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------ ------" TORYISM : PAST…

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TORYISM PAST AND PRESENT" I LECTURE AT TALYWAIN. In connection with the Abersychan Liberal Committee of the National Reform Union a lec- ture was on Thursday week delivered in Pisgali Chapel, Talywain, by Mr G. E. Lomax, of Man- chester, on the subject of "Toryism: Past and Present." Mr W. P. James, manager of the Abersychan Works, occupied the chair. The Chairman, in introducing Mr Lomax, stated that if his presence would in any way ad- vance the Liberal cause he should be glad to give it. It was needless to ask for an attentive hearing, as he was sure they would be delighted to hear the promised lecture. The Lecturer said he should have rejoiced if the weather had been more favourable and the chapel better filled. Viewing the matter from another standpoint, he might observe that he had been in a bad state of health for the past few days, and it would suit his purpose to take it quietly that night. In Ebbw Vale, at a charge of Is 6d for admission, the place was filled; and at Tredegar, when he lectured there, about 1000 people were present. True philosophy existed when a man's mind was ruled by his conscience. The subject they had met to dis- cuss, however few there might be present, and whatever might be his physical weakness, was a most important one and, next to our Chris- tianity, there were few subjects which bad a greater claim upon us than political subjects. He had passed the allotted period of three score years and ten, but he had never known a time when serious thought was more earnestly de- manded at the hands of the people than now. They appeared to be wrapt in clouds of dark- ness trade was declining, the revenue dimin- ishing, and war prevailing in foreign climes. It was time for the people to take the matter up. He frequently had occasioofo remark that there were few people who understood the word Toryism." Many who thought they were To- ries, when weighed in the balance, were found to be wanting. Professor Kogers declared his belief that there was not a working man in belief that there was not a working man in England who was a Tory, and stated that if he could find one he would put him in a glass case as a curiosity. He was aware that their Tory friends, on the principle that drowning men caught at straws, had made political capital out of the idea but with all their boasting and blustering there was not a workingman in Eng- land or Wales who was a Tory by honest con- viction. He believed if a working man under- stood Toryism, and knew anything of its past history, that it was as impossible for him to be a Tory as it was for pigs to fly, and they were not likely birds. (Laughter.) They had working men like the chameleon, who took their colour from the food they fed upon. They followed the same cause as the manager, employer, and those in authority over them. If he was in England he should say, "Such conduct is not Conservatism, but fully-developed monkeyism." In natural history there was nothing which de- veloped the faculty of imitation more than the monkey. Some of them might differ from him, for he should possibly say strong things before he had done. There were people who seemed to think that because they differed from you they had settled the question. Differences of opinion among men would never settle anything. In our country at present we have two political parties. One might be said to be virtually re- presented by William Ewart Gladstone, and the other by the great unknown," for there was not a man in the universe who understood Beajamin Disraeli. He could never be weighed or measured. If they added him up there was nothing to carry. He (the lecturer) would now for a few moments deal with the past of Tory- iisin. From the earliest history of Toryism, down to the time lie was then addressing them, they (the Tories) had in all their undertakings been antagonistic to human liberty. It was 50 years since he delivered his first political lec- ture, and he had Yer been a strong supporter of o Liberal politiciati in the the Liberal cause. N country ever took part in any movement for ad- vancement or progress, or the extension of li- berty, but found that he had invariably to fight against the Tory party. They (the meeting) had never read any speeches made by Tories in favour of the extension of freedom, nor had tI".y heard that any petition in favour of pro- gress had ever been made by ti, T I i,r tnlrl you in the present day that they were the friends of the working man, but be could show them what was their real regard for them. He (the lecturer) could remember the time when they were called the "great unwashed." The opposition of Toryism to liberty was not of re- cent date, nor was it exactly confined to our own country. To understand Toryism we must take a glance beyond our own little sea-girt isle. We had in this country what was called the national debt. It was a national property. Everything else belonged to the Queen, but the debt was theirs. That debt bad a tendency to lower their wages to-day. He had been toiling 50 years to teach working men political economy, but somehow or other they would not have it. Give them a pipe of tobacco and a pint of fourpenny, and they would vote for all the Jews in the country. A gentleman had published a pamph- let showing that if the national debt was thrown into commercial channels it would tend to revive the trade of the country. That debt was originally the King's debt. On the accession of William III., in 1689, the king's debt was £ 661,263 but when Queen Ann ascended the throne, in 1702, it had reached £ 16,000,000. Then it became more than kings or queens could bear, and it was charitably removed to the shoulders of the peo- ple, who have ever since been shareholders in it. In 1727, when George II. came to the throne, the debt was £ 52,000,000. In 1760, in the reign of