AGAINST TORY DESPOTISM

 — Six agricultural labourers were convicted at Dorchester, and sentenced to be transported, for administering illegal oaths, for the purpose of binding parties to secrecy as to the proceedings of a society, designated "the friendly society of agricultural labourers," being a branch of the Trades' Union. — The whole of the Continent appears in a very unsettled state. Unions of the labouring classes, are forming throughout France, and the most arbitrary laws are enacted to put them down.

True Colonist Van Diemen's Land Political Despatch, and Agricultural and Commercial... (Hobart Town, Tas. : 1834 - 1844), Tuesday 12 August 1834, page 4

——oo——

Every point of this festival is important and grand. The Chairman, in commencing the toasts, observed that the Radicals were the only party faithful in all reasonable duties towards the Throne. The Tories, professing extremis of loyalty, were sacrificing the Royal family to their own lust of power ; and but for the fidelity of the Radicals, the Princess Victoria might have been set aside in favour of the Duke of Cumberland, through the instrumentality of Orange Lodges. If there be any virtue in loyalty, any use in legitimacy; and safety in a quiet transmission of the Crown to its legitimate heiress, the country owes all these to the Radicals, who, however, would not have succeeded in preserving the Throne (at least not without bloodshed), to the Princess Victoria, had not the Tory Pretender, the head of the Orange Lodges, the Duke of Cumberland, been a man so idiotically destitute of understanding, so revoltingly the antipathy of morals, and in every respect so odious to the country. The Duke of Cumberland's secret clubs, secret meetings, and secret oaths, may remind us of the lines —
"But if great men, like us, were to swing,
It would thin the land, such numbers to string
—————— upon Tyburn tree."
But a most luminous and beautiful speech was made at this meeting by the celebrated Colonel Napier, the veteran of the Peninsular Wars, and the only honest historian of their campaigns. Colonel Napier alluded to the Tory officers who had anticipated what the soldiers would do in certain expected events, such, we suppose, as the attempted usurpation of the Crown by the Duke of Cumberland, and he observed that "The army, as a body, would never meddle with political discussions ;" although he allowed that soldiers, as individuals, had as much right to partake of political discussions as any other classes of the people. In all this we cordially agree with Colonel Napier ; but we wish sincerely that he had gone to the great principle, that the army, as a body, would never act against the people, except in cases of violence upon property or persons. Until this principle is assumed by the army, as a body, it is, in domestic affairs, a dangerous tool of power, if not an impending curse—a remedy worse than the disease in almost any extremity. Colonel Napier beautifully defines what the character of a soldier ought to be. He says,"It was the duty of soldiers—of English soldiers at least — to think and act like other citizens, It was the duty of the English soldier to love liberty, for that nerved the soul to noble daring ; it was his duty also to be civilized and acquainted with its meaning, that he might avoid that ferocity of heart which degraded the high-minded, gallant, national soldier, and converted him into a blood-stained, mercenary. (Cheers.) If a soldier did not know, and did not love the blessings arising from free institutions—if he did not know and love the social happiness springing from an equality of just rights—in God's name how was he to fight as a soldier for the national cause? Would it be said that his pay would support him amid all the privations and toils of war. What if it failed ? What if the shilling a day were not forthcoming ? Must the light and lamp of England's military renown among the nations of this world flicker and sink away because the golden oil that fed it once had failed ?" (Loud cheers.)—Was this not illustrated in America, where the very inferior American soldiers triumphed over us, merely because they knew that they were fighting in the defence of liberty, and property, against Tory despotism and plunder? Colonel Napier, after illustrating the fine characteristics of English soldiers, says, "What was England to these men? Not the mere soil, the dirt that they trod under their feet. No : in England they remembered the country of the free institutions that had nurtured them in moral pride and dignity—England, the home of their fathers, and the protector of their children when they were gone. This it was that made England a country to them in the burning sense of the word, and this it was that would always, in the long run, make free men victorious over mercenaries and hirelings." Can any Englishman read this, and hope to preserve the character of the English soldier, unless that soldier be identified in all the feelings of reform that pervade the country ? Even the vile Tory, Lord Mansfield, designated the English soldier to be only an armed citizen : but now the Tory doctrine is, that the soldier is to be emasculated— a creature receiving its food and lodging from the country, but being totally separated from it with respect to interests and feelings— the very reverse of a citizen. Colonel Napier says, most justly, that this never would be the character of the English soldier. This brave officer adds "that he had seen hundreds of these gallant men toiling and struggling with the most undaunted spirit against all the horrors of war—horrors of which those who had not seen war as he had seen it, could form no adequate idea. He had seen them struggling against its accumulated evils until, nature quite exhausted, they had dropped dead upon the field—not with any weak lamentations—not with any waitings for their own hard fate, but with the