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 V 
 
 ADDEESS AND SPEECHES 
 
 DELIVERED AT 
 
 MANCHESTER 
 
 ON THE 23rd and 24TH of APRIL, 1862. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, 
 
 CHANCELLOR OF HER MAJESTY'S EXCHEQUER. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JOHN MUEEAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, 
 
 1862.
 
 A Cheap Edition of this Address and Speech is published 
 by Mr. Hamer, of Leeds. 
 
 L0NIX)N: PRTNXED by W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFOnO STREET, 
 AND CHARING CROSS.
 
 ADDRESS AND SPEECH 
 
 DELIVERKD BEFORE THE 
 
 ASSOCIATION OF LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE 
 MECHANICS' INSTITUTES. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, — Although the 
 duty iu which we have just been engaged is a 
 cheerful one, the season at which I come among 
 you is, but too notoriously, a season of gloom in 
 the district, and even in the city. In this busy 
 region, all the forms of human industry are 
 grouped around one central stock, which gives 
 them their vitality ; and they droop and come 
 near to dying when, as now, the great cotton 
 harvest is no longer wafted over the Atlantic 
 to employ and feed the people. If the positive 
 signs of distress do not glare in your streets, it 
 is, I apprehend, because the manly and inde- 
 pendent character of the Lancashire workman 
 makes him unwilling to parade, or even to dis- 
 
 B 2
 
 4 ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 close, his snfforings before his fellow men. 
 None can doubt the existence of a torpor 
 scarcely ever eqiuillod in its intensity, and 
 wholly without parallel in its cause. At points 
 of the horizon in these counties, the eye sug- 
 gests regret even for the unwonted thinness of 
 the canopy of smoke, which bears witness to 
 the partial slumber of the giant forces enlisted 
 in your ordinary service. Rarely within living 
 memory has so much of skill lain barren, so 
 much of willing strength been smitten as with 
 palsy, and so much of poverty and want forced 
 its way into homes, that had long been wont to 
 smile with comfort and abundance. Nor is the 
 promise of to-morrow a compensation for the 
 pressure of to-day. On the contrary, if the 
 present be dark, the signs of the immediate 
 future may seem darker still. 
 
 In times like these the human mind, and still 
 more the human heart, searches all around for 
 consolation and support. Of that support one 
 kind is to be found in observing, that trials the 
 most severe and piercing are the lot not of one 
 station only but of all. And perhaps in the wise 
 counsels of Providence it was decreed, that that 
 
 UKJC 
 
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 "■•orHA
 
 MECHANICS INSTITUTES. D 
 
 crusliing sorrow, wliicli came down as sudden as 
 the hurricane, scarcely yet four months ago, 
 upon the august head of our Sovereign, should 
 serve, among other uses, that of teaching and 
 helping her subjects to bear up under the sense 
 of affliction and desolation, and should exhibit 
 by conspicuous example the need and the duty 
 both of mutual sympathy and mutual help. 
 In many a humble cottage, darkened by the 
 calamity of the past winter, the moui'ning in- 
 habitants may have checked their own impa- 
 tience by reflecting that, in the ancient Palace 
 of our Kings, a Woman's heart lay bleeding ; 
 and that to the supreme place in birth, in 
 station, in splendour, and in power, was now 
 added another sadder title of pre-eminence in 
 grief. 
 
 For, perhaps, no sharper stroke ever cut 
 human lives asunder, than that which in Decem- 
 ber last parted, so far as this world of sense is 
 concerned, the lives of the Queen of England 
 and of her chosen Cousort. It had been obvious 
 to us all, though necessarily in different degrees, 
 that they were blest with the possession of the 
 secret of reconciling the discharge of incessant
 
 G ADDRESS^ TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 and wearing public duty with the cultivation of 
 the inner and domestic life. The attachment , 
 that binds together wife and husband, was 
 known to be in their case from the first of 
 an unusual force. Through more than twenty 
 years, which flowed past like one long unclouded 
 summer day, that attachment was cherished, 
 exercised, and strengthened by all the forms of 
 family interest, by all the associated pursuits 
 of highly cultivated minds, by all the cares and 
 responsibilities which surround the Throne, and 
 which the Prince was called in his o\vn sphere 
 both to alleviate and to share. On the one 
 side, such love is rare, even in the annals of 
 the love of woman ; on the other, such service 
 can hardly find a parallel, for it is hard to 
 know how a husband could render it to a wife, 
 unless that wife w^ere also Queen. 
 
 So, then. She, whom you have seen in your 
 streets a source of joy to all, and herself drink- 
 ing in with cordial warmth the sights and the 
 sounds of your enthusiastic loyalty, is now to 
 be thought of as the first of English widows, 
 lonely in proportion to her elevation and her 
 cares. Nor let it be thought that those, who
 
 MECHANICS INSTITUTES. 7 
 
 are never called to suffer in respect to bodily 
 wants, therefore do not suffer sharply. Whereas, 
 on the contrary, it is well established, not only 
 that though the form of sorrow may be changed 
 with a change in the sphere of life, the essence 
 and power of it remain, but also that, as that 
 sphere enlarges, the capacity of suffering 
 deepens along with it no less than the oppor- 
 tunities of enjoyment are multiplied. Therefore 
 all the land, made aware, through the transpa- 
 rent manner of it, what was the true character of 
 her life, has acknowledged in the Queen not only 
 a true, but a signally afflicted mourner. And 
 rely upon it that even in the midst of desola- 
 tion she is conscious of our sympathy, and has 
 thrilled more deeply to the signs of her people's 
 grief on her behalf than ever, in other days, to 
 their loudest and most heart-stirring acclama- 
 tions. (Applause.) 
 
 And you, my friends, such of you in par- 
 ticular as have felt by your firesides the 
 touch of this most trying time, if perchance 
 many among you, turning in the day of 
 need and trouble to the Father of all Mercies,
 
 8 ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 have mingled with your prayers for your 
 own relief another prayer, that She may be 
 consoled in her sorrow and strengthened for 
 her work during what we hope will be the long 
 remamder of her days, that loyal prayer will 
 come back with blessing into your own bosom, 
 and in the effort to obtain comfort for another 
 you will surely be comforted yourselves. (Ap- 
 plause.) 
 
 If the mourning of the nation for the Prince 
 Consort's death was universal, yet within cer- 
 tain precincts it was also special. One of 
 those precincts surely must have been the 
 Association, to promote whose purposes we are 
 gathered here to-night. You had in him a 
 Head ; and a Head standing towards you in no 
 merely titular relation, but one who, as his 
 manner was, gave reality to every attribute 
 of his station, and in lending you his name im- 
 parted to you freely of his thought and care to 
 boot. His comprehensive gaze ranged to and 
 fro between the base and the summit of society, 
 and examined the interior forces, by which it is 
 kept at once in balance and in motion. In his
 
 mechanics' institutes. 9 
 
 well-ordered life there seemed to be room for 
 all things. For every manly exercise, for the 
 study and practice of art, for the exacting 
 cares of a splendid Court, for minute attention 
 to every domestic and paternal duty, for advice 
 and aid towards the discharge of public busi- 
 ness in its innumerable forms, and for meeting 
 the voluntary calls of an active philanthropy : 
 one day in considering the best form for the 
 dwellings of the people ; another day in bring- 
 ing his just and gentle influence to bear on 
 the relations of master and domestic servant ; 
 another in suggesting and supplying the means 
 of culture for the most numerous classes ; 
 another in some good work of almsgiving or 
 religion. Nor was it a merely external activity 
 which he displayed. His mind, it is evident, 
 was too deeply earnest to be satisfied in any- 
 tliing, smaller or greater, with resting on the 
 surface. With a strong grasp on practical life 
 in aU its forms, he united a habit of thought 
 eminently philosopliic ; ever referring facts to 
 their causes, and pursuing action to its con- 
 sequences. Gone though he be from among 
 us, he, like other worthies of mankind who
 
 10 ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 have preceded liira, is not altogether gone ; for, 
 in the words of the poet, — 
 
 " the relij^no^^s actions of the just 
 
 Smell sweet in death, and blossom in the dust.** 
 
 (Applause-) So he lias left for all men, in all 
 classes, many a useful lesson, to be learnt from 
 the record of his life and character. 
 
 For example, it would, I believe, be difficult to 
 find anywhere a model of a life more highly or- 
 ganized, more thoroughly and compactly ordered. 
 Here in Manchester, if anywhere in the world, 
 you know what order is, and what a power it 
 holds. Here we see at work the vast systems 
 of machinery, where ten thousand instruments 
 are ever labouring, each in its own proper place, 
 each with its own proper duty, but all obedient 
 to one law, and all co-operating for one end. 
 Scarcely in one of these your own great establish- 
 ments are the principles of order and its power 
 more vividly exemplified, than they were in the 
 mind and life of the Prince Consort. Now this 
 way of excelling is one that we all may follow. 
 There is not one among us all here gathered, 
 who may not, if he will, especially if he be still
 
 mechanics' institutes. 11 
 
 young, by the simple specific of giving method 
 to his life, greatly increase its power and effi- 
 cacy for good. (Applause.) 
 
 But he would be a sorry imitator of the Prince, 
 who should suppose that this process could be 
 satisfactorily performed as a mechanical process, 
 in a presumptuous or in a servile spirit, and with 
 a view to selfish or to worldly ends. A life that 
 is to be active like his, ought to find refresh- 
 ment even in the midst of labours ; nay, to 
 draw refreshment from them. But this it can- 
 not do, unless the man can take up the varied 
 employments of the world with something of a 
 childlike freshness. Few are they, who carry 
 on with them that childlike freshness of the 
 earliest years into after-life. It is that especial 
 light of Heaven, described by Wordsworth in 
 his immortal *Ode on the Kecollections of 
 Childhood:' that light— 
 
 " which lies about lis in our infancy," 
 
 which attends even the youth upon his way ; 
 
 but at length — 
 
 " the man perceives it die away, 
 And fade into the light of common day." 
 
