THE TORY OPERATIVES.
THE Times this morning contains a two-column report of a dinner of the Operative Conservative Association of Howick, near Bolton in Lancashire. The Tories hare lately been at consider- able pains to get up an agitation in different parts of the country among the working classes. It is remarkable, however, that they never venture to call a public meeting for the discussion of any political question of interest. They collect at the most two or three hundred persons in a room; the ale and tobacco circulate, and sometimes a dinner is provided. There are only one, or two topics on which the Tory orators at these meetings venture to be elcquent,—the cruelty of the new Poor-law, which, supposing it to be bad, they dishonestly attribute to the Whigs alone ; and abuse of Mr. O'CoNNEnn. In Lancashire, we suspect, the latter topic is wisely discussed with closed doors.
At the Ilowick dinner, an operative, emulous of Mr. HAR- VEY'S eloquence, railed at the authors and supporters of the Poor- law ; and immediately afterwards, the health of "Sir Robert Peel and the Conservative Members of the House of Commons" was drunk with rapture,—just as though Sir ROBERT and the Tory party had not perseveringly supported the Whigs in carrying the Poor-law.
This is the mode in which the Tories play their favourite game of humbug: it proves their consciousness that there is no real sympathy between them and the masses. They must know, that although they may bribe a few hundreds here and there to cheer Tory toasts, there is no hope for them with the country at large. They dare not address the people on those subjects which really interest and excite them. On the Corn-laws—the cruel Bread- tax—they must be silent ; on free voting, and extension of the suffrage, they are forbidden to speak by their fears. Their re- source after all is bribery. Yet, in 1831 and 1832, they had experience of the inefficacy of such means to neutralize a national movement. Let the period of popular excitement return, and then they will see of how little avail have been their ale and elo- quence in Operative Conservative Associations.
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