George III., of blessed memory —(laughter)—a full-blown Tory of the first water, who had for many years William Pitt as the keeper of his conscience and approved ad- viser—the debt had swollen to £ 138,000,000. We now have a debt of £ 834,000,000. Every penny of the debt was spent in opposing liberty and defending despotism not one penny was spent in defending any nation under heaven. Take the American war. That cost this coun- try X121,000,000, in money, in the reign of George III., and under Tory rule. The Tory Government voted for the war, and the Ameri- cans gave us a good thrashing and sent us home, and we had to pay the expenses. That was Toryism. If the Y,121,000,000 had been invested at 4 per cent., it would have brought in about E5,000,000 every year, but now it was lost for ever. They need not have entered into the war with France, which they stated was to maintain the honour of England and defend the flag which had braved a thousand years. The man who believed in such nonsense was far beyond the generation in which he lived. That war cost six hundred millions of money. This was the Tory legacy, and the war was brought about to prevent freedom of thought. Burke, in his remarks upon the French Revolu- tion, took up the matter and William Pitt used language like this If the principles which are now obtaining in France 4e permit- ted to cross the Channel, then farewell to our monarchy, our aristocracy, and our nobilitv." This was to prevent the spread of Liberal prin- ciples. They could trace matters of this kind year after year. He now proposed to come a little nearer home. The Tory party had always been the Court and the Chuioh party. He never knew either of these two parties to fight in de- fence of freedom. Suppose they were to come down at once to the year 1815, when the war wqs over. They could remember, many of them, when they had to pay 6d a pound for flour, lOd to 16d an ounce for tea, and 15d per pound for sugar. For candles they had to pay 8d and lOd a pound, and 4d a pound for salt. TIle very light ot heaven was taxed—the rays of the sun could not get through the cottage window until they had passed through the Cus- torn House. He did not know whether they taxed dreams or not. If they did not, it was a Tory oversight. When peace was proclaimed in 1815, they anticipated cheaper food and bread. They forgot the Tory landlords and Tory members who governed them. When they expected cheaper bread, the Tories proposed the Corn Laws. When these were passed, thousands were clamouring round the House of Commons crying for bread. The Tory Government brought out the military, with cannon, and at that time they- were parsing a tax upon bread. The Tories told the people that if bread was dear, trade would be good and wages high. No one could remember good trade and high wages when provisious were dear. Lord Brougham said there was a tincture abroad, and its name was" Hunger and hunger opened the eyes of the people. At this time, and previously, they were not allowed to hold public meetings to discuss public matters. If a householder per- mitted twelve people to assemble in hia house he was liable to a penalty of XIOO. Such was the will of the Tcry party, that they would not allow working men to obtain political know- ledge. They employed spies to carty out their purpose, and in 1820 they instituted a secret society in Manchester, of which 40 peers were members. Their object was to gag the Press. He remembered how his father and others used to meet to discuss political matters. They had then to search for knowledge under difficulties. In 1819, the public mind was excited. On the 10th of August he saw thousands of working- men—loom-weavers and others-coming into Manchester, their wives hanging on their arms, and wending their way to the place where the Free Trade Hall now stands—the only conse- crated ground they had in Manchester. In thousands they assembled, and humbly prayed the House of Commons to take into serious con- sideration the influence and results of the Corn Laws. They only asked the Tories to think of it. The power of a Tory magistrate was such that the starving people were dispersed at the point of the sword. Nine were killed and 600 wounded, and the chairman of the meeting got two years imprisonment. Their only object in assembling was to ask the House of Commons to think. They had a large amount of com- mercial depression in 1825, bankruptcy and bank-breaking being the order of the day. Just at that time they commenced an agitation for the repeal of the Test and Corporations Act, under which Dissenters were not allowed to carry out any duties for which salaries were paid by Government. At every step they encountered Tory opposition, but they ultimately conquered. They intended to get perfect religious equality. Whatever had been established by law, whether in respect to Bristol Cathedral or an Abersychan beershop, could be dis-established by law. In 1829 they had another great contest with regard to the emancipation of the Catholics. He re- membered clearly to what an extent the clergy raved on that occasion. They said that if we emancipated the Catholics the Throne would be in danger, the Pope would come over and take possession of the country, and the clergy would be burned at the stake. They repeated the same assertions as late as 1868, when Gladstone was in the field. We were told that Gladstone was in partnership with the Pope, who had offered him a million pounds to disestablish the Church, and that Cardinal Manning was god-father to one of his children. It was said even that if they returned Gladstone the Queen would be de- throned and the clergy burned. They returned Gladstone in 1868, but the Queen was not de- throned, the Pope did not come over, and the clergy were not burned. If Pope Leo XIII. came over to England to-uiorrow he would not come to Abersychan. The moment he landed at Dover lie would enquire for the next train to Oxford. There was no