ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM.THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 1855.
I CANNOT, I am sure, better express my sense of the kind reception accorded to me by this great assembly, than by promising to compress what I shall address to it within the closest possible limits.It is more than eighteen hundred years ago, since there was a set of men who "thought they should be heard for their much speaking." As they have propagated exceedingly since that time, and as I observe that they flourish just now to a surprising extent about Westminster, I will do my best to avoid adding to the numbers of that prolific race.The noble lord at the head of the Government, when he wondered in Parliament about a week ago, that my friend, Mr.Layard, did not blush for having stated in this place what the whole country knows perfectly well to be true, and what no man in it can by possibility better know to be true than those disinterested supporters of that noble lord, who had the advantage of hearing him and cheering him night after night, when he first became premier - I mean that he did officially and habitually joke, at a time when this country was plunged in deep disgrace and distress - I say, that noble lord, when he wondered so much that the man of this age, who has, by his earnest and adventurous spirit, done the most to distinguish himself and it, did not blush for the tremendous audacity of having so come between the wind and his nobility, turned an airy period with reference to the private theatricals at Drury Lane Theatre.Now, I have some slight acquaintance with theatricals, private and public, and Iwill accept that figure of the noble lord.I will not say that if I wanted to form a company of Her Majesty's servants, I think Ishould know where to put my hand on "the comic old gentleman;" nor, that if I wanted to get up a pantomime, I fancy I should know what establishment to go to for the tricks and changes; also, for a very considerable host of supernumeraries, to trip one another up in that contention with which many of us are familiar, both on these and on other boards, in which the principal objects thrown about are loaves and fishes.But I will try to give the noble lord the reason for these private theatricals, and the reason why, however ardently he may desire to ring the curtain down upon them, there is not the faintest present hope of their coming to a conclusion.It is this:- The public theatricals which the noble lord is so condescending as to manage are so intolerably bad, the machinery is so cumbrous, the parts so ill-distributed, the company so full of "walking gentlemen," the managers have such large families, and are so bent upon putting those families into what is theatrically called "first business" - not because of their aptitude for it, but because they ARE their families, that we find ourselves obliged to organize an opposition.We have seen the COMEDY OF ERRORS played so dismally like a tragedy that we really cannot bear it.We are, therefore, making bold to get up the SCHOOL OF REFORM, and we hope, before the play is out, to improve that noble lord by our performance very considerably.If he object that we have no right to improve him without his license, we venture to claim that right in virtue of his orchestra, consisting of a very powerful piper, whom we always pay.
Sir, as this is the first political meeting I have ever attended, and as my trade and calling is not associated with politics, perhaps it may be useful for me to show how I came to be here, because reasons similar to those which have influenced me may still be trembling in the balance in the minds of others.I want at all times, in full sincerity, to do my duty by my countrymen.If Ifeel an attachment towards them, there is nothing disinterested or meritorious in that, for I can never too affectionately remember the confidence and friendship that they have long reposed in me.
My sphere of action - which I shall never change - I shall never overstep, further than this, or for a longer period than I do to-night.By literature I have lived, and through literature I have been content to serve my country; and I am perfectly well aware that I cannot serve two masters.In my sphere of action I have tried to understand the heavier social grievances, and to help to set them right.When the TIMES newspaper proved its then almost incredible case, in reference to the ghastly absurdity of that vast labyrinth of misplaced men and misdirected things, which had made England unable to find on the face of the earth, an enemy one-twentieth part so potent to effect the misery and ruin of her noble defenders as she has been herself, I believe that the gloomy silence into which the country fell was by far the darkest aspect in which a great people had been exhibited for many years.With shame and indignation lowering among all classes of society, and this new element of discord piled on the heaving basis of ignorance, poverty and crime, which is always below us - with little adequate expression of the general mind, or apparent understanding of the general mind, in Parliament - with the machinery of Government and the legislature going round and round, and the people fallen from it and standing aloof, as if they left it to its last remaining function of destroying itself, when it had achieved the destruction of so much that was dear to them - I did and do believe that the only wholesome turn affairs so menacing could possibly take, was, the awaking of the people, the outspeaking of the people, the uniting of the people in all patriotism and loyalty to effect a great peaceful constitutional change in the administration of their own affairs.At such a crisis this association arose; at such a crisis I joined it:
