Life of Sir Joshua Walmsley – Chapter XXI.

CHAPTER XXI. This chapter takes us from 1851 to the start of the Crimean War in 1854.  It’s mainly about Louis Kossuth who was a Hungarian émigré.  Louis Kossuth (1802 -1894) was a Hungarian nobleman, lawyer, journalist, politician, statesman and Governor-President of the Kingdom of Hungary during the revolution of 1848–49. He was regarded as a liberal European statesman, and was seeking Hungarian independence from the Hapsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hungary was a considerably larger country in the C19th, it lost 72% of its territory to neighbouring states in 1920.to Romania, Czechoslovakia,Serbia, Croatia, Slovakia, Austria, Poland, and Italy. 

Lord Dudley Stuart who was one of Kossuth’s main parliamentary supporters was the Liberal M.P. for Marylebone. He was the youngest son of the 1st Marquess of Bute, and his mother was a member of the Coutts banking family. He married Princess Christine Bonaparte (1798–1847) in 1824, following her divorce from Count Arvid Posse, when he was twenty-one, and she was twenty-six. Her younger half-sister Princess Letizia Bonaparte (1804–1871) had married Sir Thomas Wyse three years earlier aged just sixteen.

 

On the 23rd of October, 1851, Kossuth landed at Southampton, and his reception there was of the most cordial kind. A crowd of his countrymen waited his arrival, cheering loudly the moment they caught sight of him. The English crowd greeted him with their usual enthusiasm as a man who, though beaten and an exile, had done good service in the cause of liberty and reform.

Mr. Cobden’s letter is dated the 10th of November, 1851 :

” My dear Walmsley,

” I got your letter at the moment I was starting for Southampton to pay my respects to Kossuth, otherwise it should have been answered earlier. I found the Hungarian leader at Winchester, in Andrew’s house, where I passed part of a couple of days with him. He is very much what I pictured him — mild, pensive, and earnest. In his features he is not unlike the lithographs, which, however, have given a romantic touch to the expression of his face, and a depth of colour to his blue eye, which does not quite fairly represent the original. He is slight and delicate in person ; and, if I must confess it, I should add, that his tout ensemble does not impress me with the idea of that power which he must undoubtedly have possessed to have been able to rise to the foremost place in a revolution, and to sway such human materials as surrounded him in the Diet and the camp. I suspect that his eloquence and moral qualities were the main source of his strength. He is undoubtedly a genius both as an orator and a writer. His speech, in English, at Andrew’s dinner, for more than an hour, was delivered with scarcely a mistake. Under all circumstances, it was one of the most marvellous performances I ever listened to. There was little attempt at rhetorical display, but it was a masterly English speech. ”

After a few weeks’ sojourn in England, Kossuth started for America. It was not till his return in the latter part of 1852, that his acquaintance with Sir Joshua began. They met at Mr. Cobden’s house. Speaking of the Hungarian patriot, Sir Joshua said :

Lajos Kossuth, 1848

” His striking appearance, his gentlemanly bearing, the quick sensitiveness of his nature that found such ready expression in impassioned words, the keen sense of a mission imposed upon him, all this explained to me the influence he had exercised over his countrymen. In conversation, Kossuth often reverted to Hungary. He spoke in a spirit of discouragement, yet there always lurked in his words faith in his mission. ”

There appeared in The Times of the 15th April, 1853, the announcement that the house of M. Kossuth had been searched by commissaries, consequent upon intelligence received by the Secretary of State, and that there had been discovered ” a store of arms and ammunition and materials of war, which may be the stock-in-trade of a political incendiary, but certainly form no part of the household goods of a private gentleman in pacific retirement. ” At this announcement of breach of faith towards English hospitality. Sir Joshua wrote to Kossuth He received the following reply :

 

 

“ 2l, Alpha Road, April 15th, 1853.

” Dear Sir Joshua,

” In answer to your note, I have the honour to assure you that not only the statement of The Times referring to my house having been searched, and arms and ammunition been found, is from Alpha to Omega false, but I can also add, that should it be indeed the case that the laws of England do not protect men from the most odious of preventive police measures, ‘ a domiciliary searching,’ no such discovery of arms, &c., could be made ; as, be it good or bad, it is a fact that I have no store of arms and ammunition in England, nor ever had since I am on English soil. “

” Anticipating, as I indeed do, that the time will yet come when I will have to use arms in a good cause, I follow with constant interest every new invention and every improvement in the fabrication of firearms, and neglect no opportunity to get knowledge of them, and to ascertain their practical results ; but I know what is due to the laws of your country while I live under their protection, and therefore I have never tried to have any store of arms in England, and indeed neither had nor have, whether in my house or anywhere else within the boundaries of English dominions. “

” With high and sincere regards,

” Yours respectfully,

” L. Kossuth,”

Sir Joshua brought the question before the House of Commons on the following evening.

” Had M. Kossuth’s house been searched by order of the Government ? ”

Lord Palmerston’s answer was evasive.

“ A house, not occupied by M. Kossuth, at Rotherhithe had been searched, and large quantities of gunpowder and several war-rockets had been found on the premises. “

On this, Mr. Duncombe rose and gave the following explanation of the mystery : “ The house that had been searched, and in which war implements had been found, belonged to Mr. Hales, a trader in gunpowder, who six years ago had taken a patent for the manufacture of a certain sort of rocket. “

” He had offered his invention several times to the Government, and the sale of these rockets had been going on to foreign governments for the last six years. M. Kossuth was in no way implicated in the matter. ”

Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart (1803-1854), MP

The Liberals, headed by Lord Dudley Stuart, Mr. Cobden, Mr. Bright, and Sir Joshua Walmsley, took up M. Kossuth’s defence, and in his name disclaimed all underhand connection with the manufacture of war-rockets. The question was allowed to remain over, however, until Mr. Hales had stood his trial. The trial came off at the end of April. No evidence advanced could inculpate Kossuth. Lord Palmerston, in the House on the 5th of May, confirmed what the court had decided, ” that the evidence did not bear out or justify any proceedings against any other person, British or foreign. “ Once more M. Kossuth’s friends in Parliament warmly repudiated the charge so lightly made against him.

No patriot ever came into exile with cleaner hands than did M. Kossuth. He who had once had the control of the Hungarian treasury, was now nobly poor. We give the following letter, for it shows in what spirit he could accept help from the sympathisers of his country’s cause, but now he rejected it, when it came from others. The letter is dated February 3rd, 1854, when Government was still hesitating, temporising, and  “ drifting into war. “  It was a moment of supreme import to the Hungarian leader, one laden with issues momentous to his country.

” Dear Sir Joshua,

“Several topics of importance induce me to trouble you with this communication. But before I begin, I beg permission to express the high gratification I felt at witnessing the late juvenile party at your house. It was a charming, cheerful view, such as can do good to a sad heart, as mine but too much is.

” Now, at once let me jump in medias res. It is not the least of the many curses attending misfortune like that of mine, that we cannot help but submit to the imperious necessity of accepting personal favours from compassionate friends, favours weighing heavily on our heart and soul, because we don’t know if we can ever reciprocate them.

” However, when the misfortune which forced us into the category of subventioned individuals is of a public nature, which ennobles our unenviable but not dishonourable position by the character of martyrdom for a sacred and virtuous cause ; and when the favours offered originate in sympathy for that cause, we think we may accept them without degrading our character, because we consider them as marks of approval of our principles and of our public conduct ; then we receive them with gratitude, we accept them as an encouragement to pursue the course which good and honourable men thus countenance.

” But when a personal benefit comes from a man hostile to the cause we suffer for, from one of the oppressors of our country, then the favour thus proffered assumes quite the degrading character of giving alms; equally offensive on the part of the donor, who takes us for base enough to be able to endure such a humiliation, as it would be infamous on our part to receive it.

” No, the cup of adversity may be yet more fully poured upon my head than it already is, the most, horrid misery may be thrown in the scale ; I might see my dear wife and children near starvation, crying out with a silent tear for a bit of bread, and my heart breaking at the sight, but not even the bread which would save them from starving would I ever take from a man who, being a friend to the enemies of my country, is my own dear country’s enemy.

“There is a distinguished and influential gentleman in England, who by former manifestations entitled me fully to take him for a friend of the cause with which ray existence is identified, and I cherished him as such with sincere gratitude, quite as much as I honoured him and honour him for his moral and intellectual qualities. I took him so much for a friend, that I approached him with unbounded confidence ; so much so, that I had no hesitation in not only receiving, but even asking from him personal favours and assistance for myself and my fellow-exiles. Now, of late this gentleman showed himself in the most decisive manner an open abettor of my country’s enemies. I have no claim or other views from him ; he is not bound to be my country’s ally, but I can certainly not play ignorance and cannot consider him a friend when he is an enemy. From such a man I cannot be base enough to hold any benefits. What in taking him for a friend I accepted, nay asked from him, weighs already too oppressively on my breast. I am just about to sell whatever I have, and at whatever price, to acquit myself of the material part of my obligations towards him for the past ; and as for the future, I certainly will never receive the slightest personal favour from one who is my country’s enemy.

” And as I have reason to suspect that that gentleman took an active and prominent part in that generous arrangement for my family which I unhesitatingly, and my soul filled with gratitude, accepted from your kind and friendly hands ; and for which I so gladly owe to you the warmest and sincerest gratitude, I therefore beg leave very pressingly to entreat you to be pleased to communicate to me the names as well as the amount of each of the contributions ; else, not knowing who they are, I would be placed in the awkward position of not knowing how far I may continue a generous assistance of sympathising friends without submitting to the insupportable degradation of accepting alms from an enemy.

” My second request is, would you kindly inform me where and how I may get a copy of the Blue Books on the Oriental question ?

” Further, it is evident that pending matters must soon come to a decision. Either there will be a speedy transaction (compromise), or a serious war between Russia on the one hand, and England and France on the other. And, in case of war, Austria can no longer temporise ; she is forced to make her choice between the Western powers and Russia. Now, in case she sides with the Western powers, England and France will become her friends and allies, and therefore our enemies ; and we can have nothing to hope from England, neither as a state, nor from Englishmen as particulars.

” That’s evident, and that’s natural. But as that issue is not at all certain yet, as the contrary is equally probable, I cannot think that the ministers of a great country like this, living blindly from the hand to the mouth, could have neglected to make up their minds about the course of policy which they intend to follow in that emergency.

” And I cannot imagine that there should be wanting private individuals in England, who, upon the condition of seeing England at war with Russia, and Austria siding with Russia, would feel inclined (as then authorised they certainly would be) to constitute a centre of active and effective agitation for the facilitation of such an assistance, which in that case private sympathy may feel inclined to afford the oppressed nationalities, then the natural allies of England.

” Hence, I beg leave to ask from your kindness, first, in what way and by whom the Government may be asked confidentially (but not publicly) whether, in the case of the above supposition, and in that emergency only, it intends to make any use, or afford any favour, to the Polish, Hungarian, or Italian nationalities ; second, whom would you think to be the fit men to act (always upon the same condition) as a committee of friends of Hungary, that I might timely enter into some consultation with them about the mode of possible immediate action, once that emergency arriving?

“These are very important matters, dear Sir Joshua, and it is their importance which will excuse me for asking your advice, equally valuable, as it is urgently demanded by pressing circumstances ; else we may be surprised by events, and found unprepared to do what then might be done.

” Please to accept the assurance of my high esteem and affectionate consideration, with which

I have the honour to be,

” Yours respectfully,

” Louis Kossuth.

In March came the Queen’s message, apprising her people that the long-pending negotiations for peace had failed, and that she was at war with the Czar. The country received the message with acclamation. It had grown weary of diplomatic reserve ; it had lost faith in the conferences at Vienna, with their fluctuating results.

Life of Sir Joshua Walmsley – Chapter XX.

CHAPTER XX.  This chapter covers from February, 1849, when Josh was elected M.P. for Bolton, through to the spring of 1852. The family had left Ranton Abbey and were definitely in London by 1851. The census shows Josh and Adeline, with the two youngest girls living at 101 Westbourne Terrace, in Bayswater, just north of the park.  It was a grand address, in a newly-built terrace. According to the History of the County of Middlesex. ” The most spacious and dignified avenue is Westbourne Terrace, begun c. 1840 and ‘unrivalled in its class in London or even Great Britain’. The houses form long stuccoed terraces of four storeys and attic over a basement, with pillared porches, many of them designed by T. Marsh Nelson. They face carriage drives and were separated on either side from the tree-shaded roadway by screen walls surmounted by railings. ” The family had six servants, including 32 year-old scouser Thomas Randdes who was presumably a butler. Adeline had a French ladies maid. Next door to Radical Reform M.P. Sir Josh was Radical Reform M.P. Richard Cobden who was scraping by with only three servants.

Westbourne Terrace W.2

The Papal aggression, and the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill are fairly easily explained. The ” aggression ” was the restoration of the Catholic diocesan hierarchy by Pius IX in 1850, and the Bill was the government response to it, which made it a criminal offence ” for anyone outside the Church of England to use any episcopal title “of any city, town or place, or of any territory or district (under any designation or description whatsoever), in the United Kingdom. ” It was almost a dead-letter from the start, and was repealed twenty years later.

 

Sir Joshua now contested the borough of Bolton, for which he was returned in 1849. Though not an eloquent speaker, he possessed much ready tact. The town seemed divided into two factions, nick- named ” Broadcloths “ and ” Fustians.” At the close of a meeting, some person requested that they might hear their representative on Mr. Hume’s scheme of reform. The following evening was fixed for the purpose, and the hall overflowed with Fustian Jackets.

They listened with intelligent attention, and seemed to understand and approve of the scheme. Suddenly the unanimity of the proceedings was threatened. One of the Fustian Jackets rose, and in a speech full of dry humour and mother wit, criticised incisively the whole project. Each period wound up with the words : ” But I have a question to ask of our esteemed representative. “ This was spoken in a drawling tone, and each time provoked cheers and roars of laughter.

At last the query was put : “ Where, sir, are your Broadcloths to-night? “ This was pregnant with danger, pointing, as it did, to the smouldering enmity between classes, which kept the upper  absent from a workmen’s meeting. Sir Joshua rose. Complimenting the speaker on his ability, he continued : ” I must also ask him a question. Does he remember Queen Elizabeth’s reply when asked a similar one at a very important meeting.   ‘ Where were her guards ? ’  was the query. The Queen points to the masses before her : ‘ There are my guards,’ she replied. In the same language I would reply : ‘ There are my Broadcloths.’ The meeting proved a very successful one, and for years afterwards a very ragged jacket was always called in Bolton ‘ Walmsley Broadcloth ‘ . ”

In that year the National Reform Association, under his presidency, began its labours, and soon spread like a network over the country. Mr. Fox, Colonel Thompson, Osborne, Roebuck, Slack, and many others joined heartily in the movement, and became speakers or lecturers.

In the House, Sir Joshua never missed an opportunity to bring the question forward. No sooner were his parliamentary duties over than he scoured the country from Southampton to Aberdeen, addressing crowded audiences.

During the year 1850 alone, the Association held upwards of two hundred and twenty public meetings, and published one hundred and twenty thousand tracts. Conferences in London, Manchester, and the larger towns were held. Branch associations were fostered ; freehold land societies founded ; and in London, Drury Lane Theatre was engaged as a place of meeting. “ During the life of the Association,” says Sir Joshua, ” upwards of six hundred large meetings were held, and in no instance did we fail to obtain a vote in favour of our programme. “ Early in October, 1849, Mr. Hume, Mr. Fox, and Sir Joshua visited Norwich. St. Andrew’s Hall was crowded; the reception was enthusiastic, and filled them with hope.

St. Andrews Hall, Norwich

Here is Mr. Cobden’s view of the matter :

” October 6th, 1849.

” My dear Walmsley,

” I was much interested in reading the accounts of your proceedings. As an old hack in these matters, however, let me warn you against relying on the influence of these demonstrations. If such a meeting could be got up without the attendance of Hume, yourself, and other stars, it would have been a sign of spontaneous feeling. As it is, people can conclude that the meeting assembled to hear and stare at certain public men ; and, let me tell you, it is perfectly understood that with a moderate time for giving due notice in advance, the attraction of the names of those who figured in St. Andrew’s Hall would fill the largest room in the country.

Then comes the question, how such a demonstration can be turned to good ? Be assured it is only by impressing on your friends the benefits of organisation and steady work at the registration and at the forty- shilling freeholds, that any impression will be made.

Old Sir Thomas Potter used to wind up all his agitating speeches by these words, accompanying them with a heavy thump of his fist on the table : ‘Work, work, work!’ Try to impress the same on your friends. The Daily News to-day has an admirable article on your meeting, contrasting well with the rhodomontade [vain and empty boasting] of The Times, which shirks the question as usual.

” Believe me, faithfully yours,

“Richard Cobden,”

The same friendly greeting everywhere met the deputants of the Association. The Liberal London papers occasionally drew attention to the reports of crowded public meetings in provincial towns, and local papers reported the proceedings of branch societies, where the principles of the mother Association were discussed by the labouring and manufacturing classes. Yet, on the whole, this Reform movement attracted little public attention. One important result from it, after awhile, however, became manifest. The antagonism between the industrial and middle classes was declining. Meetings were held, at which a spirit of conciliation prevailed.

For example: “ At Aberdeen,” says Sir Joshua, ” where it was reputed that Chartism was rife, on the eve of the great meeting held by the Association, a committee of working-men was formed, where all agreed to renounce extreme views, in order to avoid giving offence to the middle classes. At the meeting, two thousand artisans, weavers, and mechanics attended, and cheered the speeches of the members of the Association. At Southampton, reputed another hot-bed of Chartism, the largest building in the town did not suffice to hold the crowd assembled to greet the suffrage reformers. A deputation of workmen attended. After my speech, the leader of the band stepped on the platform, and holding out his hand to me in the name of his fellow- workers, gave their adhesion to the principles of the National Reform Association. Up to that period, it had been impossible for the middle-class Reformers to hold public meetings, without interruption from the operatives, but now the two classes meet in every part of the kingdom. ”

Mr. Cobden acknowledged this important and beneficial result, at a Reform gathering held in Manchester, in 1851. ” By holding public meetings, “ he said, ” in the spirit of Mr. Hume’s motion. Sir Joshua Walmsley has conciliated large masses of the working-classes, and after many difficulties, he has enabled us to hold others in the same spirit. ”

Two absorbing interests filled the public mind, when Parliament met in February, 1851 —indignation at the Papal brief issued from the Vatican in the previous October, constituting an episcopal hierarchy in England and Wales ; and pleasant anticipations of the forthcoming great Exhibition. The feebleness of the ministry was admitted by all ; but the nation, looking forward to its holiday, hoped that when the measure for defeating the Papal aggression was passed, all needful work being accomplished, the ministry might yet get through the remaining labours of the session.

Lord John Russell

In the first week of the meeting of Parliament, the Premier brought forward the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, the scope of which we need not now enter upon. The anticipations, however, of a calm session, devoted to the accomplishment of a single enactment, were not realised. During the first lull in the discussion of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, Sir Joshua Walmsley asked Lord John Russell if it was the intention of ministers during this session to extend the franchise, and amend the deficiencies of the Reform Act of 1832.

