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LIFE AND TIMES
OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
JOHN BRIGHT, M.P

BY

WILLIAM ROBERTSON,
Author of " Old and New Rochdale."

Vol. II.

CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited
LONDON, PARIS 8f NEW YORK.

[all rights reserved.]
)%%lf-

iCT

JOHN BRIGHT AND HIS GRANDSON.
(From a -photograph by Mr. A. Whitham, Rochdale.)

CHAPTEE XXXVII.
THE COMMERCIAL TREATY WITH FRANCE.
Resignation of the Ministry — Cobden's Arrival from America — Seat in the Cabinet Offered by Lord
Palmerston to Cobden — Bright Inspires Chevalier with the Idea of a Commercial Treaty
with France — Cobden's Interview with Gladstone, Palmerston, and Russell on the Subject
— The New Member for Rochdale Yisits his Constituents — Bright at Huddersfield, Liver
pool, and London, advocating Reform — The Lords and the Paper Duty — The Commercial
Treaty with Prance completed — Russell's New Reform Bill — Bright at "Wakefield, Leeds,
and Birmingham — The Abolition of Church Rates.
LTHOUGrH the general election resulted in a gain of twenty
seats in favour of the Government, it was not sufficient to
keep them in power, for the Liberals numbered 350 and the
Conservatives only 302. On the 31st of May Parliament
was opened by Eoyal Commission. Mr. Bright, in speaking
on the address in answer to " Her Majesty's Speech," on the 9th of
June, expressed his doubt as to the genuineness of the Government when
they professed themselves in favour of neutrality. While we had the
cry of neutrality upon our lips, nothing should be done, he thought, that
might render the maintenance of that neutrality difficult or impossible.
A great stir had been made about enlistment for the navy ; and the
crown of England was exhibiting itself in the streets with advertising
vans, flags, and music, for the purpose of enlisting any stray individual
who wished to change his service and his occupation. At the very
time this was being done there were, he was told, in our depots some
3,000 or 4,000 able seamen who would any day be capable of manning
at least twelve line-of-battle ships. Well, he did not think all these
preparations could have reference to any probable hostilities with
Austria. He came, then, to what was being done with regard to other
means of defence. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had told them
that there were in this country more soldiers than we have had at any
one time since the time of the great war ; and yet he invited every one
38

194 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
who has, or who wants to have, a little notion of military affairs to
engage himself as a rifleman in the various corps which were to be
formed throughout the country. He knew that there were gentlemen
who thought that these things were useful ; but at least they would
allow that there was, perhaps, something to be said on the other side.
For himself, he rather agreed with the humorous and ingenious author
of the " Biglow Papers," who says somewhere that if there be anything
more foolish or more ludicrous than military glory, it is militia glory ;
and he fancied that rifle corps glory was something more ludicrous still.
He wanted to know if there was a necessity for all these things, for
there was only one country in Europe — namely, France — with which,
under any conceivable circumstances arising out of the present war, they
could be brought into contest. Was it not likely, and even inevitable, that
all those preparations they were making, both by land and by sea, at the
time they told the whole world that their forces are so great and so
complete, should destroy in the minds of the French Government and
the French people any belief whatsoever in the language they held as to
their professed neutrality ? He thought it very likely that the rifle
corps movement was merely a movement of party tactics ; because they
knew very well that the yeomanry and the militia had served such
purposes, and probably the rifle corps project would do something to add
strength to the Conservative element in some parts of England ; but
what he said was this, they were driven to one of two things — either
they suspected the French of designs against this country, or else they
contemplated at no distant period the possibility of our attacking
France. He wished then to ask the House whether, as rational men,
apart from those superstitious fears which sometimes haunt the minds
of almost everybody, there was any fair ground for adding from year to
year to the armaments of this country on account of apprehended danger
from France ? The present Emperor of the French, in his opinion, at
least in his conduct towards this country, had given us no cause for this
suspicion. Would the House allow him to say that he had a right to
be deemed one who could exercise an impartial opinion on this question ?
He did not approve what he called the hasty recognition of the accession

THE FRENCH EMPEROR. 19S
of the Emperor to the throne of France. It did not appear to him
a matter about which we ought to have been enthusiastic. He never
approved the intimate personal alliance which had existed between the
Ministers and the Court of this country and the Court of France. He
was not one of those who crowded the streets of London when the
Emperor, with the Empress, came here, and when the press, which now
assails him, asked the people to prostrate themselves, as it were, before
his chariot-wheels. He never joined in that excessive and fulsome
laudation of the Emperor which he had heard, he was sorry to say, from
the Ministers and members on both sides of the House. For what was
done when the Emperor of the French attained his present position of
power, he did not owe grudge to the Government or the people of
England. The Emperor went into the Eussian war, not because he
wished to go into it, but because he thought it highly useful to him,
and he was evidently anxious to associate himself closely with all the
foreign policy of this country. He went, too, into the war with China
at the request of the Government of England, and he had an oppor
tunity since then to carry out those malevolent designs which some men
thought he entertained — if he had really cherished them— at the time
when all the military resources of England were being spent some
10,000 miles away to suppress a gigantic and most perilous revolt. For
fifteen years he (Mr. Bright) had sat in that House, and he could truly
say that he had never given a vote for the purpose of displacing a
Conservative Government or of embarrassing a Whig Government, but
for the purpose of forwarding the principles which they knew that he
held and the policy which he had always frankly avowed and main
tained. He supposed the stoutest ship, and with the strongest tackle,
would sometimes find itself where it did not expect to be ; but if there
be a change of Government, he expected to sit opposite, very near the
seat of the right honourable gentleman the member for the University
of Oxford (Mr. Gladstone), if he did not change his place. He wished
to pursue the same course that he had pursued in times past — a course of
vigilance with regard to the Government. He never quarrelled with
Governments that pretended to be liberal, because they did not do all he

196 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
wanted or go so far as he wanted. He had not quarrelled with one of
them yet, except when it had deserted the principles of its ancient party,
and had asked them who had sat on the same side of the House to
support that which they knew it would be impossible for them with
any show of consistency to support. If there came a new Govern
ment in, and his seat be there, he would watch it with the vigilance
that he had exercised in times past, and with as much forbearance as he
could show consistently with what he believed to be his duty to those
great political objects to which his life had been devoted. If they
pursued an honest and straightforward and moderate course, he would
bear in mind the difficulties by which they were surrounded, and he
would be anxious to uphold them in office, as long as he found them
disposed to move on fairly and reasonably in that direction which may be
said to be indicated by the average opinions of those who sat on the
same side of the House. If, unfortunately, they should do some of those
things which they had done in times past, his sorrow would be great, his
opposition, if he was there, would be inevitable, and he was afraid some
night or other he should find them, as before, handed over to the Philis
tines who will sit opposite to them. He hoped, whoever may form this
Government, whoever may be the members of the Cabinet, that they
may look to the past, and see how they had failed so much. Since the
fall of the Government of Sir Eobert Peel there had been no good
handling of the Liberal party in that House. The Cabinet had been
exclusive ; the policy had been sometimes wholly wrong, and generally
feeble and faltering. If in the new Government it should be found that
there were men adequately representing these reconciled sections, acting
with some measure of boldness and power, grappling with the abuses
which were admitted to exist, and relying upon the moral sense and
honest feeling of the House, and the general sympathy of the people of
England for improvement in our legislation, he was bold to hope that
the new Government would have that which her Majesty evidently
wished — a longer tenure of office than any Government that had existed
for many years past. The Marquis of Hartington moved an addition
to the address in answer to the Speech from the Throne, and this proce-

A NEW MINISTRY. 197
dure amounted to a vote of want of confidence in the Ministry, which
was carried by a majority of thirteen. The Ministry resigned, and
Lord Palmerston formed a new Ministry. Lord Campbell was appointed
Lord Chancellor ; Earl Granville, Lord President of the Council ; the
Duke of Argyll, Lord Privy Seal ; Eight Hon. W. E. Gladstone, Chan
cellor of the Exchequer ; Sir G. C. Lewis, Home Secretary ; Lord John
Eussell, Foreign Secretary. The office of President of the Board of
Trade was offered by Lord Palmerston to Mr. Cobden, the Premier
stating in his letter : —
" I have been commissioned by the Queen to form an administration, and I have endeavoured
so to frame it that it should contain representatives of all sections of the Liberal party, convinced
as I am that no Government constructed upon any other basis could have sufficient prospect
of duration, or would be sufficiently satisfactory to the country.
" Mr. Milner Gibson has most handsomely consented to waive all former difficulties, and
to become a member of the New Cabinet. I am most exceedingly anxious that you should
consent to adopt the same line, and I have kept open for you the office of President of the
Board of Trade, which appeared to me to be the one best suited to your views, and to the
distinguished part which you have taken in public life. I shall be very glad to see you,
and to have personal communication with you as soon as it may be convenient to you on
your arrival in London.''
j Lord John Eussell also wrote to Mr. Cobden, and urged him to
accept the appointment.
On the 29th of June Mr. Cobden arrived in Liverpool in the steamer
India, and a deputation from Eochdale and about 300 friends assembled
on the quay and gave him a hearty greeting as he landed. After the
first congratulations were over, he proceeded with his brother, Mr. Charles
Cobden, to the Adelphi Hotel. Later on in the day he was presented
by the Eeformers and Peace Society of Liverpool with congratulatory
addresses. The Liverpool Eeform Club and members of the Chamber
of Commerce also presented addresses, and Mr. Cobden found himself
the object of universal interest and expectation. In fact, his four months'
travel in America had been one continuous ovation.
Upon landing upon his native shore the news he learned surprised
him, for he had not seen the latest papers from England for twenty-five
days, nor had he heard anything of the change of Government. A great
many of his friends tried to persuade him to accept the offer of Lord

198 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Palmerston. He listened to their arguments, but at that time expressed
no opinion. A few days after, he arrived in London, and at once visited
the Premier, who gave him a hearty welcome. After some preliminary
conversation Mr. Cobden said to Lord Palmerston : —
"For the last twelve years I have been the systematic and constant assailant of the
principle on which your foreign policy has been carried on. I believed you to be warlike,
intermeddling, and quarrelsome, and that your policy was calculated to embroil us with
foreign nations. At the same time I have expressed a general want of confidence in your
domestic politics. Now, I may have been altogether wrong in my views ; it is possible I
may have been ; but I put it candidly to you whether it ought to be in your Cabinet, whilst
holding a post of high honour and emolument derived from you, that I should make the
first avowal of a change of opinion respecting your public policy ? Should I not expose
myself to severe suspicions, and deservedly so, if I were, under these circumstances, to step
from an Atlantic steamer into your Cabinet? Understand, I beg, that I have no personal
feelings which prevent me from accepting your offer."
Lord Palmerston, in combating his objections, remarked : —
" Tou and your friends complain of a secret diplomacy, and that wars are entered into
without consulting the people. Now, it is in the Cabinet alone that questions of foreign policy
are settled. "We never consult Parliament till after they are settled. If, therefore, you wish
to have a voice in those questions, you can only do so in the Cabinet."
Mr. Cobden, however, after a long discussion, told the Premier that
his mind was irrevocably made up to refuse the offer, and expressed the
hope that their personal and political relations might be in future the
same as if he were in his Government, and both parted friendly.
Mr. Bright approved of Mr. Cobden's refusal, for he foresaw that the
policy of the Ministry would not meet with his friend's acquiescence,
and that he would have resigned not many months after ; and such
would have been the case, for in July of the following year Cobden wrote
letters to Lord Palmerston and Lord John Eussell, complaining of the
suspicious and warlike conduct of the Government towards France.
When a select committee was appointed, on the 12th of July, to
inquire into the Packet and Telegraph Contracts, Mr. Bright expressed
his views as to the unsatisfactory results of the labour of such a body
of men. One of the most unsatisfactory things in the business of that
House, he said, was that so small a result followed from the appointment
of a committee. So strong had been his feeling on this subject that he

MR. DISRAELI ADVOCATES PEACE. 199
had on every possible occasion abstained from serving on committees as
much as he could, from the belief that his labour and time would be almost
thrown away. In forming committees two classes of members should be
avoided — members holding official appointments, and members represent
ing local interests.
On the motion for going into Committee of Ways and Means, on
the 21st of July, Mr. Disraeli commented on the financial policy of the
late Conservative Government, which, he contended, had been successful,
and further remarked that no country could continue to raise seventy
millions a year, as England was then doing, by taxation in time of
peace. More economical management was essential, and the Govern
ment ought to prosecute a policy of peace and neutrality. Mr. Gladstone
promised that every effort should be made to preserve and strengthen the
friendship between England and France, and said that he was anxious to
reduce our naval and military armaments when other nations had given
similar attestation to their pacific promises. This good sign of the times
brought Mr. Bright on to his feet, and he congratulated Mr. Disraeli on
having become a convert to the views long advocated by himself and Mr.
Cobden. " I am not sorry that I had the opportunity of hearing the speech of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer before I was permitted to address the House," said Mr. Bright. " I am sure the House
will understand me when I say that I have listened to large portions of his speech, and of that
of his predecessor in office, with great satisfaction. As far as the right, hon. gentleman opposite
(Mr. Disraeli) is concerned, I think that my hon. friend the member for Rochdale (Mr. Cobden),
myself, and others who have generally acted with us may consider him a convert to the views
which we have very often expressed in this House. I recollect that Sir Robert Peel on one
occasion made a speech of very much the same tenor, and hon. gentlemen opposite charged him
with being a convert to our views. I believe that any man of intellect and genius who may lead
that party to which the right hon. gentleman belongs (and none other can lead it with any success),
will, as time rolls on, more and more adopt those principles of political economy and of foreign
policy which we have felt it our duty to propound to the House and the country. The speech of
the right hon. gentleman the member for Bucks (and, in fact, also that of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer) was a speech upon two subjects, the first part being devoted to finance, and
the second to the question of foreign policy; and perhaps the House will allow me to
make a few observations in the same order. Tlie budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer has,
I think, met with general satisfaction— at least with as much satisfaction as generally falls to the
lot of unpleasant propositions of this nature : but I may say for myself that whatever approbation
of it I have to express arises from the fact that it is a proposition confined to a single year,
and that the right hon. gentleman himself has suggested to the House that next year it will be
necessary to take a general and more comprehensive review of the whole question of our finances

200 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
and taxation. I shall, if the House will permit me, state one or two reasons why I feel particular
satisfaction at the temporary nature of the plan which the right hon. gentleman has proposed. I
believe that, notwithstanding all that Chancellors of the Exchequer may say with regard to the
advantages of the income-tax, it is as hateful as ever it has been to the people, and I believe it to
be hateful chiefly because it is unjust. I shall not now enter into the question which has been so
often debated— whether the tax ought to continue to be levied at the same rate upon fixed and
precarious incomes ; because I think that, whatever we may say, every one feels that there is a
fixed injustice and a fixed wrong which it is utterly impossible that you should ever work out of
the minds of the people of this country by whom the tax is paid. Just before coming into the
House, I had in the lobby an interview with some gentlemen who have come up to town to protest
against the continuance of this injustice. I made this answer to their representations : ' I agree
with you entirely. I think the tax odious beyond all others that I know of, and odious beyond
all others because it is unjust beyond all others; ahd I will never consent that in its present
shape it should be made a permanent tax. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes it for
one year, under an emergency which some people suppose to have arisen. Therefore, I am obliged
to consent to it this year ; but if I am here next year, and any proposition is made for its con
tinuance in its present shape, it shall receive no countenance from me.' But there is another
ground on which I should have to object to this tax, and at which I will now only just hint. It
is not a pleasant view of the case for hon. gentlemen opposite or for those whom they chiefly
represent. When the time comes I am prepared to show that the income-tax presses upon all
capital employed in shops or manufactures with double the weight that it does upon that which
is employed strictly in the cultivation of the land. I am sure that hon. gentlemen opposite will
see the injustice in one particular — namely, that farmers in England, if I am not mistaken, pay
on a rate of income calculated upon half their rent, while farmers in Scotland pay only upon an
income calculated upon one-third of their rent. I know no reason for differences of that kind. I
do not think they should exist. Tou may tolerate them for a single year — we can tolerate a great
deal if we think it necessary to maintain the honour or interests of the country, or even for the
convenience of ParUament at times — but you cannot tolerate them as representing the permanent
settlement of a question in taxation. There is another ground upon which I should wholly object
to the course which the Chancellor of the Exchequer is taking if he was making his arrangements
for more than a year, and in adverting to this 1 must call his attention to measures of great
importance, which were much boasted of at the time, and to which he prevailed upon Parliament "
to assent in the year 1853. I hold that, whatever be our taxes — let us have £50,000,000, or
£70,000,000, or £100,000,000 a year — and I know not but we may live to see taxation grow up to-
£100,000,000 a year as heedlessly as we have seen it grow up to £70,000,000 — whatever be the
amount of our taxes, let us endeavour to do honestly by our countrymen ; not pressing the poor,
whether our taxes be heavy or light in the main ; laying them on with a stronger and more resolute
hand upon property, but in dealing with property dealing just as honestly with its owners as we
should deal with the poorest subjects of the realm. I take the taxes on successions of every kind
— probate-duty, legacy-duty, and the tax levied under the Act of 1853 — to be strictly in their
nature property taxes. They are taxes which are collected or intended to be collected as part of
every man's possessions and property which change hands on the death of their owner. Those
who are poor — those whose means are nothing — of whom there are unfortunately many in this
country — who make no will, for whom no one takes out letters of administration, who have
nothing to leave as a fortune or a little property to their children, are not directly
interested in this matter, but all other classes of society are directly interested in it;
and I say that, whether a man be employed in manufactures, or have property in land, in the
funds, or in stocks and shares of any kind, he has a fair right to appeal to this House that in the
imposition of taxes of this nature there should be the most just regard that is possible for the

LEGACY AND SUCCESSION DUTIES. 201
interests of all those whom the law is intended to affect. I shall tell the House in a few words
of what I complain, and what I shall move next year before anything be done to re-impose the
income-tax. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in his budget speech of 1853, where he introduced
that not very welcome guest to hon. members opposite, the succession tax, adverted to the probate -
duty, which he said ought fairly to be levied upon all kinds of property, and not confined to one
description alone. The hon. member for Lambeth (Mr. W. Williams) has brought that duty
repeatedly before the House, and has shown that £40,000,000 or £50,000,000, if not more, have
been paid into the Exchequer by taxes upon probates and legacies, all of which has been collected
by taxes on personal property, but from which real and freehold property has been entirely
exempted. I do not believe that any hon. gentleman on the opposite side of the House feels that
there ought to be this gross inequality. The probate-duty in 1858 raised to the Exchequer a sum
of £1,338,000, and next session I shall ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer why it is not extended,
as it ought to be, to all property which passes by death from one owner to another. It was
curious to observe that the right hon. gentleman in his speech the other night — it was not quite so
long as one he made before, but it was none the worse for that — did not refer to what was said to
be the greatest effort of his financial genius. In 1853 everybody said there was never such a
Chancellor of the Exchequer. He persuaded the country gentlemen to pass a bill which inflicted
upon them, as they allege, the very same succession-duty as the law imposed upon personal
property. What did the right hon. gentleman say upon that occasion P He calculated that in the
following year, 1854, the succession-tax would produce £500,000 to the Exchequer ; in 1855 an
additional £700,000 ; in 1856 an additional £400,000; and in 1857 an additional £400,000. It
will thus he seen that he anticipated the annual produce of this tax to amount in 1857 to
£2,000,000. If this calculation had turned out to be correct, the succession-duty would have
yielded up to the present time no less a sum than £9,300,000. What has been the actual result ?
I cannot give the exact figures, because the Board of Inland Revenue say they cannot separate
that which has been received from the succession-tax of 1853 from that which has been
received from the old legacy-duty. But, adopting the mode which was pursued
by the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other night, I can inform the House that the legacy duty
in 1852, before the succession-tax came into existence, produced £1,380,000, whereas the legacy
and succession duties combined yielded in 1859 the sum of £2,211,000, being an increase of
£831,000. From that sum, however, I must deduct the increase of the ancient legacy-duty in the
interval between 1853 and 1859, and I ought also to deduct something, but unfortunately I have
no means of ascertaining what, for that description of property which the Chancellor of the
Exchequer in 1853 called rateable property, and which he withdrew from the legacy-duty and put
under the succession-tax at a much smaller amount. Passing that by, however, and deducting
only £50,000 for the increase of the old legacy-duty, I find that the succession-tax, from which
the Chancellor of the Exchequer expected two years ago to receive £2,000,000 a year, brought
in last year no more than £781,000. How came the Chancellor of the Exchequer — he that under
stands his business so well — to make so grievous a mistake as this ? I shall tell the House how it
was. It is an odd thing that he could make such a mistake, but it is still more odd how any one
could be taken in by such a mistake when made. The tax was not what it pretended to be ; it
was not a succession-tax upon the value of property passing from one person to another, but
something very different ; and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, while he undertook to adjust a
great inequality, established another just as great and as offensive. I do not blame him for what
he did ; perhaps it was all he could do at the time ; but surely he was deficient in acuteness when
he supposed that his new tax would in 1857 produce £2,000,000, whereas in 1859 it yielded only
£781,000. How the tax has been so unproductive is easily explained. If a man dies and leaves
£10,000, which is in the Funds, or in the North- Western Railway, or in ships, or in machinery, or
employed in trade— what is done in reference to that £10,000 P I will take the case of the ten

202 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
per cent, duty — that is, where there is no kindred ; £10,000 left by one man to another, where
there is no relationship, would have to pay a tax of £1,000 to the Exchequer, put supposing the
£10,000 were invested in land, or in that rateable property which is the new distinction that the
right hon. gentleman establishes, what would be the result? Take two men, one twenty-two and
the other eighty years'of age. Tou would find that the Inland Revenue Board would turn to a
table, which would say the man of eighty has a life worth three or four years only, and the man of
twenty-two has a life worth twenty or twenty-five years ; and they would then take the income
from the £10,000 and multiply it by the number of years supposed to remain to the young man
and to the old man, and thus come to the sum on which each would have to pay. I was fortunate
enough to have a small property left to me by a person of whom I had no knowledge. I never saw
him. He was an old gentleman, a great friend of peace, and opposed to the Russian war, and
seeing that my hon. friend the member for Rochdale and myself were very strenuous in our oppo
sition to that war, he did what was in his power to mark his opinion of the course we had taken.
I sold the property for £1,400 or £1,500 ; and when I came to pay my legacy-duty — that is, the
succession-tax— I was greatly astonished at the small sum I had to pay. My age was taken ; an
estimate of the annual value of the property was made ; a*nd I was told that I had to pay some
thing like £40 or £50. If the property had been in the Funds, or invested in any other of the
modes to which I have referred, 1 should have had to pay £140 at least. Take the case of an
hon. gentleman on this side of the House, who has been more fortunate than myself. A property
worth £32,000 was left to him by a person who was not a blood relation. If it had been in the
Funds, or in ships, or in railways, or employed in trade, the succession-duty would have amounted,
to £3,200. What did he pay P He is not an old man— younger probably than the average of
members in this House — and yet upon the property being valued and a calculation made of the
number of years he might live, he found that he had to pay, not £3,200, but £700. Is it consistent
with fairness, with our personal honour — for, after all, that is a quality which enters into these
questions — with our duty to the public, that we, sitting here as a representative body, should take
one class of property, the most solid and durable, attracting to it the largest social and political
advantages, having in it the greatest certainty of accumulation and improvement from the general
improvement in the condition of the people, and charge it to the extent of £700, while at the same
time we impose £3,200 upon another class of property not more valuable and far more fleeting in
its character P I think the reason why I should object to a permanent re-imposition of the income-
tax will now be obvious to the House. 1 should object to it with all the force I am capable of until
the taxes which now exist are put on a satisfactory and honest footing, so that every man and
every description of property may be called upon by the State in its just proportion to support the
burdens and the necessities of the State. I do not intend beyond this to refer to the proposition
which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made. I have only now referred to it that I may lay
the ground for the course which I shall take in another session of Parliament if this question
comes before the House again ; and I believe that this course will be sanctioned by a large number
of members here, and will meet with almost unanimous approval from all the honest men who are
tax-payers in the kingdom. But this question of the mode of levying taxes is apart from a very
serious question referred to by the right hon. gentleman — that of our growing and frightful
expenditure. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said, and very justly, that up to 1853, in the great
departments of the expenditure, there had been no great increase for many years. I confess that,
although I have been protesting session after session against this growing expenditure, I was not
fully aware of the enormous increase which has taken place until I compared the present year with
1853, and eome preceding years. I find that in 1853, on'the estimate of the right hon. gentleman,
the expenditure was only £50,782,000, while the expenditure in the current year is £69,207,000.
The House must bear in mind that this is somewhat of an unfair picture, because since 1853 there
has been a sum of money charged to the expenditure which formerly went in the collection of the

PANICS. 203
revenue. Making every allowance, however, for the £4,740,000 which is disposed of in this
way, the expenditure has positively increased in the interval by £13,685,000. The right hon.
gentleman opposite (Mr. Disraeli) was not, I think, quite correct in his statement respecting the
miscellaneous estimates ; but there can be no doubt that the great and serious item in our out
goings is that of armaments, for I find that the military and naval expenditure of the country has
risen from £17,000,000 in 1853 to upwards of £26,000,000 in 1860. Now I should like to ask the
House two or three quiet, serious questions on this matter. The hon. member sitting here just
now (Sir Charles Napier) who commanded the Baltic fleet, and who represents the borough of
Southwark, has left his place, and I am very sorry for it, because I should have liked to ask him
two or three questions. Does the House believe that we are now more or less safe from a foreign
war, and particularly from an invasion of this country, than we were in 1853 P We have men —
the right hon. gentleman has referred to them — who are afflicted with a periodical
panic. There is no complaint, I believe, so incurable as that. One fits begets
another, and every fit seems so to enfeeble the constitution of the patient that each succeeding
attack becomes more alarming than the last. We have two or three newspapers in this city
which appear to suffer in this way. One, which is supposed to represent a particular trading
interest, pours forth from day to day, frotn week to week, from month to month — I know
not at whose instigation, I know not if at the instigation of any man save the editor — the most
foolish but the most bitter invectives against the French Government, and by that means against
the French nation. I say against the French nation, because I hold that, no matter whether we
approve the Government now existing in France or not, if we had such a Government, and some
foreign nation through its press were constantly insulting that Government, we should take not a,
small portion of those insults to ourselves, and we should become proportionately irritated
against that nation. Take another paper, the Times, which, unfortunately and untruly, is
believed on the Continent to represent the opinions of the English people. Who is there on
that paper — let him stand forward if there be such a man — who has a bitter personal ani
mosity against the Emperor of the French ? Day after day, every form into which the
English language can be pressed is made use of for the purpose- of stirring up the bitterest
animosity between two of the greatest nations on the face of the earth. Have these
men published letters from Italy in vain ? Have they told us of acres of bloody and
mangled human bodies over which guns have been dragged and cavalry have galloped — have
they told us of such scenes until a shudder has passed, I may almost say, through uni
versal human nature — and yet have they learnt for one single moment to restrain that
animosity which, if it continues many months longer, will place it beyond the power of this
or any Government to prevent our being embroiled in a war with France ? And it is not only
the member for Southwark and such as he, it is not only the editors of newspapers, who
suffer from and create these panics, but go into another and what is generally supposed to
be a higher place, and what do you find there P Why, you hear some aged peer turning
back, as it were, to the convictions and the facts of his early youth, and delivering speeches
which might have been somewhat in character with the barbarism of sixty years ago, but
which are very unfit for our time and for our opinions. We find another peer (' Order ! ')
— another gentleman, then — making a speech. I believe I am transgressing by the mention of
certain things which are too sacred for allusion here; but really I do not wish to go into
detail and point to particular persons in connection with this matter. What I say is, that
throughout Europe every intelligent man who reads speeches of that character, whether made
in this House or in another place, can only arrive at one conclusion, thoroughly false, as I
believe in my conscience it would be — namely, that these persons represent a very large
amount of public opinion in this country, and that we have forgotten the disasters and the
ruin entailed by the great revolutionary war of which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has

2(>4 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
spoken, and are ready to engage in another conflict of equal duration and equal cost in
blood and treasure, with a result as utterly bootless to England and to Europe. Look at our
position with regard to France at this moment. One of our wars is just over. I do not
know that I use the exact words of the right hon. gentleman opposite, but I agree with
him that there can be no peace in Italy between those two great Powers which can
compare for evil with the war which that peace has terminated. When I read of peace
being concluded, I felt as if I could breathe more freely since the species to which I belong
is no longer engaged in the fiend-like destruction of its fellow- creatures. What do we now
find in the manifesto of the Emperor of the French just received in this country P He said he
discovered — I am not now using his exact words — that he was making war against the mind of
Europe. That is a most important and valuable admission, and I only wish the Emperor had
found this out three or six months ago. He says, further, that the war was assuming dimensions
with which the interests which France had in the struggle were not commensurate. I am sur
prised that a man reputed to be so acute did not perceive that he would be exposed to this great
danger before he entered upon the war. But the two admissions made in this remarkable and
memorable address prove to me that the suspicions which have been so studiously raised in this
country as to the future objects of the Emperor of the French are altogether unfounded. I
do not believe it possible for either the Emperor of the French or the Emperor of Austria to
have returned home with all those scenes of horror such as we have read of flitting before
their eyes, and, I hope, before their consciences, and to be now prepared to enter into another
struggle — least of aU a struggle with a nation like ours, containing 30,000,000 of united people,
the most powerful, the richest, and, aU things considered, perhaps the best satisfied with their
Government of any nation in Europe. Besides this, have they not learnt something from the
improvements effected in weapons of warfare and the increased destructiveness of life of which
those weapons are now capable ? They see now how costly war is in money, how destructive in
human life. Success in war no longer depends on those circumstances that formerly decided it.
Soldiers used to look down on trade, and machine-making was with them a despised craft. No
stars or garters, no ribbons or baubles, bedecked the makers and workers of machinery. But what
is war becoming' now ? It depends, not as heretofore, on individual bravery, on the power of a
man's nerves, the keenness of his eye, the strength of his body, or the power of his soul, if one
may so speak ; but it is a mere mechanical mode of slaughtering your fellow-men. This sort of
thing cannot last. It wiU break down by its own weight. Its costliness, its destructiveness, its
savagery will break it down ; and it remains but for some Government — I pray that it may be
ours ! — to set the great example to Europe of proposing a mutual reduction of armaments. Our
policy in past times — and the right hon. gentleman did not go so far into this question as I could
have wished — has been one of perpetual meddling, with perpetuaUy no result except that which
is evil. We have maintained great armaments, not, I sincerely believe, because we wanted to
conquer or to annex any territory in Europe, but in order that whenever anything happens in
Europe we may negotiate, intervene, advise, do something or other becoming what is called the
dignity of this great country. Do not you suppose this is precisely the language of the French
Emperor at this moment P The Emperor of the French builds great fleets because you build
great fleets ; and then you build greater fleets because he builds great fleets. What does France
wa.nt with great fleets P Precisely that which you have always wanted with yours. If there be any
disturbance between any countries in Europe, do you not think it would be beneath the dignity
of France not to take a part in it, and, taking a part in it, not to take a part with that influence
and success which becomes a great country like France ? And, therefore, without wishing any
more than England wishes to make conquests or to annex territory, France wishes to have great
influence in Europe because it suits its dignity, and will add to the glory and historical renown
of its Emperor. WeU, now, that is exactly the position in which we are, and we have

FLEET BUILDING COMPETITION. 205
no more right to blame the Emperor of the French than he has a right to blame us. We
are both very silly, and I hope, from what I have heard to-night, that at last we on
our side the water are beginning to find this out. I shaU not go into the question
whether we are reaUy about to be invaded. I am told that so much has been said about it that
the French reaUy believe we are making this outcry to cover our designs of invading them. I
saw a letter in one of their newspapers this morning in which it is stated that from Dunkirk to
some other town there are mounds and fortifications and guns aU ready, though concealed from
the eye by grassy banks, to repress and to frustrate our designs. Recollect that the Freneh
Government went into the Russian war because they were anxious to associate themselves with the
foreign poUcy of England. Subsequently they went into another war with us with a more distant
nation — they went into the war with China. They took part with the noble viscount now at the
head of the Government in the interference which he promoted in Italy with regard to Naples
some two or three years ago. It appears to me that, looking at it from every point of view, read
ing the newspapers, and hearing what everybody has to say, if there be one thing which is more
distinctly marked in the policy of the Emperor of the French since his accession to the throne of
France than another it is his perpetual anxiety, by every means consistent with his own safety,
and with the interests, as he believes, of France, to aUy himself with England aud with the foreign
poUcy of England. Well, if that be so, why should we perpetually create these suspicions, and
generate in the minds of the people, nine-tenths of whom have small opportunity of ascertaining
the facts, alarms which give colour and justification to this enormous increase of our armaments,
of which we have heard such loud complaints from both sides of the table to-night ? I shall not
go into the question of this conference. At the first view my opinion would go very much with the
right hon. gentleman (Mr. Disraeli). I doubt very much — indeed, I ought to say, I do not doubt,
but I feel sure — that if England is to go into the conference merely to put its name to documents
which are of no advantage to Italy, which do not engage the sympathies of this nation, England
had much better have nothing to do with it. But there is another course which I should like to
recommend to the noble lord who now holds the seals of the Foreign Office. I cannot believe that
Frenchmen in matters of this nature are so very different from ourselves as some people wish to
teach us. I do believe that the 36,000,000 Frenchmen engaged in aU the honest occupations of
their country, as our people are engaged here, are as anxious for perpetual peace with England as
the most inteUigent and Christian Englishmen can be for a perpetual peace with France. I
believe, too, because I am convinced that it is his wisest course and his truest interest, that the
Emperor of the French is also anxious to remain at peace with us, and the people in France are
utterly amazed and lost in bewUderment when they see the course taken by the press, and by
certain statesmen in this country. With that beUef , what would I do if I were in that responsible
position ? — for which, however, I know that I am thought to be altogether unfit— but if I were
sitting on that bench and were in the position of the noble lord, I would try to emancipate uiyself
from those old, ragged, worthless, and bloody traditions which are found in every pigeon-hole
and almost on every document in the Foreign Office. I would emancipate myself from all that,
and I would approach the French Government in what I would call a sensible, a moral, and a
Christian spirit. I do not say that I would send a special envoy to Paris to sue for peace. 1
would not commission Lord Cowley to make a great demonstration of what he was about to do ;
but I would make this offer to the French Government, and I would make it with a frankness
that could not be misunderstood : if it were accepted on the other side it would be received with
enthusiasm in England, and would be marked as the commencement of a new era in Europe. I
would say to the French Government: ' We are but twenty miles apart. The trade between us is
nothing like what it ought to be, considering the population of the two countries, their vast
increase of productive power, and their great wealth. We have certain things on this side which
now bar the intercourse between the two nations. We have some remaining duties whieh are of

206 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN HRIGHT.
no consequence either to the revenue or to protection, which everybody has given up here, but
they still interrupt the trade between you and us. We will reconsider these and remove them.
We have also an extraordinarily heavy duty upon one of the greatest products of the soil of
France — upon the light wines of your country.' The Chancellor of the Exchequer, and perhaps
the right hon. gentleman opposite, may start at once, and say that involves a revenue of
£1,500,000, or at least of £1,200,000. The right hon. gentleman talked of the national debt
- being a flea-bite. What is £1,200,000 — what is £1,500,000, if it be so much as that — what is
£2,000,000 for the abolition of the wine duties, or their reduction to a very low scale, if by such
an offer as this we should enable the Emperor of the French to do that which he is most anxious
to do P The only persons whom the French Emperor cannot cope with are the monopoUsts of his
own country. If he could offer to his nation 30,000,000 of the English people as customers,
would not that give him an irresistible power to make changes in the Freneh tariff which would
be as advantageous to us as they would be to his own country ? I do believe that if that were
honestly done, done without any diplomatic finesse, and without any obstacles being attached to
it that would make its acceptance impossible, it would bring about a state of things which history
would pronounce to be glorious. The tone taken to-night by the right hon. gentleman the
member for Buckinghamshire and by the right hon. gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer
will find a response in the country. I am not accustomed to compliment the noble lord at the
head of the Government. I have always condemned the policy which I thought wrong, but
which, I have no doubt, the noble lord thought was best calculated to promote the interests of the
country. I beUeve he was mistaken, and that he was importing into this century the politics of
the last ; but I do not think it would be possible to select a Minister who could better carry out a
policy which would be just to France and beneficial to ourselves than the noble lord. Blood
shines more, and attracts the vision of man more, than beneficent measures. But the glory of
such measures is far more lasting, and that glory the noble lord can achieve. I Uve among
the people. I know their toils and their sorrows, and I see their pauperism — for little better than
pauperism is the lot of vast numbers of our countrymen from their cradles to their graves. It is
for them I speak ; for them I give my time in this assembly; and in heartfelt sorrow for their
sufferings I pray that some statesman may take the steps which I have indicated. He who can
establish such a state of things between France and England wiU do much to promote the future
prosperity of two great nations, and wiU show that eighteen hundred years of Christian profes
sions are at length to be foUowed by something like Christian practice."
The French Emperor and his Government were pleased with Mr.
Bright's speech, and it inspired M. Chevalier with the idea of a commer
cial treaty between England and France, and at once he conferred with
Mr. Cobden on the subject ; ultimately he recommended the member for
Eochdale to try to induce the Emperor to consent to a commercial treaty
with England. A few weeks after, Mr. Cobden had an interview with
Mr. Gladstone at Hawarden, and related what had transpired, and said
that as he wa,s going to spend a part of the winter in Paris he might be
of use in trying to bring about such a desirable treaty. A Cabinet
meeting was called, and Mr. Cobden discussed M. Chevalier's notions
with Lord Palmerston and Lord John Eussell ; but Mr. Cobden had

MR. COBDEN AT ROCHDALE. 207
great difficulty in interesting these two statesmen in political economy
and tariffs. They did not, however, object to his proceeding on
the mission, and accordingly Cobden visited Paris on the 18th of
October. Before leaving England, Mr. Cobden was welcomed back to public
life by a soiree at Eochdale, on the 17th and 18th of August, 1859. An
immense pavilion was erected on a plot of land at Castlemere, which at
the present time is covered by the United Methodist Free Church,
William Street. The soiree on the 17th was an imposing sight. On a
raised platform, Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright were hemmed round in a
crescent shape by Messrs. T. Bazley, M.P., Titus Salt, M.P., Frank
Crossley, M.P., E. A. Leatham, M.P., W. Sharman Crawford, William
Fenton, John Petrie, George Ashworth, H. Kelsall, E. T. Heape, and a
host of other gentlemen. The mayor, Mr. Andrew Stewart, presided.
This was the first time since the Eeform movement began that Mr. Cobden
and Mr. Bright appeared together to promote Eeform. The occasion
was one which, whilst it recalled to mind past labours and past suc
cesses, proved that the old energy and fire still existed, and that new
victories would be won for the popular cause. The question of Eeform
was uppermost in the minds of both speakers and hearers, and of these
eminent men it might be said that one could
" Read their history in a nation's eyes."
Mr. Cobden, in the course of a speech of considerable length,
remarked : —
"Shall we take stock and ask ourselves whether all the old musty predictions and traditions
of our diplomacy have been proved to be true on this occasion ? They told us that if we did
not mingle in European wars we should lose our prestige with the world,, that we should become
isolated, and that we should lose our power. Well, now, I ask you, whilst the thing is fresh upon
our memory and observation, have we lost prestige or power by having abstained from the late
war in Italy ? (Yoices, ' No-') On the contrary, do we not know that now the great Powers on
the Continent, feeling that England is powerful — more powerful than ever in her neutrality — are
anxious, are clamorous, are more solicitous, that we should go and take a part in the peaceful
conferences that are to take place with a view of securing peace ? . . . Gentlemen, I need
not tell you that on my arrival in England, on finding myself your representative, I received a
communication from Lord Palmerston, and another from Lord John Russell. In Lord
Palmerston's letter, he was kind enough to urge many reasons, frankly expressed, why I should
accept a seat in his Cabinet, as President of the Board of Trade. Now, I will not affect any

•208 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
modesty in this matter : I wUl say that if I was fit for any office in the Cabinet I should be fit
for the office of President of the Board of Trade. I think, probably, if other circumstances had
not intervened, my being in that place would have been reaUy putting a square peg in a square
hole. But, gentlemen, my reasons, if you will have them, for declining to accept the honour
which was offered to me were as follows. The honour, I beg to assure you, I did not consider a
matter of indifference ; it was probably peculiarly inviting to me, if I had been one of an ambitious
character, because, taking it for all in all, it would have been the first instance of a man springing
immediately from amongst you, literaUy a man of business, being offered a seat in the Cabinet at
all. I was not indifferent to the honour ; none of the concomitants of office could have, been a matter
of indifference to me ; but in that case I felt that it was a matter calling for my conscientious
action ; the more so in proportion to the inducements that were held out to take a particular
course. Well, gentlemen, I went to London, and before calling on anyone, or receiving anyone,
I thought it best to call upon Lord Palmerston, and to express to him exactly my views in the
matter ; and I may tell you, just as frankly as I have told him, what passed between us. I stated
to my Lord Palmerston my case thus : ' I have been for ten or fifteen years the systematic
assailant of what I believe to be your foreign policy. (Hear, hear.) I thought it warUke — not
calculated to promote peace or harmony between this country and other countries.' I explained
to him exactly what my feelings had been in those words ; and I said to him, it is quite possible
I may have been mistaken in all this ; when a man takes an idea and pursues it for ten or twelve
years, it is very likely that he takes an exaggerated view of his first impressions ; but I put it to
Lord Palmerston, and now I put it to you, whether, having regard to those opinions, it was fit
and becoming in me to step from an American steamer into his Cabinet, and there and then, for,
the first time, after having received at his hands a post of high honour and 'great emolument,
discover that I had undergone a change in my opinions, and whether I should not be open to
great misconstruction by the public at large if I took such a course ; and I candidly confess that
it was inconsistent with my own self-respect." (Cheers.)
Mr. Bright also spoke at the same meeting, and remarked: —
" 1 shall not indulge in any elaborate panegyric with regard to the character and services of
our representative. I have had the great privUege of being his political associate, his political
brother — (hear, hear) — his personal friend, for nearly twenty years. (Cheers.) If there be one
man in England whom I wish to caU my representative more than another, I have the gratification
to-night of being represented by that man. (Cheers.) .... Now let us turn, as we are
turning, I hope, from those frightful themes before us of late, from those pictures and accounts
of carnage. (Hear, hear.) I say not who is guilty, I point not to the man or the men — but I
hope the time is coming when the finger of mankind and the fierce eyes of human nature wiU be
turned in condemnation against those crowned criminals who thus destroy human life. (Cheers.)
Let us turn, I say, from those terrible scenes which have filled the columns of our newspapers.
Let us look at home, where we have so much to do. (Hear, hear.) For are not the people here
hard-worked from morn till night, from January to December, almost from their cradles to their
graves ? (Cheers.) Have we not aU this amongst ourselves — much to instruct, much to help,
much to offer justice and a fair and free field of exertion and competition to ? Let us attend
to all this and our home affairs, for here lies our duty and here lies our interest. (Cheers.) Our
people have been patient in suffering — they have been heroic in their labours and in their struggles ;
and I count the ambition to be in public life an ambition of a low and worthless kind if it be not
-the ambition to devote every faculty we possess to the true interests and permanent welfare and
real elevation of the great and noble people which we go to Parliament to represent." (Loud and
continued cheering.)

INDIA. 209
On the following evening, the 18th of August, Mr. Cobden and Mr.
Bright addressed about 8,000 persons inthe same pavilion, principally on
the subject of the suffrage and the ballot. Mr. Stewart, the mayor,
again presided.
Sir Charles Wood on the 1st of August, in his financial statement on
India, which he made to the House of Commons, proposed that the
Government should be empowered to raise £5,000,000, in the United
Kingdom in order to meet the demand of that year. Upon this question
Mr. Bright made a long speech, in the course of which he said : —
" The noble lord opposite (Lord Stanley) did an excellent thing. He did honour to himself
by appointing a man of a new sort as Governor of Madras. I have not much acquaintance with
Sir C. Trevelyan, but I believe him to be a very inteUigent man and very earnest for the good
of India. But he finds that at Madras he is like a man who is manacled, as aU the Governors
are. He is able to do almost nothing. But he has a spirit above being the passive instrument
for doing nothing in the hands of the Governor- General, and he has been disposed to make
several changes which have looked exceedingly heterodox to those who are connected with the
old Government of India, and which have shocked the nerves of the fifteen old gentlemen who
meet in Leadenhall-street, and their brethren in India. I find that among the changes
endeavoured to be effected by Sir C. Trevelyan, the following are enumerated : — He has
endeavoured to conciliate the natives by abolishing certain ceremonial distinctions which were
supposed to degrade them when visiting the Government House ; he has shown that personal
courtesy to them which appears to be too much neglected in India; he has conspicuously
rewarded those who have rendered services to the State ; he has endeavoured to improve the
land tenure, and to aboUsh the impress of cattle and carts. He has also aboUshed three-fourths,
or perhaps more, of the paper work of the public servants. He also began the great task of
judicial reform, than which none is more urgently pressing. But what is said of Sir C. Trevelyan
for instituting these reforms P He has raised a hornet's nest about him. Those who surround
the Governor-General at Calcutta say ' We might as weU have the Governors of the Presidencies
independent if they are to do as they like without consulting the Governor-General, as has been
done in past times.' The Friend of India is a journal not particularly scrupulous in supporting
the Calcutta Government, but it has a horror of any Government of India except that of the
Governor-General and the few individuals who surround him. A writer in the Friend of India
says : ' Sir C. Trevelyan relies, doubtless, on Lord Stanley, and we do not dream of denying that
the Secretary of State has provocation enough to excuse the unusual course he seems obliged to
pursue. To promise a reform to Calcutta is, at present, simply to lay it aside. It wiU probably
not be answered for two years, certainly not carried in". five. Even when sanctioned, it will have
to pass through a crucible through which no plan can escape entire. That weary waiting for
Calcutta, of which all men, from Lord Stanley to Ithe people of Singapore, now bitterly com
plain, may weU tempt the Secretary to carry on his plans by the first mode offered to his hand.'
Here are only a dozen lines from a long article, and there are other articles in the same paper to
the same purport. I think, then, that I am justified in condemning any Secretary for India who
contents himself with giving us the figures necessary to show the state of the finances, which any
clerk in the office could have done, and abstains from going into the questions of the Government
of India and that policy upon which alone you can base any solid hope of an improvement in the
39

210 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
condition of that country. There is another point I would mention. The Governor-General of
India goes out knowing little or nothing of India. I know exactly what he does when he is
appointed. He shuts himself up to study the first volumes of Mr. Mill's History of India, and
he reads through this laborious work without nearly so much effect in making him a good
Governor-General as a man might ignorantly suppose. He goes to India, a country of twenty
nations speaking twenty languages. He knows none of those nations, and he has not a gUmmer
of the grammar and pronunciation or meaning of those languages. He is surrounded by half-a-
dozen or a dozen gentlemen who have been from fifteen to forty years in that country, and who
have scrambled from the moderate but sure allowance with which they began in the service to the
positions they now occupy. He knows nothing of the country or the people, and they are really
unknown to the Government of India. To this hour the present Governor- General has not
traveUed through any considerable portion of the territory of India. If he did, he would
have to pay an increased insurance upon his life for travelling through a country in
which there are very few roads and no bridges at all. Observe the position, then, in
which the Governor- General is placed. He is surrounded by an official circle, he breathes
an official air, and everything is dim or dark beyond it. Tou lay duties upon him which
are utterly beyond the mental or bodily strength of any man who ever existed, and which
he cannot therefore adequately perform. Turning from the Governor- General to the Civil
Service, see how short the period is in which your servants in that country remain in any
particular office. Tou are constantly criticising the bad customs of the United States, where
every postmaster and many other officers lose their situations, and where others are appointed,
whenever a new President is elected. Tou never make blunders Uke the United States, and you
will therefore be surprised at a statement given in evidence by Mr. Underhill, the Secretary of
the Baptist Missionary Society. He says that in certain districts in Bengal there are three or
four Englishmen to 1,000,000 inhabitants, and that the magistrates are perpetuaUy moving about.
1 have here the names of several gentlemen cited. Mr. Henry Lushington went to India in 1821,
and remained till 1842. During these twenty-one years he fiUed twenty-one different offices ; he
went to Europe twice, being absent from India not less than four and a-quarter years. Upon an
average, therefore, he held his twenty-one offices not more than nine months each. Mr. J. P. ¦
Grant was Governor of Bengal. That was so good a place that he remained stationary in it.
But he went to India in 1828 and remained thereuntil 1841. In those thirteen years he held
twenty-four different situations, being an average of less than six months for each. Mr. Charles
Grant — and I may say that Grant is a name which for three or four generations has been foimd
everywhere in India— he was in India from 1829 to 1842, and in those thirteen years he filled
seventeen offices, being an average of only eight months for each office. Mr. Halliday, Governor
of Bengal, went to India in 1825, and remained until 1843. In those eighteen years he held
twenty-one offices, and he did not become stationary until he was accredited to the lucrative and
great office of Governor of Bengal. I think that these facts show that there is something in the
arrangements of the Indian Government which makes it no Government at all, except foi'" the
purpose of raising money and spending taxes. It is no Government for watching over the people,
and conferring upon them those blessings which we try to silence our consciences by believing
the British Government is established in India to promote. What can a Governor-General do
with such a council, and with servants who are ever changing in all the departments ? I am not
stating my own opinion, but what is proved by the Blue Books. Mr. HaUiday stated that the poUce
of Bengal were more feared than the thieves and dacoits. But how is this Government, so occupied
and so embarrassed, to be expected to put the police on a satisfactory footing p With regard to
justice, I might appeal to any gentleman who has been in India whether, for the most part, the
judges in the Company's Courts are not without training, and if they are without training
whether they wiU not probably be without law. The delay is something of which we can have no

ANGLO-INDIAN ADMINISTRATION. 211
conception, even with our experience of the Court of Chancery in this country. Perjury and
wrong are universal wherever the Courts of the Company's Service have been established in India,
Of their taxation we hear enough to-night. It is clumsy and unscientific. In their finance there
is such confusion that the Government proposes to send out somebody, not to raise revenue, not to
spend it, but somebody who wiU be able to teU you how it is raised and spent, for that is what you
want to know. They have no system of book-keeping whatever. The Secretary of State gives us
a statement of revenue and expenditure up to the 30th of April, 1858, sixteen months back, and
even for the year preceding he can only furnish what he calls an ' estimate.' Would any other
legislative assembly in the whole world except this tolerate such a state of things P I did try
myself several years ago to get a statement of the accounts up to a later period ; but I found it
was of no use. They ought to be brought up to a later period ; the thing is quite within the range
of possibility ; it is simply not done because there is no proper system of book-keeping, and no
one responsible for not doing it. Tou have no Government in India ; you have no financial state
ment ; you have no system of book-keeping, no responsibiUty ; and everything goes to confusion
and ruin because there is such a Government, or no Government, and the English House of
Commons has not taken the pains to reform these things. The Secretary of State to-night points
to the increase in the English trade. In that trade I am myself interested, and I am delighted to
see that increase ; but it should be borne in mind that just now it is not a natural increase, and
therefore not certain to be permanent. If you are spending so many miUions in railroads and in
carrying on war— that is, £22,000,000 for your armaments in India instead of £12,000,000— is not
that likely to make a great difference in your power to import more largely from this country ?
Do not we know that when the Government of the day was pouring English treasure into the
Crimea, the trade with the Levant was most materially increased P And, therefore, I say it wiU
be a delusion for the right hon. gentleman to expect that the extraordinary increase which has
taken place within the last three years wiU go on in future in the same proportion. Now, the point
which I wish to bring before the committee and the Government is this, because it is on this that
I rely mainly — I think I may say almost entirely — for any improvement in the future of India.
It would be impertinent to take up the time of the committee by merely cavilling at what other
people have said, and pointing out their errors and blunders, if I had no hope of being able to
suggest any improvement in the existing state of things. I believe a great improvement may be
made, and by a gradual progress that wiU dislocate nothing. I dare say it may disappoint some
individuals, but where it wiU disappoint one man in India it will please a thousand. What you
want is to decentralise your Government. I hold it to be manifestly impossible to govern
150,000,000 of persons, composing twenty different nations, speaking as many different languages,
by a man who knows nothing of India, assisted by half-a-dozen councillors belonging to a
privileged order, many of whom have had very little experience in India except within narrow
limits, and whose experience never involved the consideration and settlement of great questions
of statesmanship. If you could have an independent Government in India for every 20,000,000
of its people, I do not hesitate to say, though we are so many thousand miles away, that there
are Englishmen who, settling down among those 20,000,000 of people, would be
able to conduct the Government of that particular province on conditions whoUy different and
immeasurably better than anything in the way of administration which we have ever seen in India.
If I were Secretary of State for India— but as I am not, I will recommend the right hon.
gentleman to do that which I would do myself, or I would not hold his office for one month ;
because, to hold office and come before the House session after session with a gloomy statement,
and with no kind of case to show that you are doing anything for India, or that you are justified
in holding possession of it at aU, is nothing but to receive a salary and to hold a dignity without
any adequate notion of the high responsibiUty attaching to them. I am not blaming the right
hon. gentleman in particular; he is only doing what aU his predecessors before him have done.

212 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
There has been no real improvement since I have sat in Parliament in the government of India,
and I believe the bill of last year is not one whit better for purposes of administration than any
that has gone before. But I would suggest to the right hon. gentleman, whether it would not
be a good thing to bring in a bill to extend and define the powers of the Governors of the
various Presidencies in India ? I do not ask the right hon. gentleman to turn out the fifteen
gentlemen who assist him in Leadenhall Street to vegetate on their pensions, but I ask him to
go to India and to take the Presidency of Madras for an instance. Let arrangements be made
by which that Presidency shall be in a position to correspond directly with him in this country,
and let every one connected with that Government of Madras feel that, with regard to the
interests and the people of that Presidency, they wiU be responsible for their protection. At
present there is no sort of tie between the governors and the governed. Why is it that we
should not do for Madras what has been done for the Island of Ceylon p I am not about to set
up the Council of Ceylon as a model institution— it is far from that ; but I wUl tell you what it
is, and you will see that it would not be a difficult thing to make the change I propose. The
other day I asked a gentleman holding an office in the Government, and who had Uved some
years in Ceylon, what was the state of the Council P He said it was composed of sixteen
members, of whom six were non-official and independent, and the Governor had always a
majority. He added that at the present moment in that Council there was one gentleman a
pure Cingalese by birth and blood, another a Brahmin, another a half-caste, whose father was a
Dutchman and whose mother was a native, and three others who were either EngUsh merchants
or planters. The Council has not much prestige, and therefore it is not easy to induce merchants
in the interior to be members and to undertake its moderate duties ; but the result is that this
Cingalese, this Brahmin, this half-caste, and these three Englishmen, although they cannot out
vote Sir H. Ward, the Governor, are able to discuss questions of public interest in the eye and
the ear of the public, and to teU what the independent population want, and so to form a repre
sentation of public opinion in the Council, which, I wiU undertake to say, although so inefficient,
is yet of high importance in the satisfactory government of that island. Why is it that we can
have nothing Uke this in the Councils of Madras or Bombay ? It would be an easy thing to do,
and I believe that an Act of Parliament which would do it would lay the foundation of the
greatest reform that has yet taken place in India. At present aU the Governors are in fetters ;
and I see that blame has been imputed to Sir Charles Trevelyan for endeavouring to break
through those fetters. No doubt an attempt wiU be made to have him recalled, but I hope that
the right hon. gentleman, while he moderates the ardour of the Governor so far as to prevent a
rebeUion among the civilians, will support him honestly and faithfully in all those changes which
the right hon. gentleman knows as well as I do are essential to the improvement of the govern
ment of that country. There is yet another question, and that is, What is to be done with regard
to the people of India on the subject of education, and especially with reference to the matter
of religious instruction ? I beg the right hon. gentleman to be cautious how he takes the advice
of any gentleman in this country who may ask him to make changes in the established order of
things there, by appearing in the slightest degree to attempt to overthrow the caste and religion
of the natives of India. I have here an extract from a letter written by a gentleman who was
present at one of the ceremonies of reading the Queen's Proclamation in November last. He
says : — ' Not less than 7,000 natives of all ranks and conditions and religions flocked to the
esplanade at Tellicherry, where there was no show but the parading of a company of Sepoys,
who fired a feu de joie very badly, to hear the Queen's Proclamation read. AU who heard, all
who heard not, manifested the deepest interest in it. The pledged inviolabUity of their religion
and their lands spread like wildfire through the crowd, and was soon in every man's mouth.
Their satisfaction was unbounded. ... I mentioned that I went to Tellicherry to hear the
Queen's Proclamation read. We have since had it read here (Anjarakandy). Tou will see an

THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE. 213
account of what took place on the occasion in the accompanying copy of an official report I
addressed to the assistant magistrate. What I have described understates the feeling manifested
by the people. They were all eyes and ears, Ustening breathlessly to what was being read. Tou
wiU observe that convening them for any public purpose whatever, except here, was a thing
unknown, and would have been a thing scouted under the Company's Government. Here I
always assemble them, communicate everything they ought to know and hear, and talk it over
with them. But a Queen's Proclamation is not an everyday affair, so they came in crowds ; and
I will venture to say that there is not another place in the Queen's India where it was so clearly
explained to them or so thoroughly understood. But the impartial toleration of their religion
and caste was the be-all and end-aU of their comments, praise, and individual satisfaction.
One Mafitta said, " They had had scores of proclamations upon every conceivable subject, but
never one so wise and sensible as this." ' The East India Company was a wonderful company
for writing despatches. There was nothing so Christian as their doctrine, nothing so un
christian as their conduct. That Proclamation has in it the basis of aU you should aim at in
future in India — a regard to the sacredness of their property and the sacredness of their
reUgion, and an extension to them, of as regular and full justice as is shown to your own
countrymen. Depend upon it, these natives of India can comprehend this as well as we com
prehend it ; and if you treat them as we are treated, and as they ought to be treated, you wiU
not require 400,000 men to help you to govern a people who are notoriously among the most
industrious and most peaceable to be found on the face of the earth. There has lately been an act
done by the noble Lord (Lord Stanley) to which I must aUude. Why he did it I do not know. I
am sure the noble lord did not mean to do an act of injustice, though very great injustice has been
done. A question was put the other night about a native of India who had come to this country
to qualify himself for entering into competition for employment in the Civil Service of his
country. I have seen that young gentleman, and conversed with him ; and when I state his case,
it wiU be seen whether he has been treated well or wisely, though the regulation under which
he has suffered may have been made without any reference to him individuaUy. He arrived in
this country in June, 1856, and remained preparing himself for competition for two years and a-
half till December, 1858, when a new regulation came out, which made twenty -two instead of
twenty-three years of age the period for entering the Civil Service. He might have been ready
for competition in July, 1860, but he could not be ready in July, 1859. Under these circum
stances he would be past the age of twenty -two before he could be able to present himself for
examination. The consequence is that he has been obliged to turn himself to another channel
for employment. His father is an assistant -builder in the Government dockyard of Bombay, and
has been in England. There was great interest excited among the natives when the young man
left India to come to England, and there is great disappointment among his friends at the result.
He has been laughed at for trusting the Government, and it is said that while governments go on
changing their regulations in this way no faith can be put in them. Now this is the first case of
this kind that has happened. This young gentleman (or his father) has expended £1,500 in
coming here and in endeavouring to get the best education, solely with a view to be suited for
the Civil Service. If he had entered into that Civil Service, a great thing would have been
accomplished. The result would have been that the House and the Secretary for India would
have seen that it was very unjust, while the son of any one here could pursue his studies at home
and enter into competition for the CivU Service, that the sons of the natives of India who wish
to enter into the service of their own country must come thousands of miles at great expense,
and Uve apart from their families for years, before they are able to accomplish their object ; and
the result must have been that you would have established in some city in India the same mode
of examination that you have established here. Tou must have been led to do that which would
have enabled young men in India to offer themselves for the CivU Service of their country on as

214 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
favourable terms as could be done in England. I am sure the noble lord never had the
sUghtest idea of the regulation having reference to this young man, or of injuring him ; yet
it has been done, and what has occurred leads to the conclusion that either somebody very deep
in these matters has been at the bottom of this change, or that some combination of unfortunate
circumstances has been at work by which" that whieh we have aU so much at heart has been
retarded. If the noble lord had struck out this regulation, or made a new one, by which this
young man could have had a chance of going home as a servant of the CivU Service, the
fact would have been worth many regiments of soldiers in India. In speaking of this subject I
have nothing new to offer to the attention of the House. I have propounded the very same
theories and remedies years ago. They are not my remedies and theories. I am not the inventor
of local government for India ; but the more I have considered the subject; — the more I have
discussed it with the members of this House and with gentlemen connected with India — the more
I am convinced that you wiU not make a single step towards the improvement of India unless
you change your whole system of government — unless you give to each Presidency a Government
with more independent powers than are now possessed by it. What would be thought if
the whole of Europe was under one governor, who knew only the language of the Feejee Islands,
and that his subordinates were like himself, only more intelligent than the inhabitants of the
Feejee Islands are supposed to be ? Tou set a governor over 150,000,000 of human beings, in a
climate where the European cannot do the work he has to do so well as here, where neither the
moral nor physical strength of the individual is equal to what it is at home — and you do not even
always furnish the most powerful men for the office — you seem to think that the atmosphere wiU
be always calm and the sea always smooth. And so the Government of Lidia goes on ; there are
promises without number of beneficial changes, but we never hear that India is much better or
worse than before. Now, that is not the way to do justice to a great empire like India. If there
had been a better Government in India, the late disturbances among your own troops would not
have happened ; and I own I tremble when I reflect that every post may bring us, in the present
temper of the European troops in India, some dire intelligence of acts which they may have
committed, because they may think that this is a convenient opportunity for pressing some great
claim of their own. I beg the committee to consider this matter, notwithstanding that the
right hon. gentleman is not disposed to take a gloomy view of the state of India. Look at your
responsibilities. India is ruled by Englishmen, but remember that in that unfortunate country you
have destroyed every form of government but your own ; that you have cast the thrones of
the natives to the ground. Princely families, once the rulers of India, are now either houseless
wanderers in the land they once caUed their own, or are pensioners on the bounty of those
strangers by whom their fortunes have been overthrown. They who were noble and gentle for
ages are now merged in the common mass of the people. All over those vast regions there are
countless millions, helpless and defenceless, deprived of their natural leaders and their ancient
chiefs, looking with only some smaU ray of hope to that omnipresent and irresistible Power by
which they have been subjected. I appeal to you on behalf of that people. I have besought
your mercy and your justice for many a year past ; and if I speak to you earnestly now, it
is because the object for which I plead is dear to my heart. Is it not possible to touch a chord
in the hearts of Englishmen, to raise them to a sense of the miseries inflicted on that unhappy
country by the crimes and the blunders of our rulers here P If you have steeled your hearts
against the natives, if nothing can stir you to sympathy with their miseries, at least have
pity upon your own countrymen. Rely upon it, the state of things which now exists in India
must, before long, become most serious. I hope that you wiU not show to the world that,
although your fathers conquered the country, you have not the ability to govern it. Tou
had better disencumber yourselves of the fatal gift of empire than that the present genera
tion should be punished for the sins of the past. I speak in condemnatory language, because I

AT HUDDERSFIELD. 215
beUeve it to be deserved. I hope that no future historian wiU have to say that the arms of
England in India were irresistible, and that an ancient empire fell before their victorious
progress-yet that finaUy India was avenged, because the power of her conqueror was broken
by the intolerable burdens and evils which she cast upon her victim, and that this wrong
was accompUshed by a waste of human life and a waste of wealth which England, with all her
power, was unable to bear."
The bill was carried by a majority, and received the approval of
the Lords.
On the 8th September, 1859, a banquet was held by the Liberals of
Huddersfield, to celebrate the return to Parliament of Mr. E. A. Leatham,
Mr. Bright's brother-in-law. Mr. M. Hall presided, and about 3,000
persons were present. Amongst the speakers was Mr. Bright, who
spoke on various subjects of public interest.
" After the Corn BiU was passed in 1846," remarked Mr. Bright, " you had almost immediately
the aboUtion of the monopoly of sugar, and the aboUtion of the laws which pretended to protect
the shipping of this country, but which interfered most materially with the commerce of the
nation. (Hear, hear.) WeU, now we are arrived at 1852, when there was a general election, as
you recoUect, on the. first occasion when Lord Derby came into office. WeU, what was the
majority when the new Parliament assembled ? Lord Derby was rejected from office ; turned
out by a vote of the House by a majority of exactly 19. That showed that the returns to the
House of Commons had been nearly balanced, and that ten members transferred from one side to
the other would have perpetuated for a time the Government of Lord Derby. WeU, come to the
next election, 1857, an election which many people in Huddersfield do not look back upon with
much satisfaction. (Hear, hear.) In 1857 there was a great cry for a particular statesman, and
many men were returned upon that cry, and, so far as numbers went, sitting on his side of the
House there was a considerable majority returned to Parliament. That statesman was not wise
enough to know how to properly use the majority which he had obtained — (hear, hear) — and
twelve months after, when he appeared to be seated on an immovable rock, he was overthrown
and his Ministry shattered to pieces. (Hear, hear.) WeU, then, we have had another general
election, under the auspices again of Lord Derby, and what has been the result P — that Lord Derby
required only six men and their votes — seven men, for six would not have done it, but seven would
— from our side of the House to have voted on his side to have given him a majority, which would
have enabled him, at least for a time, to have maintained himself in power. Now, I have gone
through this statement to show you that for many years past, whatever be the opinion of the
nation, of the people, that the opinion as it is extracted from your present constituencies gives no
certain majority in Parliament ; and your Government — be it the Government of Lord Derby or
the Government of Lord Palmerston, or under any other Ministry that the Queen may select —
that your Government is opposed by as many opponents as it can count friends, and therefore is
almost altogether unable, even if it were willing, to do those things which you, the Liberal people
of Huddersfield and of England, wish your Government to do. (Cheers.) Now the result of
this has been that for many years past there have been only what we call ' wasted sessions ' ot
ParUament. I am so distressed and so weary, and, I confess it, so disgusted, and at times so
hopeless, that I make up my mind not unfrequently — many times during a session — that I am a
fool above aU other fools for spending my time, my labour, my life, in that House of Commons ;

216 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
and that it is my duty to myself and my family to ask for the only office that possibly I may
ever hold, that is, the Steward of her Majesty's Chiltern Hundreds (laughter)— that I may take
myself from ParUament and refrain from labour in a field where there is no soil to grow anything
—(laughter)— upon which neither the showers fall nor does the sun ever shine with a power to
produce it, (Cheers.) AU that we have done of late years, as you know, has been to vote with
listless apathy miUions of money for which you have toUed. We have voted the spending of
scores of millions of money that ought under just and economical government to have
remained in your pockets. We have put taxes on and we have taken some off ; we have shifted
an uncomfortable burden from one shoulder to the other— (laughter)— but the burden remains—
(hear, hear)— it grows larger— (hear, hear)— and if you bear it at all, if you do not stagger and
faU beneath it, it is because your industry, your productiveness, your resolution, your patience,
surpass those of any otlier people in any other country in the world." (Cheers.)
So it would appear that the position of these two Prime Ministers
during their term of office was anything but profitable to the nation ; in
fact, they are very well described in Cowper's famous lines : —
" ExtoUed for standing still,
Or doing nothing with a deal of skill."
The members of the Liverpool Financial Eeform Association held a
soiree in their Philharmonic Hall on the 1st December. Mr. Charles
Eobertson occupied the chair. Mr. Cobden, who expected to have been
present, was at the time in France, and detained by ill health. Never
theless he was actively engaged negotiating a commercial treaty with
France. " The bow cannot possibly stand always bent, nor human
nature subsist without recreation." His labours were arduous and
persistent. At the soiree Mr. Bright delivered a lengthy speech, con
cluding thus : —
" Aristocracy entrenched within the citadel of power, and resting, it may be, on generations
of unchaUenged rule; monarchy itself , venerable with the wUling homage of a thousand years;
authority of every kind, must be shaken and wiU pass away, unless it be based upon the true
interests and commends itself to the consciences of the people. (Cheers.) I ask that the Par
Uament may be made the real representative of the property, the industry, and the intelUgence of
the nation — (cheers) — that we may be delivered, if possible, from the chaotic legislation — from
reckless expenditure, and from taxation oppressive, unequal, and unjust. (Cheers.) The
monopolists of power reject this demand with scorn. The day wiU come when it will be made in
a louder voice than mine — when this question will be grasped by a ruder hand than mine ; and
when it is so made, as was the case in 1832, that right wiU be surrendered amid terror and
humiUation for which reason and justice now plead in vain." (Enthusiastic cheers.)
A Eeform Conference was held at the Guildhall Coffee-House, London,
on the 7th of December, to consider the position of the Eeform question.

THE PAPER DUTY. 217
A resolution was unanimously passed thanking Mr. Bright for his
labours in connection with Parliamentary Eeform, and highly approving
of his bill upon the subject. Another resolution was carried, declaring
that " no measure will be regarded as a settlement which does not include
a large extension of the suffrage both in counties and boroughs, an
equitable distribution of seats in proportion to the population and
property of the constituencies, an assimilation of the electoral laws of
England, Scotland, and Ireland, the repeal of the Septennial Act, and
the ballot." Mr. Bright said :—
" I shaU only say if an opportunity comes — and I hope it may not come, because to suppose
it would be to suppose the failure of the Government — I shall be prepared to introduce the bill of
which you have already heard so much, and which is now in so perfect a state that it could be
brought in any night, and which Parliament shall have an opportunity of fairly discussing, if they
are not ready in the coming year to make the concession to be offered by the Government in
that direction in which we are aU tending." (Hear hear, and cheers.)
Mr. Gladstone in his budget of 1860 proposed the repeal of the
paper-duty, which was a subject Mr. Bright and Mr. Milner Gibson had
taken a great interest in advocating for years. Sir Stafford ISTorthcote,
on the third reading, moved a hostile motion, and the bill was carried by
only nine of a majority. The House of Lords rejected it, and it was
contended that as it involved matters of taxation they had no precedent
for doing so. On the 25th of May, Mr. Gladstone moved for a Com
mittee of Inquiry to report upon the subject. The Committee was
ultimately appointed, and it was found that the House of Lords had
infringed the usages of the Commons. Lord Palmerston, however,
advised the Commons to be satisfied with a mere declaration of their
constitutional privileges. Mr. Bright spoke several times on the point
in dispute, and in one speech he said : —
"Is there anybody who has denied in point-blank terms except the right hon. gentleman that
the House of Lords, in the course it has taken, has violated— I wiU not say the privileges of this
House, for privUege is a word not easUy defined— but has broken in upon usages of many cent
uries' standing— usages which our predecessors in this House have acknowledged to be of the
utmost importance to our own powers and to the liberties of those whom we represent P If there
was nothing wrong, then why was there a committee ? The right hon. gentleman the member for
Bucks neglected to answer that question. He made no opposition at the time ; but three weeks
afterwards he thinks that it would have been better if the committee had not been appomted. I

218 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
will, however, undertake to affirm that when the noble viscount proposed that committee every
member of this House thought the proposition a reasonable one. Why did we ransack the
journals unless something had happened which jarred upon every man's sense of the rights and
privileges of this House and the usages of the House of Lords P And why, having this com
mittee and instituting these researches, have we these resolutions moved, not by a young,
inexperienced, and unknown member — if any such there be in the House of Commons — but by one
of the oldest members of this House, one of the ablest statesmen of the day, and at this
moment the chief Minister of the Crown ? Surely every one will admit that the circumstances
were such as to justify the course that was taken in appointing the committee. . . . Then we
come to 1640, when the House of Lords were much more modest than they ought to have been,
according to the right hon. gentleman, who maintains that they ought to check, alter, amend,
improve, and if necessary overthrow, all the financial arrangements of the year that this House
may agree to. The declaration of 1640 set forth that the Lords stated at the conference that —
' My Lords would not meddle with matters of subsidy, which belong naturaUy and properly to
you — no, not to give you advice therein, but have utterly declined it.' Then the House of Lords
in 1640, we are asked to suppose, knew nothing of their constitutional rights, and the House of
Commons of that day were less able than they are at present to judge of what is necessary for
the performance of their proper functions in the State, and for the liberties of those whom they
represent. Mr. Pym told their lordships that they had not only meddled with matters of supply,
but that they had ' both concluded the matter and order of proceeding, which the House of
Commons takes to be a breach of their privilege, for which I was commanded to desire reparation
from your lordships.' The Lords made reparation by declaring that they did not know they were
breaking a right of the Commons in merely suggesting that supply should have precedence over
the consideration of grievances. I am not sure that even now, notwithstanding what has been
said, the House of Lords have ever admitted by any resolution that they have not the power to
originate suppUes. They have not the power, of course, to carry such a bill, because if it came
to this House it would fall down dead, unless that unhappy time should come when the theories
of the right hon. gentleman the member for Stroud are carried out. Then comes the question of
Amendments. The Lords endeavoured to amend a bill of supply. I do not wonder that they
did so, because the theories of the right hon. gentleman must have been palatable tea good many
of them. In 1671 it was proposed not to continue a tax, but to reduce a tax — the duty on white
sugar. The Lords proposed to reduce the duty from one penny per pound to five-eighths of a
penny, and the House of Commons came to a resolution that ' in aU aids given to the King by
the Commons the rate or tax ought not to be altered by the Lords.' A conference was held with
the House of Lords, and the House of Commons then declared that the right which they claimed
'was a fundamental right, both as to the matter, the measure, and the time.' Then, what followed
in the House of Lords ? They replied by the very same resolution which the House of Commons
had passed in its own favour. The resolution they passed asserting their power to make amend
ments was just as strong, and in the same words as the resolution which had been passed in a
contrary sense by this House. They said, with reason, 'for if they cannot amend, or abate, or
revise a bill in Parliament '—they said this, mind, in answer to the Commons, who declared
that they could not amend, but might negative the whole— they said, ' if we cannot amend, or
abate, or alter in part, by what consequence of reason cau we enjoy the liberty to reject the
whole ? ' The right hon. gentleman the member for the University of Dublin last night showed
himself a most unhappy critic. He caUed our attention to the condition of things in the United
States. In fact, he proved himself— only he did not exactly understand what he was saying
—he showed himself to be strongly in favour of Americanising our institutions in one respect.
He said the Senate of the United States has the power not only of rejecting
but of amending— which is quite true. When the founders of the American Republic were

CONTESTS BETWEEN THE LORDS' AND COMMONS. 219
binding together the thirteen sovereign States in one great — and to be stiU greater 
combination, they looked back naturaUy to the practice of the country from which they
were separating, to determine, or at least to learn, something from our Parliamentary practice.
They found that in England the Lords could not begin Money Bills, could not alter or amend
them ; but that theoreticaUy— because the matter had never been decided— theoretically they had
power to reject. But, then, what was the conclusion which they came to P They said the very
same thing that the House of Lords had said in the year 1671—' It is perfectly chUdish to say
that the House of Lords cannot alter, abate, or increase, but yet shall be able to reject.' They
knew well that, although there was that theoretical right in England, yet, practically, it had never
been enforced, and they came to the conclusion that if they should give to their own Senate
power to reject, it would be necessary also to give them the power to amend ; and at this
very moment the Senate of the United States might, not with that sort of responsibUity of which
the right hon. gentleman is so fond, but with a real responsibility, every two members being
the representatives of a particular sovereign State — that elected Senate does amend, and does
reject, and does deal with finance in a manner which has never been permitted nor even
proposed in this country, except in the extraordinary speech to which we have just listened.
Seven years after the last date to which I have referred there arose another contest, in the
course of which a resolution was passed. It is the strongest and most comprehensive resolution
that the House of Commons has ever passed in relation to this subject. I wiU not go into any
elaborate argument upon it, but I wiU just read it, because it makes the argument I am about to
bring before the House more continuous and clear. The House of Commons declared this ; and
it was not one of those sudden acts which the House of Commons is now alleged to con-
tinnaUy commit; but it was a resolution drawn up by a committee specially appointed for
that purpose — a resolution specially considered and solemnly entered in the journals of the
House. It was in these words : — ' All Aids and Supplies, and Aids to His Majesty from
Parliament, are the sole gifts of the Commons, and all Bills for granting such Aids and Supplies
are to begin with the Commons ; and it is the undoubted and sole right of the Commons to
direct, Umit, and appoint in such Bills the ends, purposes, considerations, conditions, limitations,
and qualifications of such grants, which ought not be changed or altered by the House of Lords.'
At this time, when the Lords had never pretended to reject a bill, it is probable that such a
proposition was a thing that never entered into the head of any member of the House of Peers.
I wiU undertake to say it would be difficult for any member of this House to draw up a resolu
tion more comprehensive and conclusive as to the absolute control of the House of Commons than
that of the year 1678, which I have just now read. Shortly afterwards, in the year 1691, there is
another resolution which goes minutely to the case before the House, and I beg the right hon.
gentleman's attention to it. In that year a biU was passed for appointing commissioners to
examine the public accounts of the kingdom. The House of Lords amended, the House
of Commons dissented ; and among the reasons which the House of Commons gave was this —
' That in aids, and suppUes, and grants, the Commons only do judge of the necessities of the
Crown.' What are we asked now ? We are asked to take into partnership another judge of the
necessities of the Crown. The House of Commons which for five hundred years — which since
the Revolution at least — has never withheld adequate supplies from the Crown, is now to be
depreciated and defamed, as if it had been giulty of scantily supplying the wants of the Crown ;
and the House of Lords is to be asked to do that which the House of Commons alone did
in 1691, namely, to judge of the necessities of the Crown, and to make the supply greater
than that which the House of Commons has beUeved to be sufficient. And, referring to
that famous record of Henry the Fourth, we find it stated there that ' aU grants and aids
are made by the Commons, and are only assented to by the Lords.' A few years after
wards, our forefathers were concerned in a question about the paper duties, just as we are

220 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
at this time; only they managed it better than we are doing now. In the year 1699 they
declared: — 'It is an undoubted right and privUege of the Commons that such aids are to
be given by such methods, and with such provisions, as the Commons only shall think
proper.' But now we are told that aids and provisions for the Crown are to be raised by
methods, not which the Commons think proper, but which the Lords think proper in oppo
sition to the Commons. The House wiU perceive that I am very hoarse, and I am sorry to
trouble them with other cases. In the year 1700 there was another question raised between
the two Houses : and the Commons told the Lords that they could not agree with their
amendment, and they again affirmed that ' All the Aids and SuppUes granted to His Majesty
in Parliament are the sole and entire gift of the Commons ; and that it is the sole and
undoubted right of the Commons to direct, limit, and appoint the ends, purposes, considerations,
limitations, and qualifications of such grants.' And in 1702 there was another statement that
' the granting and disposing of aU public moneys is the undoubted right of the Commons alone.'
In the year 1719 they objected to a clause which the Lords had introduced, on the ground that
it levied a new subsidy not granted by the Commons, ' which is the undoubted and sole right of
the Commons to grant, and from which they wiU never depart.' I want to ask the House, or
any reasonable man, if we were discussing this question between the American Senate and the
House of Representatives, or between the two Chambers of any foreign country, to what
conclusion would each one of us necessarily come as to the purpose and object of aU these
declarations to which I have referred, and which are only a portion of those which are to be
found in the journals of this House for the last five hundred years P Would you say that they
lead to the conclusion that the House of Lords could throw out a bUl repealing a tax of the
value and magnitude of £1,300,000 a year? Would you say that if they could not abate a
tax, or continue a tax, or Umit a tax, or dispose of a tax, or control in any way a tax, or
even give advice to the Commons in respect of a tax — could you say that notwithstanding
aU that which is clear and undeniable they could, in the face of this House, reject a biU
which repealed a tax of £1,300,000 a-year without violating Parliamentary usage and running
contrary to aU the declarations of this House for many centuries ? I think — and I put it before
the Committee — and if any hon. gentleman has done me the honour to read the draft report
which I prepared, he will see that I put before the committee this long string of cases
and resolutions and declarations, couched in language not ambiguous, not feeble, but in
language clear and forcible, which could not be mistaken; and then I wished to ask the
Committee— as I now ask the House— what was the end and object which the House
of Commons had in view in these repeated declarations of their rights and opinions
touching the granting of supplies, and the imposition of taxes upon the people?
I should say that it was this — they confirm and consecrate a practice of five
hundred years, the principle which tUl within the last hour I thought every
man in England admitted— the fundamental and unchangeable principle of the Government and
Constitution of the English people that taxation and representation are inseparable in this
kingdom. Let us look and see how these declarations and resolutions apply to this case. We
are now in the year 1860, and for a long period we have had no question of importance of this
nature ; and we begin to fancy that, after all, there is no great importance in such a question.
We have long had our personal liberties in this country— longer almost, in some classes of society,
than history can tell ; but people perhaps fancy that their personal liberty cannot be endangered
by this matter. No ; in this case we were so confident of our right and our power that we could
not comprehend any infringement of our rights. These paper-duties, I believe, were granted in
the reign of Queen Anne, partly for revenue and partly for other purposes, which purposes, I
presume, had some effect in procuring the rejection of this biU by the Lords. It was a tax to
prevent the pubUcation and spread of political information. I see an hon. gentleman up there in

EXCISE DUTIES. 221
the gaUery who is very much astonished at this ; but he is not aware, probably, that all which I
have stated is, if I am not misinformed, in the preamble of the bill. Public opinion in those days
aUowed of very bad reasons being given. They can be acted on now even when they are not
given. From the time of Queen Anne to the present time, this paper-duty has crippled a very
important industry. It has taxed aU the trades which required large quantities of paper — such
as those of Manchester, of Sheffield, of Nottingham, of Birmingham, and elsewhere ; but more
than that, it has very successfully done what Queen Anne's ministers wanted — it has threatened,
and to a large extent it has strangled, the press of this country. Within the last thirty years —
and hon. members on the opposite side of the House, I presume, by this time are becoming conscious
of it — new principles have become established in this country with regard to taxation on industry.
New and wiser principles have been adopted, and not only adopted but established ; and there are
some very powerful defenders of these new principles whom I have the pleasure to see opposite
me to-night. The right hon. gentleman the member for Stroud has proceeded on the old mode of
discussion when arguments are not plentiful and facts are entirely wanting. He has raised his old
friend the hobgobUn argument, and has tried to show us that some frightful calamity must come
upon us if this paper-duty be repealed — it is but a million and a quarter. Does any hon. gentle
man beUeve that our prosperity or success — or that any vast interest of this country — can possibly
depend on a million, more or less, in the general revenue of the empire ? A million is a mUlion.
(Hear.) I am glad to have said something in which the hon. gentleman the member for Leicester.
shire can coincide. There is no member who has laid more stress on the importance of a million
in the taxation of the people than I have done ; it is the tax of many vUlages, of many towns ;
and it makes the difference sometimes between comfort and desolation ; and therefore I am the
last person who would undervalue the amount of a nrilUon of the public revenue. But still I
should be only making myself foolish if I were to say that a miUion sterling — whether our taxa
tion be £50,000,000 as it was twenty years ago, or £70,000,000 as it is now— was of the gigantic
importance attributed to it by the right hon. gentleman ; for on this mUlion, which we had pro
vided a substitute for before we relieved the people of that miUion, he founds his argument as to
our recklessness, precipitancy, and madness, and drunkenness I think he added— at least it was
to be inferred from what he said, for he made use of the converse, and spoke of sobriety. The
noble lord the member for the City of London in his speech last night reviewed the course of
events, and told us what we aU knew, that within the recollection, I suppose, of almost the
youngest member of the House there have been excise duties on many other articles— I think, at
one time, on candles ; certainly at a later period on leather ; I beUeve, since I came into the House,
on glass ; and stUl more recently on soap. WeU, all these excise duties have been abolished. Can
you find a man from John o'Groat's to Land's End who wiU not teU you that these reckless
principles, applied to the repeal of these excise duties, were not of essential benefit, not only to
the particular trades most interested, but to the great mass of the people, and to the industry by
which your people live ? Well, then, having followed for many years a course so beneficial, we
come at length, in the year 1860, to the repeal of the paper-duty, which was promised by the
House ; which was recommended by the Government officers ; which was called for by innume-
. rable petitions ; which was hoped for, I beUeve, by every person in the country who took an
intelUgent view of what was essential to aid the efforts which Government are making, by liberal
grants every year, to promote the instruction of the people. This tax was £1,300,000. It was a
question whether sugar should be relieved to the extent of a miUion, tea of a million, or paper of
a miUion ; I am speaking in round numbers. The hon. gentleman, not caring in the least about
this reckless deficit, would evidently have preferred sugar or tea; but surely, as regards the
question of the supplies of the year, it was equaUy a matter of indifference to the ChanceUor of
the Exchequer whether the duty were taken off tea, or sugar, or paper. But the conclusion to
whieh he necessarily came was, that while in the cases of tea and sugar the relief was to the extent

222 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
of a milUon of taxation, in the case of paper it was not only a relief to that amount in money, but
it was a relief to a great industry, and to several other industries, whose prosperity must depend
on an abundant and cheap supply of paper. I speak with some knowledge of the subject, and I
have not the least doubt that the abolition of the paper-duty was a positive relief to the whole people
of the country, equal to double the relief which would have been afforded by a reduction equal in
amount to the duty on the articles of tea and sugar. But the question may be stUl more narrowed ;
and I beg the right hon. gentleman's particular attention — for it appears now that his hostility
to the Chancellor of the Exchequer renders him unable to understand the multiplication table, or
anything else that is plain. If the paper-duty expired on the 15th of August, the reduction of
revenue between that time and the end of the financial year would probably not be more than
£600,000, but certainly would not exceed £700,000. I am sorry the House did not take
more economical advice in past years. But we have now come, according to the right hon. gentle
man, to this extremity of our resources, that you cannot take £700,000 this year from an excise '
which is strangling a great trade, and put an additional halfpenny or penny on the income-tax,
without bringing about such a frightful state of things that the Constitution itself and the usage
of Parliament must be violated, and we must bring in a foreign power to check us in our pre
cipitous, reckless, and headlong career. It may be very far from the modesty which becomes a
¦member of this House, but I confess I am of opinion that the House of Commons is the best judge
in this country of what is necessary for the trade, and also what is required by the financial
condition of the country. First of aU, there are among us a good many sagacious men
of all sorts. There are, as I know, some very sagacious landowners. We found it very
hard to beat them, even when they had a very bad case. We have a very sagacious
gentleman down here who spoke to-night, and who, whatever be the question which comes before
us, always finds some very fitting object for his mercUess and unscrupulous vituperation. We
know, many of us intimately, all the details connected with these questions ; in fact I suppose
there is not a trade in this country of any importance or note that cannot find its representatives
in this House. For many years past wo have, had the absolute control of questions of finance,
and I undertake to declare, notwithstanding what the right hon. gentleman has stated, that there
is not a representative body in the world which during the last twenty years has done more in the
way of financial and fiscal reforms with greater advantage to the people. And yet, at the end of
that period, when the triumphs of this House are to be found, not in granite and bronze monu
ments, but in the added comforts of the population and in the increased and undoubted loyalty
of the people, you are now, forsooth, asked by the right hon. gentleman to abdicate your functions,
and to invite 400 gentlemen, who are not traders, who have never been financiers, who do not
possess means in any degree equalUng your own of understanding the question — you are to ask
them to join your councUs, and not only to advise, but to check, and even to control. It is one
of the points which gave me most grief in regard to this question, that I have seen the House of
Lords taking, of all cases, perhaps the worst that could possibly come before them, and inflicting
suddenly, unexpectedly, and, in my opinion, groundlessly, most harsh and cruel treatment on aU
the persons who were interested directly in this question of the paper-excise. We are asked now,
in terms not ambiguous, to overthrow the fabric which has grown up in this country, which has
existed, and existed without damage, for at least 500 years. By the report of the right hon.
gentleman we find that as far back as the year 1640 the House of Commons made this declaration,
to which I ask the particular attention of members of the present House. They said :  ' We have
had uninterrupted possession of this privilege ' (the privilege of the undisputed control over the
taxation and finances of the country) ' ever since the year 1407, confirmed by a multitude of
precedents both before and after, not shaken by one precedent for these 300 years.' If that be
so, it carries us back for a period of 520 years ; and yet we are asked to-night, in the most
unblushing and audacious manner, to overthrow this magnificent and time-honoured fabric, and

THE LORDS AND THE COMMONS. 223
admit to powers to which they have hitherto been unaccustomed the hereditary branch of the
Legislature. Now, I say that the House of Lords in the course they have taken have committed
two offences, which I had much rather they had not committed, because I am not anxious that
they should depreciate themselves in the eyes of the people of this country. (A laugh.) If hon.
gentlemen opposite were as anxious that they should continue Umited to their proper functions,
doing aU the good that it is possible for them to do, and as little harm as possible, they would not
laugh with an apparent unbelief in what I have just stated. I say the House of Lords has not
behaved even with fair honour towards the House of Commons in this matter. Every man of
them who knew anything about what he was voting for knew that the House of Commons repealed
the paper-excise, not merely because it wished to remit a miUion of taxes, but because it thought
that to strangle a great industry was an injurious mode of raising revenue, and therefore it
transferred that amount of taxation from the paper-excise to the income-tax. Then, I say if
that were known in the House of Lords, although they might have disapproved of the change, and
might have thought it better if it had not been made, it was not an honourable treatment of this
House ; and further, if they had the power which the American Senate has, and which the right
hon. and learned gentleman wishes them to have, stiU it would not have been fair to this House to
enact the additional penny on income, and to refuse to repeal the tax on paper. That is a
question which every man can understand ; and I cannot believe that there is any member of this
House who does not comprehend it when put in that shape. But there is another thing in which
the House of Lords has done wrong. It has trampled on the confidence and taken advantage
of the faith of the House of Commons. The right hon. gentleman last night made a very
curious statement on this subject, which, if I were a member of the House of Lords, I should be
disposed to find fault with. He said : — ' Why, what can you expect P It was the laches of the
House of Commons that gave the House of Lords the opportunity of doing what they have done.'
But, surely, if for 500 years the House of Lords has never done this — if since the Revolution,
even with the search into precedents made by the committee, not a single case which approaches
this can be discovered — is the House of Commons blameable for thinking that it was at least
dealing with a House which would abide by the usages of the Constitution, and would not take
advantage of the change which the House of Commons made for the public interest in the mode
of imposing taxation ? Instead of certain taxes being imposed annuaUy, or for short periods, by
which the House held a constant control over them, they were made permanent. The West India
interest said they did not want their trade to be troubled and disturbed every year ; and the sugar
duties were made perpetual. But then are we always to treat the Lords as political burglars, and
invent bolts, bars, locks, everything which may keep them from a possible encroachment on our rights P
Must we treat them as men who, if you give them the smaUest opportunity, will come down upon you
and do that which you wish them not to do? If that be so, you must assuredly take certain pre
cautions to prevent them from continuing such a course. It is said that the Paper Duty Abolition
BiU was thrown out in the Upper House by a great majority. That is a fact with which we are
aU weU acquainted. I was talking recently to a peer who gave an explanation of this, which
I will venture to repeat. ' If,' he said, ' the regular House of Lords, that is to say, the hundred
members who during the session reaUy do transact the .business, if they only had been in the House,
the Paper Duties Repeal BiU would certainly have passed.' That, however, happened which we
aU understand, and I have no objection to repeat the exact words used to me. ' About two
hundred members, who hardly ever come there, were let loose for the occasion.' Most of them are
unknown to the country as politicians, and they voted out this bill by a large majority, with a
chuckle, thinking that by doing so they were making a violent attack on the Ministry, and
especially on the Chancellor of the Exchequer. That is a House, recoUect, in which three
members form a quorum. I sometimes hear complaints in this House that ministers pass
measures very late at night, when, perhaps, only fifty members are present, of whom thirty are

224 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
connected with the Government ; but in the House of Lords three form a quorum. Proxies may
be used too ; and these three peers forming a quorum, with proxies in their pockets, are to dispose
of great questions involving £70,000,000 of taxes raised from the industry of the people of this
country. At all events, if the two hundred peers who voted that night choose to come down on
other occasions, there is no single measure of finance, however liberal or however much for the
advantage of the people, that they would not reject, and thus frustrate the beneficial intentions of
this House. But after all I have said I am going to make this admission, that the Lords of course
can reject a biU, and can also initiate a bill if they like. If it were not so late (and the Lords like
to get away about seven) — if it were not so late, the Lords might to-night bringin a bUl levyinga tax
or voting money for the service of the year, and they can also reject any biU you may send up
to them. They are omnipotent within the four waUs of their House, just as we are within the
four walls of this House. But if they take their course, one contrary to the general practice
of that House and of Parliament, it becomes us to consider what course we wUl take. We
cannot compel them to make any change ; but we may ourselves take any course that we please,
and we may at least offer them the opportunity of altering the course they have taken. My
opinion is that it would have been consonant with the dignity of this House, wholly apart from
the question of £1,300,000 a-year, or of £700,000, the sum for this year, to have passed another
bill to repeal the paper-duty. If that had been a duty which I considered not the best to
repeal, I stiU should have laid aside aU partiality for a particular tax. The question before us
is of far more importance than the maintenance or abolition of any particular tax. There can
be nothing more perilous to the country, or more fatal to the future character of this House,
than that we should do anything to impair and lessen the powers we have received from our
predecessors. I understand there are other sums amounting to about ,£1,500,000 or £2,000,000
which have yet to go up to the House of Lords. Now, if the noble lord at the head of the
Government, acting up to his position, which I think he has failed to do in this matter, had
asked us, not on the ground (for that is a low ground) that the paper-duty was the best duty
to repeal, but on the ground that as the House of Commons have come to that decision they
should abide by it ; but if he had asked us to pass another biU, with an altered date, perhaps,
and sent it up again to the House of Lords, he would have given them the opportunity of
reconsidering their decision ; and my fuU beUef is that a course like this, taken without passion
and without collision, would have been met in a proper temper by that House ; this difficulty
would have been got over, and in aU probability both Houses for the future would have pro
ceeded more regularly and easily than they are Ukely to do under the plan proposed by the
noble lord. Having stated that I shaU leave the questions of these resolutions, I say there is
no reason whatever in the arguments which have been used why this duty should have been
maintained, or why it was perilous to remit it. Its repeal was consistent with the policy of
the Whigs before Sir Robert Peel came into power, with the policy of Sir Robert Peel's
Government, of Lord Derby's Government, of Lord John Russell's Government, of Lord
Aberdeen's Government, of Lord Palmerston's Government, of Lord Derby's last Government,
and of the existing Government. The policy of the repeal of the paper-duty is the recognised
poUcy of this House, and it is the admitted interest of this country. Then why, unless it
be for a party triumph, unless it be to attack a particular Minister, why is this question of
£700,000 this year, and less than double that sum in future years, raised to an importance which
does not belong to it P And why, for the sake of a party triumph, are the great interests connected
with it to be damaged and tortured, as they now are, by the action of one House of Parliament?
... I fear this session may, as a consequence, become memorable as that in which, for the first
time, the Commons of England have surrendered a right which for five hundred years they had
maintained unimpaired. I at least, and those who act with me, will be clear from any partici
pation in this ; we shall be free from the shame which must indelibly attach to the chief actors

CORRUPT PRACTICES. 225
in these proceedings. I protested against the order of reference which the noble lord proposed,
though I sat and laboured on the committee with earnest fidelity on behalf of the House of
Commons. I have felt it an honour to sit in this House up to this time, and I hope that here
after the character of this House will not be impaired by the course which is about to be taken.
I have endeavoured to show to my countrymen what I consider to be almost, the treason which
is about to be committed against them. I have refused to dishonour the memory of such
members as Coke and Selden, and Glanville and Pym ; and if defeated in this struggle, I shall
have this consolation : that I have done all I can to maintain the honour of this House, and that
I have not sacrificed the interests which my constituents committed to my care."
The duty, however, this session was not repealed, and indignation
at the conduct of the Lords was expressed throughout the country.
Complaints were made to the House on the 26th of January that
at the previous election, in the city of Gloucester and the borough of
Wakefield, corruption had prevailed. Mr. Bright took notice of these
complaints, and made the following remarks upon the matter : —
" In the borough in which I happen to reside an election took place
in 1835, or 1837 I think it was, and upon that occasion — honourable
gentlemen opposite may perhaps suppose that I am not speaking
impartially in saying so — there was a very profuse expenditure of
money on the part of the Conservative candidate, while upon our
side, on the day of polling and nomination, there was a good deal
which I could not deem right ; not exactly in giving bribes, but in
keeping open the public houses in the town. Fortunately for us, how
ever, our candidate was defeated, and after the election was over a
meeting was held, at which a considerable number of the influential
members of the Liberal party in the borough were present, and we then
pledged ourselves to a resolution under no circumstances whatever to
take part in an election, or to invite any gentleman to come into the
town for the purpose of being a candidate at an election, which was to
be conducted upon any other principles than those which were strictly
legal and moral. I recollect myself having said at that meeting, ' You
may bring forward any candidate you like, but I for one will never go
across the street again to assist any man unless an agreement is entered
into, that not one shilling will be laid out in the contest the expenditure
of which will not bear the test of being scrutinised by Parliament and
the country.' The result was most satisfactory, and I am strongly of
40

226 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
opinion that if a dozen, or even half-a-dozen, of the leading men belong
ing to either political party would come forward in Wakefield or
Gloucester, or any other borough, and adopt a similar resolution, the
corruption of which we complain would soon cease to exist."
Mr. Bright was present at the annual meeting of the Lancashire
Eeformers' Union, held in the Free-trade Hall, Manchester, on the 20th
of January, 1860. Mr. G. Wilson presided, and Mr. Bazley, M.P., Mr.
E. N. Phillips, Mr. T. B. Potter, and Mr. Alderman Eylands addressed
the meeting. Mr. Bright, commenting on a speech delivered by Lord
Normanby, in 1793, to the effect that great progressive internal measures
were thwarted by the propagation of a fear of the French, said : —
" Now, let us be careful that we are not led away by snch fear in this day. France was
made the raw-hcad-and-bloody-bones of that day, and this was successful in turning the people
from the consideration of their own affairs. Let us be careful that it has no such effect in our
day. Everybody who has heard me wUl bear me out in this, that I have never stepped out of
my way to speak in complimentary or defamatory terms of the present ruler of France. I
have left to him and the people over whom he rules all matters appertaining to France alone ;
but when I see the measures which are being taken — happily frustrated just now— (loud cheers)
— when 1 see the measures being taken, the exact counterpart policy of 1793, I wish for a
moment to dwell on this point. If there be any man who complains of the steps by which Louis
Napoleon became ruler of France, no man has a right now to quarrel with him on that point, for
he was congratulated by the then Foreign Minister, now Prime Minister, of this country, almost
immediately after, and when he came to England he was received witli every demonstration of
amity by the sovereign and of enthusiasm by the people. When we entered into a war with
a country which was distracted by factions, having an imbecile Foreign Office, he gave you
every assistance in the prosecution of that war, out of which you could not have well come
without his assistance. Afterwards what took place P The rjapers were suggesting changes in
the Government of Italy, and especially of Naples, and the English and French Governments
withdrew their ambassadors. At that time, judging by the tone of the press, what was the
French Government to conclude ?— that the English people were ready to assist them, or that
if they did not require or get help from England, that at any rate they would not be opposed by
England. Well, the war with Austria commenced, and we were first blaming the French ruler
for commencing it, afterwards the same people were just as loud in blaming him that it was
not carried on much longer. What was the result ? I put aside the agony and the bloodshed —
when men talk about war they always put that aside, especially those in favour of war, which I
am not. (Applause.) What are the results of that war ? Tou have Lombardy delivered from
Austria, and some provinces under dukes and duchesses, and one under the dominion of the
Papal power, forming themselves into one State, anxious to be united to Sardinia. Looking at
these things, and all that has taken place since, I say that' Louis Napoleon has shown by aU he
has done, judging of it by what appears in the papers and what one knows besides, he has done
aU he can to accommodate his policy to that of England. Whether it be in Italy, where you
sympathise with freedom, or in the distant empire of China, where you have no right to be as a
Power cairying on war— (hear, hear)— whether in the right in Europe or in the wrong in China,

THE COMMERCIAL TREATY WITH FRANCE. 227
you find the policy of the French Government most anxious to square itself with the policy of
England. . . . And now, after all these alarms, after all these sulphurous leading articles,
after aU those specimens of wretched oratory poured out by speakers at rifle meetings, after a
succession of stimulating letters from the Secretary of War, and hints that you don't know what
that man over the water is going to do — (laughter) — after all these things, the man over the
water is receiving one of your citizens — (Mr. Cobden) — (loud cheers, the whole assembly rising)
— discussing the great questions of commerce and peace — not matters about which your diplo
matists generally concern themselves — receiving information, considering what would be advan
tageous to the great nation over which he rules, what would be advantageous to the world of
which France and England form so great a part ; and you find him propounding, in a letter
which deserves to be written in letters of gold, a new commercial policy for France. (Applause.)
I venture to say that for centuries to come, if the policy marked out be adopted, a blessed renown
wiU attach to the name of the Third Napoleon which wiU eclipse all that sanguinary glory which
encircles the name of the first of the dynasty." (Here the meeting rose and vociferously
cheered.) In February, 1860, Mr. Cobden completed the commercial treaty
with France, and Mr. Gladstone, in introducing his budget on the 10th
of the same month embodying the provisions of the treaty, said : —
" Sir, I cannot pass from the subject of the French treaty without paying a tribute of respect
to two persons, at least, who have been the main authors of it. I am bound to bear this witness >
at any rate with regard to the Emperor of the French — that he has given the most unequivocal
proofs of sincerity and earnestness in the progress of this great work — a work which he has
prosecuted with clear-sighted resolution, not, doubtless, for British purposes, but in the spirit of
enlightened patriotism, with a view to commercial reforms at home and to the advantage and
happiness of his own people. With regard to Mr. Cobden, speaking as I do at a time when every
angry passion has passed away, I cannot help expressing our obliga'ions to him for the labour he
has, at no smaU personal sacrifice, bestowed upon a measure which he, not the least among the
apostles of Free Trade, believes to be one of the greatest triumphs Free Trade has ever achieved.
Rare is the privilege of any man, who, having fourteen years ago rendered to his country one
signal and splendid service, now again, within the same brief span of life, decorated neither by
rank nor title, bearing no mark to distinguish him from the people whom he serves, has been per
mitted again to perform a great and memorable service to his Sovereign and to his country."
Mr. Bright took part in the adjourned debate upon the budget on the
23rd of February, and, in alluding to the treaty with France, gave his
hearers a few particular reasons for having a liking for it.
" It had been the object ofhis most ardent wishes, and it was now the object of his most
cherished affections. Not longer ago than the previous July they had a discussion in the House
upon the subject of the financial policy of Lord Derby's Government, which had been introduced by
a very remarkable speech from Mr. DisraeU. On that occasion Mr. Bright claimed Mr. Disraeli
as a convert to the opinions long held by Mr. Cobden and himself. On that occasion he took the
Uberty of urging Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston to attempt, if possible, to come to
some arrangement with France, so that those two great nations would be united together in the
bonds of common interest by the exchange of their productions. About a week after, a correspon
dence was commenced between distinguished persons in France and Mr. Cobden, with a view of

228

LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.

discussing the possibility of carrying out the proposition he had suggested. The House, there
fore, would excuse him for feeling more than ordinary interest in the course which had been
taken, and for feeling more satisfaction than he could express that the Government had been able,
bytheliberaUtyof the French Government, to come to an arrangement for the good of both
countries, the extent of which it was absolutely impossible for any of them to calculate. He
thought Mr. Disraeli did not behave with the frankness which he ought to have done in dis
cussing the question of this treaty. Mr. Disraeli had described Mr. Cobden as a secret negotiator,
as if there were something not perfectly honourable and creditable iu the course which the member
for Rochdale had taken. He reminded the member for Buckinghamshire that negotiations
between nations were not, so far as his reading enabled him to judge, conducted in the market
places. It was most desirable that these negotiations should, until they came to their final con-
elusion, be to a considerable extent unknown to the world. But if this negotiation was secret it
was at least successful, because he thought never was a treaty of equal magnitude, involving
such vast interests, promising such great results, begun, continued, and ended within the same
space of time as this treaty by his hon. friend. Mr. Gladstone had spoken in much more grace
ful language of Mr. Cobden. The Chancellor of the Exchequer felt as he did, and he would
undertake to say, as the great majority of the people of this country felt. Mr. Gladstone spoke of
Mr. Cobden as a benefactor to his country, though underrated and unrewarded. The member
for Rochdale was undecorated so far as those stars and crosses went, which in the history of the
world, he, thought, had been earned as often by baseness as by merit. But Mr. Cobden was
honoured by the confidence of two Governments, and he possessed the affections of the great body
of the people of this country ; and as for his reward, he was rich in the consciousness that his
public life had been devoted to the public good; and in whatever part of the world was to be found
intelligent humanity there were hearts that were ready to bless the benefits of the labour in which
he had been employed. When Sir Robert Peel came into office there was a deficit of £2,500,000 for
the past year and the coming year, yet he reduced the duties of customs on 750 articles, by which
he lost £270,000. Sir Robert reduced the duty on coffee, by which he lost for a time
£170,000; he reduced the duty on timber, by which he lost for the time £600,000; he
reduced the duty on stage-coaches, by which he lost £100,000, and he abolished export duties to
the amount of £70,000 ; altogether being an amount of reduction almost precisely that which was
caused by the commercial treaty with France, and he made the chasm which was represented by
£2,500,000 into one represented by £3,700,000. That was the course their present Chancellor of
the Exchequer was taking. Sir Robert Peel," added Mr. Bright, " proposed it, with an amount of
apology and apparent fear, which when we read it at this moment is laughable, showing he knew
the material that sat behind him — he knew the party he was leading, and he travelled with them
on at a snail's pace for an hour and a-half by the clock before he brought them to this perUous
avowal : that they were to be asked to endure au income-tax of 7d. in the pound. At that time Sir
Robert Peel knew that the income-tax was so unpalatable to the great owners of property who
had been our legislators that he proposed it only for a very short period, but I am not sure
he thought that period would see its termination. He proposed it in a manner, too, that
was by no means just, because I believe that he felt that a just income-tax at that time, even
with his great majority, would hardly have been passed through Parliament. WeU, his
income-tax instead of producing, as he expected, £3,700,000, produced about £5,000,000. The
chasm was filled up, there was no deficiency, and the surplus, of course, enabled him to do other
things. The income-tax from that time has enabled us to do other things, some of which,
I am sorry to say, Sir Robert Peel would much have regretted if he had lived, and some of which,
had he been Minister, never would have been done. . . . But, sir, though I have spoken
thus far in approbation of the treaty, and in approbation of the relaxation of the tariff and the
aboUtion of the excise duties upon paper, do not let it be understood for a moment that I am not

LAVISH EXPENDITURE. 229
sensible to the blots which are— to one great blot, at any rate, which there is — in the statement
that the right hon. gentleman had to make to us the other night— a very foul blot which will
tarnish the character of the Government— which I venture to promise them, if there be not some
thing done to remedy it, wiU make their term of office not at all protracted— and which I will call,
as I already have in another place, frightful and scandalous expenditure. Now, I hear some
gentleman say, £30,000,000 after aU is very cheap for the securing of the country. But these
gentlemen who have got the expenditure of the £30,030,000 are not a bit more secure than
they were when it was £15,000,000. I have heard the First Lord of the Admiralty year after
year — and I must refer to more than half-a-dozen of them — year after year assure this
house that the defences were perfect and the country in a state of absolute security. I always
found the successor of the First Lord of the Admiralty unsaying aU his predecessors had said, and
assuring us unless we paid more than a miUion additional the aforesaid security would not
be obtained. There are gentlemen, also equally simple-minded, who tell us this expenditure has
no reference to France. The right hon. gentleman opposite (Mr. Disraeli) did not believe in the
cry of invasion ; but yet the right hon. gentleman did not rise to protest against the amount of
the estimates proposed by the Government. He left the amount of the estimates in the hands of
the Government, but felt fully confident as to the raising of the amount. I cannot help saying
that the whole of this matter has reference to France, and therefore let us not disguise it
from ourselves. I beUeve the whole cry to have been a huge imposture — to have been a huge lie
palmed on the country. . . . WeU now, what can be the reason that with those instruc
tions, with that treaty ratified, with this perfect amity, with these more powerful than all
past bonds for uniting, not only the two Governments but the two peoples— why is it we
have this enormous increase of the estimates ? I say it is a wonderful inconsistency ; it is
altogether illogical ; and somewhere or other there is a great hypocrisy, and somebody is
guilty of an immorality, the darkness of which I find myself at a loss to select words to describe.
Now, if hon. gentlemen opposite had fixed upon this blot — if you could have had, shall I say, the
patriotism — if the hon. member for Essex could have moved a resolution to this effect — ' That
whereas her Majesty's Government has recently concluded a treaty of commerce and amity with
the Emperor of the Freneh, therefore this House does not see the necessity for increasing
the estimates beyond £26,000,000 which were voted by Parliament last year' — if you had
proposed a resolution — for if £26,000,000 gives you no security, rely on it £30,000,000 wil
not, it is not any power which is in money or oppressive taxes to secure you — if you could have
proposed a resolution Uke this, you would eome before the country with a character for a regard
for economy and the interests of the common people, which, I say, you will not earn if you
succeed with the resolution you have submitted to the House. I should like to ask about this
expenditure which I condemn, and which I think is an insult to the intelligence of Parlia
ment and the country. Am I hostile to any interest in the country in speaking thus of this
grievous extravagance ? Am I supposed to be hostile to the interests of the Court ? There
is no rock on which so many dynasties have foundered as the rock of reckless and needless
expenditure. Am I supposed to be hostile to the interests of the aristocracy of the country ?
What has destroyed aristocracies more than the corruption engendered amongst them by the
lavish expenditure of public money, and by the discontent which must be created amongst
the people ? Am I hostile to the services which swaUow up for the most part these sums ? The
mUitary service of the country should be the servant of the country ; it should be the defender of
its rights and its property ; it should never be allowed to grow to an extent, and to be fed with
such profusion— its appetite growing with what it feeds upon— that it becomes not a blessing,
but an evil of the first magnitude to the country. ... I heard the ChanceUor of the
Exchequer treading on the thorny path of those thirty miUions, and I did think that there must
be, somehow or other, a conscience which is not always a convenient partner for a Chancellor of

230 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
the Exchequer. I thought if he had the power logically to carry out his own principles,
the principles embodied in the treaty and in the tariff, there would have been a much larger
reduction of duties and a much greater relief afforded to all classes of the country. He spoke of
the patience of the taxpayers. Do not try that patience too far. I would not ask you
to be afraid of the people; I ask you only to be just to them and just to yourselves. It is
not the poor man alone who suffers from injustice. He suffers now, and heavily too ; but there
is a Buffering hereafter, if history does not lie, that shall come upon the rich if they continue
expenditure and taxation which are needlessly oppressive to the poor. I say, then, this scheme is
a great scheme, and therefore I support it. It relieves industry by the removal of customs'
duties, and abolishes one of the very worst excise imposts that ever crippled the industry of any
portion of the people. It extends the hand of friendship, not to a Government only, but to
a great nation across the Channel. Amid the darkness of Europe it is a spot of light, and
opens to humanity a prospect —
' Bright as the breaking East, as midday glorious.'
I think it a great measure of justice to England — a great measure of friendship to France ; and
I am convinced that, acting and working through the means of these two great nations, it will be
found hereafter to be a great measure of mercy to mankind."
Many years afterwards, Mr. Bright remarked : —
" Now this was a great work which Mr. Cobden performed, as it were, with his own hand.
He went to France; he communicated with his friend M. ChevaUer, the eminent French
economist ; he put himself into communication with the Emperor, who was most honest and
very intelligent upon this question. M. Rouher, the French minister, was enabled to commence
negotiations, and through many months they went on, interfered with by many obstacles, but by
no obstacle in France so great, I believe, as some of the obstacles whieh came from this country.
Finally, the treaty was signed, and the triumph was achieved ; and I venture to say there is no
act of any stateman's life that can be looked back to with more unaUoyed pleasure by him who
did it, or by his friends who stood by him and commended it, than that great act of the com
mercial treaty with our neighbouring country of France." (Cheers.)
This splendid service Mr. Cobden rendered to his country coming
times will be better able properly to appreciate, but there can be no
doubt that it will add to the lustre which already surrounds the name
of Eichard Cobden.
Mr. Wise, on the 2nd of February, expressed the opinion in the
House of Commons that it was desirable to appoint every year a select
committee to inquire into the miscellaneous Civil Service expenditure of
the preceding year. Mr. Augustus Smith seconded the resolution for
such a committee to be appointed. Mr. Bright, in supporting the re
solution, related that a few years back a committee was appointed, with
the sanction of Lord John Eussell, to inquire into the expenses incurred

OFFICIAL SALARIES. 231
by official salaries. Mr. Bright, Mr. Cobden, Mr. Ellice (member for
Coventry) were members of the committee, and they recommended a re
duction of between £70,000 and £80,000 a-year.
" What was the result ? " asked Mr. Bright. " The salary of the Judge Advocate was reduced
by £500 and that of the Secretary of the Treasury by an equal sum. The Government reduced
the salary of a noble lord at the Poor Law Board £500, whereupon, thinking his services worth
more, he resigned. (Mr. Disraeli : ' The Secretary for Ireland.') Tes, there was the Secretary
for Ireland. No one knew what salary the Secretary for Ireland received. It appeared that
there was a great amount of dining and hospitality— a thing very well understood in Ireland—
which was said to be necessary for that official, and the committee were told that » high salary
was necessary. However, the salary was reduced by £2,000; and these reductions, which did
not amount to one tenth part of what the committee recommended almost unanimously, were all
that had been carried into effect by the Government. He had frequently remonstrated with the
Treasury Bench, but without effect. Then there were the Scotch judges. Every one knew that
if the work were equally divided between them there would be no persons with so Uttle to do as
the Scotch judges. In fact, there were so many judges and so' scanty a bar, that great difficulty
was found in supplying the Bench with men of sufficient ability. The committee recommended
that a reduction in the number of Scotch and Irish judges should be made when a vacancy
occurred. Very soon after, a chief judge died in Ireland. He put it to the noble lord (Lord
John Russell), who was then Prime Minister, whether it would not be proper for the Govern
ment to cany into effect the recommendation of the committee, and reduce the number of the
Irish judges. The noble lord made answer that he had consulted — whom does the House think P
Why, the profession, every man of whom had entered it with the honourable ambition of becom
ing one of these judges, and who, of course, saw that his chance would be very much diminished
if the vacancy were not filled. Unless Ministers took a different course from this, and adopted
the recommendation of a committee and the changes they thought necessary, how could any
reduction be made in our present growing and extravagant expenditure ? Take the education
vote for example. Was there ever anything in any country so monstrous and absurd as the
proceeding in regard to this education vote ? The House voted money ; they handed it over to
some one to distribute it ; and he ventured to say that there were not five men in the House who
knew into whose hands it went for distribution. The head of this department was a great lord in
' another place ' — the President of the Council of Education — and this great lord having nothing
to do, of course required some one to help him. Accordingly a Vice-President was appointed,
and he had a salary. The appointment was made to relieve some one who had a salary from the
necessity of doing anything for it. So another appointment was made of a Vice-President of the
Council of Education. Another piece of patronage was made, and another salary was paid.
This education vote was expended for the most part upon one particular class and sect of the
community — it went towards the education supposed to be given by the Established Church of
this country. It was not, for reasons well known to many hon. members, distributed in fair
proportions amongst the various classes of the community. He confessed he thought it a
monstrous thing to vote a sum which his hon. friend quoted at something like £1,500,000, and
which the ChanceUor of the Exchequer said was getting up to £2,000,000, without any sort of a
rsport being made that enabled the House to examine the vote minutely, or control it at all. The
Government ought to aid the House, as the House ought to aid the country, in checking and
controlling such an expenditure. To do this would be the office of the committee as was now
proposed— not a committee packed with four gentlemen from the Treasury Bench on one side of
the House and four from the ex-Treasury Bench, aU mixed up in the matter, and all hoping to

232 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
enjoy the distribution of this expenditure, but an honest and fair committee, appointed by the
House itself, and not influenced by the Government. There might come a time when we might
not have two or three good successive harvests, two or three good cotton crops, and seasons of
abundance and prosperity. There might be a time of cloud aud storm, when these matters
might be called in question in a spirit they would all be loth to see. Those who were sitting in
the House were guardians of the public purse of this country, and ought to warn their country
men against the pernicious folly that had distinguished the. public, the Parliament, and the
Cabinets of this country for years past. It was their duty to warn them that if they did not
change their policy it would lead to disaster and confusion, if not to utter ruin."
The resolution was carried by a majority of 28. The same evening
Sir Eobert Peel wished the Government to explain to the House the
particulars of the proposed annexation of Savoy to France, which he
condemned. " WeU," said Mr. Bright, m commenting upon the speech of the hon. baronet, " if France can
be more powerful by the addition of the scanty population of a mountainous region, it is more than
I can exactly calculate or appreciate. I do not believe that Sardinia wiU be sensibly weakened or
changed if the transfer takes place. I doubt extremely whether any disadvantageous circum
stances wiU arise to the people of Savoy. But let us for one moment suppose that the people of
France and Sardinia are agreed — I know not if they are — but let us suppose they have determined
to apply to the people of Savoy the principle which the Government are now wiUing should be
appUed to the people of Central Italy. The hon. baronet the member for Tamworth argued on
the assumption that the people of Savoy are to be transferred by some great force from a state of
blissful freedom to a state of degradation and servitude. Well, that is certainly not very com
plimentary to the French people, who may be quite as well pleased with their institutions as we
are with ours, and who may feel satisfied with the social liberty which we have not, and may even
prefer it to the political liberty which we have. I do not pretend to know more than the hon.
baronet, but I have heard from persons of high authority that the inhabitants of Savoy have not
only no objection to the transfer, but would prefer to be annexed to France. We may aU be
sorry that it is so ; but I will tell the House the reason. The best authority that I have been
able to consult in this matter has assured me that the annexation of Savoy to France would go far
to double the value of all the landed property in the kingdom. I am told, further, that the in
telligent portion of the labouring classes of the province are well aware that the annexation would
add greatly to the value of labour in the district. Lyons is not more than from two to three
•hours' journey, if so much, from Chambery. The manufacturers of Lyons, with their capital,
their looms, and their industry, would instantly spread through the valleys of that province, and
an immediate addition would be made to the value of everything which now exists in Savoy.
Now, I don't want the Government to give the slightest countenance to this transference. I do
not want them, on the other hand, to give the slightest opposition to it. The opposition, if you
give it, must be futUe ; you cannot prevent the transference of Savoy ; but you may, if you like,
embroil Europe and bring England into collision with France. I say, perish Savoy— though Savoy
I believe will not perish, and will not suffer— rather than that we, the representatives of the people
of England, should involve the people of this country with the people and Government of France on
a matter in which we have no interest whatever. But Savoy would not perish, nor even suffer. I
find, unfortunately, that the more remote a foreign question appears to be from our own interest,
the more it appears to absorb the sympathies of certain members of the House. Have you not

OUR FOREIGN POLICY. 233
for generations past endeavoured to settle the map of Europe P Have we not— as if it were not
worth a thought — spent blood and treasure for the purpose of fixing certain boundaries, and
declaring that certain provinces and kingdoms should belong to certain families P and have we not
utterly and ignominously failed iu every attempt we have made P Let us then, in the name of
common sense, and of the interests of the people of England, judge, if we can, this question
calmly and dispassionately, as a matter which really concerns only the kingdom of France, the
kingdom of Sardinia, and the people of Savoy. And if these two kingdoms have agreed on the
transfer, and the people of Savoy themselves are favourable to it, I say it is contrary to the
interests of the people of England, and to the honour of the English Government, to pretend
to interpose between a transaction which, though I would never have recommended or promoted
it, is yet, I am sure, not worth the imposition of a single tax on Englishmen, or the expenditure
of a single drop of blood."
Mr. Bright, in a second speech on the same subject, said : —
" I think the noble lord at the head of foreign affairs means to take a course which we must
aU hold, if impartiaUy taken, to be wise and good — namely, that the policy of England ought not
to be such as to estrange this country in future from any one of the governments of Europe ;
that we should not side with France on the one hand, or Austria on the other, in such a manner
as to make one the embittered enemy of England, but that we should take an impartial course
among the governments of Europe, and give our opinion on questions not immediately affecting
us only when our opinions are asked upon them. If this were the proper occasion I should
take the noble lord to task for the course he has taken in regard to Naples. I believe nothing
more firmly and unchangeably than this — that the past policy of the English Government with
regard to various matters connected with the continent of Europe has been a policy not tending
to her honour, not good for her people, disastrous to her finances, and I am sure most needlessly
meddling, and of no advantage whatever to Europe. I am not now asking for a policy of entire
and absolute isolation ; but I believe that even a poUcy of isolation would be better than a poUcy
of incessant meddling. I hope the noble lord will take that course to which I have referred.
Move with France, where you have to move with her, clearly, firmly, honourably, and in a manner
that cannot be mistaken. The noble lord will truckle to no power in Europe, I am sure, but
let him so conduct the foreign policy of this country that all the nations of Europe shaU say,
what I beUeve they have not heretofore said, that England is a power regarding her own great
interests mainly, not interfering in Europe when it can be avoided, and, when interfering, doing
so, not for the sake of degrading one power and exalting another, but in favour of those great
principles of justice and moderation which are necessary in the transactions of the great powers
if the peace of Europe is to be preserved."
Mr. Bright took the opportunity of speaking on the war with China
in a discussion which arose in the House of Commons on the evening
of the 16th of March, saying : —
" That in tracing the transactions he would not go back to the original war, which was about
as bad as anything could be, but to that war which was commenced by the indiscretion— to use no
harsher term— of Sir John Bowring, the English plenipotentiary— which was based on fraud—
upon that which the House of Commons had condemned as a positive lie ; and although when
there was a dissolution of ParUament, a majority was returned to support the Minister who was

234 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
then in office, yet no attempt had ever been made— and he thought no Minister would ever pre
tend to attempt— to induce the House of Commons to reverse the judgment to which it came on
that occasion ; and he beUeved that there was now scarcely a dissentient opinion throughout the
country as to the foUy and guilt of that transaction. One way or other that war came te an end,
and a treaty was made under the auspices of a noble lord, who was at present a member of the
Cabinet. There was, in the negotiation of that treaty, a grave error committed. There seemed
to be a constant disposition to introduce something into it which should be a special cause of
aggravation to the Chinese, but which could be of no use to the trade or the political interests of
this country; and one thing was insisted upon which has hitherto been unheard of in China —
namely, that an English Minister should take up his residence at Pekin. It was a question open
to discussion whether it was worth while to keep a Minister at any court in the world— it was a
question whether it would not be much better that all our ambassadors should be withdrawn ; and
that when any difficulty arose between the Government of this country and any foreign govern
ment, they should send out a Minister for the special purpose of dealing with it. But however
this question may be decided, that man must have a wonderful notion of English policy or Eng
lish commerce who thought that anything could be gained by picking up some inexperienced or
some needy diplomatist — though he would not apply the term needy to this case — and sending
him to reside at Pekin, where he would be the least comfortable, and perhaps the very least
wanted. . . When the discussion took place three years ago," added Mr. Bright, " I was spending
some weeks in the city of Rome. I there received a letter from the hon. member for Rochdale,
written immediately after that division ; speaking of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's speech.
I recollect well that he said it was ' a marvel of persuasive eloquence.' That is true ; I have
heard the statement confirmed by others who had listened to that speech. But the right hon.
gentleman on that occasion was speaking on behalf of great principles of justice, and telling the
House that what is called the prestige of England is valueless to the nation if it is not based on
an equitable poUcy to other nations. I am not charging the Government with having been
inequitable, nor blaming them for transactions of which they are not guUty. I am only warning
them against two things — first, against forming a partnership with another power in transactions
which, in connection with another power, they cannot control ; next, against making demands on
the Government of China based only on the disaster caused by the foUy of their own minister,
and which they have no right, in the sight of God or man, to make. Looking back on our
transactions with China during the last few years, I believe nothing more vicious can be proved
in our history ; no page of our annals is more full of humiliation, because f uU of crime, than that
on which is recorded our transactions with China ; and because I feel this — because I wish the
Government to live and prosper — because I wish this House to stand in honour before the
country — because I wish the country to hold a position of repute and moraUty before the world,
therefore it is I who warn the Government and this House against proceeding with a poUcy
which no man here can say in his conscience is not a policy conducted in defiance of the laws of
Heaven, and those principles of justice without which human society itself cannot be held
together." On the 19th March, 1860, Lord John Eussell moved the second
reading of the Government Eeform Bill. Mr. Bright regarded the bill
as simply one for the extension of the franchise. It touched only
the outside of the disfranchisement question. It settled nothing; it
rather unsettled, as adding another precedent to that of 1832. Mr.