 Its radiance still plays about a favoured few :
 
 12 ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 they are those few who, like the Prince, strive 
 earnestly to keep themselves unspotted from 
 the world, and are victors in the strife. (Ap- 
 plause.) 
 
 In beseeching, especially, the young to 
 study the application to their daily life of 
 that principle of order which both engenders 
 diligence and strength of will, and likewise so 
 greatly multiplies their power, I am well 
 assured that they will find this to be not only 
 an intellectual, but a moral exercise. Every 
 real and searching effort at self-improvement is 
 of itself a lesson of profound humility. For we 
 cannot move a step without learning and feel- 
 ing the waywardness, the weakness, the vacil- 
 lation of our movements, or without desiring to 
 be set up upon the rock that is higher than 
 ourselves. (Applause.) Nor, again, is it likely 
 that the self-denial and self-discipline, which 
 these efforts undoubtedly involve, will often be 
 cordially undergone, except by those who ele- 
 vate and extend their vision beyond the narrow 
 scope of the years — be they what we admit to 
 be few, or what we think to be many — that are 
 prescribed for our career on earth. An untiring
 
 mechanics' institutes. 13 
 
 sense of duty, an active consciousness of the 
 perpetual presence of Him who is its author 
 and its law, and a lofty aim beyond the grave — 
 these are the best and most efficient parts, in 
 every sense, of that apparatus, wherewith we 
 should be armed when with full purpose of heart 
 we address ourselves to the life-long work of 
 self-improvement. And I believe that the lesson 
 which I have thus, perhaps at once too boldly 
 and too feebly, presumed to convey to you in 
 words, is the very lesson which was taught us 
 for twenty years, and has been bequeathed to us 
 for lasting memory, by the Prince Consort, in 
 the nobler form of action, in the silent witness 
 of an eai-nest, manful, and devoted life. (Ap- 
 plause.) 
 
 But, although this world embraces no more 
 than a limited part of our existence, and al- 
 though it is certain that we ought to tread its 
 floor with an upward and not with a downward 
 eye, yet sometimes a strong reaction from the 
 dominion of things visible and carnal begets the 
 opposite excess. A strain of language may 
 sometimes be heard among us which, if taken 
 strictly, would imply that the Almighty had
 
 14 ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 abandoned the earth and the creatures He had 
 made ; or, at the least, that if He retained any 
 care at all for some portion of those creatures 
 while continuing to be inhabitants of the world, 
 it was only care how to take them out of it. It 
 is sometimes said that this world is a world only 
 of shadows and of phantoms. We may safely 
 reply that, whatever it is, a world of shadows 
 and of phantoms it can never be ; for by sha- 
 dows and by phantoms we mean vague exist- 
 ences which neither endure nor act : creatures 
 of the moment, which may touch the fancy, but 
 which the understanding does not recognise; 
 passing illusions, without heralds before them, 
 without results or traces after them. With such 
 a description as tliis, I say, our human life, in 
 whatever state or station, can never correspond. 
 It may be something better than this ; it may 
 be something worse ; but this it can never be. 
 Our life may be food to us, or may, if we will 
 have it so, be poison ; but one or the other it 
 must be. Whichever and whatever it is, be- 
 yond all doubt it is eminently real. So surely 
 as the day and the night alternately follow one 
 another, does every day when it yields to dark-
 
 mechanics' institutes. 15 
 
 ness, and every night when it passes into dawn, 
 bear with it its own tale of the results which it 
 has silently wrought upon each of us for evil or 
 for good. The day of diligence, duty, and 
 devotion leaves us richer than it found us ; 
 richer sometimes, and even commonly, in our 
 circumstances ; richer always in ourselves. But 
 the day of aimless lethargy, the day of pas- 
 sionate and rebellious disorder, or of a merely 
 selfish and perverse activity, as surely leaves us 
 poorer at its close than we were at its beginning. 
 (Applause.) The whole experience of life, in 
 small things and in great, what is it ? It is an 
 aggregate of real forces, which are always acting 
 upon us, and we reacting upon them. It is in 
 the nature of things impossible that, in their 
 contact with our plastic and susceptible natures, 
 they should leave us as we were ; and to deny 
 the reality of their daily and continual influence, 
 merely because we cannot register its results, 
 like changes of the barometer, from hour to 
 hour, would be just as rational as to deny that 
 the sea acts upon the beach because the eye 
 will not tell us to-morrow that it is altered from 
 what it has been to-day. If we fail to measure
 
 16 ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 the results that are thus hourly wrought on 
 rock and sand, it is not because those results 
 are unreal, but because our vision is too limited 
 in its powers to discern them. Wlien, instead 
 of comparing day with day, we com])are century 
 with century, then we find that land has become 
 sea, and sea has become land. Even so we can 
 perceive, at least in our neighbours — towards 
 whom the eye is more impartial and discerning 
 than towards ourselves — that, under the steady 
 pressure of the experience of life, human cha- 
 racters are continually being determined for 
 good or evil ; are developed, confirmed, modi- 
 fied, altered, or undermined. It is the office 
 of good sense, no less than of faith, to realise 
 this great truth before we see it, and to live 
 under the conviction, that our life from day to 
 day is a true, powerful, and searching disci- 
 pline, moulding us and making us, whether it 
 be for evil or for good. (Applause.) 
 
 Nor are these real effects wi-ought by unreal in- 
 struments. Life and the w^orld, their interests, 
 their careers, the varied gifts of our nature, the 
 traditions of our forefathers, the treasures of 
 laws, institutions, usages, of languages, of litera-
 
 mechanics' institutes. 17 
 
 ture, and of art ; all the beauty, glory, and 
 delight, with which the Almiglity Father has 
 clothed this earth for the use and profit of His 
 children, and which Evil, though it has defaced, 
 has not been able utterly to destroy ; all these 
 are not merely allowable, but ordained and 
 appointed instruments for the training of man- 
 kind, — instruments true and efficient in them- 
 selves, though without doubt auxiliary and subor- 
 dinate to that highest instrument of all which 
 God has prepared to be the means of our reco- 
 very and final weal, by the revelation of Himself. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 Thus, then, we arrive at a point which 
 plainly exhibits the ennobling tendencies and 
 high moral aims of an institution such as this, 
 when it is worked in the spirit that alone befits 
 our natiu-e and condition. 
 
 Let me now address to you a few words 
 on a marked feature of the institution — that 
 feature with which in particular we are 
 to-night concerned — I mean its examinations, 
 to which reference is made in the eighth para- 
 graph of its printed list of its objects. They 
 evidently form not only a living and chief por- 
 
 c
 
 18 ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 tion of its practice, but also a test of its power 
 over the people ; and it is manifest, from the 
 results they have produced — from such results 
 as \vitli our own eyes we have witnessed in this 
 hall to-night — that they have struck deep root 
 in the mind of tlie community around you, 
 and are likely to exercise in future a material 
 influence upon conduct. 
 
 The use of examinations in this country, not 
 alone, but with honours and prizes variously 
 attached to them, as a main stimulus and 
 support to mental cultivation, is in a very 
 great degree peculiar to the present century. 
 Examination may be said to have constituted, 
 nearly from its commencement, the basis of the 
 practical system of our ancient Universities of 
 Oxford and Cambridge. Perhaps those Univer- 
 sities have been the means of commending to the 
 country the example it has so largely followed. 
 These examinations have acquired progressively 
 more and more of weight in the public schools. 
 They now supply the only passport to the Civil 
 Service of India, richly endowed as it is with 
 emoluments, and heavily charged with duties 
 and responsibilities. Admission to the Civil
 
 mechanics' institutes. 19 
 
 Service at home had been long the subject only 
 of a political patronage which was, erroneously 
 as I think, believed to be an essential part of 
 the machinery of the Constitution, and the sole 
 effectual substitute for the ruder methods of 
 government formerly in use by prerogative and 
 force. But it is now in some degi-ee admitted 
 that the privilege of entering the Civil Service 
 of the country — and, indeed, the service of the 
 country generally — ought to be thrown open, as 
 widely as may be, to its youth at large. (Ap- 
 plause.) And some progress has been made, by 
 the method of examinations, both in securing the 
 State against the intrusion of the unworthy, 
 and in widening the way of access for those 
 who aspu'e to prove themselves worthy of the 
 honours and rewards of civil office. (Hear.) 
 The same engine of competitive examination 
 has been more freely applied to the highest — 
 I mean the scientific — department of the Army. 
 At about the same time with the adoption of 
 these last-mentioned improvements, the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford instituted, with great wisdom 
 and forethought, that system of chcuits for 
 local examination throughout the country, which 
 
 c 2
 
 20 ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 met at once with public acknowledgment and 
 approval, and which was speedily and happily 
 imitated from one or more other quarters. But 
 none of these efforts touched the great masses 
 of the peoi)le. They too, however, have been 
 at least partially reached by the widening circles 
 of the movement. A proposal is, as you know, 
 under the consideration of Parliament, which 
 aims at the establishment of the principle, that 
 the merit of the pupils, proved by elementary 
 examination, shall henceforth be, if not the sole, 
 yet the main condition on which the money of 
 the State, supplied by the taxes of the country, 
 shall be dispensed in aid of primary schools. 
 (Applause.) This, it may be said, is still pro- 
 spective. But at least we have, in the Associa- 
 tion of Lancashu-e and Cheshire Mechanics' 
 Institutes, one living proof of the progress made, 
 without aid either from old endowment or from 
 ^he public purse (" tear, hear"), by the principle 
 of examinations, with the condition of compe- 
 tition and the attraction of honour or reward. 
 (Applause.) How strictly true is this assertion 
 must be more familiarly known to many among 
 you than to me.
 