fear of the clergy being burned for the sake of principle. In 1832 they had a great struggle, and for a year or two pre- viously. In 1832 they obtained the first modi- cum of the Reform Bill. Prior to that year the county of Cornwall returned 24 members to the House of Commons Manchester, with a larger population than the entire county of Cornwall, had not a single member. The adjoining county of Devon sent 25 members—men who spent their lives in milking the cow with the crumpled horn—and Manchester, with a larger popula- tion, was not represented. The Tories said that to give the people in manufacturing towns a vote would be to ruin the country. When Gram- pound (Cornwall) was disfranchised it became a question in the House of Commons to what town this vote should be given. Some argued for Leeds or Manchester, but the Tories, led by Lord Eldon, opposed such a course, and decided to give the vacant seat to the City of York, with a Bishop, and a Minster, and a host of clergy. He was afraid the battles they had to fight were not yet over. In 1844 they repealed a portion of the sugar duty, but they were opposed by the Tories. The Tories told them at every election —and they made political capital out of it— that they repealed the corn laws. Wellington was in the House and Peel was Premier when the corn laws were repealed, but the Tories never petitioned for their repeal. When the measure was before the House lie remembered such names as Bright, Gladstone, and Cobden braving all opposition and encountering the antagonism of the Tory party in every town they visited. Because Sir Robert Peel hap- pened to be in office the Tories claimed the honour. There was no one who opposed the Rill «vith creater malignancy than Benjamin Disraeli, who was now Lord Beaconstieid. ir they had raised him to the land where the wicked cease to trouble, he (the lecturer) would have been glad. It would be an excellent thing for him (Lord Beaconsfield), and it would not be a bad thing for them. (Laughter.) He thought that ministers ought to pray for the fulfilment of scriptural prophecy. He thought they ought all to pray that the time might soon come when the Jews might be gathered to Jeru- salem. If so, Benjamin would be there. Alison, who wrote a history of Europe, also wrote a special pamphlet on the Corn Laws, and his ar- guments were as clear as London uiud. He said that if the Corn Laws were repealed, the far- mers would have to go to the Workhouse. Well, they repealed the Corn Laws, but the farmers did not go to the Workhouse, & the country was not a swamped district. One of the Tory mem- bers of the House of Commons said that work- ing men were created for the purpose of paying taxes and being governed, and it was declared if cheap education were given them, the country would be ruined, and the working man would be too proud to work. It had been the case at every step that Toryism (which, had always been a Gin and Church party)- had been and al- ways would be opposed to liberty, Disraeli carried the last Reform Bill which extended household suffrages, but^he (the lecturer) argued that it was not Disraeli s measure in any sense of the term. Every salient point came from the Liberals of the House of Commons. They were aware that in 1866, and also in 1864, there were agitations in the House relative to the Bill. In 1864 Edward Baines brought in his Bill for an extension of the franchise by re- ducing the qualification from £ 10 to X6. Dis- raeli declared that it would degrade the consti- tuencies, and that the House would be full of tinkers and tailors. He (the lecturer) would not objeet to a few tailors—heaven knew there were plenty of tinkers. When tho Tories came into power they knew they could not retain office unless they brought in a Reform Bill. Disraeli tried to move by resolutions—that is, to feel the pulse of the House—but they were literally born to blush unseen, and waste their sweetness on the desert air." He brought in a Bill which was laughed out of the House. The working men of England had been gulled. In the Bill which Disraeli brought into the House, and which was called his measure, there was one clause which made a two years' rate quali- fication for a vote. Gladstone moved an amend- ment that a twelve months1 residence should be sufficient. In the Disraelian Bill-mark the depth of this Jew—he had a clause marked "Dual votes," meaning that a man should have votes according to the extent and value of the property he possessed. Property would then have had a majority of 180,000. Gladstone moved the rejection of the clause, and it was struck out. Disraeli had no lodt/fir" frannhisp In large towns there were thousands of lodgers, and the Liberals moved the introduction of a lodger clause, which was carried. Disraeli in- serted a clause that every working man who voted should have a voting paper, and if he could not fill it up himself he could go to his master in the counting house, or else go to the clergyman of the parish, who would till it up for him. Always the clergyman, for the dis- senters were an abominable lot. The Liberals moved the rejection of that clause, and were successful. Benjamin had a clause that a man having £ 50 in the savings bank should have a vote, which the Liberals also rejected. In the Bill that was passed there was scarcely a word which was of Tory introduction. In tho present day their Tory friends were continually labour- ing to deceive them. They said sometimes that the Liberals were always calling them fotil names. If they applied epithets to them, the Tories knew the art of retaliating in kind. Some time ago, Sir Stafford Northcote was stumping Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and Dudley. He made a long speech at Wolver- hampton. and Capt. Burnaby, in proposing a vote of thanks to the Chairman, said that Glad- stone was nothing else than a political washer- woman. He had been called a Jesuit, a Judas, and all sorts of names, but now