of that moral and religious sense which
had been attempted to be obliterated from the
hearts of markind ?

Welt, Gentlemen, and what has intervened be-
tween the two periods ? A calling of that de-
graded Parliament, a meeting of that scoffed-et
and delided House of Commons, a concurrence
of those three branches of au imperfect Consfitu-e
lion, not one of which, it we are to believe the
Radical Reformers, lived in the beaus, or swayed
ti►e feelings, or commanded the respect of the
Nation ; ►►et which, despised 89 they were when
they were in a s:ate of separation and inaction,
did, by a co-operation.of four short weeks, re-
store order, confidence, a reverence for the
laws, and a just sense of their own legitimate
authority.
Another event, indeed, has intervened, in itself
of a most painful nature, but powerful in aiding
and confirming the impressions which the assem-
bling and the proceedings of Parliament' were cal-
culated to produce. I mean the loss which the
Nation has sustained by the death of a Sovereign,
wits► whose person all that is venerable in mo-
narchy has been identified in the eyes of succes-
si►e generations of his subjects ; a Sovereign
whose goodness, whose years, whose sort ows and
setietings must have softened the heart of the
most ferocious enemies of kingly power ;—whose
active virtues, and the memory of whose virtues,
~,•wen it pleased Divine Providence that they
should be active no more, have been the. guide
and guardian of his people, through many a weary
and many a stormy pilgrilnage s—scarce less a
guide, and (puke as much a gnaidian, in the cloud
of his evening darkness as in the brightness of his
ta:eridiat►

That sac!) a loss, and the recollec,,tions and re-
ficctions naturally brising from it, most have had
a tendent'v to revive. and refresh the attachment
co 11Int.:arch.y, and to root that attachment deeper
i,e4rts ot' the people, might easily be shewn
; a feeling truer thou all rea3uning

anticipates the retolt, and renders the process of
argument unnecessary. So tar, therefore, has
this great calamity brought with it its own com-
pensation, and worked, to the putting down of
fais.chiet throngliont tie country, With the mea-
sures adopted by Parliament.
And, Gentlemen, what was the character of
those measures ) The best eulogy of th,eln I take
to be this , it may be said of them, c has been.
said of sonic of die most c,pnstontnate 9100)14ptiolf
of literary art, that thongh no man belorehand
had exactly anticipated them, no man, wheli they
were laid before hint, did not feel that they Were
such as he would himself have suggested. So
faithfully adapted to the case which they were
framed- to meet ; so correctly ailjnsted to
degree:- and nature of the mischief which they].
were 'Attended to control, that while we all feer.
•thaf,tby have done their work, I think none will
say there bas been any thing in them of excess or
sopererogation.
We'-were loudly assured by the Reformers, that
the test throughout the country by which those
tvho were ambitious of seats in the new Parlia-
ment would be tried was to be—whether they bad
supported those measures. I have inquired, With
83 much diligence as was compatible with my
ditties here, after the proceedings. of other elec-
tions ; and I protest 1, know no place, besides the
Hustings of ‘lT'estruinster and Southwark, at
whiclohat menaced test has been put to any can-
didates. To me, indeed, it was not pia as a test,
but objected- as a charge. You know bow that
charge was answered ; and the result is to me a
majority of 1300 out of 2000 voters upon the
poll.
But, Gentlemen, though this question has not,
as was threatened, been the watchword of popular
elections, every other effort has, nevertheless,
been indostrioosly employed to persuade the coun-
try, that their liberties have been essentially
abridged by the regulation of popular meetings.
Against that one of the measures passed by Par-
liament it is that the attacks of the Radical Re•
formers have been particularly directed. Gentle-
men, the first answer to this aterment is, that the
Act leaves untouched all the constitutional modes
of assembly which have teen known to the na-
tion since it became free. We are fond of dating
our freedom from the Revolution.. 1 should be
glad to know, in what period since the Revolu-
tion (up to a very late period indeed, which I
will specify) in what period of those reigns grow-
ing out of the Revolution---I mean of the first
reigns of the [louse of Bi uns wick—did it enter
into-!he head of man, that such meetings could
be holden, or that rho Ltgislattoe would tolerate
the holding of such meetings, as disgraced the
country for six months previous to the last Ses-
sion of ? When, therefore, it is as-
serted that such meetings were never before sup-
pressed, the simple answer is, they were never
before attempted.
I verily believe the first meeting of the kind
that was ever called (I know of none anterior to
it) was that called by Lord George Gordon, in
St. George's-fields, in the year 1780, which ended
in the demolition of chapels and dwelling-houses,
the breaking of prisons, and the conflagration of
London. Was England never free till 1780 ?
Did British Liberty spring to light- from the ashes
of the Metropolis ? What 1. was there no freedom
in the reign of George the Second ? None in that
of George ,the First 2 None in the reign of Queen
Anne or of King William ? Beyond the Revolu-
tion I will not go ; but I have always heard that
British liberty was established long before the
commencement of the late reign ; nay, that in the
late reign (according to popular politicians) it
rather' sunk and retrograded ; and yet, never till
that reign was slid' an abuse of popular meeting's
dreamt of, much' less erected into a rigltt not to be
questioned by Magistrates and nut to be control 7
led by Parliament.

Do I deny, then, the general right of the peo-
ple to meet, to petition, or to deliberate upon
their grievances 3 God forbid ! Bot right is not
a simple, abstract, positive, unqualified term.
Nights are in the same individual to be compared
with his duties ; and rights in one person are to
be balanced with the tights of others. Now let
us take the right to meet in its most extended
construction. The persons who callrd the meet-
ing at Manchester tell you, that they had a right
to collect together countleiss multitojes to discuss
the question of Parliamentary Reform ; to collect
them when they would, and where they would,
without consent of Magistrates, or concurrence of
inhabitants, or reference to the comfort anti con-
venience of the neighbourhood. Now may not
the peaceable, the industrious inhabitant of Man-
chester say," I have a right to qoiet in my house;
I have a right to carry on my manufactory, on
which not my existence only and that of my chil-
dren, but that of my workmen and their numerous
families depends. I have a right to be protected
in the exercise of this my lawful calling. I have
a right to be protected, not against violence and
plunder only, against fire and sword, but against
the terror of these calamities, arid against the risk
of those inflictions ; against the intimidation or
seduction of my wotkiren ; against the distrac-
tion of that attention and the disturbance of that
industry, without which neither they nor I can
gain:our livelihood. .I call upon the laws to af-
ford me that protection ; and if the laws in this
country cannot afford it, depend upon it, I and
my manufacturers most migrate to some country
vkbere they can." Here is a conflict of rights,
between which what is the decision ? Which of
the two claims is to give way ? Cats any reason-
able being doubt ? Can any honest man hesitate ?
Let private justice or public expediency decide,
and can the deci6ion by possibility be other
than that the peaceable and iudustrionS shall be

[PRTCI SEVENPENer,

protected, the turbulent and mischievous put
(town ?

But what similarity is there between tumults
such as these and an orderly meeting, recognized
by the law for all legi,itnate'purposes 01 discussion
or petition ? Gott v....bid, that there should not be
modes of assembly by which "every class of this
great nation may oe brought together, to de-
liberate on any matters connected xith their in-
terests and their freedom, I, is, however, an in-
version of the na•tyal order of things, it is a
disturbance of the settled course of society, to re-
present discussion trs.every thing, and the ordi-
nary occupations of life as nothing.. To protect
the peaceable in their ordinary occupations is as
much the province of ►l►e laws, as to provide op-
portnnities of /discussion for every purpose to
wl►ich it is necessary and properly applicable.—
,Thei.ws do both ; but it is no part of the con-
trivance of the laws, that immense multitudes
should wantonly be congregated month after
month, and day after day, there, where the very
congregation of a r:►ultitude is of itself a source
of terror and of danger.
It is ho part of the provision of the laws, nor is
it in the spirit of them, that such congregations
should be brought together at the will of unau-
thorised and irresponsible individuals, changing
the scene of meeting as may suit their caprice or
convenience, and fixing, it where they have nei-
ther property, nor domicile, nor connexion. The
spirit of the law goes directly the other way. lc
is, if I may so express myself, eminently a spirit
of corporation. Counties, parishes, townships,
professions, trades, and callings, form so many
local and political subdivisions, into which the
people of England are disttibuted by the law :
and the pervading principle of the whole is that
of vicinage or neighbourhood, by which each
man is held to act under the view and inspection
of his neigl►bonts, to lend Eris aid to them, to
borrow then's; to share tl►eir councils, their du-
ties, and their burtbens; and to bear with them
his share of responsibility for the acts of any of
the members of the community of which he forms

a part.
The law, of the spirit of which I speak, is that
common law to which our Itetermers are so lOnd
Qf appealing on all occasions against the sta ute
law which modifies or explains it. Guided by the
spirit of that common law, what man is thele in this
cotttry,who cannot point to the portion of society
to which he belongs ? If injury is sustained, upou
whom is the injured person expressly cotitled to
come for redress ? Upon the hundrtd, or the
sion in which he has sustained the injury. Ou
what pi inciple ? On the principle, that as the lit-
dividnal is amenable to the division of the com-
munity to which he specially belongs, so neigh-
bours are answerallle for each other. Just laws,
to be sure, anti admirable equity, if a•stranger is
to collect the mob which is to set half Manches-
ter on fire ; and the burnt half is to come upon
the other half for indemnity, while the stranger
goes off, unquestioned,• by the.stage 1
Yet, that such was the nature,_ such the ten,.
dency, nay, that such, in all human probability,
might have been the result ot such meetings as
that of the.lti:h ot. August, vc,l)o can deny ? Who
that weighs all the particulars of that day's, trans-
action, compating-them with the rumours and the
threats that preceded them, will dispute, that such
might have been the restilt of that 'Very day's
meeting, if that meeting, so very legally assembled,
had not, by the happy,decision of the Magistrates,
been so very illegally dispersed
Ic is, therefore, not in consonance, but in con-
tradiction to the spirit' of the law; that such
meetings have been holden. The law prescribes
a corporate character. The callers of these meet-
ings have always studiously avoided it. No suzn
mons ot freeholders—none of fremen—uone,of
the inhabitants of particular idiots or parishes---
uo ot)ocal or; political classified:-
tion. Just so at,the beginning of the French,4e-
solut ion—the first work ot the liteformer,s.WdS, to
loosen every establish:a political relation, every
legal bolding cf titan destin'y every
Corporation, to dispuseeverysettled class 'of.so:
ciety, atitt to reduce the nation into
in order, afterwards, to congregate them into.
(.tribe._ _ _

Let no persori, therefore, run away with the
notion, that these things 'were done without de-
sign. To bring together the inhabitants of a,par-
ticidar division, or of men sharing a common fran-
chise, is to bring together an assembly, 'of which
the component parts act with some respect and
awe of each other ; in which ancient habits,
which the reformers would call prejudices, in
which preconceived: .attachments, whicn, they
%you'd call . corruption, in which that mittnal
te-
spect which makes the eye of a neighbour a secu-
rity for each man's good conduct, bat which the
reformers would stigmatise as a confederacy
among the few fur dominion
.over their fellows,
make men diflicnit to be moved on the sudden to
any extravagant' and violent enterptize. But
bring together a multitude of individuals having
no permanent relation to each other, no common
tie, but what arises from their concurrence as
members of that meeting, a tie dissolved as soon
as the meeting is at an end ; in such an aggtega-
tion of inditiduals there is no such mutual respect,
no such check upon the proceedings Of eaen man
from the awe of his neighbour's disapprobation ;
and if ever a multitudinous assembly can be
wrought up to purposes of mischief, it will be an
assembly so composed. How monstrous it is to
confound such meetings with the genuine avid rt-
cognised modes of collecting the sense of the
English people ! Was it by meetings such as these
that the Revolution was brought about, the great
event to which our ,antagonists are so tond'of re-
fetring Was it by a meeting in St. George's-
fields ? In SPafitids Its Smithfield Was it by