EXTENSION OF THE FRANCHISE. 235
Bright noticed the small comparative number of electors it admitted, and
advised the House to accept the bill, not as one he himself would have
liked, but as the most prudent and fittest to be brought forward at that
time. He calculated that by this bill they would not add to the
constituency more than 150,000 electors. No more than 100,000 of the
working classes would be enfranchised by the bill. He thought that the
bill did not go far enough, and that such parsimony on the part of
the House was a mistake — that there was the consciousness amongst
millions of their countrymen that Parliament did not adequately repre
sent them, and was not just to them; and silently, but surely and
inevitably, this opinion was marching on to its triumph.
"I admit there is no turbulence," added Mr. Bright, in closing his speech, "but there
is something better than that. I have seen, and been on, a stormy sea. It is a very grand
spectacle, and sometimes very appaUing, but there is something not less striking to the man who
can contemplate the sea, and watch the calm and majestic advance of the tide. The turbulence
and passion of 1832 are now passed. Nobody rejoices more than I do that we can discuss this
question under circumstances very different from those under which the bill of 1832 was
discussed. There is no howUng wind, no imminent convulsion ; but there is the steady, the ever
growing, the irresistible tide of public opinion ; there is the consciousness amongst the millions
of our countrymen that Parliament does not adequately represent them, and is not just to them ;
and silently, but surely and inevitably, this opinion is marching on to its triumph. The very
footprints in which these gentlemen on the Treasury Bench trod not long ago are swept away,
and the point which you occupied not long since on this question is submerged and gone. I ask
you not to resist this growing and gathering opinion. By a concession even so small as that
which it is the object of this bUl to make, you will show that you have a generous confidence in
your countrymen— you wUl show that you believe in the constitution of your country, that it
reaUy means a representation of the people, and you wUl show further, what I hope you will
prove by your votes upon this bill, that you are wUling to let the institutions you boast of so much,
and pretend to love so much, repose upon the goodwill, the inteUigence, and the virtue of your
countrymen." Colonel Sykes, on the 29th of March, asked the Secretary for India
for information with respect to the reorganisation of the Indian army,
but the request at that time was not acceded to. Mr. Bright, during the
discussion, warned the members that they would commit a very great
error if they permitted the Government, without the most serious
deliberation, to come to such a conclusion as should hand over 50,000,
60,000, 70,000, or 80,000 European troops in India to the management
of the Horse Guards of this country. Judging from all past experience,

236 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
the expenditure of the Indian army out of the revenues of India would
rise rapidly if the control were transferred to the Horse Guards. And
whatever evils had hitherto arisen in the management of the patronage
connected with the Indian army would be greatly aggravated if that
patronage were added to the present patronage of the Horse Guards.
Such being his opinion — though he could not say that no documents
which might be produced would change that opinion — he was entitled,
and the House was entitled, to call upon the right hon. gentleman to be
frank with them in this matter. Sir De L. Evans had referred to a
point not often alluded to in that House, and had spoken of the influence
of the Court as to that question. It was to be hoped that the House
would not feel itself unable to discuss freely a subject on which it
was supposed that the influence of the Court was largely engaged. The
great interests of India and England, and the questions whether the
Indian military expenditure should be £12,000,000 or £20,000,000
sterling, were infinitely more important than the sentiment of anybody
connected with the Court of England in such a case. The House should,
therefore, have the matter fairly before it, that it might not find itself to
have been kept entirely in the dark until it was too late to reverse
a perhaps unfortunate and fatal decision of the Government.
Mr. Bright spoke on Eeform at a meeting of the Lancashire Eeformers'
Union, held in the Free-trade Hall, Manchester, on the 12th of April.
The speech occupied an hour and a-half in delivery. Mr. George
Wilson presided, and 7,000 persons were present.
" PoUticaUy," observed Mr. Bright, " I live and move and have my being only in the hope that
I may advance the cause of truth and your cause, if only by a single step. (Cheers.) If I tell
you that peace and peaceful industry is your path of wisdom and of greatness, if I say it is your
taxes that are spent, your sweat which is pawned, your blood which is shed in war, am I the less
your countryman p (Loud cheers, and cries of ' No.') If your Sunday prayer for peace
be not a mockery and offensive in the sight of Heaven, then 1 am justified in denouncing,
as 1 now do heartily denounce, those who in the Parliament or in your press are striving to
involve the most potent nations of the earth in the crimes and in the calamities of war."
(Loud cheers.)
Mr. Bright's continual warnings of the evils of war, and the loss result
ing therefrom, have had, no doubt, a beneficial effect, and kept England of

ROCHDALE CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY. 237
late years from entangling herself in warfare to the extent that she
formerly did.
In the adjourned debate on the representation of " the People's Bill,"
on the 7th of June, in replying to Sir E. Lytton's speech, that to lower the
franchise would be to hand over Parliament and the Government to
what he designated as poverty and passion, and to the statement
of Mr. Disraeli that there was a danger lest everybody admitted to the
franchise would contrive to conspire against all the institutions of the
country, Mr. Bright gave the august assembly the benefit of his
personal experience and opinion of the working class.
" Excepting the sessions which I have had, it may be the honour," said he, " but certainly
the iU-fortune, to spend in this House and in London, I have been for thirty years, at least,
in daUy communication with these classes. I have lived among them; many of them
were playmates of mine when I was a boy. I have superintended their labour ; I have paid their
wages ; and have had as great an opportunity as any man in this House of knowing what are their
opinions and their wishes with regard to those great political questions which we have to discuss.
Now, I shall ask the attention of the House to a statement respecting the working men of
Rochdale. After the accusations which have been made, which were not necessary for your
argument, and which I grieve were ever made at all, I feel bound, in defence of the working
classes, to make this statement to the House ; and if the hon. gentlemen on the other side are
reaUy interested in these classes, they will thank me for the facts I am about to lay before them.
They refer to certain associations in the Borough of Rochdale, whereby working men exclusively
have created large mercantile concerns, and have managed them for many years past with the
greatest possible success. A Cooperative Society was established at Rochdale in 1844. It began
with twenty-eight members, who subscribed £1 apiece, so that they started with a capital of £28.
At the end of 1859, fifteen years afterwards, it had no fewer than 2,703 members, and a capital
of £27,060. It had done business during the year to the amount of £104,000, and had divided
amongst its members, in proportion to the amount of their purchases from its various shops and
establishments, the sum of £10,739. During the first quarter of the present year, ending on the
20th of March last, the business transacted was £34,000, or at the rate of £136,000 per annum,
leaving to be divided amongst the members a profit for the quarter amounting to £3,375. Its
establishments consist of a large grocer's shop, one for the sale of clothing, a butcher's shop, and
another, I think, where shoes are sold. Hon. gentlemen who suppose that these working men are
not aware of what is being said and done in this House wiU attach some importance to the facts
I am now about to adduce. The Society has a library and a reading-room, open free to all its '
members, who now number 2,900. Two and a-half per cent., amounting during the past year to
£300, is deducted from the profits of the business to purchase books and newspapers for the use
of the literary institution. The library contains between 3,000 and 4,000 volumes, and is
increasing rapidly every quarter. The newsroom is well supplied with daily and weekly papers, and
monthly and quarterly periodicals. Maps, globes, telescopes, microscopes, and other scientific
apparatus of the most recent construction, are provided for the use of the members, and a Sabbath
School is attached to the institution. The Society has at various times subscribed to the
Dispensary, the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, the Blind Asylum, and the Manchester Royal
Infirmary, and it has recently presented to the Corporation of Rochdale, at a cost of £100, a

238 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
beautiful drinking-fountain in bronze, which has been put up in a central position in the town for
the benefit cf the public. It has also established— and I am sorry Mr. Urquhart, once a member
of this House, is not present to hear this, great credit being due to him for having tanght the use
of such places— it has established, at a cost of £200, a Turkish bath, which is already remunera
tive, and the advantages of which are appreciated by many of the middle as well as of the working
classes. As a proof of the wise system upon which the Society is conducted, I may mention that
no credit is given even for a single day. Frugal and provident habits are inculcated. To save
something, it is pointed out, is the first step to independence. Pauperism has been diminished,
and education, intelligence, and morality have been greatly promoted. Now for another remark
able fact. Arbitrators have long been appointed, for the purpose of adjusting any differences
which may arise between a member and the committee, and yet in the fifteen years during which
the institution has been established, those arbitrators have never once been caUed upon to give a
decision. That is not aU. In this same town of Rochdale, the workmen have established a corn
mill, which was begun in 1850. In 1851 the capital was £2,163. In that year it suffered a loss
of £421, which was made up by subsequent gains before any divisions of profits were made. At
the end of 1859 the capital was £18,236; the business done was £85,845, leaving a profit of
£6,115 for the year ending March 24th, 1860 ; the number of members was 550, and the state of
the concern stood thus -.—Capital, £21,192 ; business done, £92,270 ; and profit, £8,278. There are
members in this House engaged in the cotton trade. I am one of them. Well, the Rochdale
Cooperative Manufacturing Society likewise has now 1,600 members, with a capital exceeding
£50,000. Its present business is not large, but it has built, and is now fitting with machinery, a
new miU, which wiU cost not less than £32,000. The mill is paid for, and the machinery wiU be
paid for on deliver)-. The whole is expected to be completed in September next. Each of these
societies is managed by a committee of eleven members. Meetings are held, in the two first
mentioned every three months, and in the last every six months. AU members can attend
and vote, and no member has more than a single vote. I have thought it desirable to place these
facts before the House, because I am able to produce evidence in support of everything I have-
said in regard to them ; for I know many of these men and the establishments. I know some
thing of the working population among whom I live, and I beUeve there is not a person in this
House who will dare to stand up after I sit down, and say with reference to the men who have
thus conducted a large business, saved their money, and promoted all these means of speedy
education, intelligence, and sobriety among the people, that it would be perilous to the
institutions of this country, if those institutions are worth anything, to give such men a vote for
members of Parliament. . . I have observed that when gentlemen who sit on this side of
the House sat in Opposition, they were very anxious to get on the Ministerial side, and sometimes
took means which I thought unworthy of a great party to dislodge their opponents. I am happy
to say that I have never cooperated in any way with those attempts. Tou recollect that when
you (the Opposition) were on this side of the House, your Government was continually taunted
with the charge of being kept in office by the right hon. member for Ashton (Mr. M. Gibson) and
myself, and those who acted with us. They said of you and us then what some of you have — I
was going to say foolishly — said of the present Government and us now; but I can make great
aUowance for the feeling which actuates the Opposition to change sides, because, from the
anxiety which every one shows to get on the Ministerial Bench, there is, I presume, some peculiar
happiness in arriving there. . . . The noble lord who sits opposite to me (Lord R. Cecil)
upon a previous occasion referred to this question, and expressed his apprehension that if
we were to have a Reform in Parliament there would be an undue interference with what
he caUed the incidence of taxation ; but for my part I believe there is no class of people in this
country, who, taken in the bulk, are more just than the working classes. There are, of course,
exceptions to that rule ; there are among them individuals who are ignorant, violent, and unjust ;

THE REFORM BILL WITHDRAWN. 239
but there are many such in your class in proportion to its numbers. Those who know the working
class best, who mix with them intimately in the north of England— in Lancashire and Torkshire
— fear them least and trust them most. If you who sit on the benches opposite were as
well acquainted with them as we are, you would not have exhibited that affected patriotism and
that unaffected ignorance which you have displayed in dealing with this great question. . . .
I recollect the right hon. gentleman the member for Hertfordshire published a work some years
ago in which he said, ' Who knows the great generosity of the people of this country ? ' and he
did what I shaU not do, exclude from the comments the nobility who constituted the Government
of the State. I concur, however, with the right hon. gentleman in the opinion which he enter
tains of the great generosity of the English people. I say the people are generous. On their
industry are based your wealth and greatness ; and, believe me, I am no less your friend than
theirs when I implore you, with all the power and earnestness which it is possible for me to
infuse into words, to pass this bill, and treat your countrymen with generosity and justice."
The Bill was further discussed on the evening of the llth of June,
and was withdrawn through the pressure of public business. Mr.
Bright was again one of the principal speakers.
" Now," remarked he, " I suppose as it is with the tree, the orchard, or the field, so it is
with legislation, and that we must not expect more than a poor harvest in a green season.
It may be, also, that in this season we have shaken off all the fruit we can gather, and that
we must rest satisfied with the things we have accomplished. Looking back on the course of
the session — and I wish to say this because I think there are those out of doors who will
be greatly dissatisfied with the announcement which has been made to-night, and many persons
within the House who may be disposed to assail the Government for having made it — it will, I
am sure, at once be admitted by every impartial person that it has not been a session barren of
results. It must not at the same time be supposed that I am not dissatisfied also with what has
taken place this evening. I lament it as much as anybody ; for there is, I believe, no one in this
House who has given so much time of late years to this question, and I hoped — you may think,
if you Uke, with too ardent enthusiasm — that something might be done this year towards its
settlement. To-night, therefore, when this hope is blighted, I have a right to say that I deplore
as much as any man the adoption of the course which the Government have deemed it to be
their duty to take. And if I do not assaU them for having pursued that course, it is simply
because I feel it would be unjust to make an attack upou them for that for which they are
not, in my opinion, entirely responsible, and to denounce them for not having accomplished
an object which any other dozen members in this House would find it equaUy difficult to
attain. I was, however, observing that the jiresent session cannot be regarded as having pro
duced no fruit. It has seen 400 obstacles to the free development of our industry, which at its
commencement existed, struck out of the pages of the tariff. So important an event would,
if it had taken place only a few years ago, have been sufficient' in itself to mark a session
as one in which much had been achieved, and almost to immortalise the reputation of a
Minister. But we have had some more work done ; we have had a treaty concluded with
France — which, no doubt, hon. gentlemen opposite wUl tell us by-and-by they never
said a syllable against — which, those who observe what is passing, cannot fail to perceive
there have been steady endeavours on the part of some persons in this House, and of some
in 'another place,' and of one influential organ in the public press to disparage, it being
contended that there is no good faith to be expected with respect to the mode in which it is to
be carried out on the part of France ; that everything connected with it has been a series

240 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
of blunders ; and that aU that enthusiasm which found expression both in the House and in
the country with respect to it at the opening of the session, has been entirely thrown away.
. Now, I am told there are gentlemen sitting on these benches who think the time
has come when we ought to have what is called 'a sound Whig Government;' that what
they regard as the ' foreign element ' should be got rid of — meaning, of course, the right
hon. gentleman the ChanceUor of the Exchequer, and my right hon. friend the President of
the Board of Trade. WeU, perhaps I may be able to give hon. gentlemen who entertain
this view a piece of information, and it is this — that that which they call ' a sound Whig
Government,' modelled after the old fashion, is just as much a thing of the past as the dodo. Tou
may say there are some remains of it, as Professor Owen knows something of the head
and foot of a dodo, and what it is like ; but in my opinion you will never see that sort of
Government again in this country. But if we are to sit on one side, caUing ourselves the
Liberal party, the sooner, I think, we get rid of these old party distinctions the better, and
endeavour in the conduct of affairs in Parliament, in connection with our principles, to act
rather a more unanimous part, and act in a more ingenuous, a more open and fairer, manner
to the Government than has been done this session by some caUing themselves foUowers of
the Whig party. . . . The noble lord, as I understood, has given a pledge, that on an
early period — whether in November or in February — at the first time Parliament shall meet,
the Government of which he is a member will again introduce a bill, with a view to
amend the representation of the people. . . . Now, what I want is this, that the
House should always consider the great body of the people. The Peers, the rich, the
powerful, can always take care of themselves, and never suffer, unless it may be for a
time in great political convulsions, which we aU hope may never again visit our . country.
Look at the condition of the great body of the people — their inteUigence, their morality,
their independence ; and you find, in characters which you cannot mistake, the real truth
with regard to the Government under which they have lived. I say, then, that the
course which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has taken is one laden with blessings
to the great body of the people; and if the House of Commons would at the same
time, whilst so much good physicaUy was being conferred upon them— if in the same sessions
it could have shown its confidence in them by offering them this moderate extension of the
suffrage which the noble lord proposed, I think it would have been said in after time that
there had been no session of the Parliament of England comparable to that of 1860 for the
good it had given the people, and for the binding effect which its legislation had had
between the great body of the people and the three estates of the realm."
While Mr. Cobden was negotiating the treaty with France, Lord
Palmerston, on the 23rd of July, informed the House of Commons that
the Government, with respect to the recommendations of the National
Defence Commission for fortifying the dockyards, and establishing a
central depot for arms and stores, proposed that a vote be taken in the
meantime for £2,000,000, to be charged on the Consolidated Fund, and
raised by annuities for a term not exceeding thirty years. The total
outlay, it was expected, would be eleven or twelve millions. Mr. Bright
stated that during his seventeen years' experience in that House he had
never known an instance of a question of such magnitude and import-

OUR NATIONAL DEFENCES. 241
ance brought before it without notice, and of such a resolution being
proposed for adoption on the same evening. In all probability the pro
position would involve an expenditure of twice £12,000,000 ; and he
protested against being entrapped into such a resolution. The debate
was adjourned to the 2nd of August, when Mr. Bright again delivered a
long and masterly speech, during which he said : —
" AUow me to mention as briefly as I can what this Commission states. They do not leave
us in much doubt of the dreadful apparition they are about to present to us. They state that
having carefully weighed the subject, they are of opinion that neither fleet, nor army, nor
volunteers, nor even the three combined, can be relied upon as sufficient in themselves for the
security of the kingdom from foreign invasion ; and they go on altogether on the most despond
ing principle throughout. They assume that there wiU be a grand combination of all the
maritime nations of the earth against England. WeU, if we presume the policy which the right
hon. gentleman has spoken of, and which the Government has as yet adhered to — namely, a
policy of great justice and courtesy in dealing with foreign nations — that combination of
maritime powers is absolutely impossible. They talk of a sudden naval combination against this
country. There can be no sudden naval combination. How long does it take to negotiate the
smaUest and most inconsiderable matter ? Do we not know that when the post arrives — nay,
long before it arrives, and before the hand of the clock can mark here what it has marked east
ward — what are the negotiations, or, if you please, the plots and conspiracies that are hatched in
every court of Europe ? We know all this by telegraph, aud yet these seven gentlemen talk of
a sudden naval combination against this country. They say ' every coasting vessel and fishing
vessel would be available as a transport.' But surely an enemy is not coming over here in a
couple of hours by these means. He must either come by steam or not ; and if he does not
come by steam he certainly will not cross over very rapidly. The right hon. gentleman says that
there never was anything so carefully drawn up as this report. For my own part, I never read
anything of an official character so incoherent, illogical, and absurd. They say, ' With the power
of combination which steam now affords, such a force might be assembled before daylight upon
any point selected for the attempt, and thrown on shore in two or three hours.' That is just the
sort of stuff that fills up the columns of the Morning Advertiser. Only think of seven gentle
men — generals, admirals, captains, F.R.S's, or anything else — putting in a report to be offered
to the Queen and to ParUament a paragraph of such monstrous absurdity as that which I have
now read. And then they say that ' without secure ports in which a fleet can find refuge in
cases of disaster ' there could be no security. The whole report goes on boding nothing but disaster.
Tou should have in the annals of 300 years nothing but naval disasters to justify the statements
in the report. ... I was talking yesterday with a gentleman who does not appear to stand
very high in the favour of the Secretary for War, but who is, I believe, the first engineer and
machinist in these matters. Mr. Whitworth, of Manchester, told me last night that he would
undertake to throw 701b. shells fiUed with molten iron six miles— he believed seven — but he
would guarantee six. The whole system of warfare is about to undergo a change as great,
probably, as the change that took place when gunpowder was first used ; and yet you have the
Government in this pressing activity not having the courage to teU the people the truth in this
matter, rushing day after day into all kinds of absurd expenses, not knowing but that in twelve
months they wiU be of no effect, and must be done over again. They claim to be great patriots,
and to be anxious for the interests of trade. I should know of the value of preserving Liverpool,
or Manchester, or Birmingham, as well as the noble lord at the head of the Government,
41

242 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
and I am one of those who beUeve that at a time like this, when these remarkable changes are
taking place, which wiU make war ten times more destructive, or— which may Heaven grant — may
make it impossible, the course of an honest and economic Government should be, to go ou
slowly, cautiously, and inquiringly, and not commit themselves to a vast expenditure which
twelve months' experience may show to be of no value at all. We have had also a committee
besides those seven gentlemen, and the name of the Duke of Cambridge stood, I believe, at the
head of the list. ... I would ask, is there any other thing in the world you would be asked
to do that you would undertake to do upon counsel such as that I have just read P It seems to
me like some dozen of doctors coming in to discuss what shall be done about the health of a man
of whom there is no pretence to say he is ill ; yet the doctors, every one, must insist upon
writing a separate prescription for him. I think the man, not being sick, having only an
imaginary complaint upou him, would be quite justified in driving the doctors to the door; and
I should say, as with regard to these men, that nothing can be more confused than the counsel
that is now offered to us. They do not tell us we shall have any greater security, after we have
done all they wish, than we have already. Every man among them says, ' If you do not do what
I propose you wiU have no security ; ' yet nine-tenths of all the things they propose to you to do
will not make you secure. After aU you will not have greater security than you have, and you
wUl have no diminution of panic, yet you will have interminable expenses. That is certain and
indisputable. Having asked the committee to follow me through our advisers' advice as to what
we ought to do, I will ask them now to look at what has been done ; because we are not now
considering a state of things wherein nothing has been done for the defence of the country, or
wherein nobody has paid any taxes for the purpose. All the accumulated wealth of the country
is not left in the pockets of the people. That is not our state. Now, if wc go back for twenty-
five years, we shall find that we have trebled our military expenses during that period. In
1835 our naval and military expenditure was £12,000,000 ; in 1853 it was £15,000,000 or
£16,000,000 ; and in 1860 we have voted about £30,000,000. But is that enormous charge any
pledge of security ? Not the least. Neither in 1835, nor at any other period since that time, has
there ever been any of that feeling of security which has existed of late. It is clear, then, that
the addition of £16,000,000 of anuual expenditure upon the army and the navy has not done one
single thing towards bringing us any nearer to security, or towards satisfying the pressure of the
services upon the exchequer of the country. The noble lord has quoted the authority of the Duke
of WeUington. The Duke of Wellington did a great deal for his order during his life, and
somebody persuaded him to leave them a legacy when he died, in the shape of a letter, which,
if he had been twenty years younger, he never would have written. I would rather trust
what the Duke of Wellington did in 1835, when he was younger, than at the period when he wrote
that letter. What did he do P He brought in those moderate estimates — he was not afraid of
popular opinion — and he and Sir Robert Peel brought in those estimates because they believed
them to be sufficient for the public service. But if you want to know the change that took place
in the Duke of Wellington's mind, come down to 1851, a little after the time when he wrote that
letter, and what did he do then ? That was the year of the Great Exhibition. The Duke of
WeUington at that time, as everybody knows who knew anything about him, had become what many
of us wiU become when wc arrive at that time of life — he had become more nervous and more irri
table than when he was younger. He fancied the country was running into great peril at the time
of the Great Exhibition. He had a vision of that class of Frenchmen of whom the noble lord
has seen something lately. He had a vision of Frenchmen — refugees. I suppose he thought that
everybody who was discontented upon the Continent would come here, not to see the Exhibition,
but for the purpose of dethroning the Queen, turning the House of Lords into the Thames, and
overturning everythmg that Englishmen hold in estimation. And what did the Duke, under
such influences, advise? Why, that as many troops as could be got there should be drawn

ENEMIES AT HOME. 243
round London, and I believe that 30,000 men were collected, gradually and quietly, so as not to
alarm those Frenchmen, who knew nothing' at all about it, in order that they might be ready to save
the Queen and the Court when they went to open the Exhibition. . . . Now I shall ask the
House one question before I sit down, and that is : whether this expenditure that we are now dis
cussing is to be without limit, and whether the House, contrary to the opinion of all other men
who have ever sat as representatives of a nation, is of opinion, that it does not matter in the least
how much money we throw away iu mUitary establishments every year ? How has this change
come about ? It all came about since the year 1853, when the flood-gates of passion were opened,
and from that time to the present the exchequer has been open, and every man, it appears, has
been aUowed to put his hand into it and spend just as much mouey as he likes. Up to that time
it was boasted that the reign of Queen Victoria was to be a reign of peace. We were told that —
' No war, or battle's sound,
Was heard the world around ;
The idle spear and shield were high up hung.'
But since then the Court seems to have its chief occupation in connection with military affairs —
reviews in Hyde Park, reviews at Aldershot, shooting matches on Wimbledon Common — all thesa
are occupations which for a long time have been foreign to the English Court, and for which I
beUeve in my conscience there is not a particle of justification at the moment at which I am
speaking. The people are stimulated to arm, the Cabinet is constantly devising new modes of ex
penditure, and aU this appears to be based upon tho ignorance of the people, the clamours of the
service, and the want of corn-age in the Cabinet to speak the real truth to the nation. There was
a great Minister of Queen Elizabeth's who once declared — and with great truth — that England
would never be undone except by a Parliament ; and I fear that the course we are taking, in our
utter negligence in regard to matters to which I have aUuded, and with reference to our ex
penditure, is tending to that which we understand by the undoing of » nation. . . . There
may be enemies abroad ; but I can find nobody who can point them out. I can, however, point
out an enemy at home, and that is this insane and wicked policy, which requires that you should
abstract from the labour and the industry of the people of England this enormous, incredible, and
ruinous sum from year to year. What is the result in every other country ? If somebody had
told the Minister of Louis XIV. that his extravagance would end in disaster to France, he would
have answered them, as I shall be answered, ' The country is rich enough — the glory of France is
worth more than your sordid considerations of pounds, shiUings, and pence. France must keep a
great position in Europe. There is no burden which France will not easily by its elasticity raise
itself under and support.' But do we not know that in another generation his family became
exUes ; the aristocracy of his country was overthrown ; another branch of his family has been
exUed ; and the kingdom which he did so much to ruin has been subjected to sixty years of
anarchy and recurring revolution ? This is the story history teUs of other countries, as weU as of
France ; and if we pursue the same course, I fear the history which wiU be written in the future
of our time wiU be exactly like that which has been written of France and of other countries
Tou wiU have an exiled royal family, you will have an overthrown aristocracy, and you wiU have
a period of recurring revolution ; and there is no path so straight, so downward, so slippery, so
easUy traveUed to all these misfortunes, as the path which we are now following, year after year,
adding to these enormous expenses, until the time will come when there wiU be some change
throughout the country, when men wUl open their eyes, will ask who has deceived them, defrauded
them, pillaged them. And then you will have to pay the penalty which all men in the upper
classes of society in every country have had to pay when they have not maintained the rights of
the great body of the people in this particular, and when they have not performed the duties which
devolved upon them as the governing classes of the country. It is because I hate this policy—

244 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
because I condemn this expenditure — because- 1 see that it wiU lead to more expenditure, and
to the wider prevalence of this policy, that I oppose with aU my heart the resolution of the noble
lord ; and in doing that, I feel the strongest conviction in my conscience that I am doing my duty,
not less to the people of whom I am one, than to the monarchy under which I live."
The measure, however, was carried by a large majority, so alarmed
were the members of the House of Commons by the invasion fever and
their own morbid fancies.
Mr. Bright wrote a letter to a Blackburn manufacturer on the 3rd of
November, in reply to a complaint " that education, literary and religious,
has failed to teach the working classes wisdom in relation to their own
interest." Mr. Bright's reply was very lengthy, and in one part of it he
stated : —
" I have never denied the legal or the moral right of workmen or employers to combine ; but
beUeve there is not one case in a hundred where it is wise to exercise this right. And looking at
the consequences of the strikes we have seen in this county, and indeed throughout the country,
it is amazing that so many men of sense, so many men competent in works of skill and ingenuity,
should take any part in them. I do not expect that in our time these deplorable transactions will
come to an end, but I am persuaded that they would occur much more rarely, and be attended with
much less of bitterness and of that obstinate f oUy which now so often distinguishes them, if the wall
of partition between classes were broken down by the admission of the great ' labour interest
into the rights of citizenship. Then the same questions would interest us aU ; the same grievances,
where grievances exist, would be seen to affect us all ; and instead of being, as we now are, two
nations in one country, having different ends and adverse sympathies, we should have objects and
purposes in common, to the incalculable and permanent gain of the whole people."
In November Mr. Cobden contemplated leaving Paris to spend the
winter at Algiers, as he was still suffering from hoarseness, which became
worse as winter advanced, and made him long for the sunshine and warmth
of the south. Mr. Bright was wishful to see him before leaving Paris, and
accordingly paid him a visit, and a few days after they had an interview
with the Emperor of the French. On that occasion Napoleon asked Mr.
Cobden if he was satisfied with the treaty. Mr. Cobden replied that,
with the exception of the iron, he did not complain. The Emperor com
plimented Mr. Bright on the course he had taken in always trying to
promote an amicable feeling between both nations. Mr. Bright and Mr.
Cobden urged the Emperor to abolish the passport system in his country
which caused so much unnecessary trouble, and Napoleon granted their
request. On the 9th of December the member for Bochdale, accom-

MR. COBDEN OFFERED A BARONETCY. 245
panied by his wife and eldest daughter, left for Algiers, where he remained
until the following May. Before leaving Algiers he received a
letter from Lord Palmerston offering, on behalf of her Majesty, to create
him a baronet, or to make him a privy councillor, for the services he had
rendered in negotiating the treaty with France. Mr. Cobden in his letter
replied that —
" Whilst entertaining the same sentiments of gratitude towards the Queen which I could have
felt if I had accepted the offer you have been so good as to make me in her name, I must beg
permission most respectfuUy to deny myself the honour which her Majesty has graciously pro
posed to confer on me. An indisposition to accept a title being in my case rather an affair of
feeling than of reason, I wiU not dweU further on the subject.
" With respect, however, to the particular occasion for which it is proposed to confer on me
this distinction, I may say that it would not be agreeable to me to accept a recompense in any form
for my recent labours in Paris. The only reward I desire is to live to witness an improvement in
the relations of the two great neighbouring nations which have been brought into more intimate
connexion by the Treaty of Commerce."
Mr. Bright was present at the soiree of the Wakefield Mechanics'
Institute, which was held in the Corn Exchange of that town on the 20th
of November. Mr. E. A. Leatham, M.P., presided.
"It seems to me," remarked Mr. Bright, "that there is nothing that is so entirely neglected
in the education of aU classes in this country as the consideration of the principle upon which, I
believe, the permanent prosperity and peace of nations or commonwealths are based. (Hear,
hear.) If these were principles that referred merely to our days or to this year, I should scarcely
think it worth while to refer to them, but they appear to me to refer to aU countries, to all times
and peoples, whatever circumstances they may be living under ; and that they are infinitely more
important than the ephemeral struggles and triumphs which attend the ambition of the statesman
with whom our time and thoughts are sometimes so greatly occupied. One of our poets has said
—I must apologise to him (though he is not here, and perhaps is not living) if I do not quote him
correctly, but he is reported to have asked or exclaimed —
' How few of all the ills which men endure
Are those which kings and lords can make or cure.'
If 1 were disposed te be sharp and short, and not disposed to argue the question, I migh+
answer him by a couplet from another of our poets, who has said, speaking of his own order —
' Poets, of all men, least regret
Increasing taxes and the nation's debt. '
(Laughter.) Now, I am prepared to contradict this saying of the poet which I first quoted. I
say that liberty, and wealth, and happiness, in the progress of every people, meet with a thousand
obstacles from laws which are based sometimes upon selfishness, but Ij believe much more
frequently upon ignorance of the true interests of the nation. (Hear, hear.) The science of
poUtical economy, although it has been proclaimed by various learned and able men for nearly a
hundred years, is a science which yet is absolutely in its infancy, and it is an entire mistake to

246 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
snppose that it is only the members of mechanics' institutions who are weU informed upon this
science. . . . There can be no doubt whatever that, as we go on, every improvement that is
made in machinery or in agriculture adds to our power of production, and ought to add to our com
fort. (Cheers.) In my opinion it ought to lessen human labour and increase human enjoyment.
(Hear, hear.) But if through bad principles of legislation, if through error of Government, pubUc
resources are wasted, if a vast quantity of our industry is misdirected; if there be these great
blunders made, you may have rich men, and you may have rich famiUes, but you may rely upon it
the multitude will stiU be poor, and the little comforts they have wiU stiU be precarious.
(Cheers.) Now, I want us to study these subjects more than we have done before, to enable us to see
clearly that we may govern ourselves more wisely. I believe that if we do so we may raise man
kind to a much higher level, wc may give greater glory to our country, we may dispense greater
happiness amongst the families of which it is composed, and we may do that which is not a little
thing— we may do something to ' justify the ways of God to mau.' " (Loud and prolonged
cheering.) Mr. Bright, on the 3rd of August, spoke in the House on the ever-
troublesome question of Turkey, with some good effect, remarking : —
" Now, we have been supporting the Sultan for a considerable period, and hitherto with very
indifferent success. I think the hon. and gaUant member, Sir Charles Napier, can tell us
something of what took place in 1840, and I have no doubt that if he were to give his unbiased
testimony — as I am sure he would if he stood up to say anything about it — he would teU us
it was not a very fortunate achievement in which he was engaged in 1840 ; and that probably
his vessels had not left sight of the shores of Syria before the Turks returned to their tyranny,
and the Christians again passed under the yoke of their oppressors. It is notorious to everybody
that whilst that part of Asia was under the government of the Egyptian Pasha there was
tranquillity throughout the land, and traveUers might pass wherever they liked with at least a fair
security ; but when that rule was withdrawn, the country returned to its former, and to its
present, anarchy. I contest altogether the wisdom and right of the Government of this country
in interfering to support a Power which is utterly and obviously, according to the noble lord's
own statement, doomed to an extinction from a decay which it is altogether improbable, in my
opinion, for any human aid to avert. . . . After you had the Crimean war, and, as you said,
chastised Russia, and re-established the power and dignity of the Porte, and secured the
integrity of the Turkish Empire by a treaty of the various Powers of Europe, you come now,
nearly seven years after the commencement of that war, and four years only after its termination,
and you find that country in a worse condition of anarchy than it was before you meddled with it.
Tour war did several thing's for Turkey. It destroyed what it had of a fleet ; it destroyed what
it had of an army. It left its finances in a more embarrassed condition than before ; it left its
revenues from Eg'ypt, and, I think, from Syria, also pledged and mortgaged to the Powers that
had lent it money ; and it did that to which the noble lord has referred as a thing greatly to be
dreaded — it depreciated and stained altogether, in the eyes of the Mahomedan population, the
dignity of the Sultan, which they had been previously so much accustomed to regard. Tou have
maintained upon the throne a man totally incapable of doing any smgle thing in the way
of government. We hear every three months that the Sultan has issued a severe order about
something connected with the finances. That is all pretence ; done with the idea of bolstering
up, in the markets of Europe, Turkish Stock, and to force people to believe there is going to be
some improvement. When you hear there is a wedding in the SiUtan's family, or in the family
of any Grand Pasha, the extravagance and expense is something that can hardly be credited in

THE TURKISH EMPIRE. 247
any Christian country. All this we hear ; but we find from time to time that there is growing
up in every part of the Empire suspicion and distrust of the Government ; hatred of the system
under which they live ; the tribes, as in Syria, massacring one another ; and yet the very authorities
of the Sultan, the pashas, who were receiving his wages — men whom, for aught I know, you
decorated during that war — did not lift a hand to stay the shedding of the blood of your feUow-
creatures aud, to some extent, your co-religionists. . . . The noble lord hopes that whatever
may be done for Turkey will be done by general concert. It appears to me there are only
two modes of dealing with the question which have any argument to recommend them. One is
the course of entire abstention. It is very likely that the adoption of that policy by the Powers
of Europe would be followed before long by a sanguinary contest both in Asiatic and European
Turkey. (Lord John RusseU, ' Hear, hear.') The noble lord, by the approbation he gives to that
statement, puts his seal to all I have said with respect to the perilous condition of Turkey. I
say, let the European Powers agree to consult together as to what should be done, not for
the purpose of sustaining the Turkish Empire, which I hold to be utterly impossible, but for the
purpose of deciding what shall take place when the Turkish Empire shall come to an end. For
instance, it would be a positive blessing to the Sultan if there could be a separate Government
organised for Syria which should be independent of Constantinople ; and probably before long
the rebounds from these atrocities committed in Syria will be found in European Turkey, and
yon may have there risings and disturbances similar to those which have taken place in Syria.
If this should occur, instead of caring very much that Russia should add a province to her bulk —
for the addition of provinces does not always give power to kingdoms and governments — do, in
the name of common sense and common humanity, abstain at any rate from attempting longer
permanently to sustain a Government which everybody in Turkey believes to be unsustainable.
Judging from the tone of Russia, of France, and of the noble lord at the head of the Foreign
Office — and, I take it, Austria and Prussia would not throw obstacles in the way — if you do not
adopt the policy of abstention, why should not there be some discussion with a view to
establish new, separate, and better Governments ? The question of Constantinople, which
is supposed to be the great political question, is surely not an insuperable difficulty. It cannot
be said that Heaven permitted a great city to grow up in a favoured spot to form continuaUy a
bone of contention between the nations of Europe, or that the statesmen who have settled so
many questions cannot suggest what can be done with this. What I am myself most anxious for
is, that England should hold itself aloof from that policy — should, in point of fact, repudiate
it altogether as a mistake that the integrity of the Turkish Empire is to be maintained, and tha
not this Power, but the pretended Power — the feebleness and the dignity of the Sultan — is to be
supported ; and that all this is to be done again at the expense of the taxes drawn from the
English people, and of the blood of EngUshmen squandered like water, in the endeavour to
do that which nature says is impossible, and that all experience teUs us we must fail in if
we ever attempt."
Mr. Bright, on the 10th of August, again commented on the conduct
of the House of Lords in refusing to give their consent to the abolition
of the duties on paper, and he asked the members of the House of
Commons whether they believed that a majority of the House of Lords
was likely to work well in financial questions with the majority of the
House of Commons. There had been no majority in the House of
Lords, he remarked, since the Eeform Bill, or long before, and that there

248 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
was no probability of there being such a Liberal majority. There was
every probability that the majority of the House of Commons, whatever
it called itself, would not be of the same political complexion as the
majority of the other House of Parliament. Therefore they were estab
lishing, in that respect, a permanent, a chronic dissension between the
two Houses, which might lead to difficulties that every man in that
House, he thought, would wish to see avoided.
A careful study of the speeches of Mr. Bright will reveal the fact
that his chief aim has been to improve the condition of the working
class ; that England should be governed well, and raised in the scale of
nations. His idea of a happy nation is very aptly described by
Confucius : — " Where spades grow bright, and idle wo:'ds grow duU,
Where gaols are empty, and where barns are full ;
Where church-paths are with frequent feet outworn ;
Law court-yards weedy, silent, and forlorn ;
Where doctors foot it, and where farmers ride ;
Where age abounds, and youth is multiplied ;
Where these signs are, they clearly indicate
A happy people and well-govern'd state."
Mr. Bright was present at the inauguration of the Leeds Working
Men's Parliamentary Association, which was held in the Town Hall,
Leeds, on the llth of December. Mr. Alderman Middleton occupied
the chair. Mr. Edward Baines, M.P., and Mr. E. A. Leatham, M.P.,
also addressed the meeting.
" I ask myself, why this dread of the people P " remarked Mr. Bright. " I live among them.
A man accosted me only on Saturday at the raUway station, and putting his hand on my shoulder
(he was a working man) he said, ' Ah, weU, we were lads together ; ' and then he made a remark
which was equaUy true — ' but it is a long time since.' (Laughter.) I have lived amongst them
all my life. I never had any distrust of them ; I never affected any perfection in them, any more
than I found it elsewhere or conceived it to exist in myself ; but I say that for those quaUties
that go to make a people, that are requisite to fulfil the duties of citizenship, the working classes
of this country need not bow the head before the highest in the land. . . . Shall English
men alone be dazzled with what they see abroad, and forget altogether the duty they owe to them
selves ? Shall seventy -five miUions of pounds sterling in taxes — seventy-five miUions, the produce
of human labour — shaU this be annuaUy raised and spent, and shaU six milUons of Englishmen,
who have had the main power in raising it, have no further concern in the matter ? Shall every
working man give, as I believe he does give, at least two hours extra per day of toil and of
sweat to support a Government whose policy he can in no degree influence, and which shuts him

R. W DALE, LL D
(From a Photograpk by Mr H. J Whitlock, Birmingham.)

AT BIRMINGHAM. 249
out from the commonest rights of citizenship, and spurns him as though he were but a wild
beast in human form ? (Hear, hear, and loud cheers.) I tell you honestly I cannot believe it. I
know there is amongst the people of this country an overwhelming preponderance in favour of
Parliamentary Reform. (Cheers.) It will come. (Cheers.) It may be delayed, but it cannot
be prevented. (Hear, hear.) It will come by honest, enlightened, and safe steps, such as we
recommend, or it wiU come hastened by some great accident which none of us can now foresee,
and may bring about changes and feeUngs which may shake our political and social fabric to its
base. ( Hear, hear.) Now, honestly, it is because I dread disorder, because I know that resistance
to just demands is the fertile parent of confusion in every State ; it is because I wish England to
be great, and glorious, and free, and moral— (cheers)— that I urge the working classes amongst
my countrymen, the unenfranchised miUions, to insist upon their just rights, and it is for those
causes that I couusel the ruling classes to grant those rights, although it may be that my
counsel may be in vain."
Mr. Bright met his constituents in the Town Hall, Birmingham, on
the 29th of January, 1861, and there were not fewer than 6,000 present.
Mr. Arthur Byland, the Mayor, presided.
" The House of Commons," observed Mr. Bright, " of late years, had presented itself to them
as a body caring little for the great internal interests of the country, reckless and profligate in
its expenditure ; and if that were so, and if he could judge of what was passing in the pubUc
mind, he was forced to the conclusion that the question of taxation and expenditure was that to
which men were looking at the present time with great interest. The past year had been one of
unusual prosperity, and heavy burdens had been borne without much complaint. But there were
clouds, particularly in the west, which promised a great change of circumstances, and the
question was passing from mouth to mouth — how long wUl the Chancellor of the Exchequer be
able to raise seventy miUions in taxes on the people of this country P . . . He had never
heard the feeblest protest raised in the House of Lords against the extravagance of the Govern
ment. It was worth their while to know that, with very few exceptions, the members of the
present peerage owed their peerages to creation within the last 100 years. The origin of them
came from the rotten-borough system : any man who could get four, five, or six seats in the
House of Commons at his command to serve the Government of his day, could, by ways known
to such a gentleman — (laughter) — procure to himself, in all probability, to be made a peer. He
told them this to show that when they were asked to examine into the conduct of the House of
Peers, they were not to look at it as anything as old as the monarchy of England. They might
single out a few families who had come down from remote times, the majority of whom had
generaUy shown themselves considerate and just to the people of the country ; but aU the
modern peerage was bred in the slime and corruption of the rotten -borough system, and they
need not look to a House so constituted for any great anxiety to save the pockets of the nation."
(Cheers.) Mr. Bright had very little faith in the House of Lords as a source
of justice to the working class. He judged the peers from their past,
which went to prove that they of themselves would never bestow
" The dew of justice, which did seldom fall,
And when it dropt the drops were small."

250 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT
" I am of opinion," continued Mr. Bright, " that a tax, althongh the working men appear to
pay none of it, is borne mainly by them, because the sum is withdrawn from the fund which
ought to employ them, and they are sufferers indirectly to the amount of the taxes that is wasted.
When I look round at the condition of things in this country, I wonder and I grieve. I see
more work ,1 believe, done than by any equally numerous people in any country in the world. I
see at the same time a wonderful benevolence and charity between man and man. There was
never a time since the beginning of the Christian era, and there never was a country, in which so
many men and women were employed in kind and benevolent and charitable and Christian
labours for the benefit of their fellow-creatures. (Cheers.) There is benevolence abounding, but
benevolence cannot do what we wish to be done. There is such a thing as
' With one hand put
A penny in the urn of poverty,
Aud with the other take a shilling out.'
(Laughter.) And that may be done without any dishonest or improper intention. ... I
maintain that we who hold these sentiments are the true Conservatives in the country. Our past
policy has loaded us with debt. It has destroyed miUions of families. It has desolated miUions
of houses. It has added immeasurably to the chaos, and infinitely to the sufferings, of Europe.
I would reverse this policy. I would practice a religious abstention from all the tumults
and quarrels which arise upon the Continent of Europe. I would give, if I could, to industrious
people the full enjoyment of the wealth they create. I would ask, with one of our old
poets — ' What means the bounty of all-gracious Heaven —
That, persevering still, with open hand
It scatters good, as in a waste of mercy,'
if it be not that the common children of all-gracious Heaven should enjoy this full bounty which
is offered to them p As you have revolutionised your commercial legislation, revolutionise your
foreign policy •. bring it to the standard of common sense and common morality. Permit the
people — for whom my very breast bleeds when I see the sufferings which so many of them endure
— permit them to enjoy that which they created. The crown wiU gain fresh lustre ; institutions
that are good wiU be more stable ; and this nation, to its humblest homestead, wiU be ever the
more contented and the more happy."' (Prolonged cheering.)
On the first night ofthe session of 1861 (the 5th of February), Lord
John Bussell informed the House that the Cabinet thought that it would
be better to leave the question of Eeform entirely untouched than to
bring forward a measure which would create great disappointment
amongst its supporters, many taunts on the part of its opponents, and
which, whether carried out or not, would occupy a great deal of valuable
time without any valuable result. As soon as the noble lord resumed his
seat, Mr. Bright rose, and expressed the opinion that a moderate, a short,
but a useful measure of Eeform might have been presented to the
House.

INDUCEMENTS FOR REFORM. 251
" If the noble lord, the Prime Minister, had stated that the Government considered that biU
to be a cardinal measure of the sessioii — by which the House would have understood one of three
things — either that it would pass, or there would be a change of Government, or there would be a
dissolution of Parliament, in pursuance of the honourable course taken by Lord Derby's Govern
ment — he woidd undertake to say there was not a shadow of a doubt that that bill would have
passed the House. But Lord John Russell said that it wanted a great tide to carry it over the
bar of the House of Lords. Well, doubtless it did. But still there were men in the House of
Lords not whoUy oblivious to the past, and not wholly wanting iii foresight as to the future. As
far as the members of the House of Commons who were instrumental in placing their present
Prime Minister in the office he now held were concerned, they at least, with regard to the question
of Reform, were absolved from any supposed obligation to consider themselves supporters of
the Government of the noble lord. He was quite content to wait for the time when this measure
would receive what he caUed a more honest and more statesmanlike attention from that House.
He believed that the time was not distant when the country would insist that something should be
done with regard to Reform. The millions to whom you have given the franchise declare " continued
Mr. Bright, "in favour of the exten sion of the franchise ; do you mean to say the majority they exhibit
is not a fair representation of the enormous majority which would be exhibited if you could poll
six-sevenths of the people to whom youref use the franchise ? And yet, what does the noble lord want,
and what do you want ? Tou want these six millions of the people to make a demonstration which
you put it out of their way to make in any peaceable fashion. Tou won't poU the nation ; you
won't refer the question to the people of the country, and let them decide it ; you confine the
franchise to the mUlion, when your hocus pocus and their votes are of no value even to them
selves ; and then you say, ' Why don't these six miUions show they want it ? ' How are they to show
it, except by great meetings ? And, for the most part, in a state of political excitement they
must go into tumultuous meetings. And if you should have those tumultuous meetings— if my
hon. friend the member for Glasgow should come here and say ' Mr. Speaker, I left Glasgow, and
there were 100,000 people assembled, and this resolution was passed ; ' and if my hon. friend the
member for Manchester, and my hon. friend the member for Leeds and his colleague, could come
up here and teU the same story, what would you do ? Tour difficulties would vanish. Tou would
play the part you played thirty years ago. Tour miuisters who are now so calm, and now so
Conservative (especially if they were on that side of the House), would take the popular side,
the House would become as obsequious as it was in 1832, and the biU would pass (perhaps, too, a more
extensive measure than many of us would wish to see passed), and changes would take place which
you dread. Now, I speak this to the House from an honest conviction. I am giving the House
wise counsel, and I am warning it of dangers, which, even though they be in some degree distant,
as they may be-for I assume not the gift of prophecy as to time-are dangers which are ahead.
They have overtaken the statesmen of every one of those countries who have disregarded these
warnings, and overwhelmed not a few of them ; and I say that, after the course which the House
of Commons has pursued on this occasion, which Ministers on both sides of the House have
pursued, and after the statement you have made, you run the risk of losing : first, your own self-
respect, and, secondly, the respect of the country; aud when once that has happened in this
kingdom, rely upon it that a more unpleasant and a more unhappy time will have come than can
possibly come as the result of such a judicious and moderate measure as the Government might
this session have proposed, if they were courageous in their duty,^ and such as the House of
Commons with great satisfaction, in my opinion, might have passed."
Mr. White moved that a paragraph should be added to the address
in favour of Eeform, but the motion was negatived by 124 to 46.

252 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Lord Palmerston, on the evening of the 7fch of February, expressed
the opinion in the House of Commons that some of the forms which had
been hitherto observed by the House might be dispensed with without
injury to the public interest, and moved that a Select Committee be
appointed to inquire into the subject.
" The great difficulty experienced," said Mr. Bright, in supporting the motion, " in the
management of public business seems to be this — that there sits on one side of the House about
as many men as sit on the other, and that it is the acknowledged duty of the leader of the
Opposition to prevent the Government doing almost anything. When the right hon. gentleman
the member for Bucks and his friends occupied the Treasury Bench, there were members on the
other side who served them in the same way. Now, if the House be a fair representation of the
people, if the population be so evenly divided in opinion that there can be no majority, business
must necessarily go on very slowly, and only those things can be done as to which members are
agreed. That being so, we must wait patiently until either the members of this House, or the
people, have become inteUigent enough to give a majority to one side or the other."
The motion was agreed to.
Mr. Dodson, on the 5th of March, called the attention of the members
of the House of Commons to the duty on hops, which he considered
impolitic, and that if there were to be any remissions of taxation, provision
should be made for the removal of such a duty. Mr. Bright believed
that the tax was as bad as it was described, and that there did not live
the man so stupid who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, would attempt
for the first time to propose a tax so odious and absurd as that. But,
notwithstanding all this, and believing that but a very short time would
elapse before it was abolished, yet he was not prepared, in the position
they stood, to give a pledge that the first money which the Chancellor
of the Exchequer could spare should be devoted to the repeal of that
duty. For many years Mr. Cobden and himself were beset by men
in the lobby who wanted something done with regard to the hop duty.
There was then a protecting duty on foreign hops, and that always
seemed to blind the eyes of every man connected with it. The previous
year it blinded the eyes of every man connected with it; it blinded
the eyes of the paper makers, and years before it blinded the eyes
of the hop growers. As long as the protecting duty remained, the
hop growers of Kent had not the same interest as the hop growers of
Sussex. The growers never came before the House until now with the

THE NAVY ESTIMATES. 253
authority of the united interest, and nothing was done. Since last year
the scales had dropped from their eyes, and now they saw it in the light
in which the free-traders had seen it for many years, and now they
wished the tax abolished. When the abolition of the excise duty on
paper was passed by both Houses of Parliament, then he would not have
the smallest objection to vote the strongest resolution, and for the most
instantaneous action on the part of the House of Commons, on behalf of
the abolition of the duty on hops. As for himself he would say that he
was as base as any member of the House of Commons, and that the House
was unworthy of its history, and would be unworthy of the slightest
confidence on the part of the people of England, if it did not on the first
opportunity assert its ancient right, and teach those who for a moment
had forgotten it that there, and in that House alone, rested the power to
tax the people of England and to determine what should be raised from
the people to satisfy the exigencies of the Crown for the service of
the year.
On the llth of March, when the House was in Committee on the
Navy Estimates, Mr. Bright, referring to our navy numbering 751
vessels in April, IS 59, reminded the members that
"An enormous sum of money had been voted within the last two years, and that ship-
buUding had been carried on faster perhaps than it had ever been carried on before ; yet they
came to a return that lay on the table and found the whole number of vessels set down as
688. Therefore, according to the Admiralty returns, it seemed the more they built, and
the more they spent, the fewer ships they had. He did not think they were a bit the worse
for it, because either of the numbers he had mentioned was far beyond what any rational Minister
would ask for, or any rational Parliament would permit to exist. Again, in a report of that
very session, it appeared that within one there had been as many ships under repair during the
last year as the number given them as constituting the whole navy: that was, of the whole
navy consisting of 688 ships, 687 were put down as under repair. He had come to the conclusion
that the House could place extremely little reUance upon those statistics, and he suspected there
were many ships of which the House knew nothing, and probably the Admiralty itself knew Very
little. The noble lord at the head of the Government and his colleagues always seized on a time
of popular delusion to add to the navy and the expenditure of the country. Instead of that, if
they were to tell the people the truth, which they knew, aud which to his certain knowledge their
own officers sent to them from Paris, they might have saved miUions during the last few years.
There was not a man in Paris, whether Bonapartist, Orleanist, or Republican, who did not
entirely disbelieve and disavow all the statements made in that House and in this country as to
the gigantic naval preparations of France and the disposition of its Government towards
England. Surely, after what was done in consequence of the panic, excited when the right hon.
member for Droitwich was at the Admiralty, and considering that this was a time of peculiar

254 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
pressure, when a general discontent was arising in different parts of the country at the enormous
expenditure, the Government might have reduced the miUtary estimates of the year by four
or five miUions. The noble lord at the head of the Government might have, with credit to his
Government and satisfaction to the country, touched these estimates with a bolder hand, and
given his ChanceUor of the Exchequer the means of making some amends to a heavily-taxed
nation for the other failures and shortcomings of the administration, by producing a budget
which might have saved much of the money they so hardly earned."
Mr. Dunlop, on the 19th of March, moved in the House of
Commons for the appointment of a Select Committee, to inquire into
the despatches of Sir Alexander Burnes previous to the unfortunate
Afghan war in 1839, saying —
" That he had read the falsified blue-book with amazement, indignation, and shame. Amaze
ment, at the extent and audacity of the falsification ; indignation, at the injustice done to poor
Sir A. Burnes and Dost Mahommed, and at the fraud that had been perpetrated on the House ;
and shame, that a department of the Government could be found capable of resorting to such
means of screening itself from censure. The terrible events of the Afghan campaign — the disgrace
to our arms — the annihilation of our army, the horrors endured by the captives during their cap
tivity, and the agonies of their friends at home — had burnt, as with a brand of iron, into the memory
of the people of this country the f earful sto . y of that war, and all the more destructively from the
solemn conviction that all those fatal calamities were, in the words of Mr. Kaye, its historian, to be
traced' to the curse of God resting heavily upon an unholy cause.' The papers that were presented
to the House were defective in not giving the whole truth, but that they presented the very
opposite of the truth, and that systematically and regularly facts were concealed, and whole
paragraphs were omitted, and others garbled, so as to give the opposite view to that which the
despatches really presented. He must do justice to the hand which had prepared this document
for the House, and he must have been a man of genius whoever he was. First of all, he asked his
hearers to look at the events which the suppression of the evidence and the publication of false
documents had done. It had, in the first place, done grievous injustice to the character and
memory of Sir A. Burnes. That officer at least was a faithful servant, and did his duty well,
and he was himself the first victim of the Afghan war. His body was hacked in pieces by the
Afghans, who looked upou him as the representative of the British policy. But his reputation
was mangled stiU more cruelly by those who should have defended it and handed his name down
to posterity with honour. He had been falsely held out by the Government which had employed
him — and, so far as they were concerned, would have been sent down to posterity — as the insti
gator and adviser of the unjust and calamitous war ; and this for the dastardly purpose of
screening themselves from a condemnation which they were conscious that they deserved, and
laying on Sir A. Burnes the obloquy of a charge of which they knew him to be innocent. Then
they ought to consider the injustice done to Dost Mahommed. We had ruined his famUy, made
him captive, and deprived him of his throne. Surely that might have been enough ; but not
content with that we published false despatches, which made it appear he was faithless to us,
aud deserved aU the injuries which he had sustained. At a subsequent period the Dost recovered
his dominions ; and when our Empire in India was tottering, he might have avenged himself by
merely gathering troops in Cabul, and so creating an alarm which would have prevented Sir
John Lawrence from sending reinforcements to Delhi, and thus have imposed upon us the task of
re-conquering India. But he abstained from taking such a step, thus contrasting the noble con
duct of a Mahommedan chief with the tortuous policy of a so-called Christian State.''

THE DESPATCHES OF SIR A. BURNES. 255
Lord Palmerston informed the House that the policy and conduct of
the Grovernment were regulated, not by the opinions of their subordinate
agent at Cabul, but by the general knowledge which they possessed of
the state of affairs in the East, of the aggressive views then entertained
by Eussia, and of the means by which that State was preparing to push
disturbance to the Very frontiers of our Indian possessions. If that be
so, the question was not the degree in which Parliament had been mis
led, or in which Lieutenant Burnes had been injured, by the omission
of portions of his despatches in which his personal opinions, evidently
arising from confusion of ideas, misconceptions, and over-credulity, were
stated at variance with the views justly entertained by the Government
under which he was acting. It was quite true that several of the
despatches were curtailed and parts omitted ; but enough remained to
reveal the outline of affairs which he had traced, and to show how the
Dost, having turned from Eussia and Persia to Great Britain for
assistance against Eunjeet Singh, reverted to his former policy when
British aid was refused.
Mr. Bright next rose and told Lord Palmerston that, in opening his
speech, he observed from his countenance and from his language he
seemed to be suffering from the passion of anger. (Lord Palmerston :
" Not much.") He would admit that in the course of his speech Lord
Palmerston calmed down, but the noble lord was so far led from what he
thought was a fair course as to charge the hon. and learned gentleman
who introduced this motion with making a violent and vituperative
speech, and spoke of that vocabulary of abuse of which the hon. gentle
man appeared to be master.
"Now, I will undertake to say," added Mr. Bright, " that I am only speaking the opinion of
every gentleman in the House who heard the speech which introduced this question, when I say
that there has rarely been delivered here on any subject" a speech more strictly logical, more
judicially calm, and more admirable than that which we have heard to-night from the right hon.
and learned member for Greenock. But the fact is, the noble lord felt himself hit. The noble
lord is on his trial in this case ; and it is on that account that I expect at the conclusion of the
debate he will not feel himself at liberty to object to the appointment of this committee. After
a few sentences the noble lord touched upon the case of Sir A. Burnes, and he made a very famt
denial of the misrepresentations which are charged against the Government of the day m the
case of that gentleman. But he went on to say that, after aU, these things were of no importance,
and that what was added to, or what was left out of the despatches was unimportant. But I

256 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
should like to ask the noble lord what was the object of this minute and ingenious, and I wUl
say unmatched, care which was taken in mutUating the despatches of a gentleman whose opinions
were of no importance, and whose writings could not make the slightest difference either to the
question or to the opinions of any person concerned p . . . And the noble lord, too, has stooped
to conduct which, if I were not in this House, I would describe in language which if I were to
use here I should possibly be told that I was transgressing the line usually observed in discus
sions in this assembly. The noble lord stooped so low as, throughout the whole of his speech, to
heap insult upon the memory of a man who died in the execution of what he believed to be his
public duty — a duty which was thrust upon him by the mad and obstinate policy of the noble
lord ; and whUst his blood cries to Heaven against that policy, the noble lord in this House,
during a three-quarters-of-an-hour speech, has scarcely ceased to heap insult on his memory.
What tho noble lord told us throughout his speech was' that Sir A. Burnes was a man of the
greatest simpUcity of character. I could not, however complimentary I were disposed to be,
retort that upon the noble lord. He says that Sir A. Burnes, an eminent political agent — of
whom he speaks throughout in the most contemptuous manner — at the court of Dost Mahom
med, was beguiled by the treachery of that Asiatic ruler ; that he took everything for
truth that he heard ; and that, in point of fact, he was utterly unfit for the position
which he held at Cabul. But although the noble lord, having these despatches before him,
and knowing all the feelings of Sir A. Burnes, still continued Sir A. Burues there ; and
he was there two years after these despatches were written, in that most perilous year when
not only himself but the whole army — subjects of the Queen — feU victims to the policy of
the noble lord. Now I must tell the noble lord, what my hon. and learned friend the member
for Gieenock did not discuss, and what the committee is not to do — because every member
who heard the speech of the hou. and learned member for Greenock, and those who listened to
the speech of the noble lord, must have seen that from the first he evaded the whole question.
He endeavoured to lead the house to believe that Mr. Dunlop was going into some antiquarian
researches about the policy of the English or the Indian Government some twenty years
ago, and that it was proposed to have a committee to dig up all questions of our supposed
peril from the designs of Russia at that time. But the fact is that Mr. Dunlop had no such
intention, and there was no man in the House more cognisant of that fact than the noble lord
when he endeavoured ingeniously to convey a contrary impression to the House. It is not pro
posed to go into the policy of the war. And there is another question that it is not proposed to
go into. It is not proposed to inquire whether Sir A. Burnes or Lord Auckland was Governor-
General We know that Lord Auckland was Governor-General, but we know that a Governor-
General, who may be many hundreds, or in India perhaps 2,000 mUes away from the place where
particular events are transpiring, must rely to a considerable extent on the information he
receives from the poUtical agent on the spot. If this be so, clearly what Sir A. Burnes thought,
and what he said, and what he wrote, is of some importance. At least, if the House of Commons
has any evidence placed before it, the noble lord wiU agree that in a great question like this  I am
not speaking of the present time, but of the time when these events happened — it is of first-rate
importance that the House should have evidence, not on one side only, but on both sides. There
is another thing we do not propose to inquire into, and that is the poUcy of Russia at that time.
I cannot very well understand the course that the noble lord has undertaken on this point ; for I
find that about twelve months after the writing of these very despatches the mutUation of which is
now complained of, the noble lord made a reply to the Russian Minister who had declared that there
was nothing whatever hostile to England in the instructions which were furnished to Vicovich.
He says, ' There has not existed the smaUest design hostile to the English Government, nor the
smallest idea of endangering the tranquillity of the British possessions of India.' The noble lord
in reply to that, on the 20th of December, 1838, just a year after the writing of these despatches

GARBLED DESPATCHES. 257
by Sir A. Burnes, said — ' Her Majesty's Government accept as entirely satisfactory the declaration
of the Russian Government, that it does not harbour any designs hostile to the interests of Great
Britain in India.' I may leave that question there, because I can assure the noble lord that my
hon. and learned friend has not the smallest intention — I judge so, at least, from his speech — of
bringing anybody before the committee to attack or defend the policy of the Government in the
war which then unhappily took place. Nor do I suppose it is intended to arraign anybody for a
poUcy that sacrificed at least 20.000 human lives — 20,000 lives of the subjects of the Queen of
England ! Nor is it intended to inquire how far the loss of more than £15,000,000 sterling by
that policy has affected for all future time the finances and circumstances of the Government of
India. These are crimes — the whole of that policy is a crime — of a nature never to be answered
for. No man can accurately measure it. No committee of this House could adequately punish
those who were the perpetrators of it. No, sir, my hon. and learned friend has not the shghtest
idea of going back twenty years for the purpose of bringing the noble lord, or any one else who
may be guilty, to the bar of public opinion by this committee. But it is worth while that the
House should know whether the Government in whom it at that time placed confidence, and in
whom the Queen placed confidence — whether that Government was worthy of their confidence, aud
whether any member of the Government of that day are members of the Government at this day.
It is worth while to know whether there was and is a man in high position in the Government
here or in India, who had so low a sense of honour and of right that he could offer to this House
mutUated, false, forged opinions of a public servant who lost his life in the public service.
Conceive any man at this moment in India, engaged as many have been during the last three
years in perilous service — conceive any man to know that to-morrow, or next week, or any time
this year, he may lay his bones in that distant land, and six months after there will be laid on the
table of this House, by the noble lord at the head of the Government, or by the Secretary of
State for India, letters from him, from which passages have been cut out, and into which passages
have been inserted ; in which words have been so twisted as wholly to divert and distort his
meaning, and to give to him a meaning, it may be, utterly the reverse of that which his original
despatches intended to convey. I cannot conceive any anticipation more painful or more bitter,
more Ukely to eat into the heart and head of any man engaged in the service of his country in
any distant land. It is admitted, and the noble lord has not flatly denied it — he cannot deny
it — he knows it as well as the hon. and learned member for Greenock — he knows it as well as the
very man whose hand did the evil — he knows there has been garbling mutilation, practically
and essentiaUy falsehood and forgery, in these despatches which have been laid before the House.
Why was it refused to give the original despatches when they were asked for in 1842 by the
hon. member for Inverness-shire (Mr. H. Baillie), and when they were asked for at a later period
by the hon. member for Sheffield (Mr. Hadfield) ? Why was it that the originals were so
consistently withheld? They have been given now, I suppose, because those who were
guUty of the outrage on the faith of Parliament thought, as twenty years had elapsed, nobody
would give themselves the trouble to go into the question, and that no man would be so earnest
as my hon. friend the member for Greenock in bringing the question before the notice of
Parliament, My hon. friend the member for Sheffield (Mr. Hadfield) informs me that it was
the noble lord the member for King's Lynn (Lord Stanley) who consented to the production of
the original despatches when he was in office. I was not aware of that fact; but I am free here
to tender him my thanks for the course he took. . . I say that an odious offence has been
committed against this House, and against the truth ; and what we want to know is, who did it ?
Now, wiU the noble lord be candid enough. He does not think there is anything wrong— he says
there is not much— it is very trifling— that Sir A. Burnes' opinions were not worth much.
Suppose it to be so. For the sake of argument, grant it ; but if it is a matter of no importance,
wiU the noble lord teU us who did it ? When Lord Broughton was examined before the Officials
42

258 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Salaries' Committee some years ago, he, as the noble lord is aware, said he took upon himself, as
President of the Board of Control at the time, the entire responsibUity of the Afghan war. The
noble lord at the head of the Government now was then a member of the Indian Board, and so I
beUeve was the noble lord the member for the City of London. But the noble lord at the head of
the Government was also Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Now, I do not think I am wrong in
supposing that this question lies between the noble lord the Prime Minister and Lord Broughton,
once a member of this House. This was not done by some subordinate who cannot be found out.
My hon. and learned friend says it has been done with marveUous care, and even with so much
ability that it must have been done by a man of genius. Of course there are men of genius in
every objectionable walk of Ufe ; but we know that the noble lord at the head of the Government
is a man of genius ; if he had not been he would not have sat on that bench for the last fifty
years. And we know that Lord Broughton is a man of many and varied accomplishments. And
once more I ask the noble lord to tell us who did it ? He knows who did it. Was it his own
right hand, or was it Lord Broughton's right hand ? Or was it some clever secretary in the
Foreign Office or in the India Office who did this work P I say, the House has a right to
know. We want to know that. We want to drag the delinquent before the public. This we want
to know, because wo wish to deter other Ministers from committing the Uke offence ; and
we want to know it for that which most of aU is necessary — to vindicate the character
and honour of Parliament. Nothing can sink Parliament to a lower state of degradation and
abasedness than that it should permit Ministers of the Crown to lay upon the table, upon
questions involving the sacrifice of £20,000,000 of money and 20,000 lives, documents which are
not true — which slander our pubUc servants, and which slander them most basely of aU when
they are dead and not here to answer. I do not believe that the gentlemen of England in this
House — upon that side of the House or upon this — will ever consent to sit down with a
case proved so clearly as this is without directing the omnipotent power and eye of ParUament
into the matter. 1 say, seeing the charge,^seeing that the noble lord was at the head of the
Foreign Office at the time, that the poUcy of the Afghan war was always considered to be his,
that the responsibility of this act must rest between him and Lord Broughton, I should not Uke
to hold the opinion, and I do not hold the opinion, that the noble lord would object to a
Committee to inquire into a matter in which he is himself so directly concerned."
Mr. Disraeli expressed the opinion that the person responsible for
the Afghan war was the English Minister at home, and he should hold
him unworthy to be a Minister who, after any lapse of time, would shrink
from that responsibility. He had no personal acquaintance with Sir
A. Burnes. He formed his opinion of that public servant from the
public documents written by him in the course of his public duties. He
found him possessed of great energy, great devotion, great fertility of
resources, and a character admirably adapted to the circumstances he was
called on to control, and to the position he filled. He could not, there
fore, agree with the noble lord, who in his observations that evening
had spoken of Sir A. Burnes in a tone of disparagement. On the
contrary, he admired his career, and he regretted his loss. He thought
that the policy that emanated from our Government at home for the

MR. DISRAELI'S INDIAN POLICY. 259
instruction of the Indian authorities was an erroneous policy. At the
time he thought it dangerous, because it might lead to conjectures and
results that would be most perilous to our Indian Empire. Many
of those results had actually occurred. They produced a catastrophe
which at last arrested public attention and directed it towards our Indian
Empire. In a time of adversit}'", and with all the energy that dis
tinguishes our country, the public mind was directed to the consideration
of the principles on which our Indian Empire was governed ; in
consequence of that consideration, a new system of government was
established, and the policy then pursued was arrested and checked.
Why should we now, therefore, discuss a policy with regard to our
Indian Empire that is no longer pursued, however strong were the
objections to it twenty years ago ? It seemed to him not only a doubtful
advantage, but a course that ought not to be adopted.
The resolution was lost by a majority of 110 against it. Seventeen
years afterwards Mr. Disraeli, when Prime Minister, committed the
same blunder as Lord Palmerston had done, by waging war in
Afghanistan for the purpose of producing a scientific frontier, at an
immense sacrifice of the poor over-taxed Englishman's treasure.
In the session of 1861, Sir John Trelawney introduced a bill for the
second time for the abolition of Church-rates. On the 27th of April, in
the previous session, Mr. Bright supported the bill in an able speech, in
which he said : —
" I live in a town in which contests about Church-rates have been carried on in past years
with a vigour and determination, and, if you like it, with an animosity, which has not been sur
passed in any other part of the kingdom. Hon. gentlemen opposite, who profess to be in favour
of what is caUed a stand-up fight, will be glad to hear that nothing could exceed the activity of
their friends in that parish, nothing could exceed the profuseness with which they wero wiUing to
pay for a contest, in order that aU might have to contribute to a Church which at that time they
themselves were not wUling adequately to support. The very last contest of this kind cost the
Church party in the parish as much money as, if invested at the common rate of interest, would
have supported the fabric of the Church for ever. (A cry of ' How much P ') I can tell the hon.
gentleman what was the estimate formed, which I believe was never disputed, and which, judging
from the expenditure on the other side, was not, I should say, very inaccurate. I believe that the
expenditure would not be less than from £3,000 to £4,000. It is a large parish, probably ten
miles square, and contains nearly 100,000 inhabitants ; and I need not tell hon. members that
there is no class of people in England more determined and more unconquerable, whichever side
they take than are the people of the county from which I come. What was the result of that

260 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
struggle ? The result was that the Church-rate was for ever entirely abolished in that parish. I
have since seen several lists of candidates for the churchwardenship put forth by Churchmen,
each of which claimed support upon the ground that they would never consent to the reimposition
of a Church-rate; and the parish has been for many years upon this question a model of
tranquillity. It would not be enough that it should be a model of tranquiUity if the result had
foUowed which the learned gentleman foretold in such dolorous language : that reUgion would be
uncared for, and that the Gospel would no longer be preached to the poor ; but I will undertake
to say that since that contest, that venerable old parish church has had laid out upon it, in
repairing and beautifying it, from money subscribed, not altogether but mainly by Churchmen,
ten times, ay, twenty times, as much as was ever expended upon it during a far longer period of
years in which Church-rates were levied. During that period there were discussions about the
graveyard, about the hearses, about the washing of the surplices, about somebody who had to
sweep out the church. There were discussions of all sorts, of a most irritating and offensive
character. The clock which was there for the benefit of the pubUc no longer told the time, and,
in fact, there was evidence of that sort of decay to which the learned gentleman has pointed as
the inevitable result of the aboUtion of Church-rates. Since the rate ceased to be levied the clock
has kept time with admirable fideUty, and to such an extent has the liberality of Churchmen
gone that very lately they have put up another clock in a neighbouring church. I believe that in
the parish of Rochdale the Church people have received far more benefit from the abolition of the
Church-rate than the Dissenters have. They have found out, what they never knew before, that
when placed upon the same platform as Dissenters, and obliged to depend upon their own
resources, they are as liberal and zealous as other sects. I wish that the learned gentleman had
told us, and I hope that some one who may foUow him wUl do so, how it happens that year by
year there has been growing in this House a power in opposition to Church-rates, while at the
same time there has been less animosity throughout the country upon this question. I beUeve
it has arisen from the growth of a better feeling on both sides, and from the fact that year by
year there have been secessions from the supporters of Church-rates throughout the country,
and that more and more without the action of Parliament the principle embodied in the clauses
of the biU of my hon. friend has come to be acted upon. Now, what is the real point between
us P — because I believe that hon. gentlemen opposite wUl agree with me, that if it could be done
it would be better that this question should be for ever disposed of. What is the question at issue
between us ? Does any man dispute the evils that have arisen ? The right hon. and learned
gentleman has, in a speech of great vigour, endeavoured to throw ridicule and contempt upon the
great body of the Dissenting population of this country. (' No, no ! ') Well, at any rate, he has not
refrained from expressions of harshness towards those whom he charges with being movers in
this question. But does he believe, or do any of you believe, that if those persons did not in the
main possess the confidence of the great body of Dissenters, they could in a week, a fortnight, or
a month, stir them up from one end of the country to the other, and bring to your table the signa
tures of 500,000 of your countrymen ? (Cries of ' 600,000.') I am reminded that the number is
600,000, but in a matter of this kind I am not particular to 100,000 more or less. I say, then, is there
any one here who disputes the evUs which have arisen from these discussions ? I confess that I
have sometimes wished that I could speak in this House, even if it were for only one half hour,
in the character of a member of the Church of England. If I could have done that I should
have appealed to the House, in language far more emphatic and impressive than I have ever been able
to use as a Dissenter, in favour of the abolition of this most mischievous and obnoxious
impost. . . . The dissensions to which I have referred have prevailed, prevail still, and
cannot terminate as long as this impost exists. What is its natural and inevitable result p It
must be to create and stimulate the pride of supremacy in the dominant Church, and at the same
time produce what I shaU caU the irritation of subjugation and injustice on the part of that great

CHURCH RATES. 261
portion of the people who support their own ministers and places of worship, and who think that
they ought not to be called upon to support those of any other sect or church. Now, is it necessary
that this should continue ? I often have occasion in this House to give hope to hon. gentlemen
opposite. They are probably the most despairing political party that any country ever had
within its borders. They despair of almost everything. They despair of agriculture. Agriculture
triumphs. They despair of their Church, yet whenever that Church has been left to its own
resources and to the zeal of its members its triumph has been manifest to the country and to
the world. Are you made of different material from the five millions of people who go to the
Dissenting chapels of England and Wales p Tou have your churches — I speak of tho old ones,
not of those recently erected by means of voluntary contributions — you have your churches,
which you call national, and you have them for nothing. Tou have your ministers paid out of
property anciently bequeathed or entrusted to the State for their use. In that respect you stand
in a far better position for undertaking what, if Church-rates are abolished, you must undertake,
than do the great body of your Dissenting brethren. Have you less zeal, have you less liberality,
than they have ? Do not you continually boast in this House that you are the owners of the great
bulk of the landed property of the country ? Are you not the depositaries of political power,
and do you not teU us that when a Dissenter becomes rich he always walks away from the chapel
into your church ? If this be so, am I appealing in vain to you, or reasoning in vain with you,
when I try to encourage you to believe that if there were no Church-rates the members of your
church and your congregations would be greatly improved, and that, as has taken place in the
parish in which I live, your churches would be better supported by your own voluntary and liberal
contributions, than they can ever be by the penny per pound issuing from the pockets of men who do
not attend your church, and who are rendered ten times more hostile to it by the very effort to make
them contribute to its support P I believe that Church-rates must before long be abolished.
Hence, I wish to afford some hope and consolation, if I can, to hon. gentlemen opposite. Mr.
Osborne and Mr. Bunting, from whom the right hon. and learned member so largely quoted,
themselves belong to a body that has done marvels in this country in erecting chapels, paying
ministers, establishing schools, raising the dead, if you like — for men who were dead to religion
have been made Christians ; and they have preached the Gospel to the poor in every county, I
might almost say in every parish, in the kingdom. Tet they have not come to Parliament for
grants of money; and, although they have often come to me and others for contributions to their
chapels and schools, they have never had any force of law to enable them to raise their funds.
Throughout England and Wales what would be the condition of your population,
your reUgious establishments, your education, if it were not for the liberality of those
sects of whom the right hon. and learned gentleman thinks fit to speak in disparaging terms ?
. . . I should like to ask hon. gentlemen opposite to look to a point in respect to which their
Church is at a great disadvantage as compared with Dissenting congregations. I am in a
position to observe both of them with great impartiality, because I belong to a sect which is
very smaU, which some people say is decaying, although I believe its main principles are always
spreading. I have no particular sympathy with Wesleyans, Independents, or Baptists, any more
than I have with the congregations which assemble in your churches. But have you not
observed in London, and more particularly in the country, where you are more intimately
acquainted with the circumstances — have you not observed, that among the congregations of
Dissenting bodies there is a greater activity in aU matters which belong to their churches, and to
objects which they unite together in promoting as a religious community ? Do not you find that
from the richest and the most influential man who enters a chapel on a Sunday to the humblest
of the congregation there is, as it were, a chain of sympathy running through them all, which
gives to them a great strength, which combines them together, which influences the humblest and
the highest for good, and which gives to the congregation a power which is f ouud to be greatly

262 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
less existent in a congregation of the Established Church? I have spoken of this to many
persons who differ from me on all these questions of Church establishments, Church-rates, and the
like ; but I never spoke to any man in the habit of attending the Established Church who did not
admit to me that it is one of the things they most deplore : that among the five hundred persons,
more or less, who attend any particular church there is infinitely less sympathy, cooperation,
union, and power of action than is evinced among the various Dissenting communities in tins
country almost without exception. But if you had none of these rates to levy by law you would
be placed— and it would be a most material advantage — in the same position as are the congre
gations of Dissenting bodies. Tou would be obliged, of course, in the management of your
congregational affairs to consult the members in general ; you would have your monthly or
quarterly meetings ; and thus you would know who were your neighbours in church, and you
would be united together, as Dissenting congregations are. And I maintain that your religious
activity and life for aU purposes of missionary work at home and abroad would be greatly
increased and strengthened ; and so far your congregations, your ministers, and your churches
would be great gainers. Some hon. gentlemen will say that I am a violent partisan on this ques
tion, and that I have partaken of the animosity which I stated to have existed in the parish in
which I live. I do not deny that in times past I have taken a warm, and it may be occasionally
a too heated, part in the contests and discussions on this question ; but, so far as I am concerned,
the feelings engendered by these strifes have been swept away; I am older than I was then ; I
make great allowance for men's passions, as I ask that they should make allowance for mine.
This question has now come to a crisis ; and I ask the House to consider whether it would not be
to the advantage of the Church, of moraUty, religion, and the public peace, that it should now bo
set at rest once and for ever. The right hon. and learned gentleman — it is one of the faults of a
high classical education — foUowing the example of the right hon. gentleman who delighted us
all with a brilliant but most illogical speech last night, affrighted us with an account
of what took place under the democracies of Greece, and asks us to foUow the example of
those who were believers in the paganism of ancient Rome. He says, did not the Roman
emperors, consuls, and people go in procession after the vUe gods and goddesses which they
worshipped p It is true they did, and I hope the right hon. and learned gentleman regrets by
this time that he asked us to foUow an example of that kind. Rome has perished, and the
religion which it professed has perished with it. The Christian religion is wholly different, and
if there be one thing written more legibly than another in every page of that Book on which you
profess that your Church is founded, it is that men should be just one to another, kind and
brotherly one to another, and should not ask of each other to do that which they are not willing
themselves to do. I say that this law of Church-rates is a law which violates, and violates most
obviously and outrageously, every law of justice and of mercy which is written in that Book, and
it is because I believe it does so that I am certain that it never can be of advantage to your
Church, if your Church be a true Church; and, beheving that, and feeling how much the
interests and sympathies and wishes of millions of our countrymen are in favour of the abolition
of this impost, I ask you to do what I am now ready to do— to give a cordial support to the third
reading of this bUl of my hon. friend."
The division this time was even, and the Speaker had to give a
casting vote, which he did against the bill, remarking that, so far as he
could collect the opinion of the House, it was in favour of some settle
ment of this question different from that contained in the present bill,
and he was not willing to take upon himself -the responsibility of the

THE PAPER DUTY. 263
proposed change. On the 31st of July, 1868, Mr. Gladstone succeeded
in passing his Compulsory Church-rate Abolition Bill, which annihilated
a rate that had caused grievances in many towns in England.
On the 15th of April, 1861, Mr. Gladstone, in his budget, proposed
to apply the surplus to the reducing of the income-tax by one penny
per pound, and to abolish the duty on paper. Mr. Baring, .Sir S
Northcote, Mr. S. Fitzgerald, and Mr. Horsman spoke strongly against
Mr. Gladstone's proposition. Mr. Bright, in defending the budget,
complained that the hon. member (Mr. Horsman) indulged in dangerous
prophecies and prognostications which were perilous to weak nerves ;
that he left the realm of fact, in a manner which he thought was hardly
compatible with useful debate, for the regions of imagination. Two
years ago the right hon. gentleman had alarmed the House with fearful
statements in regard to the nearness of war, and especially the nearness
of that greatest of all calamities — a war between England and France.
Well, these forebodings were followed, not by a descent upon our shores,
as most people expected who believed the right hon. gentleman, but they
were followed by the concluding of an elaborate and most important
commercial treaty. The previous year the hon. gentleman alarmed them
— chilled the souls of some of them, and he threatened the bodies of
our not remote posterity — by telling themthat our coals were speedily about
to be exhausted. However, the hon. gentleman, the member for Glamorgan
(Mr. Vivian), immediately after demonstrated, as far as science could do
so, that if this country lasted as long for the future as it had lasted
since that day when the dove did not return to the ark, still the supply
of coal beneath this island would not in all probability be exhausted.
" Now," added Mr. Bright, " I will ask the House to go back to that memorable night— this
night fortnight — when hon. gentlemen were so fascinated with the eloquence of the Chancellor of
the Exchequer that it took them a fortnight to find out the difficulties of this question. I have
sat opposite the^hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House for about eighteen years, and I
have taken stock of their modes of thought — of their opinions, of the effect produced upon them
by a great speech from this side. I have watched with interest the change of countenance which
takes place when anything occurs which greatly moves and surprises them. Now, I must divide
hon. gentlemen opposite into two parties in the observations I am about to make. I leave out
for the moment the gentlemen who sometimes expect to come back into office, and take those
who are the main bulk of their foUowers. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer proceeded with

264 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGH1.
his speech, there was a feeling of individual pleasure, and a reUef on the countenances of gentle
men opposite. They felt there was to be no increase of taxation. They felt there was a surplus,
which they did not expect would be so large, or so clearly made out. (' Oh ! ') WeU, I can appeal
to the consciences of scores of hon. gentlemen opposite whether what I now say is not true. But
when the right hon. gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer came to the reduction of a penny
on the income-tax, there was a positive enthusiasm ; aud I said to a gentleman near me, ' How
comes it that these country gentlemen, who are said to possess properties varying from £5,000
to £20,000 and upwards a-year, arc more delighted with the remission of this penny than if I
had opposite to me two hundred clerks of the City of London, whose average incomes were not
more than £250 a year ? ' No doubt they were greatly delighted for the sake of their con
stituencies. We will put it in that way — iu that way if you like. I do not want to give any
improper or forced interpretation to their feelings ; but it is obvious that there was great excite
ment and pleasure on that side of the House when the announcement was made. Now, when the
ChanceUor of the Exchequer came to the question of paper, there was a difference of expression.
It was not one opposite to that of pleasure, but it seemed to me that there passed through both
sides of the House a feeling that, after all, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer was able to offer
a reduction of a penny in the income-tax, and had also sufficient surplus to make the remission
which he proposed with regard to the paper duty, the least said upon unpleasant things in the
past the better, and that, perhaps, for both Houses of Parliament, and for everybody concerned,
it was desirable that the proposition of the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be accepted. . . .
Sir, I have seen a good deal of party contest in this House. I have no objection to the greatest
efforts of the greatest party, if those efforts are guided by an honest desire for the public good ;
but I observe that these party contests are generally fought in a field which, as one of our own
writers and poets has described it, is ' a field of ambition in which truly the labourers are many,
but the harvest is scarcely worth the carrying away.' I despise those triumphs. I scorn alto
gether those laurels. (Cheers.) If I contended here for the mastery, if I looked for fame, if I
desired to be remembered hereafter in connection with the great struggles on the floor of this
House, it should be by associating my name directly with measures which I felt in my conscience
it was wise and just in Parliament to give, and which it would be a blessing for the people to
receive. (Loud cheers.) Sir, I have looked at this budget, I hope, with an impartial and honest
eye. I beUeve that it meets these two conditions — that it is just for Parliament to pass, and that
it wiU be beneficent towards the people for whom it is intended ; and on these grounds alone I
shaU give it my hearty support." (Cheers.)
The Government were successful in carrying the propositions, and
the Eoyal assent was given on the 12th of July for repealing the paper
duty. Sir Morton Peto, on the 24th of April, moved the second reading of
his " Nonconformist Burial Bill." Mr. Bright, in supporting the bill,
explained that the object of Sir Morton Peto was that they should give
to all their parishioners — it was a common name, they were all parishioners
— whatever their peculiar condition with respect to their religious belief,
or to the particular religious body in communion with which they might
happen to die, their parish, and what might be called their citizen and

A BURIAL BILL. 265
national, right of being buried in their parish churchyard. There was no
intention of doing anything that would sap the Church of England by a
bill of this nature. Was the Church of England an institution so totter
ing and insecure that they could not permit a Baptist to be buried in one
of its churchyards with a Baptist prayer without its being threatened with
destruction ? He believed they might do many little things of this nature
to lessen the asperity which unfortunately existed among different sects ;
and he felt it would be infinitely better for the Church of England itself
that the House should consent to such a measure, not injurious to the
Church, but beneficial to the harmony of the parishes, and of advantage
to religion itself. The bill was lost by a majority of 81 against it.
A long discussion took place on the Navy Estimates on the evening
of the 23rd of May, and Mr. Bright contended that there was no reason
for the extravagant vote submitted to the Committee. The fact was that
the business of the Admiralty was perhaps the most extraordinary in the
way of extravagant and reckless expenditure that any legislative Chamber
had ever to consider. It was clear from all the evidence from before the
Commission that there was not a particle of substantial control over the
expenditure of the Admiralty. The expenditure in this department was
£12,000,000. " And managed by whom ? " asked Mr. Bright ; adding, " Why, the other day the right hon.
baronet (Sir John Pakington) was the president, presiding genius, general manager, and
controUer of the expenditure of £12,000,000 in the department, of which— speaking without
offence — he knew Uterally nothing. The right hon. baronet knew just as much as he (Mr.
Bright) knew, as the average of the members of that House knew, and no more. Well, now they
had a noble duke in the other House of Parliament who knew no more than the right hon.
baronet did — little accustomed, probably, to extensive book-keeping, and not at all to ship-buUd-
ing. If they were to go back many years, and take all the First Lords of the Admiralty, and
put them to manage one of the large business firms in Lancashire and Torkshire, in all
probabUity in the course of two or three years they would find them very anxious to get out of
them. But here they had this great business of £12,000,000 which was managed, not by First
Lords only, but by civil and sea lords — as they were caUed — who did not agree well together
either as to what they should do or what they should leave undone. And then they had the
noble lord, the Secretary of the Admiralty, who sat in that House, but who, it was said, had no
great authority at the Board, and was often driven to the painful necessity of defending in that
House things whieh his own judgment would not recommend, and of abstaining from doing
things which his own judgment would have left him to do. If they were to go down to the
dockyards, they would find confusion from beginning to end ; and it was nothing but the love of
labour of his hon. friend the member for Sunderland, which nothing could surpass, that could

266 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
have induced him, or any otlier man, to plunge into these inquiries with the idea of disentangling
this chaos into which the finances of the country were brought by the present extravagant and
reckless expenditure. Tet if a member of that House, representing a large constituency oppressed
with taxes, rose in his place to complain of this enormous expenditure, he was told by the noble
viscount that he was not patriotic, and he did not care a farthing about the supremacy of
his country at sea. . . . He (Mr. Bright) was quite sure that there was no more honest
friend to the noble viscount (Palmerston) at the head of the Government than the member of
that House, whether he sat on the benches below the gangway or the benches behind him, who
told him that he did not sufficiently care for the extravagant expenditure of the country, and was
not sufficiently conscious of the fact that every hundred pounds which was expended more than
was absolutely necessary, whether it be brought about by wrong poUcy abroad, or through
a reckless management at home, came out of some man's labour, some man's sweat, and
was itself the purchase-money of the suffering's and misery of some portion of the people. He
(Mr. Bright), had not meddled much of late in this matter, because he found that the House was
not well disposed to listen to arguments in favour of economy ; but he must indeed be a blind, an
ignorant, and a foolish man who did not see that the time was coming when the expenditure
would have to be diminished, and when the taxes would have to be more reduced than was even
now proposed by the ChanceUor of the Exchequer; or there would be a contest between
the people of this country and its Government, such as the noble viscount did not wish to
see, and such as he (Mr. Bright) would be as unwilling to see as the noble viscount
himself." A motion in favour of a reduction of the expenditure was lost, for a
majority of 36 was against it.
As soon as Mr. Cobden arrived in England after completing the
commercial treaty with France, his constituents wished to congratulate
him on the noble work he had performed, and accordingly he appeared at
a public meeting on the 26th June, 1861, in company with Mr. Bright,
Mr. Thomas Bazley, M.P., Sir Charles Douglas, M.P., Mr. G. Wilson
(Manchester), Mr. John Piatt (Oldham), and a large number of local
gentlemen, Conservatives as well as Liberals. The room in which the
meeting assembled — the largest then available — was the ground floor of
Messrs. Kelsalland Kemp's warehouse in Baillie Street, and it was com
puted that the audience, numbering at least 5,000 persons, seemed
highly pleased with the work which had been completed by their
distinguished member, and their " hearts spoke content in the smiles of
their face." Upwards of sixty reporters were present. The Mayor
(Joseph H. Moore) presided. Mr. Cobden, in the course of a very
long speech, said : —
" I have been occupied for nearly the last eighteen months abroad, partly in pursuit of pubUc
duty, and partly in quest of health. (Hear, hear.) I have been, as your worthy Mayor has

SPEECHES AT ROCHDALE. 267
stated, engaged in arranging a commercial treaty with France. I have been, as you are aware,
honoured with the confidence of our Sovereign— (applause)— and aided by coUeagues whose
services in this matter I would not for a moment appropriate to myself. (Hear, hear.) I have
been endeavouring to make out arrangements that shaU lead to two countries pecuUarly designed
by Providence to confer mutual lienefits upon each other, but which, owing to the foUy and perhaps
wickedness of man, have been for centuries rather seeking to injure and destroy each other— I have
been seeking to form arrangements by which two such countries shaU be united together in mutual
bonds of dependence, and, I hope, a future peace. (Cheers.) It has been truly stated by the
Mayor that France has been hitherto, as a nation, attached to those principles of commercial re
striction which we in England have but lately released ourselves from, and which have cost our
selves thirty years of pretty continuous labour and the services of three or four most eminent
statesmen, in order to bring us to the present state of comparative freedom of commerce. (Cheers.)
The French, on the contrary, had hardly taken a single step in this direction ; it was left for the
present Emperor, and he alone had the power to accomplish it with the aid of his Minister of
Commerce, who for eighteen months has scarcely given himself twenty-four hours of leisure—
(hear, hear) — it was left to them to accomplish in France, in the course of a couple of years, what
it has taken us in England at least thirty years to effect. (Cheers.) . . . Upon the imports
are based the late measures of our Government ; and I give the credit for the putting this great
final coping-stone upon the edifice of Free Trade— I mean as far as the abolition of all protective
duties goes— I give the merit to the present Government, and their great ChanceUor of the
Exchequer (Mr. Gladstone). They have abolished the last remaining protective duties in our
tariff. Now mark what the advantages of this wiU be to us as a mercantile people— an advantage
which has not been sufficiently appreciated, I venture to observe. By removing every duty upon
all articles of foreign manufacture, we have made England a free port for manufactured goods,
just as we had made it a free port for corn and for raw materials. The consequence is, that aU
articles of foreign manufacture may be brought to England without let or hindrance. We find a
large consumption for them here ; and foreigners and colonists coming from Australia, and
Canada, and America, may find in our warehouses, not merely all our produce which they want,
but Swiss, and German, and French produce, which they may buy here without visiting the
Continent to purchase there. This, I consider, is to us, as a mercantile people, an immense
advantage, which wiU be by-and-bye fully appreciated, the importance of which, I think, has not
yet been altogether anticipated; but, besides this, we are going to import commodities from
France which have been hitherto prohibited, and which will not only be to their advantage, but to
ours. Take, for instance, the article of wine. We aU know that for a century or more, owing
to an absurd treaty which was made with Portugal, this country put a prohibitive duty upon
French wines, and the consequence lias been that the taste of this country has been perverted, and
that which is the best article of its kind in the world has been almost a stranger in this land."
Mr. Bright next delivered a lengthy speech, and touched on various
subjects. " What is this money ? " he remarked. " Are we not aU sensible when we are without it how
much we could do that would be agreeable if we had it ? (Laughter.) Are we not aU sensible
that what we caU money is merely a thing by which we obtain or exchange houses and furniture,
and food and clothing, the necessaries, the comforts, the luxuries of life, by which our chUdren obtain
education, and by the possession of which, more or less, we have a much greater chance of becoming
inteUigent, and, I believe, also moral and religious. (Hear, hear.) That is what is meant by
money. But what is it that divides classes in this country — those who have nothing from those

268 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
who have much ? If you see one portion of the people doomed to incessant labour, to a precarious
position, often to much misery, and another portion having abundant leisure, abundant enjoyments,
and security in the possession of those enjoyments which two miUions are denied, where is the
difference but that the one class is in the possession of money and what money can obtain for
them ? (Hear, hear.) Now, taxes are money taken from the people. I recollect seeing a carica
ture, some twenty-five years ago, in which two or three rather over-fed footmen were discussing
this question, and one asked the other, 'What's taxes, Thomas ? ' (Laughter.) WeU, probably
Thomas did not know, because in that particular household the master paid the taxes, and he did
not see the money passing from the master's hand to the tax-gatherer. . . . Now, if we could
have in this room the oldest man in Rochdale, I don't know what age he is, but if he were eighty-
five years of age, for example, and we were to go back to his youngest days, when he was a little
toddling fellow of two or three years old, and imagine his little hand had been in the
grasp of the bony hand of the man at that time as old as he is now, these two lives would carry
us back to the time of what is caUed the ' glorious revolution,' when the Stuarts were finally
driven from England aud a new dynasty and a new system were established. At that time the
revenue of the kingdom was £2,000,000 a year, and we had no national debt. (Hear, hear.)
I am not going into details upon this matter, but when in two lifetimes we have made the progress
in this department that we have, at least we ought to be excused if we make a little progress in
some other department. But in sixty years from that time the revenue of £2,000,000 had grown
to £20,000,000, and the national debt had become a debt of £140,000,000. (Hear, hear.) In sixty
years further the £20,000,000 of taxes had grown to be £70,000,000 of taxes, and the £140,000,000
of debt had grown to be at least £840,000,000. (' Shame.') Now, I shall not go through aU the wars
and the wonderful political blunders and crimes by which this was brought about ; but I will un
dertake to say that, looking at the history of our country, looking at the great condition of the
body of the people, whether agricultural labourers, or weavers, or miners, or whatsoever they may
be of the humble classes of society, the class that has the least money, I will undertake to say that
this class has derived no real benefit from the policy which has involved us in this vast expen
diture, this enormous taxation, and this debt, which nobody believes it possible ever to pay off."
(Loud applause.)
The tongue of detraction was still busy charging Mr. Cobden with
being oblivious to the dangers of invasion; accusing him of want of
patriotism ; and alleging that his labours had too wide a sweep and would
benefit other nations to the detriment of his own. In fact, his reputa
tion had long been considered as a sort of open unbarriered area, in
which every sciolist of politics and every raw pretender to patriotism
had a right to exercise his studied commonplaces, and these person
ages had imitators downwards, for everything depended upon high
example. These detractors would have preferred a display of arrogance
or contempt towards the French nation, instead of neighbourly feeling.
Eichard Cobden had a truer idea of patriotism than this ; and while
no Greek emigrant carrying with him the sacred fire kindled on the
hearth of home, and the patch of soil carefully dug from the place

COBDEN AND HIS CRITICS. 269
of his birth, could love Greece more than this son of a Sussex farmer
loved England, it was his ambition and study to understand other
nations, to sympathise with them, and to make them participants in
the blessings of peace and good- will which he strove to secure for
his own native land. He was " the representative of the sentiments
and those cosmopolitan principles before which national frontiers and
rivalries disappear — a man essentially of his country, but still more a
man of his time." His sole aim was to guard against the calamity
of war; to prevent needless and nonsensical expenditure in armaments;
to plant deep in the tenacious ground of commercial sympathy a rock for
the foot of peace; to promote frugality; and induce his countrymen to
reflect and form their own judgments, for he knew that there are
historical falsehoods which are continually kept alive by evil feelings
and intentions which originally produced them. Generation after
generation they are repeated with a pertinacity which no disappoint
ment relaxes, and with an effrontery which nothing can abash, and
which, therefore, is only hardened and exasperated by the infamy of
repeated exposures ; and thus the work of delusion and mischief, for
which they were designed, is carried on through successive centuries
and ages. Such is to take things for granted, to assent to received
notions without examining them, to follow credulity instead of reason,
and to be the incorrigible slave of usage. This stays the ripening
of many a useful measure, protracting its operation to a distant date;
hinders the true policy of a nation from being followed up; and
prevents legislation from keeping pace with the circumstances of the
age. It is from the injurious prevalence of this folly that in our
Senate we hear arguments maintained that are open to refutation by
the humblest capacity that will give itself the trouble to analyse them.
There is nothing of which society is less tolerant than merit.
The aristocracy of rank is cheerfully acknowledged, because it is an
ancient and " time-honoured " convention ; the aristocracy of wealth is
allowed, because rich men even unknowingly and unwittingly benefit
those who come within the sphere of their activity ; but for personal
endowments there is no mercy. The supremacy of merit is extorted

270 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
from the crowd ; and the aristocracy, compelled to acknowledge the vast
distance between itself and the man of genius, is perpetually on the
search after some humiliating weakness or disparity which may compen
sate for this provoking excellence and drag back the eminent to some
thing like equality. The most ordinary person could twit Cobden in
later years with unsuccessful private speculations, and accuse Bright
with want of foresight in opposing the Ten Hours' Bill, while the fore
thought, the industry, and the intellectual strength of these two men is
a matter for the comprehension of their equals alone. Both of them
were remarkable for their reverence for common sense ; and to this all
their maxims of government appealed. Their wisdom was the wisdom
of Socrates, practical rather than speculative, homely rather than sub
lime ; they acted upon the principle that experience was the best guide,
and exposed the folly of acting upon mere conjecture.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

The Attitude of the EngUsh Government — Mr. Bright's Advice to his Countrymen — Check to
the Exportation of Cotton — Distress in Lancashire — Review of the Past History of
America — The Cotton Supply — Mr. Cobden with his Constituents — The Revolt in America
Explained — Sympathy for America in Lancashire — Working Men's Homes — Meeting of
the Union and Emancipation Society — The Southern Confederacy.
'N the early part of 1861 civil war broke out in the United
States of America, and at first it seemed likely to terminate
in the formation of two separate Eepublics — one comprised
of the free states of the North and the other of the slave
states of the South. The quarrel arose through there being a
disposition in the North to abolish slavery throughout the Union ; and
the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was the first anti-slavery Presi
dent, brought matters to a climax, and South Carolina took the first step
towards secession. This movement was the ground of a long and cruel
war. A million of men, who twelve months before were peaceful
citizens of the same country, were now encamped under arms and
scheming to accomplish each other's destruction ; but of the North it
may be said that their cause was just, for they were determined to erase
from their national annals the stain of maintaining slavery.
There was no puzzle as to which side Mr. Bright would ally himself
with. He was not the man to countenance slavery in any form, for he, like
the sect to which he belongs, has always been the indefatigable friend of
humanity, and stood forth firmly in favour of the abolition of slavery ;
even when they stood alone to break the strong rivets of the chain
custom had wrought and fashioned on a people whose only fault was
that they were "guilty of a skin not coloured like their own." It was
certain that Bright would follow in the footsteps of Clarkson, Wilber
force, Joseph Sturge, William Allen, William Foster, Joseph John

272 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Gurney, and Joseph Gurney Bevan, who merited the praise of con
sistency in one of the noblest causes of humanity, and whose names will
descend to posterity with honour.
The Quaker poet Whittier for years animated a small band of
abolitionists with his vigorous poems against slavery. The originator
of the underground railway across the State of Ohio to the British
possessions, by which 'many thousands of slaves gained their freedom,
was named Levi Coffin, and he too was a Quaker. In fact, the Society
of Friends, for nearly a century before Parliament abolished slavery in
the English colonies, entered its condemnation upon their minutes.
Lord John Eussell announced in the House of Commons, on the 8th
of May, that, after consulting the law officers of the Crown, the Govern
ment were of opinion that the South Confederacy of America, according
to the principles which appeared to be just, must be recognised as a
belligerent power. On the 13th appeared a proclamation of neutrality,
and Mr. Bright approved of the course taken by the English Govern
ment ; and on the 28th of May, in the House of Commons, he expressed
the opinion that it would be well if that policy were not confined merely
to the Government, but if individual members of the House were as far
as possible to adopt the same line of action. It was an unhappy thing,
he added, that these dissensions should have arisen ; but let them hope
that among a population more extensively educated probably than the
population of any other country in the world, it might yet be found
possible to surmount the vast difficulties which had arisen in that
country without those extensive cruelties which almost always accom
pany a civil war. With that expression of opinion, he wished to make
a request, 'and the House, he was sure, would feel that he was only
asking what was reasonable and prudent — that they should avoid,
as much as possible, discussions on matters which he believed they could
not influence for good, but with regard to which they might create a state
of feeling, either in the North or South, that would add to the diffi
culties of the Government in preserving the wise line of action which
it had laid down. Mr. Bright first spoke publicly on the subject at a
meeting of his townsmen at Eochdale on the 1st of August.

