Welsh Newspapers

Search 15 million Welsh newspaper articles

Hide Articles List

14 articles on this Page

TO THE ELECTORSI OF THE11-41…

Detailed Lists, Results and Guides
Cite
Share

TO THE ELECTORS I OF THE 11 -4 1 BOROUG o. I GENTLEMEN,— I CANNOT sufficiently express the obligations I jL am under to a large number of you, for the very kind and handsome manner in which support was tendered to me at the coming Election, and the en- couragements held out to me as to a future one, in the event of my not going to the poll on this occasion. I believe that however good a member Sir John Hanmer is, and that however liberal his views are upon some leading questions, mine are so much in advance of his—so much more settled and defined, and so far in accordance with the sentiments of the majority of vour body, as to justify me in deciding that I shall hereafter—all well—give you the oppor- tunity of recording your estimation of my fitness to represent you in Parliament. I can assure you, with all sincerity, that I have no wish to set man against man-class against class—disturb the peace and harmony of family compacts unnecessarily, nor yet to make a man's religious belief a test of his fitness for parliamentary honour; but it cannot be an im- proper thing- that Dissenting Wales should give her support to Dissenters, or that the trading and com- I mercial classes should wish to have men as their representatives, who can enter fully into all their sympathies, and, understanding their wants, impress them upon the notice of Parliament. All other t11m; being equal, I believe that in this respect, at all events, I have a decided advantage over Sir John Hanmer, my education and habits being commercial, nor do I see that my present professional pursuits are in any way a set off against this. A sense of duty to you and to the principles we hold in com- mon, would indicate therefore that the time has come when the Electors of Flint should have the opportu- nity of electing members for themselves, and that as so many of you have honoured me with your choice, I should manifest my estimation of your goodwill by a willing compliance with your wishes, I am from this day then a candidate for your suffrages at any Election after the present one, and it is my determination—win or lose-to go to the poll. This may not be the place to enter upon a full examination of past legislation and of the part borne therein by your Representative, but I may be per- mitted to say that I cannot look upon him in the light of a clecided and emphatic friend to the cause of civil and religious liberty. As a proof of this I would just say that in 1*48, and again in 1850, Sir John voted against Mr. Hume's motion for a reform in Parlia- ment. In 1*19 against Sir William Moles worth's motion for an enquiry into our system of Colonial Government. In 1850 against Mr. Locke King's motion for an extension of the Franchise in Counties. In 1851 against Mr. Fox's measure for educating the people. He has never voted for the Ballot, and upon ninety eight most important divisions in the last Par- liament, in which great principles were at stake, he only voted seventeen times; and on most of these occasions he voted adversly to the popular party. Had I been your member I should have acted very differently. Expediency not principle has too often been the pole star by which he has been governed. It is to the bold and manly stand made bv our forefathers for principle that we are what we are; property, liberty, life was cheerfully sacrificed by them on this alter; and surely we cannot willingly and tacitly give up that for which they bled and died. No, but let us rather emulate their virtues, manifesting to the world our conviction that right is more powerful than might, and that truth must ulti- mately prevail over error of every kind. The propo- eition set up by sonwmen that liberty should only be granted to a people educated and refined, is as absurd a doctrine as it is offensive in practice—to admit that men should be subjugated to the will and dic- tation of a particular man—property be the test of intelligence—and that owners of property alone should be our law makers, is so utterly opposed to our notions of right and wrong, that it requires some argument to convince us that any body of men could entertain such notions, but this is the practical working of our electoral laws,—we live and move in this state of things. How few tenants there are who dare to vote against the will of their landlords—a man must pay a particular rent before he is deemed fit by law to exercise the franchise—and a member of Parliament for English, Welsh, and Irish Cities and Boroughs must be possessed of certain valuable pro- perties before he can sit among our Senators to make laws for our governance and protection. And how is this to be remedied? We are told by men of all parties who acknowledge the evil, that it is to be done by means of a reformed Parliament! Well, Parliaments have been summoned and disolved for more than twenty years past, that had been elected subject to all kinds of reform pledges, and still this deformity in our legislative history remains untouch- ed; and it is manifest therefore that members of Par- liament may be liberal enough in name, without a grain of popular sympathy in their hearts, or posses- sing the remotest wish to make any changes whatever except at the nod of Lord John Russell or some other aristocratic leader. It is clear that men have been returned to Parliament by our electorate under false pretences—without a proper sence of tlievastinterests committed to their charge—having neither a desire to know, nor the determination to do that which the national will required at their hands. This has not been the cnuxplaint of out a loud uuiversal one for years—large bodies of men with massive minds panting for the rights of their order have been grow- ing around us whose misfortune it. is to he poor- they toil from dawn of day to dusk for bread—receive in most cases but indifferent pay-are housed in hovels unfit for human beings to live in, surrounded by families whom they can barely feed and rarely educate, they are taxed, to support the poor, for local, and for national protection, are subject to conscription for our militia—expected to be loyal and loving sub- jects, good, peaceable and moral neighbours, but owing to their poverty—their misfortune not their crime—they are treated by our law-makers as a "swinish multitude" undeserving of political rights, and as having no interest whatever in our laws except in paying for making them, and when made rendering strict obedience to them. Gentlemen, I am no enthusiastic declamatory demagogue, but, I protest nevertheless against this unjust and degrading way of treating our fellow men—our equals in birth, intelligence, and honesty, and upon whom in no small measure depends our national honour. I am for tliving a vote to every man of full .age, untainted by crime, and who is liable to taxation, be he clodhop- per or Peer—educated or illiterate——Tew or Gentile- Papist or Protestant. If he be but a taxed and honest man, he is entitled in common justice to a full and entire equality with myself, and so far as I can give or obtain it for him, lie shall have it. The first and chief principle of my creed is, JUSTICE TO ALL. I have already in a former address expressed my convictions upon the Ballot and the duration of Par- liament, nor need I enlarge upon these points here but there is one matter so intimately connected with voting, that is the ELECTORAL DISTRICTS of the pre- sent day, that I must be permitted to point out to you the gross absurdity of the system. I cannot do this better than by giving you the following figures taken from the Tines of this day, in one of its intelligent and incomparable articles on representation:— Inbalii- Mem tariff. bers. Lnrllow 2 Thir-^k n,:119 1 Lyminnn s'~ 2 Leominster 5,211 2 Caln« 5,lt)5 I Marl lio rough 5,1% 2 Northallerton 4,99;). I Richmond (York- shire) 4,9f>S) 2 rteiirate 4,:)27. I Welb íCity) 4.7-i(> 2 Evesham. 4,fill-j 2 I)artiiiouth 4,;jlJi' I Harwieh Totness 4,il9 2 4,07. 2 1.111: Ashburton :n2.] Honiton ;27 2 Arundel 2,i4K. 1 Inhahi- Mfltn- taiits. bers. York (West Lancaster (South) 514,3.12 2 Lancaster (North) 3ir»,805 2 MiddlcsPX 2KJ.2.VS 2 Kent (West) 227,li:!7 2 Devon (South) 217,.SS4 2 Stafford Tower Ham- 2 Ffnslmrv 323,772 2 Manchester.. 31ii,2I3 2 Lambeth 2-,],:14.?) 2 \tunnater ?tl.t.U 2 Birmingham 232,841 2 You will see from this statement that nineteen unim portant places with a population of not more than ninety thousnnd, return 30 members to Parliament whereas the iffteen chief constituencies of the king- dom with more than Five Million inhabitants, only send the same number of respresentatives to the House of Commons, and Mr. Cobden in his very character- istic address to the Electors of the West Riding puts the case in a still stronger light, he says:—" Let me illustrate this by one fact. In an assembly professin" fairly to represent the country, I find myself associ ated with a hundred members,the aggregate of whoso constituencies does not equal in number, and still less in intelligence and wealth, the constituency which I have the honour to represent; and yet every one of them counts for as much as your member in a divis- ion list." Need I add anything to show you the ut- ter absurdity of the system and wickedness of main- taining it ? I have no hesitation in saying that it is formed by and for a particular class, that class being deeply interested in upholding it ibr purposes of their own, quite at variance with our interests,anil antagon- istic to the liberties and prosperty of the nation. But,although it is thus upheld for class interest,there can be no greater fallacy than to suppose that a sys- tem so injurious to all other interests can in the long run be beneficial to themselves. Labour is depen- dant upon capital—capital is of no value in itself, and the land would become a worthless drug without the aid of both. The labourer, capitalist and landowner, therefore, have interests in common, and it is not only wisdom in all, but the duty of all so to deal with a great question like representation, upon which legis- lation and law