 mechanics' institutes. 21 
 
 I will not attempt to di-aw here, and now, a 
 full picture of the xissociation, but will only give 
 in proof of what I have said a very few facts 
 and figiu'es. First, as regards the general con- 
 dition of the district. We find that the com- 
 pulsory leisure forced on the population by the 
 contraction of the cotton trade has been at- 
 tended by a decrease of crime. In Blackburn, 
 for instance, where the crisis is felt with the 
 utmost severity, the charges heard by the 
 borough magistrates in the first quarter of the 
 year 1857 were 721 ; in the first quarter of the 
 year 1862, although the population must have 
 grown, the charges were only 524. ("Hear, 
 hear," and applause.) Now, we may naturally 
 expect a decrease of drunkenness to accompany 
 popular distress, because the means of indul- 
 gence have been contracted. But, on the other 
 hand, we might not be gTcatly sm-prised if there 
 were a positive increase of those offences to 
 which men are tempted in a principal degree by 
 want. Applying these considerations to the case 
 of Blackbm-n, we find the following results : — 
 The charges other than for drunkenness in the 
 first quarter of 1857 were 464 ; in 1862 they
 
 22 ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 were 380. (Applause.) There is, my friends, con- 
 solation in these facts, which I hope will long 
 sunnve the painful occasion that has brought 
 them into view. (Hear, hear.) 
 
 It also appears from the returns, that, speak- 
 ing generally, while crime lias decreased, the 
 attendance upon classes, and the use of the 
 means of mental culture, have increased. Now, 
 my friends, there are beautiful and famous pas- 
 sages in ancient writers, where statesmen and 
 orators describe the refreshment with which lite- 
 rature had supplied them, amid the cares of life 
 and of public affairs. Without any disparage- 
 ment to such representations, it is a far more 
 touching picture to behold the labouring man, 
 shut out by no fault of his own from the occu- 
 pation that gives him bread, yet unconquered 
 in spirit and resource, and turning to account 
 his vacant hours in pursuits which strengthen 
 and enlarge the faculties of his mind. (Ap- 
 plause). 
 
 It would, however, be unjust to set down to 
 the credit of this Association, or of those Insti- 
 tutes which it binds together, more than a modest 
 share in the general improvement of yom* social
 
 mechanics' institutes. 23 
 
 state. But let us observe more closely their 
 own progress. The members, formerly 2000, 
 are now from 6000 to 8000. Four years ago 
 500 persons passed the preliminary examina- 
 tions ; this year there are 1500. (Hear, hear.) 
 Four years ago 214 passed the public and final 
 examination; this year there are 730. (Hear, 
 hear.) What is more remarkable than all this is 
 the fact, that of 180 persons who have to-night 
 received honours and certificates, the number 
 who draw their subsistence from weekly wages is 
 no less than 177. (Applause and cheers.) Two of 
 these are wholly imemployed ; 83, between men 
 and women, are weavers ; fuUy 150 appear to 
 belong, in the very strictest sense, to the labour- 
 ing class. Again I say, here are the signs, for 
 that class especially, of hope and real progress ; 
 of hope which will, I trust, bear its fruit, and 
 abide with them as certainty, long after the 
 clouds of the present visitation shall, if it please 
 God, have passed away. (Applause.) 
 
 I have said to you, my friends, that the 
 extended use of the instrument of examina- 
 tions is eminently characteristic of the age 
 in wliich we live. I would almost venture to
 
 24 ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 say that, amid all the material and all the 
 social changes, by which the period has been 
 distinguished, there have been few that are 
 greater or more peculiar than tliis. The older 
 methods of education, which had been in use 
 in Eiu'opean countries, generally invited from 
 students, with more or less of strictness, volun- 
 tary performances, which were intended to 
 aftbrd general evidence of competency ; and 
 which, where they were regularly exaqted, were 
 made conditions of the certificates of proficiency 
 given by Universities and other learned bodies, 
 and by them called Degrees. These exercises 
 and exhibitions w^ere the invention of remote 
 ages, and were in all probability well adapted 
 to the exigencies of those periods. But in the 
 time of your immediate ancestors they had be- 
 come generally and even grossly ineffective; 
 and the instinct, so to speak, of the present 
 age has prompted it, instead of reviving the 
 ancient forms which had died out, to have re- 
 course to the new method of examinations. 
 
 These examinations are in a great number 
 of instances competitive ; that is, they offer to 
 the candidates one or more specific prizes, the
 
 MECHANICS INSTITUTES. 25 
 
 possession of which by particular competitors 
 involves the exclusion of others. This form of 
 examination has great advantages. It raises to 
 a maximum that stimulus which acts insensibly 
 but powerfully upon the minds of students, as 
 it were, from behind ; and becomes an auxiliary 
 force augmenting their energies, and helping 
 them, almost without their knowledge, to sur- 
 mount their difficulties. It is not found in 
 practice, so far as I know, to be open to an 
 objection which is popularly urged against it — 
 namely, that it may elicit evil passions among 
 the candidates, because it makes the gain of 
 one the loss of another. I believe that, on the 
 contrary, the pursuit of knowledge is found to 
 carry with it in this respect its own preserva- 
 tives and safeguards. Even in atliletic sports, 
 the loser does not resent or grudge the fairly 
 won honours of the winner ; and, in the race of 
 minds, those who are behind, having confidence 
 in the perfect fairness of the award, are not so 
 blmdly and basely selfish as to cherish resent- 
 ment against others for being better than them- 
 selves. (Hear, hear.) Again, it is a recom- 
 mendation of pm-ely competitive examinations
 
 26 ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 that they bring tlio matter to tlie simplest 
 issue ; for, in nice cases, it is a much easier and 
 safer task for the examiner to compare the per- 
 formances of a candidate with those of another 
 candidate, than to compare them with some 
 more abstract standard, existing oidy in his own 
 mind. On the other hand, it is a disadvantage 
 of tliis system that the honours given at dif- 
 ferent times, purporting to be equal, are given 
 to unequal merit : for the number and excel- 
 lence of the competitors varies from one occa- 
 sion to another ; and the winner of one year 
 may, on this account, be inferior to the loser of 
 another. 
 
 Much may, in truth, be said in praise or in 
 disparagement of one method of examination 
 as compared with another. Into controversy 
 of this kind I do not propose to enter, further 
 than to say that I think the highest value 
 belongs to the competitive species in cases like 
 that of admission to the civil service of the 
 State, where a main object is to bar the way 
 against the action of corrupt or inferior motives 
 in those who appoint. In the long run, the 
 simple, clear, and self-acting method of an open
 
 mechanics' institutes. 27 
 
 competition will probably be found more ade- 
 quate, tban any other agency, to contend against 
 the wakeful energies of human selfishness, ever 
 on the alert, first to prevent the adoption of 
 improvements, and then to neutralize and mar 
 their operation. (Applause.) 
 
 But what I would, on the present occasion, 
 specially endeavour to bring to your atten- 
 tion is the general character of this instru- 
 ment of examination, as it is understood and as 
 it is applied in the present century, and in the 
 institution with which we have now to deal. 
 The essential character of it I take to be this— 
 that the candidate, instead of himself producing 
 a piece of work, and asking to be judged by it, 
 offers and opens his mind to the examining 
 authority to be tested, searched, and, so to 
 speak, even ransacked, in such manner, and by 
 such questions and processes, as that examin- 
 ing authority shall choose. The adoption, or 
 wide extension, of such a method as this marks 
 an epoch in the history of study. It shows that 
 we have overlived the time, when the greater 
 part of those who engaged in the pursuit of 
 knowledge were enamoured of its beauty, and
 
 28 ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 loved it for its own sake, with a devout and 
 tender love. In the childhood of mental cul- 
 ture, it was the prerogative of a few, and the 
 mere possession of it constituted a high dis- 
 tinction. So, likewise, as in those days legal 
 rights were ill defined and protected, commerce 
 was circumscribed, nations were sharply severed, 
 and but few of the careers of active life were 
 open, it naturally happened that in the case of 
 many persons mental culture had little to com- 
 pete with it for their regard. In circumstances 
 like these, it might not be needful constantly 
 to apply a strong stimulus from without. The 
 very novelty and freshness of knowledge, in 
 ages just emerging from darkness and disorder, 
 gave it a powerful charm for the imagination, 
 over and above its hold upon the intellect ; it 
 was pursued by a spontaneous movement from 
 within, with passion as well as with conviction ; 
 and those who so pursue it do not need to be 
 goaded in their onward course ; their service is 
 a service of love, and, like the love of youth for 
 maiden, it is its own incentive and its own 
 reward. (Applause.) 
 
 But when society has passed into what is dis-
 
 mechanics' institutes. 29 
 
 tinctively, and in many respects truly, termed 
 a progressive state ; when the personal rights 
 of men are as secure in the outer world as in 
 the closest retirement ; when a thousand new 
 careers of external life are opened, and its 
 attractions in a thousand forms are indefinitely 
 multiplied ; when large numbers can engage, 
 not merely in labour for subsistence, but in 
 the pursuit of wealth ; and when a desire to 
 rise upon the social ladder takes possession of 
 whole classes, if not on their own behalf, at 
 least on behalf of their children ; then there is 
 a compound danger — first, lest the value of 
 knowledge for its own sake should be wholly 
 forgotten ; and, secondly, lest even its utility 
 in innumerable respects for the comfort and 
 advancement of life should pass, in great mea- 
 sm-e, out of view. 
 