he was called a washerwoman. In his (the lecturer's) opinion it was an honour to Gladstone to be so named, for the Tories t urned out such a lot of dirty linen, that h.e said Thank God, we have Gladstone for a washerwoman." Sir Stafford Northcote said that within the past few years a great change had taken place in the disposition of political power in this country. The chief characteristic of the change was that a large amount of political power was conferred upon the working classes. He was not aware that the Chancellor of the Exchequer I ever had a claim upon the sympathy or the grati- tude of the people. He even said that if this Bill for the extension of the franchise became law, many prophesied that evil would be the result, and that if such power was given to the working man it would be used for disorganising the Con- stitution, and that the Crown, the nobility, and the church would be no longer safe. The lecturer proceeded to say that only one inference could be drawn from this, and quoted a speech made by Mr Disraeli, in which he alleged that the greater the capabilities of the working men were the greater the danger became. In every way did the Tories endeavour to gull them. They were told in a speech at Newport the other night that Gladstone did not leave a surplus of six millions behind. In a letter to a newspaper a Tory admitted that there was a surplus of five-and-a-half millions. Viewing it from another standpoint, were not the Tories always their oppressors ? In 1874, when Gladstone left office, the national debt was £ 773,000,000 now it was £ 785,000,000. It re- quired a Tory capacity to understand Tory arith- metic. The Manchester Courier, a Tory paper of the first water, said there had been an addition of twenty millions in the expenditure, but they qualified it by saying that sixteen millions were reproductive. It also said that the agitation of Gladstone tended to make disturbances with Russia. He wanted to ask the working men to exercise their common sense at the next election. When the present Ministry came into office Dis- raeli accused Gladstone of blundering and plun- dering. In 1874 they were at peace with the world there was no trouble in Afghanistan, and no war in Zululand. There was good trade, and there were good wages. In 1873 the national ex- penditure was not more than AC71,000,000, but now it was tR6,000,000, and the five or six mil- lions they had handed to posterity, making a total of at least £ 90,000,000. Now that this Jew had been at it for five years, and they had an absence of trade, he said, in his Jewish way, "Starve quietly, and say nothing about it." He (the lec- turer) thought it was time they should have a change. If they wished for a change, let them mind how they recorded their votes at the coming Election. If any of them had their claims for votes objected to-and the Tories objected to ail working men—let them not stay at home and say, Well, it is no use for for me to go, as I am only one." The Tories object to a hun- dred, believing that fifty would not take the trouble to contest the question. The wars in Afghanistan and Zululand had been of a most wicked and abominable character. They had no business in either place. A few months ago the subject was brought up in the House of Lords, and there were seven Bishops who voted. Six were against the war, and one voted in fa- vour of it. Bishop Ellicott defended his vote in a letter by saying that he thought it would prepare the way to Christianity. This was episcopal theology. Theie is not a people under heaven so humiliated as we arc. There was an infinite differency between Christianity and H Churchiauity." They gave a man zE5,000 a year for talking such nonsense as Bishop Elli- cott. He wanted his hearers to read and think for themselves. Some of them had fifty years to live before they came to his age, and it was their duty by their votes to endeavour to make those fifty years as happy, bright, and prospe- rous as possible. Toryism would dio without a resurrection if they would bury it. Let him thank the few who were present, and had kindly favoured him with their company, that inclement evening. He hoped Wales would show, at the coming Election, that it was true to Liberal principles, and that the electors, how- ever oppressed, would remember that a man's a man for 'a that." Let them show themselves at the next election worthy of tho blood of their sires, and record their votes in support and defence of that freedom for which their forefathers bled and died. By acting thus, in- stead of being inflated with inordinate pride, they would give honour to whom honour is due. They would learn at thesame time that princes and lords were but the breath of kings, while an honest man was the noblest work of God. The Chairman then called upon Mr Daniel to move the first resolution, and in doing so re- marked that they wanted to reverse the present misrepresentation of thE county at the next elec- tion. Mr J. Daniel congratulated the meeting that they had few objections to meet at the Revising Barrister's Court which was shortly to be held. He felt sure they would obtain from 80 to 100 votes. Ho begged to propose—" That this meet- ing, having heard the eloquent and lucid defini- tion of Mr Lomas with regard to I Toryism: Past and Present,' unanimously protest against its baneful influence upon progress, retrenchment, and reform." Mr G. Griffiths, in an able speech, seconded the resolution, which was carried with acclamation. On the motion of Mr W. Lewis, seconded by Mr Griffiths, and supported by the Rev. D. M. Davies and Mr Jones, it was resolved—" That this meeting 'pledges itself to support a Liberal candidate at the forthcoming election." A vote of thanks to the deacons of the chapel for the use of the building and to the chairman for presiding were unanimously carried, a.í1.d the meeting terminated.

--! THE RIGHT REV. F. ELZEAR,…

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