Lord John answered that it was not the intention of ministers to do so during the present session, but promised certain amendments of the Reform Act, when the proper time came. This vague answer did not secure peace for the Government. Mr. Locke King followed a few nights after, on the 20th February, with the request for leave to bring in a bill to make the franchise in counties in England and Wales the same as in boroughs, i.e. the occupation of a tenement value ten pounds a-year. In the course of his speech, opposing Mr. Locke King’s motion, Lord John Russell gave a distinct pledge to bring in a new Reform Bill, should he be in office in the course of the ensuing session. He admitted that his views would not ” altogether meet with the approbation of the hon. member for Montrose and other gentlemen who agree with him; but, “ he continued, ” considering that by next session twenty years would have passed since the passing of the Reform Bill, I think it desirable to consider whether there are not great numbers of our fellow-countrymen not possessed of the franchise, who are fully qualified to exercise the suffrage, and whose exercise of the suffrage would tend to the improvement of the House. ”

Mr. Cobden attended the first meeting of the Association, at the London Tavern, after Lord John Russell’s declaration. His presence at this meeting testified to the altered position of the reform question. In simple and magnanimous language, Mr. Cobden now rendered homage to the work done by Sir Joshua and his council. ” I may say that I was a subscriber from the first to his National Reform Association. Sir Joshua Walmsley knows how I have sympathised with him, and at the same time how I frankly told him I could not boast of working as he had done. I have taken no prominent or active part in the agitation conducted under his auspices, but I feel no less warmly thankful to those who have done so; those who have kept the lamp of reform burning, and have trimmed it at a time when it was very likely to be neglected by the great body of the people. I feel grateful to all who have done so, under circumstances of neglect from myself and others. ”

He declared the question the Association had in hand the most practical one that politicians had to deal with ; and distinguishing, as Sir Joshua had always done, the reform of the suffrage from the reform of every other interest, he called upon the people ” to throw themselves into the question of parliamentary reform, in a way that would prove to the world that the English people had not lost that old attribute of their nation, that they knew how to seize the proper time for doing their own work in their own way. ”

After a short trip on the Continent to recruit his health. Sir Joshua returned and once more took his place at the head of the movement. Always unsparing in energy to attain whatever object he had set before himself, his labours during the recess of 1851-52 were excessive. As president of the Association, he took upon himself the management of its organisation, and bore the whole anxiety of its economical arrangements. His correspondence was a weighty item in his day’s work, for he adhered during this busy period to his invariable custom of answering by return of post every communication that called for a reply. As president, where fellow-workers were not called upon to attend, he was present at every meeting held by the Association, and these meetings were now held in every town, often with only interval enough to allow him to travel from place to place. Refusals to help in the work of stirring up an inert people came from the stanchest and oldest friends of progress.

The following letter from Mr. Hume accounts for his refusal, and gives also an interesting account of a recognition of his services by his native place :

” Glen Quart, 2nd October, 1851.

“ It is my anxious desire to forward the cause of reform in the most efficient manner, and consistent with the views and intentions on the subject of onward movement and the state of my health.

” I am much better, but always tired and done up at night, which proves to me that the stamina is not quite sound as yet, and that I must take care of my health. That is one reason. But the chief one is, that it is not consistent with my views for strangers to take the lead in any public measure affecting all classes, such as reform in Parliament, where the inhabitants of the place do not move and act in chief.

” There is no reason whatever why I should force myself, uncalled-for, by the people of Liverpool ! I could not avoid attending my own boroughs, as there I was on my own dunghill, but I declined to appear at Aberdeen, as I should have done at Inverness if asked. But, unknown to me, the magistrates and council met, and voted me the freedom of their borough and placed me next on their list to Lord Gough and Prince Albert. I had only been two hours in the borough (and without seeing one of that body) on my route to Red Castle, seven miles off, when the compliment was paid, and I declined to a deputation of magistrates who came the seven miles at 8 A. M. to invite me to a public dinner, but consented to drive in next day, Saturday, the 29th, at one o’clock, to receive the freedom. I desired that to be a meeting of the magistrates and council alone, but the anxiety of the inhabitants generally that I should pay the town a visit, induced me to agree to the meeting. I send you a newspaper and you will see what I have said, and as far as I can learn, all classes are satisfied. Now, it is impossible for me to get to Liverpool or any other place in England merely to make a speech (Scotland is my own field) as you propose to me.

“ If I had to receive the freedom, or any other fair and reasonable excuse, I would with pleasure meet your views when you consider that the cause we have at heart must thereby be promoted, and I hope that explanation will meet your approbation, though against your wishes.

” I think, at my age, I ought not to run the risk of being considered and called an itinerant agitator. As president of the Reform Association, you can appear anywhere the Association is wanted, but I cannot do so with propriety.

“ I hope to be in London by the 10th, as Mrs. Hume has only given me leave to the 14th to be at Somerton, where I am much wanted.

” My daughter has been enjoying the scenery here, which is really stupendous, and grander than any I had thought was in Scotland, and if the (time ?) admitted my friends in this part of the country would detain us longer.

” I remain, yours sincerely,

“Joseph Hume.”

Free Trade Hall, Manchester

The Free Trade Hall, Manchester, peopled with memories of the Anti-Corn League, was held to be the fittest place in which to inaugurate the new series of the society’s meetings. Mr. Cobden was unable to attend. While still on the Continent, Sir Joshua had received the following letter, declining to do so :

” Midhurst, September 10, 1851.

” My dear Walmsley,

” We are glad to learn that you have carried off Lady Walmsley and your family to the other side of the Channel, and hope to hear that they are deriving great benefit from the change of air and scene. I am leading the life of a hermit here, entirely out of the world, without any companions or acquaintances beyond my own family circle. We are in a thriving way, the children are as wild as young lambs in April. I got a letter from the secretary of the Reform Meeting, but I found it absolutely necessary in self-defence to decline the invitation. If I go to the North on the 24th, I can’t come back again. Already there are several engagements hanging over me for Yorkshire and Lancashire, and my only chance of escaping for a time from the platform treadmill is by declining to break corn at all. I don’t exactly understand the object or character of your intended meeting. If it be a gathering of Chartists offering the right hand to those who advocate Hume’s four points, the more it preserves the form of a working-class assembly the better. But, if it be intended for a Manchester demonstration in favour of a new Reform Bill, you must take care to secure the  attendance of the influential men of all classes. Whatever may be the nature of your gathering, I do not doubt that it will be abundantly satisfactory in point of numbers.

” The difficulty will be in forming and sustaining an organisation for permanent action. There never was much enthusiasm in favour of political reform in the manufacturing districts whilst trade was prosperous, employment good, and bread cheap, which you will be glad to find is the case now. And the present glorious harvest weather for the North of England seems to place all danger of any reverses out of the question for next year. Now, this is the safe time for making reforms, and if men acted from calm reflection and sober reasoning, instead of wild and sudden impulse, this is the time we should choose for amending representation. Let us hope that after the Exhibition closes the nation will consider its holiday ended, and begin to occupy itself with serious business. I shall look with interest to your proceedings in Manchester as the opening of the campaign and with kind regards to all your circle.

Very truly,

Richard Cobden.”

The meeting took place on September 24th, Mr. Wilson being in the chair. It principally consisted of working-men, who crowded every comer of the hall. This meeting was the first of a series held in every large town in the kingdom. Sir Joshua Walmsley’s speeches delivered during this time were the careful exposition and vigorous advocacy of Mr. Hume’s scheme of reform. We may sum up their tenor thus : Abridged duration of Parliaments, in order to preserve identity of opinion and purpose between representatives and their constituents. Extension of the suffrage, in order to bring within the pale of the constitution the interests and opinions of the unrepresented masses. Equality amongst constituencies, in order to insure a real and fair representation of national electors. The ballot as an indispensable requisite to honest elections.

We have mentioned incidentally the attempts made by the more violent Chartists, known as ” Physical Force Chartists, “ to obstruct the movements of the Association. ” On one occasion,” says Sir Joshua, “it happened that a large hall had been taken by the Association, where deputies from various parts of England, who had attended the congress for the consideration of the reform question, were to assemble; the hall, with the exception of the places reserved for the deputies, was as usual left free to the public. When the evening came, the delegates found to their consternation that every corner of the hall was packed with Chartists. At the first resolution proposed by Mr. Hume, who occupied the chair, Mr. Ernest Jones, who evidently possessed the confidence of the assembled crowd, rose, and moved a counter-resolution of adhesion to the people’s Charter, amidst tremendous cheering. I took the situation in at a glance, and saw the error we had committed in giving free admission to the hall. “

” Instead of discussing the reform question, I asked the chairman’s permission for this evening to debate with Mr. Ernest Jones the people’s Charter. Permission being granted, Mr. Ernest Jones was invited to say his say on the platform. His speech was fluent, plausible, and was received with storms of applause from the assembly, who did not perceive now utterly it had drifted from the question in hand. The subject of the Charter was scarcely touched upon. He launched into superficial platitudes connected with the intricacies of capital and labour. “

” When the loud cheers had partly subsided, I rose, and asking for fair-play and a quiet hearing, at once proceeded to answer Mr. Ernest Jones. It was a difficult task. The sympathies of the crowd were against me, and were fully roused. In a few words I pointed out that Mr. Jones had wandered from the question. The principles of the Charter had been the subject proposed. Little discussion, I showed, was necessary on this point, for on the Charter as a declaration of principles, there was no difference amongst us. The real object of Mr. Jones’s speech was to bring into antagonism, instead of into co-operation of mutual interests, the working classes and their employers. ‘ This cry of capital as being opposed to labour. ’ I said, ‘ is a miserable fallacy, and an unworthy attempt to create ill-will and inflame the passions rather than to convince the reason of the masses. I shall dispose of it by asking this simple question of the working-men around me : What would be the position of labour in the present state of society without capital? ‘ “

” I concluded by making it clear how much Mr. Jones had underrated the value of the extension of the suffrage, for which the Association was agitating. At the close of my address, there was a division, and from the lately hostile assembly less than one hundred hands were held up for Mr. Jones’s views. This is not the only occasion in which we have met with opposition from the more violent Chartists, but on none were our objects or our propositions defeated. With a just cause, the good sense and truthfulness of the masses may be successfully appealed to. ”

Some slight division of opinion still existed between the leaders of the Association and a few of the Liberal members of the House of Commons. On the general principle of Mr. Hume’s scheme they were united; on some minor points they differed. To argue out these points, it was decided to call a conference at Manchester. The invitation came from the Lancashire and Yorkshire Liberals.

Here let us insert an amusing letter from Mr. Hume, giving a hint how to treat a rival’s opposition :

” Burnley Hall, 20th November, 1851.

“My dear Sir Joshua,

“ I have yours of the 14th, and I am pleased that you are to be here soon, as the time approaches for the movement in favour of reform. It is impossible for me to leave this place, on many grounds, and therefore you must not think of it.

” I take a different view from you as to your course in the council of the R. and F. Association. Your address in the first place is too long to be read, in the second place it is throughout complaining, as if you were fearful the demonstration at Manchester were to oppose your parliamentary reform movements, and I consider that bad tactics. I believe there is great jealousy of you and of your movement, and that some of the parties would, if they could, throw you overboard and take the lead, as if they and they only were the parties to head and to urge on the movement.

“I would do as we did in 1810-11 with the education movement. I was on the committee of the Lancastrian move, and on behalf of the Dukes of Kent and Sussex, kept their movements right. At a time when Churchmen opposed the education of the masses, they at first took no notice of our progress ; then when they found we had made and were making progress, they resolved to  establish their own association (known as the Baldwin Court Association) for the Church alone, limiting the teaching to Church-men’s children or such as would read the Bible alone.

” At a public meeting at the Freemasons’ Hall, the Duke of Kent in the chair, I moved resolutions that we considered education (as you have done reform in the manifesto or address — I don’t like manifesto — at Manchester) essential for the future welfare of the people, and we congratulated the country on the establishment of the Baldwin Court Association in aid of the cause of education. We hailed them as coadjutors in the great cause, and we urged them to do their best to promote it, though limited to their own Churches, whilst ours was education for all.

” I did the same when King’s College was set up, in opposition to Gower Street University ; we held the King’s as an assistant and coadjutor, etc

” We never showed any symptoms of jealousy, as 4 if they intended to injure us. Now, if you take the same course, make the corrections of the address on the 27th, as far as I have sent you, leave out all the rest. Congratulate the country, or rather the friends and advocates of reform, that so influential a body as the Yorkshire and Lancashire proprietors and manufacturers were at length awake to the importance of the question ; and as Cobden, Bright, and others have subscribed to my motion, you take care to assume that their advocacy of these four points (as set forth in my motion, which should be copied verbatim) will do great good, and convince Lord John that nothing less than what I ask for can be proposed ; take it for granted that those who meet at Manchester (especially as Mr. Wilson, who was your chairman, will be in all probability their chairman) must at the least support all we had advocated.

” Indeed, they should advocate, as the first move, the abolition of sixty or seventy places like St Alban’s (into Schedule A), and then take my motion (or your address) as their problem.

“Treat every meeting as in aid of you, and as arising from your late efforts, and show not one breath of fear or alarm at the conduct of the cotton lords, although there is reason to believe they do not mean us well.

” I hope these few words will be enough to indicate to you the course I would take.

” When you fix the day for your public meeting, I will send you a letter of excuse to read, and will take the course I have chalked out, which I feel confident is the true one to take. The more slippery the point you have to deal with, the more my plan is recommended

” Yours sincerely,

“Joseph Hume.”

On Wednesday, 3rd of December, the conference was held at the Spread Eagle Inn. In the evening, a meeting of seven thousand people assembled in the Free Trade Hall. Mr. Bright, in a speech of massive and luminous eloquence, set forth the resolution agreed to at the morning conference.

On the ballot, triennial Parliaments, and a redistribution of the electoral franchise, the delegates were all agreed.

On the question of the suffrage, some dissent existed ; the more advanced Liberals opposing the insertion of a rate-paying clause as a condition of the exercise of the franchise. There had been some debating also on the necessary length of residence.

These were minor points of divergence, and the leaders of the Reform movement agreed to overlook them. Mr. Cobden, Mr. Bright, Mr. Hume, and Sir Joshua Walmsley laboured strenuously to preserve unanimity amongst their followers. There was in truth no practical difference between them; but some amongst them could not be made to see that, and imprudent speeches were sometimes made at public meetings.

” If there is a difference between us, “ writes Mr. Cobden, ” it is only in details, and not such as should induce reformers to place themselves as wranglers and quibblers amongst themselves in the face of their enemies. ”

Again he writes on the same subject :

” Midhurst, 15th January, 1852.

“My dear Walmsley,

” In reply to your inquiry about the mode of uniting the Metropolitan and Northern movement, I repeat I can see no differences to adjust; at least not in your programmes. There have been personal causes of alienation, almost exclusively arising from the class remarks of our friend Thompson, levelled at the large employers, who constitute the money strength of the Liberal party in Lancashire and Yorkshire. He seems unfortunately to have spoken under the influence of soured feelings, which have left a sting that will not easily be cured. I stick to my often-repeated doctrine, that the Northern capitalists, with all their imperfections, are the most liberal of their order in this United Kingdom. I speak particularly of the mill-owners and manufacturers of Lancashire and Yorkshire. They stand almost alone of their class, for even in Staffordshire and the other iron districts, you rarely find men of their wealth with the same disposition to share political power with the people. I foresee a complete deadlock and jumble of political parties in the House in the approaching session. If the Irish members should be faithful to their mission, they may knock the Whigs about like ninepins ; nor can any party govern until the country is prepared to recognise the principle of religious liberty as thoroughly as it does that of Free Trade, and repudiates as completely all interference by Parliament with Catholics as with corn. But what will your flaming Liberals of The M. D. Advertiser and The Daily News say to that ?

I hope to be in London next week, and we can then talk over matters. Meantime,

“I remain, very truly yours,

” RICHARD COBDEN. ”

Mr. Hume also wrote :

” Burnley Hall, 26th January, 1852.

“My dear Sir Joshua,

” In respect to the threatened extension of the parliamentary reform beyond what was agreed upon as a fair and wise compromise in 1849, at the meetings previous to the wording of the motion that should comprehend what we had agreed upon, I can only remark that the advocacy, at the coming conference, of such extreme principles would be very unwise, and tend to shake the ranks of reformers throughout the country.

“I observe that the principles comprehended in our motion have been very generally approved of by the mass of the working classes (who are the parties chiefly excluded), and whoever disturbs that feeling is not a friend to progress.

“No man will stand on strict principle more than I will, when any good object is to be gained. But as I really desire to see the scheme of reform we proposed carried out, I hope we shall keep true to the compromise.

” In a free government like England, where every man is a politician, I may say with truth that every act of the Legislature is an act of compromise ; and he is the wise man that compromises to carry out good measures. Let us therefore act with consistency and wisdom, in that respect ; and I hope your council will well consider what I have stated as the course we can take in the coming contest. I shall not listen to a ten-pound or a five-pound franchise, but hold to the constitutional principles as set forth in the motion.

“I shall be up on Monday evening, and if you have anything to communicate to me before then, write to me here.

“ It is a delightful day, after a stormy night of wind and rain.

” Yours sincerely,

” Joseph Hume. ”

On the 3rd February, 1852, Parliament was opened by the Queen in person. The royal speech recommended an amendment of the representative system. On the 9th, Lord John Russell brought forward the measure that was expected would be the finishing touch, given by the author himself, to his own Reform Bill of 1832. The liberal spirit and bold handling that had marked Lord John’s work twenty years before, were nowhere visible in this supplement which he now laid before the House.

It was a superficial measure without the backbone of principle, that timidly dealt with details, without going to the root of any of the existing anomalies, or removing any of tHe evils which the first measure had left standing. To extend the franchise, and yet leave undisturbed the existing adjustment of interests and classes, was the problem Lord John set to himself.

He prepared to give the borough franchise to five- pound householders, the county franchise to be rated at twenty pounds a-year. There was to be some reduction of long leaseholds and copyholds, and a vote given to all who paid two pounds a-year in assessed taxes. The property qualification, also, for Members of Parliament was to be abolished.

The characteristic feature of the Bill was the manner in which Lord John proposed dealing with the small dependent boroughs. One principle the Premier rigidly maintained — that there must be no disfranchisement. Some anomalies were to be patched up. Small constituencies were to be enlarged by annexing adjacent towns to the existing boroughs. The scheme seemed fair enough at first sight, but on examination its glaring incongruities became manifest- Towns were to be harnessed together that had no link of common interest ; and large cities, that could not thus be yoked, were to be left still unrepresented.

The Reform League, headed by Mr. Hume, accepted the measure as a step in advance, but unanimously expressed disappointment at its narrow scope and unphilosophical spirit. Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright deplored especially the omission of the ballot. Sir Joshua Walmsley attacked the Bill for countenancing the evils left standing by the Reform Bill — the pocket-boroughs.

” There are fifty or sixty boroughs, “ he said, in the course of his speech, ” having less than five hundred voters, returning two representatives to Parliament. There are six hundred and twenty-seven towns, assessed to the income-tax to the amount of fifteen millions three hundred thousand pounds, that are totally unrepresented. Does Lord John suppose that such places will be satisfied to remain unrepresented, except such representation as they find through county constituencies ? ”

After some discussion, leave was given by a large majority to bring in Lord John’s Bill. The Times had prophesied that in the second Reform Bill, and in its history, “ we shall probably find the old parallel of the Iliad and the Odyssey “ But Lord John was not to write his Odyssey yet.

A ministerial crisis was at hand. On the 16th of February the Government, following in the wake of the panic out-of-doors, brought forward its Militia Bill On the 23rd of February, owing to a majority of eleven in favour of Lord Palmerston’s amendment. Lord John resigned. The Tories now came into power, and with their advent expired for the present all hopes of parliamentary reform. The National Reform Association, undaunted by failure, continued its labours, sending forth lecturers into all parts of the country, supervising the registration, organising freehold land societies.

On the 25th of March, undismayed by the triumph of his opponents, Mr. Hume, who for forty years had never been deterred by ridicule or unwearied labour from advocating the people’s cause, launched forth another protest against the existing corruption and abuses of the representative system. Sir Joshua seconded the quadruple resolution. After a lengthy, but somewhat abstract debate on Reform, the motion was lost, only eighty-nine members having voted for Mr. Hume’s four points.

Life of Sir Joshua Walmsley – Chapter XIX.

CHAPTER XIX.  This chapter covers more of 1848, with a couple of letters taking us up to 1850.  The Corn Laws had been repealed in 1846, splitting the Tories. Sir Robert Peel largely did it to prevent a clamour for more radical reform, in particular from the Chartists. There were  revolutions all over Europe looking for electoral reform and greater participation in political life by the middle and working classes. So it was a heady time.

