Mr. CALTHORPE has much pleasure in tendering his best thanks to the Electors of Dudley for their very decided and flattering support. He regrets the impossibility of personally canvassing all the Electors, and respectfully invites them to meet him at the LANCASTERIAN SCHOOL ROOM, DUDLEY, on MONDAY Evening next, the 7th day of February, at seven o’clock.
Mr. Calthorpe’s Committee Room, Old Bush Inn, 5th February, 1859.
EAST WORCESTERSHIRE ELECTION.
Brother Electors,
Mr. PAKINGTON asks who is Mr. CALTHORPE, and how dare he presume to intrude himself upon the Electors of East Worcestershire? I would reply by asking what claims of pre-eminence Mr. PAKINGTON possesses in thus questioning your right to select for yourselves that person you consider most fitted to represent you, and upon what ground does he base his expectations of obtaining your support? Certainly not upon the exhibition he made at the Lancasterian School on Monday Evening, when he either had no principles to explain, or they were so antiquated that he lacked the power or ability to make them understandable to his audience! Can it be upon his desire to dole out to you the very smallest modicum of Reform which may be possible, or that you must be pleased to wait a little longer, until you are more capable of appreciating it? I am quite willing to give Mr. PAKINGTON all the credit he so eloquently pleaded for on Monday Evening, to which his efforts on behalf of education fairly entitle him; but I cannot understand how it is that he should deny to the people a fair participation in those rights and privileges which that education so properly qualifies them to exercise. Is it that he would continue that animosity and those heart-burnings which the exaction of Church Rates has so long occasioned, or does he still desire the dominance of an Ecclesiastical authority which, since the reformation, the Protestant spirit of the people of England has declared shall not exist in this country? Does he think that you will support him on account of the resistance of himself and his party to the establishment of those great commercial principles which have tended so largely to develop the prosperity of this Country, and so materially to increase your own happiness and comforts? How dare Mr. PAKINGTON sneer at Staffordshire men representing you, when all so well recollect the insidious attempt of Sir John to transfer you to that County, and which, had not your timely and generally expressed indignation prevented, Mr. PAKINGTON would not now have had the honour of soliciting your suffrages; Mr. CALTHORPE is a progressive, consistent Liberal—one whose principles are adapted to the spirit of the times in which we live; he comes fairly before this great County constituency with stated opinions, and soliciting from it a Seat in Parliament. He does not attempt to get there by the exercise of an influence Mr. PAKINGTON so magniloquently talked about, and which we all know is so kindly exercised in a Borough with which he is connected. Is it not that Mr. JUNIOR PAKINGTON is put forth as a feeler against the time when, very probably, that Borough may find itself in Schedule A of a New Reform Bill, and your votes may then be asked for a Senior member of the family? I will venture to answer that as Free and Independent Electors of East Worcestershire you will not thus be dictated to, but will return Mr. CALTHORPE TRIUMPHANTLY AT THE HEAD OF THE POLL!
I am,
Yours respectfully,
A FREEHOLDER.