 Now, my friends, it is in such an age as this 
 that we are living. That same attraction or 
 necessity of wages, which takes the poorer 
 child, either in town or village, from school at 
 too early a period, is but the exhibition for 
 one class of a pressure felt by all. With the 
 wealthier it is pleasure, with the needier it is
 
 30 ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 gain ; but all classes and all circles are alike in 
 tkis — that our youth are in danger of under- 
 valuing solid mental culture, and of either 
 neglecting or shortening its pursuit by reason of 
 the increased allurements or the more urgent 
 calls of the outer sphere of life. Although 
 knowledge is in so many ways auxiliary to 
 art and to commerce, yet this is a matter 
 not so palpable to the individual that we can 
 rely on it to enable him, as it were, to speculate 
 upon a distant benefit, which concerns others 
 as well as, or it may be more than himself, 
 and to forego for its sake advantages which 
 lie nearer at hand, which appertain directly to 
 his own career, and which are on the level 
 of every man's understanding. Long, accord- 
 ingly, after trade and manufactures had begun, 
 one hundred years ago, their upward spring, 
 education and art seemed rather to decline 
 than to advance among us. At length a day 
 of awakening came. Christian philanthropy, 
 we may do well to remember, was first in the 
 field on behalf of the masses of the people 
 (" hear, hear ") ; but after a while, it found 
 itself in partnership with an enlightened self-
 
 mechanics' institutes. 31 
 
 interest on the part of individuals, and with the 
 political prudence of the Government. Now, 
 for a long course of years, all three have prose- 
 cuted their work in remarkable harmony one 
 with another. Long may their union continue, 
 and its golden fruits teem and glow over all 
 the surface of the land ! (Applause.) 
 
 A principal form in which they have each de- 
 veloped their united activity has been the form 
 of examinations ; and I must in candour say 
 that, among all the particular applications of this 
 principle, I have seen none more remarkable 
 than that, which we have met to-night to com- 
 memorate and to encourage. (Hear, hear.) For 
 here it is not leisure, wealth, and ease, which 
 come to disport themselves as athletes in intel- 
 lectual games : it is the hard hand of the worker, 
 which his yet stronger will has taught to wield 
 the pen ; it is Labour, gathering up with infinite 
 care and sacrifice the fragments of time, stealing 
 them, many a one, from rest and sleep, and 
 offering them up like so many widows' mites in 
 the honest devotion of an effort at self-improve- 
 ment. (Applause and cheers.) 
 
 There are those, my friends, who tell us that
 
 32 ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 examinations, and especially that competitive 
 examinations, are of no real value ; that they 
 produce the pretence and not the reality of 
 knowledge; that they give us, not solid pro- 
 gress, but conceit and illusion. I freely admit 
 that this modern method is likely to rear, as far 
 as we can judge, no greater prodigies of learning 
 than did the simple and spontaneous devotion 
 of the olden time ; perhaps, if we are to look 
 only at individual cases of pre-eminence, none 
 so great. But I say that the true way to imitate 
 the wisdom of the olden time is this, — to watch 
 the conditions of the age in which we live ; to 
 accept them thankfully and freely, as at once 
 the law of Providence for our guidance, and the 
 gift for our encouragement : and when we learn 
 by experience that the tools with which other 
 generations wrought are not suited for the work 
 that is given us to do, then to find, if we can, 
 some other tools which are. (Hear, hear.) 
 
 It is not too much to say that the experience 
 of half a century, as well in the Universities 
 as elsewhere, appears to have shown that 
 the method of examinations is the best, and 
 perhaps the only method, by which, in the
 
 mechanics' institutes. 33 
 
 England of the nineteenth century, any due 
 efficiency can be imparted to the general busi- 
 ness of education. I do not, indeed, deny that a 
 certain trick or craft may be practised in them ; 
 that some may think more of the manner of 
 displaying their knowledge to a momentary ad- 
 vantage, like goods in a shop-window (laughter), 
 than of laying hold upon the substance. But 
 I say that these abusive cases will be the ex- 
 ceptions, not the rule. I say that those, who so 
 unjustly plead them against the system, forget 
 that this very faculty of the ready command 
 and easy use of our knowledge is in itself of 
 immense value. It means clear perception, it 
 means orderly arrangement. And, above all, 
 they forget what I take to be the specific and 
 peculiar virtue of the system of examinations, 
 namely this, that they require us to concentrate 
 all the faculties of the mind, with all their 
 strength, upon a point. In and by the efforts 
 necessary for that concentration, the mind 
 itself, obtaining at once breadth of grasp and 
 increased pliability and force, becomes more 
 able to gi-apple with gTcat occasions in the 
 subsequent experience of life. (Hear, hear.) 
 
 D
 
 34 ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATED 
 
 Therefore, my friends, again I say let us 
 accept frankly and cheerfully the conditions 
 of the age in which our lot is cast, and let 
 us write among its titles this, — that as it 
 is the age of humane and liberal laws, the age 
 of extended franchises (" hear, hear "), the age 
 of warmer loyalty (" hear "), and more firmly 
 established order, the age of free trade (cheers), 
 the age of steam and railways ; so it is likewise, 
 even if last and least, the age of examinations. 
 Let me add, it is the age in which this powerful 
 instrument of good, formerly the exclusive pri- 
 vilege of the more opulent, has been extended, 
 perhaps most conspicuously of all by this Insti- 
 tution, to the people. And I give you this for my 
 concluding word ; that, if that Prince, of whose 
 bright career and character I lately spoke, were 
 now among us, none, we may be sure, would 
 more cordially than he claim honour for a system 
 which, in such thorough harmony mth the whole 
 spuit of English laws and institutions, aims at 
 enabling every one, in every rank of the social 
 scale, the lowest like the highest, to give proof 
 of what mettle he is made, and to tmii to the 
 best account the gifts with which, by the
 
 mechanics' institutes. 35 
 
 bounty of liis Heavenly Father, his mind has 
 been endowed. 
 
 After a vote of thanks to the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer for his conduct in the 
 chair, he rose and said : — 
 
 Mr. Mayor, Ladies, and Gentlemen, — I 
 trust that you hardly need from me the 
 assurance that I am deeply affected by the 
 tokens of kindness and approval which you 
 have just been pleased to bestow upon me in 
 no common manner and degree. It is not for 
 me to question or canvass the language of 
 eulogy, I fear by much too warm, of which 
 you. Sir, and my honourable friends who 
 moved and seconded the resolution,* have been 
 so good as to make use. I am too grateful, and 
 too glad to stand in your good opinion, to be 
 myself a fair or impartial judge of those ex- 
 pressions. But I am glad to meet you. Gentle- 
 men, at all times in this great metropolis of our 
 productive industry — I am glad to meet you in 
 Lancashire, the county of my birth and the scene 
 
 * Mr. Bazley, M.P., and Mr. Clieetham, 
 
 D 2
 
 .'JO SPEECH BEFORE ASSOCIATED 
 
 of my boyliood (cheers) — I am glad to meet you 
 within this noble hall, itself the monument of 
 one of the most beneficent among the peaceful 
 triumplis that have been wrought in the social 
 and civil history of man. (Cheers.) And I 
 assure you that, although you, Sir, are pleased to 
 give me credit for ability to bear the duties of 
 my place, I myself am so sensible of their weight 
 and j^ressure that, under ordinary circumstances, 
 great as the attractions would have been, I 
 could not have undertaken to visit Manchester 
 for a purpose such as that of to-night during 
 the Parliamentary session. But the circum- 
 stances under which my friend Mr. Bazley 
 made known to me the desire entertained here, 
 led me at once to feel, as I communicated to 
 him in reply, that I had no choice to exercise. 
 It was an opportunity which I too dearly 
 prized, because, although unhappily any token 
 of sympathy that it is in my power to render 
 you must be feeble and barren for the occasion, 
 yet that token of sympathy, such as it is, it 
 was impossible for me to withhold. And, Sir, 
 if I felt that the occasion required me to come 
 — if I felt before I had had experience such as
 
 mechanics' institutes. 37 
 
 this meeting lias afforded me that the object 
 of this Association was a noble and a worthy- 
 one, — I assure you that after what I have 
 seen to-night that conviction is deepened and 
 strengthened in my mind. It was impossible 
 to see the candidates who have successfully 
 entered into the examination for certificates 
 and prizes, to watch their demeanour, so 
 modest and yet so manly, as they passed across 
 this platform, without emotion. And I beg now 
 to assure them, one and all, that the few words 
 of compliment or congratulation which I hastily 
 endeavoured to address to them on their way 
 were no words of idle form or ceremonial 
 (cheers), but that they express a feeling deeply 
 seated in my heart. It was impossible to 
 regard them without interest for what they 
 have done, for what they may yet live to do, for 
 the example which they are setting to their own 
 generation^ and for opening the path of duty 
 and of honour to those that shall here- 
 after succeed both us and them. (Cheers.) 
 They are happy, Sir, in this respect, that 
 they live in times when the rising energies 
 of youth are not met on every side, as was
 
 38 SPEECH BEFORE ASSOCIATED 
 
 once the case, even in merry England, with 
 difficulty and with discouragement. There 
 may be many here who have made them- 
 selves acquainted with a book that cannot 
 be too widely brought into public notice — 
 I mean the recent publication of a popular 
 author, Mr. Smiles, entitled ' The Lives of the 
 Engineers.' (Cheers.) There may be those here 
 who have read the 'Life of Brindley,' and perused 
 the record of his discouragements in the tardi- 
 ness of his own facidties, as well as in the ex- 
 ternal circumstances with which he determined 
 to do battle, and over which he achieved his 
 triumph. There may be those who have read 
 the exploits of the blind Metcalfe, who made 
 roads and bridges in England at a time when 
 nobody else had learnt to make them. There 
 may be those wdio have dwelt with interest on 
 the achievements of Smeaton, Rennie, and 
 Telford. In that book we see of what materials 
 Englishmen are made ; and I am happy to say 
 that of these materials Lancashire, and surely 
 Cheshire too, possess at least their share. 
 (Cheers.) 
 