It is also quite clear that Josh, Cobden, and Joseph Hume are looking for bourgeois rather than radical reform – taking power from the aristocracy and landowners, and increasing the power of the industrialists and manufacturers. So Josh is Radical but not too radical. He’s still a year away from becoming an M.P, and a part-owner of the Daily News, because as said in chapter 18 ” It was owing in some degree to his friend Cobden’s expressed desire to see a new paper started to uphold the doctrine of non-intervention, that Sir Joshua became a part proprietor of the new Liberal organ, The Daily News. ” 

” Poor Bentinck ” referred to in Cobden’s letter is Lord George Bentinck (1802-1848), third son of the 4th Duke of Portland who was the leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons between 1846 and 1848 who had died of a heart attack four days before Cobden’s letter. 

 

Previous to starting the National Reform Association, Sir Joshua made a tour through the North of England. He had lost his seat for Leicester, but the fifty members of parliament who had formed themselves into a committee to advocate Reform principles passed a resolution, inviting him to continue honorary secretary to their body, and he had consented to do so. The result of this tour he gave in a letter to Mr. Cobden, which has unfortunately been lost, but the import of which may be gathered from the following answer :

” Hayling Island, Hants, 25th September, 1848.

“My dear Walmsley,

”I have been a good deal interested with the perusal of your letter, giving me a sort of political stock-taking of public opinion in the North.

Much depends for the future upon the course of events on the Continent. If the Germans fall into anarchy, or the Red Republicans get the upper hand in France, our middle classes will cower under the wings of the aristocracy for safety and protection, and you and I may close our accounts as agitators for awhile. In the meantime the economy and retrenchment cry is working and bringing people gradually to the ranks of the parliamentary reformers.

The Daily News is doing the part, and indeed, all parts, admirably, and it would be a pity indeed if, with such an efficient corps of writers, the paper cannot be not merely sustained but strengthened. By-the-way, I got a letter from Birmingham the other day, giving some details of the working of an association for buying county freehold votes. It is succeeding and extending its operations into the neighbourhood, and I feel quite convinced that this forty-shilling freehold scheme is the only certain though slow way of beating the aristocracy; and so I have said in a letter to the society, which will be read at the anniversary meeting on the 6th of October. Poor Bentinck ! what phantoms we are and what bubbles we pursue ! My wife joins me in kind regards to Lady W. and yourself.

“ Believe me, faithfully yours,

” Richard Cobden.”

An association had been started in Liverpool, under the name of the Financial Reform Association. The principal object of a visit paid by Sir Joshua to his native city was to see this body, and to attend a meeting to be held in the Portico, Newington, on the 29th September. The purpose of this association, as its name implies, was to enforce the principle of economy in public expenditure. It advocated also a system of direct taxation, levied upon property and income, instead of indirect taxation upon commodities.

The reform of the House of Commons, however, was not included in its programme, and in the estimation of Mr. Hume and his adherents, the reform of the House once effected, all other reforms would follow. On the appointed evening the meeting came off. It was crowded. This short extract from Sir Joshua Walmsley’s speech is a curious statement of the proportionate taxation of England relatively to other countries at that time :

” State taxation in the United States, in Russia, Prussia, and Austria, does not exceed nine shillings to twelve shillings per head, in France it is twenty-six shillings, whilst in our own it is fifty-two shillings and sixpence. In other countries the chief taxes are borne by the land, in this by the labouring classes. ”

In the following letter of Mr. Cobden’s relating to this meeting, one phrase in it, alluding to his own probable length of days, now reads like a mournful prophecy :

” Hayling Island, 4th October, 1848.

“My dear Walmsley,

” Many thanks for your letter and the newspaper, giving an account of the Liverpool meeting. You hit the nail right on the head. Don’t be afraid to repeat the blow again and again in the same place ; it is by such means only, that the arguments or the nail can be driven home. I was struck with the same impression as yourself, when reading Gladstone’s remarks, viz. that he gave proofs of being in earnest by his attacks on all sides — Peel, Lord Lansdowne, M’Neile, and the Tories ! I observe what you say about our friend Hume’s anxiety to send out an address ; this is the fit of weakness which has displayed itself in occasional attacks during the session. You and I may be well excused if we have not greater foibles before we reach his age, which you may, but I shall not. However, we must try to keep him quiet. The task before us will not be accomplished by proclamation, or even public meetings or petitions ; but by hard work, done in the same methodical way in which we conduct our private affairs. Yet public meetings and addresses and speeches must form a part of our operations. My first appearance must be in Yorkshire, but I do not yet know how or when. You will legitimately appear at Liverpool, because you are one of them ; but I think they had better not invite me to their meeting in the Amphitheatre, which ought to be a local affair to command attention.

I wish you were able to be present at the Birmingham freehold anniversary, on Friday evening next. That is a movement which, if rightly started and sustained, may accomplish anything ; but there should be an association in every division of a county in which there is a town population. For instance, Liverpool should undertake to wrest South Cheshire from the squires and parsons, and Manchester should do the same for North Cheshire. What say you to a trip up to Birmingham, to make the acquaintance of Mr. Taylor, and to inspect their plan of operation ? I shall remain here for three weeks more, if the weather be favourable; but it is my intention to run up to town for two days, to meet Mr, Bastiat from France, who has come over for a few days. ”

The following extract from a letter of Mr. Hume, dated Burnley Hall, 17th November, 1848, shows what the staunch old man, now failing in health, expected from Reform, and also his radical divergence of purpose from the one of the Liverpool Financial Reform Association.

Burnley Hall, Norfolk

” It has disappointed me greatly that I was not in town to have met you and Mr. Cobden as contemplated, and I regret that I shall not be in town this month. I have not yet made arrangements for December, though I feel inclined to remain quiet here, as I find the frame not equal to the spirit. “

” I observe with regret, that in the country there does not seem to be that desire for parliamentary reform which is at the root of all reforms. I observe further that the Liverpool association does not attack the army navy, ordnance, and colonies, the four chief sources of expense, but confine themselves to the personal salaries and some of the smaller establishments ; although I admit the proceedings abroad have been very unfavourable to any large reduction in these branches of the national expenditure. I agree with you, that reduction and equalisation of the taxes must be the object in view. But to be true to our principles we must look to a change in the House of Commons, as the best and only effectual means of effecting these objects. “

” I am surprised that such men as form the committee in Liverpool cannot see that, with half the House members of the aristocracy, quarter of naval, military, and officials, it is absurd to expect effectual reduction or relief until that proportion is changed. “

“I am now told that the experience of the Continent shows that general suffrage here would not improve your House much, and that the aristocracy and their connections will continue to rule and direct. If that be true, the more direct we can make the taxes, the sooner the burden will reach the aristocracy. “

” I believe that the course taken by the Birmingham association for the multiplication of freeholds is one of the best that can be adopted, and that I think we should consider how best to promote and extend over the counties in England and Scotland. I despair of anything good from Ireland, where everything appears so bad — hopeless I would say. I may observe that the proceedings in Yorkshire, in coquetting with Fitzwilliam, as all the towns have done, is but a poor example of what we may expect should be done. If the strong and rich Reformers in Yorkshire will not take the manly course of starting one of themselves for the seat, what have you to expect from the poverty-stricken, priest and aristocratic ridden population in other parts of the country ? Nothing ! “

“I hope Mr. Cobden has advised the union in some manufacturer, or well-known Liberal man of the people ; and let the result be for or against us, it must be an argument we may use. “

” I quite concur, if there be one or two able men with sound discretion, that can be employed to visit all the boroughs without distinction, to inquire and try what organisation can be made in each place for the purposes of making freeholds, promoting registrations, and keeping together all the Reformers to our extent of reform. But I think that should not be done by our committee, which should stand, as we have done, on our principles, and call on each community to take the best course to support us. “

“If that could be done by such a man as Mr. Wilson and originating in Manchester, so as to keep our committee free, I think we should be better able to keep our own in the House, and make our appeals to the spontaneous proceeding of the several constituencies as they came forward to support our motion.”

” I should hope that those who have hitherto as Chartists divided the Reformers, may now, from the experience they have had, be disposed cordially to act with us, though we may not be so forward as they could wish. “

“I see the good effects of Mr. Cobden’s moving in furtherance of those proceedings as every movement of his in Yorkshire has had a good result. But I think he should in that respect be as an individual. I have thrown out my views, at first thought, of what you have mentioned ; but I shall be ready to concur in what, after consulting our friends, you may think right to promote. I am grieved to see the state of France, Austria, Germany, Italy, all unsettled, and as yet productive of so much ill. I will not say unalloyed, as The Daily News of yesterday has very properly shown the progress of liberty already made ; and which will not, I think, be allowed to recede, however foolishly the King of Prussia and the Emperor may act ! ”

The following is an extract from a letter written to Sir Joshua a few days before :

” Burnley Hall, 24th October, 1848. “

”Until matters are more settled on the Continent, the British public will not give the attention to parliamentary reform that it deserves. But in the meantime, I am pleased to learn that the creation of freeholds in the counties, and of votes in the boroughs, is going on, and I really see the absolute necessity of that being done as speedily as possible ; and if any- thing could be done to make that general, the cause of Reform will of itself progress.

“ I hear of nothing whatever from the ministers, except an assurance, made with apparent sincerity, that they are resolved on economy and retrenchment to the utmost possible extent.

” If you have an opportunity, will you speak to the Secretary of the Financial Association at Liverpool, and remind him that when I sent him copies of all the papers they wanted, and some more, they promised to send me a copy of all their publications? They have not done so (to me here), and I have not been able to offer suggestions which I might have done.

” They have, I presume, some paper as their organ, and should send me a copy whenever any of their articles appear. I think, however, it must soon be apparent to them that the H. of C. is the root of the evil, and that the attention of all financial reformers must be directed to the reformation of that House !

“Belief by such course is direct and speedy, by the other circuitous and doubtful But I must subscribe myself

” Yours sincerely,

” Joseph Hume.”

The creation of forty-shilling freeholds, recommended in these letters of Mr. Cobden and Mr. Hume as a powerful means of securing reform, had been tried by Mr. Cobden in the days of the League.

James Taylor, of Birmingham, who had begun life as a hard-working artisan, and who was now secretary of the Birmingham Freehold Land Society, had been the first to start the movement. The Reform Bill had annihilated many of the franchises existing in boroughs, but it had left standing the forty-shilling freehold qualification, conferred by statute in the seventh year of the reign of Henry VI.

The Chandos clause had left the landlords the depositaries of political power in the counties. By the votes of two hundred thousand tenants at will they could virtually dispose of representation.

To wrest this power from the landlords, by creating a class of independent voters, was the object of the forty-shilling movement. The plan pursued by these associations was to buy up large properties, and divide them into lots. By the investment of from thirty to forty pounds, the subscriber was not only placed on the register of the county where his bit of land stood, but an annual return of ten per cent was secured to him.

The Whigs — nominally the party of Reform — sought to neutralise at every step the work of the party they called Radicals. In the following letter Mr. Cobden describes their animosity thus :

” 17th October, 1848.

” I observe what you say about the Whig animus. Depend upon it, that fraction of the aristocracy will join sooner or later with their brothers the Tories against us. In fact it is a virtual coalition, for wherever they can’t bring in a man of their own they will coalesce to keep one of us out. The Whigs have contrived to get hold of nearly all the influential press in Scotland ; and there are toadies of the party who, as ‘our London Correspondent,’ are continuously throwing dirt upon us. The enclosed I cut from The Scotsman Edinburgh paper, of last Saturday. It is a formidable task to fight against the aristocracy when it presents the front of a sham Liberalism, and especially so when we have to deal with a people of such strong aristocratic prejudices, that it would almost prefer to be ruined by lords than saved by commoners. In such a case we can only ultimately make progress by the use of great prudence and patience, and the application of much hard labour — a quality in which we can beat them hollow. I am every day confirmed in the opinion that great political changes will flow out of the repeal of the Corn Laws. The farmers, as a rule, are not devoted to the aristocracy or the Church. I see nothing to separate them henceforth from their own order in the House. ”

Divergence in aim now appeared among the Reformers themselves. At a meeting in the Free-Trade Hall, Manchester, in the beginning of January, 1849, Mr. Cobden denounced ” the horrid waste of ten millions sterling a year on fighting establishments, “ announcing his intention of submitting to the House, in the following session, a scheme of international arbitration. Writing to Sir Joshua about this meeting, he says in the course of the letter : ” We had a monster meeting, indeed, yesterday. I feel, more than ever, that we ought to have stuck exclusively to the ‘ Financial Reform,’ for the present. I assure you that, even with the ‘ Fustian Jackets,’ those sentiments which referred to a great reduction of armaments were far more enthusiastically responded to than the allusion to organic change. ”

The support of the survivors of the Anti-Corn-Law League, on which Sir Joshua had counted, also fell away from him, as will be seen by the following letter from Mr. Cobden, dated 20th October, 1850 :

” There is one point on which I wish you to be correctly informed : whatever may be done by Wilson, Bright, myself, and other prominent leaders of the League, in support of your four points, we must be reckoned only for what we are worth. We cannot bring the League force with us. I have been looking over my old League correspondence since I have been here. Sackfuls of letters have passed through my hands, and they have convinced me that the same men who did the work of the League cannot be depended on for any other agitation. It is thirteen years since we began the Anti-Corn-Law movement.

Many of the principal workers are grown old, and not a few are dead ; a very few of those who are still alive are in the mood for beginning such another labour. For myself, I have never disguised from the public that I could not do again, in any other cause, what I did in the League agitation. In the House, and in those localities where I can legitimately advocate the four points, you may reckon on my doing so. I have not the least idea that either the Whigs or Tories will give the ballot, or a fair redistribution of the electoral power ; and I quite agree with you that it would be well to have the Whigs in opposition again. But how is it to be done ? ”

Thus Sir Joshua was left with only a handful of followers, working in the same spirit as himself, putting aside every other end but that of parliamentary reform, considered solely for itself. In a note dated 1862, that refers to this period, Sir Joshua says :

” The Manchester school fell away from us after awhile. What motives or circumstances produced this lukewarm feeling I am unable now to determine. Although they voted with us in the House of Commons, they did little more. Cobden even seemed more anxious for financial reform and the ballot, than for an extension of the suffrage. Had the party acted together, with the energy and zeal that the members of the National Reform Association have evinced, we should not now be still looking for an extension of the suffrage. ”

Life of Sir Joshua Walmsley – Chapter XVIII

CHAPTER XVIII.  This chapter covers 1847, and rather more fully 1848. 1848 was also the ” year of revolutions “, it was the year the Communist Manifesto was published, a year after the height of the Great Famine in Ireland, and a year since the death of Daniel O’Connell.  Yet again Uncle Hugh’s somewhat loose with facts and dates. He states that ” After sitting for Bolton, Sir Joshua had redeemed his promise to his former electors, and now represented Leicester in Parliament. “, which was true in the sense that he became M.P for both – but he was only elected for Bolton in 1849 serving until 1852, and he was then M.P. for Leicester for a further five years until 1857. So in 1847 and 1848 Josh wasn’t an M.P. at all.

The Daily News was founded in 1846 by Charles Dickens, who also served as the newspaper’s first editor. It was conceived as a radical rival to the right-wing Morning Chronicle. The paper was not at first a commercial success. Dickens edited 17 issues before handing over the editorship to his friend John Forster, who had more experience in journalism.  Dickens rather splendidly became the literary editor instead.

Cobden and Hume, we have met before, and the Charter was the People’s Charter of 1838 which had six aims, and resulted in millions of people petitioning the House of Commons. The People’s Charter called for six reforms to make the political system more democratic:

  1. A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for a crime.
  2. The secret ballot to protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.
  3. No property qualification for Members of Parliament in order to allow the constituencies to return the man of their choice.
  4. Payment of Members, enabling tradesmen, working men, or other persons of modest means to leave or interrupt their livelihood to attend to the interests of the nation.
  5. Equal constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing less populous constituencies to have as much or more weight than larger ones.
  6. Annual Parliamentary elections, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since no purse could buy a constituency under a system of universal manhood suffrage in each twelve-month period.

Now Chapter XVIII:

Richard Cobden

It was owing in some degree to his friend Cobden’s expressed desire to see a new paper started to uphold the doctrine of non-intervention, that Sir Joshua became a part proprietor of the new Liberal organ, The Daily News. The following letter from Mr. Cobden in reference to this subject will be found interesting :

” It has always struck me, what was wanted in a new daily paper was a new direction of politics, to suit a coming want in public opinion, not already catered for by the existing prints. This is not easily hit upon, because if too much in advance of opinion upon any topic, the paper is in danger of not floating until the public mind grows up to it. On the other hand, if the policy be very obvious, it is already taken up by other journals, so that there is no void to fill up. I have a strong opinion that the time is at hand when the old foreign policy of this country may be systematically attacked with success. You may remember that I took up the subject in my pamphlets twelve years ago. “

” All my travels and experience since have confirmed me in my views. I was much in advance of the times when I wrote ‘ England, Ireland, and America,’ and ‘ Russia.’ There was much in the style and details of those pamphlets which, owing to my being a young writer and politician, was defective, but the principles were sound. The foundation of what little influence I have in the North of England was laid by the publication of those pamphlets, and the friendships I formed with the leading minds here arose out of those works. But now the ground is far better prepared for the advocacy of the non- intervention principle [in foreign affairs]. The adoption of Free Trade has simplified the question. “

” There is no longer any vague notion that our diplomatists can bring home a commercial treaty in their pockets, as the result of their intrigues. Nor do we expect or wish to gain any more colonies for the sake of their exclusive trade. The cost of these interventions, Portugal to wit, will be brought home to the comprehension of the people,  I shall take care that my countrymen understand it. “

” I suspect that your rival The Chronicle is an illustration of the decline of the opposite principle of intervention in the affairs of other countries. It has been Palmerston’s organ and I suspect its ruin may be in part attributed to that. We can talk this over when we meet. You know that I am not very tenacious of advising your paper to take my line, because I don’t know whether that would at all times be judicious. But I do believe the time is nearly at hand when a more rational foreign policy will be in the ascendant. “

” Truly yours,

” Richard Cobden.”

Mr. Cobden’s anticipations of increased taxation were realised. In February, Lord John Russell made his financial statement for the year [1848]. Admitting a deficient revenue, he yet advocated an increase of expenditure to reorganise the militia, according to the Duke of Wellington’s suggestion. To effect this and to cover the deficiency, he proposed an addition of fivepence to the income-tax. This created universal dissatisfaction, expressed freely by all sides of the House, and Parliament was still discussing the scheme, when the threatened French invasion collapsed, and Louis Philippe and his family, including the Prince de Joinville, arrived as fugitives in England.

Free Trade Hall, Manchester

Mr. Hume had often sketched out to his political adherents a plan of parliamentary reform. The necessity of this was acknowledged by many, but as yet no nucleus had been formed. After sitting for Bolton, Sir Joshua had redeemed his promise to his former electors, and now represented Leicester in Parliament. “At my suggestion, “ he writes, ” a few political friends were brought together, and it was unanimously resolved to hold a meeting at the Free Trade Hall. Endeavours were made to thwart it, but all adverse efforts failed, and the hall was crowded. “

” Looking back, “ he continues, ” on this meeting, I can trace the various motives which actuated each, so unanimous as a whole. Hume headed, as was his wont, this movement of social progress. He was seeking, by an extension of the franchise, to bring about financial reform, for it was only when the taxed should have a voice in the levying of taxes that the burden would be fairly adjusted. Cobden, absorbed in his aspirations after universal peace, and bent on realising his scheme for unfettered, world-wide commerce, looked upon the movement as a means for protesting against the taxation necessary for war. I simply went on the right the people had to a wider representation. ”

The meeting attracted much attention, and Mr. Hume would have issued an address at this period ; but for the present was dissuaded by his friends, especially by Mr. Cobden, who wrote to Sir Joshua a few days after as follows :

” Manchester, 22nd April, 1848.