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 273
" I believe nothing could be more monstrous than for us," said Mr. Bright, " who are not very
averse to war ourselves, to set up for critics — carping, cavilling critics — of what the Washington
Government is doing. I saw a letter the other day from an Englishman, a resident of twenty-
five years in PhUadelphia, a merchant there, and a very prosperous merchant. He said, ' I
prefer the institutions of this country (the United States) very much to yours in England.' But
he says also, ' If it be once admitted that here we have no country and no Government, but
that any portion of these United States can break off from the central Government whenever it
pleases, then it is time for me to pack up what I have, and to go somewhere where there is a
country and a Government.' Well, that is the pith of this question. Do you suppose that if
Lancashire and Torkshire thought that they would break off from the United Kingdom, that
those newspapers that are now preaching every kind of moderation to the Government of
Washington would advise the Government in London to aUow these two counties to set up a
special Government for themselves ? When the people of Ireland asked that they should be
aUowed to secede, was it proposed in London that they should be allowed to secede peaceably ?
Nothing of the kind. I am not going to defend what is taking place in a country that is well
able to defend itself. But I advise you, and I advise the people of England, to abstain from
applying to the United States doctrines and principles which we never apply to our own case.
At any rate, they (the Americans) have never fought ' for the balance of power ' in Europe.
They have never fought to keep up a decaying Empire. They have never squandered the money
of their people in such a phantom expedition as we have been engaged in. And now, at this
moment, when you are told that they are going to be ruined by their vast expenditure, why, the
sum that they are going to raise in the great emergency of this grievous war is not greater than
what we raise every year during a time of peace. (Loud cheers.) They say they are not going
to liberate slaves. No ; the object of the Washington Government is to maintain their own
constitution and to act legally, as it permits and requires. No man is more in favour of peace
than I am ; no man has denounced war more than I have, probably, in this country ; few men
in their public life have suffered more obloquy — I had almost said more indignity — in con
sequence of it. But I cannot for the life of me see upon any of those principles upon which
States are governed now — I say nothing of the Uteral word of the New Testament — I cannot
see how the state of affairs in America, with regard to the United States Government, eould
have been different from what it is at this moment. We had a heptarchy in this country, and it
was thought to be a good thing to get rid of it, and have a united nation. If the thirty-three
or thirty-four States of the American Union can break off whenever they like, I can see nothing
but disaster and confusion throughout the whole of that continent. I say that the war, be it
successful or not, be it Christian or not, be it wise or not, is a war to sustain the Government
and to sustain the authority of a great nation ; and that the people of England, if they are true
to their own sympathies, to their Own history, and to their own great act of 1834, to which
reference has already been made, wiU have no sympathy with those who wish to build up a great
Empire on the perpetual bondage of millions of their feUow-men." (Loud cheers.)
One of the serious results of this unfortunate war was the check it
gave to the export of cotton to this country, and trade in Lancashire
assumed a gloomy aspect. Mill after mill was compelled to adopt short
time, which eventually resulted in an entire cessation of production.
The winter approached earlier than usual, and the prospect was most
discouraging. The workpeople of Eochdale, although extensively
43

274 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
employed in the woollen manufacture, suffered more than the inhabitants
of Bolton, who were almost entirely engaged in cotton, owing to the fact
that Eochdale was more dependent upon American cotton than the
manufacturers of Bolton, who spin fine yarn. Soup kitchens were early
established in the town, and a committee to take the superintendence and
to make a house-to-house visitation of the poor, and by this means
sufferers of a retiring or independent disposition were sought out and
relieved. " True charity makes others' wants her own."
Now that the workpeople had much leisure time on their hands, Messrs.
Bright Brothers opened a large room in their mills for a schoolroom for
adults, who made satisfactory progress in reading, writing, arithmetic,
and in other branches of education. Newspapers, periodicals, and books
were supplied, and thus the workpeople were enabled to spend the time to
advantage. As it was found by the Boards of Guardians of Lancashire, Derby
shire, and Cheshire that the Minor Belief Aid Act did not afford them
sufficient facilities for borrowing monies with which to employ distressed
persons on public works, and as they were of opinion that the Government
ought to lend the requisite funds,, under proper regulations and security
of the rates, at three-and-a-half per cent, interest, repayable within a
period not exceeding twenty years, a deputation of members of Boards
of Guardians waited upon the Eight Hon. C. P. Villiers, the President
of the Poor Law Board. Mr. Bright spoke on behalf of the deputation.
Mr.Yilliers said the cause had been very favourably presented, and he would
give the matter his serious consideration, and would present it to the
other members of the Cabinet. Ultimately the Government agreed to
find a sum of £200,000 to meet the emergency. This proved of great
service, and the distressed were employed in improving and repairing
roads and other public works.
A rupture between the United States and England was nearly
brought about in consequence of the seizure of the envoys, Messrs.
Mason and Shdell, on board the Trent, a British steam-packet ; but the

THE TRENT DISPUTE. 275
concessions demanded by England were accorded by the Washington
Government. Speaking in the House of Commons on the subject on the 17th of
February, 1862, Mr. Bright criticised the conduct of the English Govern
ment by remarking —
"It is not customary in ordinary life for a person to send a polite messenger with a
polite message to a friend, or neighbour, or acquaintance, and at the same time to send a man of
portentous strength, handling a gigantic club, making every kind of ferocious gesticulation, and
at the same time to profess that all this is done in the most friendly and courteous manner. Now,
that seems to me precisely what has been done by her Majesty's Government in this particular
case, and I am anxious for a moment to explain to the House how I think this mUlion has been
worse than thrown away, and that, besides being thrown away, it leaves behind it consequences
of much more evU and of much more harm than the loss of the milUon itself. Now, the House
wiU recoUect that, at the very time, on a Friday or Saturday, when the Cabinet were said to be
meeting for the purpose of discussing the despatch to be sent by the Saturday's boat from
Liverpool to America, there appeared in the newspapers that are the special organs of the
Government language of the most violent and offensive character, and that instantaneously —
probably on the very day when the despatch itself was written — steps were taken with regard to
both the army and the navy which were exactly such as would have been taken if the despatch
itself had been, not a courteous demand for a just object, but rather a declaration of war. Now,
the effect of that in this country was very obvious. It created almost a universal impression that
there was something which the Government knew and which the country did not know ; and
though nobody thought; — nobody but the Government could imagine— that a cause of war could
arise out of that question, that the Government either knew that war was aU but inevitable, or that
they intended war, if war could by any possibility be made out of it. . . . Why, any man
who had access to what is to be found on the shelves of the Foreign Office of England must
have known, when the question came to be discussed as to the right to seize these men, or the
right to take them, whatever might be said as to the precedents in England's previous conduct,
nothing could be said but that it was contrary to American practices and American principles ;
and that it is as clear as anything can be to any man who has read the speech which Senator Sumner
deUvered in the Senate of the United States — in which he coUected the authorities on both sides
of the question, aU of which authorities must have been known to the English Foreign Office —
that the American Government would have been utterly unable to resist the demand of the
English Government, in accordance with their past practices and principles, however courteously
that demand was made. It is well known, indeed, to those who were in Washington at the time,
that the influence of these miUtary preparations was not felt upon the Government at
Washington, or on the American people, but upon the ministers of European Powers residing
there, and I have reason to know that no fewer than two of these ministers expressed their
decided opinion that there was an intention on the part of some section of the Government, or
some powerful classes in this country, if opportunity offered, to engage in war with the United
States. . . . Now I may say, with the utmost satisfaction and truth, that the noble lord at
the head of the Government cannot possibly be more pleased than I am with the favourable
termination of that untoward event. If the noble lord believed there was no course of preventing
war but that which he took, of course it would be hard and very unfair in me to blame him for
that course ; but I do think, knowing how much the United States Government has been
bound up— has been committed to humane and moderate principles of international and maritime

276 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
law — he might have trusted more to their desire to act in accordance with that law, and less to the
force which he exhibited against them. He probably does not remember that the Union, now for
a moment partially disabled and crippled, yet owning the supremacy of the Washington
Government, consists of twenty -two miUions of people ; that for ten, twenty, or thirty years
hence, whether the Union be restored or not, the Northern States will probably continue to
increase as rapidly as they have ever increased in population and power. They are our country
men to a great extent. We have there but few enemies, except it be those who have left our
shores with a feeling of discontent against this Government, which perhaps in this generation
cannot be removed ; and I say it is worth our while, on aU moral grounds, and all grounds of
self -interest, that we should, in aU our transactions with that people, acknowledge our aUiance
and our kinship, and not leave behind, if we can avoid it, an ineradicable, undying sting', which it
may take many years, perhaps a generation or two, to remove. The War of Independence eighty
years ago left such a sting ; the war of 1812 inflicted upon both countries a similar mischief. The
course taken by the Government, not in the demand, not in the despatch, not in the courteous
way in which Lord Lyons managed everything he had to do in regard with it, but in the
instantaneous and alarming menace of war, followed and accompanied every clay by incessant
and offensive charges from the press supposed directly to represent the Government; — I
say that tends to leave on the minds of even the most moderate men in America the feeling that
England, in the hour of her trial, has not treated them in the magnanimous and friendly manner
which they had a right to expect from us. Now, I am glad to see there is a remarkable change
operating from day to day in opinion, in this House and out of it. It is obvious that,
since the course taken in that transaction by the American Government, a great change has taken
place in the opinions of a large portion of the people of this country. There is more friendly
feeling towards the Washington Government ; they see in it a Government, a real Government,
not a Government ruled by a mob, and not a Government disregarding law. They believe it is a
Government struggling for the integrity of a great country. They believe it is a country which
is the home of every man who wants a home ; and, moreover, they believe this, that the greatest
of all crimes which any people in the history of the world has ever been connected with — the keeping
in slavery of 4,000,000 of human beings — is, under the providence of a Power very much higher
than that of a Prime Minister of England, or of a President of the United States, marching on, as
I believe, to its entire abolition."
A banquet was given to Mr. Bright by his fellow-townsmen on the
4th of December, 1,861, in recognition of his labours and valuable
services on all occasions. It was wished once more to receive from him
counsel and guidance, and especially on this occasion, concerning the
critical position of affairs prevailing with respect to the American civil
war. The banquet was held in the Public Hall. Mr. J. T. Pagan, the
Mayor, presided.
" I am, as you aU know," said Mr. Bright, " surrounded at this moment by my neighbours
and friends, and I may say, with the utmost truth, that I value the good opinions of those who
now hear my voice far beyond the opinions of any equal number of the inhabitants of this country
selected from any other portion of it. Tou have, by this act of kindness that you have shown
me, given proof that in the main you do not disapprove of my course and labours ; that at least
you are wiUing to express an opinion that the motives by which I have been actuated have been

THE UNITED STATES. 277
honest and honourable to myself ; and that that course has not been entirely without service to my
country. (Cheers.) Coming to this meeting, or to any similar meeting, I always find that the
subjects for discussion appear too many, and far more than it is possible to treat at length. In
these times in which we live, by the influence of the telegraph and the steamboat and the
railroad, and the multipUcation of newspapers, we seem continually to stand as on the top of au
exceeding high mountain, from which we behold aU the kingdoms of the earth aud all the glory of
them — unhappily, also, not only their glory, but their follies, and their crimes, and their
calamities. Seven years ago our eyes were turned with anxious expectation to a remote corner of
Europe, where five nations were contending in bloody strife for an object which possibly hardly
one of them comprehended, and, if they did comprehend it, which aU sensible men amongst them
must have known to be absolutely impracticable. Four years ago we were looking still further
to the East, where there was a gigantic revolt in a great dependency of the British Crown,
arising mainly from gross neglect, and from the incapacity of England, up to that moment, to
govern the country which it had known how to conquer. Two years ago we looked South, to the
plains of Lombardy, and saw a great strife there, in which every man in England took a strong
interest ; and we have welcomed, as the result of that strife, the addition of a great kingdom to
the Ust of European States. Now our eyes are turned in a contrary direction, and we look to
the West. There we see a struggle in progress of the very highest interest to England and
to humanity at large. We see there a nation which I shaU caU the Transatlantic English nation
— the inheritor and partaker of all the historic glories of this country. We see it torn with
intestine broils, and suffering from calamities from which, for more than a century past — in fact,
for more than two centuries past — this country has been exempt. That struggle is of
especial interest to us. We remember the description which one of our great poets gives
of Rome — ' Lone mother of dead empires.'
But England is the living mother of great nations on the American and on the Australian
continents, which promise to endow the world with aU her knowledge and all her civilisation, and
with even something more than the freedom she herself enjoys. (Cheers.) Eighty-five years
ago, at the time when some of our oldest townsmen were very little children, there were, on the
North American continent colonies, mainly of Englishmen, containing about three miUions
of souls. These colonies we have seen a year ago constituting the United States of North
America, and comprising a population of no less than thirty millions of souls. (Cheers.) We
know that in agriculture and manufactures, with the excex^tion of this kingdom, there is
no country in the world which in these arts may be placed in advance of the United States.
With regard to inventions, I believe, within the last thirty years, we have received more useful
inventions from the United States than from all the other countries of the earth. In that
country there are probably ten times as many miles of telegraph as there are in this country, and
there are at least five or six times as many miles of railway. The tonnage of its shipping is at
least equal to ours, if it does not exceed ours. The prisons of that country — for, even in
countries the most favoured, prisons are needful — have been models for other nations of the
earth ; and many European Governments have sent missions at different times to inquire into the
admirable system of education so universaUy adopted in their free schools throughout the
Northern States. If I were to speak of that country in a religious aspect, I should say that,
considering the short space of time to which their history goes back, there is nothing on the face
of the earth besides, and never has been, to equal the magnificent arrangement of churches
and ministers, and of all the appliances which are thought necessary for a nation to teach
Christianity and morality to its people. (Cheers.) Besides all this, when I state that for many
years past the annual public expenditure of the Government of that country has been somewhere

278 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
between £10,000,000 and £15,000,000, I need not perhaps say further, that there has always
existed amongst all the population an amount of comfort and prosperity and abounding plenty
such as I believe no other country in the world, in any age, has enjoyed. (Cheers.) This is
a very fine, but a very true, picture ; yet it has another side to whieh I must advert. There has
beeu one great feature in that country, one great contrast, which has been pointed to by aU who
have commented upon the United States as a feature of danger, as a contrast calculated to give
pain. There has been in that country the utmost liberty to the white man, and bondage
and degradation to the black man. Now, rely upon it, that wherever Christianity lives and
flourishes, there must grow up from it, necessarily, a conscience hostile to any oppression and to
any wrong; and therefore, from the hour when the United States' Constitution was formed, so
long as it left there this great evil — then comparatively small, but now so great — it left there
seeds of that which an American statesman has so happily described, of that ' irrepressible
conflict ' of which now the whole world is the witness. It has been a common thing for
men disposed to carp at the United States to point to this blot upon their fair fame, and
to compare it with the boasted declaration of freedom in their Deed and Declaration of Indepen
dence. But we must recollect who sowed this seed of trouble, and how and by whom it has been
cherished. (Cheers.) Without dwelling upon this stain any longer, I should like to read to
you a paragraph from the instructions understood to have been given to the Virginian delegates
to Congress, in the month of August, 1774, by Mr. Jefferson, who was, perhaps, the ablest man
the United States had produced up to that time, and who was then actively engaged in its
affairs, and who afterwards for two periods filled the office of President. He represented one
of these very slave states — the State of Virginia — and he says : ' For the most trifling reasons,
and sometimes for no conceivable reason at aU, his Majesty has rejected laws of the most
salutary tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those
colonies where it was unhappily introduced iu their infant state. But previous to the enfran
chisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa.
Tet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibition, and by imposing duties which might
amount to prohibition, have hitherto been defeated by his Majesty's negative, thus preferring
the immediate advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American
States, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.' I read
this merely to show that, two years before the Declaration of Independence was signed, Mr.
Jefferson, acting on behalf of those he represented in Virginia, wrote that protest against the
course of the English Government which prevented the colonists from abolishing the slave
trade, preparatory to the abolition of slavery itself. Well, the United States' Constitution left
every State to manage the slave question for itself. It was a question too difficult to settle
then, and apparently every man had the hope and belief that in a few years slavery itself would
become extinct. Then there happened a great event in the annals of manufactures and com
merce. It was discovered that in those States that article which we iu this country now so
much depend on could be produced of the best quality necessary for manufacture and at a
moderate price. From that day to this the growth of cotton has increased there, and its con
sumption has increased here, and a value which no man dreamed of when Jefferson wrote that
paper has been given to the slave and to slave industry. Thus it has grown up into that gigantic
institution which now threatens either its own overthrow or the overthrow of that which is a
miUion times more valuable — the United States of America. The crisis at which we have
arrived— I say ' we,' for, after all, we are nearly as much interested as if 1 was making this
speech in the city of Boston or the city of New Tork — the crisis, I say, which has now arrived
was inevitable. I say that the conscience of the North, never satisfied with the institution of
slavery, was constantly urging some men forward to take a more extreme view of the question •
and there grew up naturaUy a section — it may not have been a very numerous one — in favour of

REPRESENTATION IN AMERICA. 279
the abolition of slavery. A great and powerful party resolved at least upon a restraint and a
control of slavery, so that it should not extend beyond the States and the area which it now
occupies. But, if we look at the Government of the United States almost ever since the forma
tion of the Union, we shall find the Southern power has been mostly dominant there. If we
take thirty-six years after the formation of the present Cqnstitution— I think about 1787 — we
shaU find that for thirty-two of those years every President was a Southern man ; and if we
take the period from 1828 until 1860, we shaU find that on every election for President the
South voted in the majority. We know what an election is in the United States for President
of the Republic. There is a most extensive suffrage, aud there is the ballot-box. The members
of the House of Representatives are elected by the same suffrage, and generally they are elected
at the same time. It is thus therefore almost .inevitable that the House of Representatives is
in accord in pubUc policy with the President for the time being. Every four years there springs
from the vote created by the whole people a President over that great nation. I think the world
offers no finer spectacle than this ; it offers no higher dignity ; and there is no greater object of
ambition on the political stage on which men are permitted to move. Tou may point, if you
wiU, to hereditary rulers, to crowns coming down through successive generations of the same
famUy, to thrones based on prescription or on conquest, to sceptres wielded over veteran legions
and subject realms ; but to my mind there is nothing more worthy of reverence and obedience,
and nothing more sacred, than the authority of the freely chosen magistrate of a great and free
people ; and if there be on earth and amongst men any right divine to govern, surely it rests
with a ruler so chosen and so appointed. Last year the ceremony of this great election was
gone through, and the South, which had been so long successful, found itself defeated. That
defeat was foUowed instantly by secession, and insurrection, and war. In the multitude of
articles whieh have been before us in the newspapers within the last few months, I have no
doubt you have seen it stated, as I have seen it, that this question was very much like that upon
which the Colonies originaUy revolted against the Crown of England. It is amazing how little
some newspaper writers know, or how little they think you know. When the War of Indepen
dence was begun in America, ninety years ago, there were ho representatives there at aU. The
question then was, whether a Ministry in Downing Street, and a corrupt and borough-mongering
Parliament, should continue to impose taxes upon three millions of English subjects, who had
left their native shores and established themselves in North America. But now the question is
not the want of representation, because, as is perfectly notorious, the South is not only repre
sented, but is represented in excess ; for, in distributing the number of representatives, which is
done every ten years, three out of every five slaves are counted as freemen, and the number of
representatives from the Slave States is. consequently so much greater than if the freemen, the
white men only, were counted. From this cause the Southern States have twenty members more
in the House of Representatives than they would have if the members were apportioned on the
same principle as in the Northern Free States. Therefore you wiU see at once that there is no
comparison between the state of things when the Colonies revolted, and the state of things now,
when this wicked insurrection has broken out. There is another cause which is sometimes in
England assigned for this great misfortune, which is, the protective theories in operation in
the Union, and the maintenance of a high tariff. It happens with regard to that, unfortunately,
that no American, certainly no one I ever met with, attributed the disasters of the Union to
that cause. It is an argument made use of by ignorant Englishmen, but never by informed
Americans. I have already shown you that the South, during almost the whole existence of the
Union, has been dominant at Washington ; and during that period the tariff has existed, and there
has been no general dissatisfaction with it. OccasionaUy, there can be no doubt, their tariff was
higher than was thought just, or reasonable, or necessary by some of the States of the South.
But the first Act of the United States which levied duties .upon imports, passed immediately

280 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
after the Union was formed, recited that ' It is necessary for the encouragement and protection
of manufactures to levy the duties which follow ; ' and during the war with England from 1812
to 1815, the people of the United States had to pay for aU the articles they brought from Europe
many times over the natural cost of those articles, on account of the interruption to the traffic
by the English nation. When the war was over, it was felt by everybody desirable that they
should encourage manufactures in their own country ; and seeing that England at that precise
moment was passing a law to prevent any wheat coming from America until wheat in England
had risen to the price of 84s. per quarter, we may be quite satisfied that the doctrine of Protec
tion originally entertained did not find less favour at the close of the war in 1815. There is one
remarkable point with regard to this matter which should not be forgotten. Twelve months ago,
at the meeting of the Congress of the United States, on the first Monday in December — when
the Congress met, you recoUect that there were various propositions of compromise, committee
meetings of various kinds, to try and devise some mode of settling the question between the
North and the South, so that disunion might not go on — though I read carefully everything
published in the English papers from the United States on the subject, I do not recollect that
in a single instance the question of the tariff was referred to, or any change proposed or sug
gested in the matter as likely to have any effect whatever upon the question of secession.
There is another point — whatever might be the influence of the tariff upon the United States,
it is as pernicious to the West as it is to the South ; and further, that Louisiana, which is a
Southern State and a seceded State, has always voted along with Pennsylvania until last year in
favour of Protection— in-otection for its sugar, while Pennsylvania wished protection for its
coal and iron. But if the tariff was onerous and grievous, was. that any reason for this great
insurrection ? Was there ever a country that had a tariff, especiaUy in the article of food,
more onerous and more cruel than that which we had in this country twenty years ago P We
did not secede. We did not rebel. What we did was to raise money for the purpose of
distributing among aU the people perfect information upon the question; and many men, as
you know, devoted all their labours, for several years, to teach the great and wise doctrine
of free trade to the people of England. The price of a single gunboat, the equipment of
a single regiment, the garrisoning of a single fort, the cessation of their trade for a single
day, cost more than it would have cost to have spread among all the intelligent people of
the United States the most complete statement of the whole case ; and the West and South could
easily have revised, or, if need had been, have repealed, the tariff altogether. The question is a
very different and a far more grave question. It is a question of slavery, and for thirty years it
has constantly been coming to the surface, disturbing social life, aud overthrowing almost aU
political harmony in the working of the United States. In the North there is no secession ;
there is no coUision. These disturbances and this insurrection are found wholly in the South and
in the Slave States ; and therefore I think that the man who says otherwise, who contends that it
is the tariff, or anything whatsoever else than slavery, is either himself deceived or endeavours to
deceive others. The object of the South is this : to escape from the majority who wish to limit
the area of slavery. They wish to found a Slave State freed from the influence and opinions of
freedom. The Free States in the North now stand before the world as the advocates and de
fenders of freedom and civilisation. The Slave States offer themselves for the recognition of a
Christian nation, based upon the foundation — the unchangeable foundation in their eyes  of
slavery and barbarism. I will not discuss the guilt of the men who, Ministers of a great nation
only last year, conspired to overthrow it. I wUl not point out or recapitulate the statements of
the fraudulent manner in which they disposed of the funds in the national exchequer. I will not
point out by name any of the men, in this conspiracy, whom history will designate by titles they
would not Uke to hear ; but I say that slavery has sought to break up the most free government
in the world, and to found a new State, in the nineteenth century, whose corner-stone is the

FREE GOVERNMENTS. 281
perpetual bondage of miUions of men. Such, briefly described, is what appears to me the literal
truth of this matter. What, then, is the course that England would be expected to pursue P We
should be neutral as far as reg'ards mingling in the strife. We were neutral in the strife in
Italy ; but we were not neutral in opinion or sympathy ; and we know perfectly well that
throughout the whole of Italy at this moment there is a feeling that, though no shot was fired
from an English ship, and though no English soldier trod their soil, yet stiU the opinion of
England was potent in Europe, and did much for the creation of the Italian kingdom. With
regard to the United States, you know how much we hate slavery, and that we have given
twenty millions sterling — a mUliou a year, or nearly so, of taxes for ever — to free eight
hundred thousand slaves in the English colonies. We knew, or thought we knew, how much
we were in love with free government everywhere, although it might not take precisely the
same form as om- own Government. We were for free government in Italy ; we were for
free government in Switzerland; and we were for free government, even under a republican
form, in the United States of America; and with all this every man would have said that
England would wish the American Union to be prosperous and eternal. Now suppose we
turn our eyes to the East, to the empire of Russia, for a moment. In Russia, as you all
know, there has- been one of the most important and magnificent changes of policy ever seen
in any country. Within the last year or two, the present Emperor of Russia, foUowing the
wishes of his father, has insisted upon the abolition of serfdom in that empire ; and twenty-three
millions of human beings, lately serfs, little better than real slaves, have been raised to the ranks
of freedom. Now, suppose that the milUons of the serfs of Russia had been chiefly in the South
of Russia. We hear of the nobles of Russia, to whom those serfs belonged in a great measure,
that they have been hostUe to this change ; and there has been some danger that the peace of
that empire might be disturbed during the change. Suppose these nobles, for the purpose of
maintaining in perpetuity the serfdom of Russia, and barring out twenty -three milUons of your
fellow-creatures from the rights of freedom, had established a great and secret conspiracy, and
that they had risen in great and dangerous insurrection against the Russian Government — I
say that you, the people of England, although seven years ago you were in mortal combat
with the Russians in the south of Europe— I believe at this moment you would have prayed
Heaven in aU sincerity and fervour to give strength to the arm and success to the great wishes
of the Emperor, and that the vile and atrocious insurrection might be suppressed. Well,
but let us look a little at what has been said and done in this country since the period when
Parliament rose at the beginning of August. There have been two speeches to which I
wish to refer, and in terms of approbation. The Duke of Argyll, a member of the present
Government — and, though I have not the smaUest personal acquaintance with him, I am
free to say that I beUeve him to be one of the most intelligent and liberal of his order
— the Duke of ArgyU made a speech which was fair and friendly to the Government of the
United States. Lord Stanley, only a fortnight ago, I think, made a speech which it is impossible
to read without remarking the thought, the liberality, and the wisdom by which it is distin
guished. He doubted, it is true, whether the Union could be restored. A man need not
be hostUe, and must not necessarily be unfriendly, to doubt that or the contrary ; but he spoke
with fairness and friendliness of the Government of the United States ; and he said that they
were right and justifiable in the course they took ; and ho gave us some advice — which is now
more important than at the moment when it was given — that amid the various incidents and
accidents of a struggle of this nature, it became a people like this to be very moderate, very
calm, and to avoid, as much as possible, any feeling of irritation, which sometimes arises,
and sometimes leads to danger. I mention these two speeches as from Englishmen of great
distinction in this country — speeches which I believe wUl have a beneficial effect on the other
side of the Atlantic. Lord John Russell, in the House of Commons, during the last session,

282 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
made a speech also, in which he rebuked the impertinence of a young member of the House who
had spoken about the bursting of the ' bubble repubUe' It was a speech worthy of the best days
of Lord John RusseU. But at a later period he spoke at Newcastle on an occasion something
like this, when the inhabitants, or some portion of the inhabitants, of the town invited him to a
public dinner. He described the contest in words something Uke these — I speak from memory
only : ' The North is contending for empire, the South for independence.' Did he mean
contending for empire, as England contends for it when making some fresh conquest in India ?
If he meant that, what he said was not true. But I recollect Lord John Russell, some years ago,
in the House of Commons, on an occasion when I made some observation as to the unreasonable
expenditure of our colonies, and said that the people of England should not be taxed to defray
expenses which the colonies themselves were weU able to bear, turned to me with a sharpness
which was not necessary, and said, ' The honourable member has no objection to make a
great empire into a little one ; but I have.' Perhaps, if he had lived in the United States, if he
was a member of the Senate or the House of Representatives there, he would doubt whether
it was his duty to consent at once to the destruction of a great country by separation, it may be,
into two hostile camps, or whether he should not try all the means which were open to him,
and open to the Government, to avert so unlooked-for and so dire a calamity. There are
other speeches that have been made. I wUl not refer to them by any quotation — I wiU not, out
of pity to some of the men who uttered them. I will not bring their names even before you, to
give them an endurance which I hope they will not otherwise obtain. I leave them in
the obscurity which they so richly merit. But you know as well as I do that, of all the speeches
made since the end of the last session of Parliament by public men, by politicians, the majority
of them have either displayed a strange ignorance of American affairs, or a stranger absence
of that cordiality and friendship which, I maiutain, our American kinsmen have a right to look
for at our hands. . . . Now no one will expect that I should stand forward as the advocate
of war, or as the defender of that great sum of all crimes which is involved in war. But when
we are discussing a question of this nature, it is only fair that we should discuss it upon
principles which are acknowledged not only in the country where the strife is being carried on,
but are universally acknowledged in this country. When I discussed the Russian war, seven or
eight years ago, I always condemned it, on principles which were accepted by the Government
and people of England, and I took my facts from the blue-books presented to Parliament. I
take the liberty, then, of doing that in this case also ; and I say that, looking at the principles avowed
in England and at its policy, there is no man who is not absolutely a non-resistant in every
sense who can fairly challenge the conduct of the American Government in this war. It would
be a curious thing to find that the party in this country which on every public question affecting
England is in favour of war at any cost, when they come to speak of the duty of the Government
of the United States, is in favour of ' peace at any price.' I want to know whether it has ever
been admitted by poUticians, or statesmen, or people, that a great nation can be broken up at any
time by any particular section of any part of that nation. It has been tried occasionaUy
in Ireland, and if it had succeeded history would have said that it was with very good cause.
But if anybody tried now to get up a secession or insurrection in Ireland — and it would
be infinitely less disturbing to everything than the secession in the United States, because there
is a boundary which nobody can dispute— I am quite sure the Times would have its ' Special
Correspondent,' and would describe with aU the glee and exultation in the world the manner in
which the Irish insurrectionists were cut down and made an end of. Let any man try in
this country to restore the heptarchy, do you think that any portion of the people would think
that the project could be tolerated for a moment P But if you look at a map of the United
States, you wUl see that there is no country in the world, probably, at this moment, where any
plan of separation between the North and the South, as far as the question of boundary is

DIFFICULTIES OF SEPARATION IN THE STATES. 283
concerned, is so surrounded with insurmountable difficulties. For example, Maryland is a
Slave State ; but Maryland, by a large majority, voted for the Union. Kentucky is a Slave
State, one of the finest in the Union, and containing a fine people ; Kentucky has voted for the
Union, but has been invaded from the South. . Missouri is a Slave State ; but Missouri has not
seceded, and has been invaded by the South, and there is a secession party in that State. There
are parts of Virginia which have formed themselves into a new State, resolved to adhere to the
North ; and there is no doubt a considerable Northern and Union feeling in the State of Tennessee.
I have no doubt there is in every other State. In fact, I am not sure that there is not now within
the sound of my voice a citizen of the State of Alabama, who could tell you that in his State the
question of secession has never been put to the vote ; and that there are great numbers of men, reason
able and thoughtful and just men, in that State who entirely deplore the condition of things there
existing. Then, what would you do with aU those States, and with what we may call the loyal portion
of the people of those States ? Would you aUow them to be dragooned into this insurrection, and into
the formation or the becoming parts of a new State to which they themselves are hostile P And
what would you do with the City of Washington ? Washington is in a Slave State. Would
anybody have advised that President Lincoln and his Cabinet, with aU the members of Congress,
of the House of Eepresentatives and the Senate from the North, with their wives and children,
and everybody else who was not positively in favour of the South, should have set off on their
melancholy pUgrimage Northwards, leaving that capital, hallowed to them by such associations-
having its name even from the father of their country — leaving Washington to the South, because
Washington is situated in a Slave State ? Again, what do you say to the Mississippi River, as
you see it upon the map, the ' father of waters,' rolling its gigantic stream to the ocean ? Do
you think that the fifty millions which one day will occupy the banks of that river, Northward,
wUl ever consent that its great stream shall roll through a foreign, and it may be a hostile, State P
And more, thera are four millions of negroes in subjection. For them the American Union is
directly responsible. They are not secessionists ; they are now, as they always were, not citizens
nor subjects, but legally under the care and power of the Government of the United States.
Would you consent that these should be delivered up to the tender mercies of their taskmasters,
the defenders of slavery as an everlasting institution? But if all had been surrendered
without a struggle, what then ? What would the writers in this newspaper and other newspapers
have said ? If a bare rock in your empire, that would not keep a goat— a single goat — aUve, be
touched by any foreign power, the whole empire is roused to resistance ; and if there be, from
accident or passion, the smallest insult to your flag, what do your newspaper writers say upon the
subject, and what is said in all your towns and upon aU your exchanges ? I will tell you what
they would have said if the Government of the Northern States had taken their insidious and
dishonest advice. They would have said the great Republic was a failure, that democracy had
murdered patriotism, that history afforded no example of such meanness and of such cowardice ;
and they would have heaped unmeasured obloquy and contempt upon the people and Government
who had taken that course. They teU you, these candid friends of the United States— they teU
you that all freedom is gone ; that the Habeas Corpus Act, if they ever had one, is known no
longer ; and that any man may be arrested at the dictum of the President or of the Secretary of
State. Well, but in 1848, you recollect, many of you, that there was a smaU insurrection in
Ireland. It was an absurd thing altogether ; but what was done then ? I saw in one night in
the House of Commons a biU for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act passed through all
its stages. What more did I see ? I saw a bill brought in by the Whig Government of that day,
Lord John RusseU being the Premier, which made speaking against the Government and against
the Crown — an action that up to that time had been sedition — which proposed to make it felony;
and it was only by the greatest exertions of a few of the members that the Act, in that particular, was
Umited to a period of two years. In the same session a bill was brought in called an Alien BiU,

284 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
which enabled the Home Secretary to take any foreigner whatsoever, not being a naturalised
Englishman, and in twenty -four hours to send him out of the country. Although a man might
have committed no crime, this might be done to him apparently only on suspicion. But suppose
that an insurgent army had been so near to Loudon that you could see its outposts from every
suburb of your capital, what then clo you think would have been the regard of the Government of
Great Britain for personal liberty, if it interfered with the necessities, and, as they might think,
the salvation of the State ? I recoUect, in 1848, when the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended in
Ireland, that a number of persons in Liverpool, men there of position and of wealth, presented a
petition to the House of Commons, praying — what P That the Habeas Corpus Act should not be
suspended ? No. They were not content with its suspension in Ireland ; and they prayed the
House of Commons to extend that suspension to Liverpool. I recoUect that at that time — and I
am sure my friend Mr. Wilson wiU bear me out in what I say— the Mayor of Liverpool tele
graphed to the Mayor of Manchester, and that messages were sent on to London nearly every
hour. The Mayor of Manchester heard from the Mayor of Liverpool that certain Irishmen in
Liverpool, conspirators or fellow-conspirators with those in Ireland, were going to burn the
cotton warehouses in Liverpool, and the cotton mUls of Lancashire. I read that petition from
Liverpool. I took it from the table of the House of Commons, and read it, and I handed it over to
a statesman of great eminence, who has been but just removed from us — I refer to Sir James
Graham, a man not second to any in the House of Commons for his knowledge of affairs and for his
great capacity — I handed to him that petition. He read it ; and after he had read it, he rose from
his seat, and laid it upon the table with a gesture of abhorrence and disgust. Now that was a petition
from the town of Liverpool, where some persons have been making themselves very ridiculous
of late by reason of their conduct on this American question. There is one more point. It
has been said, 'How much better it would be'— not for the United States, but— 'for us, that
these States should be divided.' I recoUect meeting a gentleman in Bond Street one day
before the session was over. He was a rich man, and one whose voice is much heard in
the House of Commons ; but his voice is not heard when he is on his legs, but when he is
cheering other speakers; and he said to me, 'After aU, this is a sad business about the United
States ; but still I think it very much better that they should be split up. In twenty years' — or
in fifty years, I forget which it was — ' they wiU be so powerful that they will bully aU
Europe.' And a distinguished member of the House of Commons — distinguished there by
his eloquence, distinguished more by his many writings — I mean Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton
— he did not exactly express a hope, but he ventured on something Uke a prediction, that
the time would come when there would be, I do not know how many, but about as many
independent States on the American continent as you can count upon your fingers. There
cannot be a meaner motive than this I am speaking of, in forming a judgment on this question —
that it is ' better for us ' — for whom ? the people of England, or the Government of England P —
that the United States should be severed, and that the North American continent should be as
the continent of Europe is, in many States, and subject to all the contentions and disasters which
have accompanied the history of the States of Europe. I should say that, if a man had a great
heart within him, he would rather look forward to the day when, from that point of
land which is habitable nearest to the Pole, to the shores of the Great Gulf, the whole of
that vast continent might become one great confederation of States — without a great
army, and without a great navy — not mixing itself up with the entanglements of
European politics — without a custom-house inside, through the whole length and breadth
of its territory — and with freedom everywhere, equality everywhere, law everywhere, peace
everywhere — such a confederation would afford at least some hope that man is not for
saken of Heaven, and that the future of our race may be better than the past. It is a common
observation, that our friends in America are very irritable. And I think it is very likely, of a

ENGLAND'S NEUTRALITY. 285
considerable number of them, to be quite true. Our friends in America are involved in a great
struggle. There is nothing like it before in their or in any history. No country in the world
was ever more entitled, in my opinion, to the sympathy and the forbearance of all friendly
nations, than are the United States at this moment. They have there some newspapers that are
no wiser than ours. They have there some papers, which, up to the election of Mr. Lincoln, were
his bitterest and most unrelenting foes, who, when the war broke out and it was not safe to take the
line of Southern support, were obliged to turn round and to appear to adopt the prevalent opinion
of the country. But they undertook to • serve the South in another way, and that was by
exaggerating every difficulty and mis-stating every fact, if so doing could serve their object of
creating distrust between the people of the Northern States and the people of this United
Kingdom. If the Times in this country has done aU that it could do to poison the minds of the
people of England, and to irritate the minds of the people of America, the New York Herald, I
am sorry to say, has done, I think, aU that it could, or all that it dared to do, to provoke mischief
between the Government in Washington and the Government in London. Now there is one
thing which I must state that I think they have a solid reason to complain of ; and I am very
sorry to have to mention it, because it blames our present Foreign Minister, against whom I am
not anxious to say a word ; and, recoUecting his speech in the House of Commons, I should be
slow to conclude that he had any feeling hostile to the United States' Government. Tou recollect
that during the session — it was on the 14th of May — a proclamation came out which acknowledged
the South as a beUigerent power, and proclaimed the neutrality of England. A little time
before that, I forget how many days, Mr. Dallas, the late Minister from the United States, had
left London for Liverpool and America. He did not wish to undertake any affairs for his
Government, by which he was not appointed — I mean that of President Lincoln — and he left
what had to be done to his successor, who was on his way, and whose arrival was daUy expected.
Mr. Adams, the present Minister from the United States, is a man whom, if he Uved in England,
you would speak of as belonging to one of the noblest famUies of the country. His father and
his grandfather were Presidents of the United States. His grandfather was one of the great
men who achieved the independence of the United States. There is no famUy in that country
having more claims upon what I should caU the veneration and the affection of the people than
the famUy of Mr. Adams. Mr. Adams came to this country. He arrived in London on the night
of the 13th of May. On the 14th, -that proclamation was issued. It was known that he was
coming ; but he was not consulted ; the proclamation was not delayed for a day, although there
was nothing pressing, no reason why the proclamation should not have been notified to him. If
communications of a friendly nature had taken place with him and with the American Govern
ment, they could have found no fault with this step, because it was perhaps inevitable, before the
struggle had proceeded far, that this proclamation would be issued. But I have the best reasons
for knowing that there is no single thing that has happened during the course of these events
which has created more surprise, more irritation, and more distrust in the United States, with
respect to this country, than the fact that that proclamation was not delayed one single day,
until the minister from America could come here, and until it could be done, if not with his
consent, or his concurrence, yet in that friendly manner that would probably have avoided aU the
unpleasantness which has occurred. Now I am obliged to say — and I say it with the utmost pain —
that if we have not done things that are plainly hostile to the North, and if we have not expressed
affection for slavery, and, outwardly and openly, hatred for the Union — I say that there has not
been that friendly and cordial neutrality which, if I had been a citizen of the United States, I
should have expected ; and I say further, that, if there has existed considerable irritation at that,
it must be taken as a measure of the high appreciation which the people of those States place
upon the opinion of the people of England. If I had been addressing this audience ten days
ago, so far as I know, I should have said just what I have said now ; and although, by an

286 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
untoward event, circumstances are somewhat, even considerably, altered, yet I have thought it
desirable to make this statement, with a view, so far as I am able to do it, to improve the opinion
of England, and to assuage feelings of irritation in America, if there be any, so that no further
difficulties may arise in the progress of this unhappy strife. But there has occurred an event
which was announced to us only a week ago, which is one of great importance, and it may be one
of some peril. It is asserted that what is caUed ' international law ' has been broken by the
seizure of the Southern Commissioners on board an English trading steamer by a steamer of
war of the United States. Now, what is international law P Tou have heard that the opinions of
the law officers of the Crown are in favour of this view of the case — that the law has been broken.
I am not at aU going to say that it has not. It would be imprudent in me to set my opinion on a
legal question which I have only partially examined, against their opinion on the same question,
which I presume they have caref uUy examined. But this I say, that international law is not to be
found in an Act of Parliament; — it is not in so many clauses. Tou know that it is difficult to find
the law. I can ask the Mayor, or any magistrate around me, whether it is not very difficult to
find the law, even when you have found the Act of ParUament, and found the clause. But when
you have no Act of Parliament, and no clause, you may imagine that the case is stiU more
difficult. Now, maritime law, or international law, consists of opinions and precedents for the
most part, and it is very unsettled. The opinions are the opinions of men of different countries,
given at different times ; and the precedents are not always like each other. The law is very
unsettled, and, for the most part, I believe it to be exceedingly bad. In past times, as you know
from the histories you read, this country has been a fighting country ; we have been beUigerents,
and, as beUigerents, we have carried maritime law, by our own powerful hand, to a pitch that has
been very oppressive to foreign, and especiaUy so to neutral, nations. Well, now, for the first
time — unhappily, almost for the first time in our history for the last two hundred years — we are
not belligerents, but neutrals ; and we are disposed to take, perhaps, rather a different view of
maritime and international law. Now, the act which has been committed by the American
steamer, in my opinion, whether it was legal or not, was both impolitic and bad. That is my
opinion. I think it may turn out, almost certainly, that, so far as the taking of those men from
that ship was concerned, it was an act whoUy unknown to, and unauthorised by, the American
Government. And if the American Government believe, on the opinion of their law officers,
that the act is illegal, I have no doubt they will make fitting reparation ; for there is no Govern
ment in the world that has so strenuously insisted upon modifications of international law, and
been so anxious to be guided always by the most moderate and merciful interpretation of that law.
Now, our great advisers of the Times newspaper have been persuading people that this is merely
one of a series of acts denoting the determination of the Washington Government to pick a quarrel
with the people of England. Did you ever know anybody who was very nearly dead drunk, and have
you not noticed how, having as much upon his hands as he can manage, he persistently offers to
fight everybody about him ? Do you believe that the United States' Government, presided over by
President Lincoln, so constitutional in aU his acts, so moderate as he has been — representing at this
moment that great party in the United States, happily now in the ascendancy, which has always
been especially in favour of peace, and especially friendly to England — do you beUeve that such a
Government, having now upon its hands an insurrection of the most formidable character in the
South, would invite the armies and the fleets of England to combine with that insurrection, and,
it might be, to render it impossible that the Union should ever again be restored P I say, that
single statement, whether it came from a public writer or a public speaker, is enough to stamp
him for ever with the character of being an insidious enemy of both countries. WeU, now,
what have we seen during the last week ? People have not been, I am told — I have not seen
much of it— quite as calm as sensible men should be. Here is a question of law. I wUl under
take to say that when you have from the United States' Government — if they think the act

MARITIME LAW. 287
legal a statement of their view of the case, they will show you that, fifty or sixty years ago,
during the wars of that time, there were scores of cases that were at least as bad as this, and
some infinitely worse. And if it were not so late to-night — and I am not anxious now to go into
the question further — I could easily place before you cases of extreme outrage committed by us
when we were at war, and for many of which, I am afraid, little or no reparation was offered.
But let us bear this in mind, that during this struggle incidents and accidents will happen. Bear
in mind the advice of Lord Stanley, so opportune and so judicious. Do not let your newspapers,
or your public speakers, or any man, take you off your guard, and bring you into that frame of ,
mind under which your Government, if it desires war, may be driven to engage in it ; for one
may be almost as fatal and as evU as the other. What can be more monstrous than that we, as
we call ourselves, to some extent an educated, a moral, and a Christian nation — at a moment
when an accident of this kind occurs, before we have made a representation to the American G overn-
ment, before we have heard a word from it in reply — should be all up in arms, every sword leaping
from its scabbard, and every man looking about for his pistols and his blunderbusses P I think
the conduct pursued — and I have no doubt just the same is pursued by a certain class in America
— is much more the conduct of savages than of Christian and civUised men. No, let us be calm.
Tou recollect how we were dragged into the Russian war — how we ' drifted ' into it. Tou know
that I, at least, have not upon my head any of the guilt of that fearful war. Tou know that it
cost one hundred miUions of money to this country ; that it cost at least the lives of forty thou
sand EngUshmen ; that it disturbed your trade ; that it nearly doubled the armies of Europe ;
that it placed the relations of Europe on a much less peaceful footing than before ; and that it
did not effect one single thing of aU those that it was promised to effect. I recollect speaking on
this subject, within the last two years, to a man whose name I have already mentioned, Sir
James Graham, in the House of Commons. He was a Minister at the time of that war. He was
reminding me of a severe onslaught which I had made upon him and Lord Palmerston for
attending a dinner at the Reform Club when Sir Charles Napier was appointed to the command
of the Baltic fleet ; and he remarked, ' What a severe thrashing ' I had given them in the House
of Commons ! I said, ' Sir James, teU me candidly, did you not deserve it ? ' He said, ' WeU,
you were entirely right about that war ; we were entirely wrong, and we never should have gone
into it.' And this is exactly what everybody wiU say, if you go into a war about this business,
when it is over. When your saUors and soldiers, so many of them as may be slaughtered, are
gone to their last account ; when your taxes are increased, your business — permanently it may be
— injured ; and when embittered feelings for generations have been created between America
and Eugland, then your statesmen will teU you that ' we ought not to have gone into the war.'
But they wUl very likely say, as many of them tell me, ' What could we do in the frenzy of the
pubUc mind ? ' Let them not add to the frenzy, and let us be careful that nobody drives us into
that frenzy. Remembering the past, remembering at this moment the perils of a friendly
people, and seeing the difficulties by which they are surrounded, I earnestly entreat of you to show
that moderation is not wanting to the people of England, and that magnanimity, so often to be
found amongst individuals, is not absolutely wanting in a great nation. Now, Government may
discuss this matter, they may arrange it, they may arbitrate it. I have received here, since I came
into the room, a despatch from a friend of mine in London, referring to this matter. I believe
some portion of it is in the papers this evening, but I have not seen them. He states that
General Scott, whom you know by name, who has come over from America to France, being in a
bad state of health — the General lately of the American army, and a man whose reputation in
that country is hardly second to that which the Duke of Wellington held during his lifetime in
this country — General Scott has written a letter on the American difficulty. He denies that the
Cabinet of Washington had ordered the seizure of the Southern Commissioners if found under a
neutral flag. The question of legal right involved in the seizure, the General thinks a very

288 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
narrow ground on which to force a quarrel with the United States. As to Messrs. Slidell and
Mason being or not being contraband, the General answers for it, that, if Mr. Seward cannot
convince Earl Russell that they bore that character, Earl Russell wUl be able to convince Mr.
Seward that they did not. He pledges himself that, if this Government cordially agreed with
that of the United States in establishing the immunity of neutrals from the oppressive right of
search and seizure on suspicion, the Cabinet of Washington will not hesitate to purchase so great
a boon to peaceful trading-vessels. Now, then, before I sit down, let me ask you what is this
people, about which so many men in England at this moment are writing, and speaking, and
thinking, with harshness, I think with injustice, if not with great bitterness ? Two centuries
ago, multitudes of the people of this country found a refuge on the North American continent,
escaping from the tyranny of the Stuarts and from the bigotry of Laud. Many noble spirits from
our country made great experiments in favour of human freedom on that continent. Bancroft,
the great historian of his own country, has said, in his own graphic and emphatic language, ' The
history of the colonisation of America is the history of the crimes of Europe.' From
that time down to our own period, America has admitted the wanderers from every cUme. Since
1815, a time which many here remember, and which is within my lifetime, more than three
millions of persons have emigrated from the United Kingdom to the United States. During the
fifteen years from 1845 or 1846 to 1859 or 1860— a period so recent that we all remember the
most trivial circumstances that have happened in that time — during those fifteen years more than
two milUon three hundred and twenty thousand persons left the shores of the United Kingdom
as emigrants for the States of North America. At this very moment, then, there are millions
in the United States who personaUy, or whose immediate parents, have at one time been citizens
of this country. They have found a home in the Far West ; they subdued the wilderness ; they met
with plenty there, which was not afforded them in their native country ; and they have become a
great people. There may be persons in England who are jealous of those States. There may be
men who dislike democracy, and who hate a republic ; there may be even those whose sympathies
warm towards the slave oligarchy of the South. But of this I am certain, that only misrepresen
tation the most gross, or calumny the most wicked, can sever the tie which unites the great mass
of the people of this country with their friends and brethren beyond the Atlantic. (Cheers.)
Now, whether the Union wiU be restored or not, or the South achieve an unhonoured independence
or not, I know not, and I predict not. But this I think I know — that in a few years, a very few
years, the twenty miUions of free men in the North wiU be thirty millions, or even fifty millions
— a population equal to or exceeding that of this kingdom. When that time comes, I pray that
it may not be said amongst them, that, iu the darkest hour of their country's trials, England, the
land of their fathers, looked on with icy coldness and saw unmoved the perils and calamities of
her chUdren. As for me, I have but this to say : I am but one in this audience, and but one in
the citizenship of this country ; but if all other tongues are silent, mine shaU speak for that
policy which gives hope to the bondsmen of the South, and which tends to generous thoughts,
and generous words, and generous deeds, between tbe two great nations who speak the
English language, and from their origin are alike entitled to the English name.'' (Loud cheers.)
Mr. Bright again spoke on the subject at a banquet of the Birming
ham Chamber of Commerce on the 4th February, 1862, presided over by
Mr. George Dixon, the vice-president : —
" At this moment the peril which has been so often foreshadowed has come upon us, and we
are faUing upon the evil days which some men foretold. Nobody knew when they would come
or in what shape, and unfortunately very few took any steps whatever to prepare for those diffi-

THE INDIAN COTTON-SUPPLY. 289
cutties when they should come. I speak on this subject with more knowledge than many,
because, ever since I was in the House of Commons almost, I have paid more than common
attention to this question, and particularly with regard to the probability of our obtaining
suppUes of cotton from India. (Hear, hear.) In the year 1847 I moved for a select committee
to inquire into the obstacles to the growth of cotton in India. That committee was appointed in
the session of 1848, and sat during that session examining a great number of witnesses, procured
a great amount of what I beUeve to be conclusive and valuable evidence, and they agreed to a
report which, though not up to that time what the evidence justified, was still a valuable report.
In 1850, as nothing had been doue in consequence of that evidence and that report — for nothing
is done in this country as long as no great catastrophe happens — (laughter and cheers) — I moved.
not for another committee to take evidence, but for the appointment of a royal commission, to go
to India, to report upon the obstacles which interfered with the growth of cotton, particularly in
the Presidencies of Bombay and Madras. But the President of the Board of Control opposed
that motion of mine. He repudiated it. My fears, he said, were not justified. He gave me a
lot of statistics respecting cotton, about which he knew nothing in the world. (Laughter.) The
royal commission was not issued. Therefore it did not proceed to India, and therefore many of
the facts which I have stated repeatedly, both in and out of ParUament, remained without that
confirmation which they would have received had that commission made its investigation in
India. On these occasions I did not leave it to be doubted what I apprehended would come to
Lancashire some day from this cause. I pointed it out clearly on the 6th of May, 1847, and on
tho 18th of June, 1850. It was no longsightedness to say or to see what would result, for I took
it for granted every man must have known, that in a country the constitution of which declared
as its cardinal point that all men are equal, the institutionof-slavery by some means or other must
at some period come to an end, and that the organisation of labour in the Southern States of
America must at least for a time be interfered with, if not whoUy broken up. ... If there
had been in every district of India a reaUy effective government, that could have given a fair
chance to the industry of the most docile people in the world, and to the climate, and the soil
(the most favourable to everything we need), I have not the smallest doubt that at this moment
we might have had whatever supply of cotton was necessary for the manufacturers of this
country, even were the cessation of the supply from the United States more total and continued
than we hope it wiU be." (Cheers.)
Mr. Horsfall, on the llth of March, renewed his motion brought
forward in the previous session, to the effect " That the present state of
International Maritime Law, as affecting the rights of belligerents and
neutrals, is ill-defined and unsatisfactory, and calls for the early attention
of Her Majesty's Government." Mr. Cobden seconded this resolution,
and Mr. Bright, in the adjourned debate on the 17th ofthe same month,
pointed out that Mr. Horsfall only asked the Government to agree to
establish on sea the same principles which were universally recognised in
warfare on land, adding : — ¦
" The tonnage of the United Kingdom, in and out, in tho year 1814, was 3,500,000. For the
last seven or eight years it has been upwards of 12,000,000 — I think approaching 13,000,000 — of
tons. The exports, which were then some £40,000,000, and the imports about the same, have
44

290 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
now risen to £120,000,000. Now, I ask the House what was the effect upon the mercantile navy
of this country during the short war with the United States of America; from 1812 to 1814 P I
have looked at a book in the library, which is published by au American, whose name I forget,
which purports to be a history of American privateering during that war ; and I have also seen
other statements which bring me to the same conclusion— that in that very short war— not
extending over more than two years — the American privateers captured not fewer than 2,500
English ships of all sizes; and I have heard stated on American authority that ships so
captured were sold for the enormous sum of 107,000,000 dollars, or more than £21,000,000
sterling. If you can imagine the loss to the shipping interest of the country during that war,
when our tonnage was only 3,500,000, what would be our loss supposing the old system were to
prevail, if we had a war now, with our tonnage amounting to 13,000,000 tons, and with the
United States mercantile marine increased far more in the time than our marine has increased ?
I say that the devastation that would be caused would be something quite enormous. We could
scarcely conceive of a case in which it would be worth while to sustain such a loss. I ask the
House this question— if this change which was made in 1856 was possible, and if it now cannot
be recaUed, does the House, does the noble lord, believe that for any long time it will be possible
to resist the proposition of the hon. member for Liverpool (Mr. Horsfall) P I hope it may be
possible for a hundred years to come ; because, as long as there is neither war nor rumour of
war, of course the calamities it points out wiU not happen. But if strong rumours of war should
arise, and war itself inevitably occur, then the consequences which he describes wUl come about,
and the noble lord, or his successors, will find the greatest possible pressure put upon him either
to abolish that which had been done in Paris in 1856, and which, I believe, cannot be recalled, or
to do that which the hon. member for Liverpool asks shall be done now. I think the House, or
certain members of the House, in considering this question, do not take sufficiently into con
sideration, both in war and in commerce, all over the world, what has taken place the last fifty
years. Our commerce is so extensive and so wide, and our force so mighty — I will say so
omnipotent — that it is utterly impossible that the ancient theories and the ancient policy of
war can any longer be maintained. Besides, let us consider, what is apparently sometimes
forgotten, that war is not the one grand object and purpose of man ; and that preparation for
war is not the one grand object for whieh Parliaments are elected. I know a distinguished
American historian, the author of the ' History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic,' in speaking
of one of his characters, Charles the Bold, says of him that he was a man in whose eyes
nothing was sacred but war, and the way to make it. Now, we profess to be a Parliament of
an enlightened age, and the Parliament of a Christian country, and I think we should have
other objects. If a man looks only at the chances of war, fills his eye and his mind with them,
believes that war is the normal condition of the world, he wiU be greatly misled with regard to
those questions which affect the industry of the country. Now, I am of opinion that war,
notwithstanding the enormous armaments which are being kept up by the nations of Europe, is
constantly becoming more difficult, and any continuous war more remote ; and I look forward
to the time— seeing the changes which are now taking place in the political condition of Europe,
and in the commercial condition of the whole world— when the commercial interests of mankind
wiU assert the superiority to which they have a right over those tendencies to war which in
time past, and even now sometimes, act too strongly on the minds of statesmen and rulers. In
my eyes, even now the victories of peace have begun ; the great men of our age are not your
warriors ; they are not even your statesmen. The great men of the country are your engineers
—those who make the great industry of the people ; and the great industry before long, you
may depend upon it, will triumph over much which has been thought great and necessary in
past times. I think we are looking from the darkness into the dawn, and that this motion
which the hon. gentleman the member for Liverpool offers to the House is one that wiU recom-

THE FRIEND OF PEACE 291
mend itself widely to all the industry of the nation — to every manufacturer, to every merchant,
and to every ship-owner in this country. I do not ask him now — in fact, if I might express an
opinion upon the subject, I would advise him not to ask the House, when the question is com
paratively new to it — to come to any absolute opinion upon it. His motion was not brought
forward with a view to embarrass or to be hostUe in any degree to the Government. It was
intended to afford to Parliament a fair opportunity for discussion. That discussion has taken
place ; and I am bound to say this subject has been treated with various ability on both sides of
the House, and I may add with great fairness and candour — notwithstanding the declaration
of the noble lord at the head of the Government, who, I think, will see, from the tone of the
debate, that he was rather precipitate in the expression of his opinion ; and I should not be at
aU surprised if before long we have an unanimous Cabinet, willing, if foreign nations are willing
— and I have the best means of knowing that other Governments are willing — to carry this
matter stiU further. (' Oh ! ') Some hon. member seems to entertain objections to that score.
There is no doubt of the willingness of the United States ; I have no doubt of the wiUirigness
of Russia ; and I believe there is no doubt of the wiUingness of France. Whenever the people
of this country shaU have made up their minds on this question, and Parliament shall be dis
posed to enable the Government to act, I believe they wiU find no difficulty iu any foreign
country. Now, I wiU only say with regard to this matter, that I may be pointed at- — as I have
been pointed at a thousand times — as a friend of peace. I would rather be a friend of peace, in
the humblest rank and position of life, than a friend of war in the highest."
Mr. Horsfall, in deference to the suggestions made from both sides
of the House, withdrew the motion.
Sir Frederick Smith, on the 31st of March, called the attention of
the Secretary of State for War to the reports of an engagement between
the American iron -clad frigate in the naval service of the Confederate
States, called the Merrimac, and an iron vessel, called the Monitor, in
the naval service of the Federal States, having a shot-proof roof; and
asked whether, in consequence of the result of that action, it would
not be prudent to suspend the construction of some of the proposed forts
at Spithead until the value of such iron-roofed vessels for the defence of
our ports a,nd roadsteads should have been fully considered. Mr.
Bright took part in the lengthy discussion which followed, for he
though'; it would be very unfortunate if the Government at once
adopted the scheme of naval construction. Nothing could be more
costly or calamitous to the country than that we should have such
sweeping measures carried out by aspiriDg Lords of the Admiralty every
half-dozen years.
" The question is," said he, " whether the batteries which we arc about to erect at a vast cost
in the neighbourhood of Portsmouth harbour are capable of resisting the entrance of iron-plated
vessels, such as the Monitor. The old questions, whether there is any danger of invasion,

202 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
whether any fortifications are required, and whether we can get them manned, are not discussed
now. They remain just where wc left them, but as far as I can learn from their conversation,
those who voted for the fortifications two years ago are generally very much ashamed of
that vote. What wc have to consider is whether, heedless of the proofs which are being given of
what iron-plated ships can do, we are to go on spending on fortifications — I am afraid to say how
much, and, indeed, the ultimate cost was never clearly set before the House. I agree with the
right hon. gentleman that nothing is to be assumed as absolutely concluded by what has taken
place in the James River, but the probability is that something has been concluded. I do
not require to be a great naval authority to pronounce it to be a very serious event, and I think
the House may fairly caU upon the Government at any rate to suspend these works, which
are costing many hundred thousand pounds, in the locality I have mentioned, and which
will involve au outlay of miUions if we include all the fortifications which we were invited
to sanction two years ago. Some hon. members have an idea that money is to be dug out some
where, and that nobody is any the poorer when it is paid out of the exchequer for such things ;
but the fact is that somebody works for it ; somebody sweats for it ; somebody receives less
of the comforts of life for its expenditure ; somebody pays it to the tax-gatherer, often grudgingly,
and suffers for the loss of it. Even the most determined spendthrift in the House must see that
the necessity of spending that money at aU has at least been rendered doubtful by recent events.
Surely we may call on the ChanceUor of the Exchequer, who sometimes upbraids the House for
its profligate expenditure, to support the proposition of the hon. and gaUant member for Chatham
in the discussion in the Cabinet. I understand that the revenue returns wiU present an
appearance more favourable than, or rather not so unfavourable as, many persons had expected ;
but I can assure the House that, judging from the state of things in the north of England,
there is a very high probability that during the next six months, or during the next year, there
wiU be a very considerable falling off in the revenue, and very great suffering amongst the work
ing classes — infinitely more, a thousandfold more, suffering than we know anything of, because it
is borne so silently and heroically. But the less the people complain, if they are in distress, and
from no fault of their own, the more carefully ought the Government and this House to watch that
not a single farthing of money which is extracted from them is expended on works which have been
shown, by one of the greatest authorities in the country, the hon. and gaUant member for
Chatham, to be unnecessary."
The Government decided against the reconsideration of the system of
fortifications, as the plans, it was said, had been adopted after the
maturest and gravest deliberations.
On the 9th May, 1862, in common with other members who addressed
the House of Commons, Mr. Bright highly eulogised the patience,
dignity, and virtue which had been exhibited by the operatives during
the distress, and expressed a hope that these circumstances would not be
forgotten Avhen the same class should again become candidates for
political power.
" In Bolton," said he, " where the spinning is almost all of fine yarn, and where only a com
paratively small portion of cotton is used, the distress is far less pressing than it is in Wio-an and
Rochdale, where the spinning is almost entirely of coarser yarn. I look back to the period to

THE DISTRESS IN LANCASHIRE. 293
wh. h my right hon. friend has referred — twenty years ago — and I can say, without hesitation, that
the distress of the whole connty of Lancaster in the years 1840 and 1841 was very much greater
than it is at this moment. At the same time, I am not certain that so many persons were out
of work then, but the distress had continued for a much longer time ; it had been preceded by a
period of much less prosperity, and the people were gradually dragged down to a condition far
lower than that to which they have now descended. My hon. friend the member for Carlisle
(Mr. Potter) says we have not more than half -trade. I should be thaukful for half -trade if it
could be spread with any moderate equality over the country. But whilst the people of Bolton
are having the whole trade, or nearly so, the people of Wigan and Rochdale have not half -trade ;
and, therefore, in a matter of this kind, averages are not very safe guides when we are to
consider what may be done. I beUeve — I am sure, indeed — that the case is growing worse, and
must grow worse, because after the prosperity these districts have enjoyed, there are thousands of
families who have saved a little money, and who can go on for a certain time without receiving
relief; but of course the longer the distress continues, the smaUer the class will become, and the
more surely will they be drawn into the abyss into which not a few have already fallen. Now,
nothing can be more sad than the sight of men who for years past have saved what they could,
and having performed in an admirable manner all the duties of life, see their earnings and
savings and Uttle stores graduaUy waste under a state of things such as that which now exists.
But let us not deceive ourselves for a moment by imagining that we can remove this evil or prevent
it. The utmost anybody connected with the county, or anybody connected with the Govern
ment, can do, must be to mitigate it to some small, and, I hope, to some considerable extent. But
there must be, whatever is done, wide ruin, extending, I believe, to thousands of families in the
cotton districts. Now, what are the means which we have at our disposal to ameliorate the con
dition of this unhappy class? My right hon. friend (Mr. C. P. Villiers) has made a speech
to-night, which, on the whole, I think, has given satisfaction tothe House, and I think also it will
be satisfactory to the country. While he has endeavoured to adhere to the acknowledged and
ordinarily acted upon principles of the Poor Law, still I think he has shown that disposition which
we should expect from him, and from the department over which he presides, to arm the guardians
in every district with the power to exercise a very large discretion with regard to the treatment
of this grave evil. . My right hon. friend said that the latest accounts showed a slight
diminution in the number of persons receiving relief, and he has referred to the question of East
India cotton. In the neighbourhood in which I live there has been an attempt, which has
gradually extended of late, to introduce the use of East India cotton, and I have no doubt in some
cases mills have been started on partial or fuU time which had been altogether stopped. But
the right hon. gentleman referred to one point to which I would call the special attention of the
noble lord at the head of the Government. He said that the importations from India had
diminished this year, and that it was greatly owing to the uncertainty which had been caused by
the fear of war with the United States. I believe it is quite true, but I wish to tell the noble
lord and his coUeagues that nothing, apart from the great question which causes the main part of
this suffering — nothing has done more harm to the trade of Lancashire than certain expressions
of opinion which we have heard lately from members of the Government on the question which
now agitates and tears the United States. About two months ago I was standing at a place where
we are permitted to stand, not far from here, and to listen to speeches which are sometimes
interesting and sometimes not. On that occasion I heard part of a speech delivered by the noble
lord the Foreign Secretary on the question of the blockade. I heard him state that he — of course,
representing the Queen, the country, and the Government — had been impartial ; we had been
perfectly neutral ; nobody in the least could complain ; he thought the blockade was efficient,
and so forth. And then he went on to say, after boasting of his impartiality, that he hoped in
the course of two or three months that the Northern States (I am not pretending to quote his

294 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
exact words, but I am giving his meaning) would permit the South to become independent, and
that this country would, of course, wish the prosperity of both States. But what was the effect
of that, the moment, the very day, when that passage in his speech went down to Lancashire P I can
turn to an honourable friend of mine who sits on this side of the House, and who represents one of
the boroughs in Lancashire which is suffering the heaviest distress. He went down a few days
afterwards, and when he came back he said to me, ' What did Lord Russell mean the other
night in the House of Lords ? ' I said, ' What did he say ? ' He referred to the passage. I
said, ' I don't know what he meant, but I heard him say it.' ' WeU,' he repUed, ' down in Lanca
shire the whole trade is checked by that very observation, and yarns and cloths in the Manchester
market have fallen from seven to ten per cent, in consequence of the declaration.' Now, I want
to know whether the noble lord the Foreign Secretary knew anything about what he was talking
of. In Lancashire they believe — they are often mistaken, no doubt — that some great statesmen
have great knowledge, and that they know secrets that the public do not know. Now, if there was
ever a question in the world on which Cabinet Ministers know no more than any other member
of this House it is precisely this question which agitates the United States. The noble lord the
Foreign Secretary knew nothing at all of the facts. He had not the slightest ground for
believing that the Northern States in two or three months would aUow that great country to
be broken up, and consent to the establishment of a new State. It is quite possible that may
happen. I am not going to prophecy, and therefore I will not express any opinion about that
question ; but I do say that if the Minister — the Foreign Minister of all others — stands forth
in a ParUament, and expresses an opinion Uke that, it is taken by aU the people in the country
to be an opinion founded upon facts, which give him fair ground to have that expectation,
and in my view it is, in point of fact, a species of intervention, and a departure from the
neutraUty of which the noble lord had just been boasting . . . Depend upon it that, in
the ' short and simple annals of the poor,' there is to be found heroism not less than that
for which votes of this House are given. (Hear, hear.) And I trust that hereafter, when
we come to look back on the abundant compliments which hon. members now pay to this
population, there may be some who will change their opinion of them, and think they are
not improper subjects of admission to political power." (Cheers.)
If there was then a disposition on the part of those hon. members
whom Mr. Bright addressed to grant the boon of the franchise, it
reminds one that " The road was long from the intention to the completion."
Mr. Cobden addressed his constituents on the 22nd of October in the
large machine works of Alderman Tatham, Milnrow Eoad. Mr. Bright
was not able to be present through business in London. In his speech
Mr. Cobden, referring to the distress in Lancashire, spoke as follows : —
" What is the position of your borough at the present moment ? I have got some au
thentic facts applicable to the Rochdale relief district. That district contains ninety-five
cotton miUs employing 14,071 persons; of these there are out of work 10,793, and the
remaining 3,278 are not averaging more than two days a week of work. The relief committee
are assisting weekly 10,041, who receive no aid from rates ; the guardians are relieving weekly
10,000, making a total of 20,041. The number of the destitute is daily increasing. Bear in
mind, I am not speaking to you here, eo much as I am speaking to my fellow-countrymen else-

MR. COBDEN AT ROCHDALE. 295
where, who are less acquainted than I could wish them to be with the actual state of this district ;
and in speaking thus I am speaking in the interests of you, the working men here present, and
your famiUes. Now, bear in mind that for all this destitution the whole of the manufacturing
capital in this region is liable to be rated. It is not generally known elsewhere that, if the mill-
owner closes his mill, provided that mill be full of machinery, it is still liable to be rated for the
relief of the poor. The consequence is that the millowner first loses the whole amount of the
interest in his capital, and the depreciation of the capital iu suspense. Say his miU is worth
£20,000 — and that is a moderate estimate for the average of miUs — that is closed, and he
immediately loses at the rate of £2,000 a year by the loss of interest and depreciation. But,
generaUy, the miU also has a number of cottages attached to it, in whieh the workpeople live.
These cottages must cease to pay rent when the workpeople cease to receive wages, but the cottages
also continue to be rated to the poor. Take, then, the amount which the mUlowner, with that small
mill worth £20,000 — at least the average mUl of £20,000 ; take the loss which he is suffering by
the loss of interest and depreciation ; take also the amount which he is Uable te pay for his poor-
rate, which may be £5,000 or £6,000 a year ; and that mUlowner, without going to a central
committee in 'Manchester to put down his name for £100 or £500, is inevitably, by the very nature
of his position, incurring a greater loss by this distress than by any amount contributed by the
richest nobleman of this land towards the funds. . . . The question we have to ask ourselves is this :
what is the position which, as a nation, we ought to take with reference to the Americans in this
dispute ? That is the question which concerns us. It is no use our arguing' as to what is the
origin of the war, or any use whatever to advise these disputants. From the moment the first
shot is fired or the first blow is struck iu a dispute, then farewell to aU reason and argument ; you
might as weU attempt to reason with mad dogs as with men when they have begun to spill each
others' blood in mortal combat. I was so convinced of that fact during the Crimean war, which
you know I opposed — I was so convinced of the utter uselessness of raising one's voice in
opposition to war when it has once begun — that I made up my mind that as long as I was in political
Ufe, should a war again break out between England and a great Power, I would never open my
mouth upon the subject from the time the first gun was fired untU the peace was made, because,
when a war has once commenced, it will only be by the exhaustion of one party that a termination
wiU be arrived at. If you look back at our history, what did eloquence, in the persons of
Chatham and Burke, do to prevent a war with our first American colonies P What did eloquence,
in the persons of Fox and his friends, do to prevent the French revolution, or bring it to a close ?
And there was a man who, at the commencement of the Crimean war, spoke in terms of eloquence,
in power and pathos and argument equal — I believe fitting to compare with anything that f eU from
the Ups of Chatham or Burke — I mean your distinguished townsman, my friend Mr. Bright —
(loud cheers) — and what was his success P Why, they burnt him in effigy for his pains. ( Hear,
hear.) WeU, if we are here powrerless as politicians to check a war at home, how useless and
unavailing must it be for me to presume to affect in the slightest degree the results of the contest
in America." For some time before this date Mr. Cobden's health was in a delicate
state, and he had taken a tour in Scotland for the purpose of recruiting
himself. Finding that he was a little better he consented to address his
constituents, but it was evident that he had not thoroughly recovered.
" It is the little rift within the lute
That by-and-bye will make the music mute,
And, ever widening, slowly silence aU."

296 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Sir John Trelawny, on the 14th of November, 1862, brought under
the notice of the House the second reading of his Church-rate Abolition
Bill. Mr. Bright, in supporting the bill, commented on the speeches
delivered in favour of church-rates, asked the question if it was because
800 years ago, as one learned gentleman from Ireland said, and 500 years
ago, as another hon. gentleman said, a practice of law existed, that
therefore it must exist for ever? That was the question which was
placed before them. They had had changes in almost every department
of State Government. The facts were altogether changed. What
reason was there, therefore, that the law should not change, and the
practice change with the facts ?
" We have been twenty-eight years discussing this question,'' added Mr. Bright, " because a
great majority of the people have discovered that what you call the constitutional or legal
principles of church-rates was at variance with their true rights and interests. I recollect
an admirable work, I think a ' History of the Anglo-Saxons,' by the late Dr. Lingard, the
historian of the Roman Catholic Church, and a man of singular accuracy and impartiality,
in which occurs a passage which points to that very fact. He says, in effect, that in time past
nothing could be more equitable or just, nothing more proper in his view, than the system of the
church-rate as it then existed in the various parishes of England ; but he says that the men who
in past time, with exact justice, established the system of church-rates by local organisation and
collection, and so forth, would, had they Uved in our time, have repudiated the very thing which
they established in their time, because a man who could say it was just and wise to do that 700 or
800 years ago, in the then circumstances of the country — if he were here, he would tell you
it were not wise and just, all the circumstances having undergone a complete change. I must
call attention to some phrases used by the right hon. gentleman, which did not appear sufficiently
definite. He speaks of the ' common interest ' we all have in the church. I recollect a ' common
interest ' a clergyman asked me to share. He asked me to subscribe towards what he considered
the ornamentation of his church — for some curious and grotesque figures which were to peep out
from under the slates. I told him I did not like to subscribe to places of worship which were to
be handed over to bishops, and that I had other things to do with any surplus funds I might
have. ' Well, but,' he said, ' one thing we do you can't— we do something to keep the people
quiet.' The hon. gentleman says that in those churches every Sunday you have the Scriptures
read and morally preached. He might have gone further, and have said the principles of
Christianity— I will admit it— are, to a large extent, faithfully preached. I deny none of this ;
for there is no one more ready to admit the good in every sect than I am. It is quite time
all this is done, and we all have an interest that it should be done ; but I have no more interest in
its being done in the parish church than I have in its being done in the Wesleyan chapel.
I have the same interest in them aU. . . . What is it we want now P We want the natural
right of meu, not only to worship according to their conscience, but not to be mulcted for any
other kind of worship, which is not according to their consciences, to be made legal. What is
the good of your Toleration Act if it merely amounted to this ? ' Walk out of om- church— build
chapels— do what you like— have any kind of reUgious service you please, but still you shall
contribute to the full, as heretofore, for the permanence of services in a manner you do not

CHURCH-RATE ABOLITION BILL. 297
approve or you do not think necessary.' I say what wc ask now is merely, to a certain extent,
the completion of the Toleration Act. If it was right to legalise a natural right 170 years ago, it
is right now to legaUse the natural right which we now assert. I ask hon. gentlemen opposite if
there be any friend of the Church who will say, as I wish some one would get up aud say, that
Churchmen wiU not maintain their place of worship, will not wash a surplice, wiU not da any of
those things which the humblest congregations of Primitive Methodists constantly do. I
want some one to get up and say to the party which owns the great bulk of the land, which holds
the patronage of the Government and enjoys it, and has enjoyed it in all time past, which boasts
itself to be the richest, which has the greatest seats of learning at its disposal, which assumes in
both Houses of Parliament a pre-eminent authority — I want some one to dare to stand up in this
Parliament and say that, with aU this power, and with all this greatness, that party is not liberal
enough to support its own churches. Now, we do not want to dimmish the number of
your churches or their usefulness. To my certain knowledge it gives the greatest pleasure to the
leading men whom you blame so much as connected with this agitation, to see the voluntary
activity which has been displayed on every side in your church. All we want is, that the
voluntary action which has done so much iu every other department of your church should
be allowed fuU play with regard to this particular department to which the church-rates have
heretofore been applied. . . . Twenty-eight years have not exhausted the attacks which are
incessantly made upon this odious and unjust impost, and the assailants have not yet been
driven off. If you maintain it for twenty-eight years longer, you wfll not drive off those who
feel that it is their imperative duty to assail it. Let us, then, in a session in which nothing
has been hitherto done except- the spending of money which is hardly gathered from the people,
agree to settle this question — let us, I implore you, make this session famous for one thing —
namely, that we have allayed a source of constant irritation throughout the country, and embodied
in the English law one of the plainest precepts of Gospel morality — that we do to all our neigh
bours as we would wish them to do to us."
The majority this time against the bill had increased to 17, and it
was again thrown out.
Mr. Bright, in a speech at Birmingham on the 18th of December,
1862, again spoke on the civil war in America.
" I shaU not enter into details with regard to that calamity," said Mr. Bright, "because you
have had already, I beUeve, meetings in this town, mauy details have been published, contributions
of a generous character have been made, and you are doing — and especiaUy, if I am rightly
informed, are your artisans doing — their duty with regard to the unfortunate condition of the
population amongst which I live. But this I may state in a sentence, that the greatest, probably
the most prosperous, manufacturing industry that this country or the world has ever seen has
been suddenly and unexpectedly stricken down, although by a blow which has not been unforeseen or
unforetold. Nearly five, hundred thousand persons — men, women, and children — at this moment
are saved from the utmost extremes of famine, not a few of them from death, by the contributions
which they are receiving from aU parts of the country. I will not attempt here an elaborate
eulogy of the generosity of the givers, nor will I endeavour to paint the patience and the gratitude
of those who suffer and receive ; but I believe the conduct of the country with regard to this
great misfortune is an honour to aU classes and to every section of this people. Some have
remarked that there is perfect order where there has been so much anxiety and suffering. I
believe there is scarcely a thoughtful man in Lancashire who wiU not admit that one great cause

298 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
of the patience and good conduct of the people, besides the fact that they know so much is being
done for them, is to be found in the extensive information they possess, and which of late years,
and now more than ever, has been communicated to them through the instrumentality of an
untaxed press. Noble lords who have recently spoken, official men, and public men, have taken
upon them to tell the people of Lancashire that nobody has done wrong, and that, in point of
fact, if it had not been for a family quarrel in that dreadful Republic, everything would have gone
on smoothly, and that nobody can be blamed for our present sufferings. Now, if you will allow
me, I should like to examine for a few minutes whether this be true. If you read the papers
with regard to this question, you will find that, barring whatever chance there may be of our
again soon receiving a supply of cotton from America, the hopes of the whole country are
directed to India. Our Government of India is not one of to-day. It is a Government that has
lasted as long as the Government of the United States, and it has had far more insurrections and
secessions, not one of which, I suppose some in this meeting must regret, has been tolerated by
our Government or recognised by France. Our Government in India has existed for a hundred
years in some portion of the country where cotton is a staple produce of the land. But we have
had under the name of a Government what I have always described as a piratical joint-stock
company, beginning with Lord Clive, and ending, as I now hope it has ended, with Lord
Dalhousie. And under that Government I will undertake to say that it was not in nature that
you could have such improvement as should ever give you a fair supply of cotton. Up to the
year 1814, the whole trade of India was a monopoly of the East India Company. They took
everything there that went there ; they brought everything back that came here ; they did
whatsoever they pleased in the territories under their rule. I have here an extract from a report
of a Member of Council in India, Mr. Richards, published in the year 1812. He reports to the
Court of Directors that the whole cotton produce of the district was taken, without leaving any
portion of the avowed share of the ryots — that is, the cultivators — at their own free disposal ; and
he says that they are not suffered to know what they shaU get for it until after it has been far
removed from their reach and from the country by exportation coastwise to Bombay; and he says,
further, that the Company's servants fixed the prices from ten to thirty per cent, under the general
market rate in the districts that were not under the Company's rule. During the three years
before the Company's monopoly was aboUshed, in 1814, the whole cotton that we received from
India (I quote from the brokers' returns from Liverpool) was only 17,000 bales ; in the three
years afterwards, owing, no doubt, partly to the great increase in j;>rice, we received 551,000 bales,
during which same three years the United States sent us only 611,000. Thus you see that in
1817, 1818, and 1819, more than forty years ago, the quantity we received from India was close upon,
and in the year 1818 it actually exceeded, that which we received from the United States. WeU,
now I come down to the year 1832, and I have then the report of another Member of Council,
and beg every working man here, every man who is told there is nobody to blame, to listen to one
or two extracts from the report. Mr. Warden, Member of the Council, gave evidence in 1832
that the money -tax levied on Surat cotton was 56 rupees per candy, leaving the grower only 24
rupees, or rather less than |d. per pound. In 1846 there was so great a decay of the cotton trade
of Western India that a committee was appointed in Bombay, partly of members of the
Chamber of Commerce and partly of servants of the Government, and they made a report in
which they stated that from every candy of cotton— a candy is 7 cwt. or 784 lbs. — costing 80
rupees, which is 160 shillings in Bombay, the Government had taken 48 rupees as land-tax and
sea-duty, leaving only 32 rupees, or less than Jd. per pound, to be divided among all parties,
from the Bombay seller to the Surat grower. In 1847 I was in the House of Commons, and I
brought forward a proposition for a select committee to inquire into this whole question; for in
that year Lancashire was on the verge of the calamity that has now overtaken it ; cotton was very
scarce, hundreds of the miUs were working short time, and many were closed altogether.

THE AMERICAN SECESSION. 299
That committee reported that, in aU the districts of Bombay and Madras where cotton was
cultivated, and generally over those agricultural regions, the people were in a. condition of the
most abject aud degraded pauperism ; and I wiU ask you whether it is possible for a people in
that condition to produce anything great, or anything good, or anything constant, which the
world requires ? It is not to be wondered at that the quality of the cotton should be bad — so
bad that it is iUustrated by an anecdote which a very excellent man of the Methodist body told
me the other day. He said that at a prayer-meeting, not more than a dozen miles from where I
Uve, one of the ministers was earnest in supplication to the Supreme ; he detailed, no doubt, a
great many things which he thought they were in want of, and, amongst the rest, a supply of
cotton for the famishing people in that district. When he prayed for cotton, some man with a
keen sense of what he had suffered, in response exclaimed, ' O Lord ! but not Surat.' Now, my
argument is this, and my assertion is this : that the growth of cotton in India — the growth of an
article which was native and common in India before America was discovered by Europeans —
that the growth of that article has been systematically injured, strangled, and destroyed by
the stupid and wicked poUcy of the Indian Government. ... I said — and my hon.
friend has admitted this — that when the revolt or secession was first announced, people here
were generally against the South. Nobody thought then that the South had any cause
for breaking up the integrity of that good nation. Their opinion was, and what people
said, according to their different pontics in this country was : ' They have a Government
which is mild, and not in any degree oppressive ; they have not what some people love very
much and what some people dislike — they have not a costly monarchy, and an aristocracy,
creating and living on patronage. They have not an expensive foreign policy ; a great
army; a great navy; and they have no suffering millions discontented and endeavouring to
overthrow their Government— aU which things have been said agamst Governments in this
country and in Europe a hundred times within our own hearing — and therefore they said, 'Why
should these men revolt ? ' But for a moment the Washington Government appeared paralysed.
It had no army and no navy ; everybody was traitor to it. It was paralysed and apparently
helpless ; and in the hour when the Government was transferred from President Buchanan to
President Lincoln, many people — such was the unprepared state of the North, such was the
apparent paralysis of everything there — thought there would be no war ; and men shook hands
with each other pleasantly, and congratulated themselves that the disaster of a great strife, and
the mischief to our own trade, might be avoided. That was the opinion at that moment, so far
as I can recollect and could gather at the time, with my opportunities of gathering such opinion.
They thought the North would acquiesce in the rending of the Republic, and that there
would be no war. Well, but there was another reason. They were told by certain public
writers in this country that the contest was entirely hopeless, as they have been told lately by
the ChanceUor of the Exchequer. I am very happy that, though the ChanceUor of the Exchequer
is able to decide to a penny what shall be the amount of taxes to meet public expenditure in Eng
land, he cannot decide what shall be the fate of a whole continent. It was said that the
contest was hopeless, and why should the North continue a" contest at so much loss of blood and
treasure, and at so great a loss to the commerce of the whole world P If a man thought — if a
man believed in his heart that the contest was absolutely hopeless — no man in this country had
probably any right to form a positive opinion one way or the other — but if he had formed that
opinion, he might think, ' WeU, the North can never be successful ; it would be much better that
they should not carry on the war at all ; and therefore I am rather glad that the South should
have success, for by that the war will be the sooner put an end to.' I think this was the feeling
that was abroad. Now, I am of opinion that, if we judge a foreign nation in the circumstances
in which we find America, we ought to apply to it our own principles. My hon. friend has
referred to the question of the Trent. I was not here last year, but I heard of a meeting — I read

300 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
in the papers of a meeting held in reference to that affair in this very hall, and that there was a
great diversity of opinion. But the majority were supposed to endorse the policy of the Govern
ment in making a great demonstration of force. And I think I read that at least one minister of
religion took that view from this platform. I am not complaining of it. But I say that if you
thought when the American captain, even if he had acted under the commands of his Govern
ment, which he had not, had taken two men most injurious and hostile to his country from the
deck of an English ship— if you thought that on that ground you were justified in going to war
with the Republic of North America, then I say you ought not to be very nice in judging what
America should do in circumstances much more onerous than those in which you were placed.
Now, take as an illustration the Rock of Gibraltar. Many of you have been there, I dare say.
I have ; and among the things that interested me were the monkeys on the top of it, and a good
many people at the bottom, who were living on English taxes. Well, the Rock of Gibraltar was
taken and retained by this country when we were not at war with Spain, and it was retained con
trary to every law of morality and honour. (A voice : ' No, no ! ') No doubt the gentleman
below is much better acquainted with the history of it than I am, but I may suggest to hiin that
very Ukely we have read two different histories. But I will let this pass, and I will assume that
it came into the possession of England in the most honourable way, which is, I suppose, by
regular and acknowledged national warfare. Suppose, at this moment, you heard, or the Eng
lish Government heard, that Spain was equipping expeditions, by land and sea, for the purpose
of retaking that fortress and rock. Now, although it is not of the slightest advantage to any
Englishman living, excepting to those who have pensions and occupations upon it, although
every Government knows it, and although more than one Government has been anxious to give
it up, and I hope this Government will send my friend, Mr. Cobden, to Madrid, with an offer
that Gibraltar shall be ceded to Spain, as being of no use to this country, and only embittering,
as statesmen have admitted, the relations between Spain and England — and if he were to go to
Madrid with an offer of the Rock of Gibraltar, I believe he might obtain a commercial treaty
with Spain that would admit every English manufacture and every article of English produce
into that country at a duty of not more than ten per cent. — I say, do you not think that, if you
heard that Spain was about to retake that useless rock, mustering her legions and her fleets, the
English Government would combine all the power of this country to resist it? If that be so,
then I think, seeing that there was a fair election two years ago, and that President Lincoln was
fairly and honestly elected — that when the Southern leaders met at Montgomery in Alabama, on
the 6th of March, and authorised the raising of a hundred thousand men, and when, on the 15th
of April, they attacked Fort Sumter — not a fort of South Carolina, but a fort of the Union —
then, upon all the principles that Englishmen and English Governments have ever acted upou,
President Lincoln was justified in calling out seventy-five thousand men — which was his first
call — for the purpose of maintaining the integrity of that nation, which was the main purpose of
the oath which he had taken at his election. Now, I shall not go into a long argument upon this
question, for the reason that a year ago I said what I thought necessary to say upon it, and
because I believe the question is in the hand, not of my hon. friend, nor in that of Lord
Palmerston, nor in that even of President Lincoln, but it is in the hand of the Supreme Ruler,
who is bringing about one of those great transactions in history whieh men often will not regard
when they are passing- before them, but which they look back upon with awe and astonishment
some years after they are past. So I shall content myself with asking one or two questions. I
shall not discuss the question whether the North is making war for the Constitution, or making
war for the abolition of slavery. If you come to a matter of sympathy with the South, or recog
nition of the South, or mediation or intervention for the benefit of the South, you should con
sider what are the ends of the South. Surely the United States' Government is a Government at
amity with this country. Its Minister is in London — a man honourable by family, as you know,

THE OBJECT OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 301
in America, his father and his grandfather having held the office of President of the Republic.
Tou have your own Minister just returned to Washington. Is this hypocrisy ? Are you,
because you can cavil at certain things which the North, the United States' Government, has done
or has not done, are you eagerly to throw the influence of your opinion into a movement which is
to dismember the great Republic ? Is there a man here that doubts for a moment that the
object of the war on the part of the South — they began the war — that the object of the war on
the part of the South is to maintain in bondage four millions of human beings ? That is only a
smaU part of it. The further object is to perpetuate for ever the bondage of all the posterity
of those four millions of slaves. (A few cries of ' No, no ! ') Tou wiU hear that I am not in a
condition to contest vigorously anything that may be opposed, for I am suffering, as nearly
everybody is, from the state of the weather, and a hoarseness that almost hinders me from speak
ing. I could quote their own documents till midnight in proof of what I say ; and if I found a
man who denied it, upon the evidence that had beeu offered, I would not offend him, or trouble
myself by trying further to convince him. The object is, that a handful of white men on that
continent shaU lord it over many miUions of blacks, made black by the very Hand that made us
white. The object is, that they should havo the power to breed negroes, to work negroes, to lash
negroes, to chain negroes, to buy and sell negroes, to deny them the commonest ties of family,
or to break their hearts by rending them at their pleasure, to close their mental eye to but a
gUmpse even of that knowledge which separates us from the brute — for in their laws it is crimi
nal and penal to teach the negro to read — to seal from their hearts the Book of our religion, and
to make chattels and things of men and women and children. Now, I want to ask whether this
is to be the foundation, as it is proposed, of a new slave empire, and whether it is intended that
on this audacious and infernal basis England's new aUy is to be built up. It has been said that
Greece was recognised, and that otlier countries had been recognised. But Greece was not recog
nised tUl after she had fought Turkey for six years, and the Republics of South America, some of
them, not tUl they had fought the mother country for a score of years. France did not recognise
the United States of America till some, I think, six years, five certainly, after the beginning of
the War of Independence, and even then it was received as a declaration of war by the English
Government. I want to know who they are who speak eagerly in favour of England becoming
the aUy and friend of this great conspiracy against human nature. Now I should have no kind
of objection to recognise a country because it was a country that held slaves— to reognise the
United States, or to be in amity with it. The question of slavery there, and in Cuba and in
BrazU, is, as far as respects the present generation, an accident, and it would be unreasonable
that we should object to trade with and have political relations with a country, merely because it
happened to have within its borders the institution of slavery, hateful as that institution is. But
in this case it is a new State intending to set itself up on the sole basis of slavery. Slavery is
blasphemously declared to be its chief corner-stone. I have heard that there are, in this country,
ministers of state who are in favour of the South ; that there are members of the aristocracy who
are terrified at the shadow of the Great Republic ; that there are rich men on our commercial
exchanges, depraved, it may be, by their riches, and thriving unwholesomely within the atmos
phere of a privileged class ; that there are conductors of the public press who would barter the rights
of miUious of their fellow-creatures that they might bask in the smUes of the great. But I know
that there are ministers of state who do not wish that this insurrection should break up the
American nation ; that there are members of our aristocracy who are not afraid of the shadow of
the Republic ; that there are rich men, many, who are not depraved by their riches ; and that
there are pubUc writers of eminence and honour who will not barter human rights for the patron
age of the great. But most of all, and before aU, 1 believe — I am sure it is true in Lancashire,
where the working men have seen themselves coming down from prosperity to ruin, from
independence to a subsistence on charity — I say that I believe that the unenfranchised but not

302 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
hopeless mUUons of this country will never sympathise with a revolt which is intended to destroy
the liberty of a continent, and to build on its ruins a mighty fabric of human bondage. When I
speak to gentlemen in private upon this matter, and hear their own candid opinion — I mean
those who differ from me on this question — they generally end by saying that the Republic
is too great and too powerful, and that it is better for us — not by 'us' meaning you, but
the governing classes and the governing policy of England — that it should be broken up. But
we will snppose that we are in New Tork or in Boston, discussing the policy and power of
England. If any one there were to point to England — not to the thirty-one millions of popula
tion in these islands, but to her one hundred and fifty millions in India, and nobody knows how
many millions more in every other part of the globe — might he not, whilst boasting that America
has not covered the ocean with fleets of force, or left the bones of her citizens to blanch on
a hundred European battle-fields — might he not fairly say that England is great and powerful,
and that it is perilous for the world that she is so great ? But bear in mind that every
declaration of this kind, whether from an EngUshman who professes to be strictly English, or
from an American strictly American, or from a Frenchman strictly French — whether it asserts
in arrogant strains that ' Britannia rules the waves,' or speaks of ' manifest destiny ' and the
supremacy of the ' Stars and Stripes,' or boasts that the Eagles of one nation, having once
overrun Europe, may possibly repeat the experiment — I say, all this is to be condemned. It is
not truly patriotic ; it is not rational ; it is not moral. Then, I say, if any man wishes the
Great Republic to be severed on that ground, in my opinion he is doing that which tends
to keep alive jealousies which, as far as he can prevent it, will never die ; though if they do not
die, wars must be eternal. But then I shall be told that the people of the North do not like us
at all. In fact, we have heard it to-night. It is not reasonable that they should like us. If an
American be in this room to-night, wiU he feel that he likes my honourable friend P But if the
North does not like England, does anybody believe the South does ? It does not appear to me
to be a question of liking or disliking. Everybody knows that when the South was in power —
and it has been in power for the last fifty years — everybody knows that hostility to this country,
wherever it existed in America, was cherished and stimulated to the utmost degree by some of
those very men who are now leaders of this very insurrection. My hon. friend read a passage
about the Alabama. I undertake to say that he is not acquainted with the facts about the
Alabama. That he will acknowledge, I think. The Government of this country have admitted
that the building of the Alabama, and her sailing from the Mersey, was a violation of
international law. In America they say, and they say here, that the Alabama is a ship of war ;
that she was buUt in the Mersey ; that she was built, and I have reason to believe it, by a
member of the British Parliament; that' she is furnished with guns of English manufacture;
that she is manned almost entirely by EngUshmen ; and that these facts were represented, as I
know they were represented, to the collector of customs in Liverpool, who pooh-poohed them,
and said there was nothing in them. He was requested to send the facts up to London to the
Customs' authorities, and their solicitor, not a very wise man, but probably in favour of breaking
up the Republic, did not think them of much consequence ; but afterwards the opiuion of an
eminent counsel, Mr. Collier, the member for Plymouth, was taken, and he stated distinctly that
what was being done in Liverpool was a direct infringement of the Foreign Enlistment Act, and
that the Customs' authorities of Liverpool would be responsible for anything that happened in
consequence. When this opinion was taken to the Foreign Office, the Foreign Office was a little
astonished and a little troubled ; and after they had consulted their own law officers, whose
opinions agreed with that of Mr. CoUier, they did what Government officers generally do, and as
promptly— a telegraphic message went down to Liverpool to order that this vessel should
be seized, and she happened to sail an hour or two before the message arrived. She has never
been into a Confederate port— they have not got any ports ; she hoists the English flag when

THE ALABAMA. 303
she wants to come alongside a ship; she sets a ship on fire in the night, and when, seeing fire,
another ship bears down to lend help, she seizes it, aud pillages and burns it. I think that if we
were citizens of New Tork, it would require a Uttle more calmness than is shown in this country
to look at all this as if it was a matter with which we had no concern. And therefore I do not
so much blame the language that has beeu used in America in reference to the question of
the Alabama. But they do not know in America so much as wc know — the whole truth
about public opinion here. There are Ministers in our Cabinet as resolved to be no traitors to
freedom on this question as I am ; and there are members of the English aristocracy, and in the
very highest rank, as I know for a certainty, who hold the same opinion. They do not know in
America — at least, there has been no indication of it until the advices that have come to hand
within the last two days — what is the opinion of the great body of the working classes in
England. There has been every effort that money and malice could make to stimulate in
Lancashire, amongst the suffering population, an expression of opinion in favour of the Slave
States. They have not been able to get it. And I honour that population for their fidelity
to principles and to freedom, and I say that the course they have taken ought to atone in
the minds of the people of the United States for miles of leading articles, 'written by the London
press — by men who would barter every human right — that they might serve the party with
which they are associated. But now I shall ask yon one other question before I sit down. How
comes it that on the continent there is not a Liberal newspaper, nor a Liberal poUtician, that has
said, or has thought of saying, a word in favour of this portentous and monstrous shape which
now asks to be received into the famUy of nations ? Take the great ItaUan minister, Count
Cavour. Tou read some time ago in the papers part of a despatch which he wrote on the
question of America — he had no difficulty in deciding. Ask Garibaldi. Is there in Europe
a more disinterested and generous friend of freedom than Garibaldi ? Ask that illustrious
Hungarian, to whose marveUous eloquence you once listened in this hall. WiU he tell you that
slavery has nothing to do with it, and that the slaveholders of the South wUl liberate the
negroes sooner than the North through the instrumentality of the war ? Ask Victor Hugo, the
poet of freedom — the exponent, may I not call him, of the yearnings of all mankind for a better
time ? Ask any man in Europe who opens his lips for freedom — who dips his pen in ink that he
may indite a sentence for freedom — whoever has a sympathy for freedom warm in his own heart
— ask such an one, he will have no difficulty in teUing you on which side your sympathies should
lie. Only a few days ago a German merchant in Manchester was speaking to a friend of mine,
and said he had recently travelled aU through Germany. He said, ' I am so surprised — I don't
find one man in favour of the South.' That is not true of Germany only, it is true of all
the world, except this island, famed for freedom, in which we dwell. I will tell you what is
the reason. Our London press is mainly in the hands of certain ruling West End classes ;
it acts and writes in favour of those classes. I will tell you what they mean. One of the most
eminent statesmen in this country — one who has rendered the greatest services to the country,
though, I must say, not in an official capacity, in which men very seldom confer such great
advantages upon the country — he told me twice, at an interval of several months, ' I had no idea
how much influence the example of that Republic was having upon opinion here, until 1
discovered the universal congratulation that the Republic was Ukely to be broken up.' But, sir,
the Free States are the home of the working man. Now, I speak to working men particularly at
this moment. Do you know that in fifteen years two million five hundred thousand persons,
men, women, and chUdren, have left the United Kingdom to find a home in the Free States of
America? That is a population equal to eight great cities of the size of Birmingham.
What would you think of eight Birminghams being transplanted from this country and
set down in the United States ? Speaking generally, every man of these two and a-half
milUons is in a position of much higher comfort and prosperity than he would have

304 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
been if ho had remained in this country. I say, it is the home of the working man ; as one
of her poets has recently said —
' For her free latch-string never was drawn in
Against the poorest child of Adam's kin.'
And in that land there are no six millions of grown men —I speak of the Free States — excluded
from the constitution of their country and its electoral franchise ; there you wiU find a free
Church, a free school, free land, a free vote, aud a free career for the child of the humblest born
in the land. My countrymen, who work for your living, remember this : there wiU be one wUd
shriek of freedom to startle all mankind if that American Republic should be overthrown. Now
for one moment let us lift ourselves, if we can, above the narrow circle in which we are aU too
apt to live and think ; let us put ourselves on an historical eminence and judge this matter fairly.
Slavery has been, as we all know, the huge foul blot upon the fame of the American RepubUc ; it
is a hideous outrage agamst human right and against Divine law ; but the pride, the passion of
man, wiUnot permit its peaceable extinction. The slave-owners of our colonies, if they had been
strong enough, would have revolted too. I believe there was no mode short of a miracle, more
stupendous than any recorded in Holy Writ, that could in our time, or in a century, or in any
time, have brought about the aboUtion of slavery in America, but the suicide which the South has
committed, and the war which it has begun. . . I blame men who are eager to admit into
the family of nations a State which offers itself to us based upon a principle, I wiU undertake to
say, more odious and more blasphemous than was ever heretofore dreamed of in Christian or
Pagan, in civilised or in savage, times. The leader of this revolt proposes this monstrous thing
— that over a territory forty times as large as England the blight and curse of slavery shaU be
for ever perpetuated. I canuot believe, for my part, that such a fate wiU befall that fair land,
stricken though it now is with the ravages of war. I cannot beUeve that civilisation, in its
journey with the sun, will sink into endless night, in order to gratify the ambition of the leaders
of this revolt, who seek to ' Wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind.'
I have another and a far brighter vision before my gaze. It may be but a vision, but I wUl
cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching from the frozen North in unbroken Une to
the glowing South, and from the wUd biUows of the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters 'of
the Pacific main — and I see one people, and one language, and one law, and one faith, and, over
aU, that wide continent, the home of freedom, and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and
of every clime."
Mr. Bright was present at the second anniversary dinner of the Birm
ingham Chamber of Commerce, which was held on the 15th of January,
1863. " I have heard that the working men of Birmingham have subscribed about £3,000 towards
the relief of their suffering countrymen in Lancashire," said Mr. Bright. " WeU, that is a very
honourable thing for Birmingham ; and I am only sorry that every one of the men who thus
nobly subscribed has not his name on your register of electors, and is not able to give his free
vote at the poll for my hon. coUeague and myself. In Lancashire there is now the strongest
paralysis probably ever seen in any seat of industry. The American war was commenced— the
one contending party refused to export cotton, and burnt not a little of it. The other blockaded
the ports, so that cotton should not escape. The result is, that the stocks of cotton have been

SYMPATHY FROM NEW YORK. 305
consumed in this country and throughout the world except that which remains in the United
States ; and what that quantity is nobody with any pretence to accuracy knows. At the same time
everybody beUeves that there is a large stock in the South. It is estimated variously at from
2,000,000 to 4,000,000 bales. I believe that whenever it comes it wiU turn out very much less
than the higher estimate; but that stock being locked up in America, with prices at four times
their ordinary rate, you can conceive how much the interests of all engaged in the cotton trade
are concerned in the time when that stock shaU be Uberated. East India cotton, commonly called
Surat, which seUs ordinarily at from 3d. to 4d. per pound, now seUs at or about Is. 3d., and
American, whieh is ordinarily 6d. per pound, is now at more than 2s. A bale of cotton which
used to cost £10 or £12 now costs £50. The advice of an armistice in America, and the cessa
tion of the war with a view to negotiation, would produce a great faU and a great ruin ; and
the apprehension of this necessarily interferes very much with the course of business . . .
Notwithstanding my complaint on this score, I am wUling to admit that the world, even in our
time, is moving on. Within the last two years we have seen two events which posterity wiU
regard as very important. In Russia serfdom has been put in the way of extinction by the act of
the Emperor and his Government ; in the United States, by the most wonderful series of events,
there is evidently coming to pass that which no man dared hope for three years ago as likely to
be approached during the lifetime of any one of us. I see from the east unto the west, from the
rising of the sun to the going down thereof, in spite of what misled, prejudiced, unjust, and
wicked men may do, the cause of freedom still moving onward ; and it is not in human power to
arrest its progress. ' For God from evil still educes good,
And Freedom's seed still grows, though steeped in blood.'
And coming back to our own country, from this review I should say there is much to be done
here ; and in this observation — I speak to members of your chamber who are not of any one poli
tical party — there are gentlemen here who, even if they give me credit for honesty and con
scientiousness in my course, yet think me mistaken and dangerous in the proposition which I make
to my feUow-countrymen; but being here, as we are of various political parties, may I not say
this much : that if we were to shun party spirit, if we were to examine questions fairly and carefully,
if we were to endeavour to decide them truthfully, we might have hope that we should do much
to elevate our people, to improve our institutions, to make broader and safer the foundations of
our freedom, and to buUd up a commonwealth which should do much to forward the advancement
of the world?"
A town's meeting was held in Eochdale on the 3rd of February,
which had been called by the Mayor, Mr. G. L. Ashworth, in compli
ance with a numerously-signed requisition, for the purpose of passing
resolutions of thanks to the merchants and citizens of ISTew York for
their sympathy with the sufferings of the unemployed workpeople of
Lancashire, and for their munificent contribution to the funds for its
relief. The Public Hall, in which the meeting was held, was crowded.
Mr. Bright, in the course of his speech, remarked :—
" I regard this transmission of assistance from the United States as a proof that the world
moves onward in the direction of a better time. (Hear, hear.) It is an evidence that, whatever
45

306 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
may be the faults of ambitious men, and sometimes— may I not say ? — the crimes of Government,
the peoples are drawing together, and beginning to learn that it never was intended that they
should be hostile to each other, but that every nation should take a brotherly interest in every
other nation in the world. (Cheers.) There has been, as we aU know, not a little jealousy
between some portions of the people in this country and some portions of the people of the
United States. Perhaps the jealousy has existed more on this side. I think it has found more
expression here, probably through the means of the public press, than has been the case with them.
I am not aUuding now to the last two years, but to the period during which most of us have been
readers of newspapers and observers of what has passed aroimd us. The estabUshmeut of indepen
dence, eighty years ago ; the war of 1812 ; it may be, occasionally, the presumptuousness and the
arrogance of a growing and prosperous nation on the other side of the Atlantic — these things
have stimulated ill-feeling and jealousy here, which have often found expression in language
which has not been of the very kindest character. But why should there be this jealousy
between these two nations p Mr. Ashworth has said, and said very truly, ' Are they not our own
people P ' I should think, as an Englishman, that to see that people so numerous, so powerful,
so great in so many ways, should be to us a cause, not of envy or of fear, but rather of glory and
rejoicing. I have never visited the United States, but I can understand the pleasure with which
an Englishman lands in a country three thousand miles off, and finds that every man he meets
speaks his own language. I recoUect some years ago reading a most amusing speech delivered
by a Suffolk country gentleman, at a Suffolk agricultural dinner, I think it was — though
I do not believe the speeches of Suffolk country gentlemen at Suffolk agricultural meetings
are generaUy very amusing — a very amusing speech. This gentleman had traveUed; he had
been in the United States, and being intelUgent enough to admire much that he saw there, he
gave to his audience a description of some things that he had seen ; but that which seemed to
delight him most was this, that when he stepped from the steamer on to the quay at New Tork,
he found that ' everybody spoke Suffolk.' Now, if anybody from this neighbourhood should visit
New Tork, I am afraid that he wiU not find everybody speaking Lancashire. Our dialect, as
you know, is vanishing into the past. It wiU be preserved to future times, partly in the works
of Tim Bobbin, but in a very much better and more instructive form in the admirable writings
of one of my oldest and most valued friends, who is now upon this platform. But if we should
not find the people of New Tork speaking Lancashire, we should find them speaking English.
And if we foUowed a little further, and asked them what they read, we should find that they
read all the books that we read that are worth reading, and a good many of their own, some of
which have not yet reached us ; that there are probably more readers in the United States of
Milton, and Shakespeare, and Dryden, and Pope, and Byron, and Wordsworth, and Tennyson,
than are to be found in this country ; because, I think, it will probably be admitted by everybody
who understands the facts of both countries, that out of the twenty millions of population in the
Free States of America, there are more persons who can read weU than there are in the thirty
millions of population of Great Britain and Ireland. And if we leave their Uterature and turn
to their laws, we shaU find, that their laws have the same basis as ours, and that many of the
great and memorable judgments of our greatest judges and lawyers are of high authority with
them. If we come to that priceless possession which we have perhaps more clearly established
than any other people in Europe, that of personal freedom, we shall find that in the Free States
of America personal freedom is as much known, as well established, as fully appreciated, and as
completely enjoyed as it is now in this country. And if we come to the form of their govern
ment, we shall find that it is in its principle, in its essence, not very different from that which
our Constitution professes in this kingdom. The difference is this, that our Constitution 'has
never yet been fully enjoyed by the people. The House in which forty-eight hours hence I may
be sitting is not as full and fair and free a representation of the people as is the House of

AMERICAN FREEDOM. 307
Representatives that assembles at Washington. But, if there be differences, are there not great
points of agreement, and are there any of these differences that justify us or them in regarding
either nation as foreign or hostile P Now, the people of Europe owe much more than they are
often aware of to the Constitution of the United States of America, and to the existence of that
great Republic. The United States have been in point of fact an ark of refuge to the people
of Europe, when fleeing from the storms and the revolutions of the old continent. They have
been, as far as the artisans and labouring population of this country are concerned, a Ufe-boat
to them ; and they have saved hundreds of thousands of men and of families from disastrous
shipwreck. The existence of that free country and that free Government has had a prodigious
influence upon freedom in Europe and in England. If you could have before you a chart of the
condition of Europe when the United States became a nation, and another chart of the condition
of Europe now, you would see the difference, the enormous stride which has been made in
Europe ; and you may rely upon it that not a little of it has been occasioned by the influence of
the great example of that country, free in its political institutions beyond all other countries,
and yet maintaining its course in peace, preserving order, and conferring upon aU its people a
degree of prosperity which in these old countries is as yet unknown. I should like now to speak
speciaUy to the working men who are here, who have no capital but their skiU and their industry
and their bodily strength. In fifteen years, from 1845 to 1860 — and this is a fact which I stated
in this room more than a year ago, when speaking on the question of America, but it is a fact
which every working man ought to have in his mind always when he is considering what America
is — in fifteen years there have emigrated to the United States from Great Britain and Ireland
not less than two mUUon four hundred thousand persons. MilUons are easily spoken, not easily
counted, with great difficulty comprehended ; but the twenty-four hundred thousand persons that
I have described means a population equal to not less than sixty towns, every one of them of the
size and population of Rochdale. And every one of these men who have emigrated, as he
crossed the Atlantic — if he went by steam, in a fortnight, and if he went by sails in a month or
five weeks — found himself in a country where to his senses a vast revolution had taken place,
comprehending all that men anticipate from any kind of revolution that shall advance poUtical
and social equality in their own land — a revolution which commenced in the War of Indepen
dence, which has been going on, aDd which has been confirmed by all that has transpired in
subsequent years. He does not find that he belongs to what are called the ' lower classes ; ' he
is not shut out from any of the rights of citizenship ; he is admitted to the fuU enjoyment of aU
political privileges, as far as they are extended to any portion of the population ; and he has
there advantages which the people of this country have not yet gained, because we are but
gradually making our way out of the darkness and the errors and the tyrannies of past ages.
But in America he finds the land not cursed with feudalism ; it is free to every man to buy and
sell, and possess and transmit. He finds in the town in which he Uves that the noblest buUdings
are the school-houses, to which his children are freely admitted. And among those twenty
mUUons — for I am now confining my observations to the Free States — the son of every man has
easy admission to school, has fair opportunity for improvement ; and, if God has gifted him with
power of head and of heart, there is nothing of usefulness, nothing of greatness, nothing of
success in that country to which he may not fairly aspire. Am , sir, this makes a difference
between that country and this; on which I must say another word. One of the most painful
things to my mind to be seen in England is this : that amongst the great body of those classes
which earn their living by their daily labour — it is particularly observable in the agricultural
districts, and it is too much to be observed even in our own districts— there is an absence of that
hope which every man ought to have in his soul, that there is for him, if he be industrious and
frugal, a comfortable independence as he advances in Ufe. In the United States that hope
prevails everywhere, because everywhere there is an open career ; there is no privUeged class

308 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
there is complete education extended to aU ; and every man feels that he was not born to be in
penury and in suffering, but that there is no point in the social ladder to which he may not
fairly hope to raise himself by his honest efforts. Well, looking at all this— and I have but
touched on some very prominent facts — I should say that it offers to us every motive, not for
fear, not for jealousy, not for hatred, but rather for admiration, gratitude, and friendship. I am
persuaded of this as much as I am of anything that I know or believe, that the more perfect the
friendship that is established between the people of England and the free people of America, the
more you will find your path of progress here made easy for you, and the more wiU social and
political liberty advance amongst us. But this country which I have been in part describing is
now the scene of one of the greatest calamities that can afflict mankind. After seventy years of
almost uninterrupted peace, it has become the scene of a civil war, more gigantic, perhaps, than
any that we have any record of with regard to any other nation or any other people ; for the
scene of this warfare is so extended as to embrace a region almost equal in size to the whole of
Europe. At this very moment miUtary operations are being undertaken at points as distant
from each other as Madrid is distant from Moscow. But this great strife cannot have arisen
amongst an educated and intelligent people without some great and overruling cause. Let us
for a moment examine that cause, and let us ask ourselves whether it is possible at such a time
to stand neutral in regard to the contending parties, and to refuse our sympathy to one or the
other of them. I find men sometimes who profess a strict neutrality ; they wish neither the one
thing nor the other. This arises either from the fact that they are profoundly ignorant with
regard to this matter, or else that they sympathise with the South, but are rather ashamed to
admit it. There are two questions concerned in this struggle. Hitherto, generaUy, one only
has been discussed. There is the question whether negro slavery shall continue te be upheld
amongst Christian nations, or whether it shall be entirely abolished. Because, bear in mind,
if the result of the struggle that is now proceeding in America should abolish slavery
within the territories of the United States, then soon after slavery in Brazil, and slavery in
Cuba will also fall. I was speaking the other day to a gentleman weU acquainted with Cuban
affairs; he is often in the habit of seeing persons who come from Cuba to this country on
business ; and I asked him what his Cuban friends said of what was going on in America. He
said, ' They speak of it with the greatest apprehension ; aU the property of Cuba,' he said, ' is
based on slavery ; and they say that if slavery comes to an end in America, as they believe it
wUl, through this war, slavery will have a very short life in Cuba.' Therefore, the question
which is being now tried is, not merely whether four miUions of slaves in America shaU be free,
but whether the vast number of slaves (I know not the number) in Cuba and Brazil shall
also be Uberated. But there is another question besides that of the negro, and which to
you whom I am now addressing is scarcely less important. I say that the question of freedom
to men of all races is deeply involved in this great strife in the United States. I said I
wanted the working men of this audience to listen to my statement, because it is to
them that I particularly wish to address myself. I say that not only is the question of
negro slavery concerned in this struggle, but, if we are to take the opinion of leading writers
and men in the Southern States of America, the freedom of white men is not safe in their hands.
And these very men who have been wishing to drag us into a war that would have covered us with
everlasting infamy have sent their envoys to this country : Mr. Tancey, Mr. Mann (I do not know
whether or not the same Mr. Mann to whom I have been referring), and Mr. Mason, the author of
the Fugitive Slave Law. These men have been in this country— one of them, I believe, is here
now-envoys sent to offer friendship to the Queen of England, to be received at her Court,
and to make friends with the great men in London. I have seen them under the gaUery
of the House of Commons ; I have seen members of the House shaking hands with them and
congratulating them if there has been some military, success on their side, and receiving them as

THE STRUGGLE IN AMERICA. 309
if they were here from the most honourable Government, and with the most honourable mission.
Why, the thing which they have broken off from the United States to maintain is felony by your
law. They are not only slave owners, slave buyers, and seUers, but that which out of Pandemo
nium itself was never before conceived — they are slave breeders for the slave market ; and these
men have come to your country, and are to be met with at elegant tables in London, and are in
fast friendship with some of your public men, and are constantly found in some of your newspaper
offices ; and they are here to ask Englishmen — Englishmen with a history of freedom — to join
hands with their atrocious conspiracy. I regret, more than I have words to express, this painful
fact, that of aU the countries in Europe this country is the only one which has men in it who are
wUling to take active steps in favour of this intended slave government. We supply the ships ;
we supply the arms, the munitions of war ; we give aid and comfort to the foulest of all crimes.
Englishmen only do it. I believe you have not seen a single statement in the newspapers that
any French, or Belgian, or Dutch, or Russian ship has been engaged in or seized whilst attempting
to violate the blockade and to carry arms to the South. They are EngUsh Liberal newspapers
only which support this stupendous iniquity. They are EngUsh statesmen only, who profess to
be Liberal, who have said a word to favour the authors of this now enacting revolution in America.
. . . But the working men of England, and I will say it too for the great body of the middle
classes of England, have not been wrong upon this great question. As for you — men labouring
from morn tiU night that you may honourably and honestly maintain your families and the inde
pendence of your households — you are too slowly emerging from a condition of things far from
independent — far from free — for you to have sympathy with this fearful crime which I have been
describing. Tou come, as it were, from bonds yourselves, and you can sympathise with them
who are stUl in bondage. . . . Coming back to the question of this war : I admit, of course —
everybody must admit — that we are not responsible for it, for its commencement, or for the
manner in which it was conducted ; nor can we be responsible for its result. But there is one
thing which we are responsible for, and that is for our sympathies, for the manner in which we
regard it, and for the tone in which we discuss it. What shall we say, then, with regard to it P
On which side shall we stand P I do not believe it is possible to be strictly, coldly neutral. The
question at issue is too great, the contest is too grand in the eye of the world. It is impossible
for any man, who can have an opinion worth anything on any question, not to have some kind of
an opinion on the question of this war. I am not ashamed of my opinion, or of the sympathy
which I feel, and have over and over again expressed, on the side of the free North.
I cannot understand how any man witnessing what is enacting on the American continent can
indulge in smaU cavils against the free people of the North, and close his eye entirely to the
enormity of the purposes of the South. I cannot understand how any EngUshman who in past years
has been accustomed to say that ' there was one foul blot upon the fair fame of the American
Republic,' can now express any sympathy for those who would perpetuate and extend that blot.
And, more, if we profess to be, though it be with imperfect and faltering steps, the followers of
Him who declared it to be His Divine mission ' to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deUverance
to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,' must
we not reject with indignation and scorn the proffered aUiance and friendship with a power based
on human bondage, and which contemplates the overthrow and the extinction of the dearest rights
of the most helpless of mankind ? If we are the friends of freedom, personal and political — and
we aU profess to be so, and most of us, more or less, are striving after it more completely for
our country — how can we withhold our sympathy from a Government and a people amongst
whom white men have always been free, and who are now offering an equal freedom to the black ?
I advise you not to beUeve in the ' destruction ' of the American nation. If facts should happen
by any chance to force you to beUeve it, do not commit the crime of wishing it. I do not blame
men who draw different conclusions from mine from the facts, and who believe that the restora-

310 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
tion of the Union is impossible. As the facts lie before our senses, so must we form a judg
ment on them. But I blame those men that wish for such a catastrophe. For myself, I have never
despaired, and I wiU not despair. In the language of one of our old poets, who wrote, I think,
more than three hundred years ago, I will not despair —
' For I have seen a ship in haven fall,
After the storm had broke both mast and shroud.'
From the very outburst of this great convulsion I have had but one hope and one faith, and it is
this— that the result of this stupendous strife may be to make freedom the heritage for ever of a
whole continent, and that the grandeur and the prosperity of the American Union may never be
impaired." (Cheers.)
Mr. Bright delivered a speech at a meeting in St. James's Hall,
London, on the 26th of March, which had been called by the Trades'
Unions, to express their sentiments on the American war : —
" In our day, then," said Mr. Bright, " that which the statesmen of America have hoped
permanently to postpone has arrived. The great trial is now going on in the sight of the world,
and the verdict upon this great question must at last be rendered. But how much is at stake ?
Some men of this country, some writers, treat it as if, after all, it was no great matter that had
caused this contest in the United States. I say that a whole continent is at stake. It is not a
question of boundary ; it is not a question of tariff ; it is not a question of supremacy of party,
or even of the condition of four millions of negroes. It is more than that. It is a question of
a whole continent, with its teeming millions, and what shall be their present and their future
fate. It is for these millions freedom or slavery, education or ignorance, light or darkness,
Christian morality ever widening and all-blessing in its influence, or an overshadowing and all-
blasting guilt. There are men, good men, who say that we in England, who are opposed to war,
should take no public part in this great question. Only yesterday I received from a friend of
mine, whose fidelity I honour, a letter, in which he asked me whether I thought, with the views
which he supposed I entertain on the question of war, it was fitting that I should appear at such
a meeting as this. It is not our war ; we did not make it. We deeply lament it. It is not in
our power to bring it to a close ; but I know not that we are caUed upon to shut our eyes and to
close our hearts to the great issues which are depending upon it. Now we are met here, let us
ask each other some questions. Has England any opinion with regard to this American
question P Has England any sympathy, on one side or the other, with either party in this great
struggle ? But, to come nearer, I would ask whether this meeting has any opinion upon it, and
whether our sympathies have been stirred in relation to it P It is true, to this meeting not many
rich, not many noble, have been called. It is a meeting composed of artisans and working men
of the city of London — men whose labour, in combination with capital and directing skill, has
built this great city, and has made England great. I address myself to these men. I ask them
—I ask you— have you any special interest in this contest P Privilege thinks it has a great
interest in it, and every morning, with blatant voice, it comes into your streets and curses the
American Republic. Privilege has beheld an afflicting spectacle for many years past. It has
beheld thirty millions of men, happy and prosperous, without emperor, without king, without the
surroundings of a court, without nobles, except such as are made by eminence in inteUect and
virtue, without State bishops and State priests —
' Sole vendors of the lore which works salvation,'

AT ST. JAMES'S HALL. 311
without great armies and great navies, without great debt, and without great taxes. (Hear,
hear, and cheers.) PrivUege has shuddered at what might happen to old Europe if this grand
experiment should succeed. But you, the workers — you, striving after a better time — you,
struggling upwards towards the Ught, with slow and painful steps — you have no cause to look
with jealousy upon a country which, amongst all the great nations of the globe, is that where
labour has met with the highest honour, and where it has reaped its greatest reward. Are you
aware of the fact that in fifteen years, which is but as yesterday when it is past, two and a-half
miUions of your countrymen have found a home in the United States — that a population equal
nearly, if not quite, to the population of this great city — itself equal to no mean kingdom — has
emigrated from these shores P In the United States there has been, as you know, an open door
for every man — and miUions have entered into it and have found rest. (Cheers.) ... I
should hope that this question is now so plain that most Englishmen must understand it ; and
least of aU do I expect that the six millions of men in the United Kingdom who are not
enfranchised can have any doubt upon it. Their instincts are always right in the main, and if
they get the facts and information, I can rely on their influence being thrown into the right
seale. I wish I could state what would be as satisfactory to myself with regard to some others.
There may be men outside, there are men sitting amongst your legislators, who wiU build and
equip corsair ships to prey upon the commerce of a friendly power — who will disregard the laws
and the honour of their country — who wUl trample on the proclamation of their sovereign — and
who, for the sake of the glittering profit which sometimes waits on crime, are content to cover
themselves with everlasting infamy. There may be men, too — rich men — in this city of London
who wUl buy in the slave-owners' loan, and who, for the chance of more gain than honest
dealing wiU afford them, wiU help a conspiracy whose fundamental institution, whose corner
stone, is declared to be felony, and infamous by the statutes of their country. I speak not to
these men — I leave them to their conscience in that hour which comes to all of us, when
conscience speaks and the soul is no longer deaf to her voice. I speak rather to you, the working
men of London, the representatives, as you are here to-night, of the feeUngs and the interests of
the miUions who cannot hear my voice. I wish you to be true to yourselves. Dynasties may
f aU, aristocracies may perish, privilege wUl vanish into the dim past ; but you, your children,
and your chUdren's children, wiU remain,. and from you the English people wiU be continued to
succeeding generations. Tou wish the freedom of your country. Tou wish it for yourselves.
Tou strive for it in many ways. Do not, then, give the hand of feUowship to the worst foes of
freedom that the world has ever seen, and do not, I beseech you, bring down a curse upon your
cause whieh no after-penitence can ever lift from it. Tou wiU not do this. I have faith in you.
Impartial history wiU tell that, when your statesmen were hostile or coldly neutral, when many
of your rich men were corrupt, when your press — which ought to have instructed and defended
— was mainly written to betray, the fate of a continent and of its vast population being in peril,
you clung to freedom with an unfaltering trust that God in His infinite mercy wiU yet make it
the heritage of aU His children." ( Cheers.)
Mr. W. E. Forster asked the First Lord of the Treasury, on the
27th of March, whether the attention of Her Majesty's Government
had been called to the danger to our friendly relations with the United
States, resulting from the fitting out in our ports of ships of war for the
service of the self-styled Confederate States, in contravention of the
Foreign Enlistment Act and of the policy of neutrality adopted by

312 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
England ? A danger such as he had referred to in his question, he said,
did really exist, because many persons, either British subjects or acting
under the -protection of the British law, and in defiance of the Queen's
proclamation and of the statutes of the realm, were breaking the law, and
were engaged in efforts to break it to an extent which did certainly place
this country in the danger of being involved in war. The Solicitor-
General contended that Her Majesty's Government were free from blame,
but Mr. Bright was satisfied that the speech of the learned gentleman
would give no greater satisfaction to many persons in this country than it
would give to very many in the United States.
" I am satisfied further," said he, " that if anybody in this country was building a sloop of
war, and there was a fair suspicion that it was intended to help a revolutionary party in the little
kingdom of Portugal — which is always a pet kingdom of this Government — I have not the
slightest doubt that the Government would interfere and stop the saiUng of the ship. I say,
sir, that our neutrality is a cold and unfriendly neutrality, and I say, considering the neutral
alliance between this country and the United States, and the enormous interests which you
jeopardise, it does become the Government fairly to look this question in the face, and to exert the
influence they have — and which I believe the people of this country would universally support
them in exerting — to prevent the sailing of these vessels, which can by no means whatever have
any effect, so far as we are concerned, but to embroU us with that nation with which of aU others
in the world we have the greatest interest in remaining at peace. Do not for a moment beUeve
that because the United States are in this great calamity — out of which they still will come a
great nation — do not believe for a moment that acts Uke these can be forgotten now, or forgotten
hereafter. There are people in America interested, apparently, in creating iU-f eeUng towards
England. There are two millions of Irishmen in America, and wherever an Irishman plants his
foot on any foreign country there stands au enemy of England. I could read to you a speech of
old date, delivered by Lord North in this Hotise, in which he lamented that amongst those that
were most hostile to England during the revolutionary war were those emigrants that had gone from
Ireland. WeU, if there be in that country elements of hostility to England, there may be, and
possibly are, elements of hostility to America in this country. Why, sir, a man who is worthy to
be a Minister, instead of speaking in this cold and unfriendly tone, ought to know that aU the living
world and aU posterity would judge him and condemn him if he permitted anything to be undone
which he could do that would preserve the peace between the United States and England. I
am not afraid to stand here in defence— not of Mr. Seward's despatches— but in defence of that
great claim which the people of the United States have upon the generous forbearance and sym
pathy of EngUshmen. If you had last night looked in the faces of 3,000 of the most inteUigent
of the artisan classes in London as I did, and heard their cheers, and seen their sympathy for that
country for whieh you appear to care so little, you would imagine that the more forbearing, the
more generous, and the more just the conduct of the Government to the United States, the more
it would recommend itself to the magnanimous feeling of the people of this country. If the noble
lord at the head of the Government, who is a man of unequalled experience in politics, and who,
though he may sometimes drive the coach very near the edge of the precipice, cannot, I should think,'
intend to drive it over ; if the noble lord, who has now for so long a time administered the affairs
of this country with a greater degree of concurrence in this House than perhaps any Minister ever

ENGLAND'S VIEW OF THE AMERICAN WAR. 313
enjoyed during his recoUection, if the noble lord would now come forward with kindly words and
generous acts, in a manly and genial spirit, towards a great and kindred people, ho has it in his
power to perform services to both nations, and to the world at large, not exceeded by any that
his warmest admirers say he has rendered during his long political career."
A public meeting was convened by the Union and Emancipation
Society in the London Tavern on the 16th of June, which was presided
over by Mr. Bright, who spoke on the war in America and the supply
of cotton.
" If we look back a little over two years — two years and a half " — said Mr. Bright, " when the
question of secession was first raised in a practical shape, I think we shall be able to remember
that, when the news first arrived in England, there was but one opinion with regard to it— that
every man condemned the foUy and the wickedness of the South, and protested against their plea
that they had any grievance which justified them in revolt— and every man hoped that some mode
might be discovered by which the terrible calamity of war might be avoided. For a time many
thought that there would be no war. WhUst the reins were sUpping from the hands — the too-
feeble hands — of Mr. Buchanan into the grasp of President Lincoln, there was a moment when
men thought that we were about to see the wonderful example of a great question, which in all
other countries would have involved a war, settled perhaps by moderation — some moderation on
one side, and some concession on the other ; and so long as men believed that there would be no
war, so long everybody condemned the South. We were afraid of a war in America, because we
knew that one of the great industries of our country depended upon the continuous reception of
its raw material from the Southern States. But it was a folly — it was a gross absurdity — for any
man to believe, with the history of the world before him, that the people of the Northern States,
twenty millions, with their free Government, would for one moment sit down satisfied with the dis
memberment of their country, and make no answer to the war which had been commenced by the
South. I speak not in justification of war. I am only treating this question upon principles
which are almost universally acknowledged throughout the world, and by an overwhelming
majority, even of those men who accept the Christian religion ; and it is only upon those principles,
so almost universaUy acknowledged, and acknowledged as much in this country as anywhere else
— it is only just that we should judge the United States upon those principles upon which we in
this country would be Ukely to act. But the North did not yield to the dismemberment of their
country, and they did not aUow a conspiracy of Southern poUticians and slave-holders to seize
their forts and arsenals without preparing for resistance. Then, when the people of England
found that the North were about to resist, and that war was inevitable, they turned their eyes
from the South, which was the beginner of the war, and looked to the North, saying that if the
North would not resist, there could be no war, and then we should get our cotton, and trade would
go on as before ; and, therefore, from that hour to this, not a few persons in this country, who at
first condemned the South, have been incessant iu their condemnation of the North. Now, I beUeve
this is a fair statement of the feeUng which prevaUed when the first news of secession arrived, and
of the change of opinion which took place in a few weeks, when it was found that by the resolu
tion of the North to maintain the integrity of their country, war, and civil war, was unavoidable.
The trade interests of the country affected our opinion; and I fear did then prevent,
and have since prevented,' our doing justice to the people of the North. . . . Now I
am going to transport you, in mind, to Lancashire and the interests of Lanca
shire, which, after all, are the interests of the whole United Kingdom, and clearly of not