 These men, whose names have now become
 
 mechanics' institutes. 39 
 
 famous among us, had no mechanics' insti- 
 tutes, no libraries, no classes, no examinations 
 to cheer them on theii* way. In the deepest 
 poverty, amidst the greatest difficulties and 
 discouragements, their energies were found 
 sufficient for their work, and they have written 
 their names on a conspicuous and a glorious 
 page in the history of their country. May you, 
 my younger friends, be enabled in like man- 
 ner, bearing up, where it touches you, against 
 the pressure of the present times, to put 
 your trust, as they put theirs, in an Almighty 
 Providence! May you be enabled to imitate 
 their noble example, to develope by patience 
 and by resolute labour the gifts that lie within 
 you ! and rely upon it, that earnest strength of 
 will and humble corn-age will never lose their 
 reward. You have human friends around you, 
 and you have inward aids afforded to you, for 
 the Almighty has given to every man who 
 desires to improve himself and serve his 
 country the means to effect that aim and 
 render that service. May His favour be with 
 you and prosper you ! May your numbers 
 multiply from year to year, and may the
 
 40 SPEECH BEFORE ASSOCIATED INSTITUTES. 
 
 success you individually have thus far achieved 
 be to you, not merely testimonials for the 
 past, but harbingers for the future! May 
 you live the life which on your deathbed you 
 will desire to have lived ; and may its course 
 be cheered, for every one of you, by every en- 
 couragement and reward which your industry 
 and ability may justly have deserved ! (Cheers.) 
 
 This brought the proceedings of the evening 
 to a close.
 
 SPEECH.
 
 SPEECH 
 
 IN ANSWER TO 
 
 AN ADDRESS PRESENTED BY THE CHAMBER 
 OF COMMERCE, ON THE 24th APRIL, 1862. 
 
 The Chancellor of the Exchequer, on step- 
 ping forward to address the meeting, was greeted 
 with vehement cheers. He said : — 
 
 Mr. Mayor, Mr. Ashworth, and Gentle- 
 men, — You have in this address appropriately 
 reminded me of the gratifying occasion when I 
 received a similar testimony of your confidence 
 and goodwill now nearly nine years ago. And 
 that circumstance naturally suggests some com- 
 parison between the state of things in which we 
 then stood and that in which we now find our- 
 selves. Great changes have occurred during 
 these nine years. The political temper of the 
 country is not what it was. I am bound to say, 
 not without some regret, that I think a moment 
 of comparative lethargy has come over the
 
 44 SPEECH IN ANSWER 
 
 sjiirit of the Parliament and of the people. 
 (Hear, hear.) Tliere are particular questions, 
 which it would be easy to point out, in the 
 treatment of which some of that comparative 
 lethargy may be traced. One, perhaps, I may 
 name for a moment, in the expression of my 
 own individual opinion. It is the question 
 of the elective franchise. (Hear.) In the 
 treatment of that question, the indications 
 of such a lethargy can hardly be mistaken. 
 But, Gentlemen, let me upon this subject make 
 two remarks. In the first place, I believe 
 that in this country we have had, upon the 
 whole, during the last thirty years, a period 
 of legislative activity as well as of social pro- 
 gress — but I speak now especially of legisla- 
 tive activity — almost entirely directed to good 
 and noble objects, with great skill, great energy, 
 and great success, such as, perhaps, had never 
 before marked our history. I believe that if you 
 compared the whole legislation of the country 
 from the Kevolution of 1688 down to the year 
 1830, with om- legislation between 1830 and the 
 close of the twenty-three years which elapsed 
 before the Kussian war, you would find that
 
 TO ADDRESS. 45 
 
 those twenty-three years comprised an amount 
 of honest labour in the public service on the 
 part of the Houses of Parliament, as great, 
 when measured by its results, as had been 
 discharged within the previous century and 
 a-half ; and, perhaps, although we may regret, 
 we cannot wonder if, after such a period of 
 activity, nations and Parliaments as well as 
 men, feel some temptation to repose. But 
 the other observation that I would make 
 to you is this : we are still in possession — 
 and are still marked in no small degree 
 among the nations of the earth by the posses- 
 sion — of our invaluable institutions ; and so 
 soon as the spirit of the people of England 
 shall assume a more active tone, then, in this 
 truly self-governing country — the most self- 
 governing country, as I believe, in the world — 
 the temper of the Parliament will answer faith- 
 fully to the temper of the nation ; and that 
 which the settled convictions and cultivated 
 intelligence of the people may demand will 
 be fully represented in administrative and in 
 legislative action. (Hear, hear.) 
 
 Now there is one particular contrast between
 
 46 SPEECH IN ANSWER 
 
 the two periods of 1853 and 1802 respectively, 
 to which my friend Mr. Ashworth has referred, 
 and which is especially connected with the 
 department that I liave the honour to ad- 
 minister. I cannot but avow to you that the 
 condition of our finance is not what it was 
 when I met you last. (Hear, hear). In the 
 year 1853 we had with little less than an 
 expenditure of 55 J- millions, a revenue of little 
 less than 59 millions ; and tliis too although 
 1853 was a year in w^hich from three to four 
 millions of taxes, if I recollect rightly, were 
 reduced. We had then a surplus of 3^ millions 
 of income over our expenditure. That was an 
 honest, a sound, and a healthful state for the 
 finances of this country. (Hear.) We stand 
 now in a position materially different. It is all, 
 or more than all, that we can do to bring about 
 anything resembling a balance of revenue and 
 expenditure. The utmost we can say to you is 
 that we have not been drawn into that vortex 
 into which almost every other country has been 
 dragged — we have not been begging for loans 
 in the money-market to carry on the Govern- 
 ment in time of peace. (Cheers.) Now, there
 
 TO ADDRESS. 47 
 
 are those who, naturally enough, tell you that 
 this state of our finance, which I hold forth to 
 you as unhealthy, is owing to the misconduct of 
 the Grovernment, and almost entirely, perhaps, 
 to the delinquencies of a particular individual. 
 (A laugh.) There are those who would say, 
 " If you had imposed some more taxes, or 
 if you had reduced fewer, we should have been 
 able to show a better state of the account, 
 a more satisfactory posture of affairs." Gentle- 
 men, with all the conviction of my mind, and 
 in the broadest sense, I deny that statement. 
 (Hear, hear.) The taxes we have reduced have 
 been taxes in which the receipts of the Ex- 
 chequer bore no just proportion to the burden im- 
 posed upon the people. Even if, at the moment, 
 they are not fully replaced, it is om' business not 
 to confine our view to the moment. After the 
 lapse of one, two, or three years, we know that 
 the result of such measures wisely chosen has 
 ever been to make the Exchequer richer ; and 
 also that, in the mean time, their effect is, under 
 a great weight of taxation, to induce, dispose, and 
 enable the people to bear its pressure. What, 
 Gentlemen, has been the state of things in this
 
 48 SPEECH IN ANSWER 
 
 respect ? During the last three years our 
 revenue has been on the average 70|^ millions. 
 I may say with substantial truth that this is the 
 largest revenue which has ever been raised in 
 this country, not only in time of peace, but 
 even in time of war. In the three years of the 
 Kussian war, when the income-tax was at 16d. 
 in the pound, the revenue raised was 70J- 
 millions. In the last three years of the great 
 Kevolutionary war, when the income-tax was at 
 2s. in the pound, the revenue raised was 70f 
 millions. But as this last-named amount of 
 revenue was raised in a currency materially 
 depreciated, the 70;| millions, which we have 
 been raising for the last three years, considerably 
 exceed in real power the revenue of the last 
 three years of the Kevolutionary war. Now, 
 that is the state up to which our revenue has 
 been brought. And, Gentlemen, 1 often in my 
 own mind draw a contrast between the two 
 periods at which I have myself been called 
 upon to administer the finances of this country. 
 The office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 is never a popular office. A very large part of 
 his time is, even under the happiest circum-
 
 TO ADDRESS. 49 
 
 stances, spent in saying to those who demand 
 public expenditure, " No, no, no." (Laughter.) 
 Well, when I first held that office, I found tlie 
 function not altogether agreeable, but still prac- 
 ticable. During the second time that I held it 
 I have found at once that all the powers of 
 resistance and of negation, so to speak, were 
 taxed infinitely more, and that the results were 
 infinitely less. (A laugh.) The time of great 
 expenditure, gentlemen, is the time when the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer is not in a 
 paradise (laughter) — I will not describe his con- 
 dition by any stronger or more positive term. 
 But the reason why I mention these matters 
 to you, and point out to you that the present 
 state of affairs is one not compatible in 
 my opinion with a thoroughly healthy finance 
 ("hear, hear"), is because, as I have said, this 
 countiy is in the main a self-governing country. 
 The expenditm'e, which has been brought about, 
 has not been forced by the Government upon 
 the Parliament, nor by the Parhament upon the 
 country. I am in your hearing. Gentlemen, 
 and under your correction, when I say that 
 partly, no doubt, this expenditure has been a
 