heart-stirring, soul-inspiring aspiration that it mattered not—they died for the glory of England." (Loud cheers.) Let England, therefore, make herself worthy of these noble spirits, and let her soldiers identify themselves with the reforms and improvements of their country, and no longer be deluded sacrifices in battles fought for objects that excite no English sympathies, and promote no English interests. Colonel Napier pays the highest eulogium as we have yet seen to the Duke of Wellington—an eulogium totally at variance with his History of the Peninsular war; but, allowing it to be just, can the soldier cease to reflect that all the Duke's battles were fought for objects, at best, totally indifferent to England—battles to be consummated by the enslavement of our country, had not Englishmen opposed and overcome the Duke with far more ease than he overcame the enemy ? But Colonel Napier tells his audience how far the country, in its present need of reform, is unworthy of the character of the soldier he has been describing. He, and his whole parish, he says, with twenty-eight parishes in East Somerset, have been disfranchised by overseers not signing the lists ; and he points out how extensively Tory bribery may disfranchise the freemen of the country, for whose glory and free institutions he had seen so many thousand soldiers forfeit their lives. Soldiers, under the delusion of fighting for free institutions, had bled and died for the Irish Church, whose ministers, says the Colonel, "revelled in the wealth wrung from a starving people, in the name of a religion that taught them that poverty best befitted their holy calling." He justly describes the Clergy of Ireland as "savage men, calling themselves the most holy, who, amidst the moanings of bereaved mothers, and the shrieks of wailing infants, grasped their beloved tithes with their blood-stained hands." He proceeds to descant on the Orange Lodges, the horrible case of the Dorchester Labourers, condemned for that which the Duke of Cumberland, and to a certain extent, the Conservative Societies, perpetuate with impunity. After showing the necessity of the ballot, and of either reforming or destroying the House of Peers, this veteran officer points out the glory and the happiness to which the country may be brought by pursuing the cause of Reform—a glory and a happiness, the defence of which would be worthy of the heroic sacrifices which our soldiers in the last war were induced to make to the cause and persons of foreign despots. We have not a more masterly and spirited reply than Colonel Napier's to Lord John Russell's declaration against any further organic changes. He justly says, that not to reform the churches of England and Ireland, not to establish the ballot, "to protect the poor and humble man in the exercise of his right against the rich and proud— not to shorten the duration of Parliaments, not to have more equal laws for the poor and rich, not to have a further diffusion of democracy in the constitution, even if necessary to the destruction of the House of Peers, was the real organic change upon all the old and venerated principles of our country." Let us reflect upon the obloquy, the punishment, the disgrace and ruin that have hitherto been inflicted upon every officer that dared to express any thing approximating to a liberal opinion upon any subject, and we shall appreciate the spirit of the times that can enable one of our most celebrated officers to utter these noble sentiments to one of the largest and most wealthy and intelligent constituencies of the kingdom. If we reflect upon the punishment of the voters of Bath for perjury and corruption, and the truly horrible state of the franchise when it was the property of Lords Bath and Camden, we may exclaim with Mr. Hume, "Who could have imagined, even twenty years ago, that such a meeting could have been convened in that city, or that such speeches could have been uttered in it !" Mr. Hume said that it was impossible in the nineteenth century for the Lords to remain an irresponsible body. As a Court of appeal, he said that cases were heard before it, perhaps by the Chancellor, who had previously tried the case, and was, in fact, only hearing and deciding an appeal against himself, whilst he might be assisted by a Bishop, probably reading a novel, and by a Peer sleeping on one of the benches." "It was time," added Mr. Hume, "that such a mockery should be abolished." When Bath, with its 40,000 inhabitants, possessed but twenty-two voters, and those were the venal slaves, the property of two Lords, what would have been the fate of Colonel Napier, of Mr. Hume, or Mr. Roebuck, had they dared to say in that city that the House of Lords ought to be abolished ? This would have been like abusing a man in his own kitchen before his own servants.
But Mr. Roebuck has gone much further than either Colonel Napier or Mr. Hume. He had stated at the last election for Bath, that society had outlived the Kingly office, and that Royalty ought to be abolished. At the present dinner, Mr. Roebuck declared, that notwithstanding all. that had been done in the cause of reform, he deemed the people to be only on the threshold ; that a majority of even the House of Commons were not the friends of the people, and that he wished to carry reforms to the extent of placing "the Government of the country entirely in the hands of the people." He wanted a reformed Parliament, a reformed law, a reformed Church, a reformed Magistracy, and a thoroughly reformed system of municipal corporations. He declared the House of Lords to be "a DOWNRIGHT nuisance—which, for public good, should be abated," and he was an advocate for only one House, with a Government which "entirely emanated from the people."—Bell's Weekly Dispatch.

True Colonist Van Diemen's Land Political Despatch, and Agricultural and Commercial... (Hobart Town, Tas. : 1834 - 1844), Friday 6 May 1836, page 7