314 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
a few in the metropolis only. What was the condition of our greatest manufacturing industry
before the war, and before secession had been practically attempted P It was this : that
almost ninety per cent, of all our cotton came from the Southern States of the American Union,
and was, at least nine-tenths of it, the produce of the uncompensated labour of the negro.
Everybody knew that we were carrying on a prodigious industry upon a most insecure foundation ;
and it was the commonest thing in the world for men who were discussing the present and the
future of the cotton trade, whether in Parliament or out of it, to point to the existence of slavery
in the United States of America as the one dangerous thing in connection with that great trade ;
and it was one of the reasons which stimulated me on several occasions to urge upon the Govern
ment of this country to improve the Government of India, and to give us a chance of receiving
a considerable portion of our supply from India, so that we might not be left in absolute want
when the calamity occurred, which aU thoughtful men knew must some day come, in the United
States. Now, I maintain that with a supply of cotton mainly derived from the Southern States,
and raised by slave labour, two things are indisputable : first, that the supply must always be
insufficient; and second, that it must always be insecure. Perhaps many of you are not aware
that in the United States — I am speaking of the Slave States, and the cotton-growing States —
the quantity of land which is cultivated for cotton is a mere garden, a mere plot, in comparison
with the whole of the cotton region. I speak from the authority of a report lately presented to
the Boston Chamber of Commerce, containing much important information on this question ; and I
believe that the whole acreage, or the whole breadth of the land on which cotton is grown in America,
does not exceed ten thousand square miles — that is, a space one hundred mUes long and one
hundred miles broad, or the size of two of our largest counties in England ; but the land of the
ten chief cotton-producing States is sixty, times as much as that, being, I believe, about twelve
times the size of England and Wales. . . . But now we are in a different position. Slavery
itself has chosen its own issue, and has chosen its own field. Slavery — and when I say slavery, I
mean the slave power— has not trusted to the future ; but it has rushed into the battlefield to
settle this great question ; and, having chosen war, it is from day to day sinking to inevitable ruin
under it. Now, if we are agreed — and I am keeping you stiU to Lancashire and to its interests
for a moment longer— that this vast industry with all its interests of capital and labour has been
standing on a menacing volcano, is it not possible that hereafter it may be placed upon a rock
which nothing can disturb ? Imagine— what of course some people will say I have no right to
imagine- imagine the war over, the Union restored, and slavery abolished— does any man suppose
that there would afterwards be in the South one single negro fewer than there are at present P On
the contrary, I believe there would be more. I believe there is many a negro in the Northern
States, and even in Canada, who, if the lash, and the chain, and the branding-iron, and the
despotism against which even he dared not complain, were abolished for ever, would turn his face to
the sunny lands of the South, and would find himself happier and more useful there than he can be
in a more Northern clime. . . . Tou do not suppose that those beautiful States, those regions than
which earth offers nothing to man more fertile and more lovely, are shunned by the enterprising
population of the North because they like the rigours of a Northern winter and the greater
changeableness of the Northern seasons P Once abolish slavery in the South, and the whole of
the country wiU be open to the enterprise and to the industry 0f all. And, more than that, when
you find that only the other day not fewer than four thousand emigrants, most of them from the
United Kingdom, landed in one day in the city of New Tork, do you suppose that all those men
would go north and west at once P Would not some of them turn their faces southwards, and
seek the clime of the sun, which is so grateful to all men; where they would find a soU more
fertile, rivers more abundant, and everything that nature offers more profusely given, but from
which they are now shut out by the accursed power which slavery exerts P With freedom you
would have a gradual filling up of the wildernesses of the Southern States; you would have

INFLUENCE OF THE STATES UPON ENGLAND. 315
there, not population only, but capital, and industry, and roads, and schools, and everything
which tends to produce growth, wealth, and prosperity. I maintain — and I believe my opinion
wiU be supported by aU those men who are most conversant with American affairs — that, with
slavery abolished, with freedom firmly established in the South, you would find in ten years to
come a rapid increase in the growth of cotton ; and not only would its growth be rapid, but its
permanent increase would be secured. I said I was interested in this great question of cotton.
I come from the midst of the great cotton industry of Lancashire ; much the largest portion of
anything I have in the world depends upon it ; not a little of it is now utterly valueless during
the continuance of this war. My neighbours, by thousands and scores of thousands, are suffering,
more or less, as I am suffering ; and many of them, as you know — more than a quarter of a
million of them — have been driven from a subsistence gained by their honourable labour to the
extremest poverty, and to a dependence upon the charity of their feUow-countrymen. My
interest is the interest of aU the population. My interest is against a mere enthusiasm, a mere
sentiment, a mere visionary fancy of freedom as against slavery. I am speaking now as a matter
of business. I am glad when matters of business go straight with matters of high sentiment and
moraUty, and from this platform I declare my solemn conviction that there is no greater enemy
to Lancashire, to its capital and to its labour, than the man who wishes the cotton agriculture of
the Southern States to be continued under the conditions of slave labour. One word more upon
another branch of the question, and I have done. I would turn for a moment from commerce to
poUtics. I beUeve that our true commercial interests in this country are very much in harmony
with what I think ought to be our true political sympathies. There is no people in the world, I
think, that more fuUy and entirely accepts the theory that one nation acts very much upon the
character and upon the career of another, than England ; for our newspapers and our statesmen,
our writers and our speakers of every class, are constantly telUng us of the wonderful influence
which EngUsh constitutional government and English freedom have on the position and career
of every nation in Europe. I am not about fo deny that some such influence, and occasionally, I
believe, a beneficent influence, is thus exerted ; but if we exert any influence upon Europe — and
we pride ourselves upon it— perhaps it wUl not be a humiliation to admit that we feel some
influence exerted upon us by the great American Republic. American freedom acts upon
England, and there is nothing that is better known, at the west end of this great city — from
which I have just come — than the influence that has been, and nothing more feared than the in
fluence that may be, exerted by the United States upon this country. We aU of us know that there
has been a great effort produced in England by the career of the United States. An emigration
of three or four miUione of persons from the United Kingdom, during the last forty years, has
bound us to them by thousands of family ties, and therefore it follows that whatever there is that
is good, and whatever there is that is free, in America, which we have not, we know something
about, and gradually may begin to wish for, and some day may insist upon having. And when I
speak of ' us,' I mean the people of this country. When I am asserting the fact that the people of
England have a great interest in the well-being of the American Republic, I mean the people of
England. I do not speak of the wearers of crowns or of coronets, but of the twenty millions e£
people in this country who Uve on their labour, and who, having no votes, are not counted in our
political census, but without whom there could be no British nation at all. I say that these have
an interest, almost as great and direct as though they were Uving in Massachusetts or New Tork,
in the tremendous struggle for freedom which is now shaking the whole North American conti
nent. During the last two years there has been much said, and much written, and some things
done in this country, which are calculated to gain us the hate of both sections of the American
Union. I beUeve that a course of policy might have been taken by the English press, and by the
English Government, and by what are caUed the influential classes in England, that would have
bound them to our hearts and us to their hearts. I speak of the twenty mUUons of the free

316 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
North. I believe we might have been so thoroughly united with that people, that all remem
brance of the revolution and of the war of 1812 would have been obliterated, and we should
have been in heart and spirit for all time forth but one nation. I can only hope that, as
time passes, and our people become better informed, they will be more just, and that iU-feeUng of
every kind will pass away ; that in future aU who love freedom here will hold converse with all
who love freedom there, and that the two nations, notwithstanding that they are separated by
the ocean, come as they are of one stock, may be in future time united in soul, and may work
together for the advancement of the liberties and the happiness of mankind."
Mr. Eoebuck introduced a motion into the House of Commons,
on the 30th of June, in recognition of the Southern Confederacy, and
Mr. Bright delivered a most eloquent speech. He said : —
" We sometimes are engaged in discussions, and have great difficulty to know what we
are about ; but the hon. gentleman left us in no kind of doubt when he sat down. He proposed
a resolution, in words which, under certain circumstances and addressed to certain parties, might
end in offensive or injurious consequences. Taking this resolution in connection with his character,
with the speech he has made to-night, and with the speech he has recently made elsewhere on this
subject, I may say that he would have come to about the same conclusion if he had proposed to
address the Crown inviting the Queen to declare war against the United States of America. The
ChanceUor of the Exchequer, who is known not to be very zealous in the particular line of
opinion that I have adopted, addressed the hon. gentleman in the smoothest language possible,
but still he was obliged to charge him with the tone of bitter hostility which marked his speech.
On a recent occasion the hon. member addressed some members of his constituency — I do
not mean in his last speech ; I mean in the speech in August last year — in which he entered upon
a course of prophecy which, like most prophecies in our day, does not happen to come true. But
he said then what he said to-night, that the American people and Government were overbearing.
He did not tell his constituents that the Government of the United States had, almost during the
whole of his lifetime, been conducted by his friends of the South. He said that, if they were
divided, they would not be able to bully the whole world ; and he made use of these expressions :
' The North wiU never be our friends ; of the South you can make friends — they are EngUshmen
— they are not the scum and refuse of the world.' (Mr. Roebuck: 'Allow me to correct
that statement. What I said I now state to the House ; that the men of the South were
Englishmen, but that the army of the North was composed of the scum of Europe.' Mr.
Bright: I take, of course, that explanation of the hon. and learned gentleman, with this
explanation from me, that there is not, so far as I can find, any mention near that paragraph, and
I think there is not in the speech a single word, about the army. Mr. Roebuck : ' I assure you I
said that.' Mr. Bright: Then I take it for granted that the hon. and learned gentleman
said that, or that if he said what I have read he greatly regrets it. Mr. Roebuck : ' No, I did not
say it.') Mr. Bright : The hon. and learned gentleman in his resolution speaks of other powers.
But he has unceremoniously got rid of aU the powers but France, and he comes here to-night
with a story of an interview with a man whom he describes as the great ruler of France — teUs us
of a conversation with him — asks us to accept the lead of the Emperor of the French on, I
wiU undertake to say, one of the greatest questions that ever was submitted to the British
Parliament. But it is not long since the hon. and learned gentleman held very different
language. I recoUect in this House, only about two years ago, that the hon. and learned gentle
man said : ' I hope I may be permitted to express in respectful terms my opinion, even though it

MR. ROEBUCK AND THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY. 317
should affect so great a potentate as the Emperor of the French. I have no faith in the
Emperor of the French.' On another occasion the hon. and learned gentleman said — not, I
believe, in this House — ' I am still of opinion that we have nothing but animosity and bad faith
to look for from the French Emperor.' And he went on to say that still, though he had
been laughed at, he adopted the patriotic character of ' Tear-'em,' and was stiU at his post.
And when the hon. and learned gentleman came back, I think from his expedition to Cherbourg,
does the House recollect the language he used on that occasion — language which, if it expressed
the sentiments which he felt, at least I think he might have been content to have withheld ? If
lam not mistaken, referring to the salutation between the Emperor of the Freneh and the Queen
of these kingdoms, he said, ' When I saw his perjured lips touch that haUowed cheek.' And
now, sir, the hon. and learned gentleman has been to Paris, introduced there by the hon. member
for Sunderland, and he has sought to become as it were in the palace of the French Emperor a
co-conspirator with him to drag this country into a policy which I maintain is as hostile to
its interests as it would be degrading to its honour. But then the high contracting parties,
I suspect, are not agreed ; because I wiU say this, in justice to the French Emperor, that never has
anything come from him in public, nor from any one of his Ministers, nor is there anything to be
found in what they have written, that is tinctured in the smallest degree with that bitter hostility
which the hon. and learned gentleman has constantly exhibited to the United States of America
and their people. France, if not wise in this matter, is at least not unfriendly. The hon.
and learned member, in my opinion — indeed I am sure — is not friendly, and I believe he is
not wise. But now, on this subject, without speaking disrespectfully of the great potentate who
has taken the hon. and learned gentleman into his confidence, I must say that the Emperor runs
the risk of being far too much represented in this House. We have now two — I will not
caU them envoys extraordinary, but most extraordinary. And, if report speaks true, even they
are not all. The hon. member for King's County (Mr. Hennessy) — I do not see him in his
place — came back the other day from Paris, and there were whispers that he had seen the great
ruler of France, and that he could tell everybody in the most confidential manner that the Emperor
was ready to make a spring at Russia for the sake of delivering Poland, and that he only waited
for a word from the Prime Minister of England. I do not understand the policy of the
Emperor if these new Ministers of his teU the truth. For, sir, if one gentleman says that he is
about to make war with Russia, and another that he is about to make war with America. I am
disposed to look at what he is already doing. I find that he is holding Rome agamst the opinion
of aU Italy. He is conquering Mexico by painful steps, every footstep marked by devastation and
blood. He is warring, in some desultory manner, in China, and for aught I know he may be
about to do it in Japan. I say that, if he is to engage, at the same time, in dismembering the
greatest Eastern Empire and the great Western Republic, he has a greater ambition than Louis
XIV., a greater daring than the first of his name; and that, if he endeavours to grasp these
great transactions, his dynasty may fall and be buried in the ruins of his own ambition. I can
say only one sentence upon the question to which the noble lord has directed so much attention.
I understand that we have not heard all the story from Paris, and further, that it is not at aU
remarkable, seeing that the secret has been confided to two persons, that we have not heard it
correctly. I saw my hon. friend, the member for Sunderland, near me, and his face underwent
remarkable contortions during the speech of the hon. and learned gentleman, and I felt perfectly
satisfied that he did not agree with what his coUeague was saying. I am told there is in existence
a Uttle memorandum which contains an account of what was said and done at that interview in
Paris ; and before the discussion closes we shaU no doubt have that memorandum produced, and
from it know how far these two gentlemen are agreed. I now come to the proposition which
the hon. and learned gentleman has submitted to the House, and which he has already submitted
to a meeting of his constituents at Sheffield. At that meeting, on the 27th of May, the hon. and

318 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT
learned gentleman used these words : ' "What I have to consider is, what are the interests of
England : what is for her interests I believe to be for the interests of the world.' Now, leaving
out of consideration the latter part of that statement, if the hon. and learned gentleman wiU keep
to the first part of it, then what we have now to consider in this question is, what is for the in
terests of England. But the hon. and learned gentleman has put it to-night in almost as
offensive a way as he did before at Sheffield, and has said that the United States would not buUy
the world if they were divided and sub-divided ; for he went so far as to contemplate division
into more than two independent sections. I say that the whole of his case rests upon a miserable
jealousy of the United States, or on what I may term a base fear. It is a fear which appears to
me just as groundless as any of those panics by which the hon. and learned gentleman has
attempted to frighten the country. There never was a State in the world which was less capable
of aggression with regard to Europe than the United States of America. I speak of its government,
of its confederation, of the peculiarities of its organisation ; for the House wUl agree with me, that
nothing is more pecuUar than the fact of the great power which the separate States, both of the
North and South, exercise upon the policy and course of the country. I wUl undertake to
say that, unless in a question of overwhelming magnitude, which would be able to unite any
people, it would be utterly hopeless to expect that aU the States of the American Union would
join together to support the central Government in any plan of aggression on England or any
other country of Europe. Besides, nothing can be more certain than this, that the Government
which is now in power, and the party which have elected Mr. Lincoln to office, is a moral and
peaceable party, which has been above aU things anxious to cultivate the best possible state of
feeling with regard to England. The hon. and learned gentleman, of aU men, ought not to
entertain this fear of United States' aggression, for he is always boasting of his readiness to
come into the field himself. I grant that it would be a great necessity indeed which would
justify a conscription in calling out the hon. and learned gentleman, but I say he ought to con
sider well before he spreads these alarms among the people. For the sake of this miserable
jealousy, and that he may help to break up a friendly nation, he would depart from the usages of
nations, and create an everlasting breach between the people of England and the people of the
United States of America. He would do more ; and, notwithstanding what he has said to-night,
I may put this as my strongest argument against his case — he would throw the weight of Eng
land into the scale in favour of the cause of slavery. I want to show the hon. and learned gentle
man that England is not interested in the course he proposes we should take ; and when I
speak of interests, I mean the commercial interests, the political interests, and the moral
interests of the country. And first, with regard to the supply of cotton, in which the noble lord the
member for Stamford takes such a prodigious interest. I must explain to the noble lord that I
know a little about cotton. I happen to have been engaged in that business — not all my life, for
the noble lord has seen me here for twenty years — but my interests have been in it ; and at this
moment the firm of which I am a member have no less than six mills, which have been at a stand
for nearly a year, owing to the impossibility of working under the present conditions of the
supply of cotton. I live among a people who Uve by this trade ; and there is no man in England
who has a more direct interest in it than I have. Before the war, the supply of cotton was Uttle
and costly, and every year it was becoming more costly, for the supply did not keep pace with
the demand. The point that I am about to argue is this : I believe that the war which is now
raging in America is more likely to abolish slavery than not, and more likely to abolish it than
any other thing that can be proposed in the world. I regret very much that the pride and
passion of men are such as to justify me iu making this statement. The supply of cotton under
slavery must always be insecure. The House felt so in past years ; for at my recommendation
they appointed a committee, and but for the folly of a foolish Minister they would have appointed
a special commission to India at my request. Is there any gentleman in this House who wiU not

SLAVE VERSUS FREE LABOURERS. 319
gree with me in this — that it would be far better for our great Lancashire industry that our
supply of cotton should be grown by free labour than by slave labour ? Before the war, the whole
number of negroes engaged in the production of cotton was about one miUion — that is, about a fourth
of the whole of the negroes in the Slave States. The annual increase in the number of negroes
growing cotton was about twenty-five thousand — only two and a-half per cent. It was impossible
for the Southern States to keep up their growth of sugar, rice, tobacco, and their ordinary slave
productions, and at the same time to increase the growth of cotton more than at a rate corre
sponding with the annual increase of negroes. Therefore you will find that the quantity of cotton
grown, taking ten years together, increased only at the rate of about one hundred thousand bales
a-year. But that was nothing Uke the quantity which we required. That supply could not be
increased, because the South did not cultivate more than probably one and a-half per cent, of the land
which was capable of cultivation for cotton. The great bulk of the land in the Southern States is un
cultivated. Ten thousand square miles are appropriated to the cultivation of cotton ; but there are six
hundred thousand square mules, or sixty times as much land, which is capable of being cultivated for
cotton. It was, however, impossible that the land should be so cultivated, because, although you
had climate and sun, you had no labour. The institution of slavery forbade free-labour men in
the North to come to the South ; and every emigrant that landed in New Tork from Europe
knew that the Slave States were no States for him, and therefore he went North or West. The
laws of the United States, the sentiments of Europe and of the world, being against any opening
of the slave trade, the planters of the South were shut up, and the annual increase in the supply
of cotton could increase only in the same proportion as the annual increase in the number of
their negroes. There is only one other point with regard to that matter which is worth mention
ing. The hon. and learned gentleman the member for Sheffield wiU understand it, although on
some points he seems to be peculiarly dark. If a planter in the Southern States wanted to grow
one thousand bales of cotton a-year, he would require about two hundred negroes. Taking them
at five hundred dollars, or one hundred pounds each, which is not more than half the price of a
first-class hand, the cost of the two hundred would be twenty thousand pounds. To grow one
thousand bales of cotton a-year you require not only to possess an estate, machinery, tools, and
other things necessary to carry on the cotton-growing business, but you must find a capital of
twenty thousand pounds to buy the actual labourers by whom the plantation is to be worked ; and
therefore, as every gentleman wiU see at once, this great trade, to a large extent, was shut up in
the hands of men who were required to be richer than would be necessary if slavery did not
exist. Thus the plantation business to a large extent became a monopoly, and therefore even on
that account the production of cotton was constantly Umited and controlled. I was speaking to
a gentleman the other day from Mississippi. I believe no man in America or in England is more
acquainted with the facts of this case. He has been for many years a Senator from the State of
Mississippi. He told me that every one of these facts was true, and said, ' I have no doubt
whatever that in ten years after freedom in the South, or after freedom in conjunction with the
North, the production of cotton wiU be doubled, and cotton wiU be forwarded to the consumers
of the world at a much less price than we have had it for many years past.' I shaU turn for
a moment to the political interest, to which the hon. and learned gentleman paid much more
attention than to the commercial. The more I consider the course of this war, the more I come
to the conclusion that it is improbable in future that the United States will be broken into
separate RepubUcs. I do not come to the conclusion that the North wiU conquer the South.
But I think the conclusion to which I am more disposed to come now than at any time since the
breaking-out of the war is this : that if a separation should occur for a time, stiU the interests,
the sympathies, the sentiments, the necessities of the whole continent, and its ambition also,
which, as hon. gentlemen have mentioned, seems to some people to be a necessity, render it
highly probable that the continent would stUl be united under one central Government. I may

320 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
be quite mistaken. I do not express that opinion with any more confidence than hon. gentlemen
have expressed theirs in favour of a permanent dissolution ; but now is not this possible that
the Union may be again formed on the basis of the South ? There are persons who think that
possible. I hope it is not, but we cannot say that it is absolutely impossible. Is it not possible
that the Northern Government may be baffled in their miUtary operations P Is it not possible
that, by their own incapacity, they may be humiliated before their own people ? And is it not
even possible that the party which you please to call the Peace party in the North, but which is
in no sense a peace party, should unite with the South, and that the Union should be recon
stituted on the basis of Southern opinions and of the Southern social system p Is it not possible,
for example, that the Southern people, and those in their favour, should appeal to the Irish
population of America against the negroes, between whom there has been little sympathy and
little respect P And is it not possible they should appeal to the commercial classes of the North
— and the rich commercial classes in all countries, from the uncertainty of their possessions
and the fluctuation of their interests are rendered always timid and very often corrupt — is
it not possible, I say, that they might prefer the union of their whole country upon the basis
of the South, rather than that union which many members of this House look upon with so
much apprehension p If that should ever take place — but I believe, with my hon. friend below
nie (Mr. Forster), in the moral government of the world, and therefore I cannot believe that it
wUl take place — but if it were to take place, with their great armies, and with their great navy,
and their almost unlimited power, they might seek to drive England out of Canada, France out of
Mexico, and whatever nations are interested in them out of the islands of the West Indies ; and
you might then have a great State built upon slavery and war, instead of that free State to which
I look, built up upon an educated people, upon general freedom, and upon morality in government.
. . . Now I wiU ask the right hon. gentleman the ChanceUor of the Exchequer, and those who are
of opinion with him on this question of slaughter in the American war— a slaughter which I hope
there is no hon. member here, and no person out of this House, that does not in his calm moments
look upon with grief and horror — to consider what was the state of things before the war. It was
this : that every year in the Slave States of America there were one hundred and fifty thousand
children born into the world — born with the badge and the doom of slavery — born to the liability
by law, and by custom, and by the devilish cupidity of man to the lash, and to the chain, and to
the branding-iron, and to be taken from their families and carried they knew not where. I want
to know whether you feel as I feel upon this question. When I can get down to my home from
this House, I find half-a-dozen little chUdren playing upon my hearth. How many members are
there who can say with me, that the most innocent, the most pure, the most holy joy which in
their past years they have felt, or in their future years they hope for, has not arisen from
contact and association with our precious children? Well, then, if that be so — if when the
hand of death takes one of those flowers from our dwelling, our heart is overwhelmed with sorrow,
and our household is covered with gloom— what would it be if our children were brought up to
this infernal system: one hunded and fifty thousand of them every year brought into the world in
these Slave States, amongst these ' gentlemen,' amongst this ' chivalry,' amongst these men that
we can make our friends P Do you forget the thousandfold griefs and the countless agonies
which belonged to the silent conflict of slavery before the war began P It is all very well for the
hon. and learned gentleman to tell me, to tell this House— he will not tell the country with any
satisfaction to it— that slavery, after all, is not so bad a thing. The brother of my hon. friend the
member for South Durham told me that in North Carolina he himself saw a woman whose every
child, ten in number, had been sold when they grew up to the age at which they would fetch a
price to their master. I have not heard a word to-night of another matter— the proclamation of
the President of the United States. The hon. and learned gentleman spoke somewhere in the
country, and he had not the magnanimity to abstain from a statement which I was going to say

GOVERNMENTS AND FREEDOM. 321
he must have known had no real foundation. I can make all allowance for the passion — and I was
going to say the malice, but I will say the ill-wiU — of the hon. and learned gentleman ; but I make
no aUowance for his ignorance. I make no allowance for that, because if he is ignorant it his own
fault, for God has given him an inteUect which ought to keep him from ignorance on a question of
this magnitude. I now take that proclamation. What do yon propose to do ? Tou propose by
your resolution to help the South, if possible, to gain and sustain its independence. Nobody
doubts that. The hon. and learned gentleman wUl not deny it. But what becomes of the pro
clamation ? I should Uke to ask any lawyer in what light we stand as regards that proclamation.
To us there is only one country in what was called the United States ; there is only one President,
there is only one general legislature, there is only one law ; and if that proclamation be lawful
anywhere, we are not in a condition to deny its legality, because at present we know no Presi
dent Davis, nor do we know the men who are about him. We have our consuls in the South, but re
cognising only one legislature, one President, one law, so far as we are concerned that proclamation
is a legal and effective document. I want to know, to ask you, the House of Commons, whether
you have turned back to your own proceedings in 1834, and traced the praises which have been
lavished upon you for thirty years by the great and good men of other countries — and whether,
after what you did at that time, you beUeve that you wiU meet the views of the thoughtful, moral,
and religious people of England, when you propose to remit to slavery three miUions of negroes
in the Southern States, who in our views, and regarding the proclamation of the only President
of the United States as a legal document, are certainly and to aU intents and purposes free. (' Oh !')
The hon. and learned gentleman may say ' Oh ! ' and shake his head lightly, and be scornful at
this. He has managed to get rid of all those feelings under which all men, black and white, like to
be free. He has tatted of the cant and hypocrisy of these men. Was Wilberforce, was Clarkson,
was Buxton — I might run over the whole list — were these men hypocrites, and had they nothing
about them but cant ? I could state something about the family of my hon. friend below me (Mr.
Forster), which I almost fear to state in his presence ; but his revered father — a man unsurpassed
in character, not equaUed by many in intellect, and approached by few in service — laid down his
life in a Slave State in America, while carrying to the governors and legislators of every Slave
State the protest of himself and his sect against the enormity of that odious system. In conclusion,
sir, I have only this to say : that I wish to take a generous view of this question— a view, I say,
generous with regard to the people with whom we are in amity, whose Minister we receive here
and who receive our Minister in Washington. We see that the Government of the United States
has for two years past been contending for its life, and we know that it is contending necessarily
for human freedom. That Government affords the remarkable example — offered for the first time
in the history of the world — of a great Government coming forward as the organised defender of
law, freedom, and equality. Surely hon. gentlemen opposite cannot be so ill-informed as to say
that the revolt of the Southern States is in favour of freedom and equality. In Europe often, and
in some parts of America, when there has been' insurrection it has generally been of the suffering
against the oppressor, and rarely has it been found, and not more commonly in our history than in
the history of any other country, that the Government has stepped forward as the organissd de
fender of freedom — of the wide and general freedom of those under its rule. With such a
Government, in such a contest, with such a foe, the hon. and learned gentleman the member for
Sheffield, who professes to be more an Englishman than most Englishmen, asks us to throw into
the scale against it the weight of the hostility of England. I have not said a word with regard
to what may happen to England if we go into war with the United States. It will be a war upon
the ocean — every ship that belongs to the two nations will, as far as possible, be swept from the
seas. But when the troubles in America are over — be they ended by the restoration of the
Union, or by separation — that great and free people, the most instructed in the world — there is
not an American to be found in the New England States who cannot read and write— and there are
46

322 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
not three men in every hundred in the whole Northern States who cannot read and write — and those
who cannot read and write are those who have recently come from Europe — I say, the most in
structed people in the world, and the most wealthy — if you take the distribution of wealth among
the whole people — wiU have a wound in their hearts by your act which a century may not heal ;
and the posterity of some of those who now hear my voice may look back with amazement, and I
wiU say with lamentation, at the course which was taken by the hon. and learned gentleman, and
by such hon. members as may choose to f oUow his leading. ( No ! No !) I suppose the hon.
gentlemen who cry' ' No ! ' will admit that we sometimes suffer from the errors of om- ancestors.
There are few persons who will not admit that, if their fathers had been wiser, they themselves would
have been happier. We know the cause of this revolt, its purposes and its aims. (Hear, hear.)
Those who made it have not left us in darkness respecting their intentions, but what they are to
accomplish is still hidden from our sight ; and I will abstain now, as I have always abstained with
regard to it, from predicting what is to come. I know what I hope for, and what I shall rejoice
in, but I know nothing of future facts that will enable me to express a confident opinion. (Hear,
hear.) Whether it wiU give freedom to the race which white men have trampled in the dust, and
whether the issue will purify a nation steeped in crimes committed against that race, is known
only to the Supreme. (Hear, hear.) In His hands are alike the breath of man and the life of
States. I am willing to commit to Him the issue of this dreadful contest ; but I implore of Him,
and I beseech this House, that my country may lift not hand or voice in aid of the most stupen
dous act of guilt that history has recorded in the annals of mankind." (Loud cheers.)
Mr. Eoebuck's speech received well-merited rebuke from all parts of
the House, and particularly from Mr. Bright, whose scathing satire doubt
less contributed to make him withdraw his motion.
The members of the New York Chamber of Commerce forwarded to
Mr. Bright, through the American Minister in London, a resolution
which had been unanimously passed at one of their meetings, and which
was to the effect —
" That this Chamber desires to place on its records an expression of grateful sense entertained
by its members of the intelligent, eloquent, just, and fearless manner in which Mr. John Bright
has defended, before the people of England in the British Parliament, the principles of constitu-
tional liberty and international justice, for the maintenance of which the American people are
contending ; and that the proceedings be communicated to Mr. Bright."
Mr. Bright acknowledged the compliment.
Mr. Bage, a wealthy merchant from New York, and an enthusiastic
friend of Sunday Schools, while addressing the scholars of Gravel Lane
Eagged School, Salford, made the following interesting statement. He
said : —
"If you were to ask in the schools of America, ' Who are the three men, whom, as a country
we love the most?' they would reply: First, Washington, because he was the father of his
country; second, Abraham Lincoln, because he was the saviour of his country ; third— and this
with cheers— John Bright, because he is the friend of the working men."

THE AMERICANS AND MR. BRIGHT.

323

President Lincoln's gold-headed staff, which his family bequeathed to
the Eev. Dr. J. Smith, U. S. Consul at Dundee, was presented to Mr.
Bright, in the following terms : — " Bequeathed by the Eev. Dr. Smith,
U. S. Consul, Dundee, to the Et. Hon. John Bright, M.P., in recognition
of his tried friendship to the United States."

CHAPTEE XXXIX.
LAST DAYS OF COBDEN.
Messrs. Bright and Cobden at a Public Meeting in Rochdale— Bright's Address to his
Constituents in January, 1864— Capital Punishment— Irishmen Enlisting in the American
Army— The Atlantic Telegraph— The Permissive BiU— Mr. Cobden's last Address at
Rochdale— Opening of the Birmingham New Exchange— Mr. Bright Addresses his Con
stituents—Mr. Cobden again refuses to take Office— Defence of Canada— Mr. Cobden's
Journey to London— His IUness and Death — Scene in the House— Reminiscences of the
departed Statesman — The Funeral.
:E. BEIGHT accompanied Mr. Cobden, on the 24th of Novem
ber, 1863, to a meeting of his constituents in the spacious
machine works of Mr. John Eobinson in Fishwick Street,
which accommodated about 4,000 persons. The Mayor, Mr.
S. Stott, presided. The member for Eochdale delivered a splendid
speech, in which he touched on most of the important topics of the day.
He seemed to have a foreboding that his life was drawing near to a close,
for in referring to the question of Eeform he said sorrowfully, " But I
am not sure that I shall live to be able to afford you much help in the
matter." This remark threw a transient gloom over the sea of human
faces assembled before him, and the expressions that played over them
seemed to say, " 0 grant that day may claim our sorrows late."
" I have been a great traveller," further remarked Mr. Cobden ; " I have travelled in most
civilised countries, and I assert that the masses of the people of this country do not compare so
favourably with the masses of other countries as I could wish. I find in other countries a
greater number of people with property than there are in England. I don't know, perhaps, any
country in the world where the masses of the people are so iUiterate as in England. It is no use
your talking of your army and navy, your exports and your imports ; it is no use teUing me you
have a small portion of your people exceedingly well off. I want to make the test in a com
parison of the majority of the people against a majority in any other country. I say that with
regard to some things in foreign countries we don't compare so favourably. The English
peasantry has no parallel on the face of the earth. Tou have no otlier peasantry like that of
England— you have m other country in which it is entirely divorced from the land. There is no
other country of the world where you will not find men turning up the furrow in their own
freehold. Tou won't find that in England. I don't want any revolution or agrarian outrages by

SPEECHES AT ROCHDALE. 325
which we should change all this. But this I find to be quite consistent with human nature : that
wherever I go the condition of the people is very generally found to be pretty good where
they have sufficient power to take care of themselves. And if you have a class entirely divorced
from poUtical power, and there is another country where they possess it, the latter will be treated
with more consideration, they wiU have greater advantages, they wiU be better educated, and
have a better chance of having property, than in a country where they are deprived of the
advantage of political power. But we must remember this : we have beeu thirty years — it is
more than ttrirty years since our Reform BiU was passed — and during that time great changes
have taken place in other countries. Nearly aU your colonies since that time have received
representative institutions. They are much freer in Australia and New Zealand, and much freer
in their representative system than we are in England ; and thirty years ago they were entirely
under the domination of om- Colonial Office. WeU, go on the continent ; you find there wide
extension of poUtical franchises all over the country. Italy, and Austria even, is stirring its dry
bones ; you have aU Germany now more or less invested with popular sovereignty ; and I say
that, with aU our boasted maxims of superiority as a self-governing people, we don't maintain
our relative rank in the world, for we are all obliged to acknowledge that we dare not entrust a
considerable part of the population of this country with political power, for fear they should
make a revolutionary and dangerous use of it. Besides, bear in mind, that both our political
parties, both our aristocratic parties, have already pledged themselves to an extension of the
franchise. The Queen has been made to recommend from her throne the extension of the
franchise ; and you have placed the governing classes in this country in the wrong for aU future
time if they do not fulfil those promises and adopt those recommendations. They are placed in
the wrong, and some day or other they may be obliged to yield to violence and clamour what I
think they ought, in sound statesmanship, to do tranquilly and voluntarily and in proper season.
If you exclude to the present extent the masses of the people from the franchise, you are always
running the risk of that which a very sagacious old Conservative statesman once said in the
House of Commons. He said, ' I am afraid we shall have an ugly rush some day.' Well, I
want to avoid that ' ugly rush.' I would rather do the work tranquUly, and do it gradually."
Mr. Bright, in his speech, confined himself exclusively to domestic
reforms. " Now, since 1830," observed Mr. Bright, " the wheel has been entirely turned round, and the
Whigs have been for the most part at the bottom. Now the Whigs when they are in office are
not precisely the same kind of people that they are when they are out of office. (Laughter.)
Their contentment is something wonderful. They believe that the Constitution has then attained
its highest exceUence. I recoUect one of their own writers describes them, and uses some lines
which I once quoted a good many years ago, but did not quote against the Whigs then, but was
obliged to make a little change to make them apply to somebody else. (Laughter.) But he was
speaking of this contentment of the Whigs when they got into office, and he said —
' As bees on flowers alighting cease their hum,
So, settling into places, Whigs are dumb.'
(Laughter.) . . . Look at the power which the United States have developed. They have
maintained now for nearly three years the most gigantic struggle ever undertaken by any nation;
they have brought more men into the field, bunt more ships for their navy, they have shown
greater resources than, I will undertake to say, any nation in Europe is at this moment capable
of. Look at the order which has prevaUed. Their elections, at which as you see by the papers

326 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
50,000 or 100,000 or a quarter of a mUlion persons vote in a given State, are conducted with less
disorder than you have seen lately in three of the smallest boroughs in England— Barnstaple,
Windsor, and Andover. (Laughter and cheers.) Look at their industry. Notwithstanding this
terrific struggle, their agriculture, their manufactures, and commerce proceed with an unin
terrupted sweep ; and they are ruled by a President, not chosen, it is true, from some worn-out
royal or noble blood, but from the people, and whose truthfulness and spotless honour have
gained him universal praise. (Enthusiastic cheers.) And now, sir, this country, that has
been thus vilified through half the organs of the press in England during the last three years,
and has been pointed at, too, as an example to be shunned by many of your statesmen — this
country, now in mortal strife, affords a haven and a home for multitudes flying from the burdens
and neglect of the old Governments of Europe. (Cheers.) And when this mortal strife is over,
when peace is restored, when slavery is destroyed, when the Union is cemented afresh — for I
would say, in the language of one of her own poets addressing his country —
1 The grave's not dug where traitor hands shall lay
In fearful haste thy murdered corpse away.'
— (enthusiastic cheers) — then Europe and England may learn that an instructed democracy is
the surest foundation of government, and that education and freedom are the only sources of
true greatness and true happiness among any people." (Enthusiastic, general, and prolonged
cheering.) This speech of Mr. Bright's extended over three columns and a-half
of the newspapers, and it was considered one of the finest and most
perfect as a work of art. It sparkled with sarcasms, was clear and fiery ;
its sentences were terse and energetic, and its picturesque phrases and
poetic imagery brilliant.
In their speeches both Bright and Cobden referred to the land
question. The Times, in commenting on their utterances in a leading
article, accused them of inciting discontent amongst the poor, and pro
posing a spoliation of the owners of land. Mr. Cobden, without con
sulting Mr. Bright, at once in a letter charged the editor of the Times
with committing a gross literary outrage, and it led to a lengthy con
troversy between Mr. Cobden and Mr. John T. Delane, who had put a
wrong construction on the passages, and who afterwards disavowed the
imputations. Mr. Bright addressed his constituents in the Birmingham Town
Hall on the 26th of January, 1864, under the presidency of the Mayor.
He spoke for an hour and a-half, and in one part of his speech he
said : —
" What I propose is this-it is nothing that I have not stated before— it is the most moderate
thing that can be proposed. If you want to see an admirable description of what I think

LAND TRANSFER. 327
it would be wise to do, you wUl find it in a paper which certainly is not very Radical — is rather,
in my opinion, though conducted with considerable ability, conceited in some of its criticisms
upon us — I mean the Spectator. There was an article on Saturday last in this paper on the
subject of land laws in New Tork, and although there are ouly three or four lines about New
Tork in the article, that does not matter, for it is admirably written. In one place it reads
as f oUows : — ' No doubt Mr. Bright would consider this not sufficient change for the purposes he
wishes.' The writer is quite mistaken. The changes which he proposes are more extensive than
any changes I have ever proposed, either in public or in private. What are these changes P First of
aU, that the law shaU declare that when any person owning property dies without making a
distribution of it by wiU, the law shaU distribute it upon the same principle that it now adopts
when it divides — I am now speaking of landed property — any other kind of property. For
example : Suppose a man has got money in the bank — I wish everybody had — suppose he
has machinery in his mUl, merchandise in his warehouse, ships upon the' ocean, or that he has
.shares, or the parchments for them, in his safe — if he dies, the Government by the law, or
rather the law itself, makes a distribution of aU that property amongst all his children, in
accordance with the great universal law of natural parental affection and justice. Then, I say, let
that principle be extended to aU the property which a man may die possessed of ; and, so far as
that goes, I want no further change. Then, with regard to the question of entails, I would
say this : the Spectator proposes that a man, by entaUing his property — so far as I can under
stand — shaU prevent only himself and his next heir from disposing of it — that there shall be, in
point of fact, only two persons in the entaU. Now, what I propose is, that a man may leave his
property to as many persons as he likes : to A, B, C, D, and E and F, and so on all through the
alphabet, if they are aU aUve at the time he makes his wiU, and he can put all their names into it.
But at present he can leave it to these people, and to a child then unborn, and who shaU not be
born, it may be, tiU twenty years after he has made his wiU. I would cut that off. I contend
that it should be left to persons who are in existence, and whose names are in the wiU, and you
wUl find that as A, B, and C died it would finaUy come into the hands of a man who would have
the absolute disposal of, and who could keep, or sell, or give, or waste it as he pleased. And I
believe it wiU be much better for the public when that freedom of transfer is given to the
possessors of land which is given to the possessors of every other kind of property. If I were to
sit down for ten minutes and a lawyer were to take my place, he could teU you what a trouble our
law is ; and — although I am sorry that some of them think that they make a good thing out of it
— what a curse it is to a man who buys landed property or who seUs it. Everthing which
I am proposing is carried out, I believe, through most of the States in the American Union, and
to a greater extent on the continent of Europe, and is being adopted in the Australian colonies-
It is the most curious thing in the world, that whenever an Englishman leaves these shores —
whether it is the effect of the salt air, or of sea-sickness, or the result of that prolonged
meditation which a voyage of some weeks' duration invites, I do not know — but whenever
an EngUshman leaves these shores, the effect is to peel off, not the rags of his body, but
the verminous rags from his intellect and soul. He leaves behind him in England all the
stupidity which some of us cherish, and he lands in Australia with his vision so clear that he can
see things in a comtnonsense manner. . . . When a man looks upon those chUdren that
make even in the poorest house sometimes a gleam of joy, when he thinks what those boys and
girls must be in this country — never to rise one step higher than that which he occupies now as
an agricultural labourer, and when he looks abroad and he sees them not labourers, in the sense
we use the word here — not tenants even, but freeholders, and landowners, and farmers of their
own property, then, I say, the temptation held out to men here to emigrate — if men knew all
the facts — would be irresistible to hundreds of thousands who have now no thought of moving to
another country. . . . There is, you know, a great tendency to large farms throughout this

328 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
country, which makes it stUl more difficult for a labourer to become even a tenant, or ever to rise
from the condition he is in. I think traveUers tell us there is a tribe in Africa so given to
superstition that they fill their huts and hovels with so many idols that they do not even leave
room for their families. It may be so in this country, that we buUd up a system. which is
detrimental to our political freedom, and is destructive of the best interests of the great mass of
our producing and working classes. (Cheers.) Now, am I the enemy of any class because
I come forward to state facts like these and to explain principles such as these ? (Cheers.)
ShaU we go on groping continuaUy in the dark, and making no effort to show them our position ?
Do not suppose because I stand here oftener to find fault with the laws of our country than
to praise them, that I am less EngUsh, or less patriotic, or that I have less sympathy with
my countrymen than other men have. (Cheers.) I want our country to be populous, to be
powerful, and to be happy ; but this end can be attained, and it has never been attained in any
other way, only by just laws, justly administered. I plead only for what I think to be just. I
wish to do wrong to no man. For twenty-five years I have stood before audiences — great
meetings of my countrymen — pleading only for justice. (Great cheering.) During that time,
as you know, I have endured numberless insults, have passed through hurricanes of abuse. I
need not teU you that my cUents have not generaUy been the rich and the gTeat, but the poor and
the lowly. They cannot give me place, and dignities, and wealth, but their honourable service is
of far higher and more lasting value — the consciousness that I have been expounding and
upholding laws which, though they were not given amid the thunders of Sinai, are not the less
the commandments of God, and not the less intended to promote and secure the happiness of
men." (Prolonged and enthusiastic cheers.)
On January 29th, 1S64, Mr. Bright was entertained at a soiree at
the Eoyal Hotel, Birmingham, and in responding to the toast, " Success
to the patriotic labours of the members of this borough," he said : —
" It is the very existence of grievances which calls me from the quiet of my home and from
the pursuits of my own family ; and whenever I find that there is nothing for me to do but to
say what a happy people we are, aud how delightful it is to be under the government of Lord
Palmerston and his Whig colleagues, then I can assure you that I will not trouble you with
saying that. I shaU leave you to find it out, and shaU stay at home. (Cheers.) But still there
is a bright side in the prospects of England, and you may see some of it probably, looking
forward, and you may see a good deal of it looking backward. The bright side of the history of
the country, so long as I have been able to take any part in it, is that side on which are delineated
the changes that have taken place— changes which I, at any rate, have the satisfaction of know
ing that I have supported, and changes which no doubt many of those who wish me to speak in
a different tone have to the utmost of their power opposed. (Hear, hear.). . . . It is a
blessed thing, but somehow or other, either the Tories die off, or they change themselves, or
they do certainly take a Uttle different colour. Tou can hardly find any of them now, but wiU
admit that a great number of these changes— some wiU admit that all of them— have been wise
changes, and beneficial changes to the country. And yet it is very odd that the very same men
at this moment set up to be authorities in politics. They opposed every one of these changes ;
they have obstructed every one to the extent of their power ; they have told you at every step
that every change was destructive to the best interests of the country; and they rushed to the
poll with what I should call a frantic blindness of patriotism to put off the good day when these
beneficial changes should take effect. And having been wrong in every single thing for twenty-
five years back and— if they have Uved as long— for fifty years back, at this very moment, with-

HOW CABINETS ARE FORMED. 329
out a blush, without the slightest appearance of difficulty or embarrassment, they wiU call upon
a constituency now to believe that they are the men, and that wisdom will die with them. If
there had been no violent party spirit, if these men would have given themselves, if they were
capable of it, to some inteUigent thought on these questions, is it not very likely that many of
these changes might have been made at an earlier period, and that the public might have had,
say for twenty years, the advantage of these reforms, which, owing to the obstinacy of opponents,
they have enjoyed, it may be, for only five or ten years ? . . And that leads me to speak
about a curious custom of the Cabinet on which the people are generally ignorant, but concerning
which I now feel it my duty to inform them. When a Government is made, a list is drawn up of
about thirteen gentlemen, who are te form a Cabinet, and who are summoned to the meetings of
the Cabinet. But there is an inner Cabinet, and it is generaUy compounded of a Prime Minister
and the Foreign Secretary, and occasionaUy one other minister. While Lord Derby was a
member of Sir R. Peel's Cabinet, he knew nothing of a most important memorandum or under
standing which had been drawn up on an agreement come to between Sir R. Peel, the Duke of
"Wellington, and the late Emperor Nicholas of Russia. Until he came to be Prime Minister, he
had never seen that memorandum, and never knew of its existence. Well, I have been told that
there was an attempt made when Lord Derby's Government was formed to keep the whole of
that interior Cabinet in the hands of himself and Lord Malmesbury, the Foreign Minister, but
that a certain other minister, who knew the responsibilities which attach to the deliberations of
such an inner Cabinet, would have nothing to do with the responsibilities of its great decisions
unless he were made acquainted with all the facts and with everything belonging to them. And,
therefore, the secret Cabinet in Lord Derby's Government was composed of three, and not of
two members. But take the present Cabinet. I wUl undertake to say, by what I know of what
has been done on past occasions, that a great deal of the most delicate business of foreign affairs
is conducted almost entirely by Lord Palmerston and Lord RusseU. Do not let me be supposed
to insinuate that Lord Palmerston has not had a most lengthened experience in foreign affairs,
and do not let me be supposed to say that Lord RusseU is not anxious to have the affairs of the
country transacted in such a way as he thinks wiU best serve the interests of the nation. But
there may be members of that Cabinet at this moment who are not aware of the steps that are
being taken from day to day, of despatches that are being written, of suggestions that are being
thrown out, and resolutions that are partly come to, and which being once arrived at and determined
upon by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, wiU plunge the country in war. If there
be any member of the Cabinet who is not in that secret knowledge, and he finds that these
matters are advancing towards war, let me beseech him, as he values the peace of his conscience
during his lifetime, and his reputation also with his fellow-men, which is of much less real value,
that he wiU take care to know everything that is done, that he will not be made the partner, it
may be in great errors, it may be in great crimes, which he and his country, if the war should
come, may have occasion to regret. I have not seen a paper written out of London which
argues in favour of war, and I do not think the London press generaUy has yet stimulated the
country to violent action. But let us here — we, the people everywhere — have our eyes wide open
at this moment, and by every means in our power show that, while we are wiUing to sympathise
with any monarch, it may be, or any State under any difficulties of any kind, we also consider it
our duty in the present and future interest of the people of these islands to show in addition that,
looking over our past history for the last two hundred years, we have come to the fixed determi
nation that the power of England shall not be exerted, the blood of England shall not be spUt,
the wealth created by the toils of EngUshmen shaU not be squandered, except it be in some great
cause in which the solid and permanent interests of this country are engaged. I wish this to be
a free country — not to be afraid of anything that is good because they say it is French, or some
thing good because they say it is American, or to stand by something that is clearly evil because

330 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
they say it is old. . . A very eminent writer, not long ago, said that England to a very
large extent was stiU, as it were, fettered in the grave-clothes of the Middle Ages. We have a
competition to run with other nations, and most closely of aU with that nation now distracted
and in the throes of a great revolution. But we have within our shores, and within the limits of
these islands, a great and noble people. (Cheers.) We have within us the elements of a nation
far greater in the future than anything we have been in the past, even in the most renowned and
most glorious pages of history. We can set ourselves free from prejudices, and as it were from
the darkness of the past. We can give to our people education. We can open up to them new
sources of industry. We can reduce the expenditure of our Government. We can invite another
million or two within the pale of the constitution, and taking them by the hand ask counsel of
them that we may assist each other in the wise government of this great nation. (Cheers.) AU
this we can do, and all that it wants is that in working out our political problems we should take
fbr our foundation that which recommends itself to our consciences as just and moral. I have
not the slightest regard for your statesmanship that is divorced from the morality which we said
ought to guide us in our private life, and which we should gather, for a nation as for individuals,
from the reUgion which we profess. Time, persistent labour, and fidelity to the great principles
which we hold and believe in — (cheers) — this will certainly give us the victory over existing evils,
as similar qualities and similar conduct have given the victories I have described to you in the
sketch which I have made." (Cheers.)
Mr. Bright, in discussing the clause relating to branding in the
Mutiny Bill, on the 10th of March, informed the House that there was
an enormous emigration to the United States and to the Colonies. Every
man in the manufacturing districts who knew anything knew that the
demand for labour was overrunning the supply, and wages in all
probability would rise very much ; and he would not be surprised if ten
years hence they should find labour, even in the agricultural districts, 25
to 50 per cent, higher than at that moment.
" WeU, if that be so," said he, " you wUl find much greater difficulty in recruiting for the
army than you have found in time past. Tou have enormous forces in the West and East Indies-
including the depots here, I think you have nearly 80,000 men, and you require to raise £10,000 a
year to keep up that army. If I was one of those who thought it necessary to maintain these
great forces, and was anxious that we should always be able to obtain a full supply from the
population, I should be disposed to make the army as Uttle distasteful to the people as possible,
and so far as it can be made to appear to them an honourable service. It is not to your advan
tage merely to pick the most reckless and most unworthy of the population. I should think that
every officer of a regiment would wish to have under his commaud respectable and honourable
men. Well, that being so, would it not be worth your while to try whether the army of this great
empire could not be enlisted and could not be maintained in sufficient order without having
recourse to that which on the face of it strikes every man and woman in England, and every man
and woman in the world, as a punishment degrading, barbarous, and wholly unsuited to our
time ? I think the noble lord said that a great many of these soldiers were fast and wild. But I
have heard a great many cases in which officers are very fast. Tou have a great many men in the
army stationed in different parts of the country with very Uttle to do. Tou have taken them

DECLINE OF THE POPULATION OF IRELAND. 331
from aU the comforts and from all the inducements to good which men have who live at home.
It is not to be wondered at that there are many cases — I am only surprised that there are not
more — in which men give trouble to their officers and to their other superiors. But if I were
one of those officers I should like to try the plan of mercy, and kindness, and fairness, and sym
pathy with the men under my command. Tou find when officers of regiments practise these
qualities, the men conduct themselves properly without flogging ; and you find that the men in
some of your ships of war will go off for a year or two years, and traverse the ocean, and come
back without the punishment of flogging having been once inflicted. Tou may rely upon
it that this depends almost as much upon the character of the officers as it does upon the character
of the men."
On a division it was found that there was a majority of 30 in favour
of maintaining the brutal punishment of branding soldiers for mis
conduct. Mr. Hennessy, on the llth of March, calling the attention of the
House of Commons to some of the causes of the decline of the popula
tion in Ireland, and especially to the difference between the laws for the
relief of the poor in Ireland, and those in England and Scotland,
recommended that the English poor-laws should be extended to
Ireland. " If I were an Irish landowner," said Mr. Bright, " I would remember what the late Lord
ChanceUor of Ireland said — namely, that there had been 200 Acts of Parliament passed on behalf
of the landlord, and never one, to his knowledge, on behalf of the tenant ; and if there be, with
regard to land, industry, poor-laws, or any other question, a just principle adopted in England,
I would endeavour to adopt it in Ireland. And if there be any just principle rejected in Eng
land, which I could stiU discover to be just — I would ask the Imperial Parliament to adopt it in
Ireland. I think there is no humiliation attaches to any Government in Europe — to Austria, for
instance, in its relation to Italy, or even to Russia with regard to Poland, — I believe there is no
humiliation attaches to any Government of Europe at this hour so great as that which attaches to the
successive Governments of this country, from the fact we have ruled Ireland, without dispute, by a
united ParUament for more than two generations, and yet we find it now, by consent of every man,
whether CathoUc or Protestant, pauperised to a great extent, and I believe disloyal and dis
affected to this House and to the English Government, probably more than it has been at any
preceding period in its history. (Oh !) WeU, I only know that I have heard a gentleman — a
Protestant gentleman, a great landowner in the South of Ireland, and at one time holding a
position in this House, say, in the presence of a dozen persons, when answering a question put by
one of our leading statesmen, as to what would be the result if there landed a French force in
Bantry Bay, that he believed that such a landing would be received with universal acclamation.
throughout the whole South of Ireland. I am not responsible for this. I have always
spoken in favour of the most equal justice to that people. To the landowners of Ireland that
inequaUty of which the Irish complain is a sore calamity, and if it did not exist their properties
would be of more value, their homes in the country more happy, their famUies more safe, and
they would have also the consciousness that they were fulfilling the duties which devolve upon
the high stations which they occupy amongst the poor people. WeU, the hon. and learned
gentleman proposes, with regard to the enactment, that you should make that law between

332 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Ireland and England equal. The very fact of your doing that, even if it had no practical result,
would stiU be a balm to the feelings of the people of Ireland ; and I beheve if the npble lord at
the head of the Government could make up his mind to concede this— I call it smaU— concession,
he would be amply compensated in the goodwiU and gratitude of the people of Ireland."
At the suggestion of the member for Dungarvan, Mr. Hennessy with
drew his motion, with the intention of embodying his views in a bill.
Mr. Eoebuck, on the 14th of March, complained, in offensive
language, to Lord Palmerston, that thousands of Irishmen had gone
to North America and enlisted as soldiers, while a very few Englishmen
had enlisted in the Navy of the Confederate States, and asked if the
Government intended to remonstrate with the Federal States. Lord
Palmerston replied that if it could be shown that there were grounds to
entitle them to remonstrate, they would vindicate the honour and
the laws of the country by adequate representations to the Government
to whom the infraction of our laws was imputed. On this matter Mr.
Bright remarked : —
" There is a charming simplicity in the character of the hon. and learned gentleman who now
appeals to the House and the noble lord so fervidly for impartiality between the North and the
South, but I have never heard, I think, on the floor of this House, from any speaker, language so
unworthy of a member of the House when speaking of a foreign Government. In this case it is
foreign only in a certain sense, for it is after all but another English nation that is growing upon
the other side of the Atlantic, aud with none of those differences which, in ordinary cases, would
entitle them to be called foreigners. The hon. gentleman has put a question to the noble lord with
regard to Ireland. If he will recollect what took place last year, he will remember that the noble
lord, speaking on the motion brought forward by the hon. member for Dungarvan (Mr. Maguire),
approved very much of the emigration of a large number of people from Ireland to America. In
fact, it is said the noble lord at the head of the Government generously contributed to assist not
a few poor persons on his own estate to leave Ireland and cross the Atlantic. The right
hon. gentleman, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, last year — and, indeed, three or four nights ago
— made speeches in which he expressed the same sentiments, and approved very much of the
emigration now going on. I showed, I think, that about 60,000 men crossed the Atlantic
from Ireland in the course of last year. The noble lord now tells us that the wages in Ireland
are from Is. to Is. 6d. per day. That, I believe, is not correct. I have it on very good
authority— from Irish gentlemen near me — that the wages of working men in the south-west
of Ireland will not average more than from lOd. to Is. per day. WeU, if that be so, how
dare the hon. and learned gentleman, with his logical mind, how dare he assume that a foreign
Government is breaking international law, and breaking our municipal law, to induce Irishmen to
emigrate to America, when he must know perfectly well that there are overwhelming attractions,
apart from the question of war, which would take Irishmen to America ; and when he knows
further that the bounty for enlistment is not, as the noble lord said, 100 dollars, but very
much nearer £100? The only marvel is that any Irishman who is not the owner of land,

RECRUITING IN NORTH AMERICA. 333
or a man of some capital, should remain in that blighted and unhappy country. Now, I happen
to know the gentleman who fiUs the office of consul for the United States at Liverpool,
Mr. Dudley. Mr. Dudley told me, many months ago, that since the war began, every day,
he believed that his office had been open, he has had to answer questions of men — Englishmen
as well as Irishmen — who came to him to ask him to help them over the Atlantic that they
might enlist in the Northern army. I believe the consul at Manchester could give the same
information, and that the consuls in other parts of the country could say the same thing. There
can be no objection in the American Government employing persons to enlist Irishmen, or
to persuade them to go. The motives which impel them to go are so powerful that the
American Government would show absolute stupidity if it attempted to do that which the
hon. and learned gentleman charges upon it. This, I think, is not at aU unlikely to have
been done. I think that when £100 is given for a recruit in the United States, some sharp
fellow may have found that he could afford to carry Irishmen or Englishmen over there
for nothing, in order that he might receive handsome remuneration for taking them there if the
men chose to enUst and receive the bounty. The hon. and learned gentleman himself, not very
long ago, traveUed through foreign countries, it is said, on commercial speculations. (Mr.
Roebuck : 'It is not true.') Then I retract it if it be not true. But if it be not true, any
American as sharp as the hon. gentleman would easily find out that he might make £10 or £20
for each passenger he took from Ireland to America, provided that when they get there they can
be induced to enlist in the Northern Army. 1 undertake to say that the opinions of the House,
and those who heard the speech of the hon. gentleman, will not be that he is a very fair critic of
what takes place in the United States. More than that — I have no caU whatever — no feeling, no
inclination — to defend the character of the noble lord at the head of the Foreign Office ; but
turning back to the events of the last session, and the part which the hon. gentleman took on the
floor of this House, I undertake to say that there does not exist to my knowledge a Minister, or
a statesman who has occupied the position of Minister, who has done so much to humUiate
this country and the House as the hon. and learned gentleman did last year after he returned
from his expedition to Paris."
A young man of position, named Townley, this year was sentenced to
death for the murder of his sweetheart, named Goodwin, who had broken
off the engagement. A report made under the Lunacy Act, to the effect
that Townley was insane, was submitted to the Home Secretary, Sir
George Grey, who commuted the sentence to penal servitude for life,
although another medical report declared that he was perfectly sane.
About the same time a man named Wright murdered his wife in
London, and he pleaded guilty of the crime, and urged in his
defence that the unfortunate woman had threatened to take his life.
The public contrasted these two murders, and got impressed with the idea
that the one criminal was reprieved because of his high position, while the
other — the poor man— was executed. This general impression was un
just, for Townley was really insane, as his subsequent suicide evidenced.
Accordingly Sir George Grey introduced a Bill for the amendment of the

334 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Insane Prisoners' Act, for the purpose of preventing a recurrence of such
difficulties as had presented themselves in the cases of Townley and
Wright. Mr. Bright took part in the discussion on this Bill, and con
tended that the punishment of death was antagonistic to the best and
noblest sentiments of the noblest portion of the people. On the 3rd of
May Mr. Ewart again brought forward his motion for the abolition of
the punishment of death.
" There can be no doubt whatever that if capital punishment be retained," said Mr. Bright in
the discussion, " and if it be absolutely necessary that there should be a crime caUed murder to
which capital punishment attaches, it is no less necessary that there should be, as there are in
some other countries,, three or four degrees of manslaughter, and that for the highest degree of
manslaughter there shouldbe the highest kind of secondary punishment, and that the power
should be placed in the hands of the jury of determining what should be the particular class in
which the criminal should be placed. There is no doubt that this is necessary to be done. I
think Voltaire — who said a good many things that are worth remembering — remarked that the
English were the only people who murdered by law. And Mirabeau, when in this country,
hearing of a number of persons who had been hanged on a certain morning, said, ' The EngUsh
nation is the most merciless of any that I have heard or read of.' And at this very moment,
when we have struck off within the last fifty years at least a hundred offences which were then
capital, we remain still in this matter the most merciless of Christian countries. If anybody
wishes to satisfy himself upon this point, let him take those late cases in which the right hon.
gentleman has had so much trouble. Take the case of Townley ; take the case of Wright ; take
the case of Hall at Warwick ; and I will take the liberty of repeating — what I said to the right
hon. gentleman when I was permitted to see him on the case of the convict Hall — that there is
not a country in Europe, nor a State among the Free States of America, in which either of those
criminals would have been punished with death. Tet we have gone on leaving the law as it is ;
and the right hon. gentleman, to my utter astonishment, every time this question has been dis
cussed, has given us very much the same speech ' as he has addressed to us to-night : he has
repeated the same arguments for continuing a law which drives him to distraction abnost every
time he has to administer it. 1 am surprised that the right hon. gentleman, who has had to face
the suffering which has been brought on him by this law, has never had the courage to come to
this House and ask it fairly to consider, in the light of the evidence which aU other Governments,
and the laws of aU other countries afford, whether the time has not come when this fearful pun
ishment may be abolished. The right hon. gentleman says the punishment is so terrible that it
will deter offenders from the commission of crime. Of course it is terrible to one just standing
upon the verge of the grave ; but months before, when the crime is committed, when the passion
is upon the criminal, the punishment is of no avail whatsoever. I do not think it is possible to
say too much agamst the argument that, because this is a dreadful punishment, it is very efficient
to deter a criminal from the commission of crime. As the right hon. gentleman proposes to give
a Commission, I shaU not trouble the House with some observations that I had intended to make.
There are, however, two or three cases which have not been mentioned, and which I should like
to bring under the notice of the House. My hon. friend the member for Dumfries referred to
Russia. Russia is a country in which capital punishments have for almost a hundred years been
unknown . . I confess I wonder that all the right hon. gentleman has gone through in these painful
cases has not almost driven him stark mad many times. I wonder that it has not driven him to

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 335
the table of this House to propose, under the solemn feelings with whieh he must often have
been impressed, that the House should take into consideration whether this vast evU — as I
believe it to be — might not be put an end to. Is the Englishman worse than every otlier man P
Is this nation worse than other nations ? Cannot the lenient laws practised with perfect safety
in every other — not every other, but in many other of the nations of the world — be practised in
this nation, and at the same time leave us perfectly secure — at least as much so as we are at
present ? I say, we may wash vengeance and blood from our code without difficulty and without
danger. ... I have confidence too that even you gentlemen opposite, who are so very
timid, always fancying that the ice is going to break under you, wiU be induced to go further
than you seem inclined to do now ; and perhaps the ten or twelve wretched men who are now
hanged annually may be brought down to three or four ; and at last we may come unanimously to
the opinion, that the security of public or private life in England does not depend upon the
public strangling of three or four poor wretches every year. This Parliament is about to expire,
I suppose, before very long — thoughsome say it is to endure during another session; I should be glad
indeed if it might be said of this Parliament, at some future time, that it had dared to act upon
the true lessons and not upon the superstitions of the past ; and that it might be declared to be
the Parliament which destroyed the scaffold and the gallows, in order that it might teach the
people that human Ufe is sacred, and that on that principle alone can human life be secured."
After a long debate, the following resolution was agreed to : —
" That an humble address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that she wiU be graciously
pleased to issue a Royal Commission to inquire into the provisions and operation of the laws
under which the punishment of death is now inflicted in the United Kingdom, and the manner
in which it is inflicted ; and to report whether it is desirable to make any alteration therein."
Mr. Bright entertains the opinion that severe punishments and
halters are not the most efficacious means for raising the morality of a
nation or for preventing outrages against person and property, but that
in proportion as a people become well instructed and comfortable, so will
they become free from crime, and be happy.
The promoters of the Atlantic Telegraph Company dined together at
the Palace Hotel, London, on the 22nd of April, 1864, under the presi
dency of Mr. Cyrus Field ; who, in proposing the health of Mr. Bright,
expressed a wish that the hon. gentleman would visit the United States,
where, he promised him, he would be received with an ovation such as
no living man ever received. The only danger was that all the male
children born in the course of the year in which he might so honour
them would be named after him, and instead of being Browns and
Joneses, they would be all John Brights. Mr. Bright replied : —
" I might very easily rob Mr. Field of the originality of the statement he has made of what
might happen were I to pay a visit to the United States. I have in the course of time received
many letters from gentlemen in his country, and one of them did say there were several penalties

336 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
I should have to endure as the consequences of my visit to America, and one of them was, he
thought, that nearly all the children there would have to be called after me. (Hear, hear, and
laughter.) If this and a great many other dreadful things which he thought would follow my
visit be true, I am, I think, very prudent in staying in this country. I have never been in
America, but for thirty years, which is a long time to look back to, I have had a strong wish to
go there, but most of us Englishmen find so much to do in the conduct and management of our
own regular business, that n six months' absence is not a thing easy to accomplish. . . .
When the news reached us that the last cable was laid, did it not make a revolution and a shock ?
Did not every man feel that a new world and a new time were opened to him P It was, I
recollect, just at the time when some great work was being inaugurated at Cherbourg, under the
auspices of the French Emperor, and which sank into insignificance compared with such glorious
news ; and everybody felt as everybody must have felt four hundred years ago, when the simple
adventurous sailor cf Genoa had opened a new world to the knowledge of mankind. But he
only discovered to Europe what I may be permitted to caU an unoccupied wildernsss ; but tlr.3
project is one to unite thirty miUions of people to the two hundred and fifty miUions who inhabit
this continent of Europe ; and passing from the days of Columbus, I know of no event in history
comparable in grandeur and sublimity (if we look at its results) with that magnificent enterprise
to which Mr. Field has devoted his talents aud his life." (Cheers.)
Mr, Lawson moved the second reading of the Permissive Bill on
the 8th of June ; it was opposed by Captain Jervis. Mr. Bright gave his
opinion on the subject : —
"I believe," he remarked, " there are two modes of remedy: the first of which is the im
provement and instruction of the people — (cheers) — and the second, the special legislation of the
House. Now, I am one of those who look rather to the improvement and education of the
people — (cheers) — for a permanent remedy, and I think it is quite conclusive that that must be
the sheet anchor, as it were, of this question. (Hear, hear.) There are hon. members of this
House older than I am, but I am old enough to remember when drunkenness was ten or twenty
times more common among a particular class of society than it is at present. I have been in
this House twenty years, and during that, time I have often partaken of the hospitaUty of
various members of the House who are in the habit of inviting their friends to dinner, and I
must confess that, during the whole of the twenty years, I have no recollection of having seen
one single person at any gentleman's table who has been in the condition which would be at aU
fairly described by saying he was drunk. (Laughter and cheers.) And I may say more — that I
do not recollect more than two or three occasions during that time in which I have observed, by
the utterance, rapidity of talking, or perhaps a somewhat recklessness of conversation, that any
gentleman had taken so much as tp impair his judgment. (Hear, hear.) That is not the state
of things which prevailed in this country fifty or sixty years ago. (Hear, hear.) We know,
therefore, as respects this class of people, who can always have as much of these pernicious
articles as they desire to have, because the price of them is no object, that temperance has made
great way, and if it were possible to make aU classes in this country as temperate as those of
whom I have just spoken, we should be amongst the very soberest nations of the earth.
(Cheers.) . . . But it may be said, after all this, that there is something still to be done by
special legislation, and I am not disposed to contradict that; and if any member were to
contradict it, it would be going in the face of experience, and certainly in the face of the opinion
which has been universally held by this House. All our legislation on this question has been
special. My hon. friend says he thinks no one would dare to propose to make the sale of

THE PERMISSIVE BILL. 337
intoxicating drinks free — as free, for example, as the sale of bread, potatoes, or any of the
articles of ordinary consumption. If we required no taxes, I do not know how we should treat
this question ; but, requiring taxes as we do, it has been thought in this country, and I suspect in
most other countries too — certainly in many — that there is nothing upon which taxes can be
levied with greater advantage (if I may use the term ' advantage ' in connection with the levying
of any taxes) as upon articles of an intoxicating quality. But having levied these taxes, and
finding the consumption is large, the Government finds it also necessary to provide certain
superintendence by the police ; because, unfortunately, wherever the sale of these articles is
considerable, there is found to be a state of things which is not favourable to obedience to the
law, and which magistrates, policemen, and the law are called in to avert and prevent. We have
this special legislation now, and my hon. friend says that not less than four hundred Acts of
ParUament dealing with this question have been before the House — not aU of them with a view
to prevent the consumption of intoxicating Uquors, but it shows how constant has been
the attention that Parliament has been obliged to pay* to this subject . . . And
now what does my hon. friend propose P He proposes something that is entirely distinct,
and to some extent a revolutionary measure, with regard to this system. He proposes that two-
thirds of the ratepayers of any district, parish, or town shall have the power to decide the whole
of this question ; and I think when the hon. gentleman stated that proposal, an hon. gentleman
on the other side of the House, and an hon. gentleman sitting near me, made gestures as if they
thought the ratepayers did not represent the working classes. But the working classes are rate
payers in a larger number than any other class, for they are generaUy married and have families,
and live in houses that pay taxes ; and therefore if you take the opinion of the ratepayers of this
country on any question, you take in as clear a manner as possible the opinion of the people of
the country. . . . What is meant by the representative system is, not that you should have
the vote of thousands of persons taken upon a particular question of legislation, but that you
should have men selected from those thousands having the confidence of the majority of the
thousands, and that they should meet and should discuss questions for legislation, and should
decide what measures should be enacted ; and therefore in this particular question I should
object altogether to disposing of the interest of a great many men, and of a great many famUies,
and of a great amount of property — I should object altogether to allow such a matter to be
decided by the vote of two-thirds of the ratepayers of any parish or town. By this bill they
would have the power to shut up at once, or rather at the end of the current year, as far as the
sale of- these articles is concerned, every hotel, inn, public-house and beer-shop throughout the
country. I say throughout the country, but of course I allude to such subdivisions of the
eountry as the bill may indicate. There would of course be a difference, for some parishes
would shut them up, and some would not ; but that is not very much an argument against the
bUl. But there might be, and I think there would be, in aU probability, sudden, capricious, and
unjust action under this bUl, which would have a very unfortunate effect upon the interests of
those immediately concerned ; and I think it might also create throughout the country violent
discussions on the question, and I am afraid might even produce a great and pernicious reaction
against the very honest and good objects which my hon. friend desires to carry out. For that
reason, as a member of this House, representing a very large constituency, and having my
sympathies entirely with those who are endeavouring to promote temperance amongst the people,
and after much consideration on this subject, I have never yet seen my way at all to give a vote
which would tend to pass a measure such as that now proposed to the House."
Mr. Bright concluded a lengthy speech by saying that he could not
give his vote in favour of the bill. In another speech in 1874, at the
47

333 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
annual convocation of the Society of Friends, Mr. Bright stated that he
would not say he had abstained for so long as 35 years, but for 34 years
—from the time he became a householder— he had not bought any wine
or spirituous liquors whatever. He had in his house no decanters, and
he thought he had no wine-glasses, and had not had them since 1839,
when he took to housekeeping. It had cost him some inconvenience and
trouble, but altogether he had had no occasion to regret the step he then
took. He did not on this account profess to be better than other people.
The bill was thrown out by a majority of 257.
At a meeting in Birmingham, on the llth of January, 1870, Mr.
Bright again referred to the subject of temperance, by saying : —
" It is a fact that no Government, that no administration, that no laws, and that no amount of
industry or of commerce, that no extent of freedom, can give prosperity and solid comfort in the
homes of the people, unless there be in those homes economy, temperance, and the practice of
virtue. (Great cheering. ) This is needful for all, but it is especiaUy needful — most needful in some
respects — for those whose possessions are the least abundant and the least secured. (Hear, hear.)
If we could subtract from the ignorance, the poverty, the suffering, the sickness, and the crime
which are now witnessed amongst us, the ignorance, the poverty, the suffering, the sickness, the
crime which are caused by one single, but the most prevalent, habit or vice of drinking needlessly,
which destroys the body, and mind, and home, and f amUy , do we not all feel that this country would
be so changed, and so changed for the better, that it would be almost impossible for us to know
it again ? (Loud cheers.) Let me, then, in conclusion, say what is upon my heart to say ; what
I know to be true ; what I have felt every hour of my life when I have been discussing great
questions affecting the condition of the working classes. Let me say this to aU the people : that
it is by a combination of a wise Government and a virtuous people, and not otherwise — mark that,
and not otherwise — that we may hope to make some steps towards that blessed time when there
shall be no longer complaining in our streets, and when our garners shaU be fuU, affording aU
manner of store." (Enthusiastic cheers.)
A discussion arose in the House of Commons on the 12th of May
(1864) on the subject as to increasing the amount to be paid to Mr. J. E.
Herbert for his great picture in the peers' robing room, on which he had
been employed six years and eight months. The original estimate for
the work to be done in fresco was £2,000, but as the Prince Consort
afterwards discovered the superiority of the glass water process, which
was adopted at the request of the Prince, the original contract was
not binding. The picture by competent judges was pronounced to
be in composition, expression, drawing, colouring, and execution
worthy to be ranked with the works of any artist in history. Mr-

A GREAT PICTURE. 339
Bright, in expressing his opinion on the subject under discussion
observed : —
' ' He did not know a great deal about art, but when he went into the room containing the great
picture he felt that he had not known until then that there was a painter in this country who
could execute a work of art such as that. That, he believed, was the impression produced by it
on the minds of a large number more competent than himself to judge. He was not in favour of
a costly decoration of the Houses of Parliament, for he thought the purpose a mistaken one.
Moreover, he was not sure that the picture under discussion was in » room sufficiently large to do
it justice, while the cost of a room fitted in a creditable manner would be large, and he would
have preferred that so much had not been spent in decorating the building. The expenditure,
however, was of a kind the most harmless, aud to many, perhaps, the most gratifying, to which a
portion of the public money could be devoted, and he would, therefore, make no complaint on that
point. If, however, the waUs of the Houses of Parliament were to be decorated, they ought to be
decorated in the best and most lasting manner. It might matter little to those then sitting in the
House whether the picture lasted a few years or a hundred, but there" would come a time, if it were
done in a manner that was not durable, when everybody would regret that the Parliament of this
day was not more attentive to the proper expenditure of its money, and did not care to have these
costly works executed in a way that was more likely to endure than ordinary frescoes appeared to
do. Then if this picture, so great as it was acknowledged to be, was executed in » manner that
would likely give it what was meant by the word ' eternity ' in relation to any work of art, should
not the House behave honourably, generously, and justly to a man who had so much distinguished
himself, and done that which in all probability would attract thousands in times to come to visit
that building ? Having known Mr. Herbert more or less intimately for years, he believed that he
had always exhibited a devotion to his art amounting to perfect enthusiasm, and that if he only
got a crust he must paint by the very nature of his constitution and mind. That was, however,
no reason why, since he had been drawn from his private practice to paint for the public, the public
should not fairly, honestly, and generously pay him. Therefore, although no member of the committee
could move a large vote, it was to be hoped that the right hon. gentleman would take the subject
into consideration in that spirit. He was afraid to name the sum to which the vote ought to be
made up, but he thought the House would consider it no extravagance or waste of public money,
but a just and moderate consideration of Mr. Herbert's claims, if that gentleman were to receive
not less than £5,000 for that picture."
Tlie House agreed to a suggestion thrown out by the Chancellor of
the Exchequer that a small commission of persons, judiciously selected,
should go carefully into the whole question, and advise the Government
impartially, on a view of the whole case, as to the course which ought to
be adopted. Mr. Cobden, ever watchful to promote his theory of non-intervention
by the force of arms in the affairs of other nations, on the 31st of May
(1864) called the attention of the members of the House of Commons to
the dissatisfaction our policy in China had given to merchants and to our
Minister there, Sir Frederick Bruce, who appeared to be in a stata of despair,

340 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
because the policy recommended by him, or carried out there with his
acquiescence, seemed to have failed. Our military commander there, Mr.
Cobden pointed out, now advocated the complete abandonment of that
policy which they were led to suppose was the sole means of restoring
peace, and now an Order in Council had been passed, rescinding a former
order which allowed English officers to take service in the Imperial
army. Sir Frederick Bruce gave it as his opinion that it was the foreign
element in China which had gained all the late successes, and Mr. Cobden
apprehended that when the news arrived in China that those officers
who had led the disciplined contingent of the Chinese army were to be
withdrawn from the service, renewed hope would be given to the insur
gents, and, probably, the result of the interference of our Government
two years ago in China might be to make things there in a more dis
tracted state than they were.
" Looking back over the last thirty years," said Mr. Bright, " perhaps there is scarcely any
portion of the annals of this country during the time of which we have less cause to be proud
than those portions of them which are connected with our relations with China. The member for
Portsmouth ( Sir James Elphinstone) did not agree with my hon. friend the member for Rochdale,
nor did he agree with Lord Naas. He has prophesied everything would come to pass exactly
opposite to what the noble lord has prophesied, and now his only defence of the Government
appears to be that the Government have got them into such inextricable confusion that it is hardly
worth while doing anything to get them out of it ; and the hon. and gallant gentleman proposes
this most incredible plan — that on the banks of that great river, the length of which nobody knows,
but which, as he says, is infested with every kind of ruffian who can make his way to China from
every part of the world, or within its banks, he would have I do not know how many gunboats —
more than those which now lie rotting at Portsmouth — and he would establish, I suppose, a sort of
travelling assize, consisting of magistrates like those presiding in our police offices in London, who
would have to travel aU over the empire of China wherever any European or American ruffian
happened to have settled, and carry out in China, not Chinese laws, but English laws ; and
thus we are to have within the empire of China an administration of justice which has nothing
to do with it, and owes no allegiance to the Chinese Government, but depends altogether, I suppose,
upon the Secretary of State for the Home Department in Downing Street. I say a more ludicrous
— I do not wish to be thought offensive — a more absurd, a more impossible scheme was never
submitted to Parliament. Now we may come, I think, to the conclusion that the House — with
the exception of the two members to whom I have referred, and the noble lord — universally
condemn the policy which has been pursued. (Mr. Kinnaird, ' No, no.') I beg pardon, I did not
see the hon. member in his place. A member of the House asked me this evening in the dining-
room whether anybody had got up to defend the policy of the Government in China, and the
answer I made was that the hon. member for Perth (Mr. Kinnaird) is not in the House, and,
therefore, there is no one to defend it. Why, the policy is condemned by men of every party in
the House. Will any one say that there was anything in the speech of my hon. friend tho member
for Rochdale that exhibited party feeling against the Government or personal feeling against the

SOME OF OUR DEALINGS WITH CHINA. 341
noble lord ? Take the speech of the noble lord the member for Cockermouth (Lord Naas) — a
speech of which, I think, every member who heard him make it will say that it did him infinite credit
— a speech of great research, in which the facts and arguments' were placed before the House in the
clearest manner, while it expressed sentiments of the very highest order. WeU, but that was not
a speech of which any member of the Treasury bench could complain. Take the speech of the
hon. member for Northumberland (Mr. LiddeU), take the speech of the hon. member for Honiton
(Mr. B. Cochrane), and the same appUes to all the speeches that have been made. There has not
been the slightest evidence of party feeling of any kind, and yet from all sides and from every
quarter of the House there has come the same general condemnation of the policy of the Govern
ment, and there has been what I may caU a universal lamentation expressed at the faults that
. have been committed during the last thirty years. It is not in this House only, but at Pekin Sir
Frederick Bruce has shown himself to be ever disgusted at and weary of the policy he was expected
to pursue ; and we know perfectly well that this policy is directly in the teeth of the most em
phatic expressions made on this side of the House, only a few years ago, by the noble lord who is now
the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs ; and it was condemned in language, if possible, more
emphatic by the right hon. gentleman, whom I do not now see in his place, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. And I think I can answer for it that the other members of the Government, if they
were not sUent under the influence of their position in the House, would be ready to express in
language equally decided their condemnation of the course which the Government have pursued in
China. WeU, but we have now got into such a state of difficulty and embarrassment that nobody
seems to know exactly what is to be done. The noble lord (Viscount Palmerston) has been, in
connection with this question, I think, remarkably reckless and unguarded in the statements he
has made, and I think that every prophecy that he has pronounced in past times is now proved
to have been whoUy baseless. He admits to-night, and, in fact, it is a part of his defence, that
everthing that he has done in regard to the more recent policy has been a failure. ( Mr. Kinnaird,
' No, no.') The hon. member for Perth was not here, and did not hear the speech of the noble
lord opposite. (Mr. Kinnaird, 'I did.') Then I beg pardon. WeU, but the noble lord at the
head of the Government rather blamed the noble lord the member for Cockermouth for speaking
upon points of which it was not necessary now to say anything, for they had failed. The noble
lord expresses his regret that they had faUed, but I do not think the House or the country has
any reason to feel any regret that the policy in question has failed. But the noble lord said the
failure is no blame to them. No, the failure is no blame ; but the conception of plans so absurd
and impossible is a blame to them. And when these plans, whieh the Government told us were
to be so advantageous to our interests in China, have failed, surely it is proper for a member of
this House to take note of the faUure, and to ask the Government what pretence they have for
asking the House to trust them further on this question after their failure is patent and clear to
all the world. Now, the noble lord treated us to an observation which is very common, and I have
no doubt many of those Chinese marauders — I mean European and American marauders in China
— would use exactly the same argument. The noble lord said the natural history of all contact
between a highly-civilised and a semi-barbarous nation is that unpleasantnesses arise, disputes are
occasioned, wars foUow disputes, and after wars have been carried on till such a length of time as
the highly-civUised nation has battered pretty nearly to pieces the semi-barbarous nation, then the
semi-barbarous nation becomes entirely submissive, and nothing can possibly be more friendly and
harmonious than the future relations of the two nations. This is what the noble lord has told us.
But the noble lord has not told us that one consequence of his policy as representing a highly-
civUised nation has been to bring into a state of decrepitude, aud almost absolutely to destroy,
the Government of that nation which enjoys the most ancient civilisation existing on the globe.
At this very moment those horrors of which he has spoken, and which so many members of
the House have referred to, have their origin mainly in the policy of the noble lord. The hon.

342 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
and gallant member for Portsmouth, I think, only said what was true when he said that our
insisting upon our entering their great cities, and especially upon breaking the seclusion of their
capital city, had, as it were, peeled off the mysterious and awful character which prevailed with
regard to their Government. In point of fact it has succeeded in shattering the whole poUtical
and social system of an empire comprising one- third or one -fourth of the whole population of the
globe. WeU, if I were in the position of the noble lord, I durst not get up in this House, or any
where else, and speak boastfully of the policy I had pursued, if results so grave and so disastrous
had happened to so great a portion of the human race. But the noble lord had, I wiU say, an
audacity beyond that, for he charged my hon. friend the member for Rochdale, by impUcation, with
having no regard for the condition and interests of the industrious classes in this country. He
attempted to persuade the House that the trade with China— the most miserable trade in the
world when compared with the magnitude of the population — was of so great importance to the
working classes of this country that it was worth while to indulge in the policy which he has
carried on, and to encounter the great expenses which have been incurred. Now I will venture to
say that our trade with China— I speak of our exports from England to China— for many years
back — I believe for thirty years— has not left one single farthing of profit if you will pay out
of it the cost of the wars, of the intermeddling, and the military and naval forces now apparently
permanently established there . . Here we are, a smaU island on the opposite side of the
globe , with a population so small that we are told that we have not an army that we could transport
to Denmark, yet we, somehow or other, take within our great ambition this vast empire of
300,000,000 or 400,000,000 persons ; we are to influence the dynasty that shall sit upon its throne ;
and, in point of fact, we are to direct the whole affairs of that empire as if it were some small
neighbour close to us. I do not know how such an idea could ever get into any man's head ; but
having once entered into the head of the noble viscount it has taken absolute possession of him, and
I suppose at his time of life that he cannot get rid of it. But I protest against it. Let the
noble lord take the course which has been recommended to him to-night by several hon. gentlemen,
of abstaining religiously from the slightest interference between two parties in China; to teaching,
I will not say the merchants, but that other class, none of which I hope are to be included iu the
list of English merchants — I mean those rude and unprincipled adventurers who abound in China
— -that it is not the intention of the English Government that the English army and navy shall
take any step in China to defend them from whatever misfortunes may happen to them. It is a
monstrous f oUy that the population of this country, whose lot in many cases, is so hard and toUing
and so suffering in comparison with us who are here, should be taxed year after year to carry on
a policy which for thirty years has covered us with discredit, and has whoUy failed, and that this
poUcy should be carried on only to please a curious crotchet which has taken possession of the noble
lord at the head of the Government — a crotchet which is not participated in, I believe, by a single
member of his Cabinet, which this House is wUling wholly to repudiate, and which, I believe, in
every society in England where the question is discussed, receives the condemnation which it
has received in Parliament to-night. I do hope the noble lord wiU now, when he sees the entire
failure of aU his plans and of all his prophecies, for once come to the conclusion that he is not
inf aUible ; and that good sense and that wisdom which spring from experience, and which have
been shown in the discussion to-night, ought rather to govern a great question of foreign policy
like this than the violent prejudices which the noble lord has so passionately cherished for thirty
years, that they seem at last to have got the better of his reason and his judgment."
In August, 1864, two noble trees, three hundred feet high, and
twenty feet in diameter, and consequently upwards of sixty feet in
circumference, growing in " Big Grove," San Francisco, were christened

COBDEN'S LAST VISIT TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 343
by the inhabitants of the district by the names of " John Bright " and
" Eichard Cobden," out of respect for the champions of the Union cause
in England. Two oblong tablets of white Californian marble, bearing
the respective names, were fastened to the trees.
Mr. Cobden addressed his constituents in Messrs. Eobinson's machine
works, Fishwick Street, Eochdale, on the 23rd of November, 1864, and
about 5,000 persons were accommodated within that extensive building.
Mr. Alderman Tatham occupied the chair. Mr. Bright, on account of the
death of his son, Leonard, at Llandudno, on the 7th of the same month,
was prevented from being present, and at the time of the meeting was
staying at Leamington. Mr. Cobden expressed the hope that Mr. Bright
might " take consolation by the consciousness of the deep feeling of sym
pathy and sorrow with which his bereavement had been learned." The
absence of Mr. Bright threw a depressing influence over the meeting,
and it was quite apparent that the sympathetic feeling was general. Mr.
Cobden's speech ranged over the whole field of political controversy,
sifted every question of foreign and home policy, and illuminated
with the light of genius even the darkest recesses of the Schleswig-
Holstein quarrel. It was considered a very able speech ; and Mr. Bright,
when he read it, remarked that he wondered how Cobden could make
such a speech when times were so dull.
The next evening Mr. Cobden met about two hundred of the leading
Liberals of Eochdale at Beechwood, the residence of the late Mr. George
Tawke Kemp, J. P., and in relating the occurrence to a friend, stated that
he spent the whole of the evening in shaking hands and incessantly
talking to relays of friends, and that he would have been well enough if
he could have gone to bed for four-and-twenty hours after the speech.
The fatigue, the exposure, and the worry of the long homeward journey
brought on " nervous asthma," which so obstructed his breathing that
he could hardly move a limb, and an attack of bronchitis threatened to
extend to his lungs. For several months he did not venture out of his
residence, on account of the weather being so severe, and he longed for
the summer.
The Birmingham new Exchange was opened by the Mayor of that

344 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
town on the 2nd of January, 1865. At the luncheon, Mr. Bright
said : —
" I think that manufacturers and merchants, as a rule, have generaUy been either too
modest, or they have not been sufficiently acquainted with their true position. My opinion is
—looking at the course of history— that merchants and manufacturers, in the aggregate, are
graduaUy becoming much more important in the world than warriors and statesmen— (applause)
—and even than monarchs themselves, for it is obvious to me that the power of these heretofore
great authorities is waning, and that in every part of the world the power of the great industrial
interest is sensibly waxing. (Applause.) But if we were to take down the volume of history
which may be called the chart of the past ages, we should see, I think clearly, that a stream of
commerce runs close alongside the stream of freedom and civilisation. (Cheers.) It is a long
time to look back to those old merchants and mariners who are said to have come from the coast
of Asia to this country in pursuit of one of the produces of our mines. But the Phcenicians
were a great people because they were merchants, and given to maritime pursuits, and it needs but
the most superficial knowledge of history to enable us to remember that from them came the arts,
the civilisation, and the greatness of the Greek States in Europe, and at the same time the great
ness and commercial splendour of the city of Carthage on the African continent. From them and
from Greece came the populous commercial colonies of Italy and Sicily ; and Carthage, though
comparatively early destroyed, yet left its traces upon France and upon Spain. Then, coming
down to the period where history is more complete and more accurate, we find that in the cities
of the north of Italy commerce is attended by arts and letters, and freedom and civilisation, to
an extent which, considering the conditions of other parts of the world, is at least beautiful to
contemplate and most remarkable. And the great commercial republics of Genoa and Yenice
have left their mark in history, which time itself can never efface. (Cheers.) Coming down to a
period somewhat later, we find the commercial cities of the Netherlands taking a part in the
history of Europe equaUy important, and being themselves equaUy devoted to arts and civUi-
sation and freedom. Passing the narrow Straits and the narrow Channel, and coming to our
own loved land, we find here that precisely as commerce has extended and industry has been
respected, towns and cities have grown, and populations have congregated together ; and from
that source, and not from monarchs or from great lords of the soil, but from that source mainly,
has come whatever there is of social, or civil, or religious, or industrial freedom to the inhabitants
of this island." (Cheers.)
Mr. Bright next addressed his constituents in the Birmingham Town
Hall, principally on Parliamentary Eeform, on the 18th of January.
He spoke for an hour and thirty-five minutes, remarking : —
"We are proud of our country; and there are many things in it which, as far as men
may rightly be proud, we may be proud of. We may be proud of this : that England is the
ancient country of Parliaments. We have had here, with scarcely an intermission, Parliaments
meeting constantly for six hundred years ; and doubtless there was something of a Parliament
even before the Conquest. England is the mother of Parliaments. I will undertake to sa,j,
with a little latitude of expression, that Lord John RusseU, before he abandoned the cause
of Reform— perhaps even since— talked very much in the daytime, and in all probability dreamt
in the night, of the time when aU countries in Europe would be strictly constitutional, and there
would be a representative assembly after his own heart. If this be so, I ask you, men of
Birmingham here— a fair representation of the great mass of the five miUions throughout

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 345
the United Kingdom— I ask you why you should be thus treated in your own land P Tou know
the boast- we have of what takes place when negro slaves land in England; you know what one
of our best poets has said, that if their lungs but breathe our air, that moment they are free ; they
touch our country, and their shackles faU. But how is it with an Englishman P An English
man, if he goes to the Cape, can vote ; if he goes further, to Australia, to the nascent empires of
the New World, he can vote ; if he goes to the Canadian Confederation, he can vote ; and if he
goes to those grandest colonies of England not now dependent upon the English Crown, there,
in twenty free, and, in the whole, in thirty-five different States, he can give his free and
independent vote. It is only in his own country, on his own soil, where he was born, the
very soU which he has enriched with his labour and with the sweat of his brow, that he is denied
this right which in every other community of Englishmen in the world would be freely
accorded to him. It may happen, as it happened thirty years ago, that the eyes of the five
miUions aU through the United Kingdom may be fixed with an intense glare upon the doors
of ParUament ; it was so in the years 1831-32. There are men in this room who felt then,
and know now, that it required but an accident— but one spark to the train— and this country
would have been in the throes of revolution ; and these gentlemen who are so alarmed now lest a
man who Uves in a £10 house in a county, and a £6 house in a borough, should have a vote,
would have repented in sackcloth and ashes that they had ever said one word or given one vote
against Lord Grey's Reform Bill. I say that accidents always are happening, not to individuals
only, but to nations. It was the accident of the French Revolution of 1830 that preceded that
great movement in this country. Tou may have accidents again, but I do not hold that to
be statesmanship which aUows the security, the tranquillity, the loyalty of a people to be disturbed
by any accident which they are able to control. If the five millions should once unitedly fix
their eyes with an intense look upon the door of that House where my hon. friend and I expect
so soon to enter, I would ask, who should say them nay ? Not the mace upon the table of
the House ; not the four hundred easy gentlemen of the House of Lords who lounge in and out
of that decorated chamber ; not the dozen gentlemen who call themselves statesmen, and who
meet in Downing Street ; perhaps not even those more appalling and more menacing personages
who have their lodgment higher up Whitehall. I say there is no power in this country — as
opinion now stands, and as combination is now possible — there is no power ih this country
that can say ' Nay ' for one single week to the five miUions, if they are intent upon making their
way within the doors of Parliament. . . . But this, I suspect, is what they fear. I have
sought a good deal into this question, and it seems to me as if they had a notion that in
this country we have some institutions which have come down to us from the Middle Ages — from
what some people caU the Dark Ages — and that these institutions may not permanently harmonise
with the intelUgence and the necessities of the nineteenth century in which we live. The
' institutions ' are truly safe enough if the Government be in the hands of the institution ; and if
the Peerage and the EstabUshed Church are to rule in England, then I presume that the
Peerage and the Established Church, in their present condition, will be permanently safe ; and
if the great patronage of our vast expenditure is to be dispensed perpetually amongst the ruling
class, the ruling class as a matter of course will take extreme care of the patronage. There
is something very sacred in that patronage. There are many families in this country with long
lines of ancestry, who, if patronage were curtailed, would feel very much as some of us feel
in Lancashire when the American war has stopped our supplies of cotton. They look upon
patronage as a holy thing, not to be touched by profane hands. I have no doubt they have
in their minds the saying of a great friend of mine, though he is an imaginary character — I mean
Hosea Biglow, the author of the Biglow Papers. He says —
' It is something like a fulfilling the prophecies,
When all the first families have all the best offices. '

346 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
.... England has long been famous for the enjoyment of personal freedom by her people.
They are free to think, they are free to speak, they are free to write; and England has been
famed of late years, and is famed now the world over, for the freedom of her industry and
the greatness and freedom of her commerce. I want to know, then, why it is that her people
should not be free to vote ? (Cheers.) Who is there that wiU meet me on this platform, or will
stand upon any platform, and will dare to say, in the hearing of an open meeting of his
countrymen, that these mUlions for whom I am now pleading are too degraded, too vicious, and
too destructive to be entrusted with the elective franchise ? 1, at least, wiU never thus slander
my countrymen. I claim for them the right of admission, through their representatives, into the
most ancient and the most venerable Parliament which at this hour exists among men ; and
when they are thus admitted, and not till then, it may be truly said that England, the august
mother of free nations, herself is free." (Great cheering.)
On the 10th of February Mr. Cobden received a letter from Mr.
Gladstone on behalf of the Government, offering him the lucrative office
of Chairman of the Board of Audit, which was worth £2,000 a year.
Mr. Cobden, after giving the subject two days' consideration, declined it,
stating that : —
" Owing to the state of my health, I am precluded from taking any office which involves the
performance of stated duties at all seasons of the year, or leaves a sense of responsibiUty for the
fulfilment of those duties by others."
He stated further —
" But were my case different, stiU, while sensible of the kind intentions which prompted the
offer, it would assuredly not be consulting my welfare to place me in the post in question, with
my known views respecting the nature of our finance. BeUeving, as I do, that while the income
of the Government is derived in a greater proportion than in any other country from the
taxation of the humblest classes, its expenditure is to the last degree wasteful and indefensible, it
would be almost a penal appointment to consign me for the remainder of my life to the task
of passively auditing our finance accounts. I fear my health would sicken and my days be
shortened by the nauseous ordeal. It wUl be better that I retain' my seat in ParUament, as long
as I am able in any tolerable degree to perform its duties, where I have at least the opportunity
of protesting, however unavailingly, against the Government expenditure."
Lord Eobert Montague, in moving the second reading of the
Eiver-Water Protection Bill, on the evening of the 8th of March,
1865, explained to the House that ten years ago the committee on the
Nuisance Eemoval Bill had inquired into the subject, and ascertained
that our rivers had become absolutely pestilential, and were, in fact,
nothing but main sewers, and had urged the Government to take steps
for the removal pf such disastrous influences. The Sewage Commission,

THE RIVER-WATER PROTECTION BILL. 347
which reported in 1861, mentioned by name upwards of one (hundred
rivers which they affirmed to be in an absolutely poisonous'' condition.
The Fishery Commission gave a catalogue of as many more rivers which
were as bad. Sir George Grey, in opposing the bill, charged the noble
lord with exaggerating the evils which existed, and drawing a melancholy
picture of England being reduced to a wilderness from the rapid decrease
in the fertility of the soil. Sir George believed that the fertility of the
soil, so far from decreasing, was increasing. The provisions of the] bill
for securing the purity of streams he regarded as incomplete, and hoped
the bill would not be passed to a second reading. Mr. Kendall informed
the House that he knew streams in Cornwall in which there had been
trout, though at present there were none, but not £5 worth of trout had
been ever taken in them, whereas in one year more than £100,000 was
divided as the profits of the three mines which polluted those streams.
When Lord Eobert Montague talked of the loss of fish as the loss of
capital, what did he imagine would be the loss to England from the
closing of her mines ?
Mr. Bright reminded the members that
" He had sat on the committee by whose report it was said the bill was suggested, and he
thought the question very difficult when he went into that committee, but he thought it stiU more
difficult when he came out. He did not think that the evidence laid before the committee, or that its
report, impartiaUy considered, gave any countenance to the measure which the noble lord had
brought in. In regard to the particular clause to which his hon. friend (Mr. Jackson) had
referred, a more sweeping or unjust clause was never perhaps introduced into a biU before Par
liament. The noble lord had referred to a mine in Wales with which he (Mr. Bright) had some
connection, and about whieh he knew a good deal. He could assure the noble lord that the extract
which he had read from the Fishery Commissioners was almost altogether an untrue and very
unfair statement of everything that had taken place with regard to that mine. They found that half-
a-dozen gentlemen who were fond of salmon fishing did not appear to consider it of the sUghtest
importance that three hundred or four hundred men and their families obtained a good Uving by
their honest industry in a mine in the Welsh mountains; and unless the mine-owners were-wiUing
to do aU kinds of impracticable things, which he believed would have no result, they were charged
by the Fishery Commissioners with caring nothing for the purity of the river Dovey. He knew
that the directors were most anxious to do anything that could be done, but these were mines in
such a position that scarcely anything could be doue without shutting up the mines altogether.
The owners would only be too glad to expend the £500 to which the noble lord referred, to put an
end to a grievance which he believed was greatly exaggerated, but they had abstained from- doing
so, because they were never able to determine that the expenditure of the money would be of the
slightest advantage. He might say without any exaggeration that during the last three years

348 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
the fishing in the river had been better than it had been for twenty years before, although the
mine had been yielding double and treble the quantity of ore that it used to do. The increased
productiveness of the mine had not damaged the fish in the river. The noble lord, he was
sure, was not weU acquainted with the state of matters throughout the country. He remembered
a Swiss coming down to Manchester to be teacher of French, in which, he was happy to say, he
succeeded very weU. The Swiss was very fond of fishing, to which he was accustomed in the
rivers of Switzerland ; and the first morning after he came down he got up early, in order to fish
in the stream that ran through the town. With his line, his rod, and his fly, he went out, and
expected to have a good basket of trout to take home before breakfast. Of course he was very much
mistaken — the river, no doubt, was as black as ink, and the noble lord would have been horrified if
he had stood on the banks of it. But there were interests concerned in this bill ten thousand times
greater than the interests of the fisheries, and the sentiments which the noble lord represented.
If this bill were to pass the House in its present shape, or anything like its present shape, or if
its principles were sanctioned, it would be tantamount to creating » stoppage throughout the
country, and would probably end in a revolution of some kind — a revolution from which the noble
lord would not derive profit or reputation. He (Mr. Bright) thought he would best consult the
objects he had in view by withdrawing the bUl ; for he was sure the House would never pass a
bill involving such extraordinary remedies as the noble lord had proposed, for a grievance the
existence of which, to a certain extent, they were aU prepared to admit."
Lord Eobert Montague adopted Mr. Bright's advice by withdrawing
the bill.
Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald on the 3rd of March introduced into the
House of Commons the subject of the defences of Canada, which led to
a lively debate. Mr. Bright's speech on this occasion was eloquent and
impressive throughout. Although his sentiments were not palatable to
the great body of his hearers, he absorbed the attention of a full House,
and sat down amidst the general cheering of all parties. : — -
" I am not sure that I should have addressed the House on this occasion but for the observa
tions which have been made by the noble lord. I think he has been perhaps a little more frank
in his declarations on this occasion, and in pointing out the real thing which I suspect is passing
in his mind, and in the minds of very many members of the House who have made no statement
of their own opinions during this debate. I hope the debate will be useful, although I am
obliged to say, while I admit the importance of the question that has been brought before us,
that I think it is one of some delicacy. That it is important is clear, because it refers to the
possibility of war between this country and the United States, and its delicacy arises from this—
that it is very difficult to discuss this question without saying things which tend rather in the
direction of war than in the direction of peace. The difficulty which is now before us is this—
that there is an extensive colony or dependency of this country lying adjacent to the United
States, and if there be a war party in the United States— a party hostile to this country— that
circumstance affords to it a very strong temptation to enter without much hesitation into a war
with England, because it may feel that through Canada it can inflict a great humiUation upon
this country. And at the same time it is perfectly weU known to aU inteUigent men, especially
to the statesmen and public men of the United States— it is as weU known to them as it is to us

THE DEFENCES OF CANADA. 349
— that there is no power whatever in this United Kingdom to defend successfuUy the territory
of Canada against the power of the United States. Now we ought to know that, in order to put
ourselves right upon this question, and that we may not talk folly and be called upon hereafter
to act foUy. The noble lord at the head of the Government — or the Government, at any rate —
is responsible for baring compelled this discussion ; because if a Vote is to be asked for during
this session — and it is only the beginning of otlier Votes — it is clearly the duty of the House to
bring the subject under discussion. I think the Vote now is particularly inopportune for many
reasons, but especially as we have heard from the Governor-General of Canada that they are
about, in the North American Provinces, to call into existence a new nationality ; and I for one
shaU certainly object to the taxes of this country being heedlessly expended in behalf of any
nationality but our owu. Now, what I should like to ask the House is this — first of aU, will
Canada attack the States ? Clearly not. Next, will the States attack Canada — I am keeping
out of view England altogether ? Clearly not. There is not a man in the United" States,
probably, whose voice or whose opinion would have the smaUest influence in that country, who
would recommend or desire that an attack should be made by the United States upon Canada
with a view to its forcible annexation to the Union. There have been lately, as we know,
dangers on the frontier. The Canadian people have been no wiser than some members of this
House — or than a great many men amongst the richer classes in this country. And when the
refugees from the South — I am not speaking now of respectable and honourable men from the
South, many of whom have left that country during these troubles, and for whom I feel the
greatest commiseration — but I mean the ruffians from the South, who in large numbers have
entered Canada, and have employed themselves there in a course of policy likely to embroil us
with the United States — I say that the iieople of Canada have treated these men with far too
much consideration. They expressed very openly opinions hostile to the United States, whose
power lay close to them. I wiU not go into a detail of that which we are aU sufficiently weU
acquainted with — the seizing of American ships on the Lakes, the raid into the State of
Vermont, the robbing of a bank, the MUing of a man in his own shop, the stealing of horses in
open day, and another transaction of which we have very strong proof, that men of this class
actuaUy conspired to set fire to the largest cities of the Union. All these things have token
place, and the Canadian Government made scarcely any sign. I believe that an appUcation was
made to the noble lord at the head of the Foreign Office nearly a year ago, that he should
stimulate the Canadian Government to some steps to avoid the dangers that have since arisen ;
but with that sort of negligence which has been so much seen here, nothing was done until the
American Government and people, aroused by the nature of these transactions, showed that they
were no longer about to put up with them. Then the Canadian Government and people took a
Uttle notice. Now, Lord Monck, the Governor-General of Canada — about whose appointment I
have heard some people complain, saying that he was a mere follower of the noble lord at the
head of the Government, who lost his election and was therefore sent out to govern a province —
Lord Monck, I am bound to say, from all I have heard from Canada, has conducted himself in a
manner very serviceable to the colony, and with the greatest possible propriety as representing
the Sovereign there. Lord Monck has been all along favourable to the United States, and I
beUeve his Cabinet has also. I know that at least the most important newspaper there has
always been favourable to fhe North. Still nothing was done ; but the moment these troubles
arose then everything was done. Volunteers have been sent to the frontier; the trial of the
raiders has been proceeded with, and possibly they will be surrendered; and the Canadian
ChanceUor of the Exchequer has proposed a vote in their House of Parliament to restore to the
persons at St. Albans, who were robbed by the raiders, the fifty thousand dollars that were taken
from them. And what is the state of things now ? There is the greatest possible calm on the
frontier. The United States have not a word to say against Canada. The Canadian people have

350 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
found that they were in the wrong, and have now returned to their right mind. There is not a
man in Canada at this moment, I believe, who has any idea that the United States Government
has the smallest notion of attacking them, now or at any future time, on account of anything
that has transpired between the United States and Canada during these trials. But if there
comes a war in which Canada shaU suffer and be made a victim, it wUl be a war got up between
the Government of Washington and the Government of London. And it becomes us to inquire
whether that is at all probable. Is there anybody in this House in favour of such a war P I
notice with great delight-and I was not a false prophet when I said some time ago that some
day it would be so— I say I notice with delight the changed tone manifested here with regard to
these American questions. Even the noble lord the member for Stamford (Lord Robert Cecil)
can speak without anger, and without any of that ill-feeling which I am sorry to say on past
occasions he has manifested in discussing these questions. Now, I believe there are no men out
of Bedlam— or at least who ought to be out oE it— and I suspect there are very few men in
Bedlam, who are in favour of our going to war with the United States. And in taking this view
I am not arguing that it is because we see the vast naval and military power and apparently
inexhaustible resources of that country. I wiU not assume that you or my countrymen have
come to the conclusion that it is better for us not to make war with America, because you and
they find her with a strength that you did not even suspect : I will say that it is upon higher
grounds that we are aU against a war with the United States. Our history for the last two
hundred years, and farther back, is a record of calamitous, and for the most part unnecessary,
wars. We have had enough of whatever a nation can gain by military successes and miUtary
glory. I will not turn to the disasters that might follow to our commerce, nor to the widespread
ruin that might be occasioned. I will say that we are a wiser and a better people than we were
in these respects, and that we should regard a war with the United States as even a greater
crime, if needlessly entered into, than war with almost any other country in the world. Looking
at our Government, we have preserved, with a good many blunders — one or two of which I shaU
comment upon by-and-bye — neutrality during this great struggle. We have had it stated in this
House, and we have had a motion in this House, that the blockade was ineffective and ought to
be broken. Men of various classes, some of them agents of the Richmond conspiracy — persons,
it is said, of influence from France — aU these are reported to have brought their influence to
bear on the noble lord at the head of the Government and his coUeagues, with a view of inducing
them to take part in this quarrel, and all this has failed to break our neutrality. Therefore, I
should say, we may clearly come to the conclusion that England is not in favour of war ; and if
there should be any act of war, or any aggression whatever, out of which Canada wiU suffer, I
believe honestly that it will not come from this country. That is a matter which gives me great
satisfaction, and I believe the House will agree with me that I am not misstating the case.
Now, let us ask, is the United States for war P I know the noble lord the member for
Stamford (Lord Robert Cecil) has a lurking idea that there is some danger from that
quarter ; I am not at aU certain that it does not prevail in other minds, and in many
minds not so acute as that with which the noble lord is gifted. If we had at the Bar of the
House Lord Russell as representing the English Government, and Mr. Adams as the repre
sentative of the Government of President Lincoln, and if we were to ask their opinion, they
would tell us that which the Secretary for the Colonies has this night told us — that the relations
between the two countries, so far as it is possible to discover them, are perfectly amicable ; and I
know from the communications between the Minister of the United States and our Minister for
Foreign Affairs that they have been growing more and more amicable for many months past. Now,
I take the liberty of expressing this opinion— that there has never been au Administration in the
United States, since the time of the Revolutionary War up to this hour, more entirely favourable to
peace with aU foreign countries, and more especiaUy favourable to peace with England, than the

THE ORIGIN OF PANICS. 351
Government of which President Lincoln is the head. I wiU undertake to say that the most
exact investigator of what has taken place wiU not be able to point to a single word he (Presi
dent Lincoln) has said, or a single line he has written, or a single act he has done, since his first
accession to power, that betrays anger against this country, or any of that vindictive feeling
which some persons here may imagine to inflame the breasts of the President and his Cabinet.
Then if Canada is not for war, if England is not for war, aud if the United States are not for
war, whence is the war to come ? That is what I should like to ask. I wish the noble lord the
member for Stamford had been a little more frank. I should like to ask whence comes the
anxiety, which undoubtedly to some extent prevails P It may be assumed even that the Govern
ment is not whoUy free from it ; for they have shown it in an almost ludicrous manner by
proposing a vote of £50,000. It is said the newspapers have got into a sort of panic. They can
do that any night between the hours of six and twelve o'clock, when they write their articles.
They are either very courageous or very panic-stricken. It is said that ' the City ' joins in this
feeUng. We know what ' the City ' means — the right hon. gentleman alluded to it to-night. It
means that the people who deal in shares — though that does not describe the whole of them —
' the moneyed interest ' of the City, are alarmed. WeU, I never knew the City to be right. Men
who are deep in great monetary transactions, and who are steeped to the lips sometimes in
perilous speculations, are not able to take broad and dispassionate views of political questions of
this nature. As to the newspapers, I agree with my hon. friend the member for Bradford (Mr.
W. E. Forster) when, referring to one of them in particular, he intimated that he thought its
course was indicated by a wish to cover its own confusion. Surely, after four years' uninter
rupted publication of Ues with regard to America, I should think it has done pretty much to
destroy its influence on foreign questions for ever. But there is a much higher authority — that is
the authority of the Peers. I do not know why we should be so much restricted with regard to
the House of Lords in this House. I think I have observed that in their place they are not so
squeamish as to what they say about us. It appeared to me that in this debate the right hon.
gentleman (Mr. DisraeU) felt it necessary to get up and endeavour to defend his chief. Now, if
I were to give advice to the hon. gentlemen opposite, it would be this— for while stating that
during the last four years many noble lords in the other House have said fooUsh things, I think
I should be uncandid if I did not say that you also have said foolish things — learn from the
example set you by the right hon. gentleman. He, with a thoughtf ulness and statesmanship
which you do not aU acknowledge— he did not say a word from that bench likely to create
difficulty with the United States. I think his chief and his followers might learn something
from his example. But I have discovered one reason why in that other place mistakes of this
nature are so often made. Not long ago there was a great panic raised, very much by what was
said in another place about France. Now an attempt is made there to create a panic upon this
question. In the haU of the Reform Club there is affixed to the wall a paper which gives a tele
graphic account of what is being done in this House every night, and what is also being done in
the other House and I find almost every night from the beginning of the session that the only
words that have appeared on the side which is devoted to a record of the proceedings of the
House of Lords are these, ' Lords adjourned.' The noble lord at the head of the Government
is responsible for much of this. He has brought this House into nearly the same condition. We
do very Uttle, and they do absolutely nothing. All of us in our younger days, I am quite sure,
were taught by those who had the care of us a verse which was intended to inculcate the virtue
of industry. One couplet was to this effect—
' Satan still some mischief finds
For idle hands to do. '
And I do not beUeve that men, however high in station, are exempt from that unfortunate effect

352 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
which arises to all of us from a course of continued icUeness. But I should like to ask this House in
a most serious mood, what is the reason that any man in this country has now more anxiety with
regard to the preservation of peace with the United States than he had a few years ago ? Is
there not a consciousness in our heart of hearts that we have not during the last five years be
haved generously to our neighbours? Do not we feel in some sort a pricking of^ con
science, and are we not sensible that conscience tends to make us cowards at this particular
juncture ? I shaU not review the past transactions with anger, but with feelings of sorrow ; for
I maintain, and I think history will bear out what I say, that there is no generous and high-minded
Englishman who can look back upon the transactions of the last four years without a feeling of
sorrow at the course we have pursued on some important occasions. As I am wishful to speak with a
view to a better state of feeling, both in this country and in the United States, I shall take the
liberty, if the House will permit me for a few minutes, to refer to two or three of these trans
actions, where, I think, though perhaps we were not in the main greatly wrong, yet in some
circumstances we were so far unfortunate as to have created an irritation which at this moment
we wish did not exist. The hon. member for Horsham (Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald) referred to the
course ta':eu by the Government with regard to the acknowledgment of the beUigerent rights of
the South. Now I have never been one to condemn the Government for acknowledging- those
belligerent rights, except upon this ground— I think it might be logically contended that it
might possibly have become necessary to take that step— that the time and manner in which
it was done were most unfortunate, and could not but produce very evU effects. Going
back nearly four years, we recoUect what occurred when the news arrived of the .
first shot having been fired at Fort Sumter. That, I think, was about the 12th of April.
Immediately after that time it was announced that a new Minister was coming to this country.
Mr. Dallas had intimated to the Government that as he did not represent the new President he
would rather not undertake anything of importance; but that his successor was on his way
and would arrive on such a day. When a man leaves New Tork on a given day you can calcu
late to about twelve hours when he will be in London. Mr. Adams, I think, arrived in London
about the 13th of May, and when he opened his newspaper next morning he found the procla
mation of neutrality, acknowledging the belligerent rights of the South. I say that the proper
course to have taken would have been to have waited till Mr. Adams arrived here, and to have
discussed the matter with him in a friendly manner, explaining the ground upon which the Eng
Ush Government had felt themselves bound to issue that proclamation, and representing that it
was not done in any manner as an unfriendly act towards the United States Government. But
no precaution whatever was taken : it was done with unfriendly haste ; and it had this effect :
that it g'ave comfort and courage to the conspiracy at Montgomery and at Richmond, and caused
great grief and irritation amongst that portion of the people of America who were most strongly
desirous of maintaining friendly relations between their country and England. ... I
believe, on the other hand, that the American people, when this excitement is over, wiU be
wUling, so far as regards any aggressive acts against us, to bury in obUvion transactions which
have given them much pain, and they will probably make an aUowance, which they may fairly
make — that the people of this country, even those high in rank and distinguished in culture, have
had a very inadequate knowledge of the transactions which have reaUy taken place in that
country since the beginning of the war. Now, it is on record that when the author of ' The
DecUne and FaU of the Roman Empire ' was about beginning his great work, David Hume wrote
a letter to him, urging him not to employ the French, but the English tongue, because, he said,
' our establishments in America promise a superior stability and duration to the English lan
guage.' How far the promise has been in part fulfilled, we who are living now can teU. But
how far it wUl be more largely and more completely fulfilled in after times, we must leave for
after times to teU. I believe, however, that in the centuries which are to come, it wiU be the

FORTIFYING QUEBEC. 353
greatest pride and the highest renown of England, that from her loins have sprung a hundred — it
may be two hundred — millions of men to dweU and to prosper on the continent which the old
Genoas gave to Europe. Now, sir, if the sentiment which I have heard to-night shall become
the sentiment of tho Parliament and the people of the United Kingdom, and if the moderation
which I have described shaU mark the course of tho Government and people of the United States,
then, notwithstanding some present irritation and some fresh distrust — and I have faith, mind,
both in us and in them — I believe that these two great commonwealths may march on abreast,
parents and guardians of freedom and justice, wheresoever their language shall be spoken and their
power shall extend." (Great cheering.)
Lord Hartington, a few days after, proposed a vote of £50,000 for
the fortification of Quebec, being part of a sum of £200,000 which would
be asked for the defence of Canada. Mr. Bright opposed the vote, but
the motion was carried by a large majority.
" The right hon. gentleman (Mr. Disraeli) said that he approached the military question with great
diffidence, and I was very glad to see any signs of diffidence in that quarter. After that explanation
he asked the House with a triumphant air whether there is any difficulty in defending a frontier
of one thousand or fifteen hundred miles, and whether the practicability of doing so is a new
doctrine in warfare. But one thousand or fifteen hundred miles of frontier to defend at the centre
of your power is one thing, but at three thousand or four thousand miles from the centre it is an
entirely different thing. I venture to say that there is not a man in this House, or a sensible man
out of it, who, apart from the consideration of this vote or some special circumstances attending
it, beUeves that the people of this country could attempt a successful defence of the frontier of
Canada against the whole power of the United States. I said the other night that I hoped we
should not now talk folly, and hereafter, in the endeavour to be consistent, act folly. We all know
perfectly weU that we are talking folly when we say that the Government of this country would
send either ships or men to make an effectual defence of Canada against the power of the United
States, supposing war to break out. Understand, I am not in the least a believer in the proba
bility of war, but I wUl discuss the question for one moment as if war were possible. I suppose
some men in this House think it probable. But if it be possible or probable, and if you have to
look this difficulty in the face, there is no extrication from it but in the neutrality or independence
of Canada. I agree with those members who say that it is the duty of a great empire to defend
every portion of it. I admit that as a general proposition, though hon. gentlemen opposite, and
some on this side, do not apply that rule to the United States. But, admitting that rule, and
supposing that we are at all points unprepared for such a catastrophe, may we not, as reasonable
men, look ahead, and try if it be not possible to escape from it p (An hon. member, ' Run
away p ') No, not by running away, though there are many circumstances in which brave men run
away ; and you may get into difficulty on this Canadian question, which may make you look back
and wish that you had run away a good many times ago. I object to this vote on a ground which
I believe has not been raised by any member in the present discussion. I am not going to say
that the expenditure of fifty thousand pounds is a matter of great consequence to this country,
that the expenditure of this money in the proposed way will be taken as a menace by the United
States. I do not think that this can be fairly said ; for whether building fortifications at Quebec
be useless or not, such a proceeding is not likely to enable the Canadians to overrun the State of
New Tork. The United States, I think, wiU have no right to complain of this expenditure. The
utmost it can do will be to show them that some persons, and perhaps the Government of this
country, have some little distrust of them, and so far it may do injury. I complain of the expen
diture and the policy announced by the Colonial Secretary, on a ground which I thought ought to
43

354 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
have been urged by the noble lord the member for Wick, who is a sort of half-Canadian. He
made a speech which I listened to with great pleasure, and told the House what some of us,
perhaps, did not know before ; but if I had been connected, as he is, with Canada, I would have
addressed the House from a Canadian point of view. What is it that the member for Oxford
says P He states, in reference to the expenditure for the proposed fortifications, that, though a
portion of the expenditure is to be borne by us, the main portion is to be borne by Canada ; but I
venture toteU him, that, if there shall be any occcasion to def end Canada at all, it wiU not arise from
anything Canada does, but from what England does ; and therefore I protest against the doctrine
that as the Cabinet in London may get into difficulties, and ultimately into war, with the Cabinet
at Washington, and as Canada lies adjacent to the United States, and may consequently
become a great battle-field, this United Kingdom has a right to call on Canada for the main
portion of that expenditure. Who has asked you to spend fifty thousand pounds, and the hundreds
of thousands which may be supposed to follow, but which perhaps Parliament may be
indisposed hereafter to grant ? What is the proportion which Canada is to bear ? If we are to
spend two hundred thousand pounds at Quebec, is Canada to spend four hundred thousand pounds
at Montreal P If Canada is to spend double whatever we may spend, is it not obvious that every
Canadian wUl ask himself — what is the advantage of the connection between Canada and England?
Every Canadian knows perfectly well, and nobody better than the noble lord the member for
Wick, that there is no more prospect of a war between Canada and the United States alone than
between the Empire of France and the Isle of Man. If that is so, why should the Canadians be
taxed beyond all reason, as the Colonial Secretary proposes to tax them, for a policy not Canadian
and for a calamity which, if ever it occurs, must occur from some transactions between England
and the United States ? There are gentlemen here who know a good deal of Canada, and I see
behind me one who knows perfectly weU what is the condition of the Canadian finances.
We complain that Canada levies higher duties on British manufactures than the United States
did before the present war, and much higher than France does. But when we complain to
Canada of this, and say it is very unpleasant usage from a part of our empire, the Canadians
reply that their expenditure is so much, and their debt, with the interest on it, so much, that
they are obliged to levy these heavy duties. If the Canadian finances are in the unfortunate
position described ; if the credit of Canada is not very good in the market of this country ;
if you see what are the difficulties of the Canadians during a rjeriod 0f peace ; consider what
wiU be their difficulties if the doctrine of the Colonial Secretary be carried out, which is
that whatever expenditure is necessary for the defence of Canada, though we bear a portion, the
main part must be borne by Canada. We must then come to this inevitable conclusion. Every
Canadian wUl say, ' We are close alongside of a great nation ; our parent State is three thousand
mUes away; there are litigious, and there may be even warlike, people in both nations, and they
may occasion the calamity of a great war; we are peaceable people, having no foreign pohtics,
happily ; we may be involved in war, and while the cities of Great Britain are not touched by a
single shell, nor one of its fields ravaged, there is not a city or a village in this Canada in which
we live which will not be liable to the ravages of war on the part of our powerful neighbour.
Therefore the Canadians wUl say, unless they are unlike aU other Englishmen (who appear to
have more sense the farther they go from their own country), that it would be better for Canada
to be disentangled from the politics of England, and to assume the position of an independent
State. I suspect from what has been stated by official gentlemen in the present Government, and
in previous Governments, that there is no objection to the independence of Canada whenever
Canada may wish it. I have been glad to hear those statements, because I think they mark an
extraordinary progress in sound opinions in this country. I recollect the noble lord at the head
of the Foreign Office on one occasion being very angry with me : he said I wished to make a
great empire less ; but a great empire, territorially, may be lessened without its power and

HOW TO ESTRANGE OUR COLONIES. 355
authority in the world being diminished. I believe if Canada now, by a friendly separation from
this country, became an independent State, choosing its own form of government — monarchical,
if it liked a monarchy, or repubUcan, if it preferred a republic — it would not be less friendly to
England, and its tariff would not be more adverse to our manufactures than it is now. In the
case of a war with America, Canada would then be a neutral country ; and the population would
be in a state of greater security. Not that I think there is any fear of war, but the Government
admit that it may occur by their attempt te obtain money for these fortifications. I object,
therefore, te this vote, not on that account, nor even because it causes some distrust, or may
cause it, in the United States ; but I object to it mainly because I think we are commencing a
policy which we shall have to abandon, because Canada will not submit te it, or else which will
bring upon Canada a burden in the shape of fortification expenditure that wUl make her more and
more dissatisfied with this country, and that wiU lead rapidly to her separation from us. I do not
object to that separation inthe least; I believe it would be better for us and better for her. But I
think that of all the misfortunes which could happen between us and Canada, this would be the
greatest : that her separation should take place after a period of irritation and estrangement, and
that we should have on that continent to meet another element in some degree hostile to this
country. I am sorry, sir, that the noble lord at the head of the Government and his coUeagues
have taken this course ; but it appears to me to be wonderfully Uke almost everything which the
Government does. It is a Government apparently of two parts, the one part puUing one way
and the other part pulling another, and the result generally is something which does not please
anybody, or produce any good effect in any direction. They now propose a scheme which has
just enough in it to create distrust and irritation, enough to make it in some degree injurious,
and they do not do enough to accomplish any of the objects for which, according to their state
ments, the proposition is made. Somebody asked, the other night, whether the Administration
was to rule, or the House of Commons. WeU, I suspect from the course of the debates, that on
this occasion the Administration will be allowed to rule. We are accustomed to say that the
Government suggests a thing on its own responsibUity, and therefore we will allow them to do it.
But the fact is, that the Government knows no more of this matter than any other dozen gentle
men in this House. They are not a bit more competent to form an opinion upon it. They throw
it down on the table, and ask us to discuss and vote it. I should be happy to find the House,
disregarding all the intimations that war is likely, anxious not to urge Canada into incurring an
expenditure which she wiU not bear, and which, if she wUl not bear, must end in one of two
things — either in throwing the whole burden upon us, or in breaking up, perhaps suddenly and in
anger, the connection between us and that colony, and in making our future relations with her
most unsatisfactory. I do not place much rehance on the speech of the right hon. member for
Buckinghamshire, not because he cannot judge of the question just as well as I or any one of us
can do, but because I notice that in matters of this kind gentlemen on that (the Opposition)
bench, whatever may have been their animosities towards the gentlemen on this (the Treasury)
bench on other questions, shake hands. They may teU" you that they have no connection with the
House over the way, but the fact is, their connection is most intimate. And if the right honour
able member for Buckinghamshire were now sitting on the Treasury bench, and the noble
Viscount were sitting opposite to him, the noble Viscount, I have no doubt, would give him the
very same support that he now receives from the right hon. gentleman. This seems to me a ques
tion so plain, so much on the surface, appealing so much to our common sense, having in it such
great issues for the future, that I am persuaded it is the duty of the House of Commons on this
occasion to take the matter out of the hands of the executive Government, and to determine that,
with regard to the future policy of Canada, we wiU not ourselves expend the money of the Eng
lish tax-payers, aud not force upon the tax-payers of Canada a burden which, I am satisfied, they
will not long continue to bear."