depend, in a candid and just spirit: if it can be shewn that any class are suffering from peculiar burdens, properly elected legislators will see to it, that the principles upon which they are elected are carried out fully, impartially, and honestly for the benefit of all without injury to any. I cannot but think that if we succeed in secu- ring just legislation upon purely secular affairs, reli- gious matters cannot very long remain as they are. I mean nothing offensive to men when I say that we have in England an Established Church, with no decided or understood views upon religious truth, j some of her Bishops, and thousands of her clergy, are semi-papists, others truly protestant, hut at all events, they partake alike from funds appropriated to the use of this church, which is no more her's, if strict justice were done, than mine. To this church we are sub- jected by law, and bound to maintain it by rates and tithes, and other unmentionable ways of a most questionable character. It cannot be said with truth that this is the church of the masses, and the intel- ligent and wealthy classes who dissent from its com- munion are no mean minority—its honours, dig- nities, and pompous cerimonials are set forth before us with no want of authority—and by association, and other adventitious circumstances, it has power and wealth on its side, if it lack the humbler wordly dis- tinctions of justice, mercy and truth. Even here it is considered by the minority, (as we are looked up- on,) as an affliction which God might in mercy re- move from us without loss; but with you in Wales, it is emphatically the church of the minority, your money is wasted upon its Bishoprics, with no stinted hand and in all candour be it said, that it is to you the electors ofWales this is in no small measure attri- butable. The Dissenters of Wales are by far the majority of your body, and they have hitherto been content to elect those as their members, whose policy and interest it ever has been to pander to the worst appetites of churchmen, but who ignore them as a matter of course when their aid is no longer required. If you turn to Ireland, you see the crying evils of the system in still greater force-its enormity made bear to every eye—that a Roman Catholic population should be compelled to support a Protestant Estab- lishment is a disgrace to our nation— a blight and curse upon our (mis) rule of that country, and not content with this, we see our law makers—your mem- ber being an assenting party—busied in making laws of proscription against this people, and by a procla- mation—which will be a lasting blot upon our age- denouncing in hard and bitter language the innocent and harmless processions of the Catholics, as dan- gerous to our peace and protestanism, as though men became Papists by the display of a cross, or by seeing a bit of calico in red or any other colour floating in the breeze It is said by hot headed but wellllleaning Protestants, that we should have no peace with Home." Certainly, I have no love for the papacy, and as far as I know, am as attached to my life as any other man can be to his, but I have no dread of its power,and can be no party to persecution for the pur pose of keeping in check its wily encroachments. Proscription ever comes from one source-the hosti- lity of a particular class to liberty. The Corn Laws- Militia Bill—Church Establishments and Toleration Acts, are but chapters in the same history-and if you are anxious to exterminate Popery without put- ting Papists to death, lend a hand to destroy and ut- terly annihilate the system on which our legislation is based, identifying with our glorious motto of QUEEN, LORDS, and COMMONS, the still more glorious one of the PEOPLO, for whom and by whom God designed that rulers should govern, and princes decree justice. I make my election to come among you on these principles. I am a firm friend to Ctvir. AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY—am iden- tified with you by birth and education—blood, lan- guage, and religion. I have, by honest labour of head and hand, secured for myself a competency and stake in the country, and have therefore so much respect for vested interests as will justify me, I trust, in say- ing that both property and labour have my sympathy and regard. I mean, hereafter, to call upon each elector personally, and to attend public meetings in your various Towns, when all parties can have the means of ascertaining more fully my opinions upon other matters of a local or national character. So long as Welshmen teach their children to revere the name of WILLIAM SALISBURY for his work's sake, shall I hope to find acceptance in your eyes for what I wish to do rather than for what I am. With much since- rity, Believe me to remain, Gentlemen, Your obliged and obedient Servant, E. G. SALISBURY. Temple, London, 1 July, IJ52.G. SALISBUBY.

AT EIN GOHEBWYR.

YR ETIIOLIAD.

j TORIAID CYMREIG LIVERPOOL,

-CYMANFA -DDmWETOT, GWYNF…

[No title]

[No title]

- - - - - - - - ----,-ADOLYGIAD…

MR. COBDEN A'R AM A ETII WYR.

[No title]

MANION A HYNODION. I

[No title]

[No title]

Family Notices