“My dear Walmsley,

” The more I reflect, the more I am convinced that we must be cautious in the next step we take. We are not in a position to issue an address. We have no plan to propose, and any address without a plan would be unsatisfactory, and even cause suspicion of our motives. Before we take another step, we must be prepared to co-operate amongst ourselves. Now, I do not see the material for a parliamentary union at present. The country will by-and-by give us that union. But if we attempt to do something and then are shown up in the House as a disunited party, we shall only discourage our friends out of doors. The fact is, more importance has been attached to our meeting than it deserves. The public does not know what heterogeneous material we were composed of, and what a variety of objects and motives actuated us. Let us beware how we get into a false position and run the risk not merely of compromising ourselves, but what is of far more consequence, damaging the cause which we wish to serve. “

“ Faithfully yours,

“Richard Cobden “

And again on the 28th April, 1848, he writes, when the movement has made some progress :

“My dear Walmsley,

” Still I am of opinion that we did right to abstain from putting forth a plan. The country is generally fermenting and debating upon the question, What ought to be done ? and we shall know what ground to take after Easter, better than before. There is besides a great advantage in letting the country initiate the plan, and then it will take more interest in its own offspring. Yesterday we had a private meeting of our earnest old Leaguers. The room in Newall’s Buildings was full, and everyone was asked for an opinion, which resulted in a unanimous resolve that Wilson should send a circular to all the subscribers to the League of five pounds and upwards, asking their opinions upon the four points :

household suffrage,

vote by ballot,

triennial Parliaments,

electoral districts.

The answers to be considered private. In a fortnight we shall know the result. Every man was anxious for a beginning. There was plenty of good stuff present. But at first we should not carry all our rich Leaguers with us. ”

In May, matters were considered ripe for action. The committee of fifty-one members of Parliament resolved that Mr. Hume be requested to give notice to the effect:

” That leave be granted to bring in a Bill to amend the national representation, by extending the elective franchise so that every man of full age, and not subject to any mental or legal disability, who shall have been the resident occupier of a house, or part of a house, as a lodger for twelve months, and shall have been duly rated to the poor of that parish for that time, shall be registered as an elector, and be entitled to vote for a representative in Parliament; also by enacting that votes shall be taken by ballot, that the duration of Parliament shall not exceed three years, and that the proportion of representatives be made consistent with the amount of population and property. ”

Joseph Hume, M.P.

The motion that ought to have come on on the 23rd of May [1848] , owing to the lateness of the hour, was postponed till the 20th of June. A short discussion on the subject of parliamentary reform took place on the first night, when Lord John Russell assured the House that, ” speaking generally, he believed the working classes of the country wish for neither the Charter nor  Mr. Hume’s great plan, which comes somewhat near the Charter. “ As an answer to this assertion, on the 20th of June the table of the House was covered with petitions coming from every part of the country, supporting the demand for reform. Mr. Hume now explained his scheme in an exhaustive speech.

” After sixteen years,” he said, ” the Reform Bill had not effected the object for which he struggled. It had failed to answer all the purposes, which, as an ardent and zealous supporter of reform, he had advocated.”

Five out of every six adults had no voice in the Government ; a country thus governed had no true popular representation. He advocated a return to the triennial Parliaments as a means of quickening the sense of responsibility of members towards their constituents ; the ballot for the protection of the voters. ” Parliament, “ he held, ” was a mere instrument by which a constitutional country was governed.” He showed up the defective state of the electoral districts, allowing one-ninth of the electors of the United Kingdom to send up to Parliament the majority of representatives. The House discussed for three nights Mr. Hume’s scheme.

On the division upon it, a majority of two hundred and sixty-seven declared against it, only eighty-six members having voted in its favour.

The life of Sir Joshua Walmsley – Chapter XI.

CHAPTER XI. This chapter covers events in London in February 1839. The meetings at Westminster must have been rather odd. The old Palace of Westminster had been burned down five years earlier, and work on the new Houses of Parliament had yet to start. So large parts of the buildings pictured here were either in ruins, being demolished, or temporarily repaired awaiting the new Palace of Westminster.

Old Palace of Westminster

As ever with Hugh Walmsley, it is concerned with Josh’s political life, with no mention of family. 1839 was the year that Josh’s eldest daughter [Hugh’s older sister] got married in St Luke’s church in Liverpool; a church he had bought the advowson to [right to appoint the vicar] . It was also the year he became Mayor of Liverpool. 

 

The Anti-Corn-Law League owed its origin to seven men taking a vow in October, 1838, to deliver England from the thraldom of monopoly. A succession of good harvests had of late years brought down the price of wheat, and the people lived unmindful of laws whose operation did not press upon them in time of plenty. The sky now was darkening.

The harvest of 1837 had proved bad; the winter of 1838-39 was a singularly hard one. “That year,” says Sir Joshua, ” the condition of the poor in Liverpool was so pitiable that it was made a subject of discussion at the council board. Subscriptions were raised, soup-kitchens established, but famine carried off men, women, and children. The price of wheat in January had risen to eighty-one shillings and six- pence per quarter. It was time for a strong pressure to be brought to bear from without upon Parliament, to force it to take this state of things into consideration. Public meetings were convened all over the country.”

” In Liverpool, on the 18th of January, one was held at the Sessions House. On being called for, I addressed the assembly, endeavouring to show how fallacious was the landlords’ favourite and plausible argument, ‘ that the price of labour is dependent on the price of corn.’ There was plenty of evidence to show that for the previous ten years there had been no proportional rise between wages and the price of bread.”

“For years,” he goes on to say, ” I had seen clearly that the Corn Laws were vicious and ruinous. I knew the sliding scale must be abolished, and that with it would cease the continual fluctuations in the price of food, which made life so harassing to the millions, yet I thought it possible that in the present state of trade a small fixed duty upon corn might be necessary. However, on the 22nd January, at the public dinner given by the Manchester Association, at which Mr. Bolton and I assisted, as delegates from Liverpool, all hesitation vanished from my mind. As I listened to the arguments of the different speakers, I became convinced that total and immediate repeal was the one right and just claim to be advanced. From henceforth I joined my humble endeavours with those of the Anti-Corn-Law League, to procure such repeal, with the resolve to accept no compromise.”

On the 14th February, delegates of the different manufacturing towns through England met at Brown’s Hotel. With petitions signed by three millions of the Queen’s subjects, they asked to be heard at the bar of the House of Commons in order to tender their evidence on oath as to the suffering caused by the laws regulating the importation of corn. Mr. Walmsley and Mr. James Aiken represented Liverpool at this smaller Parliament of the nation. ” Only Palace Yard separated Brown’s Hotel from the House of Commons,” continues Sir Joshua, in his notes, ” and members sneeringly called the Assembly of Delegates ‘ the House over the way.’ John Benjamin Smith, of Manchester, was our president, and admirably he fulfilled his duty. Our first care was to resolve ourselves into a general committee, and to appoint two sub-committees, whose duties were to collect evidence, transact the correspondence, and manage the financial concerns of the delegation. Of these two sub-committees I was appointed member. When these primary transactions had been gone through, the delegates passed their first resolution, with a certain solemnity of proceeding. We formally resigned all claims of protection for home manufactures, thus casting from ourselves the imputation levelled at us by the landed interest, that we were zealous to remove the protection on our neighbours’ products, but that we were willing to keep it on our own. We declared we were working ‘ to establish the true and peaceful principles of free trade, that we were seeking to institute the unrestricted interchange of industry and capital between all nations.’ The mornings were spent by the delegates in waiting singly or in deputations upon Members of Parliament, or upon Cabinet ministers. Our evenings were generally employed in arranging the programme of the next day, or in receiving those who were unable or unwilling to meet us publicly. It not un-frequently happened that it was early morning ere we retired to rest.”

“ The general committee met daily at half-past two, in the large room in Brown’s Hotel. The meetings were public, and were attended by members of the House of Commons; Villiers, Hume, O’Connell, Wood, Brotherton, and several others, almost daily assisted and spoke. The sittings of The Anti-Corn- Law League attracted considerable attention. The large room in Brown’s Hotel was daily crowded with eager listeners. Enemies sought to sow division in our camp, declaring that the idea of unqualified repeal was an insanity, the advocacy of which could only be explained by the supposition that we, the delegates, were visionaries. Some said we were socialists, others that we were actuated by the sordid motives of manufacturers seeking to enrich ourselves by sacrificing the peasantry to our own ends. The prime minister called us ‘ madmen.’ “ I have heard many mad things in my life,”  Lord Melbourne said in the House of Lords “ but before God, the repeal of the Corn Laws is the maddest I ever heard of. “  Nor were these opponents our only antagonists. The Chartists opposed the League on the plea, that until the people were better represented it was time ill-spent to seek for the repeal of any law. The Whigs tried to win us over by proposing to make the Corn Laws a party question, promising to unite to abolish the sliding scale if the League would accept a small fixed duty instead of unqualified repeal. Under these combined influences, waverers began to appear in the camp. I sided with those who would accede to no half- measures, and would strive for nothing short of Mr. Villiers’ motion :

‘ That we should be allowed to give evidence at the bar of the House of Commons.’

” One evening, Lord Fitzwilliam, a Liberal member of the House of Lords, entered the room in Brown’s Hotel, where several of the delegates were assembled. Mr. Cobden, Mr. Bright, Mr. Sturge, Mr. Gregg, and I, besides some others, were present. With Lord Fitzwilliam came his son Lord Milton. A long and somewhat warm discussion ensued between the peers and the delegates. The object and plan of the League were naturally the subject of the discussion. The two lords admitted that the CornLaws, as they stood, were evil in their operation; but they argued that a small fixed duty was the only conceivable remedy for this evil.”

“Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright were our spokesmen. It interested me then, as it has often done since, to watch the vigour and earnestness with which Bright rushed into the debate, whilst Cobden listened attentively, cautiously abstaining from giving any opinion until he had heard all that could be said upon the subject, then gathering the various pros and cons, delivering his judgment with overwhelming clearness and conviction. Both held resolutely by our tenets, that total repeal was just, and that nothing short of it would they advocate ; that no other concession would satisfy the League. After a discussion that grew warmer as it went on, Lord Fitzwillam rising to go, exclaimed testily as he put on his hat:”

“ You might as well endeavour to overthrow the monarchy as to strive for total repeal “ William Rawson, one of the delegates for Manchester, replied, with flashing eyes : ” My lord, if the monarchy proves as injurious to the common interests of Great Britain, as the Corn Laws are recognised to be by all thinking men, the sooner it is overturned the better. “

“Not long after Lord Fitzwilliam became a convert to the League, and as ardent for total repeal as any of the men he had visited that February night.”

The Queen opened Parliament early in February, The royal speech made no allusion to the Corn Laws, but it was expected that both the mover and the seconder of the address would touch upon them in their speeches, Mr. Wood, member for Kendal, pledged to his constituents to advocate repeal; he was also president  of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, that had been the first to sanction the proceedings of the League;  Wood was appointed seconder of the address.

On the night Mr, Wood was to speak, the delegates assembled under the gallery. They looked eagerly forward to this speech as likely strongly to advance their cause throughout the country. To their consternation, the honourable gentleman soon involved himself in a web of contradictions. On the one hand, to redeem his pledge to his constituents, he stated that the Com Laws were most injurious to manufacturers and labourers ; on the other, he assured the ministers that the country was in a most prosperous state. Mr. Wood finished his speech amidst the laughter and applause of the whole landed interest in the House, for the picture of prosperity he had drawn struck at the very root of the argument for repeal.

Sir Robert Peel rose, and with courteous sarcasm thanked the honourable member for Kendal for the very able speech he had delivered in favour of the existing system. ” I was one of the deputation,” says Mr. Walmsley,   who a couple of days after waited upon Lord Melbourne to lay before him the true state of the country, so different to the picture Mr. Wood had painted, repeating our prayer to be allowed to tender evidence on oath to this effect at the bar of the House of Commons. Lord Melbourne listened attentively, but held out no hope that Mr. Villiers’ motion, embodying this request, should be attended to.”

No wonder that some of the members of the smaller Parliament assembled in Brown’s Hotel began to lose heart. A crowded meeting, at which many members of the House of Commons were present, assembled on the afternoon of the interview with Lord Melbourne. Some of the delegates expressed their discouragement. Mr. Walmsley was of those who refused to share this feeling. His speech, on this occasion was an exhaustive argument establishing the identity of interests of agriculturists and manufacturers.  The Morning Chronicle of the 9th February, noticing it, said: ” It must be the business of delegates to undeceive landowners with regard to the extent of the injury they suffer from the advantages given to foreign manufacturers by our Com Laws. The speech of Mr. Walmsley is exceedingly valuable on account of the information it affords with respect to the chimerical nature of the apprehensions from foreign importations of corn.”

Let us take one more anecdote from the notes before us belonging to this period, which we think will prove interesting.

“Mr. Sturge and I were the two delegates relied upon as authorities in matters relating to statistics. We were generally together, hunting in couples. Mr. Sturge had worked with Lord Brougham, in preparing the Anti-Slavery Bill for Parliament, and now, when he came as delegate to London, to agitate for the repeal of the Com Laws, he sought out his great fellow- worker. I accompanied him. We found Lord Brougham already convinced of the justice of our cause, and ready to advocate it in the House of Lords. On many details, however he required information, and he invited us to instruct him on these points.”

” Several mornings we met at an early breakfast,, and spent hours in discussion and examination of facts.  We passed in review the fluctuation of prices during a number of years, and under the different Com Laws ; the prices of wheat in the corn-growing countries of Europe ; tables of averages of profit and of loss ; the speculations on bonded wheat. Sturge and I got the information together, and Lord Brougham listened with concentrated attention, asking questions occasionally, but making no memoranda in writing of the facts related. No point that could throw light on the operation of the Corn Laws was left out in these morning conferences.  When all had been gone through, Lord Brougham declared himself master of the subject, and announced his intention of bringing forward the motion independently in the House of Lords. It was not this, exactly, that we had anticipated.”

Mr. Villiers had been chosen, by the ‘Smaller House, on the other side of Palace Yard,’ as the leader of the Corn-Law agitation, and his speech, it was considered, should take precedence of every other.

On the 18th February, Lord Brougham called upon ‘the High Senate of the nation to hear the prayer of the people at its bar.’ In a speech of unrivalled power he embodied the facts we had collected for him, and to which he had listened without taking a single note. He stated the various prices of corn in different countries of Europe ; he traced the many fluctuations in the price of wheat in England under the different Corn Laws; and he set out this dry information in all the pomp of imagery and the varied resources of rhetoric. The speech produced an immense sensation. It was so exhaustive that it somewhat lessened the effects of Mr. Villiers’ lucid and forcible statement, delivered in the Commons the following day.

“Some of the delegates felt aggrieved that Mr. Villiers should have been pre-stalled. Mr. John Bright, especially, expressed himself somewhat warmly on the subject. When, on the next morning, Mr. Sturge and I called upon Lord Brougham, to thank him for the great service he had rendered to our cause, he received us somewhat coldly. He was aware of the strictures passed upon him by Mr. Bright and others. ‘Do those men,’ he said, ‘ think they understand how to deal with the House of Lords better than I do ? Have you so many friends that you can afford to lose one ? “

On the day of separating, the delegates passed a vote of thanks to Lord Brougham and to Mr. Villiers. Two dissentient votes were still found recorded against the motion, regarding Lord Brougham. In acknowledging this vote of thanks. Lord Brougham reverted with some asperity to the two who had differed from him in the course he had pursued. To this origin I have always ascribed the marked coldness with which Lord Brougham treated Mr. Bright through the course of his noble political career.”

On the 20th February, the little Parliament met for the last time in Brown’s Hotel. Both the Houses of Lords and Commons had refused to hear the evidence of the delegates on the plea ” of want of time.” The members therefore separated ; one course lay clear before them — they must rouse public opinion.

To enlighten and convince it was now the aim and end of the labours of the most patriotic and practically- wise set of men that ever joined together for a public purpose. The work of the League now began. We know the result, and the name of Richard Cobden is inscribed in the heart of the nation too deeply not to impart a certain reflex interest on those men who were his fellow- workers. The friendship between him and Mr. Walmsley grew and strengthened from the day they first met in the large room in Brown’s Hotel, members of that smaller but more faithful Parliament.

” We were in almost daily communication for years,” he says, “and our friendship was never broken or suffered alteration. It was on that occasion also I met Joseph Hume.”

Before closing this chapter, we must notice an address issued to the Chartists by Mr. Walmsley, in his character of president of the Tradesmen’s Reform Association, which appeared in The Morning Chronicle September, 1838, and to which he alludes as ” having attracted some attention at the time.”

At the very outset of the work forced upon the League, of rousing and instructing public opinion, a class of antagonists amongst the wretched proved one of the greatest obstacles it had to encounter.

Chartism permeated the underlying strata of society, and welded them together. The physical-force Chartists treated as enemies all who sought to reform abuses or amend the laws by any other means than the Charter. This cry for the abolition of the Corn Laws they judged a stratagem to divert popular attention from their just demand formulated in the ” Five Points.”

With much that the Chartists demanded, Mr. Walmsley, in common with some of the noblest and purest minds in England, heartily sympathised ; and, because he sympathised, he deplored the means they adopted to obtain their end. In this spirit he issued an address. The press took it up ; it was copied and commented upon by most of the leading London and provincial papers of the day ; it was printed separately, copies circulated through the country by thousands ; and many wrote to the president of the Tradesmen’s Reform Association, thanking him for having so clearly and justly expressed the views of those who, sympathising with the Chartists, yet were compelled by the course of conduct they were pursuing to keep aloof from them.

In the November of that year [1839], Mr. Walmsley was elected mayor of Liverpool. The Tories at the council board made a faint protest against his election to the civic chair ; but no other candidate was even proposed to compete the honour with one who was felt by all to have established his title to it.

Bicknell v. Bicknell Divorce November 1908

I think it’s time to re-post this because it’s very entertaining, but the starting point for this might well be their wedding  in 1897

 

The Times October 31, 1908 [Day 1]

(Before Mr. JUSTICE BARGRAVE DEAN and a Special Jury.)

BICKNELL V. BICKNELL (CARIELLO Cited).

Divorce-Cross Charges

This was the petition of Harriet Frances Bicknell, née Bagshawe, for the dissolution of her marriage with Herman Kentigern Bicknell, on the ground of his cruelty and adultery. The respondent, by his answer, denied these allegations, and further pleaded that the petitioner had been guilty of such misconduct as had conduced to the said alleged adultery (if any) by a persistent course of mental cruelty and gross insults towards him, practically driving him out of the house, and by her ungovernable temper; that the petitioner connived at and condoned the acts of adultery (if any); and that the petitioner had herself been guilty of adultery with the Cav. Antonino Cariello, the party cited. The petitioner, by her reply,denied and joined issue on all the allegations contained in the respondent’s answer, and the party cited, by his answer, denied that he had committed adultery with the petitioner.

Mr. Barnard, K.C., and MIr. Lailey were for the petitioner; Mr. Marshall-Hall, K.C., Mr. Haldenstein, and Mr. J. W. Orr for the respondent; and Mr. W. B. Campbell for the party cited.

Mr. Barnard, said that the petitioner was the daughter of a well-known member of his own Profession, his Honour Judge Bagshawe. She was married to the respondent on October 19, 1897, at the Church of Our Lady of Victories, High-street, Kensington, the parties being members of the Roman Catholic Church. They lived together first at Knapp, near Bideford, and afterwards at Sorrento, some two hours away from Naples. There were two children of the marriage, one aged nine and the other six years of age. Unfortunately for the petitioner, her husband was a man of no occupation, and at times he drank very heavily, and what became another matter of unhappiness between them was that while at Sorrento he acquired the habit of taking morphia. It was only fair to state, however, that when he was not under the influence of drink or drugs he treated her kindly and well, and at such times she wrote affectionate letters about him to her friends. The acts of violence of which she had to complain were about as cruel as any man could be guilty of towards a woman whom he had promised to love. Both children were baptized and brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. The mother was a good Catholic, and the husband, when under the influence of drugs, threatened to have the children brought up as Protestants, and perhaps it was now going to be suggested that he had changed his religion and wished to bring up his children in another faith.