 50 SPEECH IN ANSWER 
 
 right and justifiable increase connected with the 
 
 increasing wants of the country, connected with 
 
 the growth of education, connected with real civil 
 
 or military necessities ; but, taking it as a whole, 
 
 it has been demanded and called for by the 
 
 public voice. (Hear, hear.) Ifwe are, therefore, 
 
 to have prospectively an alteration, it must be an 
 
 alteration brought about by an alteration in the 
 
 turn of the public mind. (Hear, hear.) I cannot 
 
 say to you that I don't believe — for I do believe 
 
 — not indeed that we can go back to the rate of 
 
 expenditure we had in 1853, but that, with 
 
 judgment and firmness, material reductions may 
 
 progi'essively be made. (Hear, hear.) We are 
 
 not even now as far from the mark as we have 
 
 been. It is not the fact that, as far as the state 
 
 of our establishments and of our estimates is 
 
 concerned, the expenditm-e is at this moment 
 
 increasing. Of course, I cannot answer for 
 
 what extraordinary circumstances may require 
 
 during the present year, but the figures of 
 
 the year on which we have now entered 
 
 show that, in the absence of those extraordinary 
 
 circumstances, we shall have a real reduction 
 
 of expenditure, compared with last year, of,
 
 TO ADDRESS. 51 
 
 as far as we can judge, more than a million of 
 money. But at the same time, it must mainly 
 rest with the nation itself to determine what 
 is to be its own future course in this respect. 
 If it be the pleasure of the nation to press upon 
 its representatives the advocacy of all kinds of 
 measures, warlike or peaceful, or both peaceful 
 and warlike — I can draw no distinction — if it 
 be the pleasure of the nation to urge those 
 measures upon the Parliament, the Parliament 
 will urge them upon the Government ; and it 
 is not in the power of the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, let him do what he will, effectually 
 to resist a tide which flows in upon him from 
 every quarter, and which, while he is spending 
 his powers of resistance at a given point, breaks 
 in upon liim from many others. (A laugh.) If, 
 on the other hand, it be the desire of the people, 
 founded upon a perception of the true state of 
 affairs, and founded also upon the knowledge 
 that we have not now that thoroughly sound 
 and good position in finance which we had nine 
 years ago, that we should contract in some 
 degree the scale of our expenditure, and re- 
 estabKsh a perfectly sound relation between 
 
 E 2
 
 52 SPEECH IN ANSWER 
 
 the outgoings of the country and the resources 
 of tlie Exchequer, then I say. Gentlemen, that 
 you know as well as I do that it will take no 
 long time to bring that result about. (Cheers). 
 So much, then, for the subject of our expendi- 
 ture, on which I could not but offer a few words, 
 in which I hope that I have avoided, alike as to 
 the past and as to the future, all exaggeration, 
 because, after having done what in me lies 
 within the limits of my department to repress 
 the tendency of that expenditure to extravagance 
 where I can, my next duty, and perhaps my 
 weightiest duty of all, is never to practise or 
 suffer concealment before the country, but to 
 endeavour to bring home to the mind of the 
 people, whether in my place in Parliament, or 
 where any other legitimate opportunity may be 
 afforded me, the true and real state of things. 
 (Hear^ hear.) 
 
 Mr. Mayor, and Gentlemen, I now come to 
 points which more particularly touch the state 
 of your own district and community. We stand 
 here at a time when, but for one unfortu- 
 nate event, it is probable that you and your 
 workpeople would alike be enjoying a great
 
 TO ADDRESS. 53 
 
 prosperity. That one unfortunate event you 
 have described, and I think truly described, in 
 your Address, as "the deplorable struggle in 
 which the two sections of the great American 
 Eepublic are now engaged.'* It is, Gentlemen, 
 a deplorable struggle. We are not of those, if 
 such there were, who envied the greatness of 
 the American Republic. (Hear, hear.) We 
 could have been well content to see her enlarge 
 her borders from year to year, gradually in- 
 creasing in her wealth and strength. We should 
 have retained the consciousness that on our 
 part nothing would be done to prevent the 
 continuance of the most friendly and peaceful 
 relations, and the admiration with which we 
 regarded the energy of that nation would have 
 been totally untinged either by envy or by fear. 
 (Hear, hear.) But the struggle has come about 
 through no fault of ours. Still I think we cannot 
 but feel that the position and attitude of this 
 country with respect to the United States have 
 not on the other side of the Atlantic been quite 
 fairly or impartially judged. (Hear, hear.) 
 Now, I am not going to make this a matter of 
 complaint. Let us sympathize with our Ame-
 
 54 SPEECH IN ANSWER 
 
 rican brethren in their difficulties. Let us allow 
 that under the excitement of those difficulties, 
 and of a desperate and agonizing conflict, the 
 minds of men are not in that state of tran- 
 quillity which renders them the best judges of 
 the conduct of their neighbours. In such cir- 
 cumstances the proportions of objects alter 
 before the eye, and expectations are formed and 
 thought to be just, which in a dispassionate 
 moment will be seen and felt to have been 
 unfounded. Why, Gentlemen, there was a 
 demand made upon us by the public voice in 
 America at the outset of this deplorable struggle 
 for what was called sympathy. What was the 
 real meaning of that demand? Now I hope 
 that in what I say I shall not use a word incon- 
 sistent with that fraternal feeling which I desire 
 to cherish towards all men, and especially to- 
 wards our kindred beyond the Atlantic. But, 
 practically, the meaning of that desire and call 
 for sympathy, as far as I understand it, was this, 
 — that we should take such a com*se by our 
 language and by our public acts, as would place 
 the 6,000,000 or the 10,000,000 of men of the 
 South — I care not which manner of estimating
 
 TO ADDRESS. 55 
 
 their numbers you adopt — in permanent hostility 
 with us. (Hear.) Now, we may have our own 
 opinions — and I imagine we all have them — 
 about the institutions of the South, as, unfortu- 
 nately, we may also have occasion to hold 
 our own private opinions about the counte- 
 nance that has been given to those institutions 
 in the North. (Cheers.) But that is no reason 
 why, on the one side or the other, we should 
 pursue a course of conduct that is to lay the 
 foundation of a profound alienation of feeling, 
 and of permanent hostility, between ourselves 
 and those who may hereafter be a great nation 
 claiming to enter into peaceful relations with 
 us. (Cheers.) Whj, no doubt, if we could see 
 that this was a contest of slavery or freedom, 
 there is not a man in this room — there is hardly, 
 perhaps, a man in all England — who would for 
 a moment hesitate as to the side he should take. 
 But we have no faith in the propagation of free 
 institutions, either social or political, at the 
 point of the sword among those who are not pre- 
 pared to receive them (" hear, hear ") ; it is not 
 by such means that the ends of freedom are to 
 be gained. Freedom, to be real, must be freely
 
 56 SPEECH IN ANSWER 
 
 iifcepted — freely embraced. You cannot invade 
 a nation in order to convert its institutions 
 from bad ones into good ones (cheers) ; and 
 our friends in the North have, as we think, made 
 a great mistake in supposing that they can bend 
 all the horrors of tliis war to philanthropic ends. 
 Indeed, Gentlemen, there are those among us 
 who think — and I confess that I, for one, have 
 shared the apprehension — that if in the course 
 of the vicissitudes of the war the Southern 
 States of America should send an embassy to 
 Washington, and should say, "Very well, we 
 are ready to lay down our arms on one con- 
 dition ; we are ready to renew the compact and 
 ready to make it perpetual ; we are ready to 
 attach to it every security and guarantee that 
 you can imagine for holding us fast, but upon 
 this one condition, — that you shall assure us 
 that there shall be no interference with our 
 domestic institutions ;" — ah ! Gentlemen, we 
 have heard of the fear that that application — if 
 it were made — would receive a very favom*able 
 reply. (Cheers.) I think it was well stated by 
 my noble colleague, Lord Kussell, that this was 
 a struggle on the one side for supremacy, and
 
 TO ADDRESS. 57 
 
 on the other for independence. (Cheers.) Now, 
 I cannot but sympathise with those who are 
 described as making the struggle for supremacy. 
 It is painful to surrender a great, an imposing, and 
 a magnificent national unity. We, the English 
 people, in other times have felt that pain. (Hear, 
 bear.) We know what it was. Old George III. 
 upon the throne, whether you approve liis policy 
 in all things or not, had all the feelings of an 
 Englishman ; he was a true Englishman in heart 
 and sentiment. He felt his heart rent in twain 
 by the laceration of the empu-e when the 
 American Colonies were parted from us. But 
 the experience we have had in our own national 
 history supplies us in some degi-ee with means 
 of judging of the prospects of this American 
 struggle better than those which are possessed 
 by the Americans themselves. We have found 
 that after the pain of that severance was 
 over we came at length to recognise it as a 
 good ; and we are thankful that the American 
 Colonies were parted from us, because we 
 now perceive that we could not have governed 
 or held them for their good or for our own 
 advantage as they have been enabled to govern
 
 TjS speech in answer 
 
 themselves. (Hear, hear.) Some persons may 
 say that the Northern States are a great deal 
 stronger than the Southern, and therefore they 
 must win. Now, Engkmd was in former times 
 a great deal stronger than Scotland, but Eng- 
 lishmen as well as Scotclmien now know that 
 when it was the object of England to establish 
 by force her supremacy over Scotland the Scotch 
 proved themselves to be what are called " very 
 ugly customers " (laughter) ; and at length it 
 was not the exercise of force, but a sense of policy 
 and prudence on both sides, dictated in the 
 main perhaps by physical cii'cumstances, which 
 led to the political union of the two kingdoms. 
 But the position taken by the Northern States is 
 this : " We won't let you go ;" while the position 
 taken by the Southern States is, " We are de- 
 termined to go." (" Hear, hear," and a laugh.) 
 Well, Gentlemen, you are men of business, and 
 I ask you if one of you has got a partner, and 
 that partner wants to separate from you, whether 
 in the long run it is not very difficult to hold 
 him. (Laughter and cheers.) But, supposing 
 that you were able to hold that partner, sup- 
 posing you could contrive some indenture of
 
 TO ADDRESS. 59 
 
 partnership by which he should abdicate his 
 free-will and tie himself to you like a captive at 
 the chariot wheel of a victor, he still retaining 
 an alienated heart, no common interest in the 
 business, having a desire to trip you up and 
 embarrass you ; why, I say, you would not upon 
 such terms hold that partner if you could. 
 (Cheers.) The Northern States of America have 
 undertaken a military enterprise of enormous 
 difficulty. It is but fair, I think, that we should 
 record our sense, I mean our admiration, of the 
 vast and gigantic energies which they have un- 
 folded in the prosecution of this enterprise. 
 They have had of late various successes in the 
 field. These may or may not continue. Let 
 us suppose they do. f hen, here again I fall 
 back on our English experience. Kevert to 
 the annals of the War of Independence between 
 the American Colonies and this country, and see 
 where was the balance, the large balance, of 
 successes in the field. It was not for want of 
 such successes that we did not conquer those 
 colonies. It was because we found that when 
 we had been successful in the field we were no 
 nearer our fixed object than before. (Cheers.)
 
