1863.

Ar. 59.

Bo4

LIF® OF COBDEZN,

To Joy T. Derane, Ese.

[JHAP.

S1r,—1I have received the lotter dated from your private residence, and
searing your own signature, in which you take on yourself personally the
responsibility of the interpretation put by the Times on the speeches of
Mr. Bright and myself at Rochdale—namely, that we proposed “2
division among the poor of the lands of the rich.” Your letter to me
says tm
“You attribute to the Zimes a deliberate misrepresentation of your
weaning, and that of Mr. Bright, as to the means of amending the -
equal distribution of the land between the rich and the poor. I repeat
that certain pussages in your spesches will, in my opinion, bear no other
interpretation than that ascribed to them.”
This is a grave accusation. Iam told that, if proved, it would bring
Mr. Bright and myself within the provisions of the Act 57th Geo. IL
cap. 19, and render ug liable to the penal consequences of transportatio®
for seven years.
I will not believe that you can be so wanting in the respect due »
others, as well as yourself, as to have addressed this accusation to Mm
unless with the belief that you have evidence to substantiate it.
I call on you to give me those “ certain passages” to which you refers
and which are really now the only question at issue between you and me.
That there may be no excuse or ground for delay, I accept the report which
appeared in your paper as an accurate version of my speech ; and to aid y ou
in your task I have cut from the Z¥mes the entire passage which contain®
all that I said in reference to the condition of the people generally, or t0 the
agricultural population, and the land question in particular, But let if
be distinctly understood that I do not confine you to this extract, but that
I give you the entire range of my speech.
Before giving the passage I will say a few words, which, although I d°
oot in the slightest degree claim for them the character of evidence, m&¥
have interest in some quarters.
It is known that I am not in the habit of writing a word beforehand of
what I speak in public. Like other speakers, practice has given me #3
perfect self-possession in the presence of an audience as if I were writing
in my closet. Now, my ever-constant and overruling thought while addressing
 a public meeting, the one necessity which long experience of the
arts of controversialists has impressed on my mind, is to avoid the possibility
of being misrepresented, and prevent my opponents from raising a fal¥
issue—a trick of logio as old as the time of Aristotle. If I have, as soni?
favourable critics are pleased to think, sometimes spoken with clearness
it is more owing to this ever-present fear of misrepresentation than 837
other cause :—it is thus that the most noxious things in life may hav?