356 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT
Mr. Cobden left his residence for the purpose of opposing this
expenditure of money, and Mr. Bright, in alluding to the circumstance
at a public meeting at Bradford, said : —
" Tou know how much he sympathised, I wiU not say with the institutions, but with the
interests of the United States. He visited that country twice during the course of his life, and
he made there— as he made wherever he went— many very earnest and very warm friends. He,
I think, was more broken down in heart and feeling by the American war than perhaps any
other man that I happened to know at that time in England. He had thought that in that
country, spreading over a whole continent, there would be perpetual peace. There was no great
army, there was no great navy, there were no foreign politics, and he thought that America was
the home of peace. But he had not calculated the effect of a vast enormity Uke the question of
slavery in that country. (Hear, hear.) Slavery was one of those devils that would not go out
without tearing the nation that was possessed of it. (Hear, hear) But stUl he always held the
beUef that the result of the war would be the aboUshing of slavery, and the great Republic, stiU
one and indivisible, would henceforth become the advocate of peace and the promoter of civili
sation." Mr. Bright visited Mr. Cobden at Midhurst on the 4th of March,
1865, and thus beautifully described what took place : —
" We stroUed out in the fields, and as we were returning home he began to talk of his poor
boy, his only son, who had died some nine or ten years before ; and he said — turning round and
pointing to a beautiful Uttle church in a most lovely situation — ' Tes, my poor boy lies there, and
I shaU very soon be with him.' I little thought how soon. Only a few days afterwards he
went up to London. It was a time when the question of expending large sums on an absurd and
monstrous idea of defending Canada from the United States was under discussion. He went up
to London with the intention of speaking upon that question, and pointing out to the House of
Commons the fooUsh and irrational course on which they were invited te enter. He went up on
one of the bitterest days of that month of March, and he was stricken by the cold, and fatally
stricken. Only some ten days afterwards, I think, his complaint became greatly aggravated, and
on that 2nd of April that I have spoken of I was at his room, early in the morning, and remained
with him during some unconscious hours, until the final close of a life to which I felt myself
and have always felt myself, so strongly attached. . . . Now, my friend did not see the ful
filment of his wishes. It was a circumstance somewhat singular and very affecting to my mind,
that on the very day when President Lincoln and the Northern forces entered the city of
Richmond, and when, in point of fact, the slave confederacy was vanquished and at an end —
on that very day, on that very Sunday, that 2nd of April, in the year 1865, the spirit of my
friend left its earthly tenement, and took its way to another, and to him, doubtless, a brighter
world."

Mr. Cobden was accompanied to London by Mrs. Cobden and his
second daughter on the 21st of March, and they took apartments
in Suffolk Street, Shortly after he arrived he was attacked with

THE DEATH OF COBDEN. 357
asthma, which prostrated him. For days a piercing east wind blew,
and Cobden watched attentively the smoke from the opposite
chimneys to ascertain if the wind changed its course, but his eager
vigilance ended in weariness and disappointment. The asthma
became congestive on the 1st of April, and, bronchitis setting in,
recovery fast became hopeless. His old and true friend, Mr. Bright,
paid him a visit in the evening ; but as it was thought that the
interview would be too much for his little remaining strength, Mr.
Bright retired without seeing him. Early next morning, which was
Sunday, he repeated his visit; and as all chance *of recovery was now
beyond expectation, he formed one of the group who affectionately
witnessed the closing scene, with Sabbath peace, of the life of one of
the greatest benefactors of .his country. Just as the church bells of
the great metropolis, and every town and village in England, were
sweetly chiming, and calling worshippers to their devotions on that
hallowed morning, and blessed groups of children, as well as those of
maturer years, were bending through quiet streets and primrose
meadow paths towards spires and towers, Cobden expired at the age
of 61. Throughout England his death was deeply lamented. Indeed all
the rest of Europe and the world were quick to recognise the loss
which they had sustained in common with us ; for this great states
man did much to hasten the day when conciliated nations shall war
with each other no more. He entered upon life with none of the
advantages of birth or fortune ; singled himself out by his ability
and patriotism for the service of his country ; was called continually
to higher measures of duty; moved with steady progress to still
loftier applications of his principles ; adhered to them with heroic
patience, through evil and good report ; brought statesmen to sit at
his feet and accept him as a master ; wedded nations in the
bonds of reciprocal goodwill; turned away from the honours which
were decreed him with the simplicity of one who loved truth for her
own sake ; and finally resigned to the disposal of his God a life which,
in its public relations, no self-interest had ever warped ; no incon-.

358 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
sistency had ever misdirected ; no blot had ever stained ; and whose
memory shall be held in honour so long as truth and justice are
the master powers of the world. He showed how in England we
may build up a constitution upon the principles of justice and
truth. The beauty of his character, and the services he had rendered to
his country, were appreciated by all parties, and it was felt that a
great and good life had closed in the zenith of its fame. " He
died full of years and glory, as illustrious by the honours he refused
as by those he accepted," and left a pure and spotless name,
crowned with its halo of inimitable splendour. His past life formed
an interesting picture : unceasing labour and self-sacrifice on the altar
of high duty.
His remains were removed to his residence at Midhurst, one of
the loveliest spots in England. " Its hills are covered with foliage,
its valleys bright with verdure or teeming with fertility, alternating
with dark, sombre-looking heaths, sandy patches, and trim, silent, old-
fashioned villages, and isolated farm-houses built in the days of the
Tudors." There was an unusual scene in the House of Commons on the
Monday afternoon. The members were in the halls and lobbies
long before the hour of sitting, whispering in groups. Just as the
deep -toned Westminster clock tolled four, Lord Palmerston, followed
by the other members of the Cabinet, entered the House amidst
hushed silence. Every eye seemed to be in search of one familiar
figure as the assembly rapidly increased ; and at last there was seen
approaching, with sorrowful countenance and bowed head, the friend
of one whose vacant seat by his side would never be filled again.
Lord Palmerston, with his whitened locks and dejected appearance,
who had witnessed the leading men of more than two generations
fall one by one along the weary wayside of life, rose, and spoke of
the great loss the House and the nation had sustained, and so affected
was he that his voice quivered, and then sank into a low tone that
was deeply pathetic.

LORD PALMERSTON ON THE LIFE OF COBDEN. 359
" It is impossible for this House," said he, "to have that order put without calling to its mind
the great loss which this House, and the country has sustained by the event which took place
yesterday morning. Sir, Mr. Cobden, whose loss we deplore, occupied a pre-eminent position, both
as a member of this House and as a member of the British nation. I do not mean in the few
words I have to say to disguise, or to avoid stating, that there were many matters upon which a
great number of people differed from Mr. Cobden ; I among the rest. But those who differed
from him the most never could doubt the honesty of his purpose or the sincerity of his convictions.
They felt that his object was the good of his country, however they might differ on particular
questions from him as to the means by which that end was to be accomplished. But we all agree
in burying in oblivion every point of difference, and think only of the great and important services
he rendered to our common country. Sir, it is many years ago since Adam Smith elaborately
and conclusively, as far as argument could go, advocated, as the fundamental principles of the
wealth of nations, freedom of industry and unrestricted exchange of the objects which are the
results of industry. These doctrines were inculcated by learned men, by Dugald Stewart, and
others. They were taken up in process of time by leading statesmen, such as Mr. Huskisson, and
those who agreed with him. But the barriers which long-established prejudice — honest and con
scientious prejudice — had raised against the practical appUcations of those doctrines prevented for
a long series of years their coming into use as instruments of progress in the country. To Mr.
Cobden it was reserved, by his untiring industry, his indefatigable personal activity, the indomi
table energy of his mind, and by — I wiU say — that forcible and Demosthenic eloquence with which
he treated aU the subjects which he took in hand — it was reserved to Mr. Cobden, aided, no doubt,
by a great phalanx of worthy associates — by my right hon. friend the President of the Poor-law
Board (Mr. ViUiers) and by Sir R. Peel, whose memory will ever be associated with the prin
ciples Mr. Cobden so ably advocated — it was reserved, I say, to Mr. Cobden, by exertions which
never were surpassed, to carry into practical application those abstract principles, with the truth
of which he was so deeply impressed, and which at last gained the acceptance of aU reasonable
men in the country. He rendered an inestimable aud enduring benefit to our country by the
result of these exertions. But, sir, great as were Mr. Cobden's talents, great as was his industry,
and eminent as was his success, the disinterestedness of his mind more than equalled all
of these. He was a man of great ambition, but his ambition was to be useful to his country ;
and that ambition was amply gratified. When the present Government was formed, I was
authorised graciously by her Majesty to offer to Mr. Cobden a seat in the Cabinet. Mr.
Cobden declined, and frankly told me that he thought he and I differed a good deal upon many
important principles of poUtical action, and, therefore, he could not, either comfortably for me or
for himself, join the Administration of which I was the head. I think he was wrong. I lament
it, but it was he who had to decide. But this I will say of Mr. Cobden, that no man, however
strongly he may have differed from him upon general political principles, or the application of
those principles, could come into contact with him without carrying away the strongest personal
esteem and regard for the man with whom he had the misfortune not entirely to agree. Sir, the
two great achievements of Mr. Cobden were, in the first place, the abrogation of those laws
which regulated the importation of corn, and the great development which that gave to the
industry of the country ; and. next, the commercial arrangements which he negotiated with
France, which paved the way for improving the trade and tended greatly to extend the intercourse
between the two countries. When the latter achievement was accomplished, it was my lot to offer
to Mr. Cobden — not office, for that I knew he would not take, but to offer those honours which
the Crown can bestow — a baronetcy, and the rank of a privy councillor : honourable distinctions
which it would have gratified the Crown to bestow for important services rendered to the country,
and which I think it would not have been at all derogatory for him to accept. But the same dis
interested spirit which actuated all his conduct, whether in private or in public, led him to decline

36o LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
even the acknowledgments which would .properly have been made for the services he had ren
dered. Sir, I can only say that we have sustained a loss which every man in the country will feel.
We have lost a man who may be said to have been peculiarly emblematical of the Constitution
under which we have the happiness to Uve, because he rose to a great eminence m this House, and
acquired an ascendency in the public mind, not by virtue of any family connections, but solely and
entirely by means of the power and vigour of his mind, that power and vigour being appUed to
purposes eminently advantageous to the country. Sir, Mr. Cobden's name wiU be for ever en
graved on the most interesting pages of the history of this country, and 1 am sure there is not one
in this House who does not feel the deepest regret that we have lost one of its brightest orna
ments, and that the country has been deprived of one of her most useful servants."
Mr. Disraeli, who for years had combated the arguments of the
politician whose loss the House now deplored, next rose, and generously
said -. —
" Sir, having been a member of this House when Mr. Cobden first took his seat, and having
remained in the House during his whole lengthened career, I cannot reconcile it to myself to be
sUent on this occasion, when we have to deplore the loss of one so eminent, and that too in the
ripeness of his manhood and the full vigour of his inteUect. Although it was the fortune of
Mr. Cobden to enter public life at a time when passion rau high, and he himself by no means a
man insensible to political excitement, stiU when the strife was over there was soon observed in
him a moderation and a tempered thought that indicated a, large intellectual horizon and the
possession of statesmanlike qualities. Though forward in the tumult of popular opinions with
which he identified himself, there was in his character a vein of reverence for tradition which,
even unconsciously to himself, subdued and softened the acerbity of the cruder conclusions
at which he may have arrived. That, in my mind, is a quality which in some degree must be
possessed by any one who attempts or aspires to sway this country. For, notwithstanding the
rapid changes in which we live, and the numerous improvements and alterations we anticipate,
this country still is Old England, and the past is one of the elements of our power. What the
qualities of Mr. Cobden were in this House aU are aware, yet perhaps I may be permitted to say
that as a debater he had few equals. As a logician he was close and complete ; adroit, acute,
perhaps even subtle ; yet at the same time he was gifted with such a degree of imagination, that
he never lost sight of the sympathies of those whom he addressed, and so, generaUy avoiding to
'drive his argument te extremity, he became as a speaker both practical and persuasive. The
noble lord, who is far more competent than myself to deal with such subjects, has referred the House
to Mr. Cobden's conduct as an administrator. It would seem that, notwithstanding the eminent
position which he had achieved and occupied, aud the various opportunities which offered for the
exercise of that ambition which he might legitimately entertain, his life was destined to pass
without his being afforded an occasion of showing that he possessed those qualities which are
invaluable in council and in the management of public affairs. StiU, fortunately, it happened
that before he quitted us there came to him one of the finest opportunities that a public man
could weU enjoy, and it may be truly said that by the transactions of great affairs he obtained
the consideration of the two leading countries of the world. Sir, there is something mournful in
the history of this Parliament, when we remember how many of our most eminent men and
valued public men have passed from among us. I cannot refer to the history of any other
ParUament which will bear to posterity so fatal a record. But there is this consolation, when we
remember these unequalled and irreparable visitations — that these great men are not altogether
lost to us ; that their opinions will be often quoted in this House ; then1 authority appealed to j

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DISRAELI ON COBDEN'S LIFE. 361
their judgments attested ; even their very words wiU form part of our discussions and debates.
There are some members of Parliament who, though not present in the body, are stUl members
of this House ; independent of dissolutions, of the caprice of constituents, even of the course of
time. I think, sir, Mr. Cobden was one of these men. I believe that when the verdict of
posterity is recorded on his (Cobden's) Ufe and conduct, it wiU be said of him that, looking to aU
that he said and did, he was without doubt the greatest political character the pure middle class
of this country has yet produced — an ornament to the House of Commons, and an honour to
England." After a brief and impressive pause, Mr. Bright rose, evidently
oppressed with great sorrow. Twice he essayed to speak, but his voice
failed him. At length, with broken utterance, but with eloquent
simplicity, he said : —
" Sir, I feel that I cannot address the House on this occasion ; but every expression of
sympathy which I have witnessed has been most grateful to my heart. But the time which has
elapsed since I was present when the manliest and gentlest spirit that has ever quitted or tenanted a
human form departed this Ufe is so short, that I dare not even attempt to give utterance to the
feelings by which I am oppressed. (Mr. Bright here for a moment paused, and covered his face
with his hands.) I shaU leave to some calmer moment, when I may have an opportunity of
speaking to some portion of my countrymen, the exposition of the lesson which I think may be
learned from the Ufe and character of my friend. (Hear, hear, and applause.) I have only to
say, after twenty years of intimate and almost brotherly friendship with him, I little knew how
much I loved him until I found that I had lost him."
Mr. Bright's broken words of sorrow were with difficulty spoken,
but they plaintively told his sense of loneliness, and he sat down amid
the sympathetic applause of the House.
At the time of his death, Cobden was on the verge of the sunset
of hfe, and before the winter of age had chilled the warm impulses
of his heart, or dulled the edge of his wit, or changed the force and
elegance of his language into laborious vagueness. He was still as
susceptible of tenderness and. love as at any period of his existence,
and the more so from the oppressive conviction that the day was
not distant when the grave must for ever chill his heart against
the endearments for which it panted. When autumn strewed the
valleys with the honours of the woods, he often remarked that the
decay of nature was full of instruction for us, who blossomed for
a while, and then similarly decayed. In his simple study, on a
little table set apart from the desk at which he toiled, there always

362 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
lay the Bible, that it might be ready to his hand. Mr. Bright, in
alluding to an incident at the funeral, in one of his memorable
speeches, said : —
" Standing by me, and leaning on the coffin, was his sorrowing daughter, one whose attach-
"ment te her father seems to have been a passion scarcely equaUed amongst daughters. She said,
' My father used to like me very much to read to him the Sermon on the Mount.' His own life
was to a large-extent — I speak it with reverence and with hesitation — a sermon based upon that
best, that greatest of all sermons. His life was a life of perpetual self-sacrifice."
When at home, Mr. Cobden was regularly seen on Sundays walking
with his family along a pretty country path to West Lavington
Church ; but he was not the man to parade his religious sentiments
or feelings. Writing to a friend several years before his death, he
stated : —
"I am not without hopes that if I am spared to return in health to this country, the same
fortunate circumstance in my organisation may enable me to co-operate efficiently with the
most active and best spirits of our day in the work of moral and intellectual education. I
could insist upon the necessity of secular teaching and training without wounding the reUgious
prejudices of any man, except the grovelling bigots, whether of the High Church party or the
opposite extreme, against whom I could make war in the same spirit which has, in the case of the
corn monopoUsts, enabled me to deprive them of the pretence for personal resentment, even in
the hour of their defeat and humiliation. I have said that I have a strong feeling of sympathy
for the reUgious sentiment. A feeling so great that I have sat in a Welsh chapel, Ustening to a
ranting sermon, not a syUable of which I understood, and watching with pleased excitement the
effects upon the countenances of the hearers ; their glistening eyes, and compressed lips, and
outstretched heads, were eloquence enough in themselves for me ! But I sympathise with aU
moral men who are not passive moraUsts."
He had great faith in the power of prayer, and when the poor
operatives of Lancashire were suffering severe privations from the want
of employment during the cotton famine, he remarked to the vicar of
his parish, " Ah ! there is need that we should pray for the poor
people in the North." He was most- liberal to the poor, and
homely and familiar with all those with whom he came into contact.
In the whole of his public life there was a Catholicity of spirit
which marked all his aims and inspired all his teachings, although
he lived in an age when the traditional policy of statesmen was
still struggling against the idea of human brotherhood, and opposing
those sublime lessons which point to the happy day when kingdoms

COBDEN'S RESTING-PLACE. 363
shall be" knit together by commerce, and when nations shall learn
war no more.
Many of Mr. Cobden's friends wished that his final resting-
place should be' Westminster Abbey, but a pompous sepulchre
with a life so simple and self-denying as was his would have been
utterly incongruous ; and, moreover, it must be remembered that it
was his desire to be buried with his son in the pretty churchyard
of West Lavington. Nine years before his death, one summer's day,
while strolling in Westminster Abbey with a friend, he remarked
that, although he had for fifteen years habitually passed St. Paul's
Cathedral, he had never been within its walls. As they were reading
the monuments of the illustrious dead, the friend casually remarked
that the time might come when the name of Cobden would there
be seen amongst the departed heroes. Cobden replied, "I hope not.
My spirit could not rest in peace amongst these men of war. No,
no ; cathedrals are not meant to contain the remains of such men
as Bright and me." He preferred to sleep amongst his own people,
the undistinguished dead of a Sussex village, and pressed by the
flowery turf where once he played in childhood, where his obsequies
might be sung by the gray plover flying, and the soaring lark.
Tins was the place of sepulture preferred by him to the costly and
luxurious memorials of Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral,
where many are buried who were torments and scourges to their
day and generation, and "laid schemes for death, and to slaughter
turned their hearts " — made town sand villages solitudes, and called it
peace. And here, too, has often been heard unholy thanksgiving over
slaughtered men, women, and children. Benefactors of the world are
also interred here— men who enlightened it by their wisdom, animated
it with their gaiety, or soothed it by their delightful harmonies.
The sad ceremonial of committing the body to the ground was
performed on the 7th of April, and for the numbers and the character
of those attending, it was one of the most remarkable funerals on
record. The House of Commons led the van with a large gathering
of the most eminent of its members, and the Court was represented by

364 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
the Pagets. There were deputations from most of the large towns,
that from Eochdale being composed of Messrs. J. Tatham (the Mayor),
Thomas Bright, G. L. Ashworth, E. T. Heape, T. B. Willans, G.
Healey, William Fenton, G. T. Kemp, E. Ashworth, J. T. Pagan,
J. H. Moore, John Eobinson, T. Booth, W. Petrie, G. Mansell,
J. Ashworth, John Hoyle, C. Whitaker, C. Hurst, and S. Stott.
The procession was over half a mile in length. The hearse was
without " nodding plumes," or barren pomp, or trappings of woe. The
utmost simplicity characterised the whole of the arrangments. A walk
of an hour and a half along the picturesque highway, the banks of
which were fretted with primroses and violets, the embroidery of
spring, brought the mourners to West Lavington Church. The pall
was held by twelve of Mr. Cobden's most distinguished friends, namely,
Mr. John Bright, M.P., the Eight Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., the
Eight Hon. Charles Pelham Villiers, M.P., Mr. George Wilson, the
Eight Hon. T. Milner Gibson, M.P., Mr. Moffat, M.P., Mr. T. B.
Potter, Mr. A. W. Paulton, Mr. Henry Ashworth, Mr. Bazley, M.P.,
Mr. William Evans, and Mr. Thomas Thomasson. The chief mourners
were Mr. Charles Cobden ; Mr. William Sale, of Manchester, his
brother-in-law; Mr. John Williams, brother of Mrs. Cobden;
Mr. Frederick Hogard, Mr. Charles F. Kirk, Mr. William Sale, junr.,
Mr. Ehodes, Mr. Fisher, and Mr. Fisher, junr. The service having been
gone through in the church, which was not large enough to accommodate
the vast number of mourners, the coffin was borne to the vault which
lies at the southern extremity of the graveyard, in which his son, who
died in Germany, was interred. The scene was most impressive. The
sun shone out in all its splendour, and threw a glow of light on the
uncovered and bended heads and sad faces of not a few of England's
master-spirits. The foot of the coffin was adorned with wreaths of
spring flowers which had been gathered and woven by loving hands.
As the coffin was lowered, Mr. Bright, with a sorrowful and tear-
besprinkled face, advanced nea,r to the brink of the grave which was so
soon to close over the remains of his departed friend. There stood
too, Mr. Gladstone, with face unnaturally pale and closed eyes, in

COBDEN'S TOMB. 365
company with Mr. Milner Gibson, Mr. Villiers, Mr. George Wilson,
Mr. Edward Miall, Mr. W. E. Forster, Mr. Eobertson Gladstone, the
Eev. Newman Hall, Dr. Hook (the Dean of Chichester), Mr. T. B. Potter,
Mr. Elihu Burritt, Mr. Samuel Morley, Mr. Bazley, Sir C. Wentworth
Dilke, Professor Fawcett, Mr. Samuel Smiles, Mr. Adams (the American
Minister), and a host of other well-known men.
It was touching to witness the anxiety of the mourners to preserve
some memento, not only of the churchyard, but also of the spot where
Mr. Cobden had resided, by gathering ferns, flowers, and shrubs from
the paths which had been trod by the departed statesman. The church
yard from that day was destined to have a memorable historic interest,
but the whole land is the sepulchre of this illustrious benefactor of his
country, and his good deeds are his imperishable monument.
No sound ruder than the whistling of the wind, the crack of the
ploughman's whip or the sportsman's gun, disturbs the quietude and
peace of the scene of this pastoral loveliness. The green valleys in the
autumn time are brightly dotted with fields of golden grain, and nature
could not surround the hallowed spot of such a sleeper with a more
appropriate emblem, for he spent many years of his life in freeing corn
for the sustenance of the people.
The earliest light of the morning gilds the tomb, and parting day
lingers and plays upon it. Thither at times his life companions will
direct their pilgrim feet, to see
" The tomb of him who would have made
The world too glad and free."
Amongst the numerous pilgrims to this sacred place, the Bishop of
Oxford was accompanied there on the 16th of August, 1868, by Lord
and Lady Stratford de Eedcliffe, Lady Marion Alford, and Lady
Dorothy Nevill. The Dean of St. Paul's and party visited it on the
12th of March, 1869. Several members of the Anti-Corn-Law League
paid homage at the shrine of their departed friend on the 24th of June,.
1871. Dowager Lady Northbrook was there on the 12th of July,
1871. Mr. Bright, accompanied by two of his daughters, Miss M. H.
Bright and Miss M. S. Bright, again visited the tomb on the 25th of

366 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
August, 1874. In December of that year the Earl and Countess of
Egmont paid their respects to the illustrious dead, and the Mayor of
Portsmouth and members of his Town Council stood reverently round
the grave on a bright summer's day in 1877.
From the crest of the hill upon the slope of which the graveyard
stands the eye ranges over a charming landscape. In the far distance
stretches the range of the South Downs, from Worthington in the east
to Petersfield in the west, a distance of at least thirty miles ; the valley
being thickly wooded with pine, oak, and fir.
Mr. Bright, when performing the ceremony of unveiling a statue of
Cobden, at Bradford, in July, 1877, said: —
" I have lately been reading a new poem which has interested me very much — a poem caUed
The Epic of Hades. Many of you may never have heard of it ; most of you may not have seen
it. It is, as I view it, another gem added to the wealth of the poetry of our language. In that
poem the author says — ' For knowledge is a steep which few may climb,
While duty is a path which all may tread.'
I think it wiU be admitted by those who know anything of the life of Mr. Cobden, that he trod
what he believed to be the path of duty, and trod it with a firm and unfaltering footstep ; and
when I look upon this statue which is now before us, so like him, and so spotless, as was his name
and character, I will say that I trust his foUowing of the path of duty wiU have many imitators
in this district ; and that from this stainless marble, and from those voiceless lips, there may be
taught a perpetual lesson to many generations of the intelligent and industrious men of this
district of our country. But let me add that this which you have erected to-day, or which is
erected in your midst, is by no means the greatest monument that has been built up to him.
There is one far grander, and of wider significance. There is not a homestead in the country in
which there is not added comfort from his labours — not a cottage the dweUers in which have not
steadier employment, higher wages, and a more solid independence. This is his enduring
monument. He worked for these ends, and for these great purposes, and he worked even almost
to the very day when the lamp of life went out. He is gone ; but his character, his deeds, his
life, his example, remain a possession to us his countrymen. And let this be said of him for
generations to come, as long as the great men of England are spoken of in the EngUsh language :
let it be said of him that Richard Cobden gave the labours of a life that he might confer upon
his countrymen not only perfect freedom of industry, but also its attendant blessings of plenty
and of peace."
Mr. Gladstone, at the first annual dinner of the Cobden Club, gave
his opinion of Mr. Cobden's character, by remarking, " So far as I
had ever the opportunity of judging, it was eminently free, simple,
noble in the highest sense ; for Mr. Cobden was one of those who have
been well called, and in no invidious or disparaging sense, "Nature's

GLADSTONE'S OPINION OF COBDEN. 367
nobles." I do not know whether it has fallen to the lot of any one — it
never fell to mine — to meet a man more devoted to the welfare of others,
and more thoroughly and entirely purged from the taint of selfishness,
which means so much even of what is partially and predominately good,
or who applied his hfe and all his powers with more single and
undeviating aim to the promotion of the good of his race." — "I pass from
the Prince Consort," said Mr. Gladstone at a meeting at Glasgow, in
1865, " to another name — widely, indeed, separated from him in social
rank, but still a name which is yet at this moment in the esteem of the
country, and which will be for ever great in its annals — I mean the name
of Eichard Cobden. (Cheers.) That character, so simple, so true, so brave,
so far-seeing, of a man who knew how to associate himself at their very
root with the deep interests of the community in which he lived, and to
whom it was given to achieve, through the moral force of reason and per
suasion only, triumphs sufficiently great to have made his name immortal."
" Nothing that has been written on the life and career of Mr.
Eichard Cobden, whose place in society stands so conspicuously vacant,"
commented one writer ; " nothing that has been said of his labours, whose
fruits, rich and golden as the autumn cluster of the southern vine, meet
the eye in every homestead in the land; no panegyric that has been
pronounced on services which exhorted public homage, and even silenced
public envy — no tribute that has been tendered to his memory by friend
ship, by gratitude, or by sorrow, is half so eloquent or half so instructive
as the simple record furnished by the Probate Court, that his personalty
was sworn under £8,000. It is the key to the man's whole life, to the
motives by which he was actuated, to the objects he had in view, to the
difficulties which beset him, to the circumstances in which he struggled,
and above all to the heroic purposes for which he endured the steady
torture of prolonged labour, and the sudden martyrdom of its final ter
mination. To have lived as Cobden lived — with influence at his disposal,
power within his grasp, the boundless wealth of a nation at his feet,
and to have turned his back upon them, and used his position solely for
the good of his country and his race — was in itself a great and rare
glory."

368 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Mr. Cobden despised foppery, plush, and liveries, and did not care for
great public dinners. Mr. Bright, in the House of Commons, in speaking
of a court dress necessary in attending the Speaker's dinners and levees,
and in contending that the custom should be abolished, said : —
" My own impression is that this custom is a little out of date, especially among the members
of a popular assembly. There are, I believe, 160 or 170 gentlemen coming to this Parliament
who were not here in the last or any preceding Parliament. Well, they have not yet been
initiated into these matters ; but I think the fact of there being so many new % members here
makes it the more proper that I should now mention this subject. The Speaker of this
House is only superior to any other member by the reason of our choice ; and I cannot
see — I believe no man living can see— that, except for this old custom, there is any
necessity or advantage in the Speaker being compelled by this practice to require that
all members of this House who accept his invitations should appear in court-dress- or
in military costume. It may be thought mean to speak of cost. In the House where there
are so many rich men — and all are supposed to be rich who come here — I do not speak of
cost ; but I remember an hon. member holding the rank of colonel in the army once com
plaining, and complaining, too, in a very serious manner, that it had taken fifty guineas
to put him inside a suitable dress in which to appear at the Speaker's table. That may be
thought by many to be a small matter, and perhaps it is ; but if our Speaker is but the
first amongst equals, and is made what he is in honour and dignity by the choice of
the House, I see no necessity why — even if such things be necessary in the circles of courts
— such a practice should be retained among the members of a popular assembly. I will
state a case in point. Last year the House lost — and I lost more than any other member
of the House — one of its members, a dear and lamented friend of mine, whose absence I
greatly deplore, and without whose presence I feel almost alone. For twenty-four years he
was a member of this House — from 1831 to 1865 — and during the whole of that time he felt
himself restrained from accepting official invitations either from Lord Eversley, when he was
Speaker, or the right hon. gentleman who subsequently Occupied the chair. Now, Mr. Cobden
was not a man of striking eccentricities. He was a man to whose merits the whole world has
borne testimony, and posterity will say that he was one of the most eminent men that ever
adorned the Parliament of this country. But for twenty-four years so strongly did he feel on
this subject, that he was restrained from dining with the Speaker, or attending his official evening
parties or levees. Well, there have been, to my certain knowledge, other members of this House,
less eminent than he, but not less entitled to be regarded in a matter of this kind, who have en
tertained the same feeling. I cannot, therefore, see why this point should be thought an absolute
trifle, or if it be a trifle, that even a small minority should be forced to concur with the majority
in respect to it. If there be any country gentleman who likes to appear in the decorated apparel,
or if there be any homely manufacturer from the North who is gratified by appearing in the
blazing garments of a deputy -lieutenant, I do not object to it in the least. I should like every
man to please himself in the matter. But if there are some of us, as in the case with myself,
and, I believe, many more, who would like to make their appearance in the quieter costume, with
less that is gorgeous and astounding about them, why should not their wish be gratified also?
This is not a subject which I expect the House to debate, nor do I even say that it is worth
debating. I throw it out only as a suggestion, which I trust my right hon. friend who is about, with
the unanimous consent of the House, to take the chair, will consider. And if he can aboUsh this
Act of Uniformity, and establish an Act of Toleration, so that, provided we appear at the enter-

COURT DRESS. 369
tainments of the Speaker as we should at the houses of each other if invited to dine there, we
should not be thought to transgress the rules of the House, I believe then that some smaU burden
wUl be removed from the minds of some members, and the dignity of the Speaker wUl in no
degree be impaired."
So high did Mr. Cobden stand in the esteem of the Legislative
Assembly of Australia that his name Avas given to one of the new
divisions of the colony. The Province of Cobden comprises the southern-
coast district from Goulburn to the border of Victoria.
In none of his controversies did Mr. Cobden slander any one, although
some of his opponents did not fail to slander him ; but long before his
death the harsh charges that had been preferred against him had been
annihilated by his pure and successful life. He was of a highly sensitive
nature, which made him careful of other men's reputation as of his own,
and the more his character is scrutinised the more illustrious it appears.

49

CHAPTEE XL.
PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.
Mr. T. B. Potter elected to fill the vacant seat at Rochdale — Mismanagement in our Dockyards
— Dissolution of Parliament; — Mr. Bright's Address to his Constituents — The General
Election — A Liberal Victory — Death of Lord Palmerston — Reconstruction of the Ministry
— Mr. Gladstone Leader of the House — Speeches by Mr. Bright at Blackburn, Birmingham,
and Rochdale — The State of Ireland — The Cattle Plague.
sHEEE was a desire in the first place to offer the vacant seat
created by the death of Mr. Cobden to Mr. Bright, but
he could not possibly accept it with due regard to the
unquestionable claims of his Birmingham constituents. The
Liberal electors at last selected Mr. T. B. Potter, of Manchester, a
personal friend of Mr. Cobden's, as their candidate. The Conservatives
brought forward an eminent Queen's Counsel, Mr. W. Baliol Brett. Mr.
Bright consented to be present at a meeting of the electors, which was
held on the evening of the 10th of April, 1865, in the extensive ware
house of Messrs. Kelsall and Kemp, in Baillie Street, and he said : —
" Tou wUl believe me when I say I have had the greatest difficulty in consenting to come
forward before you to-night on this sad occasion. (Hear, hear.) I have suffered so much during
the past week, that perhaps no place can be more uncongenial to my feeUngs than the platform
of a public meeting ; but whilst we sorrow for the departed we are not permitted to abandon the
duties which Ue upon us as citizens of our country ; and therefore, in the hope that as one of the
electors of this borough I may be able to add my counsel to the general counsel, with a view to
promote a wise result, I have ventured to come here to-night, to join you in the course which
may be taken with regard to the future representation of this borough. (Hear, hear.) And,
first, I ought to refer to a matter which has not been touched upon by the gentlemen who have
preceded me, viz., that the Reform Association took upon themselves to send a deputation to
London to ask me if it were possible that I could give up the position that I now hold, as the
representative for Birmingham, to stand as a candidate for the representative of my native town.
I felt that to be a very kind proposition on their part, but I felt also what I think they felt, and
what I believe you wiU feel— that looking back to the circumstances under which my connection
with Birmingham commenced, it would not be consistent with an honourable return of the
confidence then reposed in me, that I should leave the position in which they have placed me to
accept that of the representative of any other constituency in the empire. (Cheers.) If I were

ELECTION AT ROCHDALE. 371
out of Parliament, and not indisposed to enter it, I can assure you that I should value the
confidence and support of my townsmen — of those who know me best — above the confidence and
support of any other portion of the population of this kingdom. (Loud cheers.) Mr. Ashworth,
who moved the resolution, has referred to the character of the late Sir Thomas Potter. There
are many here who did not know him. I knew him intimately, and I believe there was not in
this country a man more entirely devoted to what was just, and wise, and Uberal in the legisla
tion and government of this country. I have never known a man who was more ready to expend
his money, and to give his time and labour for great public objects more wUUngly than he_was
during his Ufe. (Cheers.) I know one man who bids fair to approach him, and that is his son,
who is proposed to be your representative. (Loud cheers.) Now, I feel bound to refer to one
passage in Mr. Potter's Ufe in which I, though not then in this country, was much concerned. I
refer to the election for the borough of Manchester, which took place, I think, in the year 1857.
On that occasion Mr. Potter did not give me that support which I am ready now to give him.
(Hear, hear.) On that occasion, I beUeve, there was no change whatsoever in the principles
which, to my certain knowledge, he has held from the time when he first considered political
questions, but that perhaps, unfortunately — unfortunately for me — he was led away by the strong
affection which he had for his brother, and that sentiment, which is not one to be thought Ughtly
of — (hear, hear) — mainly led him to take the course which I think was unfortunate, and which
he has on several occasions, publicly and privately, declared that he much regretted. (Hearty
cheering.) Now, if there be any man in this meeting, or in Rochdale, who feels compelled to
regard that passage of Mr. Potter's Ufe with regret, let him at least consider the course which I
take with regard to it, and the explanation which I have felt it my duty to give of it — (hear,
hear) — and I beg that no elector of this borough, having regard to that transaction, wUl think any
more of it, or experience with regard to it any feeling different from the feeling which animates
my mind at this moment, and which I have thought it my duty to explain to this meeting. (Cheers.)
I have known Mr. Potter, I think, from about the time when he left school, and I beUeve, from
that time to this, he has held the opinions which were held by his father before him, and which, I
venture to say, wiU at no far distant future time be held by every educated man throughout the
kingdom. (Cheers.) . . . Now, I should be sorry to say anything that would hurt Mr.
Brett's feelings, because, first of aU, I have no personal knowledge of him. I beUeve in his owu
walk of life he is a respectable gentleman, and perhaps all we can blame him for here is that he
has mistaken his vocation. (Cheers and laughter.) I have been in the House of Commons for
nearly twenty-two years, and I can speak with some authority of what has transpired there
during that time. (Hear, hear.) I have seen a great many lawyers in the House, and I have
great respect for the legal profession. We owe very much to eminent members of it in past
periods of our history, and when you find a man who is a great lawyer, combined with the
quaUties of a great statesman, I know not that you can find a better or a more useful man in
ParUament, or in the country; but every lawyer knows that there is such a thing in his pro
fession as what may be called the Parliamentary ladder, and if a man can once get his feet even
upon the lowest staves of the ladder, he can manage, by moves which I could explain to you, to
raise himself considerably higher in no very long time. (Cheers.) There is no course that is so
favourable to legal promotion as Parliamentary Ufe, you know. It is quite common for legal
members of Parliament to be chosen Recorders of boroughs ; some of them get to be judges of
our higher courts ; some of them get to be Solicitor-General, and then Attorney- General, and then
from Attorney-General it generaUy takes but one leap to be Lord ' Chancellor of England.
(Laughter and cheers.) Now, these are high prizes to which young lawyers look, sometimes with
hope, sometimes with a feeling that they are too far off ever to be reached. There are iu the
profession many offices which are valuable, which are necessary to the country, which are well
paid, and to which lawyers aspire ; and I find that a great number of the lawyers that go to

372 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Parliament— not all of them, but a great number of them— make the House of Commons what
I have described— a ladder for their own promotion ; and I have sometimes thought they regard
that with even more persistent expectation and with more enthusiasm than they ever feel with
regard to the interests of their constituents. (Hear, hear.) . . . Tou have been a borough
returning a member to Parliament now for thirty-three years. Tou chose at first a gentleman
in your neighbourhood (Mr. John Fenton), inteUigent and honourable, of good character in every
respect, and who worthily represented you in the House of Commons. I speak of those we have
been concerned in electing. Afterwards, you chose a gentleman from the North of Ireland
(Mr. W. S. Crawford), not connected with you iu any way, but selected purely by his personal
character. (Cheers.) Afterwards you selected a gentleman (Mr. Edward MiaU) whose loss is
constantly felt in the House of Commons, the representative of the growing free churches of
this country — (cheers) — and afterwards you selected, during his absence in the United States,
solely from reverence for his character and services, your late eminent representative.
(Applause.) And since 1841, at the election and tiU now, no Liberal candidate has canvassed
personally any voter, no Liberal candidate has paid any part of his election expenses. I wiU
undertake to say there is not a borough in England whose annals are more creditable and every
way more honourable than the annals of the Liberal portion of the constituency of Rochdale —
(cheers) — and hereafter, when our voices are hushed, wheu I can no longer speak and you can no
longer listen, there wiU be generations of your townsmen who, speaking of your late repre
sentative, wiU stimulate our posterity to patriotic deeds, and wiU tell them that he, the
greatest and the best in the services of his countrymen once represented this town.
(Applause.) Well, if those who come after us can say this, may I not say it to-night ? I
cannot trust myself to speak of him as I could wish. As I have said elsewhere, I must leave
that to some calmer time, when my nerves have recovered somewhat from the shock they have
sustained during the past week. But this I will say, that I should feel, wherever I went, that,
were it in England or in any other part of the world, I should feel ashamed to own that the con
stituency to which I belong, after the bright example that it has had of late years, should now
turn its back upon itself — upon its own principles, upon its own interests, upon all that it has
held sacred, upon all that the friends of humanity admire, and regard, and look forward to — and
should return a man whose politics would reverse the very dial on the face of time, and would
turn you back from the progress and the good which we have seen of late years spreading
around us, to an age almost of political barbarism, and throughout the country of almost
universal discontent. (Cheers.) Sir, the candidate who has been recommended by the Associa
tion has been for many years a warm, a most cordial friend of your late member. (Cheers.) It
is not the time, and probably the time wiU never come, when it would become me to advert to a
hundred acts of kindness which Mr. Potter has wished to perform, and many of which he has
performed, to your late eminent representative. (Cheers.) If I can speak for him who is here
no longer — and I know no one amongst his friends who has a better right to speak — (hear, hear)
— I should say in the position in which this borough is now placed you would be doing only that
which would be welcome to him, if you give the confidence and support which you offered to him
to the gentleman who is now proposed to you as a candidate for your suffrages." (Loud cheers.)
The election took place on the 15th of April, and resulted in the
return of Mr. Potter by a majority of 150 ; 646 votes were tendered in
favour of Mr. T. B. Potter, and 496 for Mr. Brett. Some time
after, Mr. Brett was made a judge, and is now Master of the
Eolls.

THE ROYAL DOCKYARDS EXPENDITURE. 373
Mr. Seeley, the member for Lincoln, directed the attention of the
members of the House of Commons, on the 16th of June, to the
necessity of appointing men as superintendents of dockyards who had
practical knowledge of shipbuilding, in preference to continuing the
present practice of selecting naval officers who were not possessed of a
technical knowledge of the business ; remarking that the Admiralty had
the power of going to the same market with other shipbuilding estab
lishments for their materials, and he could only come to the conclusion
that the reason why the work was, to the amount of from half a million
to a million a year, more expensively done in the royal dockyards than
was necessary, was on account of the mismanagement prevailing in
them. Mr. Bright, in commenting upon Lord Clarence Paget's reply to the
member for Lincoln, pointed out that the noble lord had entirety failed
to make an answer to the speech of Mr. Seeley ; that, in fact, he
admitted nearly every charge brought against the Admiralty ; that
the statement with regard to the extravagant cost of ships, or the still
more extravagant cost of repairs, had not been disputed. It had been
shown that a ship cost in one, two, and three years more for repairs
than the ships would have cost when new. Neither had the noble lord
explained why a particular firm had for a long period been making
chains and anchors for the Admiralty at a price 50 per cent, higher
than the Admiralty could have bought chains and anchors of equal
quality at from other firms in the trade. What was wanted was that
the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Secretary of the Admiralty, and the
managers and the heads of the department, should hold it their first
object to manage the department well ; and if there were men, or rules,
or customs that interfered with its good management, they ought to
break down those rules, and establish a better system in the department
which was under their control. He would undertake to say that if the
proposition be now negatived, it would be obtaining from Parliament a
sanction to a gross abuse — namely, that men should be placed in
charge of the expenditure of something like £3,000,000 a year, and that
there should be no blame attached to the department if these men so

374 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
placed in charge know nothing of the matter they were expected to
superintend. The motion was lost, for there was a majority of 27
against it.
Parliament was dissolved on the 6th of July, 1865, and Mr. Bright,
in his address to the electors of Birmingham, stated : —
" I fear the career of the House which is now about to separate is one which has given you
much disappointment. The election of 1859 was caused by the question of suffrage extension,
and was intended to promote an advance, if not a settlement, of that question. The House
which was returned at that election has been disloyal to its pledges, and has neglected its first
duty; the Administration which in 1859 climbed into office under the pretence of its devotion
to the question of Parliamentary Reform has violated its solemn pledges. Its chiefs have
purposely betrayed the cause they undertook to defend, and its less eminent members have
tamely acquiesced in that betrayal. The Ministers have for six years held office, which, but for
promise* they made, and which they have broken, they could not have obtained possession of
even for a single day."
Mr. Bright, with his colleagues, was returned to Parliament un
opposed, and in returning thanks to the electors, during a long speech,
he remarked, in speaking on Eeform : —
" I am one of those who have always sought to unite and to blend aU classes of the people
in one great mass ; and to do it by the abolition of privUege and of monopoly, and by admitting
my countrymen to that which they are entitled to — common citizenship in our common country.
(Loud applause.) Tou recoUect in the biU of Lord Derby there was a proposition which I think
I did something to knock on the head by describing it as a mode of giving what they caUed
fancy franchises. Now, I am sorry to see so judicious and sensible a man as Lord Stanley, in
his speech the other day, stUl adhere to one, at least, of those fancy franchises. The bUl of Lord
Derby was reaUy the bill of Mr. Disraeli and Lord Stanley. They were the two men in the
Cabinet who insisted upon its peculiar features, which peculiar features were fatal to the biU.
Now, Mr. Disraeli is a man who does what may be called the conjuring for his party.
(Laughter.) He is what, amongst a tribe of Red Indians, would be caUed ' the mystery man.'
(Renewed laughter.) He invents phrases for them ; and one of the phrases, the last and the
newest, is this lateral extension of the franchise. Now, Mr. Disraeli is a man of brains, of
genius, of great capacity for action, of a wonderful tenacity of purpose, and of a rare courage.
He would have been a statesman if his powers had been directed by any noble principle or idea.
(Laughter and applause.) But, unhappily, he prefers a temporary and worthless distinction as
the head of a decaying party, fighting for impossible ends, to the priceless memories of services
rendered to his country— (cheers)— and to freedom, on which only in our age an enduring fame
can be built up. (Loud cheers.) Now what is meant by lateral extension ? It means this :
that all below £10 householders are not to be admitted. Well, the present law admits all that
are above £10 householders, and therefore it can only include of those not now included, a few
men, inconsiderable in the whole number, who are lodgers, or who are brothers or sons of house-
keepers whose names are already on the register; and therefore it is quite clear that this is a
miserable pretence and a delusion, and an insult of the most glaring kind to the great body of
the people. (Loud cheers.) To the electors of the middle classes I would just address one

LORD PALMERSTONS DEATH. 375
observation. I would ask them, whence comes the freedom we now enjoy ? It does not come
from the monarch, it does not come from the peerage ; it comes from the House of Commons.
And from which side of the House does it come ? It does not come from the Tory side.
(Cheers.) It comes from the side on which my hon. friend and I for many years past, by your
favour, have been permitted to sit. (Cheers.) And if I were to say from what section of the
Liberal side it comes, I should say it comes from that section which sits chiefly below the gangway
rather than from that which sits close to the Ministers of the day. (Cheers.) I believe the time is
coming — nay, that we are upon its very threshold — when a large number of those hitherto
excluded wiU be admitted, and we shaU feel more than ever before that we are one nation and
one people. Many of you have stood, as I have often stood, on the sea-shore, in an hour of quiet
and of calm. No tempest drives the waves ; the wind is but a whisper ; and yet the tide comes
on as by some latent and mysterious power. The loiterers on the beach are driven from point to
point as the waves advance, and at length the whole vast basin of the ocean seems fiUed to the
brim. So on this question : there is no violence nor even menace of force ; but opinion grows ;
its tide moves on ; opposition, ignorant on the one hand, insolent on the other, falls back ; and
shortly we shall see barriers thrown down, privilege and monopoly swept away, a people
enfranchised, and the measure of their freedom fuU. Tou have honoured me this morning by
committing this great cause in part to my keeping. I may defend it feebly, I may fall from the
ranks before it is won, but of one thing you may be sure, I shall never betray it."
The result of the general election was that the Liberals gained fifty-
nine new seats, and the Conservatives thirty-three. This relieved the
Government of the dread of a Tory descent upon the Ministerial
benches, which hitherto operated like an incubus on the spirits of those
who wished to assert the independence of Liberalism.
Lord Palmerston was not destined to hold the reins of Government
much longer, for while riding in an open carriage at Brocket Hall,
without an overcoat, he caught a severe cold on the llth of October, and
died on the 19th ofthe same month.
" Fate steals along with silent tread,
Found of tenest in what least we dread ;
Frowns in the storm with angry brow,
But in the sunshine strikes the blow."
The noble lord, however, had reached the ripe age of eighty-one. He
had held office under the Crown altogether for forty-eight years, and had
been a member of fourteen Administrations. He was a descendant of a
family that traced its lineage to a Saxon earl, and had for ancestors some
of the most distinguished statesmen of the past generation. He was
educated at a public school and two universities. Although he had held
office for nearly half a century, he had not originated one measure of

376 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
importance with which his name will be associated. His country s
welfare, he had been of opinion, was best achieved by preserving her
institutions unchanged, and that her honour was best sustained by
making her opinions felt in every part of the world. He was " a terrible
man with a terrible name," and the Eussians, it was said, used to terrify
into silence their children by pronouncing his name. Before he died,
however, he yielded to the doctrine of non-intervention. By the ex
press commands of the Queen he was honoured with a public funeral,
and was sepulchred at Westminster Abbey. We may jnstly lament that
the ability he possessed should have been devoted to squandering his
country's treasure in a fruitless foreign policy, and in defences against
an imaginary foe ; and from his tomb we can draw no other moral than
of defeated hopes, wasted abihty, and worn-out fame.
The Ministry was reconstructed, and Earl Eussell filled the vacant
place of Premier, and Mr. W. E. Gladstone became leader in the House
of Commons, occupying the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Mr. Bright took part at a meeting in the Blackburn Town Hall on
the 30th of November, which had met to honour and present Mr. James
Pilkington, the late Liberal representative, with a testimonial as a recogni
tion of his services, during his Parliamentary career, extending over a
period of eighteen years. Mr. T. Dugdale officiated as chairman, and
Messrs. T. B. Potter, M.P., John Cheetham, M.P., T. Barnes, M.P.,
E. M. Fenwick, M.P., and Sir John Bowring were present. Speaking
of the Tory party, Mr. Bright said : —
" If I had to include the great charge which I have to make against that party it is this : that
it has been, so long as it has endured in our history, a party opposed to right, to justice, and to
moraUty in the legislation and the administration of the affairs of this kingdom. I shall not go
back to the year 1760, when that party as we now see it took the shape, and when it obtained
possession of power which it continued to hold almost uninterruptedly for about seventy years.
The history of their administration is a history of almost continuous war, of enormous debts,
of crushing taxes, of widespread pauperism, and during the latter years of it, especiaUy
the latter years of the great war, a period of almost total extinction of freedom in this country.
(Hear, hear.) But it is not necessary to go back so far as that ; you need only go back to
the time, which is clearly in the recoUection of not a few who are now in this meeting— go back
something less than forty years ; and I undertake to say that there is not a single question upon
which we now pride ourselves as an inteUigent and advancing country— there is not a single
great question which has ministered to the welfare of the great body of the people— that they have

AT BLACKBURN. 377
not systematicaUy opposed. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) . . . Now, observe, the Tory party
have opposed aU these measures on principle. It was not as two men of the same political
party might disagree, as to whether now was a suitable and convenient time to propound a certain
measure, or whether that was a proper degree to which to carry it. They did not say that those
measures should not be proposed now, but at some future time ; but they opposed, as far
as I remember, aU, or nearly aU, those questions, on the ground that the view their opponents
took was wrong, and would continue to be wrong, and that they were not questions which
the Parliament of England would act wisely in taking at all into consideration, with a view
to the settlement of them. So I think we are fairly aUowed to come to this conclusion : that if
the Tory party had been dominant during the last forty years, as it was during the preceding
forty years ; if its principles had been sustained by the administration of the country and by the
ParUament, every one probably — certainly almost every one— of these measures would have
at this moment been undone, not carried, and the country would have been in whatever position
it might have been, if that poUcy had been supported. To this hour, for example, the CathoUcs
and the Dissenters would have been, if not persecuted under the Test and Corporation Acts, at
least continuaUy insulted and degraded, and I think for a reUgious body in any country to
be insulted and degraded by its Government, or its laws, is in fact to be persecuted. WeU,
rotten boroughs would have existed aU over the country. There are some yet — (laughter) — but I
suppose, if these gentlemen had their way, instead of being a few now, and rather the exception
than the rule, they would have been omnipotent. Then, the old corrupt corporations would have
remained as they were under the hands of the lord of the manor, or of half a dozen gentlemen
who managed aU the affairs of the town, and carried on aU the jobbery and the corruption
as privately as possibly. (Cheers and laughter.) The Corn Law would still have been on
the statute-book ; we should have been continuaUy on the verge of famine, and no doubt, in every
portion of the country, at periods of two or three years, we should have had conspiracies
and insurrections, which would have been very different from the state of things which now exists,
at least in Great Britain. If the, newspapers had stiU been sevenpence a piece instead of a
penny, it is quite obvious that there would have been much more ignorance ; and where there
is ignorance and suffering there is usuaUy very much more discontent."
Mr. Bright again addressed a public meeting of the inhabitants of
Birmingham, in the Town Hall of that town, on the 13th of December,
1865. Mr. Yates, the Mayor, presided.
" Mr. Adderley," said Mr. Bright, "if he keeps to the question belonging to his party, has
not before him a very lively subject, and he never was a very Uvely speaker— (laughter)— and
although it may be convenient to make personal, and what I caU insolent— (cheers)— and what I
caU also untruthful remarks— (cheers)— upon me, with the view of giving a little spice to
his speech, yet I think, considering the position he has in this county, and in the country,
and that he has had also in the government of the country, he ought to be a Uttle more careful about
what he says. (Loud cheers.) And I would say the same to Sir John Pakington. (Laughter.)
He has no right to say, and it is very fooUsh to say, that the party which includes the vast
majority of the people can be fairly styled in this monarchical country as Republicans. (Hear,
hear.) I say, he is doing what in my opinion is a very unwise thing, and what— if he does
not know that we are RepubUcans— is not a very moral thing for him to do. (Hear, hear.) But
these men, your Pakingtons and Adderleys, have probably read history— though I would
not guarantee it— when they were at Oxford or Cambridge (laughter, and cheers)— but
they appear to have gained no knowledge, no real wisdom, from that which they have read. We

378 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
have seen Republicans triumph, we have seen monarchies overthrown— (hear, hear)— but what
does history teU us of these events when the English monarchy was overthrown 200 years ago?
Who were the persons really responsible for that catastrophe ? (Hear, hear.) Why, surely every
reader of English history must know that Buckingham, and Strafford, and Laud, and their
accompUces, and the duplicity of Charles I., that these aU were responsible for this great
catastrophe in EngUsh history. (Cheers.) And if he comes down further to the close of the
last century, and goes into the history of France, and ascertains how it was that one of the
oldest and greatest monarchies in Europe came to a sad end, and the king himself to an end
equaUy terrible with that which befeU Charles I., he wUl find that these evUs came from a
corrupted church, from a tyrannical nobility, and from a profligate court. (Loud cheers.) And
if coming to our day, within the last half-dozen years, he wiU ask what is it that has destroyed
and extinguished the dynasty which ruled over the Neapolitan kingdom, he will find that it was
the darkness of the priesthood and the feebleness and corruption of the administration. (Cheers.)
And if further he asks what it is that has convulsed the "United States, what it is that has
spread the horrors of war over a country on that continent equal in extent to half a dozen of
European kingdoms— he wiU find that it was not the friends of freedom, but the Conservative
slave-holders to whom it was due— (loud cheers)— a party whom one of our poets described, as it
were, in vision many years ago, when he said —
' A dreadful brotherhood — '
I speak of the leaders of that great rebellion —
' A dreadful brotherhood,
In whom all turbulent vices were let loose,
While conscience with their impious creed accursed,
Drunk as with wine had sanctified to them
All bloody, all abominable things.'
These are the men who endeavoured to destroy the most free government, and, as has been
sufficiently proved, the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. (Cheers.) But in
Birmingham it seems reaUy a work of supererogation to talk of these things, for the very stones
of your streets could teach us somewhat of these matters. Forty years ago, or a Uttle more,
when your streets resounded with the tramp of tens of thousands of men gathering, the great
majority in favour of freedom, the air was fuU of the menaces of war, and the very ground
seemed as it were to tremble underneath their feet, and what happened ? The revolutionists of
that time, the boroughmongers, and the Tory peers succumbed, and that great crisis passed, and
there was no disturbance of the public peace. (Cheers.) And look at the great changes which
have taken place since that stormy event — changes all of which, with scarcely any considerable
exception, have been in favour of freedom, and in favour of the rights and true interests of the
great mass of the population. But leaving out of view the question of the effects upon
the people, what has been the effect of those changes upon the position of the throne ? Does any
man deny that the Queen of England is seated more securely upon her throne than any monarch
who has sat upon the throne during any preceding period of English history ? (Cheers.) There
is no man in this island, certainly, who wishes to wrest the sceptre from her hand. (Cheers.)
The realm for years has been more tranquU, and for a longer period, than any previous period of
our recorded history ; and the cause of it is this, that the people feel that the throne is no longer
the enemy of freedom. (Hear, hear.) I recoUect reading in a book, I beUeve published under
the authority and by the approval of a lord chanceUor of Ireland, that there had been 200 Acts
of Parliament passed in favour of the landlord, and not one that he could point to in favour
of the tenant. (Cries of ' Shame ! ') Look at their Church— I am always sorry to have to
say things which appear injurious to the character of a Church. The Church religious is

AT BIRMINGHAM. 379
one thing, the Church political is another. (Cheers.) Don't let any labouring, earnest,
Protestant clergyman in Ireland think that I am undervaluing whatever services he may render
to reUgion. I speak of the Church as a political institution, set down in that country, not by the
opinion of the people, but by the power of the Tory party in England, and I say that so long as
that Church exists there never will be, there never can be, in the nature of the human mind
there never ought to be, content and tranquiUity in Ireland. (Cheers.) And this is not aU
we suffer. Look at America in connection with this question. How many Irishmen have
emigrated to America ? ' Myriads are gathered there, whom rage or fear
Drive from their wasted homes. '
And in America they form a portion of the people perpetually hostile to England. The Scotch
are a people no more disposed to put up with insult and wrong than the Irish, but the Scotch
who emigrate, whether to Canada or the United States, are not there the enemies of this country.
They speak of England, of Scotland, of Britain, of the United Kingdom, with respect and
affection ; and if the Irish had been treated as the Scotch have been treated, the whole of
the Irish nation on the American continent, instead of being hostUe, bitterly and unchangeably
hostile, to England, would have been much smaller in its numbers, and would have been just as
friendly to us as the emigrants from Scotland are. (Cheers.) . . . Let me now put to you,
before I sit down, a single proposition, and through these gentlemen who sit below me, to whom
freedom in this country is so greatly and so constantly indebted — (applause) — let me put it to the
people of this kingdom — if of the five miUions who are now shut out one miUion were admitted —
and you wiU mark the extreme, some wUl say blameable, moderation of that suggestion — if only
one million were admitted, would not the cry of the toil-laden and the suffering which even now
ascends to Heaven, would it not, think you, reach further — be heard even on the floor of
Parliament ? For do not forget that the ear of the Supreme is nearer even to the lowUest of us
than is that of our earthly rulers. (Cheers.) But if that voice was heard in Parliament, would
it not, perchance, do something to stiU the roar of faction, and to bend the powers of statesman
ship to the high and holy purposes of humanity and justice ? I speak not the language of
party ; I feel myself above the level of party. (Great and continued cheering.) I speak, as
I have endeavoured to speak, on behalf of the unenfranchised, the almost voiceless millions
of my countrymen. Their claim is just, and it is constitutional. It wiU be heard ; it cannot be
rejected. (Cheers.) To the outward eye monarchs and parliaments seem to rule with absolute
and unquestionable sway; but — and I quote the words which one of our old Puritan poets
has left for us — ' There is on earth a yet auguster thing,
Veil'd though it be, than Parliament or King.'
That auguster thing is the tribunal which God has set up in the consciences of men. It is before
that tribunal that I am now permitted humbly to plead, and there is something in my heart— a
small but an exultant voice— which tells me I shaU not plead in vain." (Great cheers, the
audience rising and continuing the demonstration for some time.)
A Eeform meeting, which had been called by the Mayor of Eoch
dale in compliance with a requisition, was held on the 3rd of January,
1866, in Mr. Pickuls's wooden theatre, which at that time was situated
in Newgate, Eochdale. Mr. Bright delivered a lengthy speech, in the
course of which he said : —

380 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
" I was glad when I heard it was intended to hold this meeting, but now when I stand before
this audience I feel myself fiUed with sadness which I cannot easily describe. I remember some
of your former meetings— one great meeting held two years ago, and another still greater which
was held last year, at which I was not able to be present; but I remember that great and most
noble speech which many of you were privileged to hear. The lips (Cobden's) whose words then
charmed and instructed you are now closed for ever; but there remains to us one thing, a priceless
legacy— the example of a great and noble life devoted to justice— I say, devoted to justice— and
whose labours have added whole realms to the ever-widening empire of human freedom.
(Applause.) In the midst of om- unavailing regrets let us thank God that such a life has been
lived amongst us. (Hear, hear.) . . . The illegal putting to death of subjects of the Queen and
citizens of the empire was minutely and accurately described by the very pen and hand of the
Governor himself. Nothing that he could say afterwards could unsay or undo that which had
been said and doue with regard to the execution of Mr. Gordon. 1 believe not a judge
in this kingdom, at this hour; -not a law officer of the Crown in the three kingdoms, not
a lawyer in practice in the three kingdoms, will differ from the opinion I express — that the
execution of the unfortunate man Gordon was in all its parts — in the transference from the place
where he was arrested ; in his being handed over to such a court, formed, it is said, of two
lieutenants and an ensign, or some such inferior officers ; in the manner in which he was treated
by the tribunal, in the manner he was treated after his mock trial — I say from beginning to end
it is a mass of iUegality ; and I believe there is not a judge who sits upon the Bench in this
United Kingdom who, speaking iu his private capacity, would doubt for one single moment that
Gordon was murdered. Tou have read the letter that he wrote to his wife within a few hours of
his execution. I know nothing in letter- writing that surpasses it. When I read it my exclama
tion was, and my first thought was, 'Why, this reminds me of the temper and the language of
the martyr Stephen' — (applause) — and since that martyrdom I have read of nothing more
touching, nothing in which the language and the temper were so tender and so beautiful, as the
expressions contained in that melancholy and wonderful epistle. (Hear, hear.) And yet I am
told — I hope my authority is not good — that when Parliament meets there wiU be a desperate
onslaught on Mr. Cardwell and the Government because they have suspended this Governor and
sent out a commission of inquiry. One of these Tory gentlemen said, ' Ay, if So-and-so had
been Prime Minister, he would not have given way to the clamour of a hundred dissenting
parsons.' (Laughter.) I cannot believe that party which caUs itself the Conservative party wUl
make this question of Jamaica a battle-ground in the ensuing session. Mr. DisraeU is a man
who is a head and shoulders taller than aU those who sit about him, or who foUow him, in aU
intellect and statesmanship. (Hear, hear.) And I do not believe, and wiU not believe until I see
it, that Mr. Disraeli will ever permit the shocking atrocities committed in Jamaica to be, in the
way of at any rate defending them, associated with his public character and career. (Hear, hear.)
Besides, suppose, which I should think highly probable, that Mrs. Gordon were to retire from
an island so sad to her henceforth, and come to England ; suppose she came to the bar of the
House of Commons and asked for justice, is there any man in that House who dares to get up and
deny that justice to that woman P Or, if she should make her way as a suppliant to the steps of
the throne, think you that the widow of the murdered Gordon will ask iu vain for justice at the
hands of England's widowed Queen? (Cheers.) . . But two things are possible— I am
not certain that they are not clear. The one is, that if this question of Reform is treated with a
feeble hand the Government will fall; and the other is, that if this Government falls, presided
over by the most eminent statesman now Uving of the Whig party, I think we are likely to see
the entire extinction of the Whigs as a governing party in the affairs of this country. (Hear,
hear.) But whether the Whigs, whether this Government, are equal to the time or not, the
cause which we espouse, and which I am endeavouring to defend, is nevertheless quite safe ; it

THE FENIAN CONSPIRACY. 381
has within it an indestructible life. Feebleness or treachery may retard it for a time, but cannot
prevent its final and its early triumph. (Cheers.) There is an old poem that I have read with
great pleasure, but many years ago — the ' Fairie Queene,' a line of which I think may teach us
something in our present position —
' No fort so fensible, no wall so strong,
But the continual battery may rive.'
I feel certain that the fort of selfishness and monopoly cannot be held for ever, and that the
walls of privUege cannot through all time resist the multitudes that are gathering to the assault.
(Hear, hear.) In all the nations of the world at this day, I believe, the powers of good are
gaining steadily on the powers of evU. (Hear, hear.) I think it is eminently and happily so in
this country. Let us take courage, then. We are endeavouring by constitutional means to pass
a great constitutional measure ; to make the Parliament not only the organ of the wiU, but the
honest and faithful guardian of the interests of aU the classes of this country. (Hear, hear.)
It is a great and noble purpose which we have set ourselves to do, and it is a purpose which
cannot fail if we are true to it and ourselves." (Great cheering.)
The discontent in Ireland, resulting from years of misrule, brought
into being a brotherhood that assumed the name of " Fenians." The
civil war in America having terminated, multitudes of Irishmen who
had enlisted in the American armies, finding their " occupation gone,"
and preferring a life of adventure and agitation to the obscurity of
monotonous labour, became avowed Fenians. Having been liberally
supplied with funds, they returned to Ireland, and sowed the seed of
disaffection. The safety of Ireland becoming serious, it was deemed
wise that the Habeas Corpus Act should be suspended, and accordingly,
on the 17th of February, 1866, Sir George Grey, the Home Secretary,
moved in the House of Commons for leave to bring in a bill to effect
that object. Mr. Bright delivered a speech on the subject. He said : —
"Sixty years ago this House undertook to govern Ireland. I wUl say nothing of the
circumstances under which the union of the two countries took place, save that they were
disgraceful and corrupt to the last degree. I will say nothing of the manner in which the
promises made to the Irish people were broken. During the sixty years that have elapsed since
the union, three considerable measures, calculated to improve the condition of the Irish people,
have passed through the House. The first of these was the measure passed in 1829 for the
emancipation of the Catholics of Ireland— an act the justness of which no one now questions.
Well, the First Minister of the Crown, himself a great soldier, stated that that measure was
passed in the face of, and only because of, the danger of civil war. The other two measures to
which I refer are the bUl for the relief of the poor, and the bill for the sale of encumbered
estates ; and these two measures were introduced into this House, and passed this House, on the
emergency of a famine, more severe, I believe, than any that has desolated any Christian country
of the world within the last four hundred years. Except on these emergencies— I appeal to every
Irish member and to every English member who has ever paid any attention to these matters—

382 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
except in these emergencies Parliament has done nothing for the people of Ireland. (Hear,
hear.) And, more than that, their complaints have been met — complaints of their sufferings
have been met — often by denial, often by insult, often by contempt. And within the last few-
years we have heard from this very Treasury Bench observations with regard to Ireland which
no friend of Ireland, or of England, and no Minister of the Crown, ought to have uttered with
regard to that country. Twice in my Parliamentary life this thing has been done — at least, by
the close of this day will have been done — and measures of repression — measures for the suspen
sion of the civil rights of the Irish people — have been brought into Parliament and passed with
extreme and unusual rapidity. I have not risen to blame the Secretary of State or to blame his
colleagues for the act of to-day. There may be circumstances to justify a proposition of this
kind, and I am not here to deny that these circumstances now exist ; but what I complain of is
this : there is no statesmanship merely in acts of force and acts of repression. And more than
that, I have not observed since I have been in Parliament anything on this Irish question that
approaches to the dignity of statesmanship. There has been, I admit, an improved administra
tion in Ireland. There have been Lord-Lieutenants anxious to be just, and there is one there now
who is probably as anxious to do justice as any man. We have observed generally in the recent
trials a better tone and temper than were ever witnessed under similar circumstances in Ireland
before. But if I go back to the Ministers who have sat on the Treasury Bench since I first came
into this House — Sir Robert Peel first, then Lord John Russell, then Lord Aberdeen, then Lord
Derby, then Lord Palmerston, then Lord Derby again, then Lord Palmerston again, and now
Earl RusseU — I say, that with regard to all these men there has not been any approach to
anything that history will describe as statesmanship on the part of the English Government
towards Ireland. There were Coercion Bills in abundance — Arms BUls session after session —
lamentations like that of the right hon. gentleman the member for Buckinghamshire (Mr.
Disraeli), that the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was not made perpetual by a clause
which he laments was repealed. There have been Acts for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus
Act like that which we are now discussing, but there has been no statesmanship. Men the
most clumsy and brutal can do these things ; but we want men of higher temper, men of higher
genius, men of higher patriotism, to deal with the affairs of Leland. I should like to know
whether those statesmen who hold great offices have themselves comprehended the nature of this
question. If they have not, they have been manifestly ignorant ; and if they have comprehended
it, and have not dealt with it, they have concealed that which they knew from the people, and
evaded the duty they owed to their Sovereign. I do not want to speak disrespectfully of men in
office. It is not my custom in this House. I know something of the worrying labours to which
they are subjected, and I know not how from day to day they bear the burden of the labour
imposed upon them ; but still I lament that those who wear the garb, enjoy the emoluments, and
1 had almost said usurp the dignity of statesmanship, sink themselves merely into respectable
and honourable administrators, when there is a whole nation under the sovereignty of the Queen
calling for all their anxious thoughts— calling for the highest exercise of the highest qualities of
the statesman. Lput the question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He is the only man of
this Government whom I have heard of late years who has spoken as if he comprehended this
question, and he made a speech in the last session of Parliament which -was' not without its
influence both in England and in Ireland. I should like to ask him whether this Irish question
is above the stature of himself and of his coUeagues ? If it be, I ask them to come down from
the high places which they occupy, and try to learn the art of legislation and government before
they practise it, I myself believe, if we could divest ourselves of the feelings engendered by
party strife, we might come to some better result. Take the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Is
there in any legislative assembly in the world a man, as the world judges, of more transcendent
capacity ? I will say even, is there a man with a more honest wish to do good to the country in

THE CATTLE PLAGUE. 383
which he occupies so conspicuous a place ? . . . But suppose it were possible for these men,
with their inteUects, with their far-reaching vision, to examine this question thoroughly, and to
say for once, whether this leads to office and to the miserable notoriety that men call fame which
springs from office, or not, ' If it be possible, we wUl act with loyalty to the Sovereign and
justice to the people ; and if it be possible, we will make Ireland a strength and not a weakness
to the British Empire.' It is from this fighting with party and for party, and for the gains
which party gives, that there is so little result from the great intellect of such men as these.
Like the captive Samson of old —
' They grind in brazen fetters, under task,
With their Heaven-gifted strength ' —
and the country and the world gain little by those faculties which God has given them for the
blessings of the country and the world." (Cheers.)
The bill passed, and on the same evening received the Eoyal assent.
Sir George Grey in February introduced a bill for suppressing the
cattle plague, for the ravages by this disease had become alarming. Mr.
Bright agreed in the absolute necessity, so far as farms were concerned,
of enforcing a rigid isolation ; but he differed from the proposal in the
bill which left the power of widespread and indiscriminate slaughter to
the local authorities. With compensation, he believed that the slaughter
would be unnecessary and monstrous in amount. It was contrary to the
principle adopted by Parliament on past occasions of public suffering to
vote money out of taxes to remedy a misfortune of this kind ; and it was
a grievance which every taxpayer would complain of, if his money were
applied to the compensation of well-to-do farmers and rich landowners
who might suffer from the affliction. The bill, after some objectionable
clauses were expunged throwing the whole charge on the county and
borough rate, passed, and soon received the Eoval assent.

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED, BELLE SAUVAGE WORKS, LONDON, E.C

LIFE AND TIMES

OF THE

Eight Hon. John Bright.

->-•?•—*-

CHAPTEE XLI.
THE REFORM STRUGGLE.
Mr. Gladstone's Eeform Bill supported by Mr. Bright— Clay's Elective Franchise BiU — The
Redistribution of Seats — Defeat of the Government — Lord Derby's new Cabinet — Sunday
Schools— Laying the foundation stone of the Rochdale Town Hall — A Reform Meeting
at Rochdale — Locke King's "Real Estate Intestacy BU " — The Sugar Duty — Reform
Demonstrations throughout the Country — Mr. Bright defends the Queen.
E. GLADSTONE, on behalf of the Government, on the 12th
of March, 1866, brought in a Eeform Bill, in which it was
proposed to reduce the county franchise from £50 to £14, but
occupation of property of a value less than £50 was to
include a house as well as land, and the annual value of the house
was not to be less than £7. The franchise was to be extended
to compound householders in boroughs, to tenants of separate parts of
a house, and to lodgers paying £10 a year. In boroughs the qualification
was to be lowered from £10 to "£7. The bill, it was calculated, would
add 400,000 persons to the list'of voters. Mr. Bright approved of the
bill in the main, and gave it his support, because, he said, as far as it went
it was a simple and honest measure. In this speech Mr. Bright exhibited
his great facility in stinging, at the expense of Messrs. Lowe and
Horsman, who opposed the bill, and who had, it was said, become dis
affected on account of being left out in the cold without office : —
" I have always been in favour of meeting this question and dealing with it in such a manner
that every person in the country who is uow an elector, or who is to be included in the bill,
should comprehend that it was a measure, so far as it went, fair and generous to the people whom
50

2 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
it was intended to enfranchise. I think I can show reasons — if wc can for a moment get rid of
the notion of party combination — why this House should readily and without hesitation agree
to this bill. One portion of it wiU recommend itself, I am quite certain, to all gentlemen who
are enthusiastic admirers of the bill of 1832 — and on this point I can confidently ask for the
support of the right hon. gentleman the member for Calne — that is the portion of the bill which
is intended to remove all legal obstacles or difficulties by which many persons who were intended
to be enfranchised by the Reform BiU have been up to this time deprived of their votes. The
Reform Bill proposed to give a vote to every occupier of a £10 house in a borough. It is shown,
partly it may be by the wording of the Act, partly by the decisions of judges and courts, that
this extension of the franchise was never complete ; that by the operation of clauses which made
it necessary to pay rates, and which made it necessary almost in effect that the occupier himself
should pay the rates, many thousands — I know not the number — wiU have been disfranchised from
1832 up to the very hour at which this biU shaU pass into law. In Scotland there is no such dis
qualification as that which this biU proposes to remove, for there they have no rate-paying clauses,
and they have no system of compounding which would juggle men out of their franchise ; and
the object of this bill is to assimilate our law in this respect to the law of Scotland, and to give
to the Reform Act of 1832 the same efficacy which the people expected from it when it passed
both Houses of Parliament. I suppose, although gentlemen may not admit it by any outward
expression of opinion, they are not against such an improvement of the Reform Act as will give
the vote whieh this part of the bill is intended to give. The right hon. member for Calne can
certainly not refuse his assent, because if there be one thing except the classical times of antiquity
to which he is more devoted than another, it is clearly the biU of 1832. The next point to which
I shaU ask the attention of the House is that which the bill proposes to do in respect to the
county franchise. Here I must say, at the risk of saying what is not complimentary to the
Chancellor of the Exchequer and his coUeagues, that I think the Government have shown a
remarkable feebleness, which lays them open to great blame, not only on the part of the House,
but of almost every person in the country who has expected a bill on the subject of Reform.
They propose to bring the franchise down from a £50 occupation to one of £14. The occupation
franchise in counties was a measure of your own carrying in 1832. I do not say that to touch it would
not have been necessary now, if you had not then disturbed the ancient franchise of the counties ;
but when the coimty occupation franchise was fixed at £50, and the franchise in boroughs at £10,
he must have been a very duU man indeed who could not have foreseen that the county franchise
must at some time not remote be greatly reduced. The right hon. gentleman the Chancellor of
the Exchequer spoke encouragingly in that Reform discussion many years ago, when the House
carried the third reading of the bill introduced by my hon. friend the member for East Surrey ;
but from that time to this there has been a good deal more done on this question. The right hon.
gentleman the member for Buckinghamshire and his Cabinet— the noble lord the member for
King's Lynn being very intimately concerned with the then leader of the House in manufacturing
a Reform BUl— had not had much experience, and it was not to be wondered at that they made
mistakes. They brought in their bill-a bill containing some good things and some bad things—
and among other things proposed a £10 franchise in counties. They took, however, a consider
able compensation by attempting to withdraw all freeholders within the Umits 'of boroughs
from the county franchise-transferring them to the electoral body within the limits of
boroughs. But that does not in the slightest degree change this fact— that they did with
due deliberation come to the opinion that £10 occupiers in counties were fit and proper persons to
exercise the elective franchise. Tou do not suppose that they proposed to put persons on
the county lists of whose fitness they were not weU assured, and then endeavoured to compensate
for this by their proposal with regard to the freeholders in the boroughs. They believed
and believe now, no doubt, that £10 was a proper and fitting franchise for the counties iii

FINALITY IN REFORM. '¦>
England and Wales ; and I should be glad to find them, when the House shall be in Committee
on this bill, proposing to reduce the sum of a £14 franchise to a £10 one. If they wish to have
an easy victory over the Government, and to prove themselves consistent, and to extend the
range of the county registration, I and a good many members in this part of the House will be
extremely happy to give them our cordial support; and I can promise them the support of
the right hon. gentleman behind me (Mr. Lowe), because he has fixed his affections on a £10
rental franchise. If he were to say he approved a £10 household franchise in boroughs he must
do so also in the counties, because we all know that the £10 householders in counties are generally
men in better pecuniary circumstances than those of equal rental in boroughs ... I now
come to the only point on which there is any great difference of opinion. I think the world has
never shown an instance of a legislative assembly such as this making a great disturbance among
themselves, exciting themselves, getting into a violent passion, pouring out cataracts of declama
tion like those we heard last night, and aU upon the simple question whether the franchise
in boroughs shaU remain as now at £10 or shall be fixed for a time at £7. Hon. gentlemen
opposite appear to be sm-prised at the frankness with which I speak. The head of the present
Government was laughed at for years because he spoke of finality in connection with the bill of
1832. I should be very happy if it should so happen, as the right hon. gentleman has suggested
in his fervid imagination, that the working classes would in great numbers surmount the barrier
of £7, and that ultimately it should be even equal to a household suffrage in the country. But
does any gentleman opposite believe that he is carrying a bill— did any gentleman sitting in this
House ever vote upon any measure of arrangement and organisation like this, and confidently
assure himself that the measure should be final ? He must have a very poor notion of what our
chUdren wiU be if he thinks them likely to be less competent to decide such questions for themselves
than we are at present to decide them. Therefore do not think that because I use the phrase ' for a
time,' I am not of opinion that this biU, if it be carried, wiU in all probability put an end to bills
having reference to the suffrage— for such portion of time, at least, as this bill will be found to
meet the views of the inteUigent— (loud laughter and cheers)— allow me to finish the sentence —
of the inteUigent population of this country . . . What is the reason, I ask, that gentlemen
who have been holders of office take this course with regard to the bill of the Government ? I
wiU not deal in any insinuations, but I wUl say that, from gentlemen who have held office, but
who happen to have been left out of what may be called the daUy ministrations, we have a right to
expect a very minute account of the reasons why they change their opinions before we can turn
round and change with them. These are the gentlemen who all at once start up as the
great teachers of statesmanship to the House and the country. Are they what the right hon.
baronet the member for Droitwich spoke of in the recess — are they the foremost statesmen in the
country ? and if so, is there to be a bid for them to take the place of gentlemen who have not
much succeeded as statesmen when in office ? In office these right hon. gentlemen are as docile
as any other gentlemen in office, but I fear, notwithstanding the ideas some people have of
my influence with Earl RusseU, that I am not able to offer them auy arguments on his part that
wiU tell upon them. I do not object for a moment to a member of this House being fond of
office. The ChanceUor of the Exchequer probably lives much more happily iu office than he
would Uve if he were out of it, though I do not think he wiU live quite so long. I do not
complain of men who are fond of office, though I could never comprehend the reason they Uke it
so much. If I may parody, or if I may make an alteration iu a line or two of one of the
most beautiful poems in our language, I might ask —
' For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
That pleasing, anxious office e'er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the Treasury,
Xor cast one last, long, lingering look behind r '

i LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
What I complain of is this : that when place recedes into the somewhat dim past, that which
in office was deemed patriotism vanishes with it ; and we have one howl of despair from these
right hon. gentlemen because it is proposed to diminish the franchise in boroughs from £10 to
£7. and to add by so small a proposition as that something to the freedom of the people of this
country. The right hon. gentleman below me (Mr. Horsman) said a little against the Govern
ment and a little against the biU, but had last night a field night for an attack upon so humble an
individual as I am. The right hon. gentleman is the first of the new party who has expressed his
great grief, who has retired into what may be caUed his political cave of AduUam, and he
has called about him every one that was in distress and every one that was discontented.
The right hon. gentleman has been anxious to form a xaarty in this House. There is scarcely any
one on this side of the House who is able to address the House with effect or to take much part
in our debates, whom he has not tried to bring over to his party or cabal; and at last the right
hon. gentleman has succeeded in hooking the right hon. gentleman the member for Calne.
I know there was an opinion expressed many years ago by a member of the Treasury
Bench and of the Cabinet that two men would make a party. When a party is formed
of two men so amiable — so discreet — as the two right hon. gentlemen, we may hope to
see for the first time in Parliament a party perfectly harmonious and distinguished by
mutual and unbroken trust. But there is one difficulty which it is impossible to remove.
This party of two reminds me of the Scotch terrier, which was so covered with hair
that you could not tell which was the head and which was the tail of it ... I
recollect that the late Francis Place and two or three others went to the Duke of Welling
ton as a deputation when he took office after the fall of Lord Grey's Government, and that '
they remonstrated with the duke. He was not it man that liked remonstrances veiy much
but they told him what was going on, how dissatisfied the people were, and how perilous they
thought the course of the Government in opposing Reform. Aud what did the duke say ? He
was standing warming himself at the fire. He said to these gentlemen, 'Vou have got heads on
your shoulders, and I would advise you to keep them there.' Two or three days afterwards the
Duke of Wellington was driven from office. The popular feeling in the country and in the
metropolis was such that this great soldier that knew no fear was obUged to resign, and Lord
Grey was permitted to come back, and the Reform BiU was eventuaUy carried. Now I ask hon.
gentlemen if they think any accident wiU ever happen again ? That accident was in Paris. But
in 1848, only eighteen years afterwards, there was another accident in Paris, which was foUowed
by a succession of accidents in other parts of Europe. I recollect at the time a noble lord who
was then a member of this House was greatly alarmed. He came to me from that side of the
House, and assured me that he had always been in favour of a great extension of the suffrage.
I believe that he was not quite sure that I should not soon be a member of a Provisional Govern
ment. I ask hon. gentlemen whether it is not better to accept a measure so moderate, and if you
like, as may be said by many in the country, so inadequate, but still in the right direction ? Is
it not better to accept this measure, and show your confidence in the people, than to take the
advice of the member for Calne-the most revolutionary advice that was ever given in this House
-and shut your doors against five mUlions of people, and teUthem that unless they can scramble
..ver this £10 barrier none of them shaU ever find a direct representation in this House? The
member for Stroud talked loudly last night about constitutional rights and constitutional
principles. But who was it that made the present constitution of England more than any other
men of our history ? Surely the men of the first and second Parliaments in the reign of Charles
I. Is ,t not m the very journals of your House? The Clerk of the House could easUy find
and read to you the resolutions of the House, that wherever there is not some direct interdiction
or contradiction of it, the aneient and common franchise of the people of this country in the
towns is the householding franchise. And do you mean to teU me that Lord Soiners, who was

AN ENGLISHMAN'S VOTE. 5
himself a great authority, and to a large extent one of the builders of our existing Constitution,
was wrong when he said that though no man by birth had any right to office, yet that by birth he
had a right to vote, and that the possession of a vote was the only true security which an English
man had for the protection of his life and property p I am not stating that as my opinion. I am
giving you the opinion of one of the greatest men in the Parliamentary annals of this nation,
and therefore I say you will not act constitutionally or wisely if you put any obstacle in the path
of a bUl that is so moderate as this, and that may give great satisfaction to vast multitudes of the
people. If this biU be rejected you will show that you are against all Reform — you will show that
you have no confidence whatever even in that portion of the population which lives in houses
between £10 and £7 rental. And if you pass this bill yon will show that you are not cut off
altogether from sympathy with multitudes of your feUow-countrymen. I say there is peril in the
present state of things. Vou have a population divorced almost entirely from the land, and shut
out from the possession of the franchise. My hon. friend the member for Brighton touched upon
the question of emigration. The right hon. gentleman the member for Calne spoke of the
inteUigence of the people in this way — of their combinations and associations. We all know that
they are reading, debating, thinking', and combining, and they know that in all our colonies, and
in the United States, the position of their class is very different. I believe that if you do not
moderate your tone and your views with regard to the great bulk of the working classes, you
wiU find your country graduaUy weakened by a constantly increasing emigration, or you wiU find
some accident happening, when you wiU have something to do more than you are asked to do to
night, under the threat, and it may be under the infliction, of violence. Now, sir, I said at the
beginning that I did not rise to defend this bill. I rose for the purpose of explaining it. It is
not a bUl which, if I had been consulted by its f ramers, I should have recommended. If I had been a
Minister it is not a bill which I should have consented to present to the House. I think it is not
adequate to the occasion, and that its concessions are not sufficient. But I know the difficulties
under which Ministries labour, and I know the disinclination of Parliament to do much in the
direction of this question. I shall give it my support, because, as far as it goes, it is a simple and
honest measure, and because I believe, if it becomes law, it will give more solidity and duration to
everything that is good in the constitution, and to everything that is noble in the character of the
people of these realms."
The correspondent of the Scotsman thus describes the unusual
scene that was witnessed during the delivery of this speech:—" Brave,
brawny, slow, self-possessed, the member for Birmingham positively
revelled in his power, and smote his adversaries hip and thigh with the
laughter of his audience. It was all done so easily! No effort, no
haste, no anger ! The broad, comely Saxon features were lit up by a
genial and good-humoured smile ; but otherwise, while the House roared,
and every other sentence was the signal 'for a burst of laughter prolonged
beyond all usual limits of duration, the orator stood bland, calm, and
unmoved. A gentle but expressive gesture of the right hand seemed to
send forth winged words— banter, pleasantry, sarcasm— in one arrowy
shower. Mr. Lowe could not help laughing. The grimmest Derbyites

(¦i LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
laughed as heartily as the youngest country squires. It was ungrateful
for the Opposition to laugh so heartily at Mr. Lowe, for they had
vociferously applauded his (Mr. Lowe's) speech, and be had fairly set
them up with arguments and fallacies for the session. Yet the truth
must be told, and it is that they roared more vociferously at Mr. Bright's
sallies against Mr. Lowe than even the hon. gentlemen below the
gangway and around the right hon. gentleman, which is saying a great
deal indeed. Mr. Deputy- Speaker Dodson bit his lip, and in vain attempted
to assume a look of unnatural and transcendent gravity. It was no use !
He was obliged to give way, and laugh like the rest. The Chancellor of
the Exchequer's face was lit up as if by forty smiles transmuted and con
densed into one. Mr. Disraeli felt, perhaps, that Mr. Lowe's eyes were
upon him, and he was content to smile faintly, and laugh with his eyes.
It is said that the only man that did not smile was Mr. Horsman, and
that even he tried and failed. Set on the bench just below Mr. Bright,
he put up his face, and tried to put him out by interruptions. But
it is impossible to disconcert Mr. Bright, and in a minute or two Mr.
Horsman's face wore a look of agony, as of a man sitting in a dentist's chair."
Mr. Bright opened the adjourned debate on the subject of Eeform
on the 23rd of April, in a very long speech, in which, replying to
Sir E. B. Lytton, he said: —
" I think so much political trepidation— I wUl say so much political cowardice, if
I may be allowed the use of that word— never was exhibited before as in the terror
shown by the mover and seconder of this amendment, because 116,000 new voters amongst
working men wUl be admitted, while more than 4,000.000 will be left out. I am astonished
at these alarmist speeches. The right hon. baronet the member for Hertfordshire
(Sir E. B. Lytton) deals in alarmist speeches. He comes down once or twice during
the session, and makes a speech, which gives great satisfaction to the House, pro
vided attention is not paid to what there is in it, I mean that in tone, manner, and
imagery we are pleased, but I am grieved when I find the side to which the right hon.
baronet gives his great influence. In the year 1860. the right hon. gentleman made «,
speech of a much more alarmist character than the one which he made last week, and
therefore we may reckon upon some amendment in his condition. In 1860 he said the bill
that was introduced by Lord John RusseU, as a member of Lord Palmerston's Government,
was a bill to admit ' poverty and passion ' to the franchise. This is one of his passages :—
'Though we are willing to admit poverty and passion into the franchise, we are not willing to
give poverty and passion the lion's share of political power over capital and knowledge.' That is
very much like what the right hon. gentleman the member for Cambridge University said of the
biU of the member for Buckinghamshire. He did not use the words ' poverty and passion.' but

BULWER LYTTON'S POLITICS. T
he spoke of things that were fatal to the Constitution as being likely to be enacted by the bill.
The right hon. baronet once held very different opinions from these. Many years ago he
pubUshed a book called ' England and the English.' This is not a very profound but a very
amusing book, and I should like to read to the House a sentence which the right hon. gentleman
put as a motto to the book, which motto, I think, he took from Ben Jonson. The words are —
' I am he,
Have measured all the shires of England over,
For to these savages I was addicted
To search their nature and make odd discoveries. '
The discovery which he had made up to 1860 was this : if you introduce artisans and working
men between a £10 and £6 rental, you give the lion's share of the power of the representation to
the poverty and passion of the country. In his speech last week he did not treat the working
men as if they were made up of poverty and passion, but he used generous words of them, and
he told us how there was a tie, not only of interest, but of respect and affection, between the
rich and the labouring poor ; and doubtless this language far more accurately stated his real
opinion than when he said that between £6 and £10 the working men represented 'poverty
and passion.' But to give them compUments of this kind, and not votes, seems to me
to be a thing which wiU not be well received by the great body of the people, who are asking that
at least some of them may be admitted to a representation in this House. It reminds me
very much of that couplet, which I am sure the right hon. gentleman wUl remember, from
Shenstone — ' He kicked them downstairs with such a sweet grace,
They may think he was handing them up.'
(Laughter.) How is it to be conceived that, after a speech full of such noble and generous sympathy,
the right hon. gentleman concludes to throw aU the weight of his character and influence into the
side of a party which says little that is kind and generous of this class ? (Loud Opposition cries
of ' No, no.') I wUl say, then, of a party which sometimes does say something generous of the
working class, but never shows the slightest disposition to confer upon it any portion of political
rights. (Cheers.) I have been misrepresented, and condemned, and denounced by hon. gentle
men opposite, and by not a few writers in their press. My conscience tells me that I have
laboured honestly to destroy only that which is evil, and to buUd up that which is good. The
political gains of the last twenty-five years, as they were summed up the otlier night by the hon.
member for Wick (Mr. Laing), are my political gains, if they can be called the gains in any
degree of any living Englishman. (Cheers.) And if now, in all the great centres of our
population— in Birmingham, with its busy district ; in Manchester, with its encircling towns ; in
the population of the West Riding of Yorkshire ; in Glasgow, and amidst the vast industries of
the west of Scotland ; and in this great Babylon in which we are assembled— if we do not find
ourselves surrounded by hungry and exasperated multitudes— if now, more than at any time
during the last hundred years, it may be said, quoting the beautiful words of Mr. Sheridan, that
' Content sits basking on the cheek of toil '—
if this House, and if its statesmen, glory in the change, have I not as much as any living man
some claim to partake of that glory ? I know, and every thoughtful man among you knows, and
those gentlemen who sit on that Bench and who are leading you to this enterprise, know that
the poUcy I have urged upon the House and upon the country, so far as it has hitherto been
accepted by Parliament, is a policy conservative of the public welfare, strengthening the just
authority of Parliament, and adding from day to day fresh lustre and dignity to the Crown.
And now, when I speak to you and ask you to pass this biU— when I plead on behalf of those

8 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
who are not aUowed to speak themselves in this House-if you could raise yourselves for this
night, for this hour, above the region of party strife-if you could free yourselves from the
pestilent atmosphere of passion and prejudice which so often surrounds us here, I feel confident
that at this moment I should not plead in vain before this Imperial Parliament on behalf of the
EngUsh Constitution and the English people." (Cheers.)
On the 27th of April, on the second reading of the bill, it was found
that the majority numbered only five. The Government took the vote
to mean that the House wished the Eeform Bill to go on, and also that
it should be made to include the redistribution of seats. Accordingly, a
bill for this purpose was introduced in May, the main features of which
were the obtaining forty -nine vacant seats by grouping small boroughs
and taking away their second members, and the allotment of these seats
—seven to Scotland, twenty- six to English counties, and the rest to
English boroughs.
On the 30th of May, Mr. Clay introduced for discussion an
"Elective Franchise Bill." The Chancellor of the Exchequer opposed
the educational test to his £7 Borough Franchise Bill, arguing that
the labouring classes should be considered not in respect to their
scholastic knowledge but with reference to their habits of life, their
settled character, and as fathers of families ; and that they should
be presented with the franchise in proportion as they excelled
in these respects. Mr. Bright, in condemning this fancy franchise,
said —
" I want to be shown in what respect the ancient practice of the constitution, the ancient line
on which our forefathers always traveUed, and on which we have hitherto travelled, is not sufficient
for au adequate extension of the franchise and au adequate and satisfactory representation of the
people. The idea of education, in the sense of reading, writing, and arithmetic — and I know not
what other branches of knowledge may at some time be added — seems to me to be almost puerile
in considering this question. The right hon. and learned member for Dublin University
(Mr. Whiteside) is a man who has aU the advantages of the highest education which the highest
University of this country can give, and he had his wits expanded by a great and successful
practice in the law, and he has been in the House for many years, and we know how skilful he is
in debate ; but I undertake to say that the political principles of that University, so far as
he represents them, are principles upon which the Government of this country can by no means
be maintained. I say further that if this Parliament had governed the United Kingdom
upon the principles of the representatives of the three Universities, there has been no anarchy in
any European kingdom during the last one hundred years that would have been comparable to
the anarchy which would have prevailed amougst us. What is the Object of education, except it
be directed to a special question or a special purpose ? My hon. friend behind me, the member
for Westminster (John Stuart Mill), is a man as highly- educated, probably, as any man in

AN EDUCATION FRANCHISE. 9
this House; and the right hon. g'eutlemau the ChanceUor of the Exchequer is not surpassed in
education and acquirements, probably, by any man in the kingdom ; but what is the good of their
high classical and it may be scientific education, if directed to certain things and purposes which
have not in the least come in their line ? For instance, I wiU take them both into my
manufactory in Lancashire, and put them to do the simplest thing. I would set them to put one
of the commonest pieces of machinery together, and to keep it going ; and the result would
be that they would be scarcely able to keep their fingers out of mischief, aud we should in
a short time have an addition to the number of those accidents which unfortunately happen
too frequently in our manufactories. Education as regards pohtics — if a man is educated as
regards pohtics — is just as good, of course, as being educated with regard to any other object. If
you take the clergy of England, who are an educated body of men — no doubt some of them are
mediocre, but a great many of them are men of high attainments — but if you take these men and
put them through an examination on political questions and political principles, you wiU find, for
the most part, that they know very little indeed about them. Well, if au educated man —
classicaUy and scientifically educated — knows nothing of politics, which is very often the case,
how shaU he be more competent to decide who shall sit in this House — or, if he sit in this House
himself, how shaU he be more competent to decide what laws shall be passed than men in
the humbler classes of society ? The object of giving them the vote is this : that they should
choose some man of their neighbourhood in whom they have confidence, that he may come
to ParUament to assist in making the laws under which they shall live. I do not know whether
we have any in this House who have written history, but we have many that have read it,
and who may remember that it is not very long ago — say as late as the time of Queen Elizabeth —
that probably the majority of the members of the peerage of this country were not able to read
or write ; and much of the greatness of this country — it may be aU the greatness — has been
achieved when the upper classes as we now call them — the rich, the propertied, and the powerful
classes— had very Utile more of that kind of education to which this bill refers than is now obtained,
for the most part, by the most industrious and intelligent of our Sunday-school children. Let nobody
get up after me and say that I disregard or undervalue the worth of education. I have not had
the advantages which many have had, but the fact makes me the more value that which other
men have obtained ; and there is not living at this moment any man who values more than I do,
for its usefulness to others, and for its luxury to one's self, that admirable education which is now
being obtained to such an extent amongst the higher classes of society . . We know, first
of all, that the house a man lives in is to a large extent the test of his income and expenditure. I
do not say that it is so in every case ; but speaking of the rule all over the country, the house a
man lives in and the rent he pays may be taken to be the test of his expenditure, and expenditure
in the man is the test of income. The man who is a householder in a great majority of cases is
a married man, and in a great majority of cases there are children in the house. Tou wiU
generally find that he is a man with a fixed position, and if you will enter the house you wiU find
as you wiU begin from the lowest— say £4 or £5— until you come to the £50 or £100 rental, all
the signs of what we caU civilisation — namely, comfort, luxury, it may be, physical and mental
enjoyment, newspapers, books, education, and so forth. This must be so clear that I will
not argue it. Vou find in houses of the smallest rental, and in those which are the poorest
furnished, less probability of the education of the children than there should be. Trace
this from those lowest houses to the houses of higher quality, and you will find that what I say
is the case — the house is the real test for what you wish to ascertain when you propose to make
an extension of the franchise."
Mr. Bright pointed out in the debate that the Chancellor of the

10 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Exchequer's bill for redistribution of seats disturbed and re-arranged
forty -nine seats, whereas Lord Derby's bill disturbed and re -arranged
fifteen seats. They knew perfectly well that county elections, as well as
borough, were more or less expensive, according to the wisdom of their
management, and the violence in some degree of the party strife which
arose. He knew a town of agricultural population in which every vote
polled at the election cost the candidate £4. He thought 2,000 votes
were polled, and consequently the election cost the candidate or his
friends £8,000. Down in South Lancashire, where the number of
electors was 20,000 or more, the cost amounted to nothing like the sum
he had just described; and if there be boroughs in which the cost
ran up several to thousand pounds at almost every election, there were
other boroughs equal in population and in the number of electors where
the contests cost not more than one-fourth of the sum he had named.
He maintained that the cost of elections did depend, and that after all
their legislation it would depend, to a large extent, on the good sense of
those powerful persons, whether in a borough or a county, by whom the
elections were generally controlled — he meant in the selection of candi
dates and the working of contests — and on their determination to do
nothing that law or morals could in any degree find fault with.
In the adjourned debate in Committee, on the 18th of June, Mr.
Bright reminded the members tbat on a former occasion, in discussing
the redistribution of seats, he took the opportunity of stating figures
with regard to about thirty of the select and choice working men of the
town in which he lived — the men who were such great favourites with
the right hon. baronet the member for Hertfordshire (Sir Bulwer
Lytton). The hon. member for North Lincolnshire (Mr. Banks Stan
hope), in a recent speech, had said that the managing men of the co
operative societies of Eochdale, he understood the greater number of
them, were outside the borough, and the right hon. member for Bucking
hamshire intimated something of the same kind.
" Well, when I was down in Rochdale," added Mr. Bright, " I understood that somebody was
making a minute investigation, but as he did not find the fact to be so, I suppose he was not able
to report it to his employer. Of the whole thirty-three men who manage these committees— 1

THE ROCHDALE CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY. 11
think there are actually only thirty-two, because one of them is on two cominittoes — there arc
only six of them out of the borough, and of these only one certainly, the other two possibly.
might have a vote if they were inside the borough. Therefore that point of the case is disposed
of. At present there are seventeen of those men within the borough who have no votes. With
a £7 franchise, as proposed by the bill, out of those seventeen eleven would be enfranchised.
Bear in mind they are the very select men of the 5,000 working-men's families in Rochdale, and
that they manage — and manage admirably, so far as I believe — a business of nearly £500,000
a year. With a £7 franchise, eleven out of the seventeen would be enfranchised, while, if you
had an £8 franchise, as proposed by the learned member for Guildford (Mr. BoviU), that eleven
would be diminished to only two. If this rating proposition of the noble lord were adopted, and
the word ' seven ' remained, in that case I believe there would not be one single man of those
seventeen who would be enfranchised. Now let me for a moment tell the committee what these
men have done in the matters of which I had not before the opportunity of speaking. They are
5,000 in number; they apply every year 2 J per cent, of their profits to educational purposes —
they spend £700 per annum iu this way ; they have established a library in the town of upwards
of 6,000 volumes ; and they keep open and support ten separate news-rooms at their different
branches in and about the town, to which libraries and news-rooms entrance is free to aU the
members of the co-operative societies. A distinguished officer of the Government who went to
that library with me, after examining the collection of reviews, magazines, newspapers, and
periodicals of various kinds, told me that he was quite certain that the collection was more
extensive than that which was taken in at the Athenaeum Club, of which he was a member.
(' Question.') I am surprised that the hon. gentleman there calls ' Question ; ' but if this is not
the question, there is no question before the House. Are you prepared to extend the franchise to
these eleven out of the seventeen, according to the proposition of the bill, or to only two out of
the seventeen, according to the proposition of the learned member for GuUdford ? Or are you
prepared to deny it to every one of them, according to the proposition of the noble lord, if the
word ' seven ' remains in the clause p At present it is to my mind one of the most lamentable
things in our country, that the great body of the working class are absolutely divorced from our
poUtical interests and institutions. Since these discussions commenced a few weeks ago, a
member of this House has shown me a letter which he received from a gentleman with
whom I am well acquainted — one of the largest cotton spinners, manufacturers, and merchants
in Lancashire — a gentleman who might long ago have been in this House, had he not had so much
business thrown upon him that it was impossible for him to have given up the time which his
presence here would have demanded. In this letter this gentleman stated to my hon. friend that
he regretted to find that amongst his workmen there was growing up a much stronger interest in
American politics than in the pohtics of their own country. I met him not long ago, after
reading that letter, and I asked him if he really meant what he had written to represent the
literal fact. He said it was the literal fact, and he stated as a iiroof of it that in his mill there
were nearly as many of American newspapers to be found as newspapers published in this
country. Hon. gentlemen may think that has nothing to do with this question ; but I take the
liberty of teUing them that in my opinion a state of society like that, and a state of opinion like
that, amongst the population such as we have in Lancashire and Yorkshire, represents anything
but a healthy state of things, and demands the attention of this House. What do the great
employers of labour say who are here ? Take the opinion of the hon. baronet the member for
the West Riding (Sir Francis Crossley). one of the largest employers of labour in the kingdom ;
take the opinion of my hon. friend the member for Oldham (Mr. Piatt), perhaps the largest
machine maker in the world, and employing several thousand men ; take the opinion of such
men in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and they will tell you that they have a deep interest in
changing the state of feeling there, and extending the right of voting to the persons they

12 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
employ. They all know— all of us who employ labour know— that one great effect of passing
this bill would be to increase the desire for education ; to stimulate self-respect ; and we know
moreover that all the social relations of our population would thereby be very much improved."
On Lord Dunkellin's motion, substituting a rating for a rental
franchise in the boroughs, the Government were left in a minority
of eleven, and instantly resigned. Lord Derby next formed a Cabinet.
Mr. Disraeli was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord
Chelmsford, Lord Chancellor ; Duke of Buckingham, Lord President of
the Council ; Earl of Malmesbury, Lord Privy Seal ; Mr. Walpole,
Home Secretary ; Lord Stanley, Foreign Secretary ; Earl of Carnarvon,
Colonial Secretary ; General Peel, War Secretary ; Viscount Cranbourne,
Indian Secretary ; Sir S. Northcote, President of the Board of Trade ;
Earl of Devon, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; Duke of
Montrose, Postmaster General; Sir J. Pakington, First Lord of the
Admiralty ; Marquis of Abercorn, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland ; and
Lord Naas, Secretary for Ireland.
Mr. Bright presided over the nineteenth annual Sunday School
Union Conference for Lancashire, Cheshire, and Derbyshire, which was
held in the United Methodist Free Church, Baillie Street, Eochdale, on
the 30th of March.
" I feci," said Mr. Bright, " that I have no right to be here from any participation I have in
the labours of those around me, for I am connected with a small sect who, until within the
last few years, have not done much in Sunday-school teaching ; and more than that, I have had a
good deal of hard work, it may be in a more conspicuous, but not, certainly, more noble field than
that in which you are engaged. (Cheers.) But if not labouring with you, I can say with
tbe most perfect honesty that I have strongly, and all my life, sympathised with your labours —
(hear, hear) — and on more than one occasion I have expressed my sense of the immeasurable
obligation which this nation is under to the teachers of its sabbath schools ; for I may say,
without any wish to compliment those who are engaged in this work, that I believe amongst all
the agencies which now arc at work with a view to redeem our people from the barbarism which
seems constantly to contend for the mastery of our race, there is no one who deserves a higher
place than the agency of Sunday schools — ( cheers) — and probably, if I were to look over all the
districts of the country. I could scarcely find one in which that agency had been more actively
employed, and with greater result, than in this town and district where we are now assembled. I
have no accurate figures with regard to the number of Sunday schools, taken as a whole, and the
scholars attending them in this town and immediate neighbourhood ; but I am informed that
in connection with the Sunday-school Union — and taking this town as a centre, extending
eastwards as far as Littleborough, and southwards as far as MUnrow, and northwards as far as
Whitworth, with an equal distance to the west, perhaps a circle of five miles in diameter — there

SUNDAY SCHOOLS. l'-'<
are not less than fifty schools, with more than 1,700 teachers, aud more than 12,000 scholars.
And if I were to add to these whatever schools and teachers and scholars connected with
the Established Church, and the Roman Catholic Church in the same district, probably I might
add one-half more to those numbers; and extending our view from what is done in this
neighboiu-hood, looking' over the country, I am told, but do not give it with any pretence, of
perfect accuracy, that there are not less than 2,000,000 of Sunday-schol scholars. Now it
is impossible by any stretch of the imagination for us to take any fair picture of the vast
effort which is involved in these numbers. It may be said shortly that the agency of the Sunday
school covers aU the country, and fertiUses, although it may be but in many parts with a feeble
rill, almost every corner of the land. But we are looking at it in the main ; we cannot help but
perceive that all this labour is carried on under difficulties of no common kind. Recollect that
the Sunday school is a school for only one day in the week, for one day out of seven ; that during
that day it does not occupy during the average more, I suppose, than from two to three hours ;
and that in the schools so far as what is called ordinary education, apart from religious training,
almost the only branch of education that is much attended to, is the most important of all —
that of reading. Now, I presume that in view of this, vast numbers of children who attend
Sunday schools have very Uttle if any other teaching' or any other learning. They enter,
not all of them but perhaps a minority of them, the schools for the most part ignorant,
and the labour of bringing them on even in the first steps in the course of their learning, which
is the heaviest labour of aU, seems at times almost insurmountable. But I believe that minority,
if it be a minority, who enter the Sunday schools wholly untaught, is constantly, and I hope
rapidly, stiU lessening ; for I find from the returns of the public census of the country that
whilst in 1851 the number of scholars, so far as could be ascertained, in the schools of the
country — I am not speaking now of the Sunday schools, but of the ordinary schools of the
country — the number was 2,297,000 ; in 1861 the number had increased to 3,150,000 ; therefore
it foUows inevitably that as in the ten years there had been added to the number of the children
going to schools 800,000, the number of those who go totally ignorant to the Sunday school
must have to some large extent been diminished ; stiU, whatever we may allow on this point, I am
quite sure that the obstacles to any great success are very great, and I fear, after all the labour
that is bestowed, a feeUng must come home to the Sunday-school teachers very often that there
are difficulties in the way absolutely insuperable, and it is only by the devotion of the teachers
and by their continuous labour, extending often over many years, and by the perseverance of the
scholars, that anything really is done that tells upon the mental, moral, and religious condition of
the country. And yet I think it will be universally admitted by all who have been living in the
country— I speak now of this district in the country, during the last half century— that the
whole spirit of the working classes has been touched and moulded by the influences of these
schools. It may be said indeed, I think, if I may quote the words of a very pious man, living
nearly 300 years ago, George Herbert, whose poems some of you may have seen, in speaking
of the Sunday, he says — ' The week were dark but for thy light,
Thy torch doth show the way.'
I think these words may be applied to the agency of Sunday schools in this district. Aud
now, reviewing all that has been done, not confining ourselves to one day in the seven, but to the
seven days, how much more requires to be done. I should like to give one illustration of this to
this meeting, because I think there are facts which cannot be too prominently brought before the
public. There is an institution in Manchester called the Manchester Educational Aid Society,
which aims to assist the children of those who are not able to pay for schooling to attend school.
It is a society not long since formed, and can make very little way in the midst of the ignorance
of a large portion of the population wherein it works. I regret to say that only two days ago

14 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
one of its most zealous friends— one of its founders— a man revered and beloved by those who
knew him— Edward Brotherton— was carried to his grave. I have reason to believe that his
illness and his death were occasioned by a visit he paid to a family of the poorest class, whose
habitation was filled with an atmosphere of typhus. There remain in Manchester thousands
who mourn his loss, and may seek long to find again such a friend. Now this Educational
Society teUs us that in every 100 children living with parents, or guardians, who are not at
work, there are forty at school, and sixty not at school ; they say that everywhere a majority
of children between the ages of three and twelve are found neither to be at school nor at work.
They also state that they have made a most accurate canvass of a portion of Manchester
and Salford, and judging from what they have canvassed, on the whole they come to certain
conclusions which are positively appalling. In canvassing a tenth part of Manchester and
Salford there were 7.055 children of all ages above three who were neither at school nor at work,
and 5,787 of those were between three and twelve. These figures show that the former estimates
of educational neglect in Manchester and Salford are by no means exaggerations, but rather fall
short of the truth. They state further that the committee have been furnished with the number of
children in an average attendance in aU the schools receiving a Government grant in Manchester
and Salford. In the year 1864, the last year of which there was a public report that the schools
are ninety-two in number, and the total average attendance for the year was 24,271 ; there are a
few schools which are not under Government inspection, but probably the average total
attendance, including these, would be considerably short of 30,000. Yet in Manchester and
Salford there are now not fewer than 97,000 children between three years and twelve, or between
four years and thirteen ; and of the classes which attend these public schools, and of those which
are still lower in the social scale, there cannot be fewer than 85,000. It follows therefore that
there must be something like 50,000 children — perhaps even more — in Manchester and Salford
who are receiving no instruction whatever ; and these 50,000 will form and become hereafter the
parents of no fewer than 20,000 families in that city, and of those no doubt vast numbers
are not reached even by the agency of Sunday schools, which seeks to descend to the very lowest
and humblest of the xieople . . This moment I have before my mind's eye a very old
friend of mine I recoUect — for he is now no longer here ; he was one of my oldest friends, and
one of our most respected townsmen ; if I mention the name of James Littlewood, I shall recall
him to the memory of many of the audience— I recollect a conversation with him on the subject
of Sunday schools many years ago. He told me that he had for more than forty years, without
almost any exception, given portions of his Sunday to teaching in the school. The day which to
many of us is a day of rest, and perhaps not always spent as it might be, was to him a, day
of zealous work. He died, and I followed him, amongst many others, to his grave. I remember
very well the thoughts which were present with me on that occasion. I said to myself how
precious must be the retrospect of a life passed in so great and so blessed a service ! I speak
now to many such labourers. There are those in this assembly— those who for various periods of
ten, twenty, thirty, and probably some forty years, have given their time to this labour. I feel, I
say it in all sincerity, that I am unworthy to be among you, except as a humble listener or
learner; but I venture to offer you, however Uttle it may be worth, the tribute of my
admiration and my reverence for the unwearied labour you have given to instruct and to train in
all that is good so many miUions of our fellow-countrymen."
Mr. Bright laid the foundation-stone of the Eochdale Town Hall in
the presence of an immense number of his townsmen on the 31st of
March. His speech was lengthy, and in alluding to the Liberal members
who had represented Eochdale in Parliament, he said : 

REFORM MEETING AT ROCHDALE. 15
'" If I look at the members who have sat for this borough, taking the whole time from the
period of our enfranchisement, now thirty-four years ago, I think we may hold up our heads
alongside any constituency iu the kingdom. (Hear, hear.) Whether I take Mr. Fenton, who was
our first member — (hear, hear) — a neighbour in high esteem, faithful always to his convictions'
and retaining, as long as he chose to sit, the confidence of the constituency ; or coming down from
hiinto Mr. Sharman Crawford, who came to this town, I will hardly say as a candidate, because he
was not a candidate of his own offering, but came to be elected at the time when I believe there
was not a single person in this town but myself who had not voted for his candidature when
he was first proposed, though, of course, I voted for him at the election. Well, after him came
Mr. Miall, a gentleman who has made himself a great position — (hear, hear) — and a name in
connection with great principles, for which, it may be, this country is not yet prepared, but which
principles wiU Uve long- after all those who now deride and oppose them are forgotten. (Cheers.)
WeU, after him we elected another man, and I fear to speak now of a man who this time twelve
months was yet living, but the anniversary of whose death wiU be only to-morrow. You see here
iu marble (pointing to the bust of the late Mr. Cobden, which was placed in the room) the
representation of his outward form, so good I think as you wiU rarely see of any man who has
passed from among us ; but marble itself is but of transient duration compared with the permanency
of that fame which his services to this country confer upon his name. (Loud cheers.) We have
selected another since then. I will not speak of the present member of this borough (Mr. T. B'
Potter). He said of the ParUament that it was a new Parliament, and had not been very long
tried ; therefore I might say the same of him, but I have no doubt that when the time sliall come
that his connection with this borough shall cease, and I wish it to be remote — (applause) — that we
shaU be able to add him to the list of our representatives who have done credit to the choice of
the constituency, and who, by their consistency in the support of all just principles of public
freedom, have done something to aid the advancing interests and liberties of their country."
(Cheers.) The inhabitants of Eochdale were thoroughly in earnest on the
question of Parliamentary Eeform, for about 5,000 of them assembled on
the evening of the 7th of April in a large shed connected with Mitchell
Hey Mill, belonging to the Eochdale Co-operative Manufacturing
Company, to adopt resolutions in favour of the Government Franchise
Bill. The mayor, Mr. S. Stott presided, and the borough member, Mr.
T. B. Potter, was one of the speakers. Their townsman, Mr. Bright,
was present, and thus counselled them : —
" We have to choose, probably, whether there shall be a reform or no reform— (hear, hear)—
whether the book of progress, in which are written so many good measures of late years, whether
the book shall be shut up and closed for ever ; because, if you allow the Tory party to gain the
ascendancy again, it is impossible to say when the book will be again opened. (Cheers.) You
have to say whether this class— this working class which they speak of with so little respect—
(hear, hear)— without which England would be no nation at all— (cheers)— without whose industry
the greatness and the wealth of this country would be as nothing in comparison with even
unimportant countries in Europe— you have to say whether this class shall sink under the slanders
which have been heaped upon it ; whether, for example, the national verdict shaU confirm that
which was said the other night in the House of Commons by a gentleman, who, being a member of