 00 SrEECH IN ANSWER 
 
 No doubt it was foreign intervention Avliicli 
 brought the American war to an end. But 
 that intervention, as I believe, only accelerated 
 the crisis of the struggle. Had France not 
 intervened, we should probably have continued 
 to conquer on the field, and to find that Avliile 
 conquering we had failed. For, when men are 
 endeavouring to conquer a country, the ques- 
 tion is not whether you can break up its em- 
 battled armies and drive them off the plain 
 where you have contended with them in fight. 
 The question is this, and this alone — whether 
 the heart of that country is set upon separa- 
 tion ? (Cheers.) If it is not set upon separation, 
 it may be conquered ; but, if the heart of the 
 Southern States is set upon separation, and if 
 the same spirit and force of resistance, which 
 animated Washington and the men of Virginia 
 in his day, still incites and sustains those who 
 inhabit the Southern States, then it seems 
 almost impossible that the military object 
 should be effected: and, even if it were, the 
 civil and political difficulties remaining would 
 render that military success itself a curse 
 and a misery to those who had achieved it.
 
 TO ADDRESS. 61 
 
 (Cheers.) Well, Gentlemen, we in this country 
 are in the habit of plain speaking; and, con- 
 sidering the nearness and intimacy of our rela- 
 tions with all those who inhabit the North 
 American continent, it is well, I think, that we 
 should test and probe our own minds in regard 
 to the sentiments with which we view what 
 you have well described as this "deplorable 
 struggle." Further, when we have so probed 
 and tested them, it seems hardly permissible 
 for us to remain silent upon a matter which so 
 nearly touches the welfare not only of America 
 but of the whole civilised world. It is vain and 
 mischievous to bring railing accusations against 
 either the policy of the North or the institutions 
 of the South. I hold it a duty to avoid, with 
 all possible care, every irritating expression; 
 but with these reservations I cannot do other- 
 wise than tell out plainly what I think of 
 this hopeless and devastating war. May the 
 Almighty Disposer of all hearts bring the 
 struggle quickly to an end! If for our own 
 sakes in part, yet more and much more for the 
 sake of the Americans themselves — may the 
 frightful conflict quickly reach its termination!
 
 62 SPEECH IN ANSWER 
 
 (Cheers.) May that issue arrive, not which we 
 wish or may prefer, but which is for the peace, 
 the happiness, and the welfare of the in- 
 habitants of that country, be they white or be 
 tliey bhick ! (Hear, hear.) 
 
 However, Gentlemen, we also see the painful 
 effects of this struggle upon ourselves — it is im- 
 possible to deny them — and not upon ourselves 
 alone, but upon the other countries of Europe 
 likewise. France is suffering, Belgium is suffer- 
 ing, every country that has a cotton manufacture 
 is suffering grievously, — more grievously in pro- 
 portion to the numbers employed than in this 
 kingdom, because they do not profit in the 
 same way with ourselves by the Indian supply, 
 and because in those countries there is not 
 quite the same sense of independence, there 
 is a greater disposition to lean on the Govern- 
 ment for help, than happily prevails among 
 ourselves. But when we are told by any 
 organ of American opinion that Europe or 
 that England has behaved unhandsomely by 
 America, I feel the utmost confidence that 
 the final verdict of history will be this: — 
 That there never was an occasion in which not
 
 TO ADDRESS. ' 63 
 
 England only but tlie civilized nations of the 
 world in general bore, and were content to 
 bear, so much real misery resulting from a 
 civil and municipal quarrel in another State 
 without interference in that quarrel, as has 
 been patiently and silently endured on the 
 present occasion. (Cheers.) 
 
 If we look at the pain that is brought upon 
 our people, it is a grievous thought. In another 
 point of view, it is a remarkable testimony to 
 the real progress of civilising and peaceful ideas 
 among the nations of the world. It is in homage 
 to what is called an abstract principle that aU 
 this misery has been borne ; — this remarkable 
 conduct has sprung from a sense of the danger 
 and mischief of interference, unless upon 
 grounds alike legitimate and urgent, in the 
 intestine quarrels of other countries. And the 
 deference that has been paid to that prin- 
 ciple of international policy by England and 
 by all the nations of Europe is, I say, among 
 the remarkable features that will hereafter 
 determine the character of history as appli- 
 cable to this nineteenth century. (Cheers.) 
 In your own district, Gentlemen, it is impos-
 
 64 * SPEECH IN ANSWER 
 
 sible to move from place to place without 
 being struck, on the one hand, by the 
 menacing character of the time, no man 
 knowing whether to-morrow will not be darker 
 than to-day, or whether another month will 
 not show a great advance in the tale of suf- 
 fering upon the month that is now running. 
 On the other hand, the moral and the social 
 signs which the darkness of this period has 
 brought into view, though the eye might not 
 have discovered them amid the glare of pros- 
 perity, are such as at once touch the heart and 
 cheer the mind of men with the hopes that they 
 open for the future. We are told that the 
 people cannot be trusted — that they are fit for 
 nothing except to earn daily bread — that you 
 must not call them to the exercise of higher 
 functions, or look to them for enlightened 
 views. I ask what a practical evidence of 
 enlightened views are the working men of 
 Lancashire and Cheshire now affording (cheers) 
 — in their patient endurance, in their mutual 
 help, in their respect for order, in theii* sense 
 of independence, in their desire to be a burden 
 to no one, in the resignation with which they
 
 TO ADDRESS. 65 
 
 submit to positive and sharp privation ! And, 
 having spoken of the workpeople, let me add 
 thus much, that, if I am able to judge, the masters 
 who employ them are worthy of those work- 
 people, and I can give them no higher praise. It 
 is a satisfactory, ay, it is an ennobling spectacle, 
 to see and know the way in which in tliis city, 
 and I believe throughout the district, according 
 to their means, employment is given ; the 
 steam-engine is kept going ; the factory, if not 
 on all days, on some days is kept at work, not 
 with a hope of profit to the master, but in the 
 face of known and positive loss, in order that 
 even under the pressure of difficulty they may 
 not desert and abandon the noble workmen 
 they employ. Gentlemen, this is a sight good 
 for us all. It shows us that in this country 
 class is bound to class by something better 
 than merely pecuniary and economical rela- 
 tions. It shows that in the community you 
 have something of a common heart. And the 
 day may come when you will look back upon 
 this time of crisis as a period which was blessed 
 to you in this, that it united you more closely 
 
 F
 
 6C) SPEECH IN ANSWER 
 
 than ever before to the workpeople among 
 whom you live. (Hear, hear.) 
 
 Gentlemen, I am sensible that I have detained 
 you for a long time (" No, no," aud " Go on ") ; 
 and I am also conscious that it is hardly neces- 
 sary for me to dwell at any length upon those 
 matters to which my friend Mr. Ashworth has 
 referred — I mean, those important economic 
 truths, once so sharply contested, which have 
 made gradual and peaceful way, which have 
 obtained in England, thank God ! we may say, 
 an undisputed sway, and which we trust are 
 now spreading — silently, calmly, but effectually 
 spreading — from England to the other nations 
 of the world. There is but one of all the 
 changes that have taken place, to which I think 
 it needful to advert. Only, I must also in pass- 
 ing offer a single criticism on a passage in the 
 speech of Mr. Ashworth. It is not my business 
 to canvass minutely any language of eidogy 
 which you, in the warmth of your feeling, may 
 be disposed to employ towards me ; but I cannot 
 with justice allow myself to be associated, even 
 in a complimentary speech on a complimentary
 
 TO ADDRESS. 67 
 
 occasion, in terms approaching to equality with 
 my late chief and lamented friend Sir Kobert 
 Peel. I was nothing but the subordinate officer 
 of the Government of Su* K. Peel, whose duty 
 it was, in 1841, for the first time in my life, 
 to turn my mind to questions connected with 
 the economical system, and the fiscal and com- 
 mercial legislation of this country. The result 
 of that application was at once to undermine 
 and break up any traditional or political regard 
 which I might previously have had for a pro- 
 tective system. (Hear, hear.) And from the 
 year 1842, not always in a conspicuous posi- 
 tion, but, I trust, with consistency, and cer- 
 tainly with a sincere purpose of heart, I have 
 laboured to prosecute that great work of gradual 
 emancipation in which Sir R. Peel has achieved 
 so much more conpicuous a place. (Cheers.) 
 And it has been my happiness, in the prosecu- 
 tion of that work towards what may well nigh 
 be called its completion, both to be supported 
 by the confidence and approval of those who 
 have applied their minds to the subject, and I 
 trust, likewise, to be the humble instrument 
 
 f2
 
 68 SPEECH IN ANSWER 
 
 of conferring some benefit on my country. 
 (Cheers.) 
 