In 1898, while living at Knapp, he was guilty of an assault upon her, and he used bad language, and while under the influence of drink had said:-” Smile, you devil, or I will turn you and your filthy spawn out of the house.” In January,1899, he threatened that he would not allow her to see any of her relatives, and in February, when her child was only a month old, he insisted on her leaving her baby and on her accompanying him to the United States. They went to Sorrento in March, 1904, and remained there until April, 1907, and in June of the former year they took a villa in that town. In July, 1905, the petitioner thought that she saw from a window her husband kiss a lady in the garden. She called out, and he came into the house in a very angry temper, called her a d-d liar, struck her, and gave her a black eye, which was afterwards seen by Signor Cariello. In 1900 her husband was taking a great deal of morphia as a letter of his dated September 28 of that year would show. On March 3, 1907, when under the influence of the drug, he called her a prostitute and a liar and struck her, and afterwards acknowledged that fact in the presence of her governess. She was, therefore, living a most unhappy life when her husband was under the influence of drugs.

At this time he was in a state of great nervousness, and though they occupied separate bed -rooms, yet when he was under the influence of morphia, as he was frightened of being alone, she used to sleep on a mattress in his room. That was important, as the respondent relied on this for his plea of condonation. which was no condonation at all.

On April 15, 1907, the petitioner found in a blotting-pad a hotel bill made out to the name of “Hermano Harmsleigh “ with certain words upon it. She intended to ask her husband what it meant, but owing to his state of health, she did not until April 25. That was an important date in the case. On that day the respondent suddenly decided to leave Sorrento, and, while helping him to pack, the petitioner suggested that he should not travel with the nurse, who was leaving on the same date. He insisted, and there was an end of that matter, so far as she was concerned. She, however, asked him if he had ever passed as ” Hermano Harmsleigh.” He immediately asked her if it were Antonino (Cariello) who had told her. Antonino was the respondent’s great friend. She said No, she had seen the name on a blotting-pad. He then called her a d-d [damned] spy and said that he had made the acquaintance of a girl in Naples, that lie had given her mother 200f. for her and had promised her marriage, and that he believed that the father was coming that day to the villa about the matter. That was why he was leaving, and that was all she learnt of the matter. He left, and she kissed him at parting. She remained at Sorrento until July, when she and her children returned to England, and with them on the 13th of that month called at Morle’s Hotel upon her husband. He took in the children, but refused to allow her to enter. She returned with a friend, Lady Macfarlane, but he refused to allow her to return to him and to her children.

It appeared, continued the learned counsel. that just before Christmas, 1906, on an occasion when the respondent was in Naples, he had made the acquaintance of a girl named Anita, represented to her that he was a bachelor and wished to be engaged to her, and gave her mother a sum of money. He had visited the girl and taken her to various hotels. Witnesses had been examined on commission, and the respondent’s counsel on that commission had admitted the adultery. Condonation had been pleaded, but the first that the petitioner. had heard of her husband’s misconduct was on April 25, 1907, and she had not since cohabited with him. Connivance and conduct conducing were also pleaded, and he (the learned counsel) was waiting to hear what possible evidence could be adduced to support such pleas. ThereI was also a charge made against the petitioner and Signor Cariello. and, after he had proved his case against the respondent, it would be for his learned friend to establish his case – if he had any evidence to substantiate it.

The petitioner, Mrs. Bicknell, examined by Mr. Barnard, said her married life had been most unhappy, as her husband was very cruel to her. He was addicted to both drink and drugs ever since the date of the marriage. When under the influence of either he was violent, and called her such names as ” d–d [damned]  liar, devil. and prostitute.” A week after the marriage he tore up the Marriage certificate, and told her, ” Now I can, repudiate tho marriage at any time.” In the autumn of 1898 he threw her down and pulled her by the hair, she being enciente at the time. He was very angry because the birth of her first child was inserted in the Tablet, the leading Roman Catholic newspaper, and threatened that she should not see her father, his Honour Judge Bagshawe, or her family again. On another occasion, when she was writing to a friend, he struck her on the back of the hand with a ruler. He forced her mother to write him an apology for inserting the birth in the Tablet, and then threatened to publish it.

Mr  Justice Bargrave Deane. – I do not follow. What was the apology for ?

Mr. Barnard, – Mrs. Bagshawe had inserted the notice and the respondent had chosen to take offence.

Examination continued.- In March. 1904 they went to Sorrento. In July she saw from a window her husband kissing a lady in the garden. She called to him to come in. and they both did so. He was very angry, and the next morning struck her and gave her a black eye, calling her a “ d–d [damned] liar.” During 1906 and 1907 he said the children should be brought up as Protestants, and laughed at her for having believed him when he told her they should be brought up as Roman Catholics. He also told her he had changed his religion. On September 28, 1906, he wrote:-” That dreadful morphia has affected mv heart and caused a fainting fit. I had one after lunch:  it was most tiresome. as the Duke and his manservant had to bring me home, and the Duchess had an awful fright ! I never thought the giving up of morphia would entail such disastrous consequences. Old Dr. Garquito wanted me to go into a home for inebriates, and is vastly struck by my ability to give morphia up suddenly. Fancy me in a home. It sounds comical, doesn’t it?  You may be sure I shall never be so silly as to take drugs again.” During 1907 the respondent was again taking morphia, and she had sometimes to sleep on the floor in his room to “watch” him. In March, 1907, the respondent was in a very bad state, called her terrible names and struck her with the back of his hand, his rings injuring her lip. Her child saw the marks and asked the cause, and she endeavoured to conceal the truth, whereupon the respondent said, ” You d–d [damned] liar, why don’t you speak the truth and say I did it.” The governess was also present.

In April, 1907, the respondent having invited her to take part in a bazaar at Sorrento, at the last moment forbade her to attend it. About April 15 she found an hotel bill in her husband’s blotter, made out in the name of ” Hermano Harmsleigh.” A few davs later she found some blotting- paper with the same name upon it and the words ” Poste Restante. Mata” (a neighbouring village).  She had never heard of the girl Anita Esposito until the morning of the day he suddenly left Sorrento. On April 25 lie informed her he was leaving that day, and she advised him not to travel with a nurse, who was leaving. She then asked him if he passed as Hermano Harmsleigh in Naples. He replied,” Has Antonino told you? “ She said, “No, you are wrong; but does he know your secret ?” He then asked her how she had found out, and when she showed him the blotter he called her a “d–d [damned] spy.”

He then said he had a disagreeable story to tell her, adding that, if she had been a woman of the world she would not have thought much of it. He then told her that while driving in Naples he had seen the girl in the street, had taken a fancy to her, had got out of his trap and spoke to her, and eventually gave the girl’s mother 200f. for her, saying he was going to marry her. He added, ” I told them you were my married sister: but now they are beginning to suspect, and may come here any day, and I want to know what you are going to say.” He also told her that the girl was not enecinte. At this stage the Court adjourned until Monday.

Bicknell v. Bicknell [Day 2 – Nov 3, 1908]

(Before MR. JUSTICE BARGRAVE DEANE  and a Special Jury,.)

BICKNELL V. BICKNELL -(CARIELLO Cited.)

Divorce-Cross Charges.

The hearing of this matrimonial suit, which, commenced on Friday last, was resumed, the first day’s proceedings being reported in The Times on October 31, 1908.

Certain interlocutory proceedings In the Court of Appeal with regard to a commission to take evidence in Italy were reported in 1908, W.N., 97. It will be remembered that Mr. Harriet Frances Bicknell, daughter of the late Judge Bagshawe, petitioned for the dissolution of her marriage with Herman Kentigern Bicknell on the ground of his cruelty and adultery. He, by his answer, denied these charges, and pleaded alternatively that if he had committed adultery the petitioner had by her mental cruelty conduced to it, had connived at it, and had condoned it. He further alleged that the petitioner had herself committed adultery with the Cavaliere Antonino Cariello, who was cited. The petitioner and the party cited denied the charges made against them

Mr. Barnard, KC. and Mr. Lailey were, for the petitioner; Mr. Marshall-Hall, KC., Mr.Haldenstein, and J. W. Orr for the respondent; and Mr. W. B. Campbell for the party cited.

The petitioner, further examined in chief by Mr. Barnard  said that on April 25, 1907, the governess,  Miss Serek, was in the house, and she (petitioner) made a complaint to her.

Mr. Marshall-Hall – I do so object to that form of question. The proper form is, ” Did you make a statement?

Mr. Barnard –Very welL. Did you make a statement ?

The petitioner.-Yes.

Mr. Barnard .- And in what state ,were you at the time ?

The petitioner.-I was in tears.

Examination continued.-She continued to write in affectionate terms to her husband up to the time when she saw him in England on June 13, 1907. On that day she took the children to Morle’s Hotel, where her husband was then living. She was prepared at that time to resume cohabitation with him, but he refused to allow her to remain and actually threatened to summon help and have her and her luggage turned out. He, however, retained the children. The following day she called a and he then told her that as she had not apologised he should take the children away. The apology was demanded in consequence of her having told him that his uncle, Mr. Sidney Bicknell, had professed to be ashamed of his nephew’s conduct. Mr. Sidney Bicknell, writing to the respondent from Barcombe-house, near Lewes, on June 11, 1907, denied having called the respondent a scoundrel or having said that he was ashamed to bear the same name as him. She had never stated that the respondent’s uncle had called him a scoundrel; but he saying that he was ashamed of his nephew. As soon as she obtained evidence of her husband’s adultery with Anita she filed her petition for divorce. When under the influence of drink or drugs her husband used to call her terrible names which upset her greatly and made her cry. . He would then say, “Smile, you devil, or I’ll make .you come cringing to me.”

Cross-examined by Mr. Marshall-Hall.  She denied that Morle’s Hotel was full on the occasion of her call there on July 18. She had, to use her own words, ” stolen the children away, and they had been in hiding ever since.” Her husband did not see the children from July 15, 1907, until last Saturday. She had, changed her boy’s name from Bysshe to Basil. That was not done at the instigation of Father Galton, S.J., nor of the Jesuits. That was not one more influence exercised by them over her. Bysshe may have, been the name of an agnostic and one of Shelley’s names, while Basil was that of a saint in the calendar. The boy was christened Bysshe against her wish. Her husband’s adultery and not the change of his religion was the true cause of this suit. She had consulted Roman Catholics before bringing the suit.. She had written on June 22, 1907, ” I was nearly mad, but on Monday I stole the children away from him, and have been in hiding ever since. I have brought an action for divorce against him (I found I could do so as a Catholic, and was told by the Jesuits and the Archbishop that I ought to),  and now we are waiting results. As long as he only treated me badly I could stand it, but once he touched the children it was another matter.” Bysshe was now at a Roman Catholic school at Boscombe. He had been sent there in July by her brother-in-law. She had previously had him at a Protestant school. The dispute at Morle’s Hotel had arisen because of what she asserted Mr. Sidney Bicknell had said about the respondent and the latter’s demand for an apology. Her husband had been for years a member of the Reform Club. Her husband had complained that she did not always speak the truth. Mr. Sidney Bicknell, on June 11, had written to her husband that  “the ‘trouble’ I had in my mind was the children going to the English Church and your recession from Catholicism.” She was ready to forgive her husband for the adultery he had confessed to her on April 25 when she went to call on him on July 13 at Morle’s Hotel.  On April 26, the day after her husband’s departure from Sorrento, she had written to him,  “Cheer, up; I am glad you wrote me a kind note before you left Italy. You cannot think how miserable I was, seeing you leave me in such a manner. I hope when this reaches you you will feel happier. Don’t forget that your best and truest friend has always and will always be your wife. The children send you their love.-Your affectionate wife Harriet.” 

She had not seen her husband except at Morle’s Hotel – since April 25 – the day on which he confessed his adultery with Anita. The confession was made on April 25, and not some days earlier. She had found the sheet of blotting paper containing the incriminating words, in one of her own books – a copy book she used daily for the study of German. She had not spoken to her husband the same day. He first told her of his adultery the day he left; she had not previously questioned him about it. She had never been to his bedroom or condoned his adultery after she was aware of it.

At this stage Mr. Marshall-Hall proposed to refer to the evidence taken on commission.in Italy.

Mr. Barnard objected to the evidence being used as the commission had not been returned to the Court, owing to the commissioner, Mr. Valentine Ball, barrister-at-law, not having been paid his fees.

Mr. Marshall-Hall .-It was a joint commission; my client has paid his half, but the other side refuses to do so.

Mr. Barnard – My learned friend is mistaken in describing it as a joint commission. It is his commission, and being on the spot we took the opportunity of examining certain witnesses before the commissioner.

Mr  Justice Bargrave Deane. – The commissioner is entitled to keep beck the commission until he has been paid his fees.

Mr. Marshall-Hall.  My client brought £ 20,000 into settlement, and he has now nothing. But the lady obtained leave from Mr. Justice Warrington to raise £1,000 for the purpose of this very commission.

Mr. Barnard –  The learned judge gave her power to anticipate to that extent to enable her to defend the suit.

Mr  Justice Bargrave Deane. – I have already intimated my view.

Mr. Marshall-Hall. – My solicitor client – Mr. Furber – undertakes to pay the commissioner’s fees. After the adjournment,

Mr  Justice Bargrave Deane said that during the adjournment the commission had been returned to the Court, and was accordingly now in.

Cross-examination continued.-Four or five days before April 25 there had been a scene between her and her husband, but that had to do with his forbidding her to take part in the bazaar. Her husband had not confessed his adultery to her on April 21, but on April 25- the day he left Sorrento. Between April 21 and April 25 she had twice slept on a mattress in her husband’s room, as was stated by two witnesses -who were examined on commission. Her letter of April 26 to her husband did not refer to his dispute with her as to what his uncle had told her about him. She had been quite ready to forgive her husband. She had been told by the Jesuits ant the Archbishop that as a Catholic she could seek the protection of the law, but that even if she were successful in her suit she could never marry again. She had asked in May, 1907, a servant named Rose Scott if she remembered.seeing her with a black eye, but she (Rose Scott) did not remember the occasion. She did not remind Rose Scott of past favours, or warn her against allowing the respondent to go out with her young daughter.. She did say that the respondent had been lunching with the child at the Metropole Hotel, Brighton. She had heard of that incident from a Mrs. Farnham. She (petitioner) did not know that Rose Cox was a witness for the respondent. She had not sought to poison her mind against him.  She told Rose Scott that her husband had stayed with Flora Cox ( a nurse) at an hotel in Naples, passing as ” Mr and Mrs. Bicknell ” She believed her statement to be true, having herself seen the names in the hotel book.

Mr. Marshall-Hall. – Then why is not that charge pleaded ?

The petitioner.-I already had one charge.of adultery, which I thought sufficient.

Cross-examination continued. – She had told Rose that the respondent had accused them of impropriety together. The respondent had dared to make that suggestion. She had not accused her husband of un-natural practices, nor was she responsible for  witnesses having been cross-examined on commission in Italy to show that a certain Giuseppe was of evil habit.

Mr  Justice Bargrave Deane. – Most- of the cross- examination referred to was on behalf of your client.

Mr. Barnard – There was, no such suggestion made by my client.

Mr  Justice Bargrave Deane. – We are not trying any issue as to Giuseppe.

Before her marriage she had heard from a cousin that the respondent was addicted to morphia, and she had refused to marry-him when he first proposed to her. He was at that time a very rich man possessed of about £ 140,000, all of which was now gone! Subsequently the respondent. settled £ 20,000 upon her, and her father settled £1,000. She had been told that he had taken to morphia because she had refused him. Before her marriage she had written to her fiancé referring to her violent temper. In spite pf her, husband having struck her on the back of the hand with a ruler or paper knife and dragged her by the hair of her head, she had written to him in most affectionate terms about the times these incidents had taken-place. When her husband tore up the marriage certificate he told her that he could now repudiate the marriage..

Mr. Marshall-Hall. – Then why, Madam, if you believed your marriage was invalid did you continue to live with-your husband ? – .

The petitioner.-,He said he could repudiate it, if he liked !

Mr. Barnard –  Voidable, -not void-!

The petitioner.-I only believed his statement for two hour.

Cross-examination continued.- She had in her letters referred to the bitter expressions she had used towards her husband, and regretted that she had not first bitten her tongue out.

Mr. Marshall-Hall. –  You called him a skunk did you not? About the worst thing you can call a man; The petitioner. – That, I think, was one of his expressions.

Cross-examination continued.- He had objected before the birth of the child to that birth being announced in the Tablet, and her mother had promised not to do so, but she afterwards put the announcement in the paper. The respondent in consequence declined to allow her mother to see the baby until she had apologized, and on June 7 1900, his Honour Judge Bagshawe  wrote on his wife’s behalf.

Mr  Justice Bargrave Deane. – This is 1900 and the child was born in 1899 !  All I can say is that the respondent is a most unreasonable man. I cannot understand any man taking such a line as that.

Cross-examination continued.-In spite of her husband’s conduct, she loved him and forgave him, and she never contemplated divorce proceedings until he took away the children from her. On September 28 she wrote of the lady from whom she had heard of the incident at the Metropole Hotel, Brighton, “Mrs. F. has lied like a trooper, and will get into trouble.”

At this stage the Court adjourned.

Bicknell v. Bicknell  [Day 3, Nov 4, 1908]

(Before MR. JUSTICE BARGRAVE DEANE  and a Special Jury.)

BICKNELL V. BICKNELL – (CARIELLO Cited.)

Divorce-Cross Charges.

The further hearing of this matrimonial suit, which has been reported in The Times on October 31 and November 3, was continued, and concluded, this being the third day of the trial.  It will be remembered that Mrs. Harriet Frances Bicknell, daughter of the late Judge Bagshawe, petitioned for the dissolution of her marriage with Herman Kentigern Bicknell on the ground of his cruelty and adultery. He, by his answer, denied these charges, and pleaded alternatively that if he had committed adultery the petitioner had by her mental cruelty conduced to it, had connived at it, and had condoned it. He further alleged that the petitioner had herself committed adultery with the Cavaliere Antonino Cariello, who was cited. The petitioner and the party cited denied the charges made against them.

Mr. Barnard, KC. and Mr. Lailey were, for the petitioner; Mr. Marshall-Hall, KC., Mr.Haldenstein, and J. W. Orr for the respondent; and Mr. W. B. Campbell for the party cited.

After the sitting of the Court.

Counsel having conferred together and seen the learned Judge in private for upwards of one hour and a half.

Mr. Marshall-Hall said that the respondent had never contested the adultery charged at Naples, but he did seriously deny any other charge made against him, and after the cross-examination yesterday those charges would not be persisted in, and he was quite willing that all charges made against the petitioner and the party cited should also be withdrawn and the jury discharged, and that a decree of judicial separation should be pronounced on certain conditions.

Mr. Barnard said that he was willing to withdraw all the charges made against the respondent -other than the one of adultery at Naples. The petitioner, however, was desirous of going into the box to deny the truth of the charges made against her.

The evidence of the girl Anita Esposito, taken on commission at Naples, was read, and went to show that the respondent had made her acquaintance in Naples five or six days before Christmas, 1906, and that the intrigue between them had continued for five months, during which time the respondent visited and passed the night at various hotels with her.

Further corroborative evidence, taken on commission, having been read,

The petitioner denied on oath that there was the slightest truth in the allegation made against her, and

The Cavaliere Antonino Cariello, in answer to Mr. Campbell, said that until the citation was served upon him in October he had no suspicion that the respondent had anything against him. He was a close friend of both Mr. and Mrs. Bicknell, and there was not a shadow of truth whatever in the charges made against him.

The respondent, in reply to Mr. Marshall-Hall said that he admitted his adultery at Naples with the girl Anita Esposito, but he denied the statement made as to the payment of money. That statement was not true. Ho had never struck his wife, and there was no truth in the charges of cruelty made against him. He did not drink to excess, nor was he habitually addicted to the use of drugs. There was no truth in the suggestion that he had ever committed adultery with Flora Cox.

Mr  Justice Bargrave Deane accordingly pronounced a decree of judicial separation with costs, and gave the custody of the elder child to the respondent, and that of the younger one to the petitioner. Questions of access to the children would be dealt with in Chambers.