16 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Her Majesty's Privy Council, is by title right honourable, and who sits for a rotten borough,
elected by the Marquis of Lansdowne. He said, ' If you want venality ' — which means
corruption — ' if you want ignorance, if you want drunkenness, if you want to be intimidated, if
you want an impulsive, unreflecting, violent people, go to the unrepresented class.' (Cries of
'Shame,' and hisses.) Now, what we have to decide — what this town has to decide, and the
public has to decide — is this : whether the national verdict shaU be given in favour of that
slanderous sentence uttered against the miUions of the people of England. Oh ! they make no
complaint that you work — you toil ten or twelve hours » day six days in the week, you sweat at
your work, you pay taxes, you build up wealth for others — you make, in combination with capital
and intellect, the greatness of this great nation. (Hear, hear.) And yet in the House of
Commons — the people's house — not in the House of Lords, iu the House of Commons, language
like this which I have quoted is uttered and cheered by the great Tory party in the House.
(Hear, hear, and cheers.) I say, there is a desperate peril in this — (hear, hear) — that language
like this, and the state of mind which causes it to be uttered, the doctrine out of which it springs
is the doctrine of revolution — (hear, hear) — of the worst and most calamitous kind. We abhor
all this. (Hear, hear.) We are for peace — (hear, hear) — peace between classes at home, and
peace with all nations abroad. (Loud cheers.) We are for peace, for justice, and for the safe
and gradual advance of freedom. (Hear, and cheers.) We believe that the time has come
when the middle classes, who are mainly Liberal, shall unite again with the great body of the
working classes, who are aspiring for something higher and better than they have hitherto had.
(Hear, hear.) And we say, united together wc can gain from our Government and Parliament
whatsoever is necessary for us. We feel that our fate is in our own hands. (Hear, hear.) And
assembled here 5,000 strong, we resolve at last, and we ask our countrymen everywhere to resolve
with us, that we shall never of our own free wiU be parties to our own humUiation and our own
enslavement." (Protracted cheering.)
Mr. Locke King again brought his " Eeal Estate Intestacy Bill "
before the members ofthe House of Commons on the 6th of June,
asking them to assimilate the law relating to real property to
that which then prevailed with regard to personal property, contending
that justice and common sense required an alteration of the law, and that
a difference should no longer be allowed to exist between real and
personal estate. Mr. Bright, in the course of his speech on the subject,
assumed that any man making a will and leaving children behind him,
would treat those children with some show at least of an impartial
affection, and would divide his property with some degree of justice
amongst them.
" Why men cUd otherwise than this," he argued, " was the great condemnation of oui- law, for
it destroyed in their minds the sense of right and wrong, and induced in thousands of cases
every year a making of wiUs and a devise of property which was contrary to all natural right,
and which made, in many cases, the last act of a man's life the great crime of his Ufe. He sat
some years ago on a committee with regard to the affairs of Ireland, and , great deal of evidence
was taken upon this matter. Amongst others, the evidence of Professor, now Judge Longfield,

THE LAW OF PRIMOGENITURE. 17
of the Incumbered Estates Court in Ireland, and the evidence would bo valuable to the members
if they would read it. Another eminent lawyer, who argued strongly in favour of the law,
admitted at last that if he confined himself to the questions aud principles of political economy
he must condemn the law ; but, taking the law in connection with an hereditary peerage, and
looking at it as a poUtical institution, the lawyer was obliged to support the law. He preferred
morality and justice to all the peerages and all the dynasties that over existed iu the world ; and
if he were in favour, as hon. gentlemen were, of hereditary succession, he should be afraid of
tying up the hereditary peerage of this country with a law so obviously immoral and unjust as that
which they were considering. He was not at liberty to state to the House everything he had heard
from younger sons upon that question, but only two years ago, soon after he made a speech at
Birmingham, iu which he referred to this question, he met a younger son, who had before that
time been seen in the House of Commons. The language the young mau used he was not sure
would be quite Parliamentary for him to repeat ; but he said, ' I read your speech at Birmingham ;
I agree with you ; we younger sons are d  • badly used.' Now that remark, for which he
vouched, was a very fair answer to the argument of the Attorney-General with regard to the
younger sons. He understood the learned gentleman to say that he thought that there was a
great advantage in the present system, inasmuch as by its means younger sons were induced to
descend into the ranks of the people, and to turn their attention to obtaining an honourable
Uving by following professions, commerce, and so forth. That would be an argument equally f or
robbing the elder son ; but he was not sure that the Attorney- General intimated that he would
like the principle to be extended to every member of the family. If the property were more
equally divided, perhaps the younger sons might hereafter come into the ranks of commerce, or
enter the professions, and the object of the Attorney- General would be obtained perhaps a little
later. If this principle that was here made so sacred was held to be sacred nowhere else; — if it
was held to be of the most pestUent character in every country in the world but this — was not
his hon. friend the member for Westminster justified when he said that England, in regard to
this question of land, was the exceptional country, and not the country from which they could
argue as the rule. He remembered reading in the biography of Mr. Jefferson, who was, he thought,
twice the American President, and one of the most able and illustrious men that the English
colonies in America had ever produced — that he considered it the greatest act of his life, or one
of the greatest, that he abolished this law of primogeniture in his native State of Virginia. And
his biographer quoted, he thought, from some letter or declaration of Mr. Jefferson, in which he
described the great advantage that the abolition of the law had been to that State, and he used one
phrase as an iUustration which would convey to the House what he meant. He said : ' Some
years after the aboUtion of the law there were fewer carriages-and-six in Virginia, but a great
many more carriages-and-pair.' And he took it for granted, as they may all take it for granted,
that a country was better off where there was a greater equality of condition and a greater
division of property, and where there was no particle of injustice in the law."
The bill was thrown out by a majority of 197.
Mr. Barclay, on the 15th of June, called attention to the differential
duties on sugar, which he thought produced an injurious effect that
ought to be obviated if possible. Mr. Bright hoped that the day was
not far distant when we could get rid of the duty altogether. He
supposed that the sum raised by it was now between £4,000,000 and
£5,000,000 sterling, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had stated
51

18 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
that the revenue of the country increased in ordinary years by an
amount not faUing far short of £2,000,000; further, in past times,
our expenditure was so gigantic that it was intolerable and dis
creditable. There was no duty, Mr. Bright thought, levied upon the
people which was so seriously felt, and which was so burdensome to them,
as the sugar duty. It was an article of first-rate importance, especially
for the feeding and rearing of children, and they knew how necessary and
beneficial it was to the poorer class of the people when there was a good
summer and fruit was plentiful, for by its aid they were enabled to supply
their cottages with an abundance of a luxury which to them was of first-
rate importance.
A " Eeform Demonstration " was held in Birmingham on the 27th
of August, which was the first of a series held in England, Scotland, and
Ireland. Mr. Bright was invited to all of these demonstrations. At
Birmingham several thousand persons walked in procession, headed by
a number of carriages, in the first of which were Mr. John Bright and
Mr. Schofield, M.P. No fewer than six platforms were erected in
Brooke's Field, and about 150,000 men were present. Eesolutions in
favour of Eeform were passed. In the evening a meeting was held in
the Town Hall ; the Mayor presided. About 6,000 persons managed to
get accommodation in this large hall. Mr. Bright, in the course of
his speech, in referring to the Eeform Bill introduced by the Liberal
Government, said : —
" During the last session of Parliament, in the debate on the second reading of the Franchise
BUl, I took the opportunity of offering a word of counsel and of warning to the powerful party
inthe House which opposed that BiU. In those words of warning and of counsel I asked them to
remember that if they should succeed in defeating that Bill and overthrowing the Government,
there would stUl remain the people of England to be met, and the claims of the great question of
Reform to be considered and settled. We have not had to wait long before that which I fore
told has come to pass. In London we have seen assemblies of the people such as for a
generation past have not been witnessed. In many otlier parts of the country there have been
meetings greater than have been seen for thirty years, and notably to-day there has been a
voice given forth from the very centre and heart of England which will reach at least to the
circumference of the three kingdoms. There has been an attempt to measure the numbers
that are present iu this hall at this moment. There are probably six thousand persons here.
I ask any who are present to-day to reckon how many times this haU could have been filled
from that multitudinous congregation upon which our eyes rested, but to the fuU extent of which
they could scarcely reach. It is highly probable that it might have been fiUed forty times from-

A REFORM DEMONSTRATION. ™
that vast number. Yes, and at this moment I am told that outside there is an audience far
greater than that I now address ; whilst to-morrow morning there will be millions of an
audience throughout the whole of the United Kingdom, anxious to know what has been done
and what said on this 27th day of August in this great town of Birmingham  Now that
biU, so moderate that I confess I had entertained the hope that it would pass through Parliament
without any great difficulty, was resisted as if it had been charged with all the dangerous matter
which the Tory party attributed to it. It was intrigued against in a manner— I had almost said more
base, but I wiU say more hateful, than any measure I have seen opposed during the twenty-three
years that I have sat in the House of Commons ; and finally, under every kind of false pretence,
it was rejected by a small majority, and feU, and with it the Government which had proposed it
also feU  The Government of Lord Derby in the House of Commons, sitting all in a
row, reminds me veiy much of a number of amusing and ingenious gentlemen whom I dare say
some of you have seen and listened to. I mean the Christy Minstrels. The Christy Minstrels,
if I am not misinformed, are, when they are clean-washed, white men ; but they come before the
audience as black as the blackest negroes, and by this transformation it is expected that their
jokes and songs wUl be more amusing. The Derby minstrels pretend to be Liberal and white ;
but the fact is, if you come nearer and examine them closely, you wUl find them to be just as black
and curly as the Tories have ever been. I do not know, and I wiU not pretend to say, which
of them it is that plays the banjo and which the bones. But I have no doubt that, in their
manoeuvres to keep in office during the coming session, we shaU know something more about
them than we do at present. They are, in point of fact, when they pretend to be Liberal, mere
usurpers aud impostors. Their party will not allow them to be Liberal, and they exist only
upon the principle upon which they have acted in all their past history, of resisting and
rejecting every proposition of a Liberal character that has been submitted to them. What
is this Derby principle of shutting out more than five-sixths of all the people from the exercise
of constitutional rights ? If any of you take ship to Canada you wUl find the Derby principle
utterly repudiated. But in Canada there is no uprooting of institutions, and no destruction of
property, and there is no absence of order or of loyalty. If you go to Australia you wUl find there
that the Derby principle is unknown, and yet there reigns order as in this country, and
contentment with the institutions of the colonies, and a regard for law and property. If you go
to those greatest and most glorious colonies of this country, the United States of America, there
you find a people exhibiting aU the virtues which belong to the greatest nations on the face of
the earth ; there you find a people passing through a great war and a great revolution with a
conduct and success, with a generosity, and a magnanimity which have attracted and roused the
admu-ation of the world, And if you go to Europe, you find in the Republic of Switzerland, in
the kingdoms of HoUand and Belgium, in Norway and Sweden, in France, and now you are about
to witness it in Germany, a wide extension of the franchise, hitherto in this country, in our
time, unknown ; and neither emperor, king, nor noble believes that his authority or his interests,
or the greatness or happiness of any one of those countries, will be jeopardised by the free
admission of the people to constitutional rights. In Germany, the vote is to be given to every
man of twenty-five years of age and upwards. Let them propose to do the same here, and then
we shaU not be in advance of the great State of North Germany which is now being established.
But what is it we are coming to in this country ? To this : that the thing which is being rapidly
accepted in almost aU parts of the world is being persistently and obstinately refused here in
England, the home of freedom, the mother of parliaments. For in this England, five millions of
grown men, representing more than twenty millions of our population, are to be permanently denied
that which makes the only difference between despotism and freedom aU the world over. I venture
to say that this cannot last very long. How do we stand at this moment ? The noble and
illustrious lady who sits on the throne— she whose gentle hand wields the ;sceptre over that wide

20 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
«mpire of which we arc the heart aud centre— she was not afraid of the Franchise Bill which the
Government introduced last session. Seven times, I think, by her own lips or by her pen she has
recommended to Parliament the admission of a large number of working men to the Parliamentary
franchise. If this proposition was destructive, would not the Queen discover that fact ? If the
biU of the last session had been a pernicious bill, would the thirty millions of people of the
United Kingdom not have been able to produce one single public meeting in condemnation of it ?
The middle class in our towns are by a vast majority in favour of it. All the middle class of
Birmingham have sympathised with the great proceedings of this day, and I doubt not that by-
and-by we shall see in the populous districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire assemblies rivalling
those which have been held in London and Birmingham  The address which has
been presented to mc has referred to 1832. I remember that time well. My young heart then
was stirred with the trumpet blast that sounded from your midst. There was no part of this
kingdom where your voice was not heard. Let it sound again. (Cheers.) Stretch out your
bauds to your countrymen in every part of the three kingdoms, and ask them to join you in a great
and righteous effort on behalf of that freedom which has been so long the boast of Englishmen,
but which the majority of Englishmen have never possessed. 1 shall esteem it an honour which
my words cannot describe, and which even in thought I cannot measure, if the population which I
am permitted to represent should do its full duty in the great struggle which is before us.
Remember the great object for which we strive. Care not for the calumnies and lies. Our object
is this — to restore the British Constitution in aU its fulness, with all its freedom, to the British
people." (Cheers.)
A demonstration was held in favour of Eeform at Manchester on the
24th of September. An open-air meeting was held in Campfield, Knott
Mill, and thousands of working men from the surrounding towns showed
their zeal by going to Manchester although it was pouring rain. The
procession numbered about 12,000, and about 80,000 persons listened to
the speeches that were delivered. In the evening a meeting was held in
the Free-trade Hall, which was not sufficiently large to accommodate
the vast number that thronged to seek admission. When Mr. Bright
appeared on the platform, the entire mass saluted him with cheers and
waving of hats and handkerchiefs, and the band played " Auld Lang
Syne." Instantly the appropriateness of this chorus to the renewal of
intercourse between Mr. Bright and his former constituents was perceived ;
the entire audience joined in the chorus, and repeated it again and again.
The chair was taken by Mr. T. B. Potter, M.P. Mr. George Wilson, in
moving the adoption of an address to Mr. Bright, said that for the last
twenty years Mr. Bright had had the question of Eeform entirely in his
hands. No man had worked harder or made greater sacrifices ; and
although he might not acquire a fortune, although he might not succeed
in establishing a family, yet he would leave a name behind him, an

AT MANCHESTER. 21
inheritance to his children which all the wealth in England could not
buy. Mr. Hooson seconded the adoption of the address, which was
supported by Mr. E. Beales and Mr. Benjamin Armitage, and adopted
amid deafening cheers. Mr. Bright's speech was a long one, and in the
course of it he remarked : —
" I accept this address, with many thanks for the kindness you have shown me. At the same
time, I accept it with something like fear and trembling, because of the mighty responsibility
which, by this address, you would throw upon mo. I have never had any ambition for leader
ship; I do not feel myself to have fitness for such an office. I have worked hitherto wheresoever
I chanced to be — whether in the ranks or in the front ; and without pledging myself to undertake
all that this address asks me to undertake aud perform, I may, however, freely pledge myself to
this: that, wherever I find men willing to work for human freedom and human happiness, I trust
I shaU be ready to take my part with them. (Cheers.) And now, as my eye has rested upon this
wonderful assembly, I have thought it not wrong to ask myself whether there is any question
that is great, that is sufficient, that is noble, that has caUed us together to-night; and I have come
to the conclusion that great as is this meeting, and transcendently great the meeting which was
held in the middle of the day, that the question which has brought us together is worthy of our
assembling and worthy of every effort we may make. (Hear, hear.) We are met for the
purpose, so far as lies in our power, of widening the boundaries and making more stable the
foundations of the freedom of the country in which we live. (Hear, hear.) We are not, as our
forefathers were two hundred years ago, called upon to do battle with the crown ; we have no
dynasty to complain of, nor royal family to dispossess. In our day the wearer of the crown of
England is in favour of freedom. (Cheers.) On many separate occasions, as you aU know, the
Qneen has strongly — as strongly as became her station — urged upon Parliament the extension of
the franchise to the people. (Hear, hear.) ParUament has been less liberal than the Crown —
(hear, hear) — and time after time those recommendations have been disregarded, and the offers of
the monarch have been rejected and denied. (Cries of 'Shame!') But no more have we now,
for that is not our business to-night — to assail the other hand of the legislature, the House of
Peers. For my share, I cannot but think that if there are dangers ahead for the House of Lords,
they are dangers not so much from without as from within. (Hear, hear.) Its foes, in my view,
are those of its own household. It stands in the high place of a senate, but too much it
abdicates the duties of a senate. It gives its votes, its power, its proxies into the hands of one
man, and he often, as at present, is not by any means the wisest of men. (Cheers and laughter.)
Unfortunate for that House, it does almost nothing. (Laughter.) It does not even debate
freely. A session wiU pass, and you scarcely hear any discussion in that House which is
calculated to instruct the people on political subjects. (Hear, hear.) I sometimes fear that it is
no longer the temple of honour, the path to which leads through the temple of virtue. It has
become too mnch a refuge for worn-out members of the House of Commons. (Cheers and
laughter.) It becomes every year more numerous, without, I fear, becoming more useful.
(Cheers.) Unless it can wake itself up to the great duties of the senate, decay and darkness will
settle upon it. Some of the members may read what I say. (Cheers and laughter.) I beg to
assure them that in those few observations I am speaking in no unfriendly spirit to the House
of Lords. (Hear, hear.) But we have a distinct purpose to-night ; and our purpose is this : to
restore the representation of the people ; to make the House of Commons, the House which
professes to represent the common people, a reality, and no longer a sham. . . The Morning
Herald is a paper which professes to be in some sort the organ of the Tory party, but I have it

22 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
from the best authorities that the leaders of that party very rarely read it. (Laughter.) But
the Morning Herald pointed to the fact which I stated with great amplitude at a meeting in
Rochdale of Sunday-school teachers, held, I think, on Good Friday last, that a very large
portion of the children of the working classes in Manchester, a proportion deplorably large, was
growing up without any school provision made for them. The Morning Herald states also that
in Manchester there is a great deal of drunkenness, although I believe all the figures show that
there is less drunkenness in Manchester probably than there is in any other town of equal magni
tude in the kingdom. (Cheers.) WeU, now, I assume the ignorance for a moment, and I wiU
assume the drunkenness, and I will assume the degradation to be true. What shall I say of the
Government which has permitted it ? (Hear, hear, and cheers.) What is this Government ?
What is this party that is supreme in this country, which holds all the land, or nearly so — (hear,
hear) —which holds the revenues of the richest church that the world has ever seen P (Hear, hear,
and cheers.) It has both Houses of Parliament to do its bidding ; it has two ancient and noble
universities ; in fact, it has everything of power in this country ; and yet, according to the show of
this writer, the people are ignorant and drunken and degraded. It must be far more so than that
of almost any other country, because in almost every other constitutional country the franchise
is far more widely extended than it is in this, and without the slightest danger to dynasty or to
order. (Cheers.) And why is it, I ask you now, that the Englishmen in England are not as well
educated as the Englishmen in New England ? (Hear, hear.) In the New England States of
North America there have been seven generations of men who came orginally from this country,
who have been thoroughly and fully instructed. And now in every free State — I mean in
every State that was free from the late war — there is a wide suffrage, and the schools are
universal — (hear, hear) — and all the people have the fuUest opportunity of being thoroughly
instructed for the purposes of life. (Hear, hear.) Why, in this country, what are we doing ?
(' Gatekeeping,' and laughter.) No, we are doing something beside that. The people who have
this matter in their hands, and who could settle it, are discussing questions of Catechism and the
Thirty -nine Articles — (laughter) — what they call ' conscience clauses.' (Renewed laughter.) They
are all engaged in worrying some dry bone of this kind, while the great body of the people, and
especially the poorest of the people, are left whoUy unprovided for. (Hear, hear, and ' Shame ! ') I
venture to say— I would stake everything I have in the world upon it— that if the platform of
the National Reform League, or any platform which gave a substantial and real representation of
the whole people, were embodied in an Act of Parliament, there would not pass over another
session of Parliament before there would be the fullest provision for the instruction of every
working man's child iu the kingdom." (Loud cheers.)
Mr. Bright on the following evening was entertained by the members
of the Eeform League at a banquet in the Albion Hotel, Market Street,
Manchester. About 100 gentlemen were present, and the chair was
occupied by Mr. E. Hooson, the President of the League. In responding
to a toast of his health, Mr. Bright gave it as his opinion that when
he saw a movement in favour of the extension of the franchise, a real
movement— something grand in its proportions, and powerful for the
gaining of results, the plan of a sensible man who wanted to do some
thing, and did not want to split hairs— was to go with that movement and
help it, to make the best of it, and get all out of it that could be got.

AT LEEDS. 23
Should they, who were of the middle class, witness this vast volume of
milhons of voices gathering in strength every day, and should they take
no part in it, nor bid it welcome, nor bid it God-speed, nor wish to see
the great results which in all probability would be born of it ?
Leeds followed Manchester with a demonstration on the 8th of
October in favour of Eeform. The day was observed more or less as a
general holiday. The procession took an hour to pass a given point, and
the streets were crowded with spectators. A meeting was held on
Woodhouse Moor, and about 150,000 persons were present. Resolutions
were passed at five different platforms in favour of Eeform, and
acknowledging the services of Messrs. Gladstone, Bright, and Mill. In
the evening there was an immense meeting in the Victoria Hall, at which
Mr. Bright was presented with an address.
The West Eiding, in a multitudinous meeting that day, Mr. Bright
thought, had spoken with a voice loud enough to be heard all through the
nation; and, if he was not misinformed, that vast meeting, of which the
present assembly had formed a part, had decided by unanimous consent
that the representation of the people in the English House of Commons
was bad and unsatisfactory to the last degree. They had decided that it
was bad, not only for what it excluded, but for what it included — that
whilst it excluded the great bulk of the nation, it included every form of
corruption and evil of which a representative system was capable. And
they came to resolutions which meant this : that they would change
this system, if it lay in their power, and that the unenfranchised millions
would stand this exclusion no longer.
" The Tories," said Mr. Bright, " were half repenting the course they took during the
previous session ; and when he stated that Lord Derby was not a Reformer he was charged with
raning at Lord Derby, and it was said that it was positively a case of shocking injustice to
charge the Tories with bemg hostile to Reform. (Laughter.) WeU, his memory might not be as
correct as that of some people, but he recollected that during the last session the 280 gentlemen
who caU themselves Tories in the House of Commons objected to Mr. Gladstone's BiU because
it proposed to admit, according to Mr. Gladstone's estimate, 204,000 working men of the
unenfranchised five mUlions to the suffrage. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) Now, it may be that the
Tory party did not care about this, but aU they wanted was power aud place. (Hear,
hear.) ... In America there are a great many political parties. There is a party that is
always seeking office, and it goes by the name of the ' Bread-and-Butter Party.' So it turns out
after all that the party of Lord Derby is not an anti-Reform party, but it is a bread-and-butter

24 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
party. (Laughter and loud cheers.) For six months of office— it may run on to nine months or
twelve months— they have rejected an honest and good measure, they have betrayed the true
interests of the people— (hear, hear)— and I think I have seen men on that Bench who would sell
the mace— (laughter and applause)— if by doing so they could give to themselves fixity of tenure
upon the Ministerial Bench. (Laughter and applause.) Now, I must ask you, in all seriousness,
to let the country know what is your object, what you propose, and how far you are honestly
seeking that which yon believe to be good. I shall not appeal to the writers of the newspapers-
one of them, not a very creditable one, is concealed somewhere in this town. (Laughter.) I
shall appeal only to the truth-loving, the vast majority of the people of this country.
Our object is this — to restore popular representation in this country, to make the
House of Commons the organ and the representative of the nation, and not a small
class of the nation. (Cheers.) If you look aU over the world you see now that represent
ation is extending everywhere, and the degree of the completeness is becoming the measure
of national liberty, not only on the North American continent, but in the kingdoms and
nations of old Europe. (Hear, hear.) I have mentioned the North American continent. To
morrow is a great day in the United States, when perhaps two milUons of men will go to the
poll and wUl give their votes oil the great question whether justice shall or shall not be done to
the liberated African. (Loud cheers.) In a day or two we shall know the result, and I shall be
greatly surprised if that result docs not add one more proof to those already given of the soUdity,
and intelligence, and the public virtue of the great body of the people of the United States.
(Loud cheers.) But, I say, I have mentioned the North American continent. I refer to the
colonies which arc still part of this empire, and to other colonies which form a great and free
republic. The grand old Genoese, at the end of the fifteenth century, gave a new world to Europe.
A friend of mine, Cyrus Field, of New York — (loud cheers) — is the Columbus of our time — (hear,
hear) — for after not less, I beheve. than forty passages across the Atlantic in pursuit of his
great object, he has at length by his cable moved the new world close alongside of the old world.
(Cheers.) To speak from the United Kingdom to the North American continent, and from the
North American continent to the United Kingdom, is but the work of a moment of time, and it
does not require the utterance of even a whisper. The two English nations are brought together, ¦
and they must march on together. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) The spirit of the Government must
be the same, although the form may vary. If it be true that a broad and generous freedom is a
heritage of Englishmen, our purpose is this : to establish that freedom for ever on the sure
foundation of a broad and generous representation of the people." (Loud and prolonged
cheering.) The agitation was next extended to Glasgow, and on the 16th of
October there was a procession to the place of meeting which extended
five miles, and numbered 20,000 to 30,000 persons. On the ground
during the proceedings it was calculated that 130,000 individuals were
present. In the evening a meeting was held in the City Hall, which
was crowded by an enthusiastic audience. Mr. Eobert Dalglish presided.
Mr. Bright, in responding, said : — •
" A friend of mine— a member of the House of Commons, who lives within six mUes of the
Royal town and Castle of Windsor, told me only the otlier day that he knew the case of a famUy
near his house in which there had grown up eleven children, not one of whom could read or write
in the least degree. And he said that he had lately had in his employ upon his property seven

AT GLASGOW. 25
men. of whom four could neither read nor write, two of thom could read most imperfectly, and one
of theni could read and write about as weU as the other two could read. Bear in mind that all
this exists within six miles of the Royal Castle of Windsor. It exists in a neighbourhood where
lords and squires and established clergymen swarm. Such is the slate of ignorance of that popu
lation at this moment. In the country from which I come, girls of the ago of from fifteen to
twenty years are earning, many of them I believe, double the weekly wages of the able-bodied
farm labourer, the head and father of a family, in some of the south-western counties of England
But what must be the ignorance of that population with such wages offered in Lancashire and
Yorkshire, and yet they scarcely hear of them p They seem to have no aspiration to better their
condition, and there is no sensible emigration from these wretched counties to the more prosperous
counties of the north. Your address refers to pauperism — the gulf of pauperism. In the
United Kingdom at this moment there are more than 1,200,000 paupers. The pauperism of the
United Kingdom last year — and it will not cost less, I beUeve, this year — cost the ratepayers —
those who pay taxes for the relief of the poor — more than seven and a half millions sterUng, and
this does not include many thousands of vagrants who also come occasionally under the name of
paupers. . Now, if the Clerk of the House of Commons were placed at Temple Bar, and
if he had orders to tap upon the shoulder every well-dressed and apparently clean-washed man
who passed through that ancient bar until he had numbered six hundred and fifty-eight, and if
the Crown summoned these six hundred and fifty-eight to be the Parliament of the United
Kingdom, my honest eonviction is that you would have a better Parliament than now exists. This
assertion wiU stagger some timid and some good men ; but let me explain myself to you. It
would be a Parliament, every member of which would have no direct constituency, but it would be
a Parliamentthat would act as a jury that would take some heed of the facts and arguments laid
before it. It would be free, at any rate, from the class prejudices which weigh upon the present
House of Commons. It would be free from the overshadowing presence of what are caUed noble
f amUies. It would owe no allegiance to great landowners, and I hope it would have fewer men
amongst it seeking their own gains by entering ParUament. . . I believe now there is
nothing which would tend so much to sweeten the breath of British society as the admission of
;i large and generous number of the working classes to citizenship and the exercise of the fran
chise. (Cheers.) Now, if my words should reach the ears and reach the heart of any man who is-
interested in the advancement of religion in this country, I ask him to consider whether there are
not great poUtical obstacles to the extension of civilisation and morality and religion within the
bounds of the United Kingdom. (Cheers.) We believe — these ministers, yon, and I— we believe
in a Supreme Ruler of the Universe. Wo believe in His omnipotence; we believe and we
humbly trust in His mercy. We know that the strongest argument which is used against that
belief, by those who reject it, is an argument drawn from the misery, and the helplessness, and
the darkness of so many of our race, even in countries which call themselves civilised and
Christian. Is not that the fact ? If I believed that this misery, and. this helplessness, and this
darkness, could not be touched or transformed, I myself should be driven to admit the almost
overwhelming force of that argument ; but I am convinced that just laws, and an enlightened
administration of them, would change the face of the country."
A banquet was given by the Irish Liberals to Mr. Bright, in the
Eotunda, Dublin, on the 30th of October. There was a very large-
attendance of the leading Liberals of Ireland, and the galleries were filled
with a brilliant attendance of ladies. The invitation was signed by
upwards of twenty members of Parliament, and by a large number of

:26 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
gentlemen of position ; in fact, the member for Birmingham seemed to
be a great favourite, and every reliance placed on what he stated. The
chair was occupied by The O'Donoghue, M.P., who said they were
there that night as a great national assembly, representing all who loved
liberty, and placed the interest of the commonwealth above the interest of
party ; and, in the name of Ireland, they wished John Bright, the match
less advocate of the people, and their tried and trusted friend, a thousand
welcomes to the shores of Ireland.
" I think I was told in 1849," said Mr. Bright, " as I stood in the burial ground at Skibbereen,
that at least 400 people who had died of famine were buried within the quarter of an acre of
•ground on which I was then looking. It is a country, too, from which there has been a greater
emigration by sea within a given time than has been known at any time from any other country in
the world. It is a country where there has been, for generations past, a general sense of wrong,
out of which has grown a state of chronic insurrection ; and at this very moment when I speak the
general safeguard of constitutional liberty is withdrawn, and we meet in this haU, and I speak here
to-night, rather by the forbearance and permission of the Irish executive than under the protection
of the common safeguards of the rights and liberties of the people of the United Kingdom. I
venture to say that this is a miserable and humiliating picture to draw of this country. Bear in
mind that I am not speaking of Poland suffering under the conquest of Russia. There is a
gentleman now a candidate for an Irish county, who is very great upon the wrongs of Poland ;
but I have found him always in the House of Commons taking sides with that great party which
has systematically supported the wrongs of Ireland. I am not speaking about Hungary, or of
Venice as she was under the rule of Austria, or of the Greeks under the dominiou of the Turk;
-but I am speaking of Ireland— part of the United Kingdom— part of that which boasts itself to
be the most civilised and the most Christian nation in the world. I took the liberty recently, at a
meeting in Glasgow, to say that I believed it was impossible for a class to govern a great nation
wisely and justly. Now, in Ireland there has been a field in which aU the principles of the Tory
party have had their complete experiment and development. You have had the country gentleman
in aU his power. Yon have had any number of Acts of Parliament which the ancient Parliament
of Ireland or the Parliament of the United Kingdom could give him. You have had the
Established Church supported by the law, even to the extent, not many years ago, of collecting
its revenues by the aid of the military force. In point of fact, I believe it would be impossible
to imagine a state of things in which the principles of the Tory party have had a more entire and
¦complete opportunity for their trial than they have had within the limits of this island. And yet
what has happened ? This, surely. That the kingdom has been continually weakened — that the
harmony of the empire has been disturbed, and that the mischief has not been confined to the
CTnited Kingdom, but has spread to the colonies. ... I am told — you can answer it if I am
wrong — that it is not common in Ireland now to give leases to tenants, especially to Catholic
tenants. If that be so, then the security for the property of the tenant rests only upon the good
feeling and favour of the owner of the land ; for the laws, as we know, have been made by the
landowners, and many propositions for the advantage of the tenants have unfortunately been too
little considered by Parliament. The result is that you have had bad farming, bad dweUing-
houses, bad temper, and everything bad connected with the occupation and cultivation of land in
Ireland. One of the results — a result the most appalling — is this : that your population is. fleeing
from your country aud seeking refuge in a distant land. (Cheers.) On this point I wish to refer

AT DUBLIN. 27
to a letter which I received a few days ago from a most esteemed citizen of DubUn. He told mc
that he believed that a very large portion of what he caUed the poor, amongst Irishmen,
sympathised with any scheme or any proposition that was adverse to the Imperial Government-
( Cheers.) He said further, that the people here are rather in tho country than of it, and that they
are looking more^to" America than they are looking to England. (Cheers.) I think there is a
good deal in that. When wc consider how many Irishmen have found a refuge in America, I do
not kuow how we cau wonder at that statement. You wiU recollect that when the ancient Hebrew
prophet prayed]in his captivity he prayed with his window open towards Jerusalem. You know
that the foUowers of Mohammed, when they pray, turn their faces towards Mecca. When the
Irish peasant asks for food, and freedom, and blessing, his eye follows the setting sun — (cheers) —
the aspirations of his heart reach beyond the wide Atlantic, and in siurit he grasps hands with the
great RepubUc of the West. If this be so, I say then that the disease is not only serious, but it
is desperate ; but desperate as it is, I beUeve there is a certain remedy for it if the people and the
ParUament of the United Kingdom are wUling to apply it. . . I believe that at the root of
a general discontent there is in all countries a general grievance and general suffering. (Loud
¦cheers.) The surface of society is not incessantly disturbed without a cause. I recoUect in the
poem of the greatest of Italian poets, he tells us that as he saw in vision the Stygian lake, and
stood upon its banks, he observed the constant commotion upon the surface of the pool, and his
good instructor and g'uide explained to him the cause of it —
' This, too, for certain know, that underneath
The water dwells a multitude, whose sighs
Into these bubbles make the surface heave,
As thine eye tells thee wheresoe'er it turn.'
(Cheers.) And I say in] Ireland, for generations back, that the misery and the wrongs of the
people have made their sign, and have found a voice in constant insurrection and disorder.
(Cheers.) I have said that Ireland is a country of many wrongs and of many sorrows. Her
past lies almost aU in shadow. Her present is full of anxiety and peril. Her future depends ou
the power of her people to substitute equality and justice for supremacy, and a generous
patriotism for the spirit of faction. In the effort now making in Great Britain to create a free
representation of the people, you have the deepest interest. The people never wish to suffer and
they never wish to inflict injustice. They have no sympathy with the wrong-doer, whether in
Great Britain or in Ireland ; and when they are fairly represented in the Imperial Parliament,
•as I hope they wiU one day be, they will speedily give an effective and final answer to that old
¦question of the Parliament of Kilkenny — * How comes it to pass that the King has never been
the richer for Leland ? ' " (Loud cheers.)
A deputation from the Cork Farmers' Club called upon Mr. Bright
the following day, and presented him with an address.
" But I have always had the opinion that a people are very much what their laws make them,"
said Mr. Bright, in responding. " I entirely disbelieve those theories which assume that it does
not matter very much what kind of laws you have — that, after all, everything depends on a
man's self. A great deal depends on a man's self, but a great deal depends on the laws ; and I
think, if we trace history back and look over the countries we know something of, we shall find
that the people are in the main what their laws and institutions make them. Now, my mind,
from a very early age, has led me always to a feeling that laws should be equal and should be
just ; that aU the people living in a country have an equal right to be considered and well treated
by the institutions aud laws under which they live. In this country, more perhaps than in almost

2S LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
any other country in Europe, that has not been the principle on which the Government has been
conducted ; because it is quite clear that the laws have been made until recently by a party, or
rather for the supremacy of a party, more than for the whole people ; and as regards the land,
which is the question to which you particularly refer, there can be no kind of doubt of this : that
the laws have been absolutely the product of the selfishness and ignorance of the landed
proprietors, and by no means the product of the general inteUigence of aU classes in this country.
It is the same to a great extent in England, where, as Mr. Murphy knows perfectly well, in the
House of Commons there are questions which you can discuss with an expectation that they wiU
be fairly considered; but if you come to any question connected with the land, with the
supremacy of that particular property in the country, argument is of no avail whatever, and the
slightest tendency to what I would call intelligence and justice with regard to that is met by the
most determined opposition by the great landowning classes in the House. Of course, there are
many admirable exceptions there, as there are here; but, on the whole, the great weight of that
party and class is directed against any wise change in regard to the laws affecting property in
land. . The Irish question has been to me one of great interest from my earliest con
nection with public life. I knew Mr. O'Connell with a certain intimacy, and when I was a very
young member of the House of Commons I often, if I found an opportunity, sat by him, for I
found his conversation not only very amusing but very instructive. He knew everybody and
almost everything, and his comments on all that passed were very pleasant to listen to, and often
very informing. I don't know how — whether it is from a natural love of what is just or not —
but I always had a great sympathy with the Irish people and Irish questions ; and as long as I
remain in Parliament, or in public life, or in life at all, and am capable of thinking, I believe I
shall be of opinion that we in this generation do owe it to ourselves, and owe it to Ireland, to
make such amends as we can for an amount of neglect, and cruelty, and injustice committed in
the past, such as I think no civilised or Christian nation has ever inflicted on another Christian
nation." A meeting of the working men of Dublin was held in the Mechanics'
Institute of the city on the 2nd of November, and Mr. Bright delivered
a lengthy speech on the subject of Eeform and the land question.
" I am very sorry that my voice is not what it was, and when I think of the work that is to be
done, sometimes I feel it is a pity we grow old so fast," remarked Mr. Bright. " But years ago,
when I have thought of the condition of Ireland, of its sorrows and wrongs, of the discredit that its
condition has brought upon the English, the Irish, and the British name, I have thought, if I could
be in all other things the same, but by birth au Irishman, there is not a town in this island I would
not visit for the purpose of discussing the great Irish question, and of rousing my countrymen
to some great and united action. I do not believe in the necessity of widespread and perpetual
misery. I do not believe that we are placed on this island, and on this earth, that one man might
be great and wealthy, and revel in every profuse indulgence, and five, six, nine, or ten men should
suffer the abject misery which we see so commonly in the world. With your soil, your climate,
and your active and spirited race, I know not what they might not do. There have been reasons
to my mind why soil and climate, and the labour of your population, have not produced general
comfort and competence for ali. The address speaks of the friendly feeling and the sympathy
which I have had for Ireland during my political career. When I first went into the House of
Commons the most prominent figure in it was Daniel O'Connell. I have sat by his side for hours
during the discussions in that House, and listened to observations both amusing and instructive
on what was passing under discussion. I have seen him, too, more than once upon our platform

A REFORM CONFERENCE. 29
of the Anti-Com-Law League. I recollect that on one occasion he sent to Ireland expressly for
a newspaper for me, which contained a report of a speech which he made against the Corn Law
when the Corn Law was passing through Parliament in 1815, and we owe much to his exertions in
connection with that question, for almost the whole Liberal — I suppose the whole Liberal — party
of the Irish representatives in Parliament supported the measure of Free Trade of which we were
the prominent advocates ; and I know of nothing that was favourable to freedom, whether in con
nection with Ireland or England, that O'Connell did not support with all his great powers. I know
nothing pleasanter. and hardly anything more useful, than personal recoUcctions of this nature.
. . I will tell you that, since the day when I sat beside O'Connell — and at an earlier day —
that I have considered this qucstiou of Ireland. In 1849, for several weeks in the autumn, and
for several weeks in the autumn of 1852, I came to Ireland expressly to examine these questions
by consulting with aU classes of the people in every part of the island. I will undertake to say
that I beUeve there is no man in England who has more f uUy studied the evidence given before the
celebrated Devon Commission in regard to Ireland than I have. Therefore I dare stand up
before any Irishman or Englishman to discuss the Irish question. I say that the plans, the
theories, the policy of legislation of my opponents in this matter all have failed signally,
deplorably, disastrously, ignominiously; and, therefore, I say that I have a right to come in and
offer the people of Ireland, as I would offer to the people of Great Britain and the Imperial
Parliament, a wise and just policy upon this question. You know that I have attended great
meetings in England within the last two months, and in Scotland also. I think that I am at
Uberty to tender to you from those scores, or hundreds of thousands, of men the hand of feUow-
ship and goodwill. I wish I might be permitted when I go back as in fact, I think by this
address that I am permitted, to say to them, that amidst the factions by which Ireland has been
torn, amidst the many errors that have been committed, amidst the passions that have been
excited, amidst the hopes that have been blasted, and amidst the misery that has been endured,
there is stiU in this island, and amongst its people, a heart that can sympathise with those who
turn to them with a fixed resolution to judge them fairly and to do them justice. (Loud
cheers, which were prolonged for several minutes, the audience rising and waving their
hats.) I have made my speech. I have said my say. I have f ulfiUed my smaU mission te you. I
thank you from my heart for the kindness with which you have received me, which I shaU never
forget. And if I have in past times felt an unquenchable sympathy with the sufferings of your
people, you may rely upon it that if there be an Irish member to speak for Ireland, he will find
me heartily by his side."
A Eeform Conference was next held in the Town Hall, Manchester,
. on the 20th November, and the chair was occupied by Mr. George
Wilson. In the evening a banquet was held in the Free-trade Hall,
which presented a brilliant spectacle. It was got up by the National
Eeform Union. About 1,000 gentlemen were present. Mr. George
Wilson was again in the chair. Mr. Bright said : —
" Your county representation is almost too sad a subject to dwell upon. Every man who
occupies a house or land of an annual value less than £50 is excluded ; the number of freeholders
on the whole diminishes, and really there remains scarcely anything of independent power and
freedom of election within the majority of the counties of the United Kingdom. So, then, I
come to this conclusion, that the working classes are excluded and insulted, and that the middle
classes are defrauded ; and I presume that those who really do meld the power despise the middle

30 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
classes for their silence under this system. When I look at the great [middle class of this
country, and see aU that it has done, and see the political position in which it has been to some
extent content to rest, I cannot help saying that it reminds me very much of the language which
the ancient Hebrew patriarch addressed to one of his sons. He said, ' Issachar is a strong ass,
couching down between two burdens.' On the one side there is the burden of seven and a half
miUions per annum, raised by way of tax, to keep from starvation more than 1,200,000 paupers
within the United Kingdom — and on the other hand, and higher up in the scale, there is mis
management the most gross, there is extravagance the most reckless, and there is waste the most
appalling and disgraceful which has ever been seen in the government of any country. And this
is the grand result of a system which systematically shuts out the millions, and which cajoles the
middle class by the hocus-pocus of a Parliamentary Government. Sir, I am delighted beyond
measure, after many years of discussion, of contemplation, of labour, in connection with this
great question — I say I am delighted to believe that the great body of the people, caU them
middle class or call them working class, are resolved that this state of things shaU exist no
longer. During the last session of Parliament there has been an honest attempt made by an
honest Government to tinker the existing system. For, after all, the bill of the last session,
honest and well-intended and valuable as it was, was still but a tinkering of a very bad system.
But the Tory party refused even to have it tinkered. They remind me of a wealthy but a most
penurious old gentleman, who lived some years ago in my neighbourhood, and who objected very
much to a tailor's bill ; he said that he had found out that a hole would last longer than a patch.
I am not sure that this is not the case with Lord Derby and his friends ; for it was one of
their great arguments that if the bill of the Government passed it would inevitably foUow that
something more would almost immediately be demanded They were so anxious that
things should remain as they are that they refused to admit 200,000 more of the middle class by
the lowering of the county franchise, and they refused with equal, perhaps with greater, perti
nacity, to admit 200,000, but, as I believe, not much more than 100,000, working men to electoral
rights. They would not suppress nor allow the suppression of one single rotten borough; and in
fact there was no abuse, however foul, however intolerable, however putrid, to which they would
aUow the legislative reforming knife to be applied ; and they determined to keep everything just
as it is. And now these gentlemen, with whom we were obliged, to our great misfortune, to con
tend so much last session, are in office. They call themselves her Majesty's servants ; but they
have not yet dared to proclaim that they are the executive servants of the people. Some of their
papers, and some papers which are not theirs, give us to understand— for the papers arc often
understanding a great many things of which they know nothing— that the Cabinet meetings held
during the last fortnight have landed us in this strange position— that the men who were against
aU Reform six months ago, are now warmly engaged in concocting » measure which shaU be
satisfactory to the great body of the Reformers of this country. I want to ask you whether
from these men you are to expect, you are to wait for, with anxious aud hopeful looking forward,
any Reform BiU ? And, after all these speeches had been made, Lord Derby did his utmost to
prevail upon Mr. Lowe to become a member of his Cabinet. If, after all this, they were to
attempt to manufacture and introduce a Reform Bill, they would cover themselves and their
party with humiliation. I know that in this country politicians change sides; office has a
wonderful effect upon men. I suppose there are men here such as were described by our witty
friend, Mr. Hosea Biglow, in painting the character of some politicians in America. He said .
of them, as we perhaps may say of Lord Derby and his party 
1 A merciful Providence fashioned them hollow,
On purpose that they might their principles swallow.'
But, notwithstanding that provision, that merciful provision, for statesmen, I confess that I do

AT LONDON. 3T
not beUeve that the Government have determined to bring in a Reform Bill, or that they can by
any possibiUty bring in a bUl which the Reformers of this country can accept. They have done
everything during the past session by fraudulent statements — by insults to the people —by the most
evident baseness of party action — to destroy the moderate and honest attempt of Lord Russell to
improve the representation. And I do not believe that in one short year they can turn round ;
and, capacious as may be the internal cavity of the Tory Government, I think they cannot in one
short year swallow all then- Conservative principles. One thing I think we have a right to insist
upon : that the next bill whieh is introduced by a Liberal and Reform Government shall be in
its suffrage based upon the ancient borough franchise of the country. Household or rating
suffrage has existed for centuries in our parishes. It has existed for many years in our municipal
corporations. It has never been found either in parish or corporation to be destructive of the
interests of the people of those circumscribed districts of the country. I say, therefore, that we
ought to stand by the ancieut constitution of England. I believe Lord Russell, speaking of him
in his private capacity, would be in favour of extending the borough franchise at least to the
limits, of the municipal franchise. There is reason to believe that Mr. Gladstone himself would
approve of such a measure. We know that the late Attorney- General, one of the most eminent
lawyers and one of the most accomplished members of the House of Commons, publicly and
openly expressed himself in favour of that change. I beUeve the middle class, as a rule, the
Liberal portion of the middle class, would have no objection to see the franchise extended to aU
householders in boroughs. I beUeve that if it were so extended we should arrive at a point at
which, so long as any of us are permitted to meddle with the politics of om- country, no further
change would be demanded. I, therefore, am entirely in favour of it, because I believe it to be
wise in itself, and because it is the ancient borough franchise of this kingdom. I am in accord
with our ancient constitution. (Cheers.) I would stand by it ; wherever it afforded support for
freedom I would march in its track. That track is so plain that a wayfaring man, though a fool,
need not err therein. (Cheers.) I would be guided by its lights. They have been kept burning
by great men of our forefathers for many generations. Our only safety in this warfare is in ad
hering to the ancient and noble constitution of our country. (Cheers.) And when we have
restored it to its bygone strength, and invited the great body of the people to take part in
political power, then the House of Commons will be the servant of the nation and not its
master, and it wUl do the bidding, not of a small, a limited, often an ignorant, necessarily a sel
fish class, but the bidding of a great and noble people." (Loud and prolonged cheering.)
A Eeform demonstration was held in London on the 3rd of December,
1866. About 100,000 persons walked in procession. On the follow
ing evening a meeting was held in St. James's Hall, and the chair was
occupied by Mr. George Potter, and on the platform were Messrs.
Bright, T. B. Potter, J. Mason Jones, G. J. Holyoake, Lieut.-Col.
Dickson, and P. P. M'S weeny (Dublin).
" I said that if there be a grievance— a deep-seated sentiment that there is a grievance— there
must necessarily be a voice to express and to proclaim it," said Mr. Bright, in a lengthy speech.
" What is the grievance of which you complain ? You are the citizens, the native inhabitants, of
a country which is called constitutional ; and what is meant by that is, that your government is
not the despotic government of a monarch, nor the oligarchical government of an oligarchy ;
but that it is a government a large and essential portion of which is conducted by honestly-
elected representatives of the people ; and the grievance is this— that this constitution, so noble

32 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
in its outline and so noble in its purpose, is defaced and deformed; and that when you look at it,
it seems in this respect absolutely worse than any other representative constitution existing in the
world. For I believe there is no representation whatsoever at this moment in America or in Europe
that is so entirely deformed from its natural, just, and beautiful proportions as is the representative
system of this country. What can be more clear than this— that the aristocracy of land and of
wealth usurp the power in both Houses of Parliament ? The Lords represent themselves, and
generaUy the great landowners, with great fidelity. But, at the same time, we must admit and
deplore that at least one-half of the House of Commons is in fast alliance with the majority of
the House of Lords. Now, I have said before— I repeat it again— that there is no security what
soever for liberty under any government unless there be an essential power in a fair representation
of the nation. An illustrious man, the founder of the great province and now the great State of
Pennsylvania — William Penn — in the preface to his Constitution for that province — a Constitution
of the widest and most generous freedom— uses these words : — ' Any government is free to the
people under it, whatever be the frame, where the laws rule, and the people are a party to the
laws ; and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion.' Now, let us ask ourselves, can it
be fairly said, can it be said without the most direct falsehood, that the people of this country,
through the House of Commons, are really a party to the laws that are made ? It is not at aU
disputed that only sixteen out of every hundred men are now on the electoral rolls, and are able,
all other circumstances favouring, to give their vote at a general election ; and it is not disputed
that half the House of Commons— that an absolute majority of that House — is elected by a
number of electors not exceeding altogether three men out of every hundred in the United
Kingdom." Mr. Ayrton, M.P., in his address, made some remarks reflecting
indirectly on the Queen, which brought forth strong expressions of dissent
from the meeeting. Mr. Bright thereupon rose and said : —
" I rise for the purpose of making, in one sentence, a reference to a portion of Mr. Ayrton's
speech — (cheers) — which I hope I did not fully comprehend, but if I did, in which I am totally un
able to concur. He made an allusion to the great meeting of yesterday, to the assemblage in the
park and the neighbourhood of the palace. He also made observations with regard to the Queen,
which iu my opinion no meeting of the people in this country, and certainly no meeting of Reformers,
ought to have listened to with approbation. (Cheers.) Let it be remembered that there has
been no occasion on which any Ministry has proposed an improved representation of the people
when the Queen has not given her cordial, unhesitating, and, I believe, hearty assent. (Cheers.)
Let it be remembered, if there be now at her side a Ministry that is opposed to an improvement of
the representation of the people, it is because, in obedience to the well-known rules and constitu
tional practice, the decision of the House of Commons on the bUl of last session rendered it
necessary for her to take the course which she then did take. But Mr. Ayrton referred further
to a supposed absorption of the sympathies of the Queen with her late husband to the exclusion
of sympathy for and with the people. (Hear, hear.) I am not accustomed to stand up in defence
of those who are possessors of crowns. (Hear, hear.) But I could not sit here and hear that
observation without a sensation of wonder and of pain. (Loud cheers.) I think there has been
by many persons a great injustice doue to the Queen in reference to her desolate and widowed
position. (Cheers.) And I venture to say that a woman, be she the queen of a great realm, or
the wife of one of your labouring men, who can keep alive in her heart a great sorrow for the lost
object of her life and affection, is not at all likely to be wanting in a great and generous sympathy
with you."

DEFENDS THE QUEEN 33
The audience cheered enthusiastically, and concluded by singing the
National Anthem. This incident, with others that occurred during Mr.
Bright's lifetime, showed his lo3ralty, the great respect he entertained for
the Queen, his deep sympathy for the loss she had sustained, and his
admiration of the constancy and faithfulness which made it impossible for
her to forget the death of her dearest earthly companion.

52

CHAPTEE XLII.
THE SETTLEMENT OF THE QUESTION OF PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.
Mr. Bright slandered — Sympathy expressed by his Workmen and Townsmen — The Study of
French— The Queen's Speech — Mr. Disraeli's Thirteen Reform Resolutions — The Govern
ment obliged to frame a Bill — Great Reform Demonstration at Birmingham — Corruption
at Elections — Mr. Bright's Criticism of the Bill — Unveiling a Statue of Cobden— An
American Martyr — The Slavery Abolitionists — A Reform Bill passed.
BOUT this time untruthful statements were made respecting Mr.
Bright, to the effect that he was disliked by his workpeople,
and had never subscribed to the Cotton Famine Belief Fund.
The principal persons who had given utterance to such state
ments were Mr. Eichard Garth, M.P., Mr. Pope Hennessey,
Mr. Ferrand, and the Eev. W. Chamberlain, of Little Bolton Hall.
When Mr. Garth was called upon to substantiate his accusations, he en
deavoured to explain them away.
" On a review of your speech and your letter," wrote Mr. Bright, in reply, " I came to this
conclusion— that you wished to get into Parliament, and were not particular as to the path which
might lead to it. You threw dirt during your canvass, doubtless knowing that if needful you
could eat it afterwards. There are many men who go through dirt to dignities, and I suspect
you have no objection to be one of them."
" I hope that the result of our labour may show that we have been in the right, and that the
abuse of our opponents has been undeserved," wrote Mr. Bright, in reply to a gentleman at
Bolton, who had caUed his attention to the Rev. Mr. Chamberlain's slander ; adding, " I pity the
congregation which is doomed to receive its weekly supply of spiritual instruction from the
ignorant and vulgar minister whose speech has been recently reported in your papers. He is a
poor guide for this world, and I know not how any one can trust him for the next."
If these persons who had circulated the defamatory statements re
specting Mr. Bright had taken the trouble to inquire among the work
men, or from his townsmen, they would have ascertained that the
relations between employer and workpeople were of the kindliest nature.
These inferior adherents of the Conservative party had little gracious
feeling to spare towards Mr. Bright, and were too ready to utter slander

MR. BRIGHT SLANDERED. 35
and groundless calumny against him, but their dispraise was praise. The
splendour of his political renown attracted these " silly moths," who were
wishful to gain celebrity even by attempting to "eat an honest name."
They were, however, unable to deface that likeness of him which history
will deliver to posterity ; still they will be consigned to immortality, like
the fly in amber, by merits not their own. They were not awed by
shame when his own townsmen testified that in the privacies of his life
he was candid, just, amiable, and generous ; but their calumnious and
malicious statements lost their sting, and received a complete refutation
by the workpeople of Mr. Bright, who took the matter up, and called a
public meeting, in the Public Hall, Eochdale, on the evening of the 25th
January, 1867, to which they invited Mr. Bright, and they presented
him with the following address : — -
"Honoured Sir, — We, the workpeople employed by the firm of which you are the head, desire
to convey our entire sympathy with, and our sincere respect for, you under the malignant slanders
which have been urged against you as our employer. We feel impelled by a sense of duty to take
this opportunity of declaring to you that aU the reports which have been circulated against you
throughout the country are entirely false. They have been made and written by parties who, to
make poUtical capital, have attacked, in an unscrupulous and base manner, your private character.
We are weU aware that the consciousness of these attacks being untrue will be sufficient to up
hold you in the dignity to which you have attained. Your conduct as our employer has been such
as to meet with our entire approval. You have always endeavoured to improve our moral, social,
and inteUectual weU-being. As a public character, your best endeavours have been to raise the
great wealth-producing class to the full rights of citizenship, and we take this opportunity of
saying that your pubUc acts have invariably met with our approbation. We pray that your valuable
life, as an employer and statesman, may long be spared to your family and country, and at last
you may meet with the great and just, and be welcomed as a good and faithful servant."
Mr. Bright remarked in his reply : —
"You know— every man and woman in this assembly knows— every honourable man in
Rochdale knows— that there is not the shadow of a shade of foundation for the charges that
have been made agamst me. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) The men who have made these charges
for the most part could have no knowledge of the facts, and having no knowledge of the facts,
it being not probable that they could be true, I say they have exhibited themselves to the
country as men without a spark of honour-(hear, hear)-aud slanderers of the most disgraceful
and odious character. (Hear, hear.) Those who live in the neighbourhood, even I should say
a large portion of my countrymen, judging either from my life at home or from my public
career, might have found a sufficient answer to these charges. (Hear, hear.)
Wherever you go now you find the opinion of the world has decided this question, that that
cannot be called a free country in which there is no representative institution ; and that in
proportion as the representation is complete and perfect, in that proportion the freedom of that

36- LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
country may be considered to be complete. If you cross the Atlantic to the British North
American colonies, to Canada, and the smaller colonies that are now said to be about to be
united with Canada, you will find in them all a much wider franchise than there is in this
country. If you go to Australia, a much greater distance, you wiU find that in the Australian
colonies you would also have votes which are denied you in England; and if you look at the
histoiy of those particular colonies of America which now form an independent Republic, you
will find that from their foundation, two hundred years ago, there has been, almost without
exception, a very wide suffrage, infinitely surpassing anything that has been possessed here m
our time. Well, then, I ask-and this is my great offence to these men-I say to you, the
working people of England, who minister so greatly to the wealth and to the power of your
country, that it is not fitting that you should be spurned from the door of that House which
professes to be the House of Commons, representing truly the great interests of the great people
of this nation. Now I say, without hesitation, and I am sure without chance of contradiction,
it is because I put in this claim for the people that I have been thus assailed. (Hear, hear.) You
know perfectly well that I have been accustomed in all my public life to take an independent
course ; that I have not been a flatterer of those who are in power, nor have I been the flatterer
of that great class on whose behalf I have mainly acted and spoken. I am no flatterer. (Hear,
hear.) I have not beut my knee to any class of the community. I have sought to be guided by
a higher law than the prejudices or the passions of any section of the people. (Hear, hear.)
In this course— independent it may be— I may have mado errors, as other men make errors, for I
profess to no kind of infallibility, even on political subjects, which I have so long and so much
considered. . . I am not one of those who believe that in a country people cannot be
happy, cannot have that which is their own, cannot be really free and really growing and
improving, unless there be a wise legislation and a just administration of the laws. (Hear, hear.)
An unjust law wounds every household in the country. That most unjust of aU laws, the Com
Law, penetrated every town and every parish, every village and every house, and it wounded
and injured every man in every house ; and a just law, on the contrary, acts with a universal
influence. It is like the life-giving sun, it is like the fertilising shower, it scatters good every
where ; and there is no district in the country so remote, no family so humble, no occupation so
unimportant, that it does not feel in some degree the influence of a wise and a just and a
beneficent law. But still, we must never forget this : that laws, monarchs, houses of legislation,
powers that be of any kind, cannot do everything for us. There will remain much for us to do
ourselves ; many duties to perform, and many efforts to make. The foundation of all abundance
and comfort is industry. WeU, you are perhaps about the most industrious people in the world.
It is not necessary that any people should work harder than the people of England. I think, on
the whole, we work a great deal too hard. (Cheers and laughter.) But if you come to the next
virtue — the virtue of frugality — I am bound to say that I do not believe the people of England
are as frugal as the people of some other coim tries. (Hear, hear, and ' That's true.') If, when
times are good, when labour is abundant, when wages are comparatively high, if it were possible
that all the people of England who are, as we say, well off — I mean well off in having good
wages — if they would cultivate the practice of putting every week a portion of it into some safe
place, so that by-and-byc there would be £5, and then £10, and then £15, and then £20,
the habit of saving would thus grow, while the money saved would grow. If that one virtue
could be added in greater degree to your industry, and your honourableness, and your other
virtues, you would become a much greater power in the country; and although you are so
numerous that the richest class is afraid of you — (' Ah ! ' laughter and cheers) — they would find
that in addition to your numbers you were so powerful that all attempts to keep you from your
fair and full share in the government of the country would be absolutely impossible. (Hear,
hear.) And there is one other virtue which you will allow mo to refer to; that is, the virtue

DEFENDED BY HIS WORKPEOPLE. 37
which leads yon to wish that your children should bo instructed better than you have boon
instructed. What is going ou in the classes above you is this— that almost every man in the
middle class now wishes his children to be better educated than he was educated. This feeling-
ought to spread amongst all classes. (Hear, hear.) You ought to have a great ambition that
your sons and daughters should be fairly instructed, that they may know their rights of every
kind, that they may as they grow up have self-respect, and be a credit and an honour to you,
then- parents, as you are sinking into your later years. Well, I hope and believe that in these
respects, both with regard to the better government and with regard to the social improvement
of the people, there is a visible advance amongst us, and that we may see in future, looking
to the future, something brighter and better thau has been seen in the past. (Hear, hear.) Now
I know there must be many here who wUl think that the proceedings of the later period of the
evening wUl be interesting after these more business-like proceedings iu which we have spent the
last horn-. I shall not detain you much longer, but sliall hope that we may all remember this
evening wth satisfaction on every ground. (Hear, hear.) I have not wished to make it an
opportunity — nothing could be more improper on my part — an opportunity of preaching to you
about things which you ought to do, and have not done. For myself, looking over my past life
— and it is a much longer lane to look over now than it was some years ago — I can see a great
number of shortcomings, which I feel ashamed of. I can see many failures which I ought to
have avoided ; I cau recoUect resolutions formed to do good things, which have failed from some
unexplained feebleness of action ; still I have worked on, and I hope not without some little
result upon the condition of the people and the interest of our common country. (Hear, hear.)
I meet you to-night with an inexpressible pleasure. You are the nearest to me in my neighbour
hood. (Hear, hear.) You tell me that so far as the conduct of my brothers and myself goes in
regard to our business relations with you, you have only that of which you can generally
approve. You tell me that you have observed my public life, and that you find not only
nothing to condemn, but much to approve of. (Hear, hear, and applause.) You say in your
address and your speeches that you confide in me ; that you believe, whether iu the country or
in that House in which I expect to be a fortnight hence, that I shall never forget your interests
and never betray them. (Cheers.) I thank you for your kindness, aU of you — my friend, the
chan-man (Mr. James Tweedale), those who spoke in moving and seconding the address, all of
you who have received their expressions with approbation —I thank you for your kindness. I am
greatly cheered by your reception of me to-night. (Applause.) I am strengthened by the
sympathy you have shown me, and I beg to assure you, from my heart, that the event of this
day, which I can never forget, will be always to me an abundant compensation for anything that
I can possibly do or suffer iu your cause." (Great cheering.)
Mr. Bright's townsmen, who were intimately conversant with his
domestic life as well as his public career, and who were well qualified to
judge how far his public professions coincided with his private life, next
held a meeting in a large building in Eochdale, on the 30th January.
Mr. H. Kelsall, J.P., occupied the chair, and a large number of o-entle-
men sat on the platform as well as in the body of the meeting, to whom
Mr. Bright's career from boyhood was familiar. And the events of the
evening seemed to throw a new light on his character as a statesman, a
private citizen, and a man. Influential gentlemen from neighbouring

38

LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.

towns signified their desire to be present ; but as it was purely a meeting
of his own townsmen, and the applications for admittance were so nume
rous, they could not be accommodated.
The following address was presented to Mr. Bright : —
" Honoured Sir,— We, your fellow-townsmen, in public meeting assembled, desire to express
the sincere admiration we feel for your private character, and your long and distinguished career
in advancing the social and political condition of the people. The services you have rendered to
our common country, in conjunction with the illustrious and lamented Mr. Cobden, the nation
and the world know, and we are thankful to believe that the great announcement of ' Peace on
earth and goodwill to men ' has received another impetus by your noble effort to establish
friendly relations between the nations of the earth. As an employer of labour you have ever
manifested the strongest desire to educate and elevate the working man, and numerous instances
testify that you have always been guided by a love of justice and humanity. We know, sir, that
during your long advocacy of the people's cause your words have frequently been misrepresented
and your character unjustly attacked ; and though wo are assured that you wUl be ever sustained
by the consciousness that your cause is just, we cannot but express our sympathy with you, and
hope that you may long live to champion the cause of popular freedom."
Mr. Bright, in acknowledging the compliment, in one part of his
speech said : —
" Wondering sometimes at those varied and continued assaults, I have just cast a look over the
twenty-five years of poUtical life which I have lived, and I have asked myself how it happens that
that is done in political life which is not done in any other kind of Ufe with which we are ac
quainted F A man may be very active and in the forefront of a religious controversy ; he may
hold the same position in some literary controversy or some scientific disputation ; but no man
living, however much opposed to him, would think of pursuing him with that rancorous spirit
which unfortunately is introduced into political controversy, and which has pursued me with an
unrelenting animosity, not for months only, but for years past. (Cries of ' Shame ! ' and cheers.)
And looking over those twenty -five years, I found, as far as my mental eye could detect, that my
path had been straightforward, not varying, so far as I know, to the right hand or the left from
any unworthy motive. (Cheers.) I found that the principle upon which I had acted was weU
defined, was distinctly avowed, and was easily comprehended, and the vu-inciple was simply this :
that the law and the administration of the law in this country should regard with equal eye all
classes of people— (cheers)— and that to aU questions of government we should bring those simple
but subhme principles, the high and everlasting principles of a pure morality which we derive, or
think we derive, from the religion which we profess. (Cheers.) Now, in these twenty-five years,
so far as I know, I find no divergence from the principle with which I set out ; but, unfortu
nately in some respects, I have not aUied myself with any political party. The public men of
this country are mainly of two parties ; the public press, until recently, was of two parties ; and
if any poUtieian took a line independent of those two parties, he did not, and could not, hope to
receive any friendly support from either of them. Perhaps I have held a pecuUar position from
another ground. As you know, I am a member of a small but somewhat remarkable reUgious
sect— (hear, hear)— a religious body which had a remarkable origin, and which in its early days
at least had a somewhat remarkable history. It is, of all the religious sects which have ever
appeared in the world— certainly since the first corruption of the Christian Church— it is that

DEFENDED BY HIS TOWNSMEN. 33
which of aU others has most taught the equality and the equal rights of men. (Hear, hear.)
And I venture to say more, that it is remarkable for auother thing : that, probably more than any
other body, within its borders and in its service personal ambition is practically unknown. (Hear,
hear.) I think that much of my opinions and much of my course has been determined, or a
least greatly influenced, by the training I received in that body. (Hear, hear.) That belief in the
equaUty of aU men in the sight of Heaven, and in the equal rights of all meu before earthly
governmentSj naturaUy leads to a strong sympathy with the great body of the people. (Hear,
hear. ) I looked upon the miUtitude, the millions who formed the nation. In social rank they may
be caUed the lowly. They labour more, they suffer more, than the ranks above them. (Hear,
hear.) They have less of what we consider the enjoyments of life ; they have fewer of those
compensations which give to us who are better off the main charms of life. (Hear, hear.) And
I have learned from my earliest youth to feel for these men — (loud and prolonged cheering) — to
feel for them a sympathy which I have never been able to express in words, and of which
I can find no proper exhibition in any outward conduct which I can exhibit to them. (Cheers.)
My beUef is, that the condition of this vast body of the people might be immensely improved and
raised. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) I believe they might have less toU, more joy in their lives, and
more of aU that without which, to persons in another station, life would appear to be hardly
worth the having. (Cheers.) WeU, with this sympathy, it was not wonderful that, five-and-
twenty years ago, I should find myself caUed out into active political life. ... I have merely
mentioned these subjects to show you what are the points which I have felt it my duty to touch
during the twenty-five years of my political career. (Cheers.) On looking back, I do not con
demn myself for anything I have done with regard to any one of these questions. (Hear, hear.)
And I beUeve now, when I stand before you thus to recapitulate them, that you wiU not condemn
me. (Cries of ' No, no ! ' and prolonged cheering.) Nor wiU you say that I have departed,
knowingly, from the great, commanding, directing principle upon which, when I first came before
the pubUc, I intended to base my political life. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) There is one thing, it
is true, which I have greatly to regret in this retrospect, and that is the very small success which
has attended any efforts I have been able to make— (' No, no') — with regard to many of these
subjects. And now, when I ask a very reasonable thing — that the miUions of my countrymen
may be freely heard in that chamber which for many hundreds of years has called itself the
Commons of England— when I ask that they shall be heard, when I say that it would be good for
the United Kingdom, and good for freedom everywhere, that the nation should seize the sceptre
which for the last 200 years has been wielded by a class— when I say this, I am subject, not only
to opposition (for that I can understand)— (hear, hear)— but to an opposition conducted with a
falsehood and a malice which knows no scruple, and which, if I were not supported by the honest
sympathies of mUlions of my countrymen— (loud cheers)— might have overwhelmed me. (Great
and prolonged cheering.) What is the end that we propose to ourselves by this change ? It is
not to destroy institutions; it is not to change a dynasty— (hear, hear)— it is not to^eize the
property of the rich— it is not to give to ignorance and vice the disposition of great national
affairs ; but it is to give power to Parliament from that source from which alone power can be
derived-(hear, hear, and cheers)— that Parliament may have power to remedy abuses which are
acknowledged to exist on every hand in the departments and the legislation of the State. (Hear,
hear.) Parliament has no power now to save the public money. (Laughter.) We would give it
power to save the public money- to make the law something felt of justice and benevolence
throughout aU the land, and also that it should be able to raise the people to a high level of comfort
of instruction, of moraUty, and of freedom. (Loud cheers.) At this moment, notwithstanding
that the omnipotence of Parliament exists as it ever existed, Parliament is stiU paralysed (Hear
hear.) You hear talk about reorganising the army ; I don't know what that is, or what it means-
(hear, hear )-but it generally ends in a large additional vote for money for the army. (Hear hear )

40 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
You hear talk of the reconstruction of the navy. That always ends in another miUion or two
being added to the excessive votes of past years. Everybody says that the Board of Admiralty
wants reforming, and there is no power in Parliament to reform it. (Hear, hear.) Everybody
knows that the laws of England are a chaos perhaps unequalled in the world besides. They
remain very much like what CromweU described them 200 years ago. He said that the law of
England was a " tortuous and ungodly jumble." (Laughter.) It remains very much so at this
time. And whilst in the various States of North America the whole legal system can be
simplified and codified so that some men at least cau understand the law — (laughter)— the law of
England remains such that no man, not even the greatest legal luminary upon the bench, can tell
you what the law is upon fifty questions. (Cheers.) Take that question of education. You will
hardly talk to a man in the House of Commons who won't admit that education is a great question,
that very little has been done, that what is done has been very awkwardly and very expensively
done, and that something more is required. I believe it is uot in the power of any Minister or any
Government to pass any decent or satisfactory measure of education through that House. Take
the case of the Church. One does not like to say much against the Church, because the Church
always says that she is in danger, and I would not add to her fears. (Laughter.) Just now the
Church reminds me very much of that old woman of whom the doctor asked what was the matter
with her, and she said she did not know, but she felt very badly in her inside. (Laughter and
cheers.) I am not now referring to any assaults upon the Church from the outside — (hear) — but
you see every day in the newspapers accounts of the fearful conflict which is waging within the
borders of the Church itself. When anything comes to a crisis they go to some court of law, a
committee of the Privy Council, or somewhere else, and a number of judges with wigs on
— (laughter) — decide what is or is not orthodox in the Church of England. I am glad to
see zeal in the Church of England ; but if any Churchman gives himself the trouble
to read what I am now saying, I beg leave to remind him that there is nothing in the
world so perilous for an established church as religious zeal. (Laughter and cheers.)
I should not be at all surprised if there are persons within this building now Ustening to me
who will witness some tremendous catastrophe in that venerable institution, the Established
Church of England. (Hear, hear.) But ParUament cannot meddle with the Church of England.
It has not the power. Of course, if everybody was wiUing and determined, it could vote anything
it liked. It could vote to upset the Church of England, as the Parliament of Florence is just
about to upset the estabUshed church of Italy (Hear, hear, and cheers.) But speaking as to its
practical power to do it, or to do anything with regard to it, ParUament has no power whatsoever.
(Hear, hear.) Take the question of the land— the accumulation of the land— why, though a man
rose from the dead on the floor of the House pf Commons, and pointed out to the great and smaU
landowners there the terrible consequences of our land laws to the great bulk of the population
labouring upon the land, they would say he was an impostor, and teU him to begone to the realm
from which he came. (Laughter.) Take the question of Ireland. There is no man in the House
of Commons at this moment more friendly to just government to Ireland than Mr. Gladstone.
(Hear, hear, and loud cheers.) There is no man in the House of Commons, be he Minister or Oppo
sition, who can prevaU upon that House to do anything substantially to remedy the grievances of
the Irish people. (Cries of ' Shame.') In fact it has been so for a long time in the Parliament
of England ; from nearly the time of the Revolution down to the time of the Reform BiU— a
dreary period of 140 years— you will look in vain for any considerable, wise, and good legislation
in that House. Immediately after the Reform Bill, on the wave of a great popular commotion,
there were many useful measures passed. (Hear, hear). And following the agitation on Free
Trade, and helped by the famine in Ireland, a commercial revolution was accomplished ; but since
then nothing has been done, and nothing can be done. At this moment I venture to say that the
corruption of the Parliament and the class interests there represented are dominant, and that the

THE SOURCE OF POLITICAL POWER. -tl
House of Commons is paralysed for good. You hear in the Tory papers, who are now looking
about for some kind of excuses to offer to the people on behalf of a Government that it is said can
agree to do nothing on the question which tho people want something to be done upon, that they
are going to offer you a whole batch of measures of administrative reform. Why, you will have
half a column nearly of things which arc to be proposed. Well, some of them may be proposed,
and it is possible that some one may pass. But it must be something very small. (Laughter. )
You have no idea, who have not sat in that House, of the difficulty there is in prevailing upon a
majority of the House to agree to any good measure whatsoever. And I say that neither Lord
Russell, nor Mr. Gladstone, nor Lord Derby, nor Mr. Disraeli, nor any other man who will meet
in that House next week, can prevail upon that House to set itself resolutely and honestly to any
of those measures of ameUoration and improvement which the people have a right to demand, and
which nearly every man in Parliament will admit calls for the attention of that House. I say
there is only one power in the country that can do any of these things, and that is the people.
(Cheers.) It used to be an old toast, ' The people is the source of political power.' It never
was more true than at this moment that, in this country at any rate, there is no other source of
political power than is to be exerted on behalf of the people. Therefore I assert, without any fear
of contradiction from thoughtful men, that the extension of the franchise, the improvement of the
representation, which I have demanded for years, is as necessary for the progress and safety of
the nation, as it is rendered inevitable by the loud, the gathering, and almost unanimous cry of a
great people. (Cheers.) I am, then, more than ever, if it be possible, in favour of this reform.
I beUeve it to be necessary for the House of Commons, necessary for every institution of the
country, and absolutely necessary for the contentment of the people. (Hear, hear.) I did not
intend to make, and indeed I have not made, a speech upon the subject of Reform. I have rather
contented myself with looking back over the five-and-twenty years since I have been at all promi
nently connected with public affairs. I have pointed out to you many of the important questions
in which I have taken an interest. On some of these questions great progress has been made.
On many others very little has been done. I plead before you, as a fair tribunal of my country
men, that I am guiltless of the charges which have been brought against me, of anti-national
feeUng, of a disregard for the true interests or the valuable institutions of the nation. I judge
by this meeting, and by that kind address that you have presented to me, that you admit my plea,
and I trust that you unanimously acquit me. (Great cheering.) I thank you from my heart for
that address, and for your manifold kindnesses to me. I am oppressed by the sense of how little
it is possible for any man reaUy to merit the kind of confidence, and the amount of commenda
tion, which you have shown and expressed to me to-night. You judge favourably of my services.
I have not worked, as you know, for the honours or the emoluments of office. I have striven for
the substantial good of the millions of my countrymen, and I can rest content with this feeling
—that my countrymen will do me justice." (Enthusiastic and continued cheers.)
Dr. Emerton, on the 8th of January, inaugurated classes in Eoch
dale for teaching the French language, and a meeting was held in the
Lyceum of the town on the evening of the same day, the Mayor, Mr.
John Eobinson, presiding. Mr. Bright was present, and in the course
of his speech said : —
" Now in the year 1860-about the end of that year- when my dear friend and your late
representative had just concluded his meritorious labours with regard to the treaty, I spent a
week with him in Paris, and on one occasion we went to the Palace of the Tuileries to see, or

12 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
rather to have an interview with, the present Emperor of the French. We spoke to him, and he
to us, ou the subject of passports, and we urged that it would be a great misfortune, and a
great hindrance to the complete working of the new treaty, if the system of passports were to
be continued; that if the Emperor wished Euglishmen to go freely to France on commercial
affairs, and Frenchmen to come freely to England, passports in either country must necessarily
be very injurious aud offensive ; that they did not exist in England, and it would be a great
advantage if they were abolished in France. It is very well known that very shortly after that
interview passports in France were abolished. But I recollect an observation of the Emperor,
which confirms all that Dr. Emerton has said with regard to his friendly disposition to the
people of this country. (Hear, hear.) He spoke with great freedom, and I have no doubt with
more sincerity. He said that he wished the two countries to be so interlaced in their interests,
that they should be altogether so interested in the preservation of peace that it should no longer,
in future times, be in the power of rulers merely to plunge the two nations into war. (Hear, and
cheers.) Well, he knew perfectly well — very few men know better the things concerning these
great questions than the Emperor — he knew perfectly weU that if the two peoples were so
interested in a vast and extending commerce, and if they were so well acquainted with each
other as they might become through the means of that commerce, that then it would be
impossible for emperors, or kings, or statesmen in either country, for some petty aud miserable
and delusive object, to involve the two nations in any future sanguinary contest. (Loud
cheers.) . . . WeU, I have found in time past how very difficult it was, to some excessively
difficult, to learn the pronunciation, and to others, and to most, in fact, what extreme difficulty
there is in learning a foreign language. And the older we get, the stupider we are. (Laughter.)
Now, as a proof of that, let any of you who has got a little boy of four years old, or a little girl,
of three or four years old, try to teach it some little verse or hymn, and repeat it line by line.
Hardly without comprehending it — much of it — the little child wUl learn it iu a very short time
indeed. And from that age up to twenty or five-and-twenty, it seems a natural, a providential
provision, that we learn all these things much more easUy than we do afterwards. As the body
becomes ossified and hard, our faculties seem to move with less ease, and the older we get the
less easy do we find it to learn poetry or to learn a foreign language. And therefore I cannot
help thinking that the enthusiasm of the doctor has brought him here, hoping' to do that which,
if I were one of his students — (hear, hear, and laughter) — I shonld begin to believe to be
impossible. (Renewed laughter.) However, he does not propose, as I understand, to confine
his teaching to old folks, but to catch the young ones, and I dare say. if he will take them from
fifteen to five-and-twenty, he wiU succeed to a certain extent, and much more than if he
attempted his proposition with those of a more mature age. However, I do not want to damp
the enthusiasm of the doctor, or the ardour of any one who may come here with the view of
learning this, if we except our own, certainly in some respects the most important language of
the world. (Hear, hear.) Dr. Emerton has had, as he has told you, and as many of us know, a
wide experience in teaching. He is a thousand times better as an authority upon the matter than
I can possibly be. He thinks he can do much good— I have no doubt he cau do some— in the
effort which he is about to make. (Hear, hear.) If he faUs, we shall respect him for his good
wishes towards us— (hear, hear)— for his devotion in coming here to attempt to do this good.
(Hear, hear.) If he succeeds, there are great numbers iu Rochdale who for the rest of their
lives wiU owe him a great debt of gratitude." (Loud cheers).
In the Eoyal Speech, on the opening of Parliament, in February, this
year, it was stated —
" Tour attention wUl again be caUed to the state of the representation of the people in Par-

MR. DISRAELI'S REFORM RESOLUTIONS. ^
liament, and I trust that yonr deliberations, conducted in a spirit of moderation and mutual for
bearance, may lead to the adoption of measures, which, without unduly disturbing the balance ot
political power, shaU freely extend the elective franchise."
On the llth of February, 1867, Mr. Disraeli submitted thirteen reso
lutions, as the basis for the measure of Eeform. Mr. Bright refrained
from entering into the discussion until the 25th of the same month, and
then he gave expression to the opinion that there was not a single member
of the Conservative party off the Treasury Bench who in his real feeling
meant to say that the course that had been taken by the Government
was a wise one, or one that ought to be persisted in.
" The hon. gentlemen opposite," he added, " show it in their faces. (Laughter.) They feel
beyond aU question that their principal Minister in this House has led them into a very ludicrous
position— (hear, hear)— and not leading them only, but there is great danger of his leading the
House into it. His speech which we have heard to-night, and which is so definite, shows how
much easier it is to make a speech which says something than a speech which says nothing.
(Laughter.) The right hon. gentleman took two hours to say nothing a fortnight ago, and one
hour to-night to say a great deal. (Hear, hear.) If the latter had been delivered a fortnight ago,
during the whole of this time we should have had an opportunity of fairly canvassing the propo
sitions of the Government. (Hear, hear.) The right hon. gentleman below me (Mr. Lowe) was
almost certain to be correct in his assumption that probably up to Saturday last the right hon.
gentlemen (the ChanceUor of the Exchequer and his coUeagues) had not decided what to propose.
They come forward now with a statement which clearly makes the resolutions out of place.
(Hear, hear.) The officers of the Government to whom these things are generaUy given over can
put every single proposition of the right hon. gentleman's speech into a bill, in correct language,
so as to be laid on the table this day week. I say, therefore, with the right hon. gentleman below
me, to go into a discussion on the resolutions is merely a waste of time — (hear, hear) — but to go
into a discussion of them with a view of treating them as we were invited to treat them a fort
night ago would be much more than a waste of time, for it would be to throw this question of
Reform, which, after aU, is a question of some seriousness, into a Parliamentary chaos, and at
the same time it would depreciate, to an immeasurable degree, the character aud the power iu future
time of the executive government of this House. (Cheers.) The right hon. gentleman a fort
night ago flattered us by telling us how superior we are to certain legislative houses in other
eountries,and he referred, amongst others, to the one which sits at Washington. Now, I under
take to say, there is no proposition of this House made during the four-and-twenty years I have
been here which has tended so much to Americanise the House of Commons and the chief
legislative assembly of this country as the propositions which the Government has laid before us
to-night. (Cheers.) . . . Last session I took the Uberty of telling hou. gentlemen opposite
that though they got rid of that bill and the Government, they would not get rid of the question
of Reform, and that they would have to settle that with the great people of the United Kingdom ;
and now they come down to ParUament and are trying to settle it. Do not try to settle it in a
hocus-pocus fashion, which many in this House would agree to without reference to persons out
side. Persons outside know that this House is not in favour of any measure of Reform ; and if
it had not been for the great pressure outside, neither the present Government, nor that which
lost office last session, nor any which has existed for the last fifteen years, would have undertaken

14 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
such a great and dangerous question. If it be this great question, why will you not attempt at
least to step so far forward, that we can meet the views and the honest sympathies and
desires of that most intelligent and resolved portion of that great body of the people which is now
excluded ? If you tinker this little bill, if you stick to this £6 rating franchise, you touch the
lips but leave tlie palate dry, and the great body of the people wiU repudiate the measure ; and I
venture to say that in the very first session of Parliament which is held after the elections under
the bill, you wUl have further propositions made to the House, certainly with respect to the
franchise, and I believe also with respect to the distribution of seats. The right hon. gentleman,
some years ago, just before he was leader of your party, made a, remarkable speech on another
question, in which he showed how very awkward and almost impossible it was for a member of this
House, in office, to undertake to carry great questions to which, wheu in Opposition, he had been
constantly opposed. I will give you a quotation from the speech he then made, which shows what
the right hon. gentleman might now have said if he had been sitting on these benches, lt was on
the subject of the endowment of Maynooth, for which Sir R. Peel had introduced a bill. He (the
right hon. gentleman opposite) opposed the biU, ' on account of the men by whom it was brought
forward.' (A laugh.) He said, ' I do not think that the gentlemen who are now seated on the
Treasury Bench are moraUy entitled to bring such a question forward. This measure, sir, involves
a principle against which the right hon. gentleman and most of his colleagues have aU along sig-
naUy struggled. When I recall to mind all the speeches, and all the motions, and all the votes
which have emanated from the present occupants of the Treasury Bench on this and analogous
questions,' he said, ' I consider that it would be worse than useless to dwell at any length upon the
circumstances which induce me to adopt that opinion. And are we to be told that because those
men who took the course to which I have referred have crossed the floor of this House, and have
abandoned with their former seats their former professions, are we to be told that those men's
measures and actions are to remain uncriticised and unopposed, because they tell us to look to the
merits of their measures, and forget themselves and their former protestations ? ' He appealed to
' the noble lord opposite ' (Lord J. RusseU), then sitting on those — the Opposition benches —
' the hereditary leader of the Whig party,' and said : ' He wUl, I am sure, not withhold his con
currence with the principles I have laid down. That noble lord, the representative of Mr. Fox,
will not gainsay the motto of that great leader, " Men, not measures," and I would ask hon. gentle
men on this side ' — that is the hon. gentlemen opposite — ' how has the opposite system answered
for them ? You have permitted men to gain power, and enter place, and then carry measures
exactly the reverse to those wdiich they professed iu Opposition, and carry those measures by
the very means and machinery by which they conducted the Opposition, and by which they gained
power '—that is by your suffrages, said the hon. gentleman, addressing the Ministerial side of the
House ; and he says : ' You are reconciled to this procedure by being persuaded that by carrying
measures which you disapprove of and they pretend to disrelish, they are making what they caU
" the best bargain " for you. There is a Minister '—and he pointed to Sir Robert Peel— 'who
habituaUy brings forward as his own measures those very schemes and proposals to which, when
in Opposition, he always avowed himself a bitter and determined opponent. But let me ask the
admirers of " the best bargain " system how they think the right hon. gentleman would have acted
had they been introduced by the noble lord opposite '—or, I may say, by the right hon. gentleman
(Mr. Gladstone) who sits there ? (Hear, hear.) Now, do not let it be supposed that if hon. gent
lemen opposite are anxious to carry a real, substantial, conclusive, and satisfactory bill, if they are
ready to support such a measure, do not let them suppose for a moment that because I am not of
their party, or because they have opposed all the propositions made upon this subject and those
which I have been concerned with in particular, I shaU factiously oppose their biU ; but having
now turned round and become reformers, having concluded at half -past two to-day that they would
allow the right hon. gentleman to appear in a new character as a reformer in this House, I ask

WITHDRAWAL OF THE REFORM RESOLUTIONS. 45
them, for their own sake, and for his sake, and, for what is worth infinitely more than their repu
tation or his official position. I ask them for the interest of this great cause, and for the satisfaction
of an excited and anxious people — (' Oh ! ') — that this measure, if it is to be passed this session,
shaU be one at least which shall release me and every other man who is in favour of Reform from
any further discussion and agitation of the question during our parliamentary lives." (Loud
cheers.) This movement of the Conservative Government was regarded as an
attempt to evade responsibility. Driven from this device, they were
compelled to withdraw the resolutions on the evening of the 26th of
February; and Mr. Bright gave them some wholesome advice by
saying : —
" We have all au interest in getting rid of these little boroughs, and distributing the
members, whether amongst counties or large boroughs, at least amongst free and independent
populations of the country. But you find every time when a bill is brought in for the suffrage,
as was doue last year, and as is professed to be done this, it is clogged with this additional
difficulty ; and when you have the chance of settling that paramount question of uniting the
non-voting class with the present voting class, you have not got the common sense to do that
which is most wanted, which is the work of the hour and lies in your way, and leave less urgent
measures for a subsequent session — for two or three, or even half a dozen sessions, if you like —
I am not at aU particular as to time ; but I say, in the name of all that is patriotic, you ought to
make up your mind to settle this question of the franchise without reference to the question of the
redistribution of seats. (Hear, hear.) I have only said what I have said in a public speech, for I
had no communication with Lord Russell or the right hon. gentleman the member for South
Lancashire, and I should have said it if this Government had been in power, and I say it now
because I am satisfied it is the wisest course to pursue in this matter, that the right hon.
gentleman and his coUeagues will find the course infinitely smoothed by adopting the advice
which I give to them in all frankness ; and when we are in committee on this bill, if he wUl
make a change now — and he may do so with the utmost consistency, considering the many
changes that at the present moment are said to be taking place — (a laugh) — he may bring in a
biU in such a shape that there wiU be no disposition on this side of the House to contest the
second reading; and in committee there would be so few points to settle that possibly some hope
might be entertained of its passing the House. But as to the Seats Bill, it is so ridiculous for
all purposes, that by bringing it forward at the same time you would be clogging a matter
which is absolutely necessary and may be done, with a thing that is not so necessary and cannot
be done. I say, therefore, that to deal with the two together is not a statesmanlike mode of
deaUng with this question. (Hear, hear.) The right hon. gentleman will believe me that I
give the advice from an honest wish, and not from any party motives, and it is because he is
receiving so much courtesy and so many kind offers from the right hon. gentleman the member
for South Lancashire, that I have shown him this courtesy and make him this kind offer. (Loud
laughter.) And I venture to say, after the great many difficulties which the right hon. gentle
man has got into, he may with advantage take a little advice from this side of tho House. The
right hon. gentleman wiU perhaps consider it between now and next Thursday week, and
probably he may be enabled to bring in a better franchise bill if he will devote the whole of
his attention to that particular subject." (Cheers.)
On the 1 8th of March Mr. Disraeli propounded a bolder scheme, by

46 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
stating that the Government accepted the principle that the franchise
should be associated with the payment of rates, and they therefore
proposed that every householder paying rates, and having resided in the
same place for two years, should be admitted to vote. This, he stated,
would admit 237,000 men who lived in houses under £10 and paid rates,
leaving unenfranchised 486,000 householders not paying their own rates.
The bill would also contain an education franchise, and would give votes
to holders of Savings Bank deposits and funded property to the amount
of £50. The direct tax franchise would add more than 200,000 voters,
the education franchise 35,000, the funded property franchise 25,000,
and the Savings Bank franchise 45,000 ; in all, more than 1,000,000
would be added to the borough constituencies. In the counties the
franchise would be fixed at £15 rating, which would add 171,000; and
the lateral' franchises would bring the total additions to the county
constituencies up to something like 330,000. Thirty seats would be
redistributed— fourteen to boroughs, fifteen to counties, and one to the
London University.
Mr. Bright took part in the discussion on the bill on the 26th of
March, calling attention to the fact that looking at the measure as it had
been described by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and as afterwards
described by the chief of the Poor Law Board, and as it had been
described by several members on both sides of the House, did it not
present itself to them in some degree as a puzzle, and he asked would it
not be regarded as such by those whose interests it was intended chiefly
to affect? According to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it appeared that
.it was a bill of the widest dimensions as an enfranchising bill. According
to the President of the Poor Law Board, it was a bill of many restrictions,
and many compensations and limitations, and therefore Mr. Bright thought
it was of a wholly different character from that which was introduced
to them as being by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He thought it
was an unfortunate thing that the bill was in the hands of a Government
who were in a most difficult position with reference to this question, for
that position apparently rendered it almost impossible for them to deal
with this matter with that straightforwardness which it required. The

ANOTHER REFORM BILL. 47
First Lord of the Admiralty once had amused Mr. Bright by telling him
that he was the only extant Peelite, but he could not help reflecting on
the unmoorings of the Conservative party, on their drifting from their
anchorage, under the presidency of Mr. Disraeli, and he concluded that
the Liberals at last would be left the only defenders of our ancient and
time-honoured Constitution.
" Now, what is the manner in whieh he reads that ancient Constitution ? " argued Mr. Bright.
" He says that in ancient times the franchise was based upon the payment of rates and the
occupation of houses. Well, there is no doubt whatever, I believe, that that is true. I have urged
that sometimes in this House, and much more frequently out of it ; aud ill-judging persons said I
was preaching revolutionary doctrines. But he does not bear in mind that in those old times, to
which we all love to look back, though none of us would like exactly to go back to them — in those
old times there was no such thing, as far as we read, as the landlord paying rates, or com
pounding for rates. AU occupiers who could pay were, of course, compeUed to pay whatever taxes
fell upon them in their position as inhabitants of parishes or boroughs. At that time nothing
could be more reasonable or wise than the plan which was established ; because, as the House wiU
see, the only persons who would be left out of the franchise, if the franchise was so fixed, would
be that extremely poor class whose members were unable to pay, and who, not being able to take
upon themselves any of the burdens of citizenship might fairly be asked to abstain from taking
part in the right of election. But at the present day, everything that concerns these matters is
changed. The parish is differently managed, the landlord is a more important person, the tenants
and occupiers form a more numerous class ; and for the convenience of aU these, and of all whom
they represent in the parishes, another and an entirely different system has been established, and
it has been found so good that gradually it is spreading to all parts of the country — a voluntary
arrangement, a voluntary contract, by which the tenant is benefited, where the landlord has no
objection to act in his position, and where the parish authorities and aU the ratepayers of the
parish feel that their interests are concerned. . . . The bill, as a whole, I regard as very
unsatisfactory, and as very bad. I think it has marks upon it of being a product, not of the
friends, but of the enemies of Reform. It is wonderful what clever men will do when a dozen of
them are shut up in a room. Now, look at the ChanceUor of the Exchequer. Why, he is a marvel
of cleverness, or else he would not have been for twenty years at the head of the hon. gentlemen
opposite to lead them into this — what shaU I call it ? — great difficulty at last. Take the right hon.
member who sits next him, and who represents a very learned University — Cambridge. Take the
President of the Poor Law Board, who represents the wisdom, and it may be to some extent the
prejudices, of Oxford. Now, take the hon. gentleman the member for Droitwich. I fear to speak
of so potent a personage. Why, at this moment he directs all the armies of the empire. There
is not a soldier who shivers amid the snows of Canada, or sweats under the sun of India, but
shivers and sweats under the influence of the right hon. gentleman. Why, it was oiUy the other
day that he was Lord High Admiral of England. In metaphor —
' His tread was ou the mountain wave,
His home was on the deep.'
But aU these gentlemen retired into a mysterious apartment in Downing Street, and they set to
work to concoct a Reform Bill, and with all their capacity it seems to me to come out as a bill
marveUously like that which would have been framed by the . member ior North Lincolnshire.

48 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
The hon. member for North Lincolnshire (Mr. B. Stanhope) last night gave an account of his
conversion. There could hardly be anything more affecting or more truthful in any class meeting ;
but he spoke of ' we ' all the time— what ' wo ' did, what determinations ' we ' had come to ; and,
in thinking over it to-day, I have come to the conclusion that he is the author of this bill. Well,
now, I complain of this bUl, and I do not do it in anger, for I hope I have not said a word to-night
that can be considered anything but fair and just ; but I say it is a bill in which, looking at the
working-class question, there is nothing clear, nothing generous, nothing statesmanlike ; audi
believe if the House were to pass it there would be universal dissatisfaction throughout the
country. I believe it woidd aggravate the wounds it intended to heal, and that it woidd leave the
greatest question of our time absolutely unsolved. Well, now, I grieve to say this, but it is true.
I tell the House frankly, and the right hon. gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer wUl
believe mc when I say, that there is not a man in this House who would be more glad to give his
very warmest support, whatever it may be worth, to a fair and honest measure on this question.
I regret what hon. gentlemen opposite did, led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his
friends, last year. I shall never cease to regret it, and never cease to blame them ; but stUl, I
would help any Government to bring this question to a just conclusion. But, sir, it seems to me
impossible to assist the Government which will not tell us frankly what it intends, what it stands
by, what it will get rid of ; which asks us to come into its confidence, and is the most reticent
Government that probably ever sat upon these benches. If any gentleman on this side were to
treat you as you treated us last year, I should denounce them with the strongest language that I
could use. I hate the ways and I scorn the purposes of faction ; and if I am driven now or in
any stage of the bill to oppose the Government, it is because the measure they have offered us
bears upon its face marks of deception aud disappointment ; and because I wiU be no party to
any measure which shaU cheat the great body of my countrymen of the possession of that power
in this House on which they have set their hearts, and which, as I believe, by the Constitution of
this country, they may most justly claim."
A second Eeform demonstration was held at Birmingham on the
22nd of April, and the gathering numbered upwards of 50,000. In the
evening a meeting was convened in the Town Hall, and was presided
over by the Mayor. Mr. Bright attributed the change of opinion of
Conservatives on the matter of Eeform to the meetings that had been
held in various parts of the country, but he regarded the Government
Bill with suspicion, and said he should prefer one that was clear, simple,
and honest, and free from tricks.
"Well," said he, "but there are gentlemen in the House of Commons, and for anything I
know there may be some in Birmingham, but I think they are very few, who say, but we arc
getting household suffrage. Mind, there is not a word in the bill about household suffrage.
Several members of the Cabinet— especially Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Hardy— (hisses)—
have repudiated in the strongest manner the notion that the bill even went in the direction of
household suffrage ; but if you want to get household suffrage you will have first of all— I mean
when this bill passes— you will have absolutely to repeal the vital and leading principle of the
biU. But if that principle be very bad, why set it on its legs now ? (A voice : ' Knock it off.')
It has never been a principle yet introduced, or acted upon, or believed in, or accepted by any

ELECTION EXPENDITURE. 49
legislation of this coimtry, with regard to our political representation ; and I ask you, as sensible
men, why, in the House of Commons, there should be one honest man of any colour who would
wish to introduce so odious, and so mischievous, and so unequal a principle in a bill to be passed
now, for the first time, under the pretence of giving great enfranchisement to the people?
(Applause.) I am not in favour of pursuing phantoms. (Hear, hear.) I have spent twenty-five
years of political life and political struggle ; but this my greatest opponent, wherever he may be
found, will say of me — that I have always pursued solid aud great objects in my poUtical
warfare. (Cheers.) It was a solid and great object to struggle for the abolition of the Corn
Laws. (Cheers.) It was a great object to labour for the correction of the enormous and
multitudinous abuses in our tariff. (Hear, hear.) It was a great object to strive for the
emancipation of the newspaper press. (Cheers.) It is a great object to strive for to extend the
blessings of our ancient and noble Constitution to the great mass of the people. (Applause.) I
therefore am not now about to begin to pursue phantom advantages, which flee as fast as I can
pursue. I am not about to say that there shaU be no rental, no value, no limit, that there shall
be nothing other than absolute manhood suffrage or pure and simple household suffrage. I ask
any oue of you — let him be a manhood-suffrage man or a household-suffrage man — to come with
Mr. Scholefield and me and sit for a session in the House of Commons ; see what there is in
front of you, see what there is behind you, see what there is around you of rottenness and
insincerity — (prolonged cheering) — and when you have seen all that, I wiU undertake to say that
you wUl be glad to strive for and to accept and to secure any really great substantial gain for the
people, although it may not be the whole thing, or the farthest point to which your aspirations
reach. (Cheers.) . . . WeU, now, there are men still — I mean the gentlemen who have had
salt put upon their tails — there are gentlemen who fancy that this bill can be made a good bill in
committee. Why, they would have to reject the whole of the bill except the preamble.
(Laughter and applause. ) The preamble says : ' Whereas it is expedient to amend the laws
relating to the representation of the people in the House of Commons, be it enacted,' and so on.
WeU, we could begin there. But the borough franchise we should have to alter, the county
franchise to alter, a lodger franchise to introduce, most of the fancy franchises to cut off, the
voting papers to extinguish, the distribution of seats altogether to transform ; and I will
undertake to say there is not, from the preamble of the biU to the very last word in it, a single
proposition that any real honest, and earnest, and intelligent reformer would consent to have in
the bill. (Cheers.) . . . This House of Commons, I undertake to say, is by far the most
corrupt House — (hear, hear) — that has been elected and assembled since the Reform Bill.
(Hear, hear, and cries of ' Shame ! ') I am not able to say what it lias cost to seat those 658
members in that House ; but if I said it had cost them and their friends a miUion of money I
should be a long way under the mark. (Hear, hear, and cries of ' Shame ! ') I believe it has
cost more to seat these 658 members than it has cost to seat all the members of the other
representative and legislative assembhes of the world at present in existence in the different
countries of the globe. ('Shame!') And, sir, unless a man is intending to be corrupt, this
state of things makes him inevitably corrupt — (hear, hear) — because Mr. Scholefield and I are in
a position to take what I may caU a too favourable or a too severe view of tbis matter. We
come here, and we don't meet with a contest, and we are not asked to pay any expenses ; but
there are many members who pay from £1,000 to £15,000 for their election — (' Shame ! ') — and
although there are men in the House of Commons who are too honest to be swayed by that
consideration, still there are a great number, I am satisfied, who are willing to take any kind of
measure, on any subject, from any Government, rather than go back to their constituents with
the chances, first of all, of not coining back to the House at all— (laughter)— and with the
certainty, if they stand a contest, of lessening the balance in their bankers' hands by several
thousands of pounds. (' Shame ! ') And so they are willing to tolerate the Tory Government, a
53

50 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Tory Reform Bill, to break up the Liberal party— to do anything, as they say, to settle the
question— (laughter)— meaning to settle it iu the House of Commons, and in a House of
Commons' style and fashion, and not to settle it as the great body of the people of this country
wish it to be settled. And they were ready to do all this rather than to have a dissolution of
Parliament. Take for instance, now, that party, which, though it did not meet .for that most
pleasant meal of tea, yet met in the tea-room. There were very honest men in that room as 1
believe ; and there were some of which I should uot like exactly to say that. (Laughter.) There
were some who were very ignorant of Parliamentary tactics, and who fancied that if the biU
would only go into committee they could, somehow or other, manage Mr. Disraeli and his friends
better in committee than in a meeting of the whole House; and the men who met there are
mainly responsible for the division which took place on a subsequent occasion ; for if that
instruction of Mr. Coleridge had been put, I believe it would have been carried— (hear, hear) —
aud if it had been carried, the disposition of this question of Reform would have been in the
hands of Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal party, instead of being, as it is now, in the hands of "
Mr. Disraeli and his reluctant followers. . . . It is not, as you know, often my duty — it is
not often my practice — to speak of official politicians and statesmen in this coimtry with
exaggerated eulogy, but I venture to say this of Mr. Gladstone — there is not a man in either
House of Parliament who would undertake to deny it — that since the year 1832 there has been
no man of the official class and rank of statesman who has imported into this question of Reform
so much of conviction, so much of earnestness, so much of soul as has been imparted into it
during the last two years by the present leader of the Liberal party. (Prolonged and enthusiastic
cheering.) Who is there, I ask, in the House of Commons who equals him in knowledge upon
all political questions ? (Renewed cheers.) Who equals him in earnestness ? Who equals him
iu eloquence ? (Voices : ' Bright.') Who equals him in the unexampled courage and fidelity of
his convictions ? ('Bright.') If those gentlemen who say we wiU not have this man to reign
over us — if they have his equal, let them show him. (Enthusiastic cheering.) If they can point
out a successor the measurement of whom will only add dignity and grandeur to the stature of
Mr. Gladstone, let them produce him. (Continued cheering.) But it is a deplorable thing that
last year a small section of forty men, or thereabouts, aU professing Liberals, destroyed the
honest and the accepted — I speak of the people — the accepted bill of the Government, and
destroyed the Government which had proposed it ; aud that about an equal number this year
have, to a large extent, destroyed the power of the Opposition, and may assist a non and anti-
reforming Government to pass a very bad measure on the greatest question of our time."
(Hear, hear.)
A bronze statue of Eichard Cobden, which had cost £2,500, and was
defrayed by public subscription, was unveiled on the 22nd of April, by
his old companion, Mr. George Wilson, in St. Anne's Square, Manchester,
in the presence of men of all shades of political opinion, though the
largest proportion were adherents of the illustrious statesman's political
creed, and belonged to that class which largely participated in the
benefits of his Free-trade policy. The statue is a striking and remark
able likeness of the original. It is plainly dressed with a surtout, vest,
and trousers. The head, uncovered, is slightly bowed, and the right arm
raised, as if in the attitude of addressing an audience.

UNVEILING A STATUE OF MR. COBDEN. 51
" And where is the man who has not been benefited by the labours of Richard Cobden ? "
saidMr. WUson, in the course of his speech. " Where is the nation which might not adopt his
views with advantage ? (Hear, hear). Where is the limit at which his principles are destined to
be suspended? (Hear, hear.) Wherever ignorance flies before education — wherever monopoly
recedes before the advancing' armies of Free Trade — (cheers) — and wherever the red splendours of
the battle-field pale before the light of peace — there you see his principles extending and ad
vancing. (Loud cheering.) We may inaugurate this monument as a graceful recognition by his
fellow- townsmen of his great and lasting services ; we may pass down Peter Street, and see the
great haU which was the theatre of his world-renowned labours ; we may pass along Bond Street,
and recognise his desire te benefit the young men of Manchester in the building which stands
there ; we may pass the public schools in which he was deeply interested ; and thus may seek to
localise and perpetuate his memory in the town of Manchester. But the great monument of his
labours wiU be seen three times a. day in the homes and on the tables of the working classes of
this country — (loud cheers) — and will be reflected in the eyes of their chUdren when they receive,
not the limited aUowance of food granted by Protection, but enjoy the harvest of the civilised
world." (Loud and prolonged cheering.)
The Mayor of Manchester, in receiving the gift on behalf of the
Corporation, said it should be cherished as a sacred inheritance, and that
the whole community would be its guardians. The site given by the
Corporation for the erection of the statue was in the very heart of the
commerce of the city, and would be pointed to with pride as a tribute to
the memory of a fellow-citizen, whose great abilities, untiring energy,
and practical statesmanship, enabled him to confer inestimable benefits on
his country— benefits equalled in their importance and value only by the
disinterestedness with which they were accomplished.
Mr. Bazley, M.P. ; Mr. Eobertson Gladstone, of Liverpool; Mr.
Jacob Bright; Mr. Hugh Mason; and Dr. John Watts also addressed
the vast gathering, and the proceedings closed with three cheers for Mr.
Bright. Mr. Bright was present at a Eeform meeting held in St. James's
Hall, London, on the 15th of May, and Mr. S. Morley was the chairman.
Thousands of persons were unable to find admittance. Mr. Bright
said : —
opinrebutmwhUstf ^t^f °nhaVen0tdai'ed alt0^ t0 «*» t0 **"* FABc
ZT^tmlTr ^ Vh&i M ^ ^ ^^ W- - »W "very
clause ot tneir bill, introduced somethina' of a nwr,in;m,0 + i ^ j. i
bill of very small value to the country. (^elTTZTll' ^ -ke the whole
the borough franchise, except this : tiTat I ^nk it bad Id tb t ^ ™t " ^ °f
pav a certain rate rh« r>™ + -n ,A ' that a rc1ulrement that all men should
oirZ^Zl'^Z ttTs y; ia the West ckss of TOtei's' •*** at least *»*
PP ty tor conuption. But as we cannot expect that in the provisions of a bill everything

oi LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
should be as we wish, I would not even quarrel with the basis of the bill if the basis of the biU had
been fairly applied, and where it could not apply, if some other mode of enfranchising the people
had been adopted ; so that through the broad land of England and Wales the same common justice
should have been meted out to all the householders in all the boroughs. (Hear, hear.) The
newspapers tell us, some of them — (great langhter)— that nobody can comprehend what the com
pound householder is ; that the thing has been so much discussed that those who knew nothing
before know nothing still— (laughter)— and those who thought they knew everything find them
selves in a state of complete confusion. (Renewed laughter.) But this bill, if passed to-night.
and coming into operation under the most favourable circumstances, and operating as I believe its
framers hope and intend it will operate, would offer to 215,000 men in aU the boroughs of England
and Wales the elective franchise, on condition that every one of them had resided twelve months
in the borough, paid his rate, and taken whatever steps may be necessary to see that his name is
left neither off the rate-book nor off the register. Now. it is an admitted fact in the House of
Commons that if you take the whole number and divide it by two, you will get as near as possible
to the actual number of persons who would come upon the register. . . Reference has been
made to certain members of Parliament, by whose defection the present momentary cloud has
i-ome over this question. I do not speak with any feelings of anger — I speak only with feelings
of deep, I may say of inexpressible, sorrow. They, by their feebleness, and by combination with
the real opponents of Reform, have transferred the management and the framing of this biU into
the hands of a statesman who during twenty years has led the Tory party in opposition to every
proposition from our side of the House for improved legislation and administration. (Cheers.)
They have done this. Further, they by so greatly elating him. and by weakening' the Parlia
mentary power of Mr. Gladstone, have given the Chancellor of the Exchequer that spirit which
he has manifested for weeks past, and which will not allow him to lose a single opportunity of
venting his sneers aud pouring his insults on the leader of the Liberal party. (Loud cheers, and
cries of 'Shame!') This, I know well, was not intended to be the result of the action of those
members, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer is a man who. though he does not change his
countenance much, as those of you know who have seen him — a laugh) — still, he is like most other
men, and like most horses : he can't stand above a certain quantity of corn. (Laughter and
cheers.) Elated by his success, he cannot submit to judicious restraint, and he treats some of his
opponents in a manner which I have never before seen since I have been in Parliament, on the
Treasury Bench. (Cries of ' Shame ! ') I admit we are under a momentary disajipomtment, but
if I could get out of my soiU the grief with which I have seen men who up to this time have been
so just and fair, depart, as I believe, from the policy of then- past lives ; if I could get that from
me, I don't think I should feel so much discouraged or grieved at the present aspect of the
question. No doubt the great cause of Reform has marched with rapid steps within the last
year and a half. From the moment that Lord RusseU became Minister, with Mr. Gladstone as
his leader in the House of Commons, from that moment the question took a new start. It found
itself surrounded with hosts of friends, and from that hour till now. whatever may be the checks,
whatever the temporary calamities of the struggle, we see that its inarch is continuous ; we see
that this great question grows ; and there is no man but believes that a just and a generous settle.
ment wiU soon be arrived at. (Cheers.) Let us not forget now more than in past years the great
and noble cause for which we strive. Tou see how it thrives beyond the Atlantic. (Cheers.) Tou
see how it thrives in almost every country in Europe : you see how it has grown here since the
time to which I have referred. Let us not despair ; let us take greater courage to go on in the
great cause for which we fight, the enfranchisement of a great people ; and let us remember that
the tribunal to which we appeal, aud which must finally decide the question, is the incorruptible
conscience of the British nation." (The vast assembly rose to their feet as one man, aud cheered
him for several minutes.)

THE IRISH CHURCH. 53
The Chief Secretary for Ireland on the 23rd of May obtained leave
in the House of Commons to bring in a bill for the continuance of the
Habeas Corpus Suspension Act. Mr. Bright, in speaking of Ireland's
grievances, pointed out the difference between the Established Church
in Ireland and that in England. For instance, he was a Dissenter in
England — a Dissenter of Dissenters. He disapproved not only of the
Church of England, but of all established Churches ; but he did not feel
the Established Church in England to be a grievance in the sense he
should feel the Established Church in Ireland to be a grievance, if he were
an Irishman and a member of the Eoman Catholic Church. The
difference was enormous. In England the Established Church was at
least as old as Dissent.
" At the time when Dissent became an existence and a power in England, and previously to
that, the EstabUshed Church was the Church of all the people," argued Mr. Bright. " It did not
confiscate the property of Dissenters, or any of the ecclesiastical fund which they, as Dissenters,
had ever possessed. The Established Church remained, as it had ever been, a great institution of
the State. Men who held different opinions — the Nonconformists of that day — gradually withdrew
from it, because they found in their own Nonconformist organisations what was a greater solace
in the performance of worship. They — I speak of the bulk — did not feel that the clergyman and
the people about the Church had turned them out, confiscated their revenues, or supplanted them.
They withdrew voluntarily from the Established Church. Although they might not believe that
an Established Church was a good thing, yet as long as it remained the great institution of the
nation, and was supported by the great majority of the nation, they felt it was not in any degree a
special grievance which might justify them in disloyalty, discontent, or insurrection. But in
Ireland the case is wholly different. In Ireland it is not, as in England, that there is no
essential difference between the EstabUshed Church and those who are Nonconformists. There is
the greatest difference in Ireland between the professors of the Established Church and the pro
fessors of the Roman Catholic faith. There are great and essential points of distinction between
the two Churches. When the Protestant Church in Ireland came in there with the English soldiers
and the English power, it came in there with the power which confiscated the land, put an alien
proprietary there, and dislodged, with a cruelty of which history has scarcely a parallel, the popu-
lation who had been possessors of the soil. Not only that. It confiscated the ecclesiastical
revenues of the people. It placed them at the disposal of a small garrisoned minority, holding a
faith the great body of the people repudiated, in connection with a political supremacy hatefufto
the population." Mr. Bright took part in the discussion on the Eeform Bill in com
mittee on the 28th of May, and reminded the members that the bill of
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which was so enthusiastically supported
by the Conservatives, was, as regarded the borough franchise, precisely
that which he had previously recommended. On examining the 23rd clause

54 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
of his own bill he found that it did exactly what the biU of the Chancellor
of the Exchequer did. It proposed the extremest measure of franchise
in boroughs that he had ever recommended in public or private, and he
thought it would be most ungrateful and most unhandsome in him if he
was willing to say anything against that proposal, or to withdraw his
most cordial support from the bill, as far as the borough franchise was
concerned. Viscount Amberley brought a bill before the House of Commons on
the 19th of June in favour of permitting lectures to be given and
speeches to be delivered on Sundays at places where money was paid for
admission or tickets were sold. In January, 1866, St. Martin's Hall was
opened on Sunday evenings for the delivery of lectures by gentlemen of
eminence, but legal proceedings were threatened by religious societies,
under an Act of George III., c. 49. Mr. Bright, in the course of the
debate, expressed the opinion that he would be sorry to make a man think
less of the value and of the immeasurable advantages which the day of rest
was to the human race. Therefore his observations were offered to the
House with the understanding that they all accept that proposition — that
none of them wished to disturb the day as a day of rest, and a day of
religious improvement. The difference resolved itself into this : whether,
as the right hon. gentleman (Mr. Henley), who had spoken very clearly
on the subject, said, we were to draw the line by prohibiting a money
payment or not. His friend the member for Perth (Mr. Kinnaird) had
in private rather criticised him because he thought Mr. Bright was in
favour of allowing everything of evil to go free. Coming into the House
Mr. Bright asked Mr. Kinnaird how he would vote, and the member for
Perth replied, "I shall vote against the bill, because there are a lot of
infidels at the bottom of it." Mr. Bright was not disposed to view it in
this light.