 There is, then, I\Ir. ]\rayor, only one other sub- 
 ject to which I will refer. It is one with regard 
 to which, though I took a part, the merit of what 
 has been done does not belong to me. I mean 
 the Commercial Treaty with France. It has been 
 my delight on every occasion, in Parliament 
 and out of Parliament, to record my sense of 
 the immense obligations which this country is 
 under to Mr. Cobden (loud and continued 
 cheers), for his enlightened, his exhausting, 
 but his unwearied labour, in the achievement 
 of that great act. It is a great act, Gentlemen. 
 (Cheers.) It has been the subject of cavil ; it 
 was met with objection and opposition. You 
 will hardly believe what I now tell you, and I 
 will not name the name ; but one Member of 
 Parliament there was, sufficiently bold to say, 
 during the discussions on the French Treaty, 
 that he regarded it as fraught with mischief so 
 virulent that he would rather we were at once 
 plunged into war with France, than that that 
 treaty should take effect. (Cries of " Shame ! ")
 
 TO ADDRESS. 69 
 
 Well, Gentlemen, that was an error of opi- 
 nion. The treaty has been made. The treaty 
 has given a great and a timely stimulus to busi- 
 ness. It has done less for you than it has 
 done in some other districts ; but even here, 
 under the difficult cu'cumstances of the time, 
 its influence may have been felt. It has com- 
 mercially answered thus far all our expecta- 
 tions ; and we entertain sentiments of admira- 
 tion and gi-atitude for the enlightened views 
 which prompted the Emperor and Government 
 of France boldly to conclude that instrument, 
 as well as for the distinguished and conspicuous 
 part played by our friend and fellow-country- 
 man, Mr. Cobden. But, Gentlemen, great as 
 has been the development of our trade with 
 France consequent upon that treaty, that has 
 not been all. As is so justly stated in this Ad- 
 dress, an evidence has been afforded, in this 
 relaxation of the protective system of France, 
 that our example has begun to influence Con- 
 tinental nations. Abeady we " see beginnings 
 elsewhere. In Italy (cheers) great revolutions 
 in the tariff have accompanied the progress of 
 rational liberty, and the foundation of institu-
 
 70 SPEECH IN ANSWER 
 
 tions in tliat country wliich it would, perhaps, not 
 bo too niucli to say are likely in no long space 
 of time to be, more than tliose of any other 
 great nation in the world, akin to British insti- 
 tutions. (Cheers.) In Belgium, in Germany, 
 the indications of a like movement are exhibit- 
 ing themselves. The example of England in the 
 path of free trade, as long as she stood alone, 
 was not readily effective with the rest of the 
 world. A kind of cant plirase was in vogue in 
 foreign nations, such as that " England has made 
 herself great by Protection, and she now wants 
 to kick down the ladder by which she alone has 
 mounted." (A laugh.) But the example of 
 France is a far more telling argument. France 
 was known to be a country thoroughly protec- 
 tive in spirit, and my belief is that the silent 
 force of her example, rather than any more 
 direct influence, will produce a most beneficial 
 effect in gradually relaxing international restric- 
 tions, and thus promoting the trade and com- 
 merce of the world. But it is not even this 
 view, extensive as it is, which exhibits the whole 
 scope of the benefits that have been aimed at, 
 and are likely to be achieved, tlu'ough the
 
 TO ADDRESS. 71 
 
 French Treaty. It is the silent gi-owth of 
 civilizing and peaceful influences, to which I 
 think we have a right to look as the crown and 
 the flower of all the advantages that such a 
 treaty is calculated to convey. (Cheers.) It 
 is not, Gentlemen, the impression of the mo- 
 ment, not what may be said or thought at the 
 moment, upon the particulars of the treaty, or 
 upon the political aspects wliich it may in the 
 ideas of some persons present. In my opinion 
 those political aspects are most important, and 
 were from the first a material portion of the 
 motives for prosecuting the enterprise to its end, 
 because I believe there is nothing at all to be 
 compared with the political harmony of Eng- 
 land and France for giving security to peace 
 and order in the world. (Hear, hear.) But it 
 is not even this in which, in my opinion, the 
 last and greatest advantage of the treaty con- 
 sists. It is in the silent, the unseen, but the 
 continued and innumerable kindly influences, 
 which it brings into constant operation between 
 Englishmen and Frenchmen. I mentioned in 
 the House of Commons a circumstance even 
 more interesting, in my view, than the increase
 
 72 SPEECH IN ANSWER 
 
 of commerce ; it was the increase of letters 
 between the two countries. (Hear, hear.) I 
 am not sure that I recollect the figures, I 
 tliink the increase had been four millions, 
 but I remember this more distinctly — that 
 whereas before the treaty the letters between 
 this country and France increased at the rate of 
 about 4 per cent, per annum, the immediate con- 
 sequence of the treaty was that they increased 
 by 20 per cent. (Hear, hear.) Well, now, 
 what do these letters mean ? They mean the 
 conduct in each case of transactions which of 
 themselves have a calm, a quiet, an unperceived, 
 but an inevitable, tendency to generate kindly 
 and fi'aternal feelings. They are each of them, 
 as it were, a slight and tender fibre, the fibres 
 combined into threads ; and the threads into 
 strong tissues not easily to be torn. Will you 
 allow me, in bringing these remarks to a 
 conclusion, to illustrate my meaning for a mo- 
 ment by referring to a poem written by a divine 
 now living — the Dean of Westminster — who 
 also holds no mean place among the poets of 
 our time? He visited in Italy the scene of 
 one of the great battles between the Carthagi-
 
 TO ADDRESS. 73 
 
 nians and the Romans. He saw that all 
 was peaceful. But he recollected that, at the 
 time when that battle had been fought, houses 
 were destroyed, woods were burnt, crops were 
 devastated, the ground lay strewn with corpses, 
 and the whole face of natm-e was made hideous 
 before Heaven by the work and hand of man. 
 Meditating within himself how Nature had set 
 herself quietly and calmly to work on that torn 
 and mangled battle-field to remove the traces 
 of that bloody day, and finding at the time 
 when he saw it that not one of those vestiges 
 remained, he wrote as follows : — 
 
 " With what success has Nature each sad trace 
 Of man's red footsteps laboured to efface ! 
 . . . . This spot appears 
 Guiltless of strife when now two thousand years 
 Of daily reparation have gone by 
 Since it resumed its own tranquillity." 
 
 (Cheers.) It is even so in the moral as in the 
 physical world. Some bloody quarrel, some 
 diplomatic controversy portending strife, some 
 state of the public mind fraught with anger 
 and animosity, or fraught, it may be, with 
 terror and suspicion, produces estrangement
 
 74 SPEECH IN ANSWER 
 
 between nations in a moment, and threatens 
 even the last extremities. Well, Gentlemen, that 
 alienation, that anger, that suspicion which 
 prevails on both sides constitutes a dangerous 
 state of preparation for actual warfare. You 
 cannot reason mth it. ^Vhen men are in that 
 state of excitement it is vain to think that it 
 can be suddenly allayed. All you can hope to 
 do is that you may be able to circumvent it. 
 If you can place those nations, upon a distinct 
 and separate ground, in friendly relations with 
 one another — if you can cause them to meet 
 each other as brethren in the ordinary business 
 of life — if you can extend and multiply the 
 occasions of their so meeting — if you can put 
 them in a position in which they will be con- 
 stantly learning to appreciate and confide in each 
 other's vii'tues, and to be thinking mildly of each 
 other's faults or failings — if you can teach them 
 how much good, as well as how much evil, it is 
 in the power of man to do to his brother man in 
 the world in which we live — then. Gentlemen, 
 silently, gradually, imperceptibly, but effect- 
 ively, even like the kindly action of Nature 
 upon the arena of deadly fight, you too may
 
 TO ADDRESS. 75 
 
 efface the traces of anger and of wrath — you 
 may gradually, from day to day, from month to 
 month, and from year to year, be causing them 
 to pass into oblivion, and you may bring the 
 minds of these two nations at last to a state in 
 which they shall represent as fair a face of 
 harmony and concord as did that ancient battle- 
 field, teeming with its beautiful and luxuriant 
 vegetation, after the lapse of two thousand years. 
 (Cheers.) This, Gentlemen, I do not hesitate 
 to say is, in my sense and view, the highest 
 aim and purport of that great instrument the 
 Commercial Treaty with France. (Hear, hear.) 
 I am not so sanguine as to believe that it is in 
 itseK an infallible specific — such specifics you 
 cannot have. It is not given to us to alter the 
 fundamental conditions of human society. We 
 must be content to meet them when they con- 
 front us, and to deal with them as we may 
 But let us, at any rate, do what we can ; and 
 if we have to fear that in the vicissitudes of 
 human affairs differences will continually arise 
 between nation and nation, at least let us take 
 pains to bring, if we can, counteracting forces 
 into play, to give to those forces the utmost
 
 70 SPEECH IN ANSWER TO ADDRESS. 
 
 development in our power, and to prove, if it 
 please God we may, before the face of the 
 civilised world, that the cause of commerce, in 
 which you are engaged, is also in no small 
 degree the cause of peace, and of the welfare 
 and hapj^iness of mankind. (Loud and pro- 
 longed cheers.) 
 
 THE END. 
 
 LONDON; PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFOQD STBEET, 
 AND CHARING CROSS.
 
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