She hath done what she could: A Discourse addressed to the Ratepayers of St. Marylebone, urging the adoption of The Public Libraries Act, 1855 — John Shaqi
She hath done what she could: A Discourse addressed to the Ratepayers of St. Marylebone, urging the adoption of The Public Libraries Act, 1855Feilde, Matthew
History
She hath done what she could: A Discourse addressed to the Ratepayers of St. Marylebone, urging the adoption of The Public Libraries Act, 1855
Feilde, Matthew
Library legislation -- Great Britain
You are not Members for Nice or Savoy. To annoy our ALLY and impede his
policy, the rights and liberties of ENGLISHMEN are to be shelved. Why
this excessive anxiety about our Foreign neighbours to the neglect of
HOME? I can only glance at the curious tone of this cynical speech. No
doubt the delivery of this harangue was striking enough, but a roar is
certainly not a melodious sound. The effect of the oration though
clothed in glittering phraseology was entirely lost by the jerking mode
of its delivery. Such a _dog_matical outcry I never heard. It resembled
the noise of some furious mastiff, and no wonder the loud barking drove
despairing Members into the lobby. And this wretched declamation Lord B.
Manners calls a brilliant and magnificent oration. There was a time when
_Mr. Bulwer_ could see no evil in a large increase of the constituency,
nor any danger in the ignorance, credulity, and excitableness of the
working classes. There was a time when he wished to conciliate the
“English” with fulsome adulation in order to elevate himself, _now_ he
labours to damage and damnify; and who are his associates in adopting the
not very elegant or polite terms of “scum,” “boor.” &c. A _Mr. Adam
Black_, M.P. for Edinburgh, the son of a journeyman mason, _Sidney
Smith_, a briefless Edinburgh barrister, _Robert Longfield_, an Irish
barrister, a Q.C. and Member for Mallow, and next a brace of Lords,
Robert Cecil, and Robert Montagu. In coarse and vulgar slanders of the
Poor who is such an adept as the man who is a traitor to his order—the
man who has himself worked for his bread? None are so bitter and
malignant as those who have risen from the ranks. Let me tell this scion
of the House of Rutland that the presence of _Lords_ in the House of
_Commons_ is not desirable, and that the days of a rapacious OLIGARCHY as
the real ruling Power in England are numbered. Why add Insult to Injury?
It is a defence full of peril, to say in effect that your order requires
the people to be deprived of their just Rights.
Let me tell that political incendiary Lord DERBY that if his Order can
only be upheld by depriving us of the Elective Franchise, that if his
Order really requires this great sacrifice, this keeping the people year
after year in dense ignorance, that if his Order can only be preserved by
USURPING the privileges of the House of Commons, in order to perpetuate
an odious and miserable Tax on Intelligence, I for one exclaim, Perish
this Order.
And here let me contrast the coarse, censorious, anti-Reform Speeches of
Lord R. Cecil, Lord B. Manners, Mr. Bentinck, and another Aristocrat
whose “House” is quite as potential for evil, though not so ancient as
some noble Lords. I allude to John Walter of Bear Wood, and Printing
House Square, Member for Berkshire, and the chief Proprietor of the
“Times.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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