" There had been many," he remarked, " who had been infidels — who had professed to be infidels
— who had made good suggestions for the advantage of mankind. A hall might be open for every
body, for everybody who were disposed to come in, in which any man may speak on any religious
topic — of faith or no faith. This very haU out of which this bUl had sprung might be opened
by the persons who were in the habit of lecturing — if they would advertise that the people might
come in gratis. They eould give lectures of science or no science, of faith or no faith, and the

AT A BANQUET OF THE FISHMONGERS' COMPANY. 55
law could not meddle with them in the least. He was in favour of reading the bill a second time,
without it being understood that they were bound to accept its principles or clauses, but for the
honest object of taking it before a fair tribimal, in the hope that something may be brought out
of it, which would be advantageous to the country, which would extond a liberty which might -lie
harmless, and which would not offend the susceptibilities which ho would be the last man to dis
regard. He believed the stability and the character of our country as well as the advancement
of our race depended very much on the mode in which the day of rest appointed for mankind
may be observed and used amoug men."
Mr. Bright was one of a number of guests entertained at a banquet
given by the Fishmongers' Company on the 25th of June, 1867, and, in
responding on behalf of the House of Commons, said : —
" Now, I am, as many of you know, in rather a peculiar position with regard to this great
question. I have taken a very active part in promoting changes, some of which are now being made.
From my youth upwards, since I could consider such questions, I have had before my eyes, as you
have had before yours, almost everywhere — and nowhere more than in this city — great wealth,
great luxury, remarkable refinement, and a very high degree of education ; and almost close
alongside this I have seen great poverty, fearful degradation, and also an ignorance so profound
that it was almost impossible to measure or to fathom it. Now, I have believed that a nation
which could make so many rich, so many refined, and so many instructed, might, if it were to
examine its own affairs and manage them, lessen the number of those who live in poverty, in
degradation, and in ignorance ; and I have been strongly of opinion that if the ParUament of the
country more broadly represented what I will call the industry, the inteUigence, and the virtue of
the entire people— if God has given to men the power to govern themselves weU and to improve
their position upon this earth — possibly, if we had a Parliament so formed, we might raise vast
multitudes of the people from a condition which was one of misery to them and humiliation to us
who had permitted it. I thought the House of Commons was buUt on too narrow a basis ; that in
many things, and particularly because, by reason of the extreme expensiveness of elections, many
of its members hardly represented anybody; that it was to a considerable extent corrupt, and that
which might be called the health of the House was not by any means in a satisfactory condition.
Well, this was denied, you know, and it was denied most stoutly by men who last year sat opposite
to me, and who sit opposite me now. (Laughter.) They said there was no such House in
the world— no Constitution or Government which had done so many good things— jio representa
tion which was so exact a voice of the mind of the people of the country. They denied the
truth of the statements which I had made, not having examined the question as I had done, and
said that doubtless which they had a right to say, because they believed it to be true. (Hear. ) It
is curious now that these gentlemen to whom I refer have confessed that they were wrong, aud
that I was right. (' No.') They have not only adopted, especially with regard to the main point
of the great question that has been under discussion, my view with respect to the health of
the patient, but they have actually stolen, or borrowed without acknowledgment, my proscription.
(A laugh ; ' No, no.') We are nearly all agreed in the House of Commons in this matter now, and
it was not unreasonable to suppose there might be considerable agreement here ; but if there be
any gentleman who thinks I am overstating the case, I can only leave him to observe what passes
during the rest of the session, and perhaps by the end of it he may come to the conclusion to
which I have arrived (Cheers.) There is one thing that I beg to state to the two or three
gentWn who rather differ from me, and it is this: the House of Commons, with regard to all
the boroughs m England and Wales, has now established a franchise which is lower than any

56 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
franchise which exists in the Northern States of the American Republic ; and this, after I have
been charged for many years with wishing to Americanise our institutions, has been done by those
gentlemen who brought the charge agamst me. (Hear, hear.) Now, I say this for fear that what
I have said may be misunderstood. Let me explain that the reason why I say the franchise is
lower here than there is, that we have unfortunately in this country a larger number of the popu
lation who are poor, and ignorant, and dependent, than can be found in any corresponding number
of the population throughout the heretofore Free States of the American Republic. Therefore I
say the franchise we have established is lower than that which exists there. Now, I will not pre
tend to say — I think most people arc rather puzzled to conjecture — what within the next ten or
five years may be the result of what has been done. I beUeve there is great and solid good in all
classes of the people of this country. (Hear, hear.) My own impression is that in the highest
class — that of high titles and privileges and great wealth— there has been an amazing advance-
ment in everything that is creditable to that class during the last thirty years. (Hear, hear.)
But I eould not withhold the expression of the same opinion with regard to what has transpired
among the middle classes or among the working classes. I believe that from the highest in the
land down to almost the very lowest there has been a great increase of general knowledge, and a
great increase of kindness between man and man, and that we are at this moment more ready than
we have been at any former period to admit great numbers of the people to the exercise of the
franchise aud of political power. ( Hear, hear.) Now, notwithstanding that there wiU be thousands
and scores of thousands who are not independent enoug'h to vote without some kind of influence over
them, and may know little for what it is they vote, still I beUeve in a fair field, which we shaU
now have to a large extent, the good which exists through aU classes of the people of this country
will exert itself with full effect, and will prevent any evil consequences whatsoever, affecting the
general politics or legislation of the country, from arising from the admission of considerable
numbers who cannot give either strength or inteUigence to the constituencies that are about to be
created. The session of 1867 will, I believe, be memorable to a very late period, and memorable
for the conversion of a great party. (A laugh.) I trust aud believe that that party, having
abandoned its ancient position of resistance on this great question, will consider its position with
regard to some otlier questions — (hear, hear) — and I hope that in future we shall have in the
House of Commons — taking the whole House, and both sides of it — a less obstinate resistance to
improvement — (hear, hear) — and more of a fair and candid consideration of all the arguments
that may be submitted to it ou the questions that are brought under consideration. (Cheers.) I
think the result of what has been done wiU be to opeu a wider field for the inteUeet and for the
energies of the people ; and I here take upon myself to say that I think we may hope with confi
dence that those who come after us, ou looking back at our proceedings during this eventful year,
will have no reason to condemn the course that we have taken. (Hear, hear.) Indeed, a change was
made which now, I believe, everybody admits to be a very wise change. In fact, I think now the
last opponent of, the last person who condemned the Reform BiU of 1832, must have passed away
from amongst us. It was said last session by the strongest opponents of the bill of last year, that the
bill of 1832 was so wise, and had done so much good, that it was not desirable to depart from it,
and that scarcely anything remained to be done. Well, from 1832 to this time thirty -five years
have passed. A biU is passing now. What will happen in the next thirty-five years ? This: That
the twentieth century wUl have dawned upon our children; and I trust that when it does dawn
upou them, and when they look back to this day as we look back to 1832, they may say of this day
what we say of that day ; and they may say further that during aU the time which has elapsed,
this England, this Great Britain, this United Kingdom, has grown a greater, a more united, and
a happier country." (Cheers.)
A public breakfast of welcome was given in St. James's Hall, London,

AN AMERICAN MARTYR. °'
to Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, one of the heroes of negro emancipation
in America, on the 29th of June, and Mr. Bright presided.
"The position in which I am placed this morning," said Mr. Bright, " is one very unusual for
me, and one that I find somewhat difficult ; but I consider it a signal distinction to be permitted
to take a prominent part in the proceedings of this day, which are intended to commemorate one
of the greatest of the great triumphs of freedom, and to do honour to a most eminent instrument
iu the achievement of that freedom. There may be, perhaps, those who ask what is this triumph
of which I speak. To put it briefly, and, indeed, only to put one part of it, I may say that it is
a triumph which has had the effect of raising 4,000,000 of human beings from the very lowest
depths of social and political degradation to that lofty height which men have attained when
they possess equality of rights in the first country on the globe. More than this, it is a triumph
which has pronounced the irreversible doom of slavery iu all countries, and for aU time. Another
question suggests itself— How has this great triumph been accomplished ? The answer suggests
itself in another question— How is it that any great thing is accomplished? By love
of justice, by constant devotion to a great cause, and by an unfaltering faith that what is
right wUl in the end succeed. When I look at this haU, filled with such au assembly-when I
partake of the sympathy which runs from heart to heart at this moment in welcome to our guest
of to-day— I cannot but contrast his present position with that which, not so far back but that
many of us can remember, he occupied in his own country. It is not forty years ago I believe
about the year 1829— when the guest whom we honour this morning was spending his solitary
days in a prison in the slave-owning city of Baltimore. I wiU not say that he was languishing
in prison, for that I do not believe ; he was sustained by a hope that did not yield to the persecu
tion of those who thus maltreated him ; and to show that the effect of that imprisonment was of
of no avail to suppress or extinguish his ardour, within two years after that he had the courage.
the audacity — I daresay many of his countrymen used even a stronger phrase than that — he had
the courage to commence the pubUcation, in the city of Boston, of a newspaper devoted mainly
to the question of the abolition of slavery. The first number of that paper, issued on the 1st of
January, 1831, contained an address to the public, oue passage of which I have often read with
the greatest interest, and it is a key to the future life of Mr. Garrison. He had been complained
of for having used hard language — which is a very common complaint indeed — and he said in his
first number : — ' I am aware that many object to the severity of my language, but is there not
cause for such severity ? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. I am in
earnest, I will not equivocate, I wiU not excuse, I will not retract a single inch, and I will be
heard.' And that, after aU, expresses to a great extent the future course of his life. But what
was at that time the temper of the people among whom he lived — of the people who are glorying
now, as they well may glory, in the abolition of slavery throughout their country ? At that time
it was very little better in the North than it was in the South. I think it was in the year 1835
that riots of the most serious character took place in some of the Northern cities ; during that
time Mr. Garrison's life was in imminent peril ; and he has never ascertained to this day how it
was that he was left alive on the earth to carry out his great work. Turning to the South, a state
that has lately suffered from the ravages of armies, the State of Georgia, by its legislature of
House, Senate, and Governor, if my memory does not deceive me, passed a bill offering 10,000
dollars reward— [Mr. Garrison here said ' 5,000 ']— well, they seemed to think there were people
who would do it cheap-offering 5,000 dollars, and zeal, doubtless, would make up the difference.
for the capture of Mr. Garrison, or for adequate proof of his death. Now, these were menaces and
perils such as we have not in our time been accustomed to in this country in any of our political
movements ; and we shall take a very poor measure indeed of the conduct of the leaders of the

58 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Emancipation party in the United States if we estimate them by that of any of those who have
been concerned in political movements amongst us. But, notwithstanding aU drawbacks, the
cause was gathering strength, and Mr. Garrison found himself by-and-bye surrounded by a smaU
but increasing band of men aud women, who were devoted to this cause, as he himself was. We
have in this country a very noble woman, who taught the English people much upon this question
about thirty years ago ; I allude to Harriet Martineau. I recoUect weU the impression with which
I read a most powerful and touching paper which she had written, and which was published in the
number of the Westm inster Revieiv for December, 1838. It was entitled ' The Martyr Age of the
United States. ' The paper introduced to the English public the great names which were appearing
on the seene in connection with this cause in America. There was, of course, I need hardly say,
our eminent guest of to-day ; there was Arthur Tappan, and Lewis Tappan, and James G. Birney,
of Alabama, a planter and slave-owner, who liberated his slaves and came North, and became, I
believe, the first Presidential candidate upon Abolition principles in the United States. There were
besides them Dr. Channing, John Quincy Adams, a statesman and President of the United States,
and father of the eminent man who is now Minister from that people amongst us. Then there
was Wendell Phillips, admitted to be by all who knew him, perhaps, the most powerful orator who
speaks the English language. I might refer to others, to Charles Sumner, the scholar and states
man, and Horace Greeley, the first of journalists in the United States, if not the first of jour
nalists in the world. But, besides these, there were of noble women not a few. There was
Lydia Maria Child ; there were the two sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, ladies who came from
South Carolina, who liberated their slaves and devoted all they had to the service of this just cause ;
and Maria Weston Chapman, of whom Miss Martineau speaks in terms whieh, though I do not
exactly recollect them, yet I know describe her as noble-minded, beautiful, and good. It may be
that there are some of her family who are now within the sound of my voice. If it be so, aU I
have to say is, that I hope they will feel, in addition to all they have felt heretofore as to the cha
racter of their mother, that we who are here can appreciate her services, and the services of all
who were united with her as co-operators in this great and worthy cause. But there was another,
whose name must not be forgotten, a man whose name must live for ever in history : Elijah P.
Lovejoy, who in the free State of Illinois laid down his life for the cause. When I read that
article by Harriet Martineau, and the description of those men and women there given. I was led,
I know not how, to think of a very striking passage which I am sure must be familiar to most,
here, because it is to be found in the Epistle to the Hebrews. After the writer of that epistle
has described the great men and fathers of the nation, he says :— ' Time would fail me to tell of
Gideon, of Barak, of Samson, of Jephtha, of David, of Samuel, and the prophets, who through
faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of Uous,
quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong,
waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.' I ask if this grand passage of
the inspired writer may not be applied to that heroic band who have made America the perpetual
home of freedom ? Thus, in spite of all that persecutions could do, opinion grew in the North in
favour of freedom ; but inthe South, alas ! in favour of that most devilish delusion that slavery
was a Divine institution. The moment that idea took possession of the South, war was inevitable.
Neither fact, nor argument, nor counsel, nor philosophy, nor religion, could by any possibiUty
affect the discussion of the question when once the Church leaders of the South had taught their
people that slavery was a Divine institution ; for then they took their stand on other, and different,
and what they in their blindness thought higher grounds, aud they said, 'Evil! be thou my
good ; ' and so they exchanged Ught for darkness, and freedom for bondage, and good for evil,
and, if you like, heaven for hell. Of course, unless there was some stupendous miracle, greater
than any that is on record even in the inspired writings, it was impossible that war should not
spring out of that state of things ; and the political slave-holders, that 'dreadful brotherhood, in

THE ABOLITIONISTS OF SLAVERY. ¦>¦
whom aU turbulent passions were let loose,' the moment they found that the presidential election
of 1860 was adverse to the cause of slavery, took up arms to sustain their cherished and endan
gered system. Then came the outbreak which had been so of ten foretold, so often menaced ; and
the ground reeled under the nation duriug four years of agony, until at last, after the smoke of
the battle-field had cleared away, the horrid shape which had cast its shadow over a whole con
tinent had vanished, and was gone for ever. Au ancient and renowned poet has said—
' Unholy is the voice
Of loud thanksgiving over slaughtered meu.'
It becomes us not to rejoice, but to be humbled, that a chastisement so terrible should have faUon
upon any of our race ; but we may be thankful for this— that this chastisement was at least not
sent in vain. The great triumph in the field was not aU ; there came after it another great
triumph— a triumph over passion, and there came up before the world the spectacle, not of armies
aud miUtary commanders, but of the magnanimity and mercy of a powerful and victorious nation.
The vanquished were treated as the vanquished, in the history of the world, have never before been
treated. There was a universal feeling in the North that every care should be taken
of those who had so recently and niarveUously been enfranchised. Immediately we found
that the privileges of independent labour were open to them, schools were estab
lished in which their sons might obtain an education that would raise them to an
inteUectual position never reached by their fathers ; and at length full political rights were
conferred upon those who a few short years, or rather months before, had been called chattels,
and things, to be bought and sold in any market. And we may feel assured, that those persons
in the Northern States who befriended the negro in his bondage wUl not now fail to assist his
struggles for a higher position. May we not say, reviewing what has taken place — and I have
only glanced in the briefest possible way at the chief aspects of this great question — that
probably history has no sadder, and yet, if we take a different view, I may say also probably no
brighter page ? To Mr. Garrison more than to any otlier nian this is due ; his is the creation of
that opinion which has made slavery hateful and which has made freedom possible in America.
His name is venerated in his own country — venerated where not long ago it was a name of
obloquy and reproach. His name is venerated in this country and in Europe wheresoever
Christianity softens the hearts and lessens the sorrows of men ; and I venture to say that in time
to come, near or remote I know not, his name wUl become the herald and the synonym of good to
milUons of men who will dweU on the now almost unknown continent of Africa. But we must
not allow our own land to be forgotten or depreciated, even whilst we are saying what our
feeUngs bid us say of our friend beside me and of our other friends across the water. We, too,
can share in the triumph I have described, and in the honours which the world is wiUing to
shower upon our guest, and upon those who, like him, are unwearied in doing good. We have
had slaves in the colonial territories that owned the sway of this country. Our position was
different from that in whieh the Americans stood towards theirs ; the negroes were far from
being so numerous, and they were not in our midst, but four thousand miles away. We had no
prejudices of colour to overcome, we had a Parliament that was omnipotent in those colonics, and
public opinion acting upon that Parliament was too powerful for the Englishmen who were
interested in the continuance of slavery. We liberated our slaves ; for the English soil did not
reject the bondsman, but the moment he touched it made him free. We have now in our
memory Clarkson, and Wilberforce, and Buxton, and Sturge; and oven now we have within this
haU the most eloquent living English champion of the freedom of the slave in my friend, and our
friend, George Thompson. WeU, then, I may presume to say that we arc sharers in that good
work which has raised our guest to eminence ; and we may divide it with the country from which
he comes. Our country is stiU -his; for did not his fathers bear allegiance to our ancient

60 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
monarchy, and were they not at one time citizens of this commonwealth ? aud may we not add
that the freedom which now overspreads his noble nation first sprang into life amongst our own
ancestors ? To Mr. Garrison, as is stated in one of the letters which has just been read, to
William Lloyd Garrison it has been given, in a manner not often permitted to those who do great
tilings of this kind, to see the ripe fruit of his vast labours. Over a territory large enough to
make many realms, he has seen hopeless toil supplanted by compensated industry ; and where the
bondman dragged his chain, there freedom is established for ever. We now welcome him
amongst us as a friend whom some of us have known long; for I have watched his career with
no common interest, even when I was too young to take much part in public affairs ; and I have
kept within my heart his name, and the names of those who have been associated with him in
every step which he has taken ; and in public debates in the halls of peace, and even ou the
blood-soiled fields of war, my heart has always been with those who were the friends of freedom.
We welcome him, then, with a cordiality which knows no stint and no limit for him and for his
noble associates, both men and women ; and we venture to speak a verdict which, I believe, will
be sanctioned by all mankind, not only by those who live now, but by those who shall come after,
to whom their perseverance and their success shall be a lesson and a help in the future struggles
which remain for men to make. One of our oldest and greatest poets has furnished me with a
line that well expresses that verdict. Are not William Lloyd Garrison and his fellow -labourers
in that world's work — are they not
' On Fame's eternal bead-roll worthy to he filed ': ' "
The Duke of Argyll moved the adoption of an address to the
distinguished stranger, and Earl Eussell, in seconding it, paid an
admirable tribute to the holiness of the struggle for emancipation and
its martyr-chief, by saying that he had not rendered due justice to Mr.
Lincoln, who was tbe friend of freedom, and not only the friend, but
ultimately its martjr.
Mr. Bright, when the Government's Eeform Bill reached the third
reading, on the evening of the 15th of July, in reply to a speech
delivered by Mr. Lowe, informed the House that the member for Calne
had tried to impress them with the notion that he (Mr. Bright) in some
degree was in consternation because the Conservative party had advanced
to a point he thought extremely dangerous, and to which he would not
have gone. Mr. Lowe, he was sure, must know — every member in that
House who paid any attention whatever to political affairs must know —
that for many years past — in fact, from the very first time that he (Mr.
Bright) ever spoke in public, either in the country or that House — he had
always laid down distinctly and unequivocally this proposition: that the
payment foundation for the borough franchise ought to be sought in the
householders.

HOUSEHOLD SUFFRAGE. "1
"I recoUect that when Mr. Hume brought this subject before the House twenty years ago,"
further remarked Mr. Bright," I was one of those who met with him and others to prepare the
resolutions which he submitted to the House. I wrote out the resolutions with my own hand, and
these resolutions included tho proposition for household suffrage. Further than this, the bill
which I prepared in 1859— which was not brought before the House, because the Government of
Lord Derby, which had then but lately come into office, proposed to bring in a. bill of their own
upou the subject, and I did not, of course, desire to introduce my bill in competition with theirs—
contained also household suffrage ; aud I have already explained to the House that the right hon.
gentleman has, as I think wisely, though without the acknowledgment which would have been
fair, taken my clause, and has put it into his bill, and it cannot be supposed therefore, for an
instant, that I could find fault with it. In the course of the discussions which have taken place upon
the subject, I have said that, iu deference to the opinions of many persons, and because I believed
that there was a class of householders in this country who were so dependent, and I am sorry to
say so ignorant, that it was not likely that they would be independent electors, or would give
strength to any constituency, it would be desirable to draw a Une, and I believe that the line I
proposed was houses that were rented at £4 or £3 per annum. That, however, is perfectly con
sistent with what I have said before. I say now, what I have said all along, that the permanent
foundation of the boroug-h franchise would be the household suffrage. I do not complain of the
passing of this bill, or of the House having adopted it in its entirety; but I have said that, looking
at the prevaiUng opinion of powerful classes in this country, who regarded such a step with fear
and alarm, and also to the fact, lamentable undoubtedly, but which no man can deny, that there
is a class, which I hope is constantly decreasing, to whom the extension of the franchise at present
cannot possibly be of any advantage either to themselves or to the country, I should for the present
have been willing to consent to some proposition which feU short, of household suffrage pure and
simple. With that view. I supported as strongly as I could the proposition which was introduced
by Lord John Russell during the Government of Lord Palmerston in 1860, for a £6 rental
franchise. Last year it is true that I did aU that I could by private representation to the
Government of Lord John RusseU to persuade them not to introduce a higher suffrage than that
contained in the biU of 1860; but when the £7 franchise was introduced by the right hon.
gentleman on that Bench I supported it, as being a valuable and rational step in the direction, if
you like, to the gradual extension of the power to the great body of the people— power which I
undertake to say cannot and could not be much longer withheld from them. When we are dis
cussing questions of this nature before a public audience in any part of the country, clearly the
man who speaks to a great audience must have something in the shape of a definite principle to
lay before them, and by discussing principles and questions in that manner you, of course, explain
your views, and teach that which you wish the people to learn ; but when we come to this House
sittmg here as an official member, as I do, still more, sitting on that Bench which is occupied by
the light hon. gentlemen opposite, it is our duty to take into consideration all the opinions and
if you like, aU the prevaiUng fears, and to some extent the ignorance— for fear often comes from
ignorance-whichistobefound throughout the country. In presenting a distinct measure, of
tins kind to Parliament, a Government is, of course, at liberty to make concessions here and there
and to offer to the House such a general settlement of the question as, in their opinion, will meet
with the general acceptance and assent of the nation. Therefore it is that whenever what I believe
o be a large measure likely to meet the general sympathy and wishes, even although it might not
be so large as that now before the House, came before me, I always gave it my honest and,, ord i i
support. Had the Government of Lord Derby proposed this session the Jy sanmW " s
was proposed by Lord Palmerston's Government-namely, £10 i„ counties, and £6 in bo o^hs-
I should have given it all the support in mv ™™ . w ?!,„,. _.._,.-, , , . . uolou-"»

\T01L , !8?V0Tt!n.myV0WBr; buUhat wo«ld ™t W altered!
> any very long period had elapsed would

that the ultimate point of the borough franchise before anv verv wJI. " ^TT

62 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
be household suffrage — a point which the right hon. gentleman has chosen to ask the House to come
to at once. I am one of those persons who have been subject to every kind of — what shall I say ? —
abuse ; that is a very mUd word indeed. I have been charged with wishing to urge Parliament
and the country to adopt measures of a very perilous character. I believe when somebody wished
to say something very terrible about me, I was accused of endeavouring to Americanise our insti
tutions. But I have no wish to go very far or very fast. My own impression is that in the
l>olitical changes which are inevitable in our time and in all countries, and which certainly are as
inevitable in this as in any otlier country, it is an advantage to the country that these great
changes should be made rather by steps than all at once, especially when there is a largo class in
the country who have a terror of what you are doing, and who do not go cordially with the changes
you would promote. That is the principle upou which I have always acted. I have never con
demned Governments and Ministers because they did not go so far as I might have done ; and
whenever a Government upheld an honest and sound principle, I have always been wUling to give
them my support in every step that they should make in that direction, and to make every allow
ance for the great difficulties which every Government has had to encounter that has endeavoured
to make any step at aU."
The bill was passed without a division.
The Lords introduced a few amendments, such as that in large
constituencies, which were to send three members to Parliament, the
electors should have only two votes, thus providing for the representa
tion of minorities, and it was maintained by a majority of 49 votes.
The votes of electors of the City of London were restricted to three ; and
on the 15th of August the bill received the Eoyal assent.
Thus the original bill was ultimately transformed into an extremely
liberal measure by the tactics of the Liberals, and Lord Cranborne
admitted that the bill had been modified according to the demands made
by Mr. Gladstone, on the principles laid down by Mr. Bright, so that
really it was an attempt to gain renown out of the many years' labour of
Mr. Bright :—
" Perhaps you are not aware of this fact," said Mr. Bright to his constituents, " that although
the Act of last session contained no less than sixty- one clauses, there were left in it when the bill
passed only four complete and perfect clauses as the Government offered them to the House.
Out of sixty-one clauses, forty-one were materially altered, sixteen of them being borrowed from
Mr. Gladstone's bill of 1866. Only four passed as the Government proposed them to the House.
I will tell you what those clauses were. The first was the clause which gives the title to the bill ;
the second was the clause which disfranchised the boroughs of Lancaster, Yarmouth, Reigatel
and Totnes ; the third was a clause imposing a penalty if anybody corruptly paid the rates of any
elector; and the fourth was some temporary provision for the registration of some divided
counties or boroughs. I should like to ask you how the bill would have been made worth one
single farthing if somebody had not voted against all tho evil parts of it as it first came before
the House ? "

THE MINORITY CLAUSE. 63
Mr. Bright, in a speech delivered on the 6th of August in the Free
Trade Hall, Manchester, against the minority clause, said : —
"I say that the proposition which was rejected by the Honse of Commons, and which
has been accepted by the Lords, is a proposition aimed with a deadly malice at the
political power of the great constituencies of the kingdom. (Loud cheers.) I find myself,
curiously enough, constantly caUed on to staud upou and to defend the ancient lines of
our venerable Constitution. (Laughter and cheers.) I am rather, like Mr. Jones — but I am not
sure that I should speak it with so much enthusiasm as he did — I am rather an admirer of many
things that are ancient, sometimes, not because they are very useful, but I can admire them if
they are harmless. (Hear.) I would not advise my countrymen with hasty and irreverent hands
to pull down that which has been left them by their forefathers until they see their way clearly
to build up in its place something that will tend more to the true greatness and the lasting
happiness of their country — (cheers) — but I ask them to reject this new and worst device of their
opponents, because it has within it n principle, as I believe, disastrous and fatal to everything
which we comprehend, and which our forefathers have comprehended, of the true principle of
popular representation. (Cheers.) I prefer, infinitely prefer, the practice of the robust common
sense of those who have gone before us, to this new scheme which is offered to us with so many
professions for our good. (Cheers.) I regard it — I say it here without fear of whomsoever it
may strike — I regard it as the offspring and the spawn of feeble minds. (Loud cheers.) It may
have been, for aught I know, born of eccentric genius — (laughter) — it may, and probably has
been, discovered in some of those abysses in which the speculative mind of man deUghts to
plunge. (Hear, and a voice, 'The Cave.') But I prefer, I tell you honestly, that which our
forefathers understood of freedom, of popular representation, of the mode of manufacturing a
great Parliament, to any of these new-fangled and miserable schemes which have come into light
in our day." (Cheers.)
In March, 1883, Mr. Bright further remarked : —
" Well, before the House Mr. Disraeli made au admirable speech against it, and the bulk of
his party — I am not sure if all of his party — voted with him. But that was in rejecting the
clause. When it came down the second time, having come from the Lords, we heard with some
surprise that Mr. Disraeli and his followers were going to vote for it — for that which he had so
utterly condemned a short time before. I remonstrated privately with some of them upon this.
I thought it was a grievous thing that Mr. Disraeli, understanding the question as well as I did.
should take such a course. Now for the explanation. A friend of Mr. Disraeli, connected with
his Government, very much trusted by him, and deservedly, spoke to me about it, and lamented
the eonrse which was about to be taken. He said Mr. Disraeli had not in the least changed his
opinion; that his view was against it, as it had been before, and as mine remained; but be said
he was in this difficult position : that all the amendments the Lords had made to the bill — 1 do
not mean verbal amendments, but amendments really affecting the force and character of the
biU — we had rejected one after the other as they came up, and there remained only this one
thing the Lords had done that the House of Commons had not rejected. ' Now,' he said, ' Lord
Derby had more difficulty in getting this bill through the House of Lords than some of you
perhaps think he had. If the bill were to go back without one single amendment of the Lords
having been accepted by the Commons, it is impossible to say what effect it would have upon the
fate of the measure.' (Hear, hear, and laughter.) Well, there was the explanation at that very
time. Mr. Disraeli was not in favour of this amendment, and if we had admitted some one or
two of the other of the Lords' amendments he could not have supported the argument ; in all
probability he would not have supported the clause, and on that ground excused it."

61 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Mr. Bright, upon learning that it was the intention of the Eeform
League, and its organisation of 430 branches, to use its influence for the
purposes of registration, educating the people in the use of the vote, and
promoting the return to the next Parliament of members pledged to
advanced Liberal principles, gave, in a letter, the following wholesome
advice : —
" I am glad to see that it is not intended to discontinue the organisation and labours of the
Reform League, although so great a step has been gained in the extension of the suffrage. On
that branch of the question of Reform I presume you will not feel it necessary now to agitate
further, so far as the boroughs are concerned. But the concession of a wide franchise is most
incomplete as long as the security of the ballot is denied. As a machinery for conducting
elections without disorder, the arrangement of the ballot is perfect, and if on that ground only
it should be adopted . But there is a higher ground on which all reformers should insist upon
it. The more wide the suffrage, the more there are of men in humble circumstances who are
admitted to the exercise of political rights, the more clearly is it necessary that the shelter of the
ballot should be granted. I am confident it would lessen expenses at elections, greatly diminish
corruption, and destroy the odious system of intimidation which now so extensively prevails, and
that it woidd make the House of Commons a more complete representation of the opinions and
wishes of the electoral body. I have a very strong conviction on this subject, and I hope all our
friends throughout the country will accept the ballot as tho next great question for which, in
connection with Parliamentary Reform, they ought to contend. Without this safeguard there
can be no escape from corruption and oppression at elections, and our political contests will still
remain what they now are, a discredit to us as a free and intelligent people. If the Reform
League and Reform Union will make the ballot their next work, they must soon succeed. I need
not tell you that I shall heartily join them in their labours for this great end. I hope the
friends of the ballot, those who care for freedom and morality iu the working of our representa
tive system, wiU provide the needful funds to enable yon to move on with increasing force to a
complete success."
At a meeting held in the Prince of Wales' Theatre, Eochdale, on the
:23rd December, 1867, to celebrate the return of Mr. Jacob Bright as a
representative for Manchester, presided over by the Mayor (Mr. Charles
Whittaker), Mr. John Bright, in adverting to Mr. Gladstone's Eeform
Bill, said : —
" At that time, of course, they were determined against Reform, and what changed their
opinion between then and the session of '67 was, no doubt, the great meetings which were held in
different parts of the country, which showed them at once that if they met Parliament without «.
promise of a bill, witliiu one single fortnight after the meeting of Parliament they would have to
go back to the old side of the house which they sat on so long, and iu which they seemed to me
never to feel the smallest degree of comfort. (Cheers and laughter.) During the session of '66
it was impossible, in language which you would not think exaggerated and unfair, and almost
insulting, to describe the eager and howling rage which they exhibited against that unfortunate
proposition of a t'T franchise, i Hear, hear.) Their bitterness and malice against Mr. Gladstone

THE S WHETS OF OFFICE. &~>
really would not have been justified if he had been as bad as they said he was, and it is clear now
that he was not half so bad as they themselves have proved themselves to be. (Laughter and cheers. )
Their conduct in the pursuit of office reminds me of some lines, which I will quote if they will not
think it too unkind — (laughter) — which were published a good many years ago, and which have
never had, I believe, a more exact application than when used to describe tho course of the Tory
party last year. The poet, I think in the ' Rejected Addresses,' says : —
' So when " dogs' meat " re-echoes thro' the streets.
Rush sympathetic clogs from then* retreats,
Beam with bright blaze their supplicating eyes,
Sink their hind legs, ascend their joyful cries,
Each wild with hope aud maddening to prevail,
Points the pleased ear and wags the expectant tail.'
(Shouts of laughter, continued for some time.) Just so with the gentlemen on the front Opposition
Bench, and such of them behind who thought that something was to be had — especially, and above
all, the lawyers — (cheers and laughter) — who have since been gorged with patronage. (Loud
cheers.) They, for the sake of that patronage and that plunder — that which in India is called
' loot ' — formed a combination to overthrow the bill of 1866 to place themselves in office.
(Cheers.) And to keep themselves in office, having' found themselves there, they consent to pass
a bill infinitely worse in all the points in which they condemned the bill of 1866 — (hear, hear) — and
I venture to say that their conduct on this occasion leads to the conclusion that there is scarcely
an institution in the country, however honourable aud however ancient, that they would not seU
for the permanent possession of office. (Loud cheers.) But if there be opportunities thus to
criticise the conduct of the Parliamentary Tory party, we may not the less rejoice in the triumph
which our principles have achieved. (Hear, hear.) But there is more to be added. They were
not wUling quietly that the thing- shoiUd be done, but they have, since the rising of Parliament,
taken steps to add greatly to our triumph : for we have seen the principal leaders of the party at
great banquets, in different parts of the country, rejoice in a sort of grotesque exultation over the
success of principles which have all along been our principles, and which they have declared in a
thousand speeches were absolutely destructive of the constitution and the true interest of the
country. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) And to crown the whole thing, such a— what shall I say P—
spectacle as that has, I believe, not been before seen in the political annals of this country. We
liave lately had Lord Derby, the last defender of Protection— (laughter)— and the last and foremost
bulwark against democracy— (hear, hear, and laughter)— we have seen him exhibiting himself in
the defence of Free Trade and household suffrage on' the platform of the Free-trade HaU in
Manchester. (Laughter and cheers.) Notwithstanding this, I suppose our fricuds the Tories.
wiU stUl— as their credulity has no limit— (laughter) -believe in him. They must believe
in somebody— (laughter)— and he will stand as a sort of saint and hero in the political
calendar of the Conservative party. . . Now, before I conclude, there is that one
other question to which reference has been made, and which I think it would not be right in me
whoUy to pass by— I mean the question of the conditiou of Ireland. (Hear, hear.) It is not my
intention to say anything in the way of explanation of what I can see to be the grievances under
which the Irish nation has laboured, nor of the remedies which ought long ago to have been
applied. I have done that frequently, both in public meetings and within the walls of the House
of Commons. One thing, at any rate, I maybe allowed to say with regard to them : that I entirely
disagree with those who, when any crisis or trouble arises, say, ' You must first of all preserve
order, you must put down the disloyalty and disobedience to the law, you must assist the
supremacy of the Government, and then consider the grievances which are complained of.' But
then, generally, after having asserted the supremacy of the law, and having made what they call
54

¦06 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
peace under the terrors of the law, the grievances are forgotten, and there is no consideration of them.
(Hear, hear.) This has been the case in Ireland for 200 years ; the great preservers of the peace
have been the gallows and the gibbet. Of late years the barbarity of our law has but rarely
•cxhibited itself ; but in former years the number of persous who suffered death by the law in
Ireland was something wonderful and appaUing to think of. Twenty years ago, many of you will
recoUect, in Ireland under the guidance of one of Ireland's greatest sons, the late Mr. O'Connell,
there were held in Ireland meetings of vast numbers of the people, equal probably in numbers to
the meetings that were hold ayear ago in Birmingham, in Manchester, in Leeds, in Glasgow, and
in London. These meetings were held to condemn certain things that were evil in Ireland, to
demand certain remedies, to complain even that there should be a legislative union between the
two countries, for they thought that only an Irish Parliament could abolish the miseries of Ireland.
(Applause.) But there is not one of you that can point out any single great measure of justice
which was given to Ireland in consequence of those great meetings. They were on the other side
¦of the channel ; they did not frighten Lord Derby, like the meetings of last year ; they were not
so near home, and the Government in London always knew that they could count upon the power
of Great Britain to prevent any very great mischief being done across the channel. The
grievances were not remedied ; the demands of the people were not conceded. Nothing has been
done in Ireland except under the influence of terror. If you go back to the first time when the
horrible penal laws were in any degree ameliorated, it was during the time of the American War
of Independence, when the Government in London felt that it would not do to have a great war
in the colonies on hand and a great dissatisfaction in Ireland, and so the penal laws were
mitigated to a considerable extent. In 1829 the Catholic Emancipation BUl was passed; and tho
Duke of Wellington admitted it was passed because he would not take the responsibility of a civil
war. Afterwards, when the great famine took place, the poor-law was passed for Ireland, and
the Encumbered Estates Court was established in order that trade in laud might be more free.
But except under the pressure of some great emergency, no man can point to anything great
having been done by the Imperial Parliament for the Irish nation. And if these great meetings
were disregarded, what was more natural, what more inevitable, than that a certain portion of the
people, not reasoning well, stimulated by an impassioned feeling of the wrongs done to their
¦country, should descend into the ranks, the odious and the criminal ranks, of a dark conspiracy P
Why, if this last year the Parliament of England had refused to extend the franchise, if all these
great meetings had been held in vain, if the popular voice had been raised, so that aU the world ex
cept deaf members of the imperial legislature could hear it, you would have had in England, I wUlnot
say a dark and criminal conspiracy, but you would have had men who would graduaUy have worked
their way amongst the people, and would have instructed them in principles and in practices which
are near akin to the worst form of criminal conspiracy. (Hear, hear.) There is nothing so safe
as great meetings. Come together and look each other in the face — let the men who comprehend
these things discuss them freely before you— consider them weU for yourselves— vote by an open,
free vote in favour of the policy that you require— and then let your rulers take that voice as
significant of the wiU of the country, and let them bend to it, and give the country that which it
demands. (Hear, hear.) That has never been done for Ireland, and it is on that ground aud for
that reason that at this moment you have the terrible and the calamitous state of things which exists.
Because in America you have another Ireland— an Ireland which does not fear the Government in
England— an Ireland which is full of passion with regard to what they beUeve to be the sufferings
of the country they have left. Many of these men are capable and many of them desperate. They
have been accustomed to deeds— what shall I say P— deeds of cruelty and blood, in the course of
a most envenomed and sanguinary civil war ; and freed now from that war, what is more likely than
that they should turn the instruction they have received to purposes which they believe are in some
degree patriotic P If the Government of England, and the Government of the United Kingdom, as it

fgffl 77W7AA<AA7Q,.

J. S. WRIGHT.
{From a Photograph by Mr. H. J. 11 'hillock, Birmingham.)

TECHNICAL EDUCATION. <>7
is caUed, had been a Government of statesmen, does any man in the world believe they would have
allowed things to come to such a pass as this P If your leading and eminent men, instead of clamour
ing constantly for office, had undertaken to teach the public what was true, and to form a great
public opinion out of which statesmen might have done great things, then Ireland might have
heen tranquil, and the kingdom might long ago have been united. (Cheers.) As it is, what a
position we are in ! The whole civilised world points to our condition. The newspapers of France,
and Germany, and even of Italy— Italy, so full of trouble just now— and of the United States,
discuss with great freedom and more or less of fairness the condition of this country and the
condition of Ireland. They do not now write about Poland, or Hungary, or Venice ; they write
about Ireland, and they point to the people of Great Britain, and say that we have not done our
duty towards our sister country. And whatever be the criminality which we now all deplore, they
deem that a responsibUity that can neither be weighed nor measured rests upon us, the people of
England. (Hear, hear.) . . .If Ireland is to be made content, if her wounds-are to be
healed, if there is to be henceforth what there never has been— a united kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland— if the sceptre of the Queen, representing the majesty of the law, shall ever
be of equal authority east and west of the channel, it must be done, and it can only be done, by
measures of great statesmanship and of justice. (Cheers.) The morals of the turf, laid on the
floor of Parliament or in the secrecy of the Cabinet, will fail here. The disease which wo arc
discussing is one of a different character. But there are remedies, unless it be that remedies are
too late. Has this country faUen so low that it can produce no statesman equal to these things ?
I say the man who, leading in the counsels of the Queen's Government, shaU grasp this great
question and end it —who shall comprehend the remedies, and sliall administer them and make
them law — he would do that which in future time the pen of history wiU delight to trace. He
may to the very full gratify the noblest ambition of his mind, and he may build up for himself a
lasting memorial in the happiness and the gratitude of a regenerated nation." (Cheers.)
Mr. Bright was present at a breakfast given by Mr. J. S. Wright,
the chairman of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, on the 4th of
February, 1868, to the artisans who had visited the Paris Exhibition.
" Now, suppose we had in this country all the working people educated," remarked Mr. Bright
— " I mean thus far, that every boy and girl amongst them, as near as could be, should understand
how to read, should comprehend what was read, should go through the ordinary rides of arithmetic,
and had that little general knowledge which every child picks up at school — such as a little know
ledge of history, a, Uttle knowledge of geography, and probably a little knowledge of drawing-
supposing that this knowledge was universal among aU the children of the labouring classes, what
else would be necessary ? Tou would find from out of the vast body that there would be certain
boys who could by no means be kept down to the level at which they left school. There would
be found in their mind and brain an energy compelling them to do something more, and the
desire to do it; so that if you set them upon Salisbury Plain without anybody within five mUes of
them, still they would carry on in some way or other their education, and would become teehnicaUy
educated, because one would be led info one branch, and another into another, and these children
speciaUy gifted, as you find some children in all ranks of life, would become your leaders in all
your various arts and manufactures. In my opinion, then, it will not be necessary to have much
of what is called technical training for particular trades. I have never heard in the United States
— I speak, of course, under correction — that there has been much, or anything, done in the
formation of what we caU technical education ; and yet I wiU undertake to say that, looking to
the short period during which the United States have been a considerable nation, there is no

68 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
nation in the world that has surpassed the United States in the progress that has been made by
them in manufacturing intelligence. Mr. Dixon spoke of the inventive faculty of the Americans.
I believe the people of the United States have offered to the world more valuable inventions
during the last forty years than all Europe put together. Now, this has not arisen from the
technical education of tho people, but it has arisen from this — that in the United States there is no
class of the people that is not sufficiently educated to be able to read, and to comprehend, and to
think, and that, I maintain, is the foundation of all subsequent progress. Look at our condition in
this country. The g'reat rich class have no stimulus whatever to make any exertion. What
could stimulate a man who is a lord with a great estate, or a country gentleman with a g'reat
estate, or a rich man of any kind — what would stimulate that man, as a rule, to do anything more ?
He is comfortably placed in life, is looked on with so much respect, that there is scarcely any
kind of stimulus which eould induce him to make any great effort. If you go to the other end of
the scale in this country, you will find I know not how many millions of people totally unable to
make these efforts, because they have no education whatever, and their whole life is a mere
scramble to get a living. They have no opportunity, as they have no aspirations, for any great
discovery or invention. But in the United States you have not that great and idle class, on the
one hand, and that great, poor, and depressed class, on the other. The whole population is more
like what we should be in this country if we lopped off the rich from one end of the scale and the
poor from the other, and instead of having 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 of persons out of whom you can
get uo invention and progress, you have the whole 35,000,000 of people equal to the effort ;
then from that vast reservoir of human power, of human intellect, and of human energy, you would
get those great efforts which were all totaUy impossible, from the circumstances that our very
rich have no stimulus to make exertions, and our very poor and very ignorant have no power to
do so. I maintain that if we were to establish throughout the country a system of primary educa
tion, simple but sound, and give to the people power to read and to think, we should lay a broad
and great foundation from which would arise almost all else that we want. With regard to the
distinct and special education about which some gentlemen have been eloquent, and about which
we have heard so much during the last two or three months, my lamented friend, Mr. Cobden,
referring ou one occasion to the condition of Prussia, said that the Prussians were the Yankees of
Europe, and, from their education he believed they would be the most powerful nation in Europe,
because they had foUowed, to a very large extent, and although not exactly in the same way. the
system of the United State*, of endeavouring to give a sound education to their people. There
is no doubt that in future the strength of nations will depend very much upon this possession — I
do not mean their strength when in war, although it adds very much to that — but in the progress
of invention and manufacture, in the creation of wealth, in the consciousness of self-respect, and
in everything that really tend* to make one nation greater than another."

CHAPTEE XLIII.
IRELAND.
Reconciliation the True PoUcy for Ireland — Mr. Gladstone defeats the Government — Infringe
ment of Parliamentary Usage by Mr. Disraeli — The Government's Irish Policy — Majority
against the Government Increases — Mr. Gladstone's Resolutions Negatived by the
Lords— The Irish Church — Nova Scotia — Mr. Bright in Ireland— At Birmingham and
Edinburgh. E, BBIGHT addressed his constituents in the Town Hall,
Birmingham, on the 4th of February, 186^ : —

&

" I might remind them, as I will remind you, though uo doubt my object will
be misconstrued and misrepresented — I might remind them that the question of
which they have spoken is not a question outside the range of discussion. There is
a o-reat precedent in our history. After the union with Scotland and England,
about a hundred and sixty years ago, and a few years after only, there was a proposition
submitted to the House of Lords for tho repeal of the union with Scotland, and that
proposition was only rejected in a. full House, after au animated discussion, by a majority of
two. (Hear.) Therefore there is a precedent at least, set in a very high quarter, if anybody
thinks he is urged thus to do his duty, and to discuss the question of separation. Besides,
the empire was powerful before the legislative union with Ireland. It was powerful by
colonising ; it was powerful by war ; it was powerful by commerce ; aud you must bear in mind
that the Irish Parliament was a ParUament nearly, if not quite, as ancient as ours, and as sacred
to Ireland as that of England is to England. (Hear, hear.) Bear in mind, also, that the mode
of its extinction forms one of the very foulest scenes in the annals of this country. (Hear, hear.)
Force and fraud and corruption of an unparalleled character were the means by which the
extinction of the Irish Parliament was brought about — (hear, hear) — and although I have not a
word to say, and I hope I may never have a word, in favour of the separation of the two
countries — (hear, hear, and applause)— yet I will not hesitate to assert that the Irish people
never consented to that legislative union, and that their right to protest against it, and their
right to ask for the restoration of their Parliament — if they think it would be advantageous to
them — has not and cannot be destroyed. (Hear, hear, and loud applause.) But, however, the
question before us is this, and it is a fair question : can we so deal with Ireland as to make union
probable and inevitable through its obvious advantages to both countries ? (Hear, hear.) They
are really in Ireland the same people as ourselves; we all speak, with a little difference. of accent,
the same language ; we read the same books ; aud Irishmen write a great many of the books
which we read in England. (Hear, hear.) Our interests are tho same ; our family connections
are wonderfully interlaced; and, as proved by the harmony which exists in several of the
continental countries of Europe, there is nothing in difference of religion iu Catholics and
Protestants, if men will act in a just and Christian spirit, to prevent the most perfect harmony
in the two countries. (Cheers.) With regard to this question of legislative union I shaU make
only one more observation, which is this : that I shall never consent myself to any measure which
would disturb the legislative union, until it is proved that in England statesmanship is absolutely

70 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
dead, until it is proved in Ireland that right and justice have failed to influence mankind.
(Applause.) Now, the Minister of whom I have spoken said there are two great subjects of
parliamentary controversy with regard to Ireland — viz., the church and the land. (Hear, hear.)
But these questions are much more than questions of parliamentary controversy; they are
questions on which may depend the duration or decay of the empire. (Hear.) Unless a
persistent and an ineradicable feeling of nationality is sowed on the whole soil of the Irish
people, these two questions are really the beginning and the end of this terrible Irish difficulty.
(Hear, hear.) Scotland is a nation, and I think on the whole the Scotch are more national than
the Irish. They are very ready always to assert the virtues and the greatness of Scotchmen in
every part of the world. But Scotland is now a member of a greater nation, with which position
she is perfectly content. (Hear, hear.) Well, Ireland is also a nation, but I want to know why
we cannot also make Ireland content to be a portion of a greater nation, and take her share of
that great renown which attaches to the greater power ? (Hear, hear.) I believe, as much as I
believe that I am here before you, that this can be done. There is nothing that a Parliament in
Ireland could do that tho Imperial Parliament could not do, if it tried to do it. (Hear, hear.)
There is nothing with regard to the true interests of the people that an independent Republic
could do which a Parliament in London could not do. (Hear, hear.) There is nothing that
Ireland could do for herself if she were a State of the American Union which the Parliament
in London, if it be statesmanlike and just, cannot do for Ireland. (Hear, hear, and applause.)
Now, suppose we had a Parliament in Dublin that was elected by a fair and free and equal vote
of the householders of the Irish nation, does anybody beUeve that there would exist in that
country an institution such as there is now under the name of the Protestant Established
Church? ('No. no.') Let nobody suppose I am hostile to the Protestant Church or to
Protestantism. (Hear.) I am myself , as you know, a Protestant of Protestants. (Loud cheers.)
I can have no kind of religious sympathy with many of the practices of the Catholic Church,
therefore when I am speaking of the Protestant Church I am speaking purely of a poUtical
State organisation. (Hear, hear.) If any would say that with such a Parliament in Dublin the
Irish people woidd permit that political State Church to exist, he must have this kind of idea of
Ireland and the Irish people — ho must believe that Ireland is no better than one huge lunatic
asylum. (Laughter and applause.) Then, why should the people of England, being the most
powerful section of the three kingdoms — why should our Parliament in England maintain and
support that Church against the individual opinions and the thousand times repeated protests of
the great majority of the Irish people P (Hear, hear.) That Church has been maintained there
for the sake of building up what in time past were considered English interests. A supremacy
party was established with the idea of preserving tho union with England, and it has become in
our time, more than all other institutions, that which most imperils that union. (Hear, and
applause. ) Now, I believe that nobody who reaUy can have any kind of claim, from thinking on
the question, to give an opinion upon it, would say that wc, the people of England, the Parlia
ment of Great Britain, can pretend any longer to govern Ireland upon the principles and in
accordance with the prejudices and the fashions of that supremacy party in Ireland. (Hear,
bear.) . . I recollect when Daniel O'ConneU was in the House of Commons, and on many
occasions I sat by him. I asked him on one occasion if he would write me an autograph for a
lady, a relative of mine, who wished to preserve it. He went into the lobby, and, taking a pen,
lie wrote these four lines. Speaking of Ireland, he said (I don't know that the lines were his-
own composition, but he wrote them) : —
' Within that land was many a malcontent,
Who cursed the tyranny to which he bent ;
That land full many a wringing despot saw.
Who worked his tyranny in form of law ' "

, A ' I ¦¦^".¦LjSE

O

0

DANIEL O'CONNELL.
(/>w* a Photograph by Mr. IV Lawrence, Dublin } of an Original Oil Painting.)

CAUSA OF THE DISCONTENT IN IRELAND. 71
Mr. Maguire, on the 13th of March, introduced a motion to the
effect that the House should resolve itself into a committee to consider
the condition of Ireland. He attributed the land grievance and the
existence of the Established Church as the chief causes of Irish dis
content. The Earl of Mayo, in introducing the Government's proposal, stated
that a commission would be appointed to inquire into the whole state of
the relations between landlord and tenant ; and in the meantime a bill
would be introduced providing for an easy compensation for money laid
out in improvements, and another for rendering more efficient the
working of Irish railways. The general education of the people was
already under the consideration of a commission, and it was proposed to
grant a charter to a Eoman Catholic university. With regard to the
Irish church, it was not proposed to take any immediate action. In the
adjourned debate on the 14th of March, Mr. Bright remarked that the
cause of discontent and disloyalty was well known by the Government,
particularly by Mr. Disraeli, adding : —
" My hon. friend the member for Cork, in the opening portion of his address, described the
state of Ireland from his point of view, and the facts he stated are not and cannot be disputed.
He said that the Habeas Corpus Act had been suspended for three years in his country ; that
within the island there was a large miUtary force, amounting, as we have heard to-night, besides
12,000 or more of armed police, to an army of 20,000 men ; that in the harbours of Ireland there
were ships of war, and in her rivers there were gunboats ; and that throughout that country, as
throughout this, there has been, and is yet, considerable alarm with regard to the discontent
prevalent in Ireland. AU that is quite true ; but when the noble lord the Chief Secretary opened
his speech, the first portion of it was of a very different complexion. I am willing to admit that
to a large extent it was equally true. He told us that the condition of the people of Ireland was
considerably better now than it was at the time of the Devon commission. At the time of the
Devon commission the condition of that country had no parallel in any civilised and Christian
nation. By the force of famine, pestilence, and emigration, the population was greatly dimin
ished, and it would be a very extraordinary thing indeed if, with such n diminution of the
population, there was no improvement in the condition of those who remained behind. He
showed that wages are higher, and he pointed to the fact that in the trade in and out of the
Irish ports they had a considerable increase ; and though I will not say that some of those
comparisons were quite accurate or fair, I am on the whole ready to admit the truth of the
statement the noble lord made. But now it seems to me that, admitting the truth of what my
hon. friend the member for Cork said, and admitting equally the truth of what the noble lord
said, there remains before us a question even more grave than any we have had to discuss in
past years with regard to the condition of Ireland. If — and this has been already referred to be
more than one speaker — if it be true that with a considerable improvement in the physical

72 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
eoiidition of the people— if it be true that with a universality of education much beyond that
which exists in this island — if it be true that after the measures that have been passed, and have
been useful, there stUl remains in Ireland, first of all what is eaUed Fenianism, which is a
reckless and daring exhibition of feeUng — beyond that a very wide discontent and disloyalty —
and beyond that, amongst the whole of the Roman Catholic population, universal dissatisfaction
— and if that be so, surely my hon. friend tho member for Cork — one of the most useful and
eminent of the representatives of Ireland — is right in bringing this question before the House.
And there is no question at this moment that we could possibly discuss, connected with the
interest or honour of the people, that approaches in gravity and magnitude to that uow before
us. And if this state of things be true — and remember I have said nothing but what the hon.
member for Cork has said, and I have giveu my approval to nothing he has said that was not
confirmed by the speech of the noble lord — if this be true, surely aU this great effect must have
some cause. We are unworthy of our position as members of this House and representatives of
our countrymen if we do not endeavour at least to discover the cause, aud if we can discover it.
speedily to apply a remedy. The cause is perfectly well known to both sides of the House.
I am in favour of more proprietors, and some, of course, will be small, aud some will be
large ; but it would be quite possible for Parliament, if it thought fit to attempt anything of this
kind, to fix a limit below which it would not assist the owner to sell or the purchaser to buy. I
believe that you can establish a class of moderate proprietors, who wUl form a body intermediate
between the g'reat owners of land and those who are absolutely landless, which wiU be of
immense service in giving steadiness, loyalty, and peace to the whole population of the island.
. . . The other day I passed through the county of Somerset, and through villages that must
be well known to many gentlemen here — Rodney-Stoke and Drayford, I think they were called —
and I noticed a great appearance of life and activity about the neighbourhood. I asked the
driver of the carriage which had brought ine from Wells what was the cause of it. ' Why,' he
said, ' don't you know that is the place where the great sale took place P ' ' What sale P ' I asked.
' Oh ! the sale of the Duke's property.' ' What Duke P ' ' The Duke of Buckingham. Did you
never hear of it ? About fifteen years ago his property was sold in lots, and the people bought
all the farms. You never saw such a stir in the world.' He pointed out the houses on the hill
side which had been built to replace old tumble-down tenements, the red soil appearing under
the plough, and cultivation going on with such general activity as had not been witnessed till
within these last few years. The appearance of these viUages was such as must strike every
traveller from another part of the country, and it was produced by simple means. The great
estate of an embarrassed Duke had been divided and sold off ; he had not been robbed ; the old
miserable hovels of the former tenants had been pulled down, aud new life and activity had been
given to the whole district. If you could have such a change as this in Ireland, you would see
such a progress and prosperity that gentleinen would hardly know the district from which they
came. It reminds me of an anecdote which is related by Addison. Writing about the curious
tilings which happened in his time, he says that there was a man who made a living by cheating
the country people. I do not know whether it was in Buckinghamshire or not. (Laughter.)
He was not a Cabinet Minister — he was only a mountebank — (great laughter) — and he set up a
stall, and sold piUs that were very good against the earthquake. (Roars of laughter.) WeU,
that is about the state of things that we are in now. There is an earthquake iu Ireland. Does
anybody doubt it P I will not go into the evidence of it, but I will say that there has been a
most extraordinary alarm— some of it extravagant, I will admit— throughout the whole of the
three kingdoms ; and although Feuianism may be but a low, a reckless, and an ignorant con
spiracy, the noble lord has admitted that there is discontent and disaffection in the country; and
when the member for one of the great cities of Ireland comes forward and asks the Imperial
Parliament to discuss this great question — this social and political earthquake under which

THE IRISH CHURCH. 73
Ireland is heaving — the noble lord comes forward and offers that there shall be a clerically -
governed endowed university for the sons, I suppose, of the Catholic gentlemen of Ireland. I
have never heard a more uustatesmanlikc or more unsatisfactory proposition ; and I believe the
entire disfavour with which it has been received in this House is only a proper representation of
the condemnation which it wiU receive from the great majority of the people of the three
kingdoms. (Cheers.) . . . We are, after all, of oue religion. I imagine that there will
come a time in the history of the world when men will be astonished that Catholics and
Protestants have had so much animosity against and suspicion of each other. I accept the
beUef in a grand passage which I once met with in the writings of the illustrious founder of the
colony of Pennsylvania. He says that ' the humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout
souls are everywhere of oue religion, and when death has taken off the mask they wiU know one
another, though the diverse liveries they wear here make them strangers.' Now, may I ask the
House to act in this spirit, and then our work will be easy P (Cheers.) The noble lord, towards
the conclusion of his speech, spoke of the cloud which rests at present over Ireland. It is a
dark and heavy cloud, and its darkness extends over the feelings of men in all parts of the
British Empire. But there is a consolation which we may all take to ourselves. An inspired
king and bard and prophet has left us words which are not only the expression of a fact, but
which we may take as the utterance of a prophecy. He says, ' To the upright there ariseth light
in the darkness.' Let us try in this matter to be upright. Let us try to be just. (Cheers.)
That cloud wUl be dispelled, the dangers which surround us will vanish, and we may yet have
the happiness of leaving to our chUdren the heritage of an honourable citizenship in a united
and prosperous empire." (Loud cheers.)
Mr. Gladstone took part in the discussion, and said that the Estab
lished Church must cease to exist, and religious equality be established.
Not many days after he tabulated resolutions affirming the necessity for
disestablishing and disendowing the Established Church of Ireland, and
on the 30th of March he delivered his speech in favour ofhis resolutions.
Mr. Bright, in supporting Mr. Gladstone, said : —
" I think I might appeal to every member of the House who now hears me, whether, if he
had been placed in Ireland with his father before him among the Catholic population— I might
ask him whether he would not have felt that if he threw off his allegiance to his Church, and if
he entered the portals of this garrison Church, that it would have been to him not only a change
of faith, but a denial, as it were, of his birth and of his country. I have felt always, in
considering this question— and I have considered it much for twenty-five years past— that aU the
circumstances of that Church in Ireland have been such as to stimulate the heart of every
Catholic to a stronger adherence to his own faith, and to a determined and unchangeable
rejection of the faith and of the Church which were offered to him by the hands of conquest.
There is one point on this, too, which is important : that the more you have produced dissatis
faction- with Imperial rule in Ireland, the more you have thrown the population into the hands of
Rome. Now, I hope I shall offend no Catholic member in this House when I say that I consider
it one of the greatest calamities of the world that there are in many countries millions of
Catholic popidation who are liable to be directed in much of their conduct, and often in their
political conduct, through their bishop and clergy from the centre of the city of Rome. I thmk
that is a misfortune— I think it is a misfortune to the freedom of the world. And I think, more-

71 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
over, that it is a misfortune to every Catholic Church in every country, for it tends to prevent it
from being whoUy national, and it prevents also such changes and such reformations as I believe
are necessary in the progress of every Church. Last year, you, who had seen this hobgoblin for years,.
who thought, I have no doubt, many of you, that I was very unwise and injudicious in the mode
in which I had proposed to extend the suffrage — last year you found out that it was not so mon
strous a thing after all, and you became absolutely enthusiastic in support of the right hon. gentle
man's Reform Bill. Well, you believe now, and the First Minister, if this was an occasion on which
he had to speak about it, would tell you not to be afraid of what was done. He would tell you that,
based on the suffrage of a larger portion of your countrymen, Parliament would henceforth be more
strong and venerated by the people than ever it had been before. If it is true of Parliament, what
shaU we say of the throne itself after these changes ? I will venture to say that, whatever conveni
ence there may be in hereditary monarchy, whatever there may be of historic grandeur in the kingly
office, whatever nobleness in the possessor of the crown, in all these things is it not true that
everything is at least as fully recognised by the nation as it ever was at any previous period of
our history P I do not mention these things to reproach anybody here. We all have to learn.
There are many in this House who have been in process of learning for a good while. In fact, I
am not sure that my right hon. friend the member for South Lancashire did not admit to me that
on this very question of the Church his opinions have been greatly expanded and have been
ripening for a series of years. That is greatly to the credit, not only of his head, but of his heart-
We have seen amongst you, on that side of the House, a progress in many things, a progress which
I say is most gratifying to me — though that, of course, is a very small matter — and it is also a
very wholesome indication that the minds of men are becoming more and more open to the con
sideration of great principles in connection with great public questions. And this lets us see
that in future we shall have a Government more in accordance with public opinion and public
interests than we have had in past times. Now, in my opinion, the changes that are made in our
time are the glory of our time ; I believe our posterity will regard them as the natural and blessed
fruits of the growth of intelligence, and of the more comprehensive justice of this age. I
mention these things to ask you not to close your eyes to the arguments, nor to close your heart*
to the impressions of justice, which must assail you with regard to this question which is now
being debated so much in Great Britain and Ireland. I might appeal to a right hon. gentleman,
who perhaps is in the House— the member, I think, for the county of Limerick — who was at a
very remarkable meeting held the other day in Limerick on this very question. I have heard from
sources which cannot, I think, be questioned, that it was a very remarkable meeting — one of the
most remarkable that has been held in Ireland, I will venture to say, for the last twenty years, or
perhaps I might say, for a longer period ; that there was a far more healthy tone of mind, of
expression, of conduct, of f eeUng, of everything we wish to see, than has been known there for a
very long period. I believe and know— because I am told by witnesses who cannot be contra
dicted—that that change arose from the growing belief that there was a sufficient majority in this
House, that the general opinion of Parliament was sufficiently strong, to enable this measure of
justice and reconciliation to be passed. Now, I ask you, if, after what has taken place, you are
able— unhappily able— to prevent the progress of the movement which is now afoot for the dis
establishment of the State Church in Ireland, are you not of opinion that it would create great
dissatisfaction, that it would add to the existing discontent, that it would make those that are
hopeful despair, and that men — rash men, if you like — strong and earnest men, would speak to-
those that hitherto have not been rash, and have not been earnest, and would say, ' You see at last -t
is this not a proof, convincing and unanswerable, that the Imperial Parliament sitting in
London is not capable of hearing our complaints, and of doing that justice which we as a people
require at their hands ? ' Do not imagine that I am speaking with personal hostility to the right
hon. gentleman who is your chief Minister here. Do not imagine for a moment that I am one of

DEFEAT OF THE GOVERNMENT. 75-
those, if there be any, who are hoping to oust hon. gentlemen from that (the Treasury) Bench in
order that I may take one of the places occupied by them. I would treat this subject as a thing-
far beyond and far above party differences. The question couies before the House, of course, as
aU these great questions must, as a great party question ; and I am one of the members of this
party. But it does not foUow that all the members of a party should be actuated by a party
spirit, or by a miserable, low ambition to take the place of a Minister of the Crown. I say, there
is something far higher and better than that; and if there was a question presented to ParUament
which invited the exercise of the highest feelings of members of the House, I say this is one of
those questions. Then, I say, do not be alarmed at what is proposed. Let us take this Irish State
Church ; let us take it, not with a rude — I am against rudeness and harshness in legislative action
 but if not with a rude, stiU with a resolute grasp. If you adopt the policy we recommend, you
will pluck up a weed which poUutes the air. (' Oh, oh ! ') I wUl give hon. gentlemen consolation
in the conclusion of the sentence — I say, you will pluck up a weed which pollutes the air, but you
wiU leave a free Protestant Church, which will be hereafter an ornament and a grace to all those
who may be brought within the range of its influence. (Cheers.) Sir, I said in the beginning of
my observations that the people of three kingdoms are waiting with anxious suspense for tho so
lution of this question. Ireland waits and longs. I appeal to the right hon. gentleman the member
for Limerick (Mr. MonseU) ; I appeal to that meeting, the character of which he can describe, and
perhaps may describe, to the House ; and I say that Ireland waits and longs for a great act of
reconcUiation. I say, further, that England and Scotland are eager to make atonement for past
crimes and past errors ; and I say, yet further, that it depends upon us, this House of Commonsr
this Imperial ParUament, whether that reconciliation shall take place, and whether that atone
ment shall at length be made." (Cheers.)
Mr. Gladstone's motion for going into committee was carried by a
majority of 56.
Mr. Disraeli, on the 4th of May, informed the House that he had
advised her Majesty to dissolve Parliament, but at the same time placed
the resignation of himself and his coUeagues at her Majesty's disposal.
At a second interview she declined to accept the Premier's resignation, but
signified her readiness to dissolve Parliament as soon as the state of
public business permitted.
Mr. Bright pointed out that Mr. Disraeli had asked them to overturn
a long-existing usage of ParUament ; for he asked them to disregard
the first principle of parliamentary action, for the purpose of maintain
ing in office a Minister who acceded to office by acts which in his
opinion were not the most worthy in their character, and who had
maintained himself in office by adopting a policy utterly at variance
with everything he professed when in Opposition.
In the autumn and winter of 1867 there was a grave manifestation of
discontent in Ireland, and troops were despatched thither in great numbers.

76 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Commissioners were specially appointed to try offenders ; there were
state trials in abundance ; and at that moment there were, Mr. Bright
believed, about 100 men undergoing sentences to various terms of penal
servitude for their offences, and, more than that, some men who had
suffered death by the hands of the executioner for offences arising from
circumstances springing out of discontent in Ireland. The Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs, who had tbe most impartial and dispassionate
judgment, probably, of any of the members on the Treasury Bench, and
of whom the right hon. gentleman had that night spoken in terms of
praise which he would not say were exaggerated — this noble lord in the
winter, only just before the meeting of Parliament, had said that
the question of Ireland was " the question of the hour," and Mr.
Bright maintained that the policy of the Government was a policy
of evil. The policy which had been shadowed forth by the Prime
Minister was this : that he would pay tbe Eoman Catholic Church in
Ireland — he would endow it — that he would charter and endow a Eoman
Catholic university, and that he would pay an increased — a donable sum
— as Rcgium Donum — to the Presbyterians. Mr. Disraeli was anxious to
maintain the Established Church in Ireland, to teach Protestantism, but
at the same time he was willing to endow a university which should
bring up the young men of the laity of Catholic Ireland firmly grounded
in the tenets of the Eoman Catholic religion. Mr. Bright thought that
was a policy that did not agree with the opinion of the House, nor did it
receive, as far as he could judge, the slightest support from any section
of the people of the United Kingdom. Mr. Gladstone brought forward
a counter-policy, and a policy which Mr. Bright ventured to say had met
to a degree which many hardly anticipated the approval of that House,
and which was every week and every day receiving testimonials of
approval throughout the country. Mr. Disraeli at first did not know
very well how to meet this. The course he took was to put up — or
to permit — the noble lord the member for King's Lynn to move an
amendment, and that amendment, brought forward, bj a Minister second
only to the Prime Minister in importance, was flatly refused by the
House, who rejected it by a majority of no less than sixty votes. That

INFRINGEMENT OF PARLIAMENTARY USAGE. 77
was not a pleasant thing for a Government, though an adverse vote was
not necessarily a humiliation to a Government. But it was a great
humiliation to a Government if it persisted in clinging to office after
a vote of that character. Mr. Disraeli, however, came down to the
House after the recess, and he put on a kind of non-meaning, nothing-
intending countenance, and proceeded with the business of the evening as
if he positively never heard that there had been an adverse vote against
his Government ; and by-and-bye, having got into Committee, the first
resolution was proposed, and the majority of 60 had swollen to 65. As
to the practice of previous Governments, he (Mr. Bright) would not go
farther back than the Eeform Bill, to the Government of Earl Gray, or
the Government of Lord Melbourne, or that of Sir E. Peel, or the first
Government of Earl Eussell, tbat of Lord Aberdeen, Lord Palmerston's
Government, or the second Administration of Earl Eussell ; and, taking
these Governments, had not the Minister adopted the rule — the decision
of Parliament, and when he had lost the confidence of the majority
of the House, as shown upon any matter of importance, he had,
in accordance with constitutional practice, withdrawn from the Treasury
Bench ; and why should they now depart from Parliamentary usage, and
from the acknowledged principles of our constitutional practices, for the
sole purpose — there was no other purpose whatever that had been
indicated in connection with it— of keeping the right hon. gentleman
and his friends on the Ministerial Bench ?
On the 7th of May Mr. Gladstone's second and third Irish Church
resolutions were carried in committee without a division. Mr. Disraeli
predicted that there would be a quarrel amongst the Liberals over the
division of what he termed plunder.
" I have held consistently for twenty years," said Mr. Bright, " the conviction which the right
hon. gentleman at the head of the Government himself held then, and which, if it were possible
now to put him under an accurate examination from which he eould not flinch, he would be obliged
to say that he holds now ; because, on a recent occasion, he admitted that the main sentiment of
that speech which he delivered twenty-five years ago was right. But I am in a different position
from the right hon. gentleman. I have not been endeavouring to climb the ladder of parlia
mentary promotion and notoriety. (' Oh ! ' and cheers.) No, sir, I have only had the single object
-so far as I had anything to do with Irish questions-to promote what appeared to be just to tbat
country, and which would tend to the advantage of the United Kingdom. The right hon. gent-

78 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
leman the other night, in a manner at once pompous and servile, talked at large of the interviews
which he had with his Sovereign. I venture to say that a Minister who deceives his Sovereign is
as guilty as the conspirator who would dethrone her. (' Oh ! ' and cheers.) I do not charge the
right hon. gentleman with deceiving his Sovereign ; but if he has not changed the opinion which
he held twenty-five years ago, and which he has said in the main was right, then I fear that he has
not stated aU that was his duty to state in the interviews which he had with his Sovereign. Let me
teU hon. gentlemen opposite, and the right hon. gentleman in particular, that any man in this country
who puts the Sovereign in the front of a great s truggle like this into which, it may be, we are
about to enter — who points to the Irish people, and says from the floor of this House, ' Your Queen
holds the flag under which we, the enemies of religious equaUty and justice to Ireland, are
marshalled ' — I say, that the Minister who does that is guilty of a very high crime and a great mis
demeanour against his Sovereign and against his country. And there is no honour, and there is
no reputation, there is no glory, there is no future fame that any Minister can gain by conduct
like this, that will acquit him to posterity of one of the most grievous offences against his country
which a Prime Minister can possibly commit." (Cheers.^
On the 22nd of May Mr. Gladstone's resolutions were carried by a
majority of fifty-four, and there was no difficulty experienced during the
remaining stages, until it came to the House of Lords, where the second
reading was negatived on a division by 192 to 97.
In the early part of 1868, Mr. W O'Sullivan, of Limerick, who sub
sequently became a member of the House of Commons, was arrested on
suspicion of being connected with the Fenian organisation, and many of
his friends in England formed the opinion that he was unjustly suspected,
and ought to be liberated. Mr. Bright was asked to intercede on his
behalf, and, in reply, wrote : —
" I think it likely there are many eases of great hardship and injustice under the present system
of arrests in Ireland."
He also promised to wait upon Lord Mayo, to try to induce him to
liberate Mr. O'Sullivan. On the 26th of March, Mr. Bright wrote
.again, stating —
" That Lord Mayo, after consulting with the law officers, has ordered the Uberation of Mr.
O'Sullivan, on condition that he does not reside within the county of Limerick before the 1st of
August next. This seems a strange condition, but I suppose it wiU not prevent his going within
a few miles of home to live, and perhaps may enable him to pay some attention to his business."
The annual meeting of the Welsh National Eeform Association was
held in Liverpool on the 3rd of June, and Mr. Bright was one of the
speakers, and said : —

THE IRISH CHURCH. 79
" That out of a population of six million persons in Ireland 4,500,000 belonged to the Roman
Catholic Church. Half a million belonged to the Protestant Episcopal Church, and about half a
million to the Presbyterian Church. The census gave under 700,000 of Church Protestants, but
this overstated the numbers. Now, if we were these four and a half millions, and knew that this little
Church of half a million was planted among us by those who had conquered our fathers ; if wo
knew also that this little Church was associated with everything that had been hostile to our
national interests and national prosperity, aud if we know further that it absorbed incomes
amouuting to not less than £700,000 or £800,000 sterling per year, these incomes being derived
from national property amounting to probably £13,000,000 or £14,000,000 sterling — I say, that if
we were of those four and a half mUlions, let ine ask every man of you whether we should not
feel that we had a just cause of complaint, and that there was a national grievance in our country
that required to be speedily redressed P . . Now, what is it we propose to do ? So far as I
am concerned. I should be sorry to join any political party that was about to do a real injury or a
real injustice to any portion of the people. We propose — Mr. Gladstone iu his resolution pro
posed — the House of Commons, by its great majority, has resolved — to place the Episcopal
Church, the Protestant Episcopal Church iu Ireland, in this position — a position familiar to you.
You have been in this position for a long time ; you know exactly its hardships, its grievances, its
advantages, and its glorious successes. We propose to put the Protestant Episcopalians of
Ireland in exactly the same position that the Welsh Free Churches are in now— inthe position in
which the Wesleyan Churches of Scotland are ; and also, I may say, it is the same position in
which all the Protestant Churches, the Episcopalians included, are in Canada, iu the AustraUan
colonies, and in the United States of North America. But we propose to give them this
advantage, which yon have never had, to leave them in possession of all the churches wherever
they have a congregation that will keep them in repair, and of all the parsonage houses belonging
to those churches where there are congregations who will support a minister. You have had to
budd on your hiU-sides and in your valleys in Wales all those churches aud chapels of yours which
we see in traveUing through your lovely coimtry. In Scotland the churches and manses of the
Free Church have been built within the last twenty-five years by members of the Free Church.
I need not teU you that half the people of every creed that go to a place of worship, go
to buildings which have been erected by the voluntary offerings of those who are not connected with
the Episcopal Church. If you go to Ireland you will find 5,000,000 Roman Catholics who own
scarcely any of the land, but who have been in times past the poor, the naked, aud the meanest in
the laud, who have established for themselves chapels, and priests' houses, and hospitals, and
schools, nearly, if not altogether, sufficient for the spiritual wants of the people. . I say
that we have no right — I am willing to say this anywhere — we have uo right whatever to insist
upon a union between Ireland and Great Britain upon our terms only. We have only a right to
insist that the United Kingdom shall not be severed if we are wUling to do full justice to the
different nations of which it is composed ; and, therefore, there is a question far more important
than whether this man or that man shaU be Prime Minister, or whether a particular Cabinet.
shuffling and offensive as this Cabinet is, or a more honest Cabinet which may succeed it, should
govern the country— there is a question far greater than whether this or that Cabinet shall be m
office. It is whether the people of England have raised themselves to such a height of political
intelligence, and to such a sense of political justice, as to induce them to deal fairly and honourably,
and as they would like to be dealt with themselves, by the Irish nation. Until I find that the
people of England at their next election shaU decide adversely to justice to Ireland, I wiU not
beheve them capable of doing so. I will hope and I will speak, so far as I am able, and as
opportunity may be given me, in favour of the great measure which is now before Parliament, for
I believe it to be essential to the unity and the strength and harmony of the United Kingdom ; and
I believe that, insteod-to take the language of the present Prime Minister, offensive and

xo LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
impudent as it was— instead of dimming the lustre of the British crown, it wiU be regarded
in history as one of the most honourable events in the reign of the Queen, if under her mild sceptre
this United Kingdom can really be united, and Ireland made as contented and loyal as any other
portion of the empire."
Mr. Bright, on the 16th of June, presented to the House of Commons
a petition, complaining that an Act was passed in the previous session
which overthrew the constitution of the colony of Nova Scotia, and thus
destroyed tbe independence which had existed in that colony for nearly one
hundred years. Tbe Act handed over the government to Canada, taking-
from the people the management of their own affairs, the appointment of
their own officials, the collection and expenditure of their own revenues,
and transferred tbe whole of these to a Parliament which was to sit at
Ottawa, a distance of not less than S00 miles from Nova Scotia.
" You have subverted the constitution of Nova Scotia," declared Mr. Bright, '• without any
appeal to the people of Nova Scotia. You did it from what I think an exaggerated statement of
persons connected with the then Government of Nova Scotia, and the House did it on the represent
ation ofthe right hon. gentleman opposite, who was certainly verymnchmore sanguine than he had
any right to be. You have done the people of Nova Scotia what I maintain is one of the greatest
wrongs that despotism in any form can do to any people. You have power to maintain it so long a»
Nova Scotia has no assistance from outside its own borders. But there is no statesman in England
who wiU venture to bring about the shedding of one drop of blood upon that continent. No man
in this House more entirely hopes that such a thing is absolutely impossible than I do. Yet these
questions may be driven to a point where difficulties will arise which the English Parliament will
be utterly unable to settle. And while we have been endeavouring to bring about important
arrangements for the federation of our fellow-subjects in the British North American colonies, we
may possibly have been taking the step that will thrust them into the United States. Only the
other day I met an Englishman who had lived in the United States, and who is familiar with
everything there, and he asked me whether I thought the Government intended to refuse my claim.
I said, ' I think they do.- They generally refuse everything, and I understand they are going to
refuse this.' ' WeU,' he said, ' I am very glad to hear that; ' which rather struck me with surprise,
and, indeed, with pain ; and I said, ' Why are you glad ? ' He said, ' I believe nothing can prevent
the absorption of these colonies within the Republic of the United States; * and he added, ' There is
no step the Government could take so certain to hasten it, as to object to your motion, and refuse
the commission of inquiry which yon propose.' Now, sir, I cannot say what he says, because I
am not glad of it. I regret it, and regret it sincerely, because I think nothing could be more un
fortunate for these colonies and this country than that we should do anything to hasten the
accession of these colonies to the United States. Our duty is, so far as we can, in legislating for
them and in governing for them, to do it all freely, honourably, and generously to them, with their
consent in every step, and to the last moment that these colonies shaU be upon the British Crown ;
and that every person within them shaU feel tbat the Crown has not been a Crown of tyranny but
the Crown of just government to them."
The motion was lost by a majority of 96 against it, and some of the

AT THE LIMERICK ATHENAEUM. 81
speeches delivered against it did not tend in the slightest degree to allay
the gathering discontent which was felt in New Brunswick.
Mr. Bright in July, 1868, was a guest of Mr. Peabody at Castle
Connel in Ireland, and on the 14th of that month he was invited to a
public breakfast in the Limerick Athenseum.
" It is now twenty years since I was, the only time before this, in your city," said Mr. Bright
to his audience. " I can see — and I have heard much more than I have seen — that there is a con
siderable change in some respects for the better in Ireland during the last twenty years ; but it is
not at aU to be wondered at. When I was here before, famine and pestilence had scarcely com
pleted their melancholy duty. When I say duty, I regard famine and pestilence as instruments
appointed by Providence to punish the ignorance, the folly, and the crimes of men. But since
famine and pestUence in their fearful forms have ceased amongst you, there has been an emigration
unexampled, I beUeve, by any modern nation and in any modern time ; and the result has been
that the population of Ireland has been greatly thinned, and it is only reasonable to expect and to
believe that there should be better and more constant employment for the population remaining
here, and a higher rate of wages than in former times. If you recollect the contents of the
report of the Devon Commission, which I think sat about the year 1845, you will remember that
nearly one half the population of Ireland at that moment were in a condition of absolute
pauperism. That is a thing which, happily, cannot be said now of such a large proportion
of your people. ... I am willing and anxious, if possible, to supplement the Act of
Union by deeds of generosity and of justice which shaU reaUy unite the three kingdoms.
And I would offer to the Irish people the more durable and solid independence which they
may possibly think is the portion of a great and prosperous empire, whose councils and wdiose
examples would move the world to great and noble ends. ... In traveUing through this
country, one may not accept the dictum of your poet, that this is the ' first flower of the earth ; '
but at any rate I think a man cannot live in the valley of the Shannon without believing that it
is one of the earth's very fairest flowers. Your climate is genial, your people have at least as many
virtues, so far as I know, as other people have, and even it is admitted that their faUings leau
rather to virtue's side. But it is impossible not to feel that there hangs over the country some
thing like a shadow of the curse of past wrongs, and that there are amongst you afflicting
memories that wUl not sleep. What I would propose, if it were possible for me to dictate the
policy of the Imperial Parliament towards Ireland, would be to undo— absolutely te undo— the
territorial and ecclesiastical arrangements maintained during the past two or three hundred years,
though I would do aU this without inflicting upon any living man the smaUest act of injustice in
connection with his personal interests in those territorial and ecclesiastical arrangements."
The general election approaching, Mr. Bright issued his address to his
constituents on the 22nd of August, 1868, and stated—
'¦ I regard the question of the baUot as of first importance. Whether I look to the excessive
cost of elections, or to the tumult which so often attends them, or to the unjust and cruel pressure
which is so frequently brought to bear upon the less independent class of voters, I am persuaded
that the true interest of the public and of freedom will be served by the adoption of the system
of secret and free voting. It is in practice, and is highly valued, in almost every otlier country
having representative institutions, and I regard it as absolutely necessary to a real representation
of the United Kingdom. The foremost question for the new Parliament will be our treatment of
55

82 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Ireland. You know my views on the Irish Church EstabUshment and on the land question. Iu
dealing with the Irish Establishment we are not promoting the spread of the Roman Catholic, or
damaging the influence of the Protestant, religion. We do not touch religion at all. We deal
only with the political institution which has wholly failed to secure any good object, and which
has succeeded only in weakening the loyalty and offending the sense of justice of the great
majority of the Irish people. Our opponents speak of their zeal for Protestantism and their
loyalty to the constitution. I prefer a Protestantism which is in aUiance with Christian kindness
aud with justice, and my loyalty to the constitution leads me to wish for the hearty union of the
three kingdoms in allegiance to the Crown. I believe that Christianity and the constitution will
be alike strengthened in these islands by the removal of the Irish Church Establishment."
Mr. Bright addressed a crowded meeting of his constituents in the
Town Hall, Birmingham, on the 26th of October ; Mr. J. S. Wright in
the chair.
" Now, will you allow me for a moment to tell you what was the state of England exactly
forty years ago ? " remarked Mr. Bright. " If I had a blackboard here on the platform, as
schoolmasters have in their schools, or if I had a large chart where I could point to all these
things, you would take them in not only with the ear as I speak them, but with the eye as you
would see them. In 1828 no Dissenter in England — how many Dissenters are there on this
platform, in this meeting? — (cheers) — half the people at least who go to a place of worship on a
Sunday are Dissenters — forty years ago not one of these Dissenters by law could hold any civil
or military office in the State. He could not be Mayor of Birmingham ; he could not be an
alderman ; he could not be a member of the town council ; he could not be a magistrate ; he
eould not hold, I believe, a position of the rank of any officer in the army. There were many
who did hold those offices, but they did it contrary to law, and every year a BiU of Indemnity
was passed to excuse them for having broken the law. What was there besides, with regard
to your fellow-countrymen, the Roman Catholics of the kingdom ? Not one of these was
permitted to sit in the House of Commons, although he was elected by any of the largest
constituencies of the kingdom. ('Shame!') But not only were these members of the Catholic
Church thus disqualified, but your great town itself, and the city of Manchester, and the town of
Leeds, and the town of Sheffield, and many of the g'reat towns, and aU the boroughs of the
metropolis of the kingdom, except the city of London, the borough of Southwark, and the city of
Westminster, were totally without parliamentary power. Where do you think all the members
of Parliament came from in those days ? I will teU yon where forty-four of them came from. I
have been lately, within the last month, spendiug some days in the county of CornwaU, a very
charming county, with beautiful coast scenery, with an industrious, a frugal, an inteUigent, and a
noble-minded population ; but the forty-four members who came to the House of Commons were
not returned by the population, but for the most part by what were called rotten boroughs. That
was the state of things that existed at the time of which I have spoken. You know that as
to municipal government there was scarcely any in England. Many boroughs had the form
of municipal government, but they had scarcely any of the substance. You know that the
cpiestion of popular education had never been taken up by the Government or Parliament of that
day, and that nothing had been done by the legislature to redeem the great mass of our popula
tion from an ignorance which was degrading to us, and kept us also below many of the civUised
nations of Europe. (Hear, hear.) At that time also, in our colonies, we had 800,000 negroes in
a state apparently of hopeless bondage, and at the same time, at home, we had monopolies that
reduced the working classes themselves to a condition of bondage. You had a monopoly iu corn.

PAST GRIEVANCES. 83
a monopoly in sugar, and a monopoly in many other things, which I need not particularise.
(Hear, hear.) . . . We must be one people — (hear, hear) — we must have but one law, and one
great measure of justice — (hear, hear) — and one great equality in Ireland. (Cheers.) And if you
intend to have this you must give uo more support to the Tory party now, when you have votes,
than you did by your voices when you had no votes. (Cheers.) If it had not been for that party
your fathers aud grandfathers woidd have had the vote which has been conceded to you. (Hear,
hear.) What would you think of the liberated negro in the Southern States coming forward
to vote for any member of the copper-head faction, who would have kept him in perpetual
bondage? (Hear, hear.) MetaphorieaUy, may I not say that your chains have but just drojjped
off P (Hear, hear.) They now lie at your feet ; the sound of their clinking has not left your
ears ; your limbs at this very moment are sore from their chafing ; and you are impudently
and audaciously asked to vote for the men and for the party who for hundreds of years have
riveted these chains upon you. (Loud and protracted cheering.) Years ago I appealed to you
from this place on behalf of the franchise, which I said you had a right to, and which must
shortly be conceded to you. I did not appeal in vain. I reminded you then of what your fathers
had done not thirty years before, when they shook the fabric of privilege to the very base. And
I appeal to you now. Ever since I have been permitted to speak in these open councils of
my countrymen I have pleaded for those political rights. (Cheers.) You have now to a large
extent obtained those rights. I plead to you once more, that you should regard those rights as a
sacred trust in the eyes of aU your countrymen, in the eyes of heaven itself, and that you should
use those rights as an instrument only of good ; that you should seriously weigh the claims of all
those who seek your suffrages, and that you should so vote that you may expect to influence the
Imperial Parliament and the legislation of your country, so that you may advance the happiness
of aU the people in aU its famUies and the grandeur, and security of this nation. (Loud cheers.)
... I have been permitted to see many sights in this hall, but never before one so
remarkable as that which I have just been permitted to look upon. I only wish I had power, or
had had power, adequately to discuss the question which has been before you, and to speak about
it so that you could have heard ten years ago. I recoUect referring to some gentlemen who were
then upon the platform, and I spoke of them as men who were white with age ; and I find myself
now, as you have noticed, as white as many of those of whom I then spoke ; and I am afraid that,
like some of them, I feel that after twenty -five or thirty years of pubUc labour, one might ask for
respite and for quiet, aud that one might hereafter look on as a spectator, and not join in the
fray as an actor; but when I come here and see such meetings as this— when I see how wonder-
fuUy your committee has worked, and how well the electors have seconded them, with a view of
baffling the most scandalous inventions that ever were devised for crippling or destroying
the power of the great constituencies ; when I see all this, I feel that I may perhaps be permitted
for a short time yet to speak with your voice in Parliament— (cheers)— and to assist in promoting
some of those great measure which cannot long be delayed now, when the political franchise has
been so widely extended." (Loud cheers.)
On the 3rd of November, 1868, Mr. Bright was presented with the
freedom of the city of Edinburgh. Mr. W. Chambers, the noted
publisher, who at that time filled the office of Lord Provost, occupied
the chair at the meeting.
" Now, more than thirty years ago," said Mr. Bright, " when I was very young indeed, in my
beginning to think about public affairs, in reading the pure writings of John Milton, I found a

84 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
passage which fixed itself in my mind. This passage time has never been able to take from my
memory. He says : ' Yet true eloquence I find to be none but the serious and hearty love of truth.'
And I have endeavoured, so far as I have had the opportunity of speaking in public, to abide by
that wise and weighty saying. So far as I am able to examine myself, during the thirty years that
I have been permitted to speak at meetings of my countrymen, I am not conscious that I have
ever used an argument which I did not believe to be sound, or have stated anything as a fact which
I did not believe to be true. I have endeavoured, further, always to abstain from speaking on
subjects which I had not examined and well considered; and perhaps it is because I have
endeavoured to attend to these rules that what I have said has met with some acceptance, and
perhaps in some quarters has been influential with the country. As to the title of statesman, I
may say here what I said many years ago in the House of Commons : that I have seen so much
intrigue and ambition, so much selfishness and inconsistency, iu the character of many so-called
statesmen, that I have always been rather anxious to disclaim the title. I have been content to
describe myself as a simple citizen, who honestly examines such public questions as affect the
public weal, and honestly offers his counsels to his countrymen. (Cheers.) .... I am one
of those who has never believed that there is anything very mysterious in the art or knowledge
of politics ; and that what we call statesmanship — honest statesmanship — is not an abstruse and
difficult branch of knowledge. Most of us, when we come to consider a public question, are able
to strip it of all the things which do not really belong to it and get at the pith and kernel of the
matter. I think that our intellects are so much on a par, and that as a whole we are so anxiously
and rightly, that on almost all occasions we may be able to come to an early and wise agreement
as to the course which the public should pursue. In the course of my political life there have
been several g'reat questions which have interested me, and on each of which I have been
astonished that I found myself at variance with so many of my countrymen, and I have not been
less delighted afterwards to find that, by-and-bye, we all seemed to agree ; but unfortunately the
agreement came occasionaUy too late, and when the misfortune, which had been perhaps foretold,
had already happened, and it was only after the misfortune that we were able to agree as to what
ought to bave been done."
On the 5th of November, 1868, Mr. Bright was made an honorary
member of the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, the chairman, Mr.
George Harrison presiding, and in the evening he addressed a meeting
of the working class. In the course of a lengthy speech, he made these
remarks : —
" Since I have taken a part in public affairs, the fact of the vast weight of poverty and
ignorance that exists at the bottom of the social scale has been a burden on my mind, and is so
now. I have always hoped that the policy which I have advocated, and whieh has been accepted in
principle, will tend gradually but greatly to relieve the pauperism and the suffering which we still
see amongst the working classes of society. (Hear, hear.) I have no notion of a country being
called prosperous and happy, or being in a satisfactory state, when such a condition of things exists.
(Hear, hear.) You may have an historical monarch, decked out in the dazzling splendour of
royalty ; you may have an ancient nobility, settled in grand mansions and on great estates ; you
may have an ecclesiastical hierarchy, hiding with its worldly pomp that religion whose first virtue
is humility ; but, notwithstanding all this, the whole fabric may be rotten and doomed ultimately
to fall, if the great mass of the people on whom it is supported is poor and suffering and
degraded. (Cheers.) Is there no remedy for this state of things ? If governments were just,

SOCIAL REFORM. 85
iyaxes were moderate and equitably imposed, if laud were free, if schools were as prominent
institutions in our landscapes and in our great towns as prisons and workhouses are, I suspect we
should find the people gradually gaining more self-respect ; that they would have much more hope
of improvement for themselves; and their families that they would rise above, in thousands of
cases, aU temptations to intemperance, aud that they would become generally — I say almost
universaUy — more virtuous and more like what the subjects of a free state ought to be. (Hear,
hear.) The solemn question as to the future condition of a considerable portion of the
labouring classes in this country cannot be neglected. It must be known and remedied. It is the
work upon which the new electoral body and the new ParUament will have to enter. It is a long
way from Belgrave Square to Bethnal Green. It is not pleasant to contrast the palatial mansions
of the rich with the dismal hovels of the poor — the profuse and costly luxuries of the wealthy
with the squalid and hopeless misery of some milUons of those who are below them. But I ask
you, as I ask myself a thousand times, is it not possible that this mass of poverty and suffering
may be reached and be raised, or taught to raise itself P What is there that man cannot do if he
tries ? Tlie otlier day he descended to the mysterious depths of the ocean, and with an iron hand
sought, and found, and grasped, and brought up to the surface the lost cable, and with it made
two worlds into one. I ask, are his conquests confined to the realms of science ? Is it not
possible that another hand, not of iron, but of Christian justice and kindness, may be let down
to moral depths even deeper than those the cable fathoms, to raise up from thence the sons and
daughters of misery and the multitude who are ready to perish ? (Cheers.) This is the great
problem which is now before us. It is one which is not for statesmen only, not for preachers of
the Gospel only — it is one which every man in the nation should attempt to solve. The nation is
now in power, and if wisdom abide with power, the generation to follow may behold the glorious
day of what we, in our time, with our best endeavours, can only hope to see the earliest dawn."
(Cheers.) A deputation of Birmingham gunmakers waited upon Mr. Bright on
the 10th of the same month with respect to the action of the Govern
ment in establishing gun manufactories at Enfield. The deputation ex
pressed the opinion that the work could be as adequately and safely
executed by private enterprise. Mr. Bright replied at some length, and
stated that ever since he had been in Parliament, when it was possible to
do anything, he had supported the views of Mr. Cobden, that the Govern
ment ought not to be allowed to manufacture for itself any articles which
could be obtained from private producers. Touching on the military ex
penditure, he said : —
" There live upon that £26,000,000 so vast a body of men— men looking for better wages, better
salaries, higher promotion, that they f omi necessarily a most powerful influence, acting constantly
upon the executive, and against the interest of the taxpayer. And I can assure you that the House
of Commons, hitherto, seems to be wholly incapable of contending with this power. In point of
fact, many of those who have seats in the House are interested in this expenditure ; and if you
wiU f oUow the manner in which this expenditure is determined on, and the estimates are proposed,
you will see how difficult it is for three members for Birmingham, or for thirty, to make much
difference in this matter. The heads of departments— the Horse Guards for the army, the

86 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Admiralty for the navy— bring forward certain proposals with regard to expenditure which are
laid before the Cabinet, but the public are never heard at the Horse Guards or at the Admiralty.
Men are there who are certainly heard— men whose heads are filled from morning to night with
the grandeur, the glory, and the extent of the services ; but most of them do not appear to have
any idea that it is of the slightest importance that money is spent or saved, for they do not seem
to know that a tax taken from the people is so much taken from their comforts. . . . The
Cabinet, as a whole, is disposed greatly to leave each particular department to the heads of that
department, and we all know that in the House of Commons, with its mob of generals, and
colonels, and admirals, and captains, and the friends of such, it is far more easy to work the
parliamentary machine by a lavish expenditure of money than it is to procure, or to promote, or to
insist upon, any due system of economy. They make things easy by what is caUed greasing the
wheels. . . . What is wanted is an entirely new system, and I will, in a few sentences, tell
you what that system ought to be. Li future the formation of the estimates should no longer
be left to be determined by the Admiralty, the War Office, or the Cabinet. There ought to be
an honestly-chosen committee of the House of Commons. The House pretends to hold the purse
of the nation — it does so, indeed, but its own hand is always in it. Surely, instead of having 650
gentlemen, who for the most part know nothing about the matter, to determine these claims, all
the estimates should be referred to a fairly-selected committee of the House of Commons, and
that committee ought to go into the consideration of the whole matter, to hear opinions, to take
evidence, and to make a report with regard to every important item in the estimates which it pre
sents to the House. For the first ten or twelve years after I entered the House of Commons, I
took great interest in the estimates. I sat very near Mr. Hume, and I did what I coidd to aid him
inhis efforts upon this subject; but I found out that it was all in vain. In fact, there is no
greater delusion imaginable than that any single member of Parliament can make any sensible
difference in the public expenditure."

CHAPTEE XLIV.
MR. BRIGHT A CABINET MINISTER.
The General Election of 1868-Mr. Gladstone Premier-Mr. Bright made a Cabinet Minister
—At Windsor— Mr. Gladstone's Bill for Disestablishing the Irish Church — The
Deceased Wife's Sister Bill— The Game Laws in Scotland— The Commercial Treaty with
France — A Free Breakfast Table — Illness of Mr. Bright — His Resignation from the
Cabinet -Comments of the Press— The Queen's Kindness— An Irish Land Bill— Presenta.
tion from Staffordshire to Mr. Bright— Recovery— ChanceUor of the Duchy of Laneaster-
At Bingley Hall.
HE dissolution of Parliament took place in November, and on
the llth of the same month the electors were summoned
to choose their representatives. The result was that the
Liberals gained a majority of 1 20 in the new Parliament. The
Ministers wisely decided, at a Cabinet meeting on the 1st of
December, to resign at once. On Mr. Gladstone devolved the task of
forming a new Administration. He offered a seat in the Cabinet to
Mr. Bright, who at first declined, but ultimately consented, after much
friendly, and at the same time, earnest discussion.
Mr. W. E. Gladstone, in his contribution to this work, states : —
" I remember that Mr. Bright told me the next day he had not slept a wink after it. It
lasted from two to three hours, during the whole of which we were at close quarters. We were,
however, completely united in spirit and aim, and were only debating the means. He sat in the
same chair and place as he had occupied some months before at a meeting of the principal
persons of the Liberal party, at whieh the resolution was taken to raise for good the question
of the Irish Church Establishment and to fight it through. I am not sure that he was not the
inventor of the word ' disestablish ' on that occasion."
Very few members of Parliament have more fairly earned the title
" honourable " than Mr. Bright. The records of Parliament present the
names of few statesmen to whom Englishmen are more distinctly in
debted for the practical extension of their freedom, and for the lasting
improvement of their Constitution ; or for whom, in a wider sense,
all men who value the principle of genuine freedom are bound to

88 LIFE AND THIES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
cherish and to express a more cordial gratitude. To many, however,
tbe plain "John Bright, the burly, unscrupulous apostle of the
people's welfare, was far more preferable than the title of Eight Hon.
John Bright." Still, his name was a source of strength to the Govern
ment, for it was a common saying amongst his admirers, " He knows
all that is going on, and if he is satisfied we are." Appearing before
his constituents for re-election on the 21st of December, 1868, Mr.
Bright informed them that —
" Mr. Gladstone, soon after he proceeded to the formation of his Administration, asked me to
join him in the Government. (Loud cheers.) I have reason to know that he made that
proposition with the cordial and gracious acquiescence of Her Majesty the Queen. (Loud and
prolonged cheering.) As you know, I had very strong reasons for refusing to change my seat
and place in the House of Commons. The arguments which were used to induce me to change
that opinion were arguments based entirely upon what was considered best for the interests of
the great Liberal party and for the public service. (Cheers.) And I was obUged to admit,
looking at them from that point of view, that they were not easily to be answered. On the
other hand, I had to offer arguments which were more of a private and personal nature, which
I also believed to be unanswerable. But when the private and the personal came to be weighed
against the apparent public reasons— (cheers)— then the private and the personal yielded to the
public reasons— (loud cheers)— and I surrendered my inelination, and I may say also my
judgment, to the opinions and to the judgment of my friends. (Cheers.) Mr. Gladstone told
me that he did not wish me to accept of any office that was inferior in importance or in
emolument to any office held by any one of his colleagues — (cheers) — and he proposed that I
should accept the position of Secretary of State for India. (Cheers.) Now, very many of
my friends have urged in past times that I should undertake that office — (cheers)— and not a
few have expressed regret that I have not accepted it. (Hear, hear.) In a sentence, therefore,
I think it right to explain why I took the course which led to my declining that important
post. You know that twelve years ago, just before I came here, I suffered from an entire
breakdown of my health, which cut me off from public labours for about two years. The
Indian department, I believe, is one of very heavy work, and I felt I was not justified in
accepting it, unless there were some great probability of some useful result which could not be
accomplished under any other chief of that office. (Hear, hear.) Now, my own opinion is that
the views I have expressed in times past — especially in the year 1858, when the Indian Govern
ment BiU was passing through Parliament — that those views are sound, and that the time will
come when it wiU be necessary to apply them to the government of India ; but I believe that
public opinion is not yet sufficiently advanced to allow us to adopt them ; and that, if I had taken
that office, I should have found myself unable to carry into execution the principles which I
believe to be sound with regard to Indian government. (Hear, hear. ) At the same time, I wiU
confess freely that it did not appear seemly for me — I think I should have felt that I was in my
wrong place, with the views which I have held from my youth upwards — if I had connected
myself distinctly with the direction of the great military department of the Indian Govern
ment. (Hear, and cheers.) Looking, therefore, at these points, I felt it my duty to decline the
proposition ; and I said, very distinctly, that if I am to accept auy seat in this Government, I
should prefer to take the office of President of the Board of Trade. (Cheers.) In that office,

IN OFFICE. 89
perhaps, I may do a little good, and perhaps I may prevent some harm. (Laughter and cheers.)
At least it will not, I hope, so burden me that I may be uuable to take some reasonable xiart in
the discussion of the great questions which must come very speedily before the House of
Commons. (Hear, hear.) Having said this much, then, I must ask you to consider that,
although I stand before you in a new character, yet I have not the smallest intention of getting
rid of my old one. (Cheers.) I hope the time has arrived iu this country — it has only recently
arrived — when a man may perhaps without difficulty act as an honest Minister of the Crown
and at the same time as an honest and devoted servant and counsellor of the people. (Cheers.)
. There is a charming story contained in a single verse of the Old Testament, which has
often struck me as oue of great beauty. Many of you will recollect that the Prophet, journeying
to-and-fro, was very hospitably entertained by what is termed in the Bible a Shunammite
woman. In return for her hospitality, he wished to make her some amends, and he called her to
him and asked her what there was that he should do for her. ' ShaU I speak for thee to the
king,' he said, ' or to the captain of the host ? ' Now, it has always appeared to me that the
Shunammite woman returned a natural answer. She replied, in declining the Prophet's offer, ' I
dweU among mine own people.' (Great applause.) When the question was put to me whether I
would step into the position in which I now find myself, the answer from my heart was the same
— I wish to dwell among my own people. (Great applause.) HappUy the time may have come
— I trust it has come — when in this country an honest man may enter the service of the Crown —
(great applause) — and at the same time not feel it in any degree necessary to dissociate himself
from his own people. (Great applause.) Some partial friends of mine have said that I have
earned aU this by my long services in the popular cause. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) They know
not what they say. (Laughter.) They would add labour to labour, and would compensate a life
of service by a doubled responsibility. I am sensible of the duty which is imposed upon me
as a Minister of the Crown. It is my duty faithfully to perform that which belongs to such a
position, but I have not less faithfully to act as becomes an honest representative of the people."
(Cheers*) Mr. Bright's colleagues in the Cabinet were — Lord Hatherley as
Lord ChanceUor ; Earl de Grey, Lord President of the Council ; Earl of
Kimberley, Lord Privy Seal ; Mr. Lowe, Chancellor of the Exchequer ;
Mr. Bruce, Home Secretary; Earl of Clarendon, Foreign Secretary;
Earl Granville, Colonial Secretary ; Mr. Cardwell, War Secretary ; Duke
of Argyle, Indian Secretary ; Lord Dufferin, Chancellor of the Duchy
of Lancaster; the Marquis of Harrington, Postmaster-General; Mr.
Childers, First Lord of the Admiralty ; Earl Spencer, Lord Lieutenant
of Ireland ; Mr. Chichester Fortescue, Chief Secretary of Ireland ; and
Mr. A. H. Layard, Woods and Forests.
When Mr. Bright went to Windsor to go through the ceremony
of taking the oath of office, her Majesty showed her delicate considera
tion for the great commoner in a very marked way. She requested Mr.
Helps, the clerk to the Privy Council, to assure Mr. Bright, if it was
more agreeable to his feelings to omit the ceremony of kneeling he was

90 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
quite at liberty to do so. Mr. Bright availed himself of this considerate
permission, and was very kindly and cordially received by her Majesty.
It was afterwards intimated to him that her Eoyal Highness the
Princess Eoyal of Prussia had expressed a desire that he should be
presented to her. She herself, she said, had read his speeches, and
she was very pleased to see him. Mr. Bright replied in graceful terms,
and said if her Eoyal Highness would permit him he would tell
her what the late Mr. Buchanan, the American Minister, when last
in London, said of her to him : " that wherever her Eoyal Highness went
she shed sunshine over all her path." Mr. Bright was very much struck
with the graceful, animated manners of her Eoyal Highness, and with
the genial greeting he had the honour to receive from her; and the young
ladies of the Court tell with curious interest of the meeting between
her Eoyal Highness and the great Quaker courtier. Mr. Bright became
as famous in royal circles as his illustrious predecessor, William Penn.
Mr. Gladstone, in supplementing our account of this interesting
interview, tells us that : —
" The rules of costume on such occasions have been suspended or modified since the death of
the Prince Consort. It was at court or levees that Mr. Bright availed himself of hor Majesty's
gracious permission, and appeared in a velvet dress with trousers. The acceptance of office was
at Windsor, in a small room in which business is transacted standing. I remember bemg struck
with the feeling that there was more loyalty, I will even say more reverence, expressed in
Mr. Bright's face than would have served many a, man to go through the knechng and the
kissing of hands."
Mr. Bright made his first official reply as President of the Board of
Trade on the 18th of February, 1869, and performed his duties very
naturally ; but it was certainly very strange to listen to him making
a dry departmental statement. Great was the curiosity on the part of
the members to witness how he executed the duties, and the impression
made was favourable.
The Board of Trade was no sinecure, for scarcely a night passed
without his having to answer a good many questions, and on all the open
nights the motions affecting the department were numerous. On the
5th of March, in reply to Lord Eustace Cecil respecting adulteration, he
gave it as his opinion that it would be vain to attempt by the power

LEGISLATION AND ADULTERATION. 91
of Parliament to penetrate into and track out evils such as these on
which Lord Eustace Cecil had dwelt at such length. It was quite
impossible to have the oversight of shops of the country by inspectors,
and to organise a body of persons to go into the shops to buy sugar,
.pickles, and cayenne pepper, to get them analysed, and then to raise com
plaints against shopkeepers, and bring them before the magistrates. If
men in their private business were to be tracked by Government officers
and inspectors every hour of the day, life would not be worth having,
and he would recommend them to remove to another country, where
they would not be subject to such annoyance. The question, too, as
Lord Cecil had put it, was one of great difficulty, because, if the Govern
ment proposed to legislate on the whole of that matter, he suspected that
it would be found that in the clauses of a bill, however carefully it
might be drawn, there would be points that would create so much
difference that it would be impossible to settle them. It was the case,
he knew, when his late colleague (Mr. Scholefield) brought forward his bill,
and it was found almost impossible to pass it through the House. If an
hon. member chose to inquire into the question before the Government
could touch it, and to suggest a measure which he might think would be
likely to give satisfaction, the Government would be perfectly ready
to examine it, and give it a fair consideration. He regarded these
subjects as about the most difficult, and at the same time about the
least advantageous, to which Parliament could devote itself. Most of the
bills of that kind which had been passed during the twenty-five years he
had been in Parliament had failed in their operation, and he suspected
that most of the attempts which would be made hereafter would be
equally unsuccessful.
Mr. Gladstone, on the 1st of March, 1869, introduced his bill for the
disestablishment and partial disendowment of the Irish Church in a very
eloquent speech. On the resumed debate, on the 19th of March, Mr.
Bright delivered a masterly speech : —
"The Catholic Church in Ireland is not discontented because it is not endowed." said Mr.
Bright. " It is discontented because another and a smaller Church-in numbers a comparatively
nsignificant Church— is established there, not by the power or consent of Irishmen, but by

92 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
the power and will of the Imperial Parliament ; and that to this very smaU and comparatively
insignificant Church has been handed over all the ecclesiastical revenues which belonged in
ancient times, and which now justly belong, to the whole of the Irish nation. But some hon.
gentlemen opposite have a great feeling for the congregations. So have I. I think the
congregations have a right to excite the sympathy of Parliament. But I have seen other
congregations, and how they emerged from their difficulties. In 1843 nearly 500 ministers
in Scotland, not waiting for an Act of Parliament to descend on them, walked out of their
manses. They left many charming residences, aud many nice churches. They quitted homes in
which they had spent many of the happiest years of their lives. They went out as a Church
absolutely naked. There was not a church left for them, nor a glebe house, nor a curtilage, nor
commutation ; and, I will be bound to say, not a single good wish, or ' God bless you,' from any
man on that side of the House. Do not — do not teU the House that your Irish Protestant
congregations are feebler and worse than the congregations of Scotland. What have they done
since in Scotland ? It is told in a sentence, though it would take weeks to survey it all. They
have built 900 churches, and not less than 650 manses for their ministers ; they have built 500
schools ; three theological coUeges ; and during the last three years — I have not the accounts
further back — they have raised, on an average, by the voluntary subscription of their members,
not less than £370,000 per annum ; and during the twenty-five years that have elapsed since
these 500 ministers walked out of the Established Church, their congregations have raised,
by voluntary contributions, a sum exceeding £8,000,000 sterling. The right hon. and learned
member for Dublin University had the courage to say, in the presence of many members of
nonconformist bodies, that ministers of voluntary churches were rather a low class — that they
were not so highly born as the very high-born clergy of the Establishment. As to being high-born,
I think the prophets of old were, many of them, graziers. The apostles were fishermen and
handicraftsmen ; and their religion was one to which ' not many mighty, not many noble b were
caUed. It may be that in this age aud in this country the light of the Reformation and the light
of Christianity may be carried through the land by men of humble bUth with just as much
success as may attend men who were born in great mansions or in palaces . . . It is too late
to-night to go into the question of the surplus. There is one tiling that I should say about it—
and I say it in the hearing of my hon. and learned friend (Sir RoundeU Palmer), who is under
stood to take a different view on this question from some on this side. John Wycliffe, as
the House knows, lived five hundred years ago ; he was born in the town of Richmond ; and he
was, perhaps, the first and greatest of the English Reformers. John Wycliffe was obliged
to consider this question as to what should be done with regard to religious endowments ; aud he
said, ' If Churches make bad use of their endowments, princes are bound to take them away from
them.' It is not too much for us to say that if endowments are found to be mischievous,
Parliament may put them to other uses. I sometimes wonder how it is that in five hundred
years we moke so little progress on some subjects. That was the opinion of Wycliffe in the
fourteenth century, and we are now discussing the same subject in this House ; and right hon.
and hon. and learned gentlemen get up in this House and denounce as almost sacrilege and
spoliation any attempt on the part of the Imperial Parliament to deal with the endowments of the
State Church in Ireland. And as to the uses to which these endowments are put, if I were
particidar on the point as to the sacred nature of the endowments, I should even then be satisfied
with the propositions in this bill— for, after all, I hope it is not far from Christianity to charity ;
and we know that the Divine Founder of our faith has left much more of the doings of a
compassionate and loving heart than He has of dogma. (Hear, hear.) I am not able to give the
chapter or the verse, the page or the column ; but what has always struck me most in reading
the narratives of the Gospel is, how much of kindness and how much of compassion there was,
and how much also there was of dealing kincUy with all that were sick, aU that were suffering.

THE LORDS AND IRISH DISESTABLISHMENT. 93
Do you think it wiU be a misappropriation of the surplus funds of this great Establishment to
apply them to some objects such as those described in the bill ? Do you not think that from the
charitable dealing with these matters even a sweeter incense may arise- than when these vast
funds are applied to maintain three times the number of clergy that there is any need for ?
(Hear, hear.) We can do little, it is true. We cannot relume the extinguished lamp of reason.
We cannot make the deaf to hear. We cannot make the dumb to speak. It is not given
to us ' From the thick film to purge the visual ray,
And on the sightless eyeballs pour the day ; '
but at least we can lessen the load of affliction, and we can make life more tolerable to vast
numbers who suffer. (Loud cheers.) Sir, when I look at this great measure — and I can assure
the House I have looked at it much more than the majority of hon. and right hon. members
opposite, because I have seen it grow from line to line, and from clause to clause, and have
watched its growth and its completion with a great and increasing interest — I say, when I look at
this measure I look on it as tending to a more true and solid union between Ireland and Great
Britain ; I see it giving tranquiUity to our people — (' Oh, oh ! ' from the Opposition, followed by
Ministerial cheers) — when you have a better remedy I at least will fairly consider it — (cheers) — I
say, I see this measure giving tranquillity to our people, greater strength to the realm, and adding
a new lustre and a new dignity to the Crown. (Hear, hear.) I dare claim for this bill
the support of aU thoughtful and good people within the bounds of the British Empire, and I
cannot doubt that in its early and great results it wiU have the blessing of the Supreme ; for
I beUeve it to be founded on those principles of justice and mercy which are the glorious
attributes of His eternal reign." (Loud cheers.)
The cheers when Mr. Bright sat down were most enthusiastic, and
repeated again and again from both sides of the House. All present
seemed to yield unreservedly to the influence of the orator, as in softened
accents, and with the great tenderness of a strong man, he touched,
amidst the most hushed silence, the softer passions and emotions. The
peroration swept on, gathering grandeur, and culminating in a magnificent
invocation to the Divine Euler. The second reading of the bill was
carried by a majority of 118, and the third reading by 114. In the
committee in the House of Lords numerous changes were made in the
biU. Some of the amendments were accepted by the Government and
the House of Commons, and others rejected. The bill was accordingly
sent back to the House of Lords on the evening of the 20th of July, and
after undergoing some slight alterations, passed into law.
Before the bill was disposed of by the House of Lords, Mr. Bright
gave the members of the Upper Chamber a warning, in a letter addressed
to the Secretary of the Birmingham Liberal Association. This letter
caused considerable excitement among the Peers.

94 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
" I must ask my friends to excuse me if I am unable to accept their invitation for the meeting
on Monday next,'" wrote Mr. Bright. " The Lords are not very wise, but there is sometimes
profit to the people even in their innovations. If they should delay the passing of the Irish Church
Bill for three mouths, they will stimulate discussion on important questions, which, but for their
infatuation, might have slumbered for many years. It is possible that a good many people may
ask what is the special value of a constitution which gives a majority of 100 in one House for a
given policy, and a majority of 100 in another House against it. I may be asked also why the
Crown, through its Ministers in the House of Commons, should be found in harmony with the
nation, whUe the Lords are generaUy in direct opposition to it. Instead of doing a little chUdish
tinkering about life peerages, it would be weU if the Peers could bring themselves on a line with
the opinions and necessities of our day. In harmony with the nation, they may go ou for a long
time ; but throwing themselves athwart its course, they may meet with accidents not pleasant for
them to think of. But there are not a few good and wise men among the Peers, and we will hope
their counsels may prevail."
Lord Cairns, in the House of Lords, complained of this letter, by
saying : —
" There is, in the first place, the statement that the Lords are generally in direct opposition to
the will of the nation. There is, in the second place, the statement — obliquely, if uot directly,
made — that if the Irish Church Bill be rejected, a fair question will be raised whether the House
of Peers should continue as a part of the Constitution. There is, in the third place, the statement
that the rejection of the Irish Church Billmight very possibly lead tothe overthrow of the House
of Lords — described by the euphemistic expression of their possibly ' meeting with accidents not
pleasant for them to think of ;' and there is, in the fourth place, the statement — which, perhaps,
involves a proposition more remarkable than any I have stated — that if by any means this biU were
rejected, there would arise a tumult of the people. Now, my Lords, I do not comment upou these
propositions. I might, indeed, be permitted to express the opinion whether the direct conse
quences of statements of this kind, made in this way, may not be somewhat different to that which
the writer of the letter might desire ; and whether some of the members of your Lordships' House,
in consequence of a letter of this kind, might not even be driven to record a vote which other
wise you would not have recorded against the bill of which I have been speaking."
Earl Granville, in replying, informed their Lordships that he had as
certained that the letter which had been read in ecetenso had been written
by Mr. Bright ; but, whUe admitting the correctness of that letter, he
must guard himself against being bound to admit the correctness of the
paraphrase which the learned lord afterwards gave to it. He knew, as a
fact, that none of Mr. Bright's coUeagues knew anything of that letter
until they had the opportunity of reading the expressions contained in it
on the day on which it appeared in the public papers.
" With regard to Mr. Bright," further stated Earl Granville, " I read in the newspapers quite
recently a report of a conversation of Mr. Sumner's. In that conversation Mr. Sumner, com-
plaining of Mr. Bright, said that, ' notwithstanding the grandeur of character of Mr. Bright, there
was a " John BuUism " iu him which would break out.' He added that ' this was a quality which

THE DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER BILL.

95

was not sufficient in Mr. Cobden to do any harm.' Now I venture to say that, although I am not
inclined ta agree generally with Mr. Sumner's opinions, lam very much inclined to agree with the
opinion which he then laid down. I believe he described the character, which, united with -roat
abdity, has given Mr. Bright a great hold upon pubUc opinion ; aud I also believe that Mr Bright
has an amount of ' John BuUism ' which your Lordships, perhaps, may not have recognised, aud
which, I daresay, the right hon. gentleman himself is not aware of. I cannot help thinking it
possible that, influenced at the time by the somewhat rash, combative feeling which John Bull is
supposed to possess. Mi-. Bright-exaggerating, I admit, the latitude which exists even with
regard to a letter to a constituency from a person who, besides being a member of Parliament is
a Minister of the Crown-may have felt some little desire, having been so constantly attacked in a
place where he coidd not defend himself, at last, like a real John BuU, to hit out in return. (' Oh.
oh ! ') There is another quality which I think may be attributed to his ' John BuUism '-which is'
a frank explanation of anything which he may have done ; and I am now giving Mr. Bright's own
interpretation of the letter, which he has authorised me to make. Mr. Bright has authorised me
to say that when he wrote that letter he was not acting under any feeling of indignation at any act
of your Lordships as a whole, but that he did feel very much moved by the account he had heard
of the proceedings and speeches at a certain meeting in St, James's Square, which has now become
a matter of history."
Mr. T. Chambers on the 21st of April introduced a bill into the House
of Commons in favour of abolishing the restriction upon marriage with a
deceased wife's sister. In thirty-three divisions of the House, in the pre
vious years, the existing law had been condemned ; five times the members
had virtually sanctioned the measure to remove the restriction ; and four
times the House of Commons had sent up to the House of Lords
a bdl with that object, which was thrown out. Mr. Bright, during the
many times such a measure had been introduced since he had been a
member, had never spoken on the question, although he had on several
occasions voted in favour of the bill, and this was the first time he broke
silence. " I recollect many years ago," said Mr. Bright, " when the bill for the admission of the Jews
to this House was before Parliament, that an eminent member of the party opposite, on one
occasion, asked me why I had not addressed the House on that question, and I gave him this
answer : I said that I had never yet heard an argument against the admission of the Jews which
required an answer, and therefore that I should find myself in great difficulty if I attempted to
meet the sentiment of hon. gentlemen who opposed that bid ; because, as we all now shall admit,
looking back to that question, there was no valid argument against the admission of the Jews to
ParUament, but there was a very strong and honest sentiment in the minds of many members,
although it was a sentiment which it was utterly impossible for us to meet by any argument. I
must say the member to whom I refer admitted frankly that it was more a question of sentiment
than of argument. I have felt exactly the same as to the question before the House. It is that
difficulty which has prevented me in times past, on many occasions when the bill has been before
the House, from taking any part in the discussion ; but, at this time, I feel an accumulated sense

96 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
of the great injustice which the present state of the law creates, and also of the greater proba
bility that the law may be altered ; and knowing as I do grievous and fearful cases of injury and
suffering under the present law, I came forward at last. I am not content further to give a silent
vote, but I feel compelled to say what I think may influence some persons to bring this question
now to a final and just settlement. Sir, I shall not foUow the ecclesiastical speeches of the hon.
member for Cambridge University (Mr. Beresford Hope) and the hon. and gallant member for the
county of Longford (Mr. O'Reilly). Those speeches may be said to have been almost purely
ecclesiastical, and I think the less we have of the ecclesiastical in this House the better. I
recollect that a very distinguished relation of my hon. and learned friend the Solicitor-General in
one of his poems speaks of — ' Warriors, lords, and priests,
All these sore ills that vex aud desolate our mortal life.'
Little sympathy as I have with warriors and lords as devastators and rulers of mankind, I am not
sure that the mischiefs which they have inflicted upon our race have been greater than those we
have suffered from the domination and tyranny of priests. . . . There has been mention of
religious societies, and the evidence has been given of men most eminent in the Christian religion
and representing almost all the churches into which the professors of that religion are divided.
The hon. and learned member for Marylebone (Mr. T. Chambers) referred to the very small society
of which I am a member. Now, I shaU say nothing of the women of that society which I beUeve
any other man who knows anything of their character would not say ; and I say there are uo women
in the world to be found of purer character or more stainless Uves. And yet I undertake to say
— and I undertake to say it without fear of contradiction — in that society these marriages are not
in any way reproved or condemned ; and when they do take place, which in so small a body is not
often, the discipline of the society is not brought into action against the parties who have contracted
them. ... I have heard this question discussed many times in the society of women,
women of cultivated minds and admirable in their lives, and I must say I never heard any of those
fearful things foretold which we sometimes hear foretold from that side of the House, aud which
we may hear possibly from this side. It is proved that in every Christian country of the world
but this, under certain conditions, and under certain difficulties not insurmountable, these
marriages are permitted, and may be contracted. It is notorious that in many countries the
freedom is perfect ; but no man has ever had any proof from those countries that the social incon
veniences which we are now threatened with as a consequence of the passing of the bill, have been
there experienced, or that there is any disposition on account of them to change the law and
revert to the custom which prevails with so much social inconvenience in this country. . . . But
I trust the House will follow what I believe is the general sentiment of the nation — not that you
should encourage by law these marriages, or any particular marriages, but, where there is no
fundamental objection on which to base your legislation, that you should leave men and women to
their natural freedom in this great matter. I have always thought that the matter referred to by
two or three speakers — that of the interests of the children — is of immense importance in dealing
with the question. Apart from the consideration of the freedom of the man and woman who pro
pose to marry, this matter is of the greatest importance to the motherless children who are left ;
and it is notorious beyond dispute, that there have been numberless cases — and these might
have been multipled more if this law had not existed — where a dying mother had hoped that her
sister might become, in a nearer sense than as their aunt, the protector and friend of the children
whom she was about to leave behind her."
The second reading of the bill was carried by a majority of 99, but
was again thrown out by the Lords.

THE GAME LAWS IN SCOTLAND. 97
The old grievance — the Game Laws of Scotland — was brought before
the House of Commons again by Mr. Loch, on the 27th of April, who
reminded the members that there were not less than three Game Bills in
troduced to their notice, but, on account of delays, it was hopeless to
attempt to pass any one of them that session ; therefore he wished that a
select committee should be appointed to inquire into the subject, with a
view to obtain the best information accessible upon the question, to guide
them in legislating upon it the year following. Mr. Bright avowed that
he held the same opinion he entertained twenty-two years previously, and
held it more firmly than ever : that the practice of preserving game, as it
existed in this country, was one wholly opposed to the true interests of
the people; that it demoralised the labouring classes to a great extent;
that it caused a vast destruction of what otherwise would be human food;
and made the occupation of a tenant-farmer much more precarious, and
much less profitable, than it would otherwise be. And, what was worse
than all that, it degraded the tenant-farmer by the position he occupied
under these laws, watched, annoyed, and irritated by the law, and by the
gamekeepers whom the owner employed. The farmer was degraded
under the system, and could not have that self-respect which a person in
his position ought to have. In a populous country like this, where they
had a vast population with almost no property, it was a monstrous and
incredible evil that there should thus be placed in their way temp
tations like these to lead them into breaking the law, and into all the con
sequences that must necessarily follow. The select committee to inquire
into the operation of these obnoxious laws was granted without a division.
The state of Ireland was brought before the notice of the members of
the House of Commons by Mr. Graves, on the 30th of April, who main
tained that there was a lawlessness, an insecurity, and a sedition extending
itself throughout the country, unchecked, or apparently unchecked, which
if allowed to go on unrestrained might possibly lead to consequences of
a very disastrous character. Mr. Bright reminded the members that from
the first moment when he felt called upon to speak on the Irish question,
either in or out of Parliament, he described the maladies of Ireland in the
same language, and called on Parliament to apply the same remedies
56

98

LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.

He did not pretend to say that any particular landlord, or any particular
number of landlords, were responsible for the miseries of Ireland ; but he
had said before, and he said it now, that there could be no peace in that
country, and no settlement in that country, until the population, by some
means or other— he was prepared to propose means, and he believed it
could be done without injustice to any man— were put in possession, in
greater numbers than they were now, of the soil of their own country.
He repeated that if Ireland were unmoored from her fastenings in the
deep, and floated 2,000 miles to the westward, those things which they
proposed to do, which they offered to the House in that session, and which
in all probability might be offered to the House in the next session, would
have been done by the people of Ireland themselves, and that if they had
become a State of the American Eepubhc, under the constitution of that
country, those things would have been done.
" Now, sir, " further remarked Mr. Bright, " with regard to the real question of this evening,
from which, perhaps, I ought not to have departed— I say, there is no case for panic, but there is
a case for deep thought ; and I think there is a case that should induce every man on both sides
of the House to consider whether it be possible in the course of the coming session of Parliament
to apply a remedy to this great grievance of the land. No man is fit to make laws, no man can
deUberate upou them with any advantage, if he is not capable of observing the breadth and
greatness of the evil, and that it requires both patience and wisdom in the application of the
remedy. Tou cannot by instantaneous votes of Parliament, or the edicts of a monarch, remove
the great evils that have grown up during the centuries of error and of wrong. I make no pre
tence whatever, in sitting upon these Benches, or as a member of this Government, to be able by
my uplifted finger to tell the Irishmen that their miseries shall cease. But I say that the time
has come when Acts of constant repression in Ireland are unjust and evil, and that no more Acts
of repression should ever pass this House unless attended with Acts of a remedial and consoUng
nature. I would not for a moment sit on these Benches as a member of this Government, and
agree to any of those measures which are hinted at by gentlemen opposite, if I did not feel
that at the same time we are honestly and energeticaUy offering to Parliament propositions
which we believe wiU, in time, effect a great and salutary change in Ireland. At this moment it
may be said, and I doubt not that it is true, that what we are doing with regard to the Church —
and that the House is consenting to by so large a majority — may not affect this question of agra
rian outrage. No man, I believe, ever thought it would. The men who are concerned in these
outrages are men to whom probably any appeal made from me would he useless. But I do believe
that what Parliament is now engaged iu doing, and thatto whichParliament looks forward, wiU affect
the opinions of vast numbers of the Irish people, and will withdraw their sympathy from the few
who approve and the stUl fewer who commit, the crimes which we all lament. If my voice could
reach to any man in any Ribbon lodge, in any secret committee, in any dread tribunal of this
fearful and hidden vengeance, I would tell him that no man at this moment is a greater enemy to
his country than he is. For once — for the only time in the history of the union between Great
Britain and Ireland — there is a great Parliament which is willing to do justice to Ireland."

THE FRENCH COMMERCIAL TREATY.

99

Mr. Staveley HiU, on the 18th of June, endeavoured to persuade the
members of the House of Commons to appoint a select committee to
inquire into the report upon the operation of the commercial treaty with
France, and particularly as it affected the silk manufacture of England.
" No doubt the inquiry Mr. Hill asks for," said Mr. Bright, " would produce some facts
certainly some arguments, which would be curious in their way ; but no man in this country who
knows anything of trade can doubt for a moment that the -French Treaty has been of great
advantage to this country. (Hear.) I will say, if you like, of uo smaller advantage, perhaps of
greater advantage, to France ; that it has been one of the most beneficent measures the House of
Commons has accepted for many years I am perfectly convinced, and that is the opinion of the
majority of educated men in the country. (Hear, hear.) Now, it may be stated, in the first
place, that the trade between the United Kingdom and France has been more than doubled by
the operation or since the passing of that treaty. The annual imports into this country from
France seven years before the treaty were from twelve millions to thirteen miUions sterling ; and
for the seven years since — from 1861 to 1867 — they were about twenty-seven and a-half millions.
The exports show an increase from £10,000,000 to £23,000,000— so that the increase is con
siderably more than double. The honourable and learned member may say these exports do
not represent manufactures only ; and he would be quite right, because cotton, for instance,
comes from the United States to Liverpool, and, being purchased by French spinners, is
re-shipped to France. But the annual average for the seven years before the treaty of actual
EngUsh manufactures was about £5,000,000, and of the seven years since at least £10,000,000 ;
therefore, whether we look at the whole of the exports and imports, or those purely the produce
of the United Kingdom, we find a large and very satisfactory increase. Iu silks, the goods
which come here from France amounted to four-and-a-half miUions per annum in the seven years
before the treaty, and in the seven years since to seven-and-three-quarter millions, showing a
large increase, and fulfiUing the expectations and desires of the people of England. If there
had not been a large increase, the treaty would be as waste paper, and we should have been
disappointed. But let me show the House something respecting a point the honourable and
learned member did not refer to, and that is : that although the French have sent here au
increase of rather more than £3,000,000 per annum of silk manufactures since the establishment
of the treaty, during the same time they have exported to the United States nearly £3,000,000
less than they did before ; that from 1854 to 1860, the seven years before the treaty, the French
exports to the States were £4,100,000, and that during the seven years since, the annual exports
to America were £1,400,000, showing an actual decrease of £2,700,000, which goes a long way to
balance the extra trade they have done with us, amounting to £3,200,000. I think there has not
been any increase at all of silk manufactures exported from France, for I find that from 1854 to
1860 the total exports from France were rather more than they were during the seven years
since the treaty— that is, they were £16,500,000 in the former seven years, and £15,968,000 in
the latter, showing a decrease of more than half a miUion. This proves that there has been no
great increase of the silk trade in France, and we are led to the conclusion that there has been
some great influence at work in France as well as in England to produce great disaster to the
French trade, and that both countries would have suffered from these influences if the French
treaty had never been imagined. (Hear, hear.) The honourable and learned member does not
use much raw material in his profession, but if he was a manufacturer of cotton he would know
that during the last eight years the diminished supply of cotton has brought ruin to the trade
of Lancashire, and that hardly anything which has befallen the silk trade can be said to be as

100 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
disheartening as what bef el the cotton trade during those eight years as simply the residt of the
high price of the raw material. The honourable and learned member's colleague (Mr. Eaton)
knows perfectly well that in 1867 the price of raw silk was just double what it was in 1855 ; and
when an article of that costly nature, even at the cheapest, is doubled in price, only conceive
the loss ; why, there must be almost nothing left for wages and profit ; and thus we can readily
sec what a great effect the high price of the raw material has upon the trade."
The House divided on tbe subject, and the committee was refused by
a majority of 54.
The Corporation of Trinity House entertained the Prince of Wales
and other members of the Eoyal family, her Majesty's Ministers, and
many other persons of distinction, at dinner, in their hall on Tower HiU,
London, on the 3rd of July. The Prince, in the absence of the Duke
of Edinburgh, the Master of the Corporation, presided on the occasion,
and was supported right and left by Prince Arthur, Prince Christian,
the Prince of Teck, and Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, Mr. Gladstone,
Mr. Bruce, Mr. Lowe, Mr. Bright, Mr. CardweU, the Lord Chief -Justice
Cockburn, Mr. Disraeli, Sir John Pakington, and several other members
of Parliament. During the evening, Lord Taunton proposed " The
Maritime and Commercial Interests of the Country, and the Health
of the President of the Board of Trade." (Cheers.) Mr. Bright,
during his speech, remarked : —
" I have sometimes imagined what a scene would be presented if any man could from a
height survey all the land and waters of the globe. He woidd see men in every land preparing
something to find its way to this country. And if he could look over the waters he would see
ships driven either by the winds, or, what is more potent, by steam, bringing from thousands of
sources the produce of the industry of man in every country of the world to the shores of this
country, to supply the necessities, comforts, and luxuries of the various classes of our people.
. . . For myself, I never could comprehend why such great navies should be kept up. I
would forego all the luxuries of Ufe rather than be tempted to obtain them by crossing the sea.
Such are the perils of the deep that I confess I never hear the wind howling, or see the storm
raging, or the clouds drifting, but I think of my countrymen on stormy seas. Therefore, I have
a strong sympathy with the lifeboat system, and no less sympathy with the great and benign
objects of this Corporation. (Hear.) I hope it may so come up with the requirement of the
times, and keep up with them, that it will never require to be either disendowed or disestablished.
(Laughter.) The subject to which I have referred leads me to hope that the industry of om
country may be sustained, that its commerce may be more and more widely diffused, that with an
economical Government— it is long since we had one— (laughter)— that with an economical
Government, and the efforts that I trust will before long be made to support a general and
universal education among our people, they may grow in all that is good, and that our country,
great and glorious as she is, is destined for long generations and centuries to hold her place
among- the nations." (Cheers.)

THE IRISH QUESTION. 101
Mr. Bright again addressed his constituents in the Town Hall,
Birmingham, on the llth of January, 1870. The Mayor presided.
Mr. Bright, in a broad and masterly speech, proved that he had
lost nothing of his old power, and abated nothing from his ancient
demands. " The question of imperial importance is that of the Irish Church," said he. " The constitu
encies of the country spoke with a voice which everybody could hear, and, which is not always the
case, with a loud voice which everybody could understand— (hear, and applause)— and a measure
was introduced into Parliament, which, I believe, has been admitted by the most able of its
opponents to be one of the most complete measures which ever was presented to the House of
Commons. After many nights' debate in both Houses, the measure became law and the work was
done; but you wiU recoUect that some time in the month, I think, of July there was at one time
some difficulty in what is called ' another place.' (Laughter.) It is not the place to which my
hon. friends and I go when we go up to London. (Laughter aud cheers.) StiU, it is a place
of great antiquity — (laughter) — and of great dignity, and great influence in this coimtry.
(Cheers.) But on a given night — as the date is not material — the atmosphere in that place
became charged with— what shaU I say? — dangerous matter. (Great laughter.) There was more
passion than is generaUy seen in that serene assembly. And the passion went so far as to bring
those who occupy the benches in that place to the very edge of a very ugly precipice. (Hear.)
Fortunately there was time for passion to cool, and for the wisest to reflect, and the night after,
or the night but one, instead of this passion and this violent opposition to the measure of the
Government, we found mutual compliments — (laughter) — and mutual congratulations, and an
almost universal exultation as this great measure passed the House of Lords. (Cheers.) The
peers of the United Kingdom on that night taught, it may be, some other people a lesson by
showing that they themselves had learnt it. What was it ? That no institution, however digni
fied, however grand by its historic character, can be safe in this country if it permanently sets
itself against the conviction and the voice of a united people. (Cheers.) It was a great piece of
wisdom which was shown by the House of Peers. We must understand that they are not as we
are on a question of this nature. Consider all that they have been taught, and all that they have
honestly believed, and aU that they have feared, and then regard the conduct of that House in
passing this measure, and on the whole I think the friends of the House of Lords, at least, will
have something to congratulate themselves upon. (Cheers.) But there are people who say this
great biU was a failure, and that it has really done nothing. The fact is, that it has done exactly
what it was intended to do. It has put aU the churches of Ireland on exactly the same footing
before the law. There is no longer a Catholic grievance in Ireland ; there may be Irish grievances
— old grievances, if you Uke — a whole crop of them ; but there is no Catholic grievance. The
Catholic stands now exactly before the law in regard to all questions of this nature— aud in regard
indeed, I think, to all questions— exactly where the Protestant stands, aud therefore we have
swept away, at once and for ever — (cheers) — everything tbat could fairly stand np and say that it
was a CathoUc grievance. But there may be, and there seems to be, a general opinion that there
is another grievance— an Irish grievance, but not a Catholic grievance— a grievance which affects
the North the same as the South, a cry from the whole of Ireland that Government and Parliament
should do something to place the social condition of that country in a more satisfactory state than
it has hitherto been. Now, this land question is a very awkward question. (Hear, hear.) I have
often travelled along the road and seen a hiU a mUe off that looked very steep, and I wished that
I was on the other side of it— (laughter)— but, on coming to the foot of the hiU, the slope

102 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
appeared much more gradual, and I got over it without that difficulty I had anticipated. Now,
the Irish land question is not at all that sort of a question. (Laughter.) It has looked to me a
very difficult question for the last twenty years, for during the whole of that time I have had it
before me, and I have considered it, and yet II am, I will say, if you like, modest enough to
confess that when I get nearer the question, and endeavour to discover how it is to be dealt with,
it appears to me steeper and more difficult than it ever did before. (Laughter.) What are the
circumstances of Ireland, as they may be stated in a sentence or two ? The land of that great
island is in the hands, as you know, of very few proprietors. (' Shame ! ') I suppose half the
actual population of Ireland are cultivators of the soil, and they are not only cultivators of the
soil, but unfortunately they are what arc caUed tenants at will. The owners for generations past,
by their own admission, with sundry exceptions which need not be mentioned, but speaking
generally. I say, the owners have done nothing for the cultivation of the soil. (' Shame ! ') They
have let the land at a given rent, and twice a year at least they have received the rent, and that
has been the chief part of the duty which the landowners have performed as regards their lands
On the other hand, the tenants have done very little compared with what might have been done,
but quite as much as could be expected from people who had no security for anything they might
do. This, the industry, tho fortune, the home, the life itself of the cultivating population has
been at the mercy of the owner of the land, and of his agent, who has had the management of
his property. (Cheers.) Now, in Ireland, as I dare say most of you know, the land is not only a
g'reat industry, but, with some exceptions in the North of Ireland, it is almost the only industry
in the country, and there has been an excessive competition for it, and the struggle for life and
the means of living, which has placed the occupier almost entirely at the mercy of the
proprietors of the soil. And thus have grown up suspicion and hatred and wrong, and a social
war in some parts of the bitterest and most painful character. But at last Parliament is caUed
in, not merely to give any kind of right or justice to the tenants themselves, but to save, it may
be, the interests of the property and the proprietors of the soil. (Hear, hear.) I do not know
myself whether, if I were an Irishman, I should be more anxious for legislation as a tenant than
I should be for legislation as a landlord. I think it absolutely necessary for both of them ; and,
more, I think it absolutely necessary for the United Kingdom — (cheers) — that we should, if
possible, put an end to the reign of discord in Ireland, and take away from us the disgrace of
maintaining order there by an armed force of police and military, I suppose, seldom falling
lower than thirty thousand men. (Cheers.) I consider this Irish land question to be one of the
greatest and most difficult that ever was considered by an Administration, and that ever was
submitted to a Parliament. (Hear, hear.) My views upon it have been explained in this hall
in past times, and it wiU not be necessary, nor woidd it be right, for me to go into details with
regard to it, when probably before the end of next month, whatever proposition the Government
will submit to the House of Commons will be fully and fairly explained to all the people of the
three kingdoms. (Applause. ) But if I might say so to people who are about to criticise very
much everything that a Government does, I don't ask them to approve beforehand, I ask theni
merely to give to the propositions, whatsoever they may be, that same solemn and conscientious
consideration which I believe these propositions have received from the members of the Govern
ment. (Cheers.) This is not a question for party. (Hear, hear.) I have no objection to as
much party as you like when the time is fitting for it, but in the present condition of Ireland I
should say that a party fight was an unpatriotic fight, (Hear, hear.) I say, it is not a question
for class or party contest. It is a question for conscientious patriotism— (cheers)— and every
man should consider it as if the prosperity and the peace of the United Empire depended upon
its wise solution. (Renewed cheers.) I have often blamed ou this Irish question, here aud
elsewhere, I have blamed the leaders of parties in the House of Commons. Three years ago
—four years ago nearly, when the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, in 1866— (hear, hear)— I

JUSTICE TO IRELAND. 103
blamed Mr. Gladstone, then the leader in the ministry of Lord RusseU, and I blamed Mr
Disraeli, the leader of the Opposition, because they did not in some manner or other bring before
the House propositions that would settle what is understood to be the Irish question (Hear )
But I knew that it could not then be dealt with fairly by an unreformed Parliament. (Hear ) I
laboured, as you know, much for Reform-Cheers) -for I had great faith in a wider franchise
and free representation. (Cheers.) The Irish question to me was one of so complicated and
gigantic a character that it never could be dealt with by a class. It seemed to me to demand the
wiU, the sense of justice, and the power which dwelt only in a nation for properly disposing of
it. (Cheers.) But now sometimes, when to a large extent the nation is called on, when every
householder in every borough has a vote for his representative in Parliament, I feel I may be-I
am-very sanguine that great results are to foUow from our legislation in regard to this great
question. (Cheers.) The Imperial Parliament can do just as much in the way of legislating for
Ireland, with its hundred Irish members, as an independent Irish Monarchy or an independent
Irish Republic woidd do-(< No, no ')-or as could be done for Ireland if that country was one of
the States of the great Confederation of the West. (Hear, hear.) Some gentleman appears to
doubt that. I am not saying that it is done, or that I will do it. I only say what the Imperial
ParUament, with one hundred honest representatives for Ireland, could do. (Loud applause.)
What have we done ? In conjunction with her representatives, we have already given to Ireland
free churches and free schools— (loud cheers)— and I hope before long we shaU give to Irishmen
free land and a free vote. (Loud and prolonged applause.) Ireland lies adjacent to the most
populous and wealthy island of the world. We can buy from her all she wishes to sell, and at a
higher price than any other nation can give ; and we can seU her all she wishes to buy at a lower
price than any other nation wiU take. (Hear.) We propose— we may fail, but I hope not ; good
efforts in regard to legislation, honest efforts, very often succeed— we propose a new conquest of
Leland, without confiscation, and without blood— (hear, hear, and applause)— with only that holy
weapon, a frank and generous justice — (cheers) — which is everywhere potent to bring together
nations which have been long separated by oppression and by neglect. (Loud cheers.) Now, from
this new policy we hope for great changes in Ireland. Not that Ireland is to be made a
paradise, but that Ireland should be greatly improved. (Applause.) It may be, possibly it is,
or will seem like, the language of great exaggeration if I quote the lines of Pope, in one of the
most exquisite poems in our language : —
' Then crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail ;
Returning Justice lift aloft her scale ;
Peace o'er the world her olive-wand extend ;
And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend.'
(Loud cheers.) This may appear the language of great exaggeration; but if we are able to
suppress conspiracy ; if we can abolish agrarian crime ; if we can unbar prison doors — (cheers) —
if we can reduce aU excess of military force ; if we can make Ireland as tranquil as England and
Scotland now are — (cheers) — then at least I think we may have done something to justify the
wisdom and the statesmanship of our time. (Loud cheers.) But there are other questions, and
two of them I wiU touch as briefly as I can. ... I have said over and over again, hundreds
of times in private, and many times in public, that I thought three years would not pass, after
the election of a household-suffrage Parliament, without our having a great and general measure
of national education. (Cheers.) With regard to my particular views upon it, they were stated
rather at length in a meeting that I addressed just prerious to the general election. (Hear.) One
thing that is most gratifying now is this : that there seems a general tendency to some arrange
ment, which, perhaps, no party will consider unsatisfactory. (Cheers.) We are agreed upon
this. Whether speakers or writers belong to one section or the otlier, aU are agreed upon this :

104 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
that there must be some means of instruction for all offered to all the children of the people.
(' No compulsion,' and a laugh.) We are unanimous upon that. We are not unanimous upon the
manner, but the discussion which is going on, in my opinion, is producing that kind of unanimity
out of which it is possible to carry a measure. (Hear, hear.) Whether the schools shaU be free,
or whether there shall be any payment ; whether there shall be any compulsion, and, if so, whether
it shall be of this kind or that — these are points which are being sifted throughout the public dis
cussion which is going on ; and, of course, nobody leams more from public discussion than a
member of her Majesty's Government. (Applause and laughter.) . . There are certain
things which ParUament and Government can do for a people, and there are other things which
no Government which ever existed or ever will exist can do. (Hear.) You have now got votes,
and votes are power. (Cheers.) I hope, judging from the proceedings of the committee of last
session, and judging from the temper of ParUament, that before there is a general election not
you only but voters in every part of the United Kingdom wiU have the shelter of the baUot.
(Loud cheers.) Tou will have it, but whether it be this session or whether it be next it is not in
my power to teU. Mr. Radford said that even with the great measures they had before them the
Government could do two or three other things ; but bear in mind that it is not easy driving six
omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar — (loud laughter) — and therefore I cannot tell whether
during this session there will be passed by Parliament a measure of education such as you, or I,
or any of us, would hope for ; but that it wiU come soon is certain and inevitable. (Hear, hear,
and cheers.) That is worth your keeping your eyes upou. Then there is the question of
diminished national expenditure. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) Tou know that last year there was
a considerable reduction of expenditure. (Cheers, and a voice : ' A. free breakfast table.') We
all live in hope that there may a reduction this year, and if you will keep your eyes upon it, and
tell your members, and Parliament, and the Government what you think upon it, it is quite within
the bounds of possibility that you may have a gradual reduction for several years. (Cheers.)
Governments cannot strike off mUlions in a year, because you know, however wasteful may
have been the proceedings of past Governments, that it would create great inconvenience and
great suffering in many quarters, and might be a great loss to some if any change of that kind
took place. (Hear, hear.) Tou may rely, I believe, upon the honesty of the Government in this
matter. Always bear in mind that every Government, however honest, however well disposed, is
more capable of doing what is right when they have the opinion of the people thoroughly sup
porting them. (Cheers, and a voice : * A free breakfast table.') My friend speaks of a free
breakfast table. That is his (Mr. Baldwin's) hobby, and I can only compliment him upon it,
because it is mine also. (Cheers.) The malt tax does not come into the breakfast generaUy.
(Cheers and laughter.) His remark shows that my friend is getting a little nearer me than he
was some time ago. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) Well, a free breakfast table is by no means an
impossible thing. (Cheers.) I have not been in the habit of recommending or proposing things
that are impossible. (Great cheering.) If we could get rid of taxes upon articles which come to
our breakfast table we should have a free country, as far as our ports and customs duties go, with
the exception of things which many people think not necessary and injurious, meaning spirits,
wines, and tobacco. What a magnificent thing it woidd be if every EngUshman, whenever he
trod the world over, could say to all the world, ' Send everything which all mankind agree to be
useful and beneficial to the human race to any port in England, and they wUl be received there
without the payment of a farthing of duty.' (Cheers.) I am speaking now, bear in mind, as your
representative. (Great laughter and cheers.) I am not speaking in any other capacity. (Renewed
laughter and cheers.) I am making no promises; I am only teUing you what I believe to be
possible, and what the people in the end may get— (cheers)— if they wUl examine it, comprehend
it, make up their minds in its favour, aud let Parliament and the Government know what it is they
are thinking about." (Cheers.)

A FREE BREAKFAST TABLE. 105
The free breakfast table, however, might be laid out easier than at
first imagined. For instance, under Protection, in 1839, the amount of
tea consumed per head of the population was lib. 13oz. ; under Free
Trade it was 31bs. 8oz. Under Protection, 241bs. of sugar were consumed
per head; under Free Trade 39|lbs. Under Protection, in 1844, tea was
5s. per lb. ; in 186S it was just half this sum. Under Protection we had
coffee for which we paid Is. 8d. per lb. ; now we have the same article at
Is. Under Protection, in 1842, sugar was 9d. per lb. ; it is now 3|- d.
The free breakfast table is stiU looming in the distance.
A deputation waited upon Mr. Bright in January for the purpose of
persuading him to use his influence in procuring some mitigation in the
sentences passed on the Fenian prisoners : —
" Though I have been one who has always spoken strongly in favour of changes," said Mr.
Bright, in reply, " and changes which we showed by demonstration were right to be made, still,
for aU that, I am bound to say that I know no greater enemy to our country than the man who
attempts by force of arms to disturb the pubUc peace, and to break down the authority of the laws.
Least of aU are those to be excused who, being in a country to which they have emigrated, and
thereby escaped from what they supposed to be the tyranny and oppression here, are free to do
what they please, yet conspire against our common country. I cannot see that any kind of allow
ance is to be made for such persons."
On the very eve of the meeting of Parliament, in February, 1870,
while in London, Mr. Bright suffered severely from exhaustion, the result
of mental labour, and, writing to Mr. Gladstone, he stated : —
" I cannot tell you how much I am disappointed at being absent from the meeting of Parlia
ment, but I have distinct warnings of an attack of something like that from which I suffered
fourteen years ago, and I dare not disregard them. I am quite unable to work, and must leave
London for a time. I regret deeply that I cannot be at your side to vote and plead for the Irish
Land BiU. . . . I think ita wise, just, and comprehensive measure, and I hope the moderation
and patriotism of Parliament wUl enable it soon to become law."
The quiet and rest produced a favourable effect upon Mr. Bright's
health, and by the advice of his physicians he abstained from everything
tending to excitement. Earl Granville, while in attendance on her
Majesty at Balmoral, received a letter from Mr. Bright in which he stated
that his recovery was hopeful. The noble earl communicated the news to
her Majesty, who desired Earl Granville at once to telegraph to Mr.

106 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Bright, " that if he thought it prudent in regard to his health, she hoped
he would come and spend two or three days in retirement at Balmoral."
Mr. Bright was prevented accepting the kind offer on account of the
inevitable excitement attendant upon such a visit. He was very
much benefited by a stay of six months at Llandudno, and on the 28th
of November he arrived at his residence in Eochdale. In December he
resigned the office of President of the Board of Trade, on account of not
feeling himself sufficiently recovered to take part in the preliminary
deliberations to prepare the work for the session. The wish of Mr.
Gladstone and his colleagues, warmly expressed from time to time, had
alone withheld Mr. Bright from resigning before, but he thought it was
necessary for the complete recovery of his health.
The London Press thus commented on the event : — The Times stated
that he had lavished the best energies of a singularly fine intellect for the
benefit of his country, and he had done so at a grievous personal sacrifice;
but he might be assured that few public men have been foUowed into
retirement by more earnest good wishes from all classes of their country
men. The Morning Post thought there was probably not a man in the
country, be his politics what they might, who would not receive tbe
intelligence with the greatest concern and regret. The Daily Telegraph
stated that his resignation would be keenly felt throughout the country.
No name would ever go more straight to the Irish heart than that of John
Bright, and his name would remain as that of one of the greatest orators
who ever adorned the House of Commons. The Daily News was of
opinion that Englishmen, without distinction of party, would share regret
at Mr. Bright's resignation. The london Figaro .¦ " We understand —
and have much pleasure in making tbe announcement — that her Majesty
not only expressed to the Premier her sincere regret in accepting the
resignation of the President of the Board of Trade, but has also written
to Mr. Bright in the most gracious and cordial terms. Her Majesty's
wish that the health of Mr. Bright will speedily be restored, and that he
may be able for many years to devote his talents to the service of the
country, will find a general response. This mark of the Sovereign's
regard will be deeply gratifying to the right honourable gentleman, whose

THE IRISH LAND BILL. 107
zeal for popular rights has always been allied with a fervent attachment
to the Queen."
In June, 1871, Mr. Bright spent a few days with Mr. Bass, M.P., at
his shooting lodge, Glen Tulchan Lodge ; he also visited Invershin, and
thence to Dingwall, Inverness, Kelso, Melrose, and returned home to
Eochdale much improved, and universal was the wish that his health
would be completely restored.
Mr. Gladstone introduced an Irish Land Bill on the 1 5th of February,
1870. The bill would reverse the present presumption of law, he ex
plained, and would presume all improvements to be the property of the
tenant, and it would be for the landlord to prove the contrary. Eetro-
spective improvements would be included, but only so far back as twenty
years, except in the case of permanent buildings and reclamations of
lands. As to holdings under lease, any owner might exempt his lands
from the custom, always excepting the Ulster custom, which would be
legaUsed, and from the scale of damages, by giving to his tenants a lease
for thirty-one years, provided that the lease were approved by the Court,
and gave the tenant at the close of it a right to compensation for
manures, permanent buildings, and reclamation of land. After several
amendments by the House of Lords it received the Eoyal assent on the
1st of August.
The " Purchase clause " of this Act was suggested by Mr. Bright to the
Cabinet ; but the suggestions of the Irish Executive were chiefly adopted
in framing the measure, which made the "Bright clauses" only partially
successful, and delayed desired improvements in the land laws of Ireland.
In January, 1872, at his residence in Eochdale, Mr. Bright wrote the
following letter to The O'Donoghue : — ¦
" It is said that some persons engaged in the canvass of the county of Kerry have spoken of
me as an advocate of what is termed Home Rule in Ireland. I hope no one has ventured to say
anything so absurd and untrue. If it has been said by any one of any authority iu the county I
shaU be glad if you will contradict it. To have two representative legislative assemblies or Parlia
ments in the United Kingdom would, in my opinion, be an intolerable mischief ; and I think no
sensible man can wish for two within the limits of the present United Kingdom who does not
wish the United Kingdom to become two or more nations, entirely separated from each other.
Excuse me for troubling you with this. It is no duty of mine to interfere in your contest, but I
do not wish to be misrepresented.''

108 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGH1.
Mr. Bright in the latter part of January found that the state of his
health would not permit him to attend the annual meeting of his con
stituents, held on the 29th of the month, and accordingly he forwarded,
from his residence at Eochdale, the following letter, which was read at
the meeting. It was full of public interest, and was received with pain,
for there had been an impression abroad that his health and strength
had been thoroughly re-established.
"lam not sure that I ought not two years ago to have given up the office of your representative,
when I found myself no longer capable of performing' its duties ; but I have trusted to the kind
ness of my friends, and I fear trespassed somewhat too much upon it. Some months ago I
thought I should be able to be in Birmingham before the openiug of the session ; but I dare not
yet attempt to take part in or to be present at one of your great town-hall meetings. I expect,
notwithstanding, that I shall be able to attend the House of Commons some portion of the ensuing
session. I do not enter into political discussion, because I should require to write a pamphlet if
I were only to touch upon the many questions now before the public, and which will soon come
before Parliament. I hope the session wUl be fruitful in good measures, and that the determina
tion to lessen the public expenditure may be manifested by the administration of the House. I am
very grateful to my friends for their long patience with me, and to my colleagues, Mr. Dixon and
Mr. Muntz, that they have not permitted any matter specially affecting Birmingham to suffer from
my absence." Although the state of Mr. Bright's health at this time would not
permit him to express his opinions orally at public meetings, he did not
neglect his correspondence, and now and then the public were entertained
and instructed by reading his views on various subjects.
" I think the great revolution of opinion on many public questions which is no w being witnessed
in this country is owing mainly to the freedom of the newspaper press," he replied to one corre
spondent, Mr. William Mitchell, of West Sussex. "It is silently working a change of a most
important and, I hope, of a most beneficial character. Newspaper property to an enormous extent
has been created or extended ; the literary character of newspapers has been improved, and the
tone of writing is higher than it formerly was. All that we foretold in our agitation for a
free press has come to pass ; nothing that the most timid feared has arisen in consequence of our
success." In March there was an agitation in Birmingham in favour of the total
repeal of the Income-tax, which inflicts hardships and has so many
inequalities, and Mr. Bright was invited to join a deputation to the
Chancellor of the Exchequer.
"I regret to say that I shall not be able to be in town on Wednesday, and therefore cannot
take part in the proposed deputation to the Chancellor of the Exchequer," he replied. " There is
little real difference of opinion as to the odious and unfair character of the Income-tax ; but it is

AGAIN IN THE HOUSE. 109
not easy to see where the money is to be obtained which now comes from that tax. I see no chance
of its aboUtion, except in a lessened expenditure, and at present there seems no probability of the
creation of a political party resolved to lessen the public expenditure, and adopting that policy as
the one great article of its creed. I do not believe in governments that eanuot govern without
taking seventy miUions every year from the industry of the nation, and I hope the time will come
when no such government wUl be permitted to exist. For myself I shoidd be ready to vote for
such reduction of expenditure as would enable the Chancellor of the Exchequer to remove the
Income-tax, or to abolish the taxes which add so greatly to the price of tea, coffee, and sugar."
A meeting of leading working men of London was held at Bolt Court
on the 13th of February to consider the propriety of presenting a con
gratulatory address to Mr. John Bright, on his restoration to health and
return to pubUc life. A letter was afterwards addressed to the right hon.
gentleman, asking whether he would consent to receive their address, and
to fix the time and mode of its presentation. Mr. Bright replied from
Eochdale on the 19th February : —
" My dear Sir, — I desu-e to thank your friends and yourself for the resolution of which you
have sent me a copy ; but I am puzzled as to the reply 1 shoidd make to your kind and flattering
proposal. I am not going np to London to attend Parliament immediately, although it is a great
disappointment to me to be so long absent from the duties which I owe to my constituents ; but I
know weU that it is far better for me to give myself a Uttle more time than to plunge into the
turcnoU of pubUc life before I am well enough to encounter it. I must ask you to let the matter
rest for a time. I cannot object to receive your address, so kindly intended and so complimentary ;
but I shoidd prefer a postponement of it to some period which may be better for me, and perhaps
not less convenient for those who may wish to see me in connection with it. I beg you wiU convey
my thanks to those with whom you are associated for the kindness they intend to show me. I am
very sensible of the value of their goodwill and friendship."
Mr. Bright left Eochdale for London on the 9th of April, and the
foUowing day he had a long interview with Mr. Gladstone. On the
llth of the same month he entered the House of Commons for the first
time after his illness, and with the view of avoiding any public demon
stration he attended before the commencement of the sitting and the
arrival of the Speaker for prayers. As members came in, they, without
distinction of party, gathered round the right hon. gentleman, and
greeted him with great cordiality. . For some time Mr. Bright held a
kind of levee, group after group forming about him. The right hon.
gentleman afterwards took his old place at the upper corner of the second
bench below the gangway, and remained there until prayers had been
said. After a short conversation with the Speaker he left the House.

110 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
He also visited the Eeform Club, where he was most heartily received.
Traces ofthe trying illness through which he had passed were noticeable.
His hair was less abundant, and had become perfectly white, imparting,
together with his florid complexion, a venerable appearance. He visited
the House of Commons two or three times, but so many kind friends
gathered round him, that he thought it best to refrain from attending
regularly for a short time, fearing that the excitement might bring on a
return of his illness.
In the early part of June he and Mrs. Bright paid a visit to the
ancient city of Perth, once the capital of Scotland. Its noble river lined
with quays, its handsome edifices built chiefly of freestone, and its
spacious promenades, were objects of interest to these illustrious visitors.
A gentleman who had been told that the English Eepublicans would
select Mr. Bright as their first President, wrote to ask the right
hon. gentleman if he would accept the post, and received the following
reply :—
" Rochdale, April 7th, 1872. Dear Sir.— Tour Republican friend must not be a very
desperate character if he proposes to make me his first President, though I doubt if he can be a
friend of mine. As to opinions on the question of Monarchy or Republicanism, I hope and
believe it wiU be a long time before we are asked to give our opinion ; our ancestors decided the
matter a good while since, and I would suggest that you and I should leave any further decision
to our posterity. Now, from your letter I conclude you are willing to do this ; and I can assure
you I am not less willing."
A year later Mr. Bright was invited to attend a " National EepubUcan
Conference," which was to be held in St. George's Hall, Birmingham.
"Tou ask for a word of encouragement, which I cannot give," wrote Mr. Bright in reply.
" To possess ' the best system of civil government,' is a thing worth striving for ; but it may be
a wise policy to endeavour to perfect the civU government we have, rather than to look to great
changes which necessarily involve enormous risks. It is easier to uproot a monarchy than to give
a healthy growth to that which is put in its place, and I suspect the price we should have to pay
for the change would be greater than the change would be worth. Our forefathers suffered for
nearly a century of unsettled government in consequence of the overthrow of the monarchy,
brought about by the folly and the crimes of the monarch. France has endured many
calamities and much humiliation for nearly 100 years past, springing from the destruction of her
ancient government, and the apparent impossibility of founding a stable government to succeed
it. Spain is now in the same difficulty, and we watch the experiment with interest and anxiety.
For forty years past in this country we have seen a course of improvement in our laws and
administration equal, perhaps superior, to anything which has been witnessed in any other
nation. This gives us hope and faith that we can establish a civil government so good as to

A HANDSOME PRESENT. Ill
attract to its support the respect and love of all tho intelligent among our people, and this
without bringing upon us the troubles which I believe are inseparable from the uprooting of an
ancient monarchy. I have no sympathy with the object which gives its name to your club. I
prefer to try to do good in the way of political reform by what I regard as a wiser and less
hazardous, if a less ambitious, method ; and from what we have seen in the past, I think you may
gather hope and faith for the future."
The inhabitants of the Potteries conceived the idea of making a pre
sentation to Mr. Bright, and delicately carried it out. It took the form
of a cabinet and collection of ceramic art. The cabinet was designed by
Mr. F. W. Moody, of South Kensington, in the style of the time of Louis
XVI., and was made of walnut. It is divided into two compartments,
the upper, which is enclosed, being filled with vases and other examples
of the art of industry of the district in its highest form — the productions
of the eminent firms of Wedgwood, Minton, and Copeland. On the
outer leaf of the cabinet are two of Copeland's finest statuettes in
Parian, " Chastity " and " St. Filomena ; " and three large majolica
vases, by Wedgwood, occupy the lower compartment, which is open.
Several of the objects had been manufactured specially for the testimonial,
and the decorations of one of the choicest pieces are emblematic of
Mr. Bright's career and services. There is an inscription on the top
of the cabinet as foUows :— " To the Eight Hon. John Bright, M.P.,
whose foresight, eloquence, and faithful character have greatly contributed
to his country's prosperity, these specimens of ceramic art are presented
by admirers in the Staffordshire Potteries."
A deputation of ten gentlemen was entrusted with the presentation of
the cabinet and its valuable contents. These were Mr. Thomas Pidduck
(ex-Mayor of Hanley, and chairman of the central committee), Mr. W.
Furnival, Hanley, treasurer ; Mr. J. E. Cooke, Hanley, honorary secretary;
Mr. Taylor, Ashworth and Mr. J. L. Cherry, Hanley; Mr. W. Woodall,
chief bailiff of Burslem ; Mr. Mayor, Longton ; Mr. J. Clark and Mr.
John Peak, Tonstall; and Mr. C. Dickinson, Stoke. The deputation
reached Mr. Bright's residence about half -past twelve on the 12th of
July, 1872, and was conducted to the drawing-room, where the cabinet
had previously been set up and its contents displayed. There were also
present in the room the Mayor of Eochdale (Mr. Alderman Shawcross),

112 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
the ex-Mayor (Mr. Alderman Ashworth), Mr. Thomas Bright, Mr.
Alderman Heape, Mr. Oliver Ormerod, Mr. Frank Bright (nephew
of Mr. Bright), and Mr. William Bright (his son). Mrs. Bright and
several other ladies were also present. On entering the room Mr. Bright
was cordially welcomed, and privately introduced to several members
of the deputation by Mr. Alderman G. L. Ashworth, of Eochdale.
Mr. Pidduck made the presentation, and Mr. Bright retrospectively
glanced over his political lifetime, and no other statesman could have
traced a course in public affairs which redounded more to his credit.
In this half-privately conversed speech, as in his public utterances, there
were in many phrases that swing of rhythm which gave the sentences
their perfect finish, and charmed the ear.
•' I assume, therefore, as I may assume from your kind address," said he, " that my public
course and labours have met generally — not minutely in aU cases, probably, but generally — with
the consent and approval of those whom you represent. (Hear, hear.) At the same time I am
deeply touched with the consideration of the circumstances under which, and the time when, this
gift is made. The idea was not formed when I was actively engaged before the public, either as
a member of Parliament or as a member of the Administration. I had not returned with friends
and associates from any fresh political success. On the contrary, I was suffering from severe
and protracted illness. It was at a time when it was not unUkely that I should never again
return to public life. I was enfeebled and prostrated to an extent known only to my own famUy,
and at that time your kindness and friendship were awakened, and you conceived the idea of
doing me this honour, and marking' your approbation by this gift. I think, therefore, that more
than on ordinary occasions I have reason to feel deeply grateful to you for the kindness you have
manifested to me. The other question is one to which you have indirectly referred : the
question of our policy with regard to the United States. It is one of the unaccountable things in
history that a people like ours — not the great body of the people, but the Government, Parliament,
the rich classes, and the most influential members of the Press, or many of them — should for
a moment have taken side with a rebellion whose sole object and purpose it was to perpetuate for
ever the slavery of miUions. (Hear, hear.) I did not counsel any interference from this country.
I said from the first, and in fact when the insurrection began, in a few observations in the House
of Commons, I said, ' Let us leave it alone. The United States have been powerfid enough
hitherto to overcome aU its difficulties, and I believe they will overcome this.' My object was to
counsel what 1 called at that time ' a generous and not an unfriendly neutrality ; ' and I call you
to witness, and the whole country to witness, whether if we had pursued that counsel of generous
neutrality we should not have escaped the embarrassment, the negotiations, the concessions, and
the humiliations to which we have been subjected for several years past, I hope, 1 beUeve, now
in all probabiUty the difficulties which have arisen will be terminated. I think the conduct
of the Government has been everything the people coidd require in reference to this subject, and
I can speak from personal knowledge of the most intimate character, that there are no men
iu this country more anxious that all these difficulties should be removed, and that the United
Kingdom and the United States should live hereafter on terms of the most perfect amity, than
the gentlemen who have the responsibility of administering the executive Government of the

IMPROVING HEALTH. 113
country. In saying what I have said, I hope uo one will assume I am pretending to be wiser than
my neighbours. There were thousands, there have been hundreds of thousands in this country,
who during all this period have held the same opinions that I have held, and who have
recommended or wished for the same policy, but they had not the same opportunity of speech
and action that I had. I have felt always that there were in aU parts of the country men,
and good men, and many of them, who sympathised with me, and who would, as far as they had
the power, give their warmest support to the course and to the policy in which I was engaged.
Let us look for a moment, and only for a moment, at the great change which thirty years
have made. There are countries which have gone through strange and sanguinary revolutions,
and have not been able to make changes so wise and so wholly satisfactory. If those changes
had not been made — I will undertake to say that if the Corn Laws had been maintained, if there
had been a power which coidd have maintained them in their unrestricted and cruel character,
nothing less than anarchy and insurrection could have followed : —
( For men will break, in their sublime despair,
The bonds which nature can no longer bear.'
Tet aU this has been done in this coimtry with scarcely a single hour's riot, and without, so far
as I remember, the sacrifice of a single drop of blood. I suppose there is yet a party in this
country which complains of everything that we have said, and nearly everything that we have
done. They have obstructed everything, they have contested every point, and they appear to bo
so ignorant and incapable of discussing these questions and considering them, that they may be
said to be absolutely incurable. That party still appeals, in all its ancient audacity, to the
support of the people. I think about the only consolation we have —and it is one dictated by
Christian charity — is that they may partake, opponents though they have been— partake f uUy of
the good things which we have provided for them ; for as the sun shines and the rain descends
alike on just and unjust, so the blessings of a wise and beneficent legislation are participated
in, not more fully by those who have promoted it than by those who have pertinaciously
obstructed it."
In August, 1872, Mr. Bright arrived at Banavie, and was the guest
of Lord Abinger, and spent part of his time in fishing on the Lochy.
After visiting other places in Scotland, he returned to Eochdale on the
20th of the same month. On the 22nd of August, accompanied by Mrs.
Bright, he visited the thriving town of Hitchin, Herts, and from
there traveUed to Clifton, near Bristol, and spent a few days with a
relative, Miss Priestman. For about a week, in the beginning of
October, he was the guest of the Duke of Argyll, and left Inverary,
vid Dalmathy, for the North, to enjoy a few days' fishing. He visited-
Dunblane, and after examining the antiquities in and round the town,
proceeded to Pitnacre, the seat of Mr. T. B. Potter, the member for
Rochdale. On the 18th of October, accompanied by Mr. Brunlees, of
London, a distinguished civil engineer, he arrived at Kelso, and angled
for salmon in the Spronston water ; and during the last three months

57

114 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
the improvement in his health had been greater than during the previous
years of his disability. While staying at Llandudno, on the 22nd of
November, he wrote the following letter in reply to a Coventry corre
spondent, which was a strong proof of the improved state of his health,
and his capacity to once more take part in public affairs : —
" Sir, — It is to be regretted that you and your friends should distress yourselves about the
new Treaty, and prefer, as I conclude you would prefer, to have no Treaty at all. If there were
no Treaty, the French Government would not reduce their import duties, some of them they
would probably raise, and the English Government would not impose new or higher duties on
importations from France. The Treaty, therefore, which fixes the limit of the French tariff, but
which does not prevent its amendment in the direction of lower duties, and which in no degree
affects the duties we impose on foreign goods, can inflict no injury on Coventry or on any other
manufacturing town in the kingdom. The Treaty may not be a wise Treaty on the part of
France, but it is impossible that it should be injurious to England ; for under its provisions
England does not bind herself to do anything which she would not willingly and wisely do if
the Treaty were not in existence. If, under the Treaty, the French tariff is in any degree lower
than it would be without the Treaty, then by so much are we the gainers by it. Our Govern
ment would have been delighted to have signed a Treaty under which the French tariff would
have been as liberal and as sensible as our own, but it can only act for England, and not for
France. If I am not mistaken, you were against the Treaty of 1860, and on the same grounds,
doubtless, you are against the renewed Treaty of 1872. Tou think the special interests of
Coventry should have been cared for at the expense of the general population of the kingdom.
But Lord Granville is not the minister for Coventry only, but for the United Kingdom, and he
and his colleagues must act for the general good, and not for any special interest or trade which
clamours for protection at his hands. In the protest you have sent me, you say that ' while the
French were fighting in 1871, the trade of Coventry was exceptionaUy good ; ' that is, when you
had no competition your trade was very good ; and what you want now is, that our tariff should
prevent foreign competition with you in this market, and give you the prosperity, at the cost of
your customers, which you had last year, caused by the calamities of the French. I am sorry,
if not surprised, that there are any working men in Coventry who still think duties for protection
are just and good for English industry after the experience of the last twenty-five years.
Surely it is something of a discredit to Coventry that, almost alone among all the towns of the
United Kingdom, she should ask the Government to place her upon that ' out-door relief ' which
is intended by the system of special duties for the protection of special trades. I do not beUeve
the workmen of Coventry are less able to fight the battle of competition than are the workmen
of Bradford, or Birmingham, or Rochdale ; and when the old cry of Protection is so thoroughly
worn out in your ancient city that it can no longer serve a local political purpose, I suspect we
shall hear uo more of it even from you. I am sorry to trouble you with so long a reply. Iu
future, I must ask you to forgive me if I am silent."
The marked improvement in Mr. Bright's health led to the hope
that he would be able to appear before his constituents at their annual
meeting on the 20th of January, 1873; but in place of a long and
powerful speech, the audience and the nation only heard from Mr.

AGAIN IN THE HOUSE. Ho
Bright through the following letter, which he had forwarded to
Mr. J. S. Wright, of Birmingham : —
" Rochdale, January 14, 1873.
" My dear Mr. Wright, — I thank you for your letter informing me that your annual meeting
is fixed for the 20th instant. I have often expected that I should be able to attend it, and now.
when it is close upon us, I am much disappointed to have to write you another letter of explana
tion and apology. I feel as though I have little claim upon my friends in Birmingham to
entitle me to the consideration and kindness they have shown me, and my only consolation is that
I have not willingly absented myself from them, and from the duties which they have entrusted
to me, and that this is, as I hope and believe, the last time I shall have to trespass on their good
nature and forbearance. There are public questions on whieh I wish I could speak to my
constituents, and in which they take a deep interest. They are too large to be dealt with in a
letter, and I must leave them for the present. As Liberals, and supporters of Mr. Gladstone's
- Administration, we have much to rejoice in if we look over the time which has passed since tho
last general election. There have been mistakes and disappointments, and we deplore them ; but
the course of the wisest and best of men in the government of a great country, which is so
encumbered with the errors of the past, is full of difficulty, and we may fairly make some
aUowance for it. We are coming near the time of another general election. If no accident
forces it on at an earlier period, it wiU probably take place in the autumn of next year. There
are two questions to which you refer that are probably too large to be undertaken with any
degree of completeness in the last years of a Parliament. I allude to the state of the county
representation and to the land question. These seem to me the great questions of the immediate
future, and the more they are discussed by the public the more will the Parliament be prepared
to deal with them. The question of expenditure is one which demands resolute handling. If
the present Government is unable to grapple with it, it should only show us how great are the
interests which oppose themselves to economy, and how much an earnest public opinion is wanted
to arrest the extravagant and scandalous expenditure which every statesman in turn condemns,
and which no one of them seems able to diminish. I wish your meeting may be in every way
successful I regret deeply not to be present with you."
For months before this date and months afterwards he received many
invitations to address public meetings in various parts of the country,
but he refused, and stated that he had been more than three years
absent from public meetings, and before he returned to them again he
must go to Birmingham before he went to any other place.
Before the members attended the devotional service in St. Stephen's,
on the 24th of February, Mr. Bright appeared for the first time
that session, and took his familiar seat on the second bench below tbe
gangway. There were few members present at the time, and the
demonstration that would have been inevitable half an hour later was
avoided. Mr. Bright's welcome presence seemed to strike each fresh
arrival with delight, and something like a levee was held, for hearty

Hi; LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
hand-shaking and words of welcome were indulged in, until the House
became absorbed in Mr. Cardwell's exposition of the army estimates.
Upon Mr. Bright receiving from Mr. Hawkes a copy of a resolution
which was passed in the Town Hall of Birmingham on the 3rd of
March, in favour of the Permissive Bill, he wrote the following reply
on the 2nd of May at the Eeform Club, London : —
" I wish I could vote in accordance with its purport ; but I cannot do so, for reasons which I
bave more than once explained to my friends in Birmingham. I am as anxious to promote the
cause of temperance as any man who supported that resolution, but I must endeavour to promote
it by means which are consistent with reason, with constitutional practice, with a consideration
for the just rights of those concerned and engaged iu a legal traffic, and with my own view of
what is likely to be effective towards the end we seek. I see the great good which your friends
profess to seek — a lessening of the evils of intemperance ; but I think I observe a remarkable
absence of wisdom in the chief measure they offer for our adoption. I thhik it is one which in
its present shape can never be adopted by Parliament, and which, if it were adopted, would
grievously disappoint its most sanguine friends. I regret deeply that I am obliged to differ from
so many zealous and good friends on this question. I must, however, accept my own judgment
and conscience as my guide in the course I must take in regard to it. I wish I could have
written you a different reply. What I have written I am sure you will not unfairly interpret."
A conference of Liberal members and delegates from Nonconformist
Associations was held in the Westminster Palace Hotel, London, on the
1st of July, and resolutions were adopted condemning the Elementary
Education Act Amendment Bill, and calling on Liberals in the House
to offer it the most strenuous opposition. Mr. Bright was present, and
was unable to understand the full force of the objections which were
urged against the new bill.
"He had heard much criticism on it," he said, " but no suggestion as to the means by which
it was proposed to meet the difficulty. He could not see how compulsion was to be enforced,
even if it had been adopted, without some provision for the payment, in some way, of the school
fees of children who were forced to school, but whose parents could not pay for them. He was
at a loss to understand in what way the proposal to let the guardians pay fees was worse than
that at present in the Act. For his part, it appeared as though it must work entirely in favour
of those who were then objecting to it. The guardians constituted a body less devoted to
sectarian influence, more open to the currents of public opinion, than the School Boards. They
were not elected by the miserable sectarian expedient of the cumulative vote. Their object
woidd not be, as had been the case with some School Boards, that of supporting certain
denominational schools, but of economically administrating tbe rates. He thought, therefore,
that, granting these must be paid, the guardians were the best persons, perhaps, to pay them.
He wished, too, that the meeting should not be led away by enthusiasm, but should really
estimate the difficulties iu the way of the Government. He did not in any way support the Act

CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER. 117
of 1870, which he thought was the very worst Act which had ever been passed by any Liberal
Government since the Reform Act of 1832. Still it was now a question of what amendment
was practicable, and there was no doubt that it was not possible to pass such a measure as the
meeting wanted. He warned them against an impulsive breaking away from the Liberal party.
It was easier to smash up than to restore, and they might possibly find, when they had shattered
the party, as some of the speakers had threatened to do, they would bo in a worse and weaker
position than they were before. The working classes viewed these questions in a somewhat
different light, and he feared his friends might not merely sever themselves from the Liberal
party, but from the great mass of the people. His hope was, that after a while there would be
a subsidence of the passions whieh had been roused by this unfortunate Act, and that the public
would gradually see that the sectarian schools were inferior to the Board Schools, would
appreciate the objectious urged agaiust denominational education, aud would thus transfer their
support from the sectarian schools to the national schools."
Mr. Gladstone reconstructed his Cabinet in August, 1873, and Mr.
Bright consented to succeed Mr. Childers as Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster. His sole object was to advance the cause of progress, and he
could render while a Minister more important services to the principles
to which he was attached than he could perform in the House of
Commons unconnected with the Government : —
" The ofiice I have accepted." he stated in his address to his constituents, " is not one of heavy
department duty, or I could not have ventured upon it ; but it will enable me to take part in the
deliberations of the Cabinet, and to render service to principles which I have often expounded in
your hearing, and which you have generaUy approved — more important, I believe, than any I
could render in the House of Commons unconnected with the Government. I do not write to
you a long address, for I am not a stranger to you. I hold the principles when in office that I
have constantly professed since you gave me your confidence sixteen years ago. When I fiud
myself unable to advance those principles aud to serve you honestly as a Minister, I shall
abandon a position which demands of me sacrifices whieh I cannot make. I owe much— no other
man owes so much as I do — to your forbearance and your generosity. This makes me bold
enough to believe that you will now sustain me.''
He submitted himself to his constituents for re-election, and was
returned unopposed.
Mr. Bright, Earl Granville, and Lord Wolverton, in the middle of
September, spent a few days with Mr. Gladstone, at Hawarden Castle.
On the evening of the 22nd of October, 1873, Mr. Bright met his
constituents in Bingley Hall, Birmingham, which has an immense
breadth of floor-space, covering about an acre of ground, as the Town
HaU was not large enough for the immense gathering. Galleries had
been erected on each side, and in the dim distance, at the farther end of

118 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
the immense hall, a gallery was devoted to the ladies. Early in the day
the apartments in the hotels were engaged by strangers, many of whom
had travelled hundreds of miles, and later comers had great difficulty in
procuring accommodation for the night. The gathering was not purely
political, for Mr. Bright was regarded as a friend by all shades of
politicians. Four years' silence and almost complete retirement from
public life had increased the anxiety to listen to his eloquence once more,
and to receive instruction. The hall was quite full at seven o'clock, and
the upturned faces of the mass of people in the body of the hall looked
somewhat terrible on account of their numbers, there being present
about 15,000 persons. The presence of sixty representatives of the
press of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the United States, testified to
the interest that was taken in the event. Among those on the platform
were the Eight Hon. H. Childers, M.P., Mr. G. Dixon, M.P., Mr.
Watkin Williams, M.P., Mr. Shaw Lefevre, M.P., Mr. James Howard,
M.P., Mr. Duncan M'Laren, M.P., and Mrs. M'Laren, Hon. G. C.
Lyttleton, M.P., Mr. Charles Seed, M.P., Mr. E. M. Eichards, M.P.,
Mr. J. J. Colman, M.P., Mr. A. Brogden, M.P., Mr. D. C. Heron,
M.P., Sir Thomas Bazley, Bart., M.P., Mr. Alderman Carter, M.P.,
Mr. H. B. Samuelson, M.P., the Town Clerk of Birmingham, the
Eecorder of Birmingham, Mr. J. Albert Bright (Mr. John Bright's
eldest son), Hon. Chandos Leigh, Hon. Lyulph Stanley, Eev. W. H.
Blamire, vicar of St. James's, Over Darwen, and representatives from the
following and numerous other associations: — The Blackburn Eeform
Club, West Cheshire Liberal Association, National Eeform Union
(Manchester), Leeds Liberal Association, Salford Liberal Association
(Pendleton branch), Cavendish Eeform Club (Blackburn), National
Amalgamated Society of Brassworkers (Birmingham), Birmingham Law
Society, Liberal Eegistration Association (East Worcestershire), Leigh
Eeform Union, Bury Liberal Association, Wolverhampton Liberal
Association, Burnley (Lancashire) Liberal Association, Wrexham and
Denbigh (North Wales) Liberal Association, Ledbury Liberal Associa
tion Eeform Club, Todmorden Eeform Club, London Eeform Club,
Manchester Society for the Liberation of Eeligion from State Patronage

AT BINGLEY HALL. 119
and Control, Liberal Club (Coventry), Marsden Liberal Association (near
Huddersfield), Huddersfield Liberal Association, Manchester and
Burnley Liberal Clubs, Kendal Liberal Eeform Association, National
Agricultural Labourers' Union.
At twenty-five minutes past seven Mr. Bright appeared, and every
man rose and gave him a gracious welcome, for the cheering that burst
forth made the roof of the hall ring again ; the audience could scarcely
be seen from the platform for the waving of hats and handkerchiefs.
Mr. Bright's lips quivered, his cheek flushed, yet he did not, even by the
shghtest bow, acknowledge the enthusiastic greeting ; but it could be
plainly seen that he was overjoyed by the reception.
The Mayor presided, and Mr. J. S. Wright moved a resolution of
congratulation to Mr. Bright on the recovery of his health, and his
abnity to resume the labours of statesmanship. Mr. J. Chamberlain
seconded the resolution, which was carried unanimously. When Mr.
Bright rose to speak, the hearty cheering was renewed and prolonged.
SUence being restored, every face was turned to the spot where Mr.
Bright stood alone, and the vast crowd waited expectantly. There was
some fear that he was about to be inaudible to all but those in the
immediate neighbourhood of the platform ; as he proceeded, however, he
gained power, and ere long his voice had all its wonted volume and
richness, and " There was melody in every tone,"
which had not lost any of the old fascination. He spoke for one hour
and a quarter. His allusion to his illness was received with the warmth
of sympathy.
"Standing here, after these five years," remarked Mr. Bright, "it is impossible that one
should not look back a little at what has happened-not with the view of reading or speaking of
a catalogue of measures that have been passed, or with the view of entering into enthusiastic
laudation of the Administration which has existed ; but it is worth our while to observe what are
the great principles that during the last five years have been adopted and fixed irrevocably in the
poficy and legislation of England by consent of Parliament and by the acknowledged consent of
the country. I say that the five years are five memorable years; and if the Administration
were to perish to-day the works of the Administration would live, and they would bear
comparison with those of any Government which has ever preceded it. (Cheers.) . . . Another
great principle has been established-that office, authority, dignity in a great service of the
State, which spends ten or eleven mUlions a year, shall not henceforth be bought by the neb, to

1-20 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
the exclusion of those that are less rich, or poor ; and promotion iu the army is no longer to
be obtained upon the old, and I wUl say the corrupt terms. (Cheers.) The promotion market is
closed for ever in that department of the public service. Unfortunately there is still the
pnrchase of offices of the highest character in another branch— that of the Church established. I
was glad to see, a, few days ago, that a bishop, very active in my county, condemned this,
and I think described it as a scandalous thing. I say it is odious in any branch ; bnt it is
especiaUy scandalous within the organisation of a Christian church. (Cheers.) I sometimes ask
myself what would be said if it were proposed to be introduced into the Wesleyan society—
(laughter)— or the Independents, or the Baptists, or the Presbyterians in Scotland, or even in the
Catholic Church in Ireland. It exists only in the Established Church in England— (cheers)—
and I trust the time will come when the members of that Church will regard it in the light in
which it is regarded, I believe, by all persons outside and unconnected with that Church. There
is another principle that has been established, which must interest many here, and that is that
the franchise is the right of the elector — that employer and landlord and creditor and customer
have no right to ask a man to give his vote against the opinion and conscience of the voter. I
was told lately that the Conservative editors spoke in kindly terms of the BaUot when they won
an election, but that when they lost an election they turned and cursed it. (Laughter.) Whether we
win elections or lose them, I am for the Ballot — (cheers) — and I suspect that the longer it
remains a part of our electoral system the more impossible wUl it be to remove it. There
was auother principle established, too, that is of value, and that is, that the House of Peers shoidd
no longer continue to be the highest court of justice in the kingdom. I am not about to say a
syllable against the manner in which many eminent men have endeavoured to discharge the duty
of judges in that assembly ; but I say it is better to have a regular court, with regularly
appointed and paid judges for that duty — a court that sits for a much longer time during the
year, and a court that, I believe, will dispose of the business before it with less delay and
less cost than that which has hitherto been incurred. (Cheers.) Well, then, there is only
one other point I would mention, and that is the oue which has been referred to in terms of great
severity by my friend Mr. Chamberlain, who seconded the resolution. The State — that is,
the country acting through Parliament and the Crown — the State has admitted its responsibility
for the education of the people. (Applause.) By public grants, by public rates, by a partial
application of the power of compulsion, the education of the children of the country is
henceforward to be provided for by the State. WeU, now, that is a great principle which
has never beeu adopted in this country before, and I ask you to look at the various points I have
mentioned. Examine, if you can, their importance and their grandeur, and you will see that it-
is a description of a, great work to have been accomplished by one Parliament under the advice
and direction of one Administration. (Hear, hear.) But I must delay for a moment or two upon
this last question to which I have referred. I was not in Parliament when the Education BiU
passed. (A voice : ' The more's the pity.') It was not at any time, so far as I remember,
submitted to the Cabinet whilst I was in the practice of meeting with my colleagues. I was
a member of the Administration, but withdrawn from it by iUness so great that duriug the
months of the session of 1870 I knew nothing of what was taking place within the waUs of
Parliament. I could read no debate and no speech myself, and I was too prostrate to make
it safe for any one of my family to read it to me. I put this explanation— uot for the sake
of saying that somebody else did it and I did not— but because it has been said, and in a very
important newspaper, that I was one of those who were concerned in this measure, and had given
my assent to it. I think the original faidt in the whole of this business was in submitting
to Parliament a great measure on a great subject, which had not beeu sufficiently discussed
in public, and about which the public mind had neither been fixed nor enlightened ; and, in that
belief, I am obliged to say that, judging from what I have read since, it appears to mc that

STATE EDUCATION. 121
almost everybody concerned in it was wholly in the dark, and that the measure as it came from
Parliament, and as it has been worked, has somewhat disappointed nearly everybody that
was concerned in it. (Applause.) Now, I shaU tell you my opinion of the bill in as few words
as I can, because I want you to understand that I am not speaking here at all in the capacity of a
member of the Administration, but as oue of the representatives of the electors of Birmingham.
I hope I shaU say nothing and do nothing inconsistent with either character. The Education
BUl was supposed to be needed because the system that up to 1870 had existed was held
to be insufficient and bad, and the fault of the biU is, to my mind, that it extended and confirmed
the system which it ought, in point of fact, to have superseded. (Great and prolonged applause.)
It was a biU— I speak of it as it passed, and combined with the changes with regard to the
minutes of Privy CouncU which came into force with it— it was a bill to encourage denomi-
national education, and, where that was impossible, to establish Board Schools. It ought
to have been a biU, in my opinion, to establish Board Schools, and to. offer inducements to those
who were connected with denominational schools to bring them under the control of the School
Boards. (Applause.) The fact is— and it is notorious— that the denominational system in this
country must of necessity in the main be an Established Church system— (hear, hear)— because
from the parochial organisation of the Church— although it does not include within its pale more
than haK of the churchgoing people of the nation— yet, by its parochial organisation and
its unity in this matter, it can, of course, place schools in every parish where the divided
and many-sected Nonconformists are unable te do it, and the result is, as we have seen, that the
Nonconformists are aggrieved, and justly aggrieved. I suppose there are probably thousands of
parishes in which there will scarcely be any schools except Church schools to which the children
of Nonconformists can go, and they must either in these schools receive the religious education
which is given in them, or they must be withdrawn from religious education altogether. Now,
much has been said about a certain clause of that bill. (Hear, hear.) It is a clause which coUects
rates from aU ratepayers — I speak now specially of Nonconformist ratepayers — (hear, hear) — and
applies these rates partly to the support of Catholic schools, very much more to the support
of Church of England schools, over which the ratepayers have no kind of control whatever. That
I think, is an evil principle, and one that should not be continued. (Loud and prolonged cheers.)
I am bound to say that I don't think that the clause left in the bill was supposed capable
of exciting the disapprobation which has arisen on account of it. Now, for myself, I have
not publicly — in any public meeting — discussed this question since it has come before
the public ; but I shall say what I think. (Hear, hear.) With regard to this question of
education through the sects, I believe that it is impossible ever to make it truly national, or truly
good. (Hear, hear.) The fact is — I thiuk we all feel it — that the public do not take great interest
in denominational schools. (Hear, hear.) The Church cares nothing for Dissent — (laughter and
cheers) — and with regard to this question, Dissent cares just as little for the Church. (Applause.)
Tlie people regard these schools as Church schools, as Chapel schools ; and they do not regard
them as public and national and general schools, and as part of a great system in which the whole
people unite for a great and worthy national object. (Hear, hear.) Then, again, the School
Boards. (Laughter.) I don't know that the Cabinet of the day was responsible for the mode of
electing School Boards. It was not certainly in the original memorandum of the bill which I was
permitted to see ; but the mode of election appears to me about the very worst— (hear, hear)— the
worst for purposes of general and national education, that could possibly have been devised. When
a- contest comes for a School Board, the question of real education seems to be hardly ever thought
of ; but there are squabbles between Church, and Chapel, and Secularist, and I don't know how many
other things. (Laughter.) And when the School Board meets, there is priest, and parson, and
minister, and there are partisans, and there is no free breeze of public opinion passing through the
room— (cheers)— but rather an unwholesome atmosphere of what I may call sectarian exclusive-

122 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
ness, and sometimes of bigotry, from which nothing good can come. (Cheers.) Now, with regard
to one or two points that have been much discussed, particularly that point of the 25th clause.
Whatever is said about it in the country, I believe that there are many worthy and honourable
men on the side of the House opposite to that on which I sit, who would be very glad to have some
arrangement come to with regard to that clause, because, as long as this remains a matter of dis
pute, it is obvious that whatever good can be got out of what I call an insufficient measure cannot
be got, and it is desirable for every party that something rather more like harmony should be
introduced into the public action ou the great education question. I, therefore, expressing my own
opinion, say that I believe there is a mode, and a simple aud a just mode, by which everything may
be done, doing harm to nobody, that is now proposed to be done under the 25th clause, and that
that clause might be absolutely repealed. (Cheers.) But with regard to the great question which
lies behind it, of whether we are on the right track for a general sound public education of our
children under the denominational system or not — that must be left to further proof. For I admit
that multitudes differ with me and with you ; but I apprehend, and I cannot but believe, that further
experience, and something like faUure, will before long force upon Parliament and the country a
general reconsideration of the question. (Applause.) Well, now, in speaking of the five years,
I have said nothing of minor measures, and I sliall say nothing of them. I said nothing of
lesseuod taxation. I have not touched yet upon one question which I think ought not to be passed
over, and that is the course of the Government in the settlement of the dispute with the United
States. Mr. Chamberlain, I think, referred to a speech made the other day by an eminent member
of the House of Lords. (Laughter.) He spoke, or rather insinuated, that the Government turned
one cheek meekly to the United States and the other meekly to Russia, and had only a bold front
for a savage African nation. (Laughter.) With regard to the savage African nation, I will
undertake to say that there are not fifteen men in this room more anxious than the Cabinet to
avoid war with an African nation, or wiU be more disposed, by all possible and reasonable pacific
measures, to adjust the troubles which have arisen on that continent. (Applause.) The time will
come, I trust, and before long, when Parliament, acting upon the opinion of one of its own com
mittees, will consider that it would be wise to withdraw absolutely from that coast. (Applause.)
There is no slave trade to put an end to now. Trade flourishes rather more where there are no
forts than where there are forts. It is a country where EngUsh life is scarcely to be maintained,
and I beUeve the interests and the honour of the country, at some not distant time, would be best
consulted by an entire withdrawal from that coast. (Hear, hear, and applause.) But as to
America. They talk of this treaty of 1872 as if it were a great humiliation to England. No ;
the humiliation was not in 1872. (Cheers.) The humiliation took place between the years 1861
and 1865. (Hear, hear, and applause.) Many of you met me in the Town Hall during those
years, when we discussed that American question. (Hear, hear.) If the Government of this
country had treated the United States with what I termed a ' generous neutrality,' if the rich
people of this country had not in the main sided with the insurrectionary planters of the South ;
if the writers of many of your important newspapers had dealt fairly with their kinsmeii
on the other side of the Atlantic, there would have been no dispute between the United
Kingdom and the United States. (Hear, hear.) But the dispute arose, and what was it the duty
of the Government to do P To let it rankle, and rankle and fester until it grew to something that
was grievous to both nations and grievous to the world ? No. They took it when the cost and
the question were manageable. They trod in the steps of a member of a previous Government,
the present Lord Derby, who was then Foreign Secretary ; for it was Lord Derby— and I say it
to his honour— who first of all admitted the propriety of arbitration between the United States
and England. (Applause.) Anyone may say that the terms were not satisfactory, and that this-
Government conceded too much. WeU, I venture to say this: that twenty years hence, or fifty
hence, when the pen of history narrates what has been done in regard to the question, it will say

THE LAND LAWS. 1>{
this— that that treaty, that arbitration, aud the conduct of Lord Granville, Mr. Gladstone, and their
colleagues, added a nobler chapter to the history of England than if they had filled it with the
records of bloody battles. (Great applause.) . . . There is another question which Mr.
Chamberlain referred to, and I think also Mr. Wright— that is, the question of the land. Tou
know what has happened since by great efforts we were enabled to free the produce of the land.
(Cheers.) I know it was the opinion of my dear friend Mr. Cobden that the freedom of the land
would be as great a boou to the country as was the freedom of the produce of the soil. It is a
question of the intensest interest to the working-classes throughout the country. I am delighted—
as, I hope are thousands and thousands who have no immediate connection with them — I am de-
Ughted to see some movement and stir amongst the class of agricultural labourers. (Cheers.) But
bear in mind that it is not in the power of a disorganised, especiaUy of a scattered class, as they
are, permanently and greatly to raise the rate of wages. What the agricidtural class of
this country requires is, that the land should bo made absolutely free— (prolonged cheers)
— that there should bo steps by which the best, the cleverest, the most indus
trious, the most frugal of the agricultural labourers could graduaUy make their way
to a higher and better social life. They can never do that with land laws such as we have
— land laws which tend everywhere to great estates, and great farms altogether beyond the
reach, or expectation, or dream of the agricultural labourer. That is a question which will have
to be dealt with very soon. Last session a BiU was introduced by the present Lord ChanceUor
with a view to make more easy and cheap the transfer of land — of course I mean by sale and
purchase. Other bills, before long, must be introduced upon this question. It cannot sleep
But it is as necessary for the landlords themselves that it should be dealt with as it is for the
agricultural labourers in their poor and abject condition. Then there are other laws which affect
land — the relation of landlord and tenant, and the question of game. (Hear, hear.) That is a
matter which wiU have to be dealt with, and with some degree of force, before long. It seems to
be monstrous that tenant-farmers should occupy land, paying rent for it, and that they should
not have absolute property in aU that lives upon the soil. . . Now, then, there is the
question of expenditure. (Applause.) The public, I am sorry to say, during prosperous years
have been so much attending to their own personal expenditure, which has greatly increased, that
they seem to have forgotten the expenditure of the Administration. But the question of
expenditure is a, very serious one. We have heard — I have heard in the House of Commons,
from the leader of the Opposition and from the leader of the Administration— condemnation in
the strongest language of the extravagant expenditure of the country ; and it is for the most
part, but not altogether, in the military expenditure that the extravagance is most witnessed.
Tou wiU have by-and-by a Budget— there is a Budget every year— (laughter)— and, whilst we are
at peace and acting like a rational and Christian nation, the Budget generally, on the whole, is
rather a pleasant thing than otherwise. Looking back to the Budgets that we had some years
ago, it may be that the Budget of the next session may cause interest, and I hope it may cause
pleasure. I know no secrets. (" Hear, hear," and laughter.) The fact is-I wiU tell you one
secret too— (laughter)— the Cabinet secrets are not made up tiU November— (laughter)-and, as
we are yet only at the 22nd of October, of course it is impossible that I should be able to tell you
anything, however much I wish to do it. But this wc all know, that there are two questions
which interest people when they speak about a Budget and a surplus and the diminution of
taxation. Some feel very sore upon the question of the income-tax. I do not wonder at it ; it is
most unequal, and it tempts men to great dishonesty. Then there is the question of a free
breakfast table-tea, sugar, coffee. WeU, there is abundant room here for the most enterprising
Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he has a surplus, to gratify the people of the United Kingdom.
(Cheers.) I am in favour of leaving these matters in the hands-I am not speaking about the
present Government or Mr. Gladstone-in the hands of the Liberal party, and a Liberal

U-i LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Administration. . . . The policy of the Liberal party is known. It is before the pubUc ; it
is not concealed ; it is no mystery. What is the policy of the Opposition ? (Laughter, and cries
of " None.") We were told the other day that the leader of the Opposition was in " a state of
strict seclusion," and but for that strange and unfortunate epistolary outburst we should have
had no idea of the desperate state of mind in which he has been. (Laughter and cheers.)
But still, if we ask for the policy of the Opposition, all is impenetrably dark, and all that we
know is that nothing can be kuown. (Laughter.) No, I beg pardon, I am wrong in that — we
know this — that, according to the Opposition, all the past twenty, and, if you like, all the
past forty years, is evil ; but as to the future, you wUl see it when it comes. (Cheers.) But let
me tell you this — that the great statesmanship which consists in silence and secrecy is not original ;
it is a mere copy. Thirty or forty years ago — I recollect the time very well — there was a great
fever and mania for speculation. Everybody went into everything, and they generaUy came out
with nothing. I recollect quite well an advertisement of a Great Sunflower Company — (laughter)
— and if anybody had proposed so unsubstantial a speculation as the equinoctial line, people
woidd have taken shares in it. Now, at that time there was a very ingenious feUow — if I could
remember his name I would try to immortalise him. He put out a prospectus. He was what
they call a " promoter " of a great company. It was to have a great capital, a great number of
whores, and great profits. Everything was great about it. It was to work a great invention. It
was a great secret — so profound a secret that, until all the money was paid in, nobody was to
know what it was. (Laughter.) Now, that is the Conservative policy at this moment. (Cheers.)
They have a poUcy which they offer for the coming elections. It is a profound secret. When
you have all given your votes, and returned a Conservative majority, perhaps then they wUl teU
ymi what it is. (Laughter and cheers.) ... I could take the men with grey hairs here— all
the men — there must be a great many — of sixty years of age, and ask them to teU us what was the
state of things when they were twenty or thirty years old. They would show that this country
has gone through a beneficent revolution iu regard to the condition of the working class, and I
believe aU that is come from a long period of peace and the changes which have been made by the
Liberal party in the legislation of the country. (Cheers.) Now, I will tell you a Uttle anecdote
about this which, I think, will interest you. I have been reading lately a great number of letters
which were addressed to me by my dear friend Mr. Cobden during our long friendship ; and I
have read also a journal consisting of memoranda narrating the circumstances which took place
in Paris when he was there negotiating the commercial treaty with France. Well, now, he had
to try to persuade the Emperor Napoleon to follow the example of this country with regard to a
reduction of import duties and the establishment of something like freedom of trade. He told
the Emperor how great the benefits had been of the policy of Sir Robert Peel, and how great was
the regard and the reverence felt for the name of Sir Robert Peel. (Cheers.) The Emperor said
he should be charmed and flattered if he could think it possible that he could do things of that
kind so beneficial for his country, but, he added, " It is difficult in France — in England you make
reforms, in France we make revolutions." Now, observe, the Emperor was a man who had Uved
in this country for years, who had watched the working of public opinion and of our institutions
from the retirement of his exUe, and afterwards for nearly twenty years had observed them from
the lofty stage of an imperial throne. Aud that was his judgment, that was the statement which
he made to one of the foremost Englishmen, representing much of English opinion, and sanctioned
by the English Government to negotiate with him the great treaty of commerce ; but I beUeve
there is not a thoughtful statesman in any civilised country in the world who would not join with
the Emperor in expressing his admiration of the mauner in which the people of this country, for
the last forty years, have worked out such beneficial reforms in legislation. Our own experience
brings us to the same conclusion. These men are in error who tell you that nothing has been' done,
and that aU remains to be done. These men are not less in error who tell you that what has been done

THE CONQUESTS OF FREEDOM. 125
is evil, and that it is evil to do any more. What you shoidd do is to act on the principles and the rules
of the past years, stiU advancing in favour of questions which the public has thoroughly discussed,
which it thoroughly comprehends, and which Parliament can honestly and conscientiously put into
law. Looking back these forty years I feel some sense of content, but it does not in the least lessen,
it rather adds to. and strengthens my hope for the future. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) The history
of the last forty years in this country — judge it fairly, and speak of its legislation— is mainly the
history of the conquests of freedom. It will be a gralid volume that tells the story. Tour name
and mine, if I mistake not, wiU be found in some of its pages. (Hear, hear.) For me the final
chapter is now writing. It may be already written ('• No.") But for you, this great constituency,
you have a perpetual youth and a perpetual future. I pray Heaven that in the years to come, and
when my voice is hushed, you may be granted strength, and moderation, and wisdom to influence
the councils of your country by righteous means to none other than noble and righteous ends."
(Great cheering.)
Mr. E. W Dale, in seconding the vote of thanks to Mr. Ambrose
Biggs, the Mayor, for presiding, expressed the opinion —
"That the vast assembly rejoiced in Mr. Bright appearing amongst them that night —
(hear, hear, and cheers) — and that he appeared with all his old force ; his eye was not yet
dim, and his natural force was not abated. He spoke with the old courage, the old clearness,
and the old enthusiasm. It was not necessary that he should appear before them that evening
in order that he might be regarded with unfaltering and unqualified confidence by his
constituents. They had the most perfect trust in him before he came, and that trust was
confirmed by aU they had Ustened to. He had won himself a lasting name in the history of
the empire — (hear, hear)— and he had secured a place for ever in the hearts of his countrymen.
He had contributed great genius to the service of great principles, and had rendered the
nation most glorious and enduring services. (Loud cheers.) During former years he had to
pass through tempest and hurricane of slander and contumely ; but they all rejoiced that now
even those who once mistrusted him, and still opposed his policy, recognised the integrity of
the man and aU the magnificent genius that had animated him. They might say that his
name would go down to the ages that were coming as the name of a faithful patriot, and an
honest man, for that was a higher title still.
' When heroes, statesmen, in the dust repose,
Their sons should Mush their fathers were his foes.' "
This speech of Mr. Bright's was telegraphed the same evening to
London, Inverness, Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cork,
Belfast, Dublin, Darlington, Newcastle, Hull, Bristol, Cardiff, Plymouth,
Sheffield, Bradford, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and Exeter, and
appeared in the first impressions of the next morning. Besides the
verbatim reports of the speech, many newspapers had long descriptive
accounts of the scene in Bingley Hall telegraphed. Birmingham com
municated direct with no less than thirty-two large towns, which in
their turn transmitted the speech to other towns. The separate reports
sent from Birmingham to various parts of the country contained more

126 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
than 160,000 words — i.e., more than eighty columns of The Times
newspaper. On no recent occasion had there been so great a demand
for a full report of a speech made in public.
Mr. Bright, during his stay in Birmingham, was the guest of Mr.
Charles Sturge, at Edgbaston, and on the 23rd of October he received
deputations from the Birmingham Grocers' Mutual Protection Society,
who complained of the operations of the new Adulteration Act. A few
gentlemen representing the Midland Counties Electoral Union next
sought his influence in favour of repealing the Contagious Diseases Act ;
and later on in the day he drove to the Arts Club in New Street, where
he had luncheon with many members of the League and the Liberal
Association, and spent some hours in pleasant social intercourse with
a select circle of friends.
In reply to a letter in The Times on the Education Act, signed
" Amicus Veritatis," Mr. Bright wrote, while at home at Eochdale,
on the 27th of October :—
" My recoUection of what took place in regard to the education question just before I was
withdrawn from the Cabinet is this —the only document which I can recollect to have received
and read is the draft biU of the date January 22, 1870, of which I think it is but fair to say
that my impression at the time was rather favourable than otherwise. I was at that period —
I mean in the fortnight preceding that breakdown of my health — not able te give attention
to it, being harassed with the Irish Land Bill, and especially with the clauses which had been
proposed to facilitate the purchase of farms by the tenantry, and by the feebleness which I
felt to be increasing upon me. I do not remember any discussion as to the principles or
details of the biU ; but I have some recoUection of a conversation as to whether it was desirable
to proceed with the bill. To me it seemed that the Land BiU was enough for the session.
I think, after reading the letter of your correspondent, I must be, to some exteut, mistaken as
to what took place at the end of 1869, and in January, 1870 ; but what I have said at Birming
ham and now is precisely what I remember. But as to the changes and concessions made
during the session of 1870, which alone I seriously condemn, I knew nothing of them for many
months after they were settled, and, of course, cannot accept any responsibility in connection
with them. But for them, the 25th clause would have given no offence, for its action would
only have been temporary. Nonconformists would have been patient while the schools were
graduaUy being brought under the control of School Boards. If, however, I were responsible
for those changes and concessions. I hope, after the experience of three years, I shoidd have
been wUling to confess my error, and to have united with those who are more concerned for
education than for sect in au attempt to create harmony where now only discord prevails."
His health was not injured by his lengthy speech at Birmingham,
and a few days after he accompanied Mrs. Bright to Llandudno. On the

THE DRINK QUESTION. 127
2nd of November he was at home at Eochdale, and answered an inquiry
from Mr. G. W. Saunders, of Stockton-on-Tees, as to the meaning of his
term of " free land."
" It means," said he, " the abolition of the law of primogeniture, and tho limitation of
the system of entails and settlements, so that ' life interests ' may be for the most part got rid of.
and a real ownership substituted for them. It means also that it shaU be as easy to buy or sell
land as to buy or sell a ship, or at least as easy as it is in Australia and in many or in all
the States of the American Union. It means that no legal encouragement shall be given
to great estates and great farms, and that the natural forces of accumulation and dispersion shall
have free play, as they have with regard to ships, and shares, and machinery, and stock in trade,
and money. It means, too, that while the lawyer sliall be well paid for his work, unnecessary
work shall not be made for him, involving an enormous tax on all transactions in connection with
the purchase and sale of lands and houses. A thorough reform iu this matter would complete,
with regard to land, the great work accomplished by the Anti-Corn-Law League iii 1846. It
would give an endless renown to the Minister who made it, and would bless to an incalculable
extent all classes connected with and dependent on honest industry."
A Liverpool working man described, in a letter he forwarded to Mr.
Bright, the evils produced by the drinking system in Liverpool, and
asked him to lend his aid in obtaining for every householder a direct
personal voice or vote on spirit vaults and beershops. In reply Mr.
Bright stated that the evils described seemed too vast for any known
remedy, and he knew not who had courage to attempt to deal with
them. He could not support the Permissive Bill, for reasons he had
given in the House of Commons ; nor did he approve of the existing
licensing system, for the magistrates were not the best authority to
determine the number of houses, or to whom licences should be
granted. The work would be much better and more justly done,
he thought, by the Town Council, who were the direct representa
tives of the ratepayers, subject to such limits as to the granting or
refusing of licences as Parliament might determine. He was in favour
of adding to the authority and dignity of municipal governments, and
would have been glad if the management of elementary schools had been
placed in their hands. In the way they were moving then, they would
have little to do but fight elections, which were but necessary evils.
Parliamentary elections, municipal elections, and School Board elections,
he thought were enough, without adding Permissive Bill contests as

128 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
often as fluctuating public opinion might demand them. He had no
objection to public opinion having fair play, but wished it to act through
a recognised constitutional channel.
Another clergyman made himself conspicuous by slandering Mr.
Bright at a Conservative banquet at Hyde, in the beginning of December,
for he charged the distinguished member for Birmingham with calling
the poor working men of England the residuum of the population. Mr.
James Thornley, of Hyde, forwarded a report of the speech to Mi-
Bright, who, in reply, wrote : —
" Dear Sir, — I thank you for sending me a copy of the Hyde and Denton Chronicle of
Saturday last, where I find a passage in the speech of tho Rev. A. Reed, of St. George's, Hyde,
to which you have called my attention. I need hardly teU yon that the statement of this
slanderous clergyman is false ; and that if he is not a singularly ignorant person he might know
it to be false. If I had applied the word ' residuum ' to the working men of England — if I
had deemed or called them ' the dregs of the population,' shoidd I have given much time
and labour and many years of my life to procure for them the right to live by the free exchange
of their industry, and the right to vote, that they might share in the government of their country p
I do not remember the time when, or the speech in which. I used the word ' residuum,' or I would
refer you to a passage. Tou would at once see how utterly unjust and false is the construction
which Mr. Reed had put upon it. I do not know what Mr. Reed is in his pidpit, but I would
advise him to stay there, where he cannot be contradicted. On the platform he is — what is
not uncommon in the hot partisan priest — ignorant and scurrilous, and a guide whom no sensible
man would wish to foUow. His congregation should pray for him."
The extract from Mr. Bright's speech from which the rev. gentleman
professed to quote is very different from Mr. Eeed's representation, and
shows how mean was the attempt to mislead the public, and stigmatise
Mr. Bright with being unfriendly to the working classes, which is so
palpable a contradiction to his whole life, for his greatest speeches have
been made when he has been pleading the cause of the poor, or denoun
cing the wrongdoer. The following is a correct extract from Mr. Bright's
speech, delivered on the 26th of March, 1867, which was made on the
second reading of Mr. Disraeli's Eeform Bill : —
'¦At this moment, in all or nearly all our burghs, as many of us know sometimes to our
sorrow, there is a small class which it would be much better for themselves if they were
not enfranchised, because they have no independence whatever ; and it would be much better for
the constituency also that they should be excluded, and there is no class so much interested
in having that small class excluded as the intelligent and honest working men. I caU this class
the residuum, which there is in almost every constituency, of almost hopeless poverty and
dependence."

CHAPTEE XLV.
THE CONSERVATIVES IN OFFIOE,
Past Legislation— The Conservative Party in Power — Temperance Legislation— At Bingley
Hall— The Clerical Title of Reverend — The Cause of the Defeat of the Liberals— The
Eastern Question— Speeches on the Burials Bill— Women's Disabilities Removal Bill-
Condemnation of the Foreign Policy of the Government— The Legislation of the last
Forty Tears— At Bradford and Birmingham— The Opening of the Manchester Town HaU.
N the 26th of January, 1874, Parliament was dissolved, and
the election proceeded without any delay. Messrs. Bright,
Dixon, and Muntz were elected without opposition on the
30th of January. Next day Mr. Bright addressed his con
stituents, remarking : —
"As you stand by the grave of the dead ParUament, I am sure, whether you speak its
funeral oration or write its epitaph, you will be willing to say that it is one of the best and
the noblest of the Parliaments whose doings have made the story of English history during many
centuries past. (This observation was received with loud applause ; and the speaker, eliciting in
turn the cheers and laughter of his audience, continued as follows:) But our opponents do not
agree with us; they are an unhappy party. Whether in or out, they seem to me alike
unfortunate. I have watched their agonies for thirty years. During that time, according to them,
the constitution has received some scores of serious wounds, and several of those wounds, though
it is curious to say so, have been pronounced fatal. They say that we— that is, the Liberal party
— lave disturbed classes and interests unnecessarily, that we have harassed almost aU sorts of
people, and have made ourselves very unpopular thereby. I doubt not that if they had been in
the WUderness, they would have condemned the Ten Commandments as a harassing piece of
legislation, though it does happen that we have the evidence of more than thirty centuries to the
wisdom and usefulness of those Commandments . Well, I plead guilty to the charge that we have
disturbed a good many classes and a good many interests ; but then, in pleading that I offer as
the justification that in no single case have we injured a class or interest, and in every case we have
greatly benefited the country. . . . But the reformed ParUament went on with these disturbances.
The people of England heard the wail of anguish from the West Indian colonies ; every breeze
from the West brought with it the sound of the torture and the sufferings of nearly a miUion of the
popidation. And the Liberal party— for it was they who did it— they not only heard this, but
they resolved to abate the evil, and they did it in a manner by which they offered, what I will
caU lavish justice and consideration to the planters, at the same time they extended perfect and
complete mercy to the slave. And by-and-by there came up another great question. FaiUng
harvests, and failing trade, and a suffering people, created a combination to abolish the hated system
58

130 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
of Protection. Trade was strangled, the poor were stricken with famine. And then we disturbed
lords, dukes, and squires, aud farmers, and, I am sorry to say, not a few clergymen, who were dis
tressed and harassed to an alarming extent. One duke, if I recollect aright, said that the country
would not be worth living in, and that they should go abroad. But a Sussex peasant, not a distant
neighbour, I suspect, of the duke, asked, ' They bean't going to take the land wi' 'em, be they P ' and
the duke, as you know, did not go abroad. He remained to the end of his life as much attached
as ever to his ancestral acres, and now doubtlessly he sleeps tranquilly in that small portion of his
vast estates which is enough finally for the great duke as for the peasant. WeU, but the dukes were
not all. The farmers thought they were injured, and Mr. Chowler (you recoUect Mr. Chowler ?) said
they had more horses than anybody else, and knew how to ride 'em, and they would rather ride down
upon Manchester than upon Paris; but, fortunately for the industrious, unwalled, and undefended
town, Mr. Chowler relented, and Manchester was spared. But five-and-twenty years have passed
since that disturbance, and the harassing of these great events, and where are we now P Every duke
and lord, and squire and parson, and peasant and manufacturer, and merchant and artisan, and
labourer and miner, and man and woman of every class in this country, is happier and more content
by that disturbance. Out of the five-and-twenty years that are past, I suppose the whole food of
the people of this country for about ten years has been imported from abroad. Trade has extended
to fourfold its then amount, work is far more plentiful and more steady, as you aU know. Wages
are from twenty to fifty per cent, higher throughout the country, and the farm-labourer — a writer
in the Saturday Review not long ago said that if the farm-labourer is a son of agriculture, he is
a disinherited chUd — the farm-labourer, abject and suffering and neglected, is now finding that
the beneficent shower is even descending upon him. I have heard Mr. Disraeli in the House of
Commons, when claiming from Parliament compensation from the land for the aboUtion of the
Corn Laws, I have heard him say that he would rest his whole case upon the condition — that is,
upon the future condition — of the agricultural labourer. WeU, I met about a year ago a man doing
some work for my firm under contract ; he was looking rather weakly and UI, and I entered into
conversation with him, and asked him where he came from. He said he was just recovering from
an illness of many weeks ; that he had only just returned to his work ; that he was a native of
the county of Buckingham — Mr. Disraeli's own county. He said that when he was a lad, and that
was about thirty years ago, his father went to work regularly for the wages of seven shiUings a
week, and he said further that ' when I left Buckinghamshire wages had got up to eleven shillings,
and,' he says, ' I have heard lately that they are at fourteen shiUings.' Therefore I say that the
disturbance that has set free the industry of this country, which doubled the wages of the humble
labourers amongst whom Mr. Disraeli moves when he is at his country home — that this disturbance
is not to be condemned, but is one of those great things for which we may take credit, and in
which we may glory. Now if there were nobody to speak but myself, and I were able to do it, I
might go through I know not how many cases of the same kind. One or two I will refer to.
Take the case of the shipping interest for example. The great shipowners were terrified because
the Navigation Laws were to be repealed, and it was said that your mercantile navy would rot in
your harbours, and your imperial navy would have no support. What happened ? But that was
not all that was said. I am not sure that I did not once before tell you of the observations of a
saUorto me upon the subject. He had come down with two or three hundred to the House of
Commons to bring a petition to the House, praying them not to abolish the Navigation Laws. I
walked up Parliament Street with this procession, and I entered into conversation with one of these
simple-minded sailors. I asked him what he had been about, and he said that he had been down
to the House of Commons ; they had taken a very great petition against the repeal of these Navi
gation Laws. I said to him, ' What harm will it do to you P ' and he said, ' I do not know much
about it myself, but they tell us that if the Navigation Laws are repealed we shaU all of us never
get anything to eat again but black bread, Uke them Norwegians.' That was the absurdity which

THE CONSERVATIVES RETURNED TO POWER. 131
—I wUl not mention names — shipowners and active men of that agitation taught these poor
sailors, who reaUy, as you know, knew nothing about it. But the result of the abolition of the
Navigation Laws, and the establishment of Free Trade, has been a prosperity absolutely incon
ceivable before by the shipping interests, in the vastness of your mercantile marine, in the mag
nificence of your ships. Now, there is not a sea, there is not a bay, there is not a harbour, there
is not a part of the watery surface of the globe in which your magnificent merchant ships are not
saUing. And no doubt the shipping interests would be very sorry to go back to the system which
we attacked, and which they upheld. ... It was my expectation within the last year, that
when there came this dissolution — and it was not expected so soon — it was my expectation that I
should have at that time to write, not an address offering myself as a candidate, but an address of
fareweU and final thanks. I did not think it was likely that I should ever again be able to take
my place upon this platform to address you thus, or to speak in the House of Commons. But I
could not at this moment; — it was impossible at this juncture that I could take any other course
than that which I have taken in offering myself again to you, if you chose to elect me. And
though I am not strong to labour as I have been in the past years, yet stiU possibly I may do
something to promote the great interests of our country and to guard the precious fruits of the
many victories that we have won." (Cheers.)
The election throughout the land resulted in favour of the Con
servative party, for they had a majority of about fifty. Mr. Gladstone
tendered his resignation on the 17th of February, and Mr. Disraeli
became Premier; an uneventful year followed, remarkable only for the
decline of trade.
Mr. Bright was present at the annual Convocation of the Society of
Friends on the 22nd of May, when a discussion arose with regard to
temperance and temperance legislation. The position Mr. Bright took
on this question differed very much from that taken by many of his
friends. He found that they were always crying to Parliament for the
cure of this great eATil, and the proposition which had been placed before
them showed that they adhered to that course.
" They asked for things to be done," Mr. Bright said, " which they knew, and all knew, at that
time, with the state of pubUc opinion, were impossible to be done. The asking for these things
in itself revealed an amount of simpUcity which could not be understood by him. It was for
ParUament to make such changes, as, for instance, the shutting up of public-houses when decent
and weU-behaved people would be indoors and abed, to preserve order in the streets. This
ParUament would do aU that was necessary for the public good, and for the proper adnunistra-
tion of police regulations. If aU these things were done, and if the public-houses were closed on
Sundays; if the hours of sale were shortened; if licences were taken from the grocers, the
amount of drinking, which was so absolutely appalling', would be but little lessened, and it would
almost make no difference to the great question. For instance, in Scotland, at a place he visited
every year, and where he was staying only six weeks previously, when walking on a Sunday down
one of the most beautiful of glens, where nature seemed to have placed its loveliest scenes, and
where one might indeed think there were no vices to be found, yet from the only public-house for

132 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
many miles, he saw some men reel drunk from the whiskey supplied to them. What legislation
could do in the present state of public opinion was pretty nearly nothing. He met a minister of
the Established Church of Scotland who brought out whiskey, and asked him to drink. He told
him that he was surprised that he did so, when the minister replied that he objected, as he
(Mr. Bright) did, but were he to refuse to- offer it to his friends, he would be stigmatised as
mean and unsocial. As long as this state of things existed, Parliament need not, and ought not,
to do anything further than was. just necessary to preserve order in the streets. Those who
advocated these changes were always pointing to the United States ; but surely in the State of
Ohio, from whence an epistle had been read, the opinion prevalent amongst the population there
had rendered legislation possible — an opinion very different from the opinion in England,
because there public opinion was favourable to it, and legislation followed as a matter of course.
If Parliament were to pass such laws as those proposed by many of the friends of temperance
legislation, the very next week they would have to repeal them, and the whole city of London
would be in riot, revolt, and insurrection. Against public opinion Parliament could have no
power more than the meanest citizen. He had during many years been urged to take these
questions under his notice, and he had been induced' to look very carefuUy to what was the mode
in which this evil could be touched. He believed it could never be touched unless the thoughtful,
serious men, beginning with the ministers of the Gospel, and all those who went to places of
worship for other reasons than fashion, should regard the question of temperance as' one of the
' great evils they have to overcome. If the ministers in the churches would drink, a good many
of their congregation woidd favour this evil of intemperance in consequence. There was among
the Northern States of America a great amount of feeUng on behalf of the temperance question.
Tet their attempts had to a very large degree failed, because there was a large number of people
outside this opinion of which he had spoken. He had come to the conclusion that unless the
religious portion of the country would take up this question, there was no hope for it whatever.
Lately, in Convocation they had discussed this question. In Scotland it had been discussed. A
large body of Independent ministers had taken it up. Among the Wesleyan body it had been
taken up. But until all ministers took it up, he did not think it possible to touch it at aU. He
believed that it would be an advantage which no words in our language would be at all adequate
to describe, if those who tried to do anything for their feUows would try to bring about a current
of national opinion in favour of the abstinence from a source of so much evil. He thought the
yearly meeting of the Friends should have nothing to do with the question of legislation. Their
own business was in their own homes, to endeavour to change the course of opinion ; and if the
Society of Friends united with other good men, he beUeved that there were no words which
could describe, and no mind which could imagine, what good woidd result from their united
efforts." In a letter to a friend at Bradford, a few months later, Mr. Bright
pointed out that at that time a few persons clamoured for legislation on
the temperance movement when the country was not prepared for it.
The consequence of this was failure, there being much contention and no
result. "The friends of temperance," he added, "should leave Parliament, and form opinion, trusting
that when opinion is formed, whatsoever is judicious in legislation wiU naturaUy and easily
f oUow. In a great reform of this kind Parliament can do Uttle ; but that portion of our people
which cares for religion can do much — it can, indeed, do all. Tbe ministers of religion and the

The Right Hon. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN M.P.

AMONGST HIS CONSTITUENTS. 133
midtitudes of good men and women who listen to them from week to week, can make all the
reform you seek. Without their zeal and co-operation, it is impossible, and a dream."
In the early part of September, Mr. and Mrs. Bright visited South
Wales, and about twenty years had elapsed since he sojourned there
previously. On the 10th of the month he drove from Cardiff to Caer
philly, and examined its ruined castle. Subsequently he inspected the
Cardiff docks and splendid basin that had been constructed by the Marquis
of Bute. The inhabitants of Birmingham gave Mr. Bright a hearty reception
at their annual meeting, which was held in Bingley HaU on the evening
of the 25th of January, 1875. The number of persons present was
computed at 15,000, and many had travelled long distances to listen to
Mr. Bright, who appeared in exceUent health, after his travels during
the past year for restoring his strength ; but who could number the larger
circle that waited throughout the kingdom to receive the suggestions or
his wisdom and counsel on the most important topics of the day ?
Mr. Alderman Joseph Chamberlain presided, and the Mayoress occu
pied a seat on the vast platform, as well as Mrs. Bright, Mr. and Mrs.
Dixon, Mr. Muntz, M.P., Mr. J. S. Wright, Mr. W. L. Bright, Pro
fessor Eawcett, M.P., Mr. H. Harrison, M.P., Mr. J. Fletcher, M.P.,
Mr. A. Brogden, M.P., Mr. M. A. Bass, M.P., Mr. E. M. Carter, M.P.,
Mr. H. Eichards, M.P., Mr. A. W. Peel, M.P., Mr. T. E. HUl, M.P., Mr.
George Dawson, Mr. E. W. Dale, Mrs. Eogers, Miss Sturge, Mr. A.
IUingworth, and Mr. H. IlUngworth. Mr. J. S. Wright, in seconding
a vote of confidence in their three representatives, on behalf of the
immense gathering, remarked that their senior member had served them
weU for eighteen years. His name had been linked with them for a
great part of the generation during the most memorable period, and
they would together go down to history. There never existed a con
stituency having greater affinity with their representatives. They had
rejoiced with him when he had spoken on their behalf in his strength
in the House of Commons ; they had mourned when he had been laid
aside ; but they had always felt that, in health or sickness, John
Bright was member for Birmingham, and when the ties that had bound

134 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
them together for so long a period were severed, they must be severed
by his own hand. (Cheers.) Mr. Bright then addressed the gathering
as follows : —
"It has been said very often within the last year that the people — not the people of
Birmingham, but the people of the United Kingdom — were a little tired of the legislature and
of great measures, and that they preferred, at least for a time, to have rest and quiet. If too
much has been done, and if nothing more was to be done, there has been a wonderful consistency
in the action of the constituencies, because they have discovered twelve gentlemen whom they
have placed on the Treasury Bench — whose special recommendation is that they never did any
thing — or at least if they attempted to do anything, it was merely to prevent their opponents
from doing something. . . . Last July I was spending some time in the extreme north, on
the shores of the Pentland Frith. It was a much pleasanter atmosphere than that of the
House of Commons. But I was obUged to pick up my information from the papers that came
down twice, or at most three times, in the week. I pictured to myself what must be going on in
Westminster, and it was a surprising picture. There was the Duke of Richmond — a solemn
Scotch proprietor, though not a Scotchman — a man, I should say, incapable of recklessness and
enthusiasm. There was the Lord Chancellor, with his wig on, and his wisdom under it, importing,
as I thought, some Orange and North of Ireland notions into the affairs of the EstabUshed
Church. I saw these two in one House, and the Prime Minister in another, engaged in
applying a match to every bit of gunpowder they found in their way. (Laughter.) . . . Tou
recoUect that a short time ago a bishop made an exhibition of himself, not favourable, I should say,
in connection with the question, whether a respectable and worthy Wesleyan minister should have
his name on a tombstone with the word ' reverend' before it. I told you that I do not speak
strongly, and I hope I never speak evil of dignitaries ; but my learned friend, Sir WUliam Harcourt,
in his public speech, alluding, I suppose, to this bishop, speaks of him as a learned simpleton. Now
I would not use such language ; I think what the bishop did appears to me almost naturaUy the
outcome of his position and the pretensions of his order. He calls himself, or allows himself to
be caUed, the right reverend father, and yet, as for this Wesleyan minister, though he assumes to
be caUed so, he shall not have the word ' reverend ' prefixed to his name on any tombstone in any
churchyard over which he has control. Tou read now and then some of those beautiful epistles
that are found in the New Testament. Tou wiU find that St. Peter, in speaking of St. Paul,
speaks of him as ' our beloved brother Paul.' He never once, to my knowledge, uses the term,
' right reverend father.' Now, if the bishops — if this very bishop, who, being learned, must know
something, we may^hope, of the Epistles, if he were moved by the same spirit by which Peter and
Paul were moved, is it not reasonable to think that he would not, at least, object to give this
Wesleyan minister any title which he thought it proper to assume for himself P But I take this
to be the case — I believe no harm of the bishop ; I know nothing of him — bishops are generaUy,
so far as I believe, exceUent men, and are generally anxious to do their duty in the best way that
is open to them — but it is an instance of that kind of arrogance which comes from the sacerdotal
spirit within the Church. It is a form of presumption which is born of privilege, that which
does not come from the pride of man, or from his dislike for his fellow-man, but from the un
fortunate circumstances in which he is placed, and which breathe into him a mind and spirit, so
far as I can judge, which is wholly contrary to the mind and spirit that was in the Apostle from
whom I quoted. It is not to be wondered at, when, as one of your poets says, your priests assume
to be ' sole vendors of the lore that works salvation ' — it is not to be wondered at that, with these
privileges, with these endowments, these preferments, this constantly proclaimed superiority; — it
is not unreasonable to expect that such things as this should happen, and that they should despise

TEMPERANCE. 135
men — humble and hard-working men — whose labours have been abunduntly blessed by Heaven,
but who seem to intrude into their privileged field. . . Our position is that all thoughtful
people should consider this subject. If they believe that the Church is not carrying them in the
direction of Rome ; if they believe that it is a sound Protestant institution ; if they believe it
makes the people religious — well, then, let them preserve the Church ; but if they come to a
different conclusion, surely the people and the ParUament are at liberty to make whatever changes
they may think proper. This Church Defence Association reminds me of another meeting held
the other day, with which Birmingham was connected. There was a meeting of the Ucensed
victuaUers in Salford; and a Birmingham man, an old friend of mine, if I may say so, because I
have often had the pleasure of seeing him on deputations, I mean Mr. Wadham, was the chair
man of the meeting. But I find that Mr. Wadham and his friends take exactly the same sort of
course that Lord Dartmouth and his friends take. Tbey are very petulant, they are bad-tempered,
and they are apt to caU names. They say that the temperance people want to ruin aU the
pnbUcans, and it is a dreadful thing that some should propose — which is perhaps, the next
probable assault — that public-houses should be shut up on a Sunday. Surely every sensible man
knows, and a great number of publicans know, that the persons in England who would be most
benefited by closing public-houses on Sundays are the publicans and their families. There are two
bodies — Lord Dartmouth and his friends here, and Mr. Wadham and his friends, in possession
each of them of a monopoly — the one teaches morals and religion, about which they cannot agree;
and the other yet have the undisputed, and the almost uncontrolled, right to dispense to the people
as much as they Uke of those articles which I have described before as promoting disorder, and
crime, and madness, to a very great extent. I am not assailing the Church ; I admit much that
may be said in its favour ; I have admitted, and I assert, that there are thousands of excellent
men who are at work in the various parishes of England as ministers of the Church ; but then
there would be thousands of exceUent men if it were not an Act of Parliament Church ; and I
beUeve that every one of those good men would do just as much good if he was a clergyman of a
free church as he can possibly do in his present position of being connected with the State. I do
not recommend this meeting, or any constituency, that they should pledge their candidates to vote
for the aboUtion of the Established Church. I do not in the least degree recommend or approve of
any body of men who complain that a Parliamentary or party leader is chosen who has not formed
the same opinion that I have upon this question. This is a question which has not come near the
front yet. It is one of the gravest questions which a people has ever had to consider. It is far
more important and far more difficult than the question of the extension of the suffrage, or even
of the redistribution of seats. It is a question that goes down deep into the hearts of hundreds
of thousands of good men and women in this country, and you cannot by a sudden wrench make
a great alteration of this kind. What you have to do is to discuss it, Uke intelligent and Christian
men, with fairness to the Church, with fairness to its ministers, with the sole object of doing what
you believe to be good te your country and to the religion which the country professes. I have
said nothing to-night about a point to which our chairman referred — the condition of the Liberal
party. I have found in my more than thirty years' experience, that a political party somehow or
other gathers itself up when it is wanted. And, therefore, I shall not go into a discussion of the
present position of the Liberal party — conscious as I am that at least we of that party have
succeeded so far in implanting the living seeds of a wise and just policy in the minds of the
people of England, and I believe there is no other party in the country who can uproot that work
which we have done. I have said nothing, and it is not my intention to say more than one
sentence with regard to a fact which startled and pained many throughout the kingdom during the
last two or three weeks. I refer to the abandonment by Mr. Gladstone of the leadership of the
Liberal party. They who have seen him for many years in the House of Commons as I have —
they who have sat with him, and seen him in the counsels of the Cabinet — they only are able

136 LIFE AND TI2IES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
justly to estimate the magnitude of the loss which the House of Commons and the country have
sustained by his withdrawal. I wUl say nothing in answer to the ungenerous things that have
been said of him. Of this I am weU aware, that Mr. Gladstone, like an old and noble Roman,
can be content with deserving the praises of his country, even though some of his countrymen
should deny them to him. In conclusion, then, I am not asking you, or your constituencies, or
any party, or section of a party, to plunge into a violent agitation for the overthrow of the
Established Church of England. I think it would be a great calamity indeed that a change like
that should come through violent hatred and angry discussion, that it should be accompUshed by
a tempest which would be nothing but the turmoil of a great revolution. I ask you only to con
sider it, and I appeal not to you who may be Nonconformists, or who may not care about the
Church, but I appeal to those who do care about it, who do care as they say they do for
Protestantism and religion. I have offered to you to-night my humble contribution to the dis
cussion of the greatest question of our time. If I am able to form any just judgment upon it,
I should say it will be a great day for freedom in tins country, and for Protestantism and for
Christianity, when we shall witness the fuU enfranchisement of the Church within the realms of
England." In moving a vote of thanks to Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, the Mayor,
for presiding, Mr. Bright informed the vast gathering —
" That he came to their meeting suffering with a cold and hoarseness ; that he scarcely had
been out-of-doors untU that morning for nearly three weeks ; and that only three days pre
viously he meditated writing to Mr. Wright to say that he should be obliged to absent himself
from their meeting. However, badly as his voice for a. time had served him, he was now
glad that he had attended the meeting. He had seen, perhaps, the most magnificent public
meeting that in his life of thirty or forty years of attending public meetings he had ever
seen under any roof — a meeting which ought even to give pleasure to those who did not agree
with them. (Laughter.) He meant what he said, because it was worth something in a country
that they could hold vast meetings like the one assembled, and discuss both sides and maintain
perfect harmony, and go away with such an addition to their information as might be com
municated by the speakers."
Mr. Bright was one of the invited guests to a conversazione which
was got up by the Birmingham Liberal Association in their Town Hall
on the 28th of January, 1875, and in commenting on some of the causes
of the defeat of the Liberals at the late general election, said : —
" Amongst the many thousands of publicans there are a great number of respectable and
honourable men ; and there are many more than are supposed to be by those who sometimes too
fiercely assaU them. But there is another and lower class of whom one can scarcely say this, and
I am afraid that, as in many other things, so in this combination of the publicans against the
public interest, the head of the great body is moved by the tail. (Laughter.) It is easy to see
how the publicans influence an election. The publican has his own vote, and he has a number of
persons not remarkable for sobriety — many of them not remarkable for their inteUigence, or
their anxiety to promote the public interest, who frequent his bar- parlour aud spend then- evenings
round his comfortable fire. With these it is easy — and no doubt this has been done to a great
extent — to set influence at work on behalf of the objects of the publican. There are abundant

CAUSES OF THE LIBERAL DEFEAT. 137
cases in which what, in a more open manner, might be called a bribe might be given, and
the publican not only brings his own vote to the poU, but might bring three, or six, or in some
cases a dozen, to give their votes with him, and with him, as I beUeve (and as he would believe if
he did not put his own interest against it), in opposition to the true interests of the country. I do
not know how many — nobody knows how many — Parliamentary votes have been affected by this ;
but I have no doubt that a very considerable portion of the majority obtained by the present
Government was directly obtained from that cause. Then I come to another cause of defeat
which is one of a whoUy different character, aud that is the divisions which existed — the absolutely
chUdish poUcy that was pursued — in many parts of the country, in many constitueucies, by
sections or fragments of the Liberal party. Half a dozen men, or a dozen, or twenty, or fifty,
are possessed, not of one idea, but by one idea. They may have a very good object that they wish
for. There is no end to the good objects which people wish for that cannot be accompUshed by
the agitations and contentions of a year ; but these men come into a constituency, and argue in this
way : ' We wUl force the candidate — he may not be of our opinion, he may be as conscientious as
we are, and he has his opinion — but we wiU force the candidate to this particular vote, although
the constituency have never expressed their opinion in its favour ; but, nevertheless, he shall vote
with us, or we (this little section) wUl oppose him, and we will oppose him though our oppo
sition be fatal, not to him only, but fatal to the party with which we have always been associated,
or hurtful to the interests of the country, which may be a thousand times greater than the ideas
by which we are possessed, or even fatal to the object we have before us.' I wiU take the
temperance men, and a variety of other persons who in some places have acted in this way. I do
not want to stir up irritating matters more than is absolutely necessary, but I say such men are not
qualified to take any wise part in poUtics. If the making defeat absolutely certain were able to
forward their views, and to make their triumph, it would be some consolation ; but the silliness
of beUeving that it can forward their cause is even greater than the silliness of the mode by
which they attempt to do it. I know perfectly well, from being in the House of Commons all
these years, what is the sort of things members say, and what they do with regard to questions of this
nature. They never carry them to success. I know no question in my time that has been carried
by any such tactics, and so long as men are resolute and firm and honourable, and have any sort
of independence, you may rely upon it that no such measure wiU ever be carried by these tactics.
If you look over the boroughs of the country at the last election, you will find that at least a dozen
of them, possessing twenty-four or twenty-five votes, were lost by the mode of conduct which I
have been exposing and condemning ; and if you wiU suppose that the publicans, with a want of
patriotism shocking to think of, were the cause of losing an equal number of votes, you wiU find
whence comes nearly the whole of the majority of the present Government. Then there is
another great cause, as I think, of loss. In 1867 the election went with a great sweep all over the
country in favour of a Liberal policy and of the Liberal party. The new franchise had come into
operation for the first time, and the elections were so decided and so decisive that it was common
to hear men say, 'The Tories are done for ever ; here is a majority of a hundred or more. The
matter is so much decided now that really after all we need have no apprehension again that the
Liberal party wiU ever be in jeopardy.' They forgot then, and they forget now, what are the
abiding conditions, at least for the present and for some time to come, of politics in this
country. They forget the solid power that is always opposed to the Liberal party and to Liberal
principles. They forget that almost all the land of the country is in the hands of persons whose
interests are different from ours. They forget that the Church, which is established, as you know,
in every parish, is nearly always on the side of the Tory party ; and that wherever a new church
is built, be it in town or be it in country, be it in any county in England or Wales, you will find that
that Church is not a centre of poUtical light, but of political darkness, and from it there comes
no trace of anything that is found to be Liberal in representation or Parliamentary action, but

138 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
entirely on the contrary ; and the Church is now as certain to be the centre of the propagation of
Tory principles as the pubUc-house itself. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) In addition to this, you
haye another cause (which I am not about to complain of, because I believe it is in the nature of
things), that is, that some men become rich, and many become what is caUed very comfortably off,
and generally the more wealthy a man is, with a balance at his banker's and investments every
where, the more timid he becomes in all his political actions. WeU, then, with this timidity on
high, and unhappUy profound ignorance below, you may fancy, to a certain extent, what a vast
amount of solid resistance there is to any proposition for auy political progress ; and then you
should add to aU this that which I must mention, though one does not like to treat of it : the
enormous lying in which our opponents, from top to bottom of their organisation, throughout their
political speeches and throughout their press, indulged against Mr." Gladstone and his colleagues
during the whole time they were in office."
Mr. Gladstone, in the early part of January, retired from the leader
ship of the Liberal party, and on the 3rd of February a meeting of the
Liberal members of the House of Commons was held in the Library of
the Eeform Club to nominate a successor. Mr. Cowper-Temple first
proposed that Mr. John Bright should preside over the conference.
Mr. Dillwyn seconded this motion, which, upon being unanimously
passed, the senior member for Birmingham expressed the opinion —
" That the assembly were tolerably unanimous with regard to the things which they thought
ought to be achieved for the good of the nation, and he could not help thinking that it would
be a piece of great good fortune to them if they should show that they were also unanimous as
regarded the means by which they were to be carried out. (Loud cheers.) With respect to the
object of the meeting, he had only one observation to make, which was this — that although they
were there for the purpose of selecting a parliamentary leader, yet they knew and recognised
perfectly well, each for themselves, that they would not by so acting thereby impose fetters or
burdens upon themselves. A parUamentary leader, of course, was necessary, according to their
views of conducting poUtics. But each and aU of them reserved to themselves such individual
liberty as honourable men necessarily required. (Cheers.) They were ready to make all the
sacrifices which might be necessary for party unity, or which might be demanded from
honourable men, and which honourable men could make; but, as he said, a party leader was
essential. Without that general unity, the momentum of party would be destroyed ; its power
would be destroyed, and it would become, not a disciplined force for the carrying out of great
objects, but a mere mob for the purpose of ratifying the eccentricities and, he was sorry to
say, the vanity of individuals or of particular sections. (Loud cheers.) But while he hoped
that they should be able that day to show that they were unanimous about their leader, they
would also be able to show that there remained yet a great consoUdated Liberal party in
ParUament and in the country.'' (Cheers.)
Mr. Whitebread expressed in a resolution he moved the deep sense
of the great loss which the country had sustained in the retirement of
Mr. Gladstone from the leadership of the Liberal party. Mr. Fawcett

THE LEADERSHIP OF THE LIBERALS. 139
was the seconder of this resolution, which the meeting carried
unanimously. Mr. Charles Villiers moved that the Marquis of Hartington be
requested to undertake the leadership of the Liberal party in the
House of Commons. Mr. S. Morley, in seconding the resolution, felt
confident that it was no disparagement to any member of the party
when he said that it was not an easy task to select a gentleman qualified
to occupy the post of leader with such distinguished ability and such
pre-eminent lustre as Mr. Gladstone. The meeting was again unanimous
in the choice of leader.
Mr. Bright, in acknowledging a vote of thanks for presiding, frankly
expressed his entire and hearty concurrence in the judgment to which
the meeting had come.
" There was one Uttle objection which had been made here and there to the proposition that
had been carried, upon which he felt disposed to say a word. It had been said that the Marquis
of Hartington was a member of a powerful family, and that he was a kinsman of Earl
Granville. He thought that we in England had not yet quite come to foUow the custom which
prevaUed in one of the Italian Republics — he thought it was Florence. This custom was that
a man was obUged to disconnect himself from the noble class before he could accept any office
under the State. With respect to the Marquis of Harrington's personal connection with Earl
GranvUle, he did not know how near it was, but, at all events, he knew that it was a relation
ship which among poor people was very often forgotten. They must say this, however,
that this connection with Earl GranvUle had been of the very greatest advantage to the
Marquis of Hartington in his public career and party connection. He quite agreed with what
had been said by Mr. ViUiers — that the individual members of the party were often obUged
to fight great questions, as he and others did upon the Com Laws. He well remembered
the Corn Laws, and there were many present who also must do so, when half-a-dozen reso-
lnte members of the party at one time sat on one bench. But at the present moment it
ought also to be borne in mind that there was also there a young man who turned out to be
Earl GranvUle. The Earl had not been educated upon the question as they had been. He
was not pledged so distinctly to it as they had been ; but, notwithstanding that, he was proud
to say that Earl GranviUe always gave his vote in favour of Free Trade. (Cheers.) Lord
Frederick Cavendish had spoken of his brother in terms of good taste, which must commend
themselves to their approbation. He agreed with him in what he had stated. He also agreed
with what had been said— that it was a great compliment indeed to pay to any man to ask
him to become leader of the Liberal party. (Loud cheers.) But whUe he said that, he Uke
wise fuUy recognised this fact— that he coidd not conceive anything which was — and must
necessarUy be— a greater burden than that of holding the position of leader of so great a party.
The position of their party, if they looked round, was not one which affords altogether the
most pleasant prospect. But Lord Hartington, being so young a man, possessed great advan
tages, which would enable him more successfully to discharge the duties which they had
invited him to assume. He had plenty of courage, and moreover what in the north of England

140 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
was caUed hard-headedness. (Loud cheers.) He was a very sensible man, and only required
great occasions to bring out his great good sense. If there were any gentlemen present who
knew the sentiments of their late leader with respect to this question, he thought they would
agree with him when he said that what they had done would probably meet with his sympathy.
(Cheers.) He hoped that the Liberal party in time to come— and he hoped that time would not
be a remote time — would, under their new leader, accompUsh some great things for the interest
of the country, which things he trusted might fairly be put in competition with what had
been done by their late leader." (Loud cheers.)
The Marquis of Hartington, on making his first appearance as
leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons on the 5th of
February, was very warmly cheered, and appealed to the forbearance
and favourable consideration of the House in his new position.
Mr. Bright was present on the 23rd of February at the ceremony
of laying the foundation stone of a scientific coUege in Birmingham,
erected at the generous expense of Sir Josiah Mason, and in a few
well-chosen sentences he expressed the natural feelings of respect and
admiration for the venerable founder's wise and practical benevolence.
" In this country," said Mr. Bright in the course of his speech, " where there is so much
industry and great wealth, it is not by any means an uncommon thing that men should acquire
fortunes and amass wealth. We know the virtues or the quaUties which tend greatly, and even
lead, to this result. Industry, and skill, and invention, and produce, and economy are followed, in
many instances known to all of us, by the accumulation of great wealth. But the accumulation
of great wealth, whilst it is sometimes a blessing, at other times it is a curse. I think I have
known cases in which men's hearts have been narrowed, and their sympathies have been blighted,
and, as it were, withered and dried up. In the case that is specially before us to-day, it is
obvious that no such result has foUowed the accumulation of wealth. I doubt not at this moment
the heart of our venerable friend is as broad and open as ever it was, and that his sympathies
are as wide and full towards aU his feUow- creatures as they have ever been during the whole
course of his long and honourable career. Reference has been made to other institutions and other
benevolences besides that which has called us together to-day. Sir Josiah Mason has followed,
in one respect, the highest and greatest example that we have. He has foUowed the steps of
Him who has said — ' Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not,' for he has held
out his hand kindly te the friendless and the orphan ; and having, as he told us in his written
address a little ,time ago, not been blessed with chUdren of his own, has had the heart and the
sympathy to take as his own, encompassing in charity and love, hundreds, and if you look down
through generations, thousands of the friendless and helpless chUdren of this country. And now
look to another field for service not less remarkable and not less eminent. He knows that the
prosperity of the town has been buUt mainly upon science, and what science has done for your
industry and for your trade ; and he proposes, and has begun, the creation of a coUege, whose
efforts and results, standing here as we do to-day, at the birth of this new institution, maybe said
for generations together to be such as we are totaUy unable to measure. WeU, I think these are
great things to have done — very great thmgs to try and wish to do; and they are great
things when they come towards the end of a Ufe of honour aud industry. The great result of
the industry is now poured out with an open hand for the blessings of his feUow-countrymen."

HOME-RULE. 141
The Eev. Thaddeus O'Malley, of Dublin, the author of a Home-
Eule scheme, sent a copy of his book on the subject to Mr. Bright, who,
after perusing it, on the 25th of February wrote a reply, letting the
reverend gentleman know what he thought of his scheme and of the
rival plan of separation.
" The Mitchell plan is easy to understand," wrote Mr. Bright, " and if Ireland were
unanimous and strong enough it might be attempted, and might succeed. It is very simple,
and under the conditions I have mentioned is not, or would not be, impracticable. But the
conditions are wanting, and therefore there is this fatal objection to it