Judgment accordingly.

King Dan’s speech- Convent Garden 12th March 1844

This is from The Times, on Wednesday 13th March, 1844. It’s a very long post, but worth it. To get a full sense of the power of Dan’s oratory, try reading it as though you are speaking it.  At the time of the speech, he had been arrested, charged with conspiracy, and sentenced to a year in prison and fined  £2,000., but not yet jailed.  The sentence was set aside after Dan had been in prison three months. He served his sentence at the Richmond Bridewell in Dublin, living in the Governor’s House with his own servants, and food brought in. He was released on 4th September 1844.

DINNER TO MR. O’CONNELL AT COVENT GARDEN THEATRE.

Last night a dinner was given at Covent Garden Theatre to Mr. O’Connell, ” to show,” as the announcement expressed it, ” the admiration entertained by Englishmen for his constant and consistent advocacy of the rights and privileges of Irishmen, for more than 40 years.”

The pit of the theatre was boarded over so as to make it level with the stage, and five long tables, with two slips occupying the bend of the boxes, making seven tables in all were spread in that part of the house. There were six cross tables and ten long tables spread on the stage, beside the grand table, at which sat the chairman, the guest (Mr. O’Connell), and several noblemen, members of Parliament, and others.

The decorations of the portion of the arena behind the proscenium remained the same as they were on the occasion of the late Bal Masqué, The chairman sat in the centre of the stage, with the chief guests on his right and left. At back of, and immediately over the chair, suspended from the ceiling, there was a brilliant illumination of variegated lamps, representing the rose, the thistle, and the shamrock, underneath which appeared, in front of the raised orchestra, the word ” O’Connell,” in variegated lamps. On the right of the device was the word ” Ireland,” and on the left the word ” Justice,” also in variegated lamps. At the back of the chair was the retiring-room, over which was the orchestra, containing 30 vocal and instrumental performers, under the direction of Mr. G. Stansbury. The great salle, formed by the boarded pit and the stage, was illuminated by 30 elegant ormolu chandeliers, in addition to the great chandelier suspended from the centre of the theatre, and the smaller chandeliers suspended over each box in the dress circle. The stage was adorned by mirrors at the centre and the sides. The whole of the boxes were appropriated to ladies, and every place was filled. The galleries were also densely crowded. About 1,100 persons sat down to dinner, and the effect of the whole theatre when thus brilliantly filled was most imposing. Owing to the excellence of the arrangements, no confusion whatever took place. At a few minutes before 6 o’clock, the chairman and the other chief guests entered the room, accompanied by Mr. O’Connell. On the hon. and learned gentleman’s appearance, he was received with a general burst of cheering from all parts of the house.

At 6 o’clock the chair was taken by Mr. T. Duncombe, M.P., supported on his right by Mr. O’Connell, and on his Ieft by the Earl of Shrewsbury. The following noblemen and gentlemen were among the principal guests : – Lord Camoys, the Earl of Dunboyne, the Hon. F. H. Berkeley M.P.; the Hon. Charles Langdale; Sir R.W. Bulkeley, M.P.; Sir John Easthope, M.P.; Mr. William Collins, M.P.; Mr. Serjeant Murphy, M.P.; Mr. W. H. Tancred, M.P.; Mr. Henry Metcalfe, M.P.; Mr. W. S. Crawford, M.P.; Mr. Wynne Ellis, M.P.; Mr. M. J. Blake, M.P.; Mr. Thomas Gisborne, M.P.; Mr. Charles Hindley, M.P.; Mr. James Pattison, M.P..; Mr. John Dennistoun, M.P.; -Mr. H. Elphinstone, M.P.; Mr. Robert Hollond, M.P.; Mr. Joshua Scholefield, M.P.; Mr. B. S. Butler, M.P.; Sir V. Blake, M P.; Mr. M. J. O’Connell, M.P.; Mr.W. Williams, M.P.; Dr. Bowring, M.P.; Sir B. Wray, the Hon. W. B. Nugent, Mr. Edward Weld, Mr. Rigby Wason, Mr. J. A. Yates, Major Revell, Mr. James Harmer, Senor Olozaga, General Washington Barron, Mr. Summers Harford, and Mr. John Travere.

Grace having been sung by the vocalists (Messrs. Stansbury, T. Cooke, Atkins, P. Bedford, and several others), the company sat down to dinner, which was very well provided by Mr. Rouse. During the dinner, the band, directed by Mr. Godfrey, played several national Irish airs. The cloth having been removed and grace sung.

The Chairman then rose to propose the health of Her Majesty. When he considered, he said, the importance of this occasion (hear), and the influence of individuals so distinguished for their abilities and their eloquence who were invited to meet their distinguished guest (hear), he could not but feel how inadequate he was to fill the chair. (” -No, no.”), In the discharge of the duty imposed on him, however, he stood there to propose the health of the Sovereign, who, let the faults and delinquencies of her Ministers be what they might (” hear” and laughter), held, he believed, a firmer place in the hearts and affections of the people, whether of Ireland or of England (hear), than it had ever been the fate of any Sovereign of this country to possess. (Cheers.) To be sure, he had heard, at the close of a long debate in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister express a wish that the Queen of England might set her foot on Irish ground, and, like some benignant spirit, restore peace and harmony to that distracted country. That wish, in his (Mr. Duncombe’s) opinion, implied disloyalty to the Irish people. (Hear.) Who was it that prevented the Queen from setting her foot in Ireland ! Was it Mr. O’Connell (Cries of ” No ! ” and cheers.) Was it the Irish people (“No ! ”) – a people whose loyalty was proverbial even to weakness! (A laugh.) No; it would be a libel on them to assert that it was they who prevented the Queen from going to Ireland. It was that faction (hear) – that faction which in 1330 prevented King William from enjoying the pleasure of witnessing the loyalty, and partaking the hospitality, of the citizens of London. (Cheers.) The real reason was, that those whose duty it would be to attend the Queen to Ireland were afraid to show their faces there among the people – a people whose origin and religion they had, so scandalously traduced, maligned, and insulted. (Cheers.) It was well known, that the Queen had intended to visit Ireland last year; but she did not, and Belgium and. France were favoured instead, while Ireland – poor Ireland was, as usual, neglected. (Hear.) To be sure, it was a gratifying sight to the friends of international peace to witness the Queen returning to her native shores, the standard of England and the French tricolour waving from the same mast and in the same breeze – an union which he trusted would never be interrupted; but how much more gratifying a sight would it have been to have seen the Queen returning from her Irish subjects, after having personally witnessed their loyalty, and investigated the manifold wrongs and oppressions which they had so long and so patiently endured, and, satisfied that their complaints were well founded, to the confusion of evil counsellors, declaring that the union between England and Ireland should no longer be an union in name, but should hereafter be based on equal laws, rights, and privileges (hear, hear) –that there should no longer be any preference for class, sect, country, or creed ! (Cheers.) He (Mr. Duncombe) trusted, that the day was not far distant when he might behold this state of things – he trusted that they might yet come to pass – and believing as he did that they had a Sovereign who was anxious to accomplish them, and knowing as he did that the people were determined to achieve them (Hear), it was with pride that he now proposed the health of  ” the Queen, and long may she reign over a happy, a free, and an united people.” (Cheers).

The toast was received with loud cheers, and the National Anthem having been sung The Chairman then gave, ” Prince Albert, and the rest of the Royal family,” which was also drunk with enthusiasm.

The neat toast was ” The Navy and Army.” After which, The Chairman rose and said, it was now his duty to propose “ Health and long life to Daniel O’Connell.” [At the mention of the hon. and learned gentleman’s name the whole audience rose and cheered. The ladies in the boxes rose, and waved their handkerchiefs, and the whole surface of the pit presented the same appearance of waving hand- kerchiefs. The mass of white, from the floor to the ceiling, reminded one of a snow-storm. This scene of excitement was continued, with frequent renewals, during considerably more than five minutes.] Yes ! although he knew that he should be incurring the displeasure of certain high persons at the Home-office (laughter), he asked them to join with him in wishing health and happiness to this convicted conspirator. [Here there there was a renewal of the previous scene.] He rejoiced to hear that hearty sympathetic cheer for the chosen representative of Ireland, and through him for the whole people of Ireland; and he was quite sure that no observations of his could induce the meeting to do additional honour to the toast which he was about to propose. But in justice to them, as well as in justice to the public feeling that he knew existed at present in this country (hear), he could not deprive himself of the gratification of assuring their distinguished guest (Cheers), that this sympathy, and this enthusiasm, was not confined to within these walls. (Loud cheers.) He could assure him, that this building, had it been ten times more spacious, would have been insufficient for those who were anxious to come forward, not only to testify their esteem and respect for him as a patriot and a man, but for the purpose of expressing, by their presence, their disgust and indignation (hear, hear) at the persecution and the injustice, at the treachery and meanness (hear) -the malignity and vindictiveness (hear, hear) – which had marked the recent State trials, as they were called, in Ireland, and of which he and others were attempted to be made the victims – The Attorney-General for Ireland (hisses) -the first law officer of the Crown in that country – he, at the onset of the proceedings, pledged himself that he would prove the existence of one of the foulest and one of the most wicked conspiracies that ever endangered the safety of an empire. He would not insult their understandings, by asking them. how he succeeded. All England, every honest man in England proclaimed his failure. (Cheers.) All England despised his attempts, and cried shame upon the Government proceedings. (Cheers, and cries of “Shame ?”) It was with much satisfaction that he heard the other evening, one who had been high in the councils of Her Majesty, a member of the late Government, and a leading member of the Opposition at the present moment – he meant Lord John Russell – it was with great satisfaction that he heard that noble lord express his opinion of Mr. O’Connell, that he had not had a fair trial (cheers)  and that if he had been tried by an English judge and an English jury, it was his opinion that he would have been acquitted. (Cheers). Was he not justified in stating to Mr O’Connell, that he must not judge of the whole feeling of this country by that which had been testified upon the present occasion, he must not believe that with this evening’s proceedings the enthusiasm would end ! No, he might depend upon it, they would not remain tongue-tied (hear) while they saw this prosecution pursuing its accursed way, and not make any attempt to rescue from its fangs that man in whom were centred the hopes and affections of the Irish people. (Cheers). If there was no stronger inducement than their attachment to the impartial administration of justice, he was sure the attempt would be made (hear); but let him remind them, that that which was Ireland’s fate today might be England’s tomorrow if they quietly looked on. (Cries of “No”) If they saw juries packed – if they allowed judges to become Ministerial partisans – if they allowed the law to be strained – if they allowed public meetings, legally convened – to be put to an end by proclamations – if they allowed the rights of petition to be abrogated by such proceedings – if they allowed it to be proclaimed that the sword and the bayonet were the just remedies, they might depend upon it that struggles of their ancestors for freedom would have been in vain, if their descendants acted with such pusillanimity. (Cheers) But had Mr O’Connell no other claims on their admiration and support ! Had they forgotten the Catholic Emancipation measure (cheers) which was his act, and his only? To him the Catholics were indebted for it. To him the Liberal Protestants owed their admiration. Had they forgotten, also, that to Mr O’Connell and the Irish members they were indebted for most valuable assistance in the struggle that took place for the Reform Bill ! (Cheers) True it was that the Reform Bill had disappointed – had sadly disappointed – them; but Mr O’Connell was not responsible for that. (Hear, hear) Had not Mr O’Connell made many sacrifices for the cause of liberty ! Had he not devoted his time, his services in his profession, and his fortune, to the cause of the people, and his services at the present moment were at the command of his country. (Loud cheers) He (Mr Duncombe) had heard Mr O’Connell in the House of Commons state to Ministers, that if they would bring in measures for the benefit of Ireland, his much-injured country, he care not how they treated him: he would forget it all in the prosperity of his country, and co-operate strenuously with them for the benefit of his native land. What return had these Ministers mad to the man? What was their reply to the proposition? Why, the reply was this – that concession had seen its utmost limits, and that condign punishment must be his reward. It was quite clear that the last act of that contemptible drama which had been played in Ireland had yet to be enacted, and that the Government, halloed on by the bloodhounds of the Tory press, meant to send the law officers of the Crown again into the Court of Queen’s bench in Dublin, there to demand the vengeance of the Court upon their victim. (“Never”) Nay, at this moment you could not go into any society, but if you met any persons who belonged to what was called the Orange faction, with that peculiar delicacy which invariably attached to all their proceedings, you heard them speculating as to the number of years for which Mr O’Connell was to be incarcerated. (Laughter). More than this, they might be heard speculating on the relative strength of the gaols of Kilmainham and Carrickfergus. (Hisses and derisive laughter.) Deluded and short-sighted men ! Did they think that by his incarceration in a prison they could conceal Mr O’Connell from the eyes of his countrymen ! – did they think that imprisoning such a man, that his virtues, and that his patriotism, would be lost to their memories ! No. He told them in their name, and he told them in the name of the people of England – yes, and in the name of the toiling millions of England, that how dark soever might be his cell – how strong soever might be his dungeon – how gross soever the indignities they might heap upon his head: and he told Mr O’Connell in that vast and gorgeous assembly, that he might lay his head in peace upon his pillow, for that the petitions, ay, and the remonstrances too of millions of the virtuous, the patriotic, and the good, would not only attest to his innocence, but would proclaim his liberation from within the very walls of Parliament itself. (Cheering) He told them before that he had already gone beyond the limits he had assigned to himself, and he was satisfied that nothing he could urge would strengthen the feelings they had towards their patriotic and illustrious guest; and he should, therefore, conclude his observations by saying that they, in honouring Mr O’Connell, did honour to themselves; and, farther, that they testified their sympathy and regard for a people whose rights and liberties, whose prosperity and happiness, ought to be, and he was sure were, as sacred to them as their own. (Cheers) He had now, therefore, only to propose – “ Health and long life to Daniel O’Connell. “

The toast was received with the same enthusiasm that attended the first mention of Mr O’Connell’s name. The cheering and waving of handkerchiefs continued for some minutes.

Mr O’Connell ( after the cheering with which he was greeted had subsided) rose, and spoke as follows: –

I protest to you this is the first time in a long and variegated life that, with truth I may say, I feel unmanned – I feel overpowered. The dungeon that my enemies and yours have prepared for me has no terrors to my mind (Cheers); and, if the scaffold and the rack could be added to it, they would not bring such overpowering sensations to my mind as the awful magnitude of the compliment you have paid to me today. (Cheers) Oh ! how ardent must be your love of justice. Oh ! how steady and severe your hatred for judicial partiality. How you must delight in seeing justice rendered with the same intensity that you hate the practice of partiality and injustice ! What are my claims on your sympathy? That I am the victim of injustice – simply because the  law has been violated in my person, simply because those in power have practised iniquity, and you, who have integrity and manliness, know how to hate them. (Cheers) Yes, you are able to turn defeat into victory, (Cheers) and to make conviction not a source of punishment but triumph. (Cheers) You make me glad that I have been convicted. It is no exaggeration to use that expression. I use it in all the sincerity of my heart, because you have shown a sympathy in England for Ireland; you have convinced me, not reluctantly to be sure, but with some difficulty, that there is a higher mind animating the masses of the middle classes, and the better part of the higher classes, in England, which teaches me that we were born to be united in affection and in interest – born to be combined against the world, and that we have on enemies but those who are enemies of both. (Cheers) Yes, I do delight in the events that have taken place. I think they will tend to great good in both branches of the country. I am sure of this, that the people of Ireland will hear with gratitude, to be extinguished only with their lives, of the manner in which I have been received lately in more popular assemblies than one, and in that brilliant assemblaze that is now before me. (Cheers) Oh ! what a scene is here tonight. When I see the rank and station, when I contemplate the wealth and importance, when I see the manly determination and the kindly glisten of the friendly eye, when I behold those beings that seem to turn it to fairy land, those sylphs and celestial beings animating and smiling upon us, I do rejoice that at any inconvenience to myself I have beheld such a transcendent spectacle. (Cheers) They have convicted me: but you ask how and of what ! I am here to tell you of what. They have convicted me not of a crime defined or definite – not of anything you can read in law books, but of something the judges have spelt out of those law books, and put together to form a monster indictment. It is literally so. – [Considerable interruption here took place owing to the great difficulty of hearing Mr O’Connell in the more distant parts of the house. The confusion continued until Mr O’Connell, advancing towards the centre of the house, mounted on a table, and thus continued his address]

I was endeavouring to vindicate the judgement you had formed. My task, I may say, was that of vindicating you to yourselves, of endeavouring to prove that you are perfectly justified in the ardour of your enthusiasm in supporting my cause and that of the Irish people. (Cheers) The accusation that has been made against me, and on which I have been convicted is of that enormous nature, that it is interesting to every human being, whether he be himself liable to a similar machination or not, to understand distinctly its bearing, its form and its pressure. It is not a crime respecting the evidence for which there is any possible resort to law nooks, or to the conjurations of men of my trade. It is called, to be sure, a conspiracy; but there is nothing of private agreement – there is nothing of arrangement – there is nothing of plot or plan in it. It is something that the judges imagine when they dream, and make the public suffer when they are awake. (Cheers) One of our female authors of celebrity in the fulness of the feminine imagination has depicted to the world an imaginary being of extraordinary dimensions, and of voracious capacity, and denominated it Frankenstein. The conspiracy tried in Ireland was the Frankenstein of the law, uncouth of limb, unshaped in form, undefined and indefinite in manner, having nothing of humanity about it, having nothing of law but its monstrosity. (Cheers) How was it endeavoured to be supported ? By the history of nine months. What plot did it disclose ? Why a plot which was carefully committed to those cautious keepers of secrets, the public newspapers. (Cheers) Not one witness was produced to prove any fact except that A and B were proprietors of newspapers, and members of the association, and then the newspapers were read in detail against us; the judges determined that that was evidence of conspiracy, and here I stand before you a convicted conspirator. (Cheers) The history of nine months was given in this most satisfactory manner. The chronology of the newspapers, the dates of them were all varied one week from another. The history of 41 giant meetings was detailed as it appeared in the public prints, and was it alleged that any one of these meetings was illegal ? – that there was force, violence, tumult, or turbulence at any one of them ? There was not a particle of any such allegation that the magistracy or the constables, or the idle and the timid, were intimidated or frightened at any one of these meetings ? There was not a single allegation of the kind. They were peaceable. They were admitted to be legal. Each and every one of them were admitted to be legal. But by the dexterity of judicial magic, the 41, though each perfectly legal separately, when taken together formed a conspiracy. (Cheers). It is literally so. I am not mocking you when I tell you literally the fact, that 41 legal meetings were held to make an illegal one. Forty-one cyphers would not make a sum, and yet, in point of law, it was decided in our case that 41 nothings made a something, and we are to abide the event. Oh ! the scorn and indignation of mankind ought to be poured out on such an abomination of injustice. (Cheers) I arraign the men as conspirators who planned such a trial. I arraign, as the worst species of conspirators, the men who carried on this mock prosecution with all the trickery and chicanery of Old Bailey practitioners. (Cheers) What is fact today judges call precedent tomorrow, and, if this question be allowed to repose, if this precedent be once established, Englishmen, there is not one of you whose case it may not be tomorrow. (Cheers) I say not this to threaten or menace you. I say not this to instigate you to warmth in support of the people of Ireland; for I would be the most mistaken of human beings, if I were not aware already, from what I have seen in England, that it is unnecessary to animate you, or to give you any motives for acting, but your own generous feelings. (Cheers) I arraign, therefore that prosecution against me, and I tell you you are justified in arraigning it for want of anything like legal form or fixity, for want of anything that you can encounter; for it is a monstrous shadow that may be armed with deadly weapons by a miscreant administration of the law, but which has in it nothing that is tangible which a rational man can meet in fair conflict of argument or judicial discrimination. What is my next arraignment ? The conduct of the judge (Cheers) – and here I have one consolation, that no one human being attempts to justify the judge. (Cheers) The usual practice in Parliament is, when any man is arraigned for misconduct, the Ministry, if he happens to be a Ministerial man, and the Opposition, if he happens to be an Opposition man, suddenly discover that he really was endowed with all possible human virtues. They get up and eulogise him, never having discovered that he had so many good qualities till he was attacked – that is the usual course of Parliamentary proceeding. But there is one man of whom men of all classes are ashamed, a person no one praised, and that man is Chief-Justice Penefather. Nobody attempted to eulogise him. It is admitted that since the hideous days of Scroggs and Jefferys so one-sided a charge was never pronounced by judicial lips. (Cheers) He is taken back to the worst days of the history of the law. It is admitted – it was asserted and not denied – I saw it myself – he borrowed part of the prosecuting counsel’s brief to help him make his charge, and in addressing the jury he showed the bent of his mind – “ out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh” – he talked of the counsel on the other side. (Shame) Let it be proclaimed throughout England – from the extremity of Cornwall to the highest part of Scotland – let it be known throughout the length and breadth of the land – that there has been a trial where a chief-justice presiding was admitted to have made the charge of an advocate, which was incapable of defence by any party or any government. (Loud cheers) You see how I am coaxing him to pass a lenient sentence on me. (Cheers and a laugh) What is my next impeachment of this proceeding ? I am here to vindicate myself and countrymen, and you for your sympathy and support. (Cheers) My next impeachment is the management of the jury panel. Out of 710 names, 63 slipped by accident. (Cheers) We had a lottery, out of 773, 710 alone remained; 63 were wanting. (Villainy) To be sure it was villainy; it would not be accident. (Cheers) Especially out of the 63, 27 were Roman Catholic. Perhaps you do not know that I am of that persuasion. (Cheers and a laugh) And here let me say, that when my esteemed and valued friend (your Chairman) awhile ago told you that the Roman Catholics were indebted to me for my exertion in favour of their emancipation, he might have added with truth – I add with pride – that I sought for that emancipation, not by the assertion of sectarian preference or party, but on the great and glorious principle that religion is a matter between man and his Creator (Cheers) and there is no freedom or justice in any country where a man is prohibited worshipping his God according to the dictates of his conscience. (Cheers) It was upon that principle that we petitioned for the Protestant Dissenters in England, and helped to obtain their emancipation. (Cheers) There is the hand that drew the petition that was signed by 28,000 Catholics praying for the emancipation of the Protestant Dissenters of England, and, within one fortnight after that petition was presented Lord John succeeded; and Peel was compelled to emancipate the Protestant Dissenters. (Cheers) pardon me for this digression; but it is important that we should understand each other well. The people of Ireland have waited for their own freedom of conscience; they were in power three times since the Reformation, and they never persecuted a single Protestant. (Cheers) Let us then contend with each other, in the good, the charitable, the benevolent generous flow of our feelings, and take no credit for particular sectarian advantages, and let us establish the liberty of all on the broad basis of Christian brotherhood. (Cheers)  I come back to the trial. The 63 names slipped out. Mark now, for one moment: there is something of technicality in what I am going to tell you, but I think you will easily comprehend me. We challenged the array on account of the 63 names which had been dropped. In that challenge – the document is on record – we alleged that those names were fraudulently spoliated from the list – we alleged that this was done to the detriment of the traversers. That plea was put on the record. The Attorney-general had it in his power to join issue and say the thing had not been fraudulently done. That question of fraud would have been tried by lawyers duly sworn; but he declined to do so. he left the allegation uncontroverted – it was uncontroverted  on the record to this day, and he relied on this, that he had judges who told him and told us that, as we did not know who it was that committed the fraud, we were without remedy. (Shame) It is literally true. I am here talking to the common sense of Englishmen – to their sense of honesty, and to that noble adherence to fair play, which above all things else is the highest and most dignified trait in the English character. It is a common saying all over the world, when two men are found fighting, people who come up are sure to take part with one or the other; but in England it is proverbial that no two people fight that those who come up don’t see fair play. I am telling you those things, and appealing to your fair play. There is no one word in any other language that can express such a character, and it deserves to have a word coined for itself. The fraud is uncontroverted till the present moment; the only answer we get, as I told you, was, “you don’t know who committed the fraud, and therefore there is no remedy.” Suppose a man is robbed and does not know the name of the thief, if he went before Sir Peter Laurie, or any other of your white witches, and said “ I caught this man escaping from my premises with my goods.” everybody would laugh at Sir Peter more than they do if he were to say “ I cannot listen to your complaint: you do not know the man’s name.” (A laugh) And yet on that most ridiculous assertion we were told that the fraud must go unpunished, and we must be punished for mentioning the fraud. (Cheers, and cries of “Shame”)

There remains one more impeachment, and that is my impeachment of the jury that was sworn. In point of law Protestant and Catholic have equal right to be on that jury. (Cheers.) In point of justice it ought to be so; in fair play it would be so. Chief-Justice Fairplay would have decided for me at once. Yet what was the first step ? Eleven Catholics were on the reduced list, every one of them was struck off by the Crown Solicitor. They say, to be sure, they were Repealers. In the first place it is not true: that is one answer. In the next place, if it were true it would be no reply; because, being a Repealer might be a great folly, but it is not a crime: it is not a crime which makes a man an outlaw (Cheers) ; and if being a Repealer would make a juror favourable to me, I ask you whether my most rancorous and violent opponents – men who had voted three times against me -could be considered a fair and impartial jury against me. This is their own argument. I convict them out of their own mouths. I appeal to common sense, if a Repealer would be favourable to me, is not your anti-Repealer necessarily favourable to another. (Cheers.) But recollect this, it was the more important to have a fair jury in this case, because the crime was not a distinct one. If it had been a charge of robbery, or murder, or forgery, any human intellect could have understood the nature of the crime, and would only have had to decide the fact whether the party charged was guilty or innocent. But here was an imaginary crime, participating more of ideality than reality – here was something that was to be spelled out of the recesses of the criminal law, and it emphatically called for a thoroughly impartial as well as a thoroughly intelligent jury to investigate it. (Cheers.)

One Protestant they struck off – as respectable an individual as ever lived -almost the only liberal Protestant in the entire panel. The man whose intellect was of the highest order, the intelligent Protestant, they sent to keep company with the 11 Catholics. Yet they call this a fair trial. I call it not prosecution, but persecution. (Cheers.) I call it not a fair trial, but shifting, scheme, and management. (Cheers.) I say I am not the person convicted by the due course of law. In prison I shall feel that I am a victim, and in that prison I shall have the feeling at heart that will raise me superior to the punishment. (Loud cries of “Hear.”) Oh ! I see I have plenty here to open the prison door. (Loud cheers.) But it would be very idle to suppose that I am not thoroughly prepared for an event of that kind. Whatever I suffer for my country I rejoice in that suffering, and she is rendered doubly dearer to me by any infliction imposed on me for acting in defence of her freedom and happiness, and they mistake much who imagine that my influence will be diminished, or my power of persuasion over my countrymen will be lessened by any sentence they may possibly inflict on me. (Cheers.) However, I will not dispute with you on the nature of the sentence. I have shown you the culpability of the proceeding. I have arraigned the parties to it here, where my voice, unconfined by these walls, will reach all over the world wherever the English language is spoken: wherever the ear understands its accents my words will be conveyed on the wings of the press, and in presence of the congregrated civilization of the world, in the presence of America, of France and India, of every clime and country, I proclaim the proceedings against me a foul and dishonest persecution (Loud cheers), and I hurl at the tyrants of the law my merciless scorn and defiance. (Loud cheers.) But it will be asked what object I had in view at those meetings. You may say to me ” ’tis true you ought not to have been convicted, but you have an account still to render to us; you are accused of wishing to separate England from Ireland.” I have been accused of unnecessarily meddling with an enactment that took place 44 years ago, of needlessly reviving old causes of complaint, and accumulating new grievances to make them more unbearable. Now, I am quite ready to meet that charge, and I should be utterly unworthy of the magnificent compliment you have paid me this evening, if I were not ready here, in the presence of you Englishmen, to justify everything that I have done, and to rebut every imputation which has been cast upon me. (Loud cheers.) I will tell you why I have held these meetings, and I will abide by your disinterested judgment. They say there is a union between the two countries. I utterly deny it. There is a parchment enactment (Cheers), but there is no real union. (Cheers.) What is the meaning of a real union ? A perfect identification between the two countries (Cheers) – that there should be no difference between Englishmen and Irishmen, except a little in the accent (a laugh) – that Englishmen and Irishmen should possess the same rights, the same privileges, and the same franchises (cheers)-that there should be no difference between the men of Kent and the men of Cork (cheers) – between the men of Mayo and the men of Lancashire. (Renewed cheers.) That England and Ireland should be one nation, possessed precisely of the same rights, the same franchises, and the same privileges. Is not that the real meaning of a union ? (Cheers) I appealed to the imperial Parliament to make the union what I have described it, but I appealed in vain. TheTories, of course refused, and the Whigs were equally complimentary. (Cheers and laughter.) I do not wish to weary this assembly by the barrenness of statistics, I will, however, draw your attention to one or two statements. The county of Cork, which I have the honour to represent, has 710,000 inhabitants in its agricultural districts, and upwards of 140,000 inhabitants in its cities and towns, so that the population of Cork, taken together, amounts to 850,000 inhabitants. Now, the inhabitants of Wales are 800,000, being 50,000 less than the inhabitants of the county of Cork. The county of Cork, with its 850,000 inhabitants, returns just eight members to Parliament – and now many members do you think Wales returns with its 800,000 ? Why, just 28. (Hear, hear.) One Welshman is not able to beat five Irishmen. (Cheers and laughter.) The Welsh are a brave and perhaps sometimes ill-tempered race. (Cheers and laughter); but, at the same time, I respectfully submit that one Welshman is not worth five Irishmen. (A laugh.) Man for man,I am quite content to allow; but I cannot admit that, as compared with my own countrymen, they are worth five to one. (Loud cheers and laughter.) I cannot admit they are entitled to retain 28 members for the 800,000 inhabitants, while the county of Cork, with its 850,000 inhabitants, is only to return eight members to Parliament.(Cheers.) Ought that to last ? (Cries of “No, no.”) Is it not a thing that ought to be changed ? (Cries of” Yes, yes.”) They laughed at me when I called for the change. Then, again, let us look at the question in another point of view. The parliamentary returns, made seven years ago, on the registration of voters, showed that there were 4,000 registered voters for the county of Cork, with a population of 710,000 inhabitants, while in Wales there were 36,000 registered voters. I was looking over the Parliamentary returns this morning, and I find the number of registered voters for Cork is now 1,500 – only 1,500 ! (Hear, hear.) The votes for the largest county in Ireland are nearly extinguished by the operation of the Registration Act, while in Wales the number of voters has increased by 2,000. There are 38,000 registered voters in Wales, and 1,500 for the county of Cork. Now is that common sense ? Is that justice? Is that fairness, or is it honesty? (“No,no”) l have obtained the love and affection of my countrymen. (Hear, hear.) I know what it is to feel the delight of being borne along, as it were, on the breath of a people. (Cheers.) Oh ! if you saw the stalwart men leaving their work and flocking to the roadside as I pass by; if you saw them in the attitude of firmness, and watched their eye beaming with affection as they looked on me, and their hand outstretched, almost asking me, would you wish that we should strike the blow ?(hear, hear) – if you saw the aged woman greeting me as I passed by, and praying for my health and prosperity – if you saw the merry children and heard their chirping cry as I went along (cheers) praying for blessings on the head of him whom they called the father of their country (cheers);  – oh, if you had seen and felt this as I have seen and felt it; if you had seen the congregated hundreds and thousands – ay, more than a million – come at my call and dissolve with my breath, whom I have taught the lesson of which I am an apostle – that no political advantage can be of so much importance as to justify the shedding of one single drop of human blood (cheers) ; this is the lesson they have been taught; this is the lesson they practise (cheers); and this is the lesson they will continue to practise until the triumphant success of their efforts shall imprint the maxim upon the wise and good of all nations (Cheers); – if you had seen all this as I have experienced it you would think me, indeed, the basest of all mankind if I did not struggle to remedy the inequalities of which I have mentioned two, but of which I might cite a hundred, existing between the two countries. (Cheers.) The Irish nation, to be properly represented, ought to have 160 members at the least; and that is less even than her right. We would take less for a compromise: they will give us none; but set us at defiance and indict us for a conspiracy for endeavouring to obtain them. (Cheers.) Are you aware that the Corporate Reform Bill given to Ireland is most miserably defective in every respect. In England whoever is rated to the poor-rate is a burgess, and is entitled to vote at municipal elections; but, in Dublin, in order to be upon the burgess-lists it is necessary that a man should be rated at 10s., that is, he should occupy a 20s. house and that he should have paid no less than nine different rates. The consequence is, that in Dublin not above one-third of those who ought to be burgesses are on the list. (Hear hear.) I ask for equality with the English Corporate Reform Bill, and when I call the people together that they may insist on the desirable alterations in a peaceable, tranquil, and constitutional manner, I am indicted for  a conspiracy. (Cheers.) But there is another grievance in Ireland greater than all these. It may have the appearance of prejudice on my part, or of sectarian fanaticism, that I should advert to it now; but, as I have assailed it elsewhere, I am ready boldly to assail it here, and to take your judgment on it. I allude to the established church in Ireland. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, I appeal to you whether the church in England, that has the state emoluments, is not the church of the great majority of the people? (Cries of ” No.”) So much the worse; it ought to be. Well, that is a disputed question which I will not argue. The church of Scotland, until lately, was the church of the great majority; but the church in Ireland, which has the state emoluments, is not and never has been the church of the majority. (Hear.) I do not want the emoluments of that church for my church – I would not accept them. There does not live a Protestant who would be half so determined as I should be in throwing them aside from my church. I would scorn to have my church the vassal of the state, or connected with the state. I think such connexion is injurious to the state, and must be detrimental to the church. My opinion may be insignificant; but the Catholic prelates of Ireland have within the last six weeks proclaimed that they would never take one single farthing of public money, or any state endowment whatsoever. (Cheers.) I do not think that there is a greater crime on the face of the earth than that one man should be compelled to pay for the religion of another which he did not believe. Upon that principle, the great oppression of Ireland is the Established Church, and until this system is put an end to it will be in vain to expect tranquillity in lreland. My friends, I wish you had seen the Irish newspapers. A short time since a very respectable gentleman, named Archdeacon De Lacy died. He was the nephew of a Bishop, and according to the advertisement of the sale of his effects, he was an excellent man, he had 11 hunters, an excellent pack of hounds, and a splendid cellar of wine. (Laughter.) But it may be said that these grievances of Ireland are rather speculative than otherwise. I don’t think it will be said that the last is so. It is said, that we may be rich, happy, and contented without these political advantages. But is Ireland rich? That she is not contented is certain – has she a right to be happy ? Allow me to vindicate myself by telling you the real state of Ireland – In 1834, 40 years after the establishment of the union, the Commissioners on the Poor Law Inquiry reported that they found 2,385,000 in a state of destitution upon a population of 8,000,000 more than one fourth of the whole population; and Captain Larkom has reported that 70 per cent. of the rural population were living in huts in one room only – that 30 per cent. of the town population families were living in one room, and in some instances several families in that one room. ( Hear, hear.) Nothing shows greater misery than a decrease in the population. An increase in the population is a favourable sign, but the retrogression of a population of 70,000 a year is a most convincing proof of misery, distress, and wretchedness. Now, just to shows you that what I am stating is correct, I will read you the description of Mr. Kohl, a German, who has been travelling  all over Europe, who has visited Ireland, and lately published a book, in which is the following statement:- I remember, when I saw the poor Lettes in Livonia, I used to pity them for having to live in huts built of the un-hewn logs of trees, the crevices being stopped up with moss. I pitied them on account of their low doors and diminutive windows, and gladly would I have arranged their chimney for them in a more suitable manner. Well, Heaven pardon my ignorance. I knew not that I should ever see a people on whom Almighty God had imposed yet heavier privations. Now that I have seen Ireland, it seems to me that the Lettes, the Esthonians, and the Findianders, lead a life of comparative comfort, and poor Paddy would feel like a king with their houses, their haoilirrents, and their daily fare. (Cheers). A wooden house, with moss to stop up its crevices, would be a palace in the wild regions of Ireland. Paddy’s cabin is built of earth, one shovelful over the other, with a few stones mingled here and there, till the wall is high enough. But perhaps you will say, the roof is thatched or covered with bark. Ay, indeed ! A few sods of grass cut from a neighbouring bog are his only thatch. Well, but a window or two at least, if it be only a pane of glass fixed in the wall, or the bladder of some animal, or a piece of talc. as may often be seen in a Wallachian hut ! What idle luxury were this ! There are thousands of cabins in which not a trace of a window is to be seen. Nothing but a little square hole in front, which doubles the duty of door, window, and chimney – light, smoke, pigs, and children all must pass in and out of the same aperture !  A French author, Beaumont, who had seen the Irish peasant in his cabin, and the North American Indian in his wigwam, has assured us that the savage is better provided for than the poor man in Ireland. Indeed, the question may be raised, whether in the whole world a nation is to be found that is subjected to such physical privations as the peasantry in some parts of Ireland. This fact cannot be placed in too strong a light; for, if it can once be shown that the wretchedness of the Irish population is without a paralell example on the globe, surely every friend of humanity will feel himself called on to reflect whether means may not be found for remedying an evil of so astounding a magnitude !’ (Cheers.)

And, in Ennis, the following statement was made the other day at a meeting, at which Sir Lucius O’Brien presided: – ” At a meeting of the Guardians of the Ennis Poor Law Union on Wednesday, Sir Lucius O’Brien in the chair, Mr. Butler brought forward the resolutions of which he had given notice, relative to the exorbitant amount of Grand Jury Cess now leviable, and which he stated was entirely borne by the occupiers of land. His object in bringing forward the resolutions was, to call attention to, the matter, in the hope that the grievance would be redressed by the introduction of a provision into the grand jury laws, which would render the landlords liable for a moiety of the tax, in the same manner in which they are subject to poor-rates. The chairman and Mr. Carrick supported the landlords, attributing all their misfortunes to bad seasons, failures in the crops, &c. : while Mr. James Mahon, B. Butler, Mr. Finucane, Mr. Knox, and nearly the entire board were of opinion that the major part of the population were in a state of dreadful destitution – that pauperism was frightfully on the increase, and that nothing short of sound remedies should be considered.”   Why do I harrow you with these pictures ? Why ?  for the purpose of calling upon you to exert yourselves in the cause of my unhappy country, and to do all in your power to render her happy once again. Does this misery that I have pictured to you arise from the laziness of the people of Ireland ? No. Do they not travel far and near to obtain work ? Do they not crowd your streets and your villages in hopes of obtaining work ? (Loud cheers.) But then it may be said that Ireland it unproductive. Oh ! no, ’tis one of the greenest and the fairest isles of the globe. (Loud cheers) Its crops are abundant, and its produce magnificent. –(Cheers.) It has the best harbours and the finest estuaries in the world. It has all those advantages – and, added to this, it has in spite of all their misfortunes a cheerful, a gay, laborious and affectionate people. (Cheers.) Then why is it that this misery exists ! From bad government. It is impossible to give any other reason for it. (Great cheering.) Since the union, matters have become worse and worse in Ireland. They have given us a poor law, and that poor law, I will venture to say, will bring rebellion in Ireland if it exists for two years longer. (Hear, hear.). I stood alone in opposing it. I was attacked as hard-hearted for doing so. l said it could be no remedy – that Ireland was too poor for a poor-law. It is literally so, and now the country is breaking up in consequence of it. Let them send me to my dungeon, let them preclude me from intercourse with the people -the consequences will be awful They wait in the expectation that something will yet be done for them. They have learned from me that something may be done for them, and I have told them that he who commits a crime strengthens the enemy – that the only mode of obtaining justice is by being peaceable and quiet. (Cheers.) I have trespassed on you long; but how could I avoid expressing my gratitude and showing you that I deserve at least your good attention, your kindness, and support ? (Cheers.) I have never shrunk from standing by you in any contest, – I have always been at your side – (Cheers) – I have never given a vote that was calculated to Increase the burdens of the English people – (Cheers); but I have invariably supported every measure for the extension of civil and religious liberty. (Cheers.) I have advocated the cause of the slave in America, as well as the peasant in Ireland. I care not what a man’s creed, or caste, or colour may be; no matter, how incompatible with freedom, a southern sun may have burnt upon him – I care not whether the despotism of the Spanish tyrant or of the French mocker of liberty presses on any country, I am for freedom for every man, liberty for all, tyranny for none. (Cheers.) I stood by you in the Reform Bill, I formed one of your majority, and an influential one it was; for others voted with me. It promised much. It was spoiled in its management. Its nursing mothers were unkindly to their foster child. In another struggle for freedom I also joined you. I shall always be with you in giving the protection of the vote by ballot, and for the shortening of the duration of Parliaments, recollecting that short accounts make long friends. (Cheers.) I owe this statement to you; and now I solemnly assure you, that if I was not thoroughly convinced that the establishment of a domestic legislature was essential to the comfort of Ireland, and that it was necessary to keep up the connexion between this country and Ireland, I would advocate it no longer. If I did not apprehend that when I am gone some one else will do that which I never will do, countenance the separation of Ireland from England, I would not struggle for a local legislature. But to say that a local legislature must end in a separation is a mockery. Look at Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Canada, Barbadoes, even Botany Bay. (Cheers.) So that every dependency of England, except Ireland, has a local legislature. We don’t want to check or curb England. What we want is, that the laws, to be obeyed in Ireland, should be made in Ireland. It was so before the union; it will be so again when wise and good men understand the question as I do. And, in the mean time, I ask all to assist us in getting justice for Ireland, and they will draw away the repealing from me. Let us have equal franchises, equal representation, equal corporate reform, equal freedom of conscience from a church to which we do not belong. Let them try the experiment of kindness, and they will soon defeat any plan of further agitation. The life and soul of agitation is the injustice attempted to be done us; to crown which they come out now with a wicked perversion of the law, the scandalous partiality of the judge, the corrupt packing of the jury, and the insulting title of ” convicted conspirators.” (Cheers.) Convicted! convicted in their teeth, the renegades. Renegades who have forsaken every principle – who violently opposed emancipation one year, and carried it the next. (Hear, hear.) There is the renegade Stanley, who was the principal contriver of the Reform Bill in such a manner as to prevent it from working. (Hear, hear.) There is Graham, too, who was first on one side of the house, and now is on the other, and goes to the very extreme of renegadism. (Hear, hear.) These are the real conspirators; and let all those of both countries who wish for rational freedom, those who look for free trade and an unshackled commerce, cheap law, and a relief from the intolerable burden of debt, – let those who desire economical, practical reforms, join with old Ireland. (Cheers.) They will be sure of meeting grateful hearts. We will have no separation, but a perpetual friendship. The union would then, indeed, be rendered valuable by a domestic legislature and by a complete combination of a loyal, contented, and happy people. (The hon. and learned gentleman then retired amidst loud and general cheering.)

The Earl of SHREWSBURY came forward to propose the next toast-” The People.”

He could not tell them how extremely he felt the disadvantage he laboured under, in having so immediately to follow after the eloquent and instructive speech which had been delivered to them by their illustrious guest: but on this, as on other grounds, he felt he should receive what he so much needed, their kindest consideration. (Hear, hear.) The toast which had been assigned to him to propose was that of ” the People,” and in proposing it he was sure that the first idea which presented itself to their minds was the cause of the people of Ireland. That was a great and generous cause, for it was the cause of humanity – the cause of right as opposed to that of wrong. (Cheers.) They had arrived at a new era in the history of that cause, for they had at length embodied in it the sympathies and the feelings of the people of England. (Hear, hear.) The time was when the people of England were foolish enough to imagine that their political rights and their commercial prosperity were distinct from those of Ireland. This delusion had been done away with, and they were now beginning to see that the way to make her own empire secure was to make Ireland her happy, her trusted, and, therefore, her prosperous ally. (Hear, hear.) They now were beginning to find out that the prosperity of England would never be stable and deep-seated – that there never would be security for herself, unless she shared all her privileges and franchises fairly and equally with Ireland. Ireland was now universally acknowledged to be one of the finest countries in the world, but she had been governed by persons blinded by prejudice; and thus her great natural advantages had never been fairly developed. (Cheers.) For, with every natural advantage in a superior degree, the natural resources of Ireland remained unproductive, while the great mass of her population were in a state of misery and destitution unparalleled in any country in Europe. Why should there be this difference between England and Ireland ? It was because England was governed by another law, and in another spirit. We were comparatively happy and prosperous ; they were doomed to poverty and misery; and so it would continue until the people of Ireland enjoyed equal rights and privileges with ourselves. (Hear, hear.) But Ireland must no longer be allowed to fight her battle for justice single-handed. The people of England must come in as a generous or even as an interested auxiliary. (Hear.) Ireland deserved every assistance in her hour of need. She was deprived of half her strength. The liberties of the people had been invaded; the weapon with which the constitution had armed her for the attainment of her rights, and which she had wielded with such astounding effect under the guidance of him whose courage and prowess they were there to commemorate, had been rudely wrested from her grasp. Had Ireland sought to attain her object by the display of physical force, without a just and paramount necessity – he spoke of that sort which came in the spirit of law and order, and he should say of the constitution, for in these days it was necessary to distinguish between legal and constitutional means (Hear) – and had Ireland sought redress by the display of physical strength, without a just necessity for it, she would have exceeded the true prerogative of the people ; but where there was that necessity the people were justified in resorting to those means. Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights were our title-deeds. Yes, when the moral was at hand to guide the physical power of a nation, their union became a duty where their object was to alleviate sorrow and resist injustice (Cheers); but that union was for the present dissolved. Let them not, however, be dismayed. Ireland had gained more than she had lost. She had gained the sympathies of the people of England. Let Ireland then never cease to struggle, though hitherto in vain till she had conquered injustice; ” and,” continued the noble Earl, “may he who is so truly styled the Liberator of his country (cheers) – he who first snapped our bonds asunder, may he live to see Ireland rise from poverty and oppression, and as the reward of his own untiring energy, may he live to see her enjoy the proper fruit of freedom – fair and equal justice, and fair and equal rights with the people of England.” (Loud cheers.)

The toast having been received with cheers.

The Hon. Mr. LANGDALE came forward to acknowledge the toast, and proposed,

” The 78 peers who supported Lord Normanby’s motion, and the 227 members of the House of Commons who supported Lord John Russell’s motion.” He said he felt personally bound to come forward and welcome the Liberator of Ireland on this occasion, because had it not been for the exertions of Mr. O’Connell, he would in all probability have not been now (as a Catholic) entitled to address an assembly of freemen, conscious of an equality of rights and privileges with those whom he addressed. (Hear.) With respect to the late trial, if ever there was an instance in which vengeance seemed to have taken the place of justice, it was on that occasion. However, it was a source of deep consolation that in the Upper House there should have been 78 peers to redeem the character of the House of Lords, among whom were some of the first blood of the land. He knew too how repugnant it was to the feelings of his noble friend (Lord Shrewsbury) to come forward on such a public occasion, but it was gratifying to see the head of the house of Talbot stand forth as be had done tonight on behalf of the insulted rights of his Irish fellow-countrymen. (Hear, hear.)

The CHAIRMAN returned thanks as a member of the House of Commons, and then read letters from the Earl of Radnor and Lord Kinnaird, expressive of their approval of the objects of the meeting.

Lord CAMOYS said he was proud of being one of those 78 Peers who had formed the minority on the occasion referred to. Had not the division taken place so early, the number would have been much augmented. As it was, however, that minority comprised some of the most ancient and patriotic blood in the House of Lords. He (Lord Camoys) was especially bound to be present on this occasion, for to whom was it that he was indebted for being one of that number of 78, but to the eminent individual whom they had that night met to honour. He had come there to express his indignation at those recent proceedings in Ireland which had covered the judicature of that country with contempt. Such things ought not to be allowed to continue; and he trusted that such a demonstration as this, and others which had taken place, and would take place in this country, would totally remove from the public mind that ignorance and prejudice with respect to Ireland without which no power on earth could have induced the people of England to withhold redress of the grievances of Ireland. (Hear, hear.)

Sir R. BULKELEY, M,P., also acknowledged the toast. He felt it to be the duty of every friend of civil and religious liberty to come forward on this occasion. The magnificent assembly of that evening would suffice to assure Mr. O’Connell of the sympathy of the English people, and to convince him of what was the fact, that the interference with the right of trial by jury had thoroughly aroused them, to an extent far beyond any effect that had been produced by all that had been written for many years. As a Protestant he gloried in the revolution of 1688, but far be it from him to wish to perpetuate in Ireland those wrongs for which that settlement was made the pretext. (Cheers.)

The Hon. F. H. BERKELEY M.P., then came forward to propose ” Justice to Ireland”. He could not, however, flatter the meeting, with the hope that justice would come soon, while there was the present overweening majority in the two houses of Parliament. (Hear, hear.) Nor could he say he believed that another election would restore the power to the people. (No.) Nothing would effect that but an extension of the franchise, which was now a mere mockery. There would be no good done until the House of Lords had less to do with the House of Commons, (Hear, hear,) and until the House of Commons had less power over the constituents; until such a day arrived, he despaired of seeing the peopIe of England wishing to assist the people of Ireland in the way their hearts and feelings would prompt them. (Hear, hear)

Mr M.J. O’CONNELL, M.P., begged to acknowledge with pride and gratification the humour they had done his country by the practical pledge of justice to Ireland they had given that night, and on so many former occasions since the late state trials. it was a source of pride and gratification to him to see the people of England throwing off that apathy which seemed to have hung over them, however much they might be inclined to feel for the people of Ireland. It arose, however, from the feeling which always done the people of England humour – the feeling of fair play – the feeling which prompted them to take the part of an injured person at once, without inquiring whether his previous conduct had ‘er had not deserved approbation. (Hear) If there had been alienation, jealousies, and heart-burnings between the two people, he hoped they would now close on both sides. (Hear.) They might differ as to what justice to Ireland consisted in, but they were all agreed that there must be an identity of rights and privileges between the people of the two countries. (Cheers.)

MR GISBOURNE M.P., rose to propose the next toast. He had said to a member in the house that evening that he was coming to this dinner. “Oh,” said he “then you are going to a dinner given to a Repealer, and presided over by a Chartist,” to which he (Mr Gisborne) replied, “ that if the chairman believed in witchcraft, and the guest was a believer in mesmerism, it would not deter him from going for his object was to do honour to Mr O’Connell, and to express the deep conviction he felt, after having heard the nine nights’ debate in the House of Commons, that the late trials in Ireland had been a tyranny perpetrated under the form of law. He desired to express most emphatically his detestation of the whole course of the proceedings. “(Cheers.) The hon. member proposed “Trial by jury, without fraud.” (Cheers.)

Mr. Serjeant Murphy acknowledged the toast.

The health of the ladies having  been drunk,

The Chairman’s health was pronosed by Mr. O’Connell,.

The Chairman returned thanks, and

The company separated at a few minutes to 12 o’clock.

Originally  from The Times, on Wednesday 13th March, 1844. This was reprinted in The Morning Chronicle in Sydney, NSW, on Wed 10th July, 1844,  on Page 1, and I imagine a lot of other papers around the world.

George Hopkins stealing drink 1815

My great-grandfather’s first father-in-law [he, G G’pa, married twice] was a George Hopkins. He appears to have been transported to Australia in about 1847. There seem to be a few George Hopkins who show up with criminal records, and probably aren’t all the same person. This may well be the right George – there’s about six years difference between his age here, and the 1841 census – but that census rounded up people’s ages by five years for some bizarre reason. But he’s an entertainingly bad boy. This one was prosecuted at the Old Bailey in 1815, and sent to Newgate prison [1 year, and a whipping]
JOHN BENNET, GEORGE HOPKINS. Theft: grand larceny.  15th February 1815

JOHN BENNET and GEORGE HOPKINS were indicted for feloniously stealing, on the 15th of January, three pints of brandy, value 4 s.[£181.50] a pint of rum, value 3 s.[£136.10] a quart of geneva [gin], value 4 s.[£181.50] two quarts of wine, value 6 s. [£272.20] eight bottles, value 1 s. 4 d. [£60.79] the property of Christopher Smith, esq. Newman Smith , and William Petter Woodhouse , and a basket, value 1 s. [£45.37] the property of John Adnam. [ The total value was 19s.4d., or a modern-day equivalent of £877.40 ]

GEORGE WHEATLEY. I am night constable.

Q. On the evening of Sunday the 15th of Januuary, where were you?

A. I was in Union Street; I saw the prisoner John Bennet in Union Street, with this basket in his hand, and the contents, except this bottle. It was between the hours of seven and eight. I asked him what he had got there, he did not give me a satisfactory account; he asked me what it was to me. I asked him to go into some public-house with me to give me a satisfactory account; I got him to a public-house door, he put the basket down. The prisoner Hopkins then came up, and while we were talking, the prisoner Hopkins took up the basket, and run away; I had got hold of Bennet. Hopkins came by, and got hold of the basket; he ran about twenty-yards; I stopped him with the basket.

THOMAS CHILDS . I am constable of St. Saviours. I was at Union Hall when the prisoners were brought there, on Sunday, the 15th of January, I went to the watchhouse; I asked them where they lived; Bennet told me 223, Kent-street; they both lived together in one room; I found a pint bottle of brandy in a hamper; I found a letter in Hopkins’s box, in that letter was

“send me a bottle of brandy for the old man, for he has nothing to drink but small beer.”

WILLIAM PETTER WOODHOUSE . The names of the firm are Christopher Smith , Newman Smith, and William Petter Woodhouse ; we are wine and spirit merchants , Queen-street, in the City of London. The two prisoners were porters in our house; they were employed in the warehouse and the cellars. There are two pint bottles of brandy, one quart bottle of brandy, a quart of rum, and three of port wine; I can identify the bottle of brandy with the name on it, of which a pipe of wine was sent in our cart; this bottle is a sample of the pipe of wine; it appears to have been emptied and filled with brandy; I have every reason to believe it is all our property; we sent the pipe in the cart; the sample we keep ourselves as a check to the carrier, least there should be any change or alteration in the journey. The prisoners had full employment at our house from seven o’clock in the morning until eight at night.

Q. What is the value of each?

A. About five shillings the quart, about half a crown the pint. I know this bottle to be our property.

The prisoners called four witnesses, who gave them a good character.

BENNET, GUILTY , aged 24.

HOPKINS, GUILTY , aged 22.

Confined one Year , and whipped in Jail .

London Jury, before Mr. Common Serjeant.

Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, 18 July 2018), February 1815, trial of JOHN BENNET GEORGE HOPKINS (t18150215-43).

Transportation for Cheese Theft, April 1827

My great-grandfather’s first father-in-law [he, G G’pa, married twice] was a George Hopkins. He appears to have been transported to Australia in about 1847. There seem to be a few George Hopkins who show up with criminal records, and probably aren’t all the same person. This probably isn’t the right George – he seems to be about eleven years too young. But he’s an entertainingly bad boy. This one was prosecuted at the Old Bailey twice in 1821, the second time when he was already in Newgate prison [3 months, and a whipping] and then this.
George Hopkins. Theft: Grand Larceny. 5th April 1827

GEORGE HOPKINS was indicted for stealing, on the 2nd of April , 50lbs. weight of cheese, value 3l. 10s.,[modern-day value £ 4,052] the goods of Charles Beach .

WILLIAM KLING . On the 2nd of April, at half-past nine o’clock at night, I was in my back premises in Oxford-street, and heard two whistles – I opened our back gates and looked out – I saw the prisoner and another man in conversation, and saw a bag by the prisoner’s side – this was about twenty yards from Mr. Beach’s house – I stood still – the other man then left the prisoner and met a man who was coming down the mews, which my gates open into – that man lifted the bag on the prisoner’s back – I followed them to No. 28, Parry’s-court; they gave three knocks at the door – the prisoner was taken there in about an hour and a half, and the bag and cheese found in his room.

Cross-examined by Mr. BARRY.

Q. You did not see the cheese brought from Beach’s house?

A. No.

CHARLES BEACH. I am an oilman, and deal in cheese , and live in North Audley-street . On the 2nd of April, about half-past nine o’clock, I left the shop for half an hour – the Parmasan cheese was in its usual place – Kling came to me – I then looked and missed the cheese – there are 50lbs. – it cost me 18d. a pound. 

Cross-examined.

Q. Where was it?

A. On a tonguetray at my door – mine is a corner house; it was not in a bag – I can swear to the cut of it, and it is eaten by rats in one place.

Prisoner’s Defence. I was coming from my father’s, who is coachman to Mr. Hanbury – a gentleman came and and asked me to carry the parcel, which I did – I did not know what was in it; the man asked if he could leave it at my room till Monday, as he was going into Surrey.

GUILTY . Aged 23.  Transported for Seven Years .

Reference Number:  T 18270405-213

Verdict:   Guilty

Sentence: Transportation

From: Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, 18 July 2018), April 1827, trial of GEORGE HOPKINS (t18270405-213).

Another view of Sir Joshua Walmsley from 1852

From “My Life in Two Hemispheres”  by Charles Gavan Duffy,  Chapter 19 (Book 3, Chapter 3). Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (1816-1903), was an Irish nationalist and politician in Victoria, Australia; ending up as State Premier. He was born on 12 April 1816 in Monaghan, Ireland, son of John Duffy, shopkeeper, and his wife Ann, daughter of Patrick Gavan of Latnamard. Reading and dreaming over his few books, he grew up during the struggle for Catholic emancipation and his nationalism was kindled by stories of [the Irish “rebellion”] in 1798. He boasted that he was the ‘first Catholic emancipated in Ireland’ as most of his schooling was at the local Presbyterian academy. The following was written in November 1852

” Sir Joshua Walmsley, a former mayor of Liverpool, who had become spokesman of a Parliamentary group of Reformers, resting on a political society outside, appears a good deal in the diary of this date, but as nothing came of his coquetting with the Irish party one specimen will suffice:—

“Excused myself for Sunday to Walmsley (he had invited me to meet a number of his political friends at dinner, but I was engaged to Richard Swift and a muster of our own men). As he wanted to talk we dined soon after tête-à-tête at Bellamy’s. All popular questions, he thought, including the Irish Land Question, ought to be postponed till an extension of the franchise was obtained; then, and then only, would everything be possible. I told him that nobody familiar with the condition of Ireland would consent to a fresh postponement of the Land Question on any pretence. He thought Cobden and Bright might be induced to lead the franchise movement if it became wide enough to promise a speedy success. I said I would be glad to see the franchise become the English question of the day, and it would get substantial Irish help. In Ireland the franchise had dwindled away till genuine popular representation had almost disappeared. We wanted an extension urgently, but the farmer wanted the right to live on his own land so much more that it was idle to speak of the questions together. He talked of Cobden with affection. He was a truly generous man, he said. His American investments had not turned out well, but he was always ready to put his hand in his pocket for a public purpose. A fund was raised to sustain Kossuth, and Cobden gave £50 a year, while many other conspicuous Liberals, including Bright, would not give a penny. I spoke, of Hazlitt, Cobbett, Leigh Hunt, Hone, and the martyrs and confessors of Radicalism, but modern Radicalism does not apparently keep a calendar. He knew more of Edward Whitty, Linton, and The Orchestra of the Leader, but his esteem is moderate for any one who does not regard an extension of the suffrage as a specific for human woes. I asked him about Roebuck. Roebuck, he said, was privateering, and could no longer be counted on by any popular section. He loved no party, and no party loved him. My own observation confirms this description. I had some talk with him lately in the Library, and he seemed embittered and disappointed beyond any one I had ever encountered; his face had an expression that was scarcely human. I compared it mentally to the aspect of an angry dog—venomous and dangerous. He used to be called the most conceited man in Parliament, but his unkempt hair, stooping figure, and flabby look give him the appearance of a ruin.”