The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1858-11-15
REFORM IN ENGLAND

friends, for we cannot now call any of them our OPP
ponents-[ laughter but friends, the bcwil-
dered reformers, are beginning to use. They say
now We must not on any account Americanize our
institutions. Well, only know of one institution
in America of which the Americans need to be very
greatly ashamed, and that institution was estab-
lished under the monarchy, although unfortunately
it has lived and hourished under the republic
Hear, hear. They tell you that in America
numbers-you know what that means-overwhelm
property and education. Look at the legislation
OF England, look at our wars, look at our debt
look at our taxes, look at this great fact that
every improvement of the last forty wears has
been an Improvement which numbers, and num-
bers only, have wrested from the property and
what they call the education of the country Your
education surely is fairly represented by your uni
versities; but state now, as have stated before
that ifthe legislature of England had been guided
for thirty years past according to the councils of
the representatives of the Universities, England
instead of being country of law and order, would
have been long before this country of anarchy
and revolution. Hear, hear. This America is a
strange bugbear. Laughter. There are thirty
two at least, If not thirty-three Independent
reign States in the United States Of America. Now
am not one of those who believe that you cannot
be free and happy under monarchy such as ours.
am not prorosing-l am the last person to pro-
pose-that the institutions of this country should
be modelled upon the plan of some other country
because it is the plan of some other country; but
| say that looking all over the world we are
at liberty to draw science from every country
we draw products for our manufacturers from every
country; we draw literature from every country;
and why should we not. when we see ANYTHING good
in politics. why are we not allowed to learn also
from that in every country? Hear hear1 In
America there are thirty-two thrty-three sover-
eign and independent States. Speaking generally
in all of them there franchise as wide as that
have proposed tonight. There is an exactly equal
allotment of members to electors throughout most
of the States, when voters choose to avail them
selves of it; and yet in America we find law order,
nd nd ,lott, ,,t bo,
ment of physical comforts and abundance such as
are not known to the great body of the people in
this country, and such as are not known, and have
never, believe, been known in any country and
in any age of the world before. [Cheers. i
Now, does any man dare to tell me. in the
presence of this audience that the English nation
in England is worse nation than the English
nation in North America? Are we less educated2
Are we less industrious? Are we less moral? Are
less subject to the law? Are we less disposed to
submit to all the just requirements of government?
If we so, and if the English nation in America
excels US in all these particulars, does it not look
very likely that the institutions of England not
so good in the training and rearing of nation as
the institutions in the United States? don't say
that; but to those persons who say that the fran
chise, the distribution of seats, and the ballot,
which act so well in America would yet be perilous
in England, say they do what will not do-they
libel the people of this country and they libel the
institutions of this country.
He also spoke of the inequality of representation.
birmingham WIN pOpulaLlOn or ZoZ,UUU, sending
two members to Parliament, while Buckingh ham
shire with a population of 164 900, sends eleven
members, eve will ask ourselves, when we talk of
the question of reform, what it is we really want.
hold it to be this-that we want substitute, a
real and honest representation of the people for
that fraudulent thing which we now call represen-
tation. Loud cheersl :"
Speaking the house of Lords, he says of the
peer which am afraid you will not care to glance
at. (Cries of eco on''.) l am afraid he is crea-
ture-what shall say-of monstrous, may | not
say, of adulterous birth ,-the spiritual peer.
Hear, and laughter) You cannot get anything,
assure you, and you may place the most perfect be-
lief in what say, it is not in the nature of things,
it is not in human nature, that men in this posi-
ton and in these positions, would become willing
ly the fiuntain from which flow the good
things of freedom to the population of any country.
The Manchester Guardian thus comments on the
speech:
When Mr.. Ernest Jones denounced the British
constitution as the greatest legislative ever
inflicted on a nation, quiet men shrugged their
shoulders and sensible men smiled but no one took
any serious notice of the assertion its author.
Both were beneath rebuke or refutation. But
when Mr.. Bright advocates the adoption of demo-
cratic institutions by the example of America, and
gravely tells us that law and order respected
there-that life and property are secure in New
York and at Baltimore-the matter becomes too
grave to be passed over with the silent contempt
to which it would have been consigned had any
meaner man given utterance to similar absurdties.
Had such assertions respecting America been made
by ordinary demagogue in meeting of toerably
well informed men, the asserter would have been
laughed down with unanimous derision. When they
emanate from an orator who has few rivals in Eng
land and who has been in his day valuable and in
dustrious public servant we are compelled to treat
them as seriously as the nature of the case will
allow.
Mr. Brights indignant that we should be warned
against AmericaniziDg cur institutions Perhaps,
rardrp fhars Ua 10 for
beyond MIR. Brights immediate following, man
dreams of doing anything so utterly unreasonable.
But the member for Birmingham made haste to
prove that, as applied to himself such an admoni-
ton was most necessary. He evidently regards an
approach to the condition of America as the end
and aim of all efforts at political amelioraton in
this country. The nearer we come to the state OF
elderly" enjoyed by our transatlantic brethren,
the effectually shall we realize the wishes and
! aspirations of our late representative.
Mr.. Bright informs us that there is only one in
stitution IN their country of which Americans are
ashamed. We cannot assent to such a libel on our
distant brethren. We believe that all honest and
respectable men are heartily ashamed OF the House
of Representatives at Washington, of the elections
of Baltimore, of the democracy of New York. and
not few of them Disguised and sickened by the
working of that admirable system of secret voting
which the partisans of the ballot adore, happily for
u.s. at so safe distance. Whence does the mem
Der for Birmingham derive his ideas of American
feelings and opinions? 1t cannot be from the con-
speak with shame and regret of the mire into
which their country have been dragged by the
rabble of New York and the ogarchy of South
Carolina. ~
1t can hardly be from the democratic press-for
will not believe that even the most violent par
tisan of democracy can admire the pictures OF
American politics daily sketched by the New York
papers. 1t cannot be from the general news which
reaches of the dongs at New York and else
where, for man of peace cannot but depore the
atrocious duels and murders which are matters of
everyday gossip; and an honest man must con-
denim such an outrage as the burning of the Quar-
antine Station by the people of New York. crime
which will almost certainly go absolutely unpun-
ished by elective judges and authorities implicitly
subject to tho will of the mob. Whence, then,
does Mr.. Bright derive his conception of this second
Utopia7
When we are told that law and order exists, that
life and property secure, in this new Atlantis,
we cannot identify it with the United States of
actual time, land where assassinations al
most daily perpetrated with impunity; in many
parts of which the revolver is constant and neces-
sary companion; where Judge Lynch has superseded
all other authorities whenever the ordinary tribu-
nails do not perform the peoples bidding with sufi-
cient disregard of law and morality; and where, on
more than OCCASION an insurrection of the res
pectabe inhabitants has suspended the government
appointed by universal suffrage, and intrusted to a
rude committee of public safety the protection of
life and property from the lawlessness of the sover
eign people.
But there is one feature in which Mr. Brights
America resembles that of reality and it is in this
resemblance that the mischief of his misrepresenta-
ton lies Had he confined himselfto uogiums on
the preservation of peace and order in the United
States, no one would have believed him; and no one
would have cared to Americanize our government
for the sake of securing these blessings in the same
degree that they are enjoyed in Charleston Bati-
more. But it is true that physical comfort and the
prospect of wealth open to all classes in the
northern States, and if this great advantage were
owing to democratic institutions, it was repre-
Il Al 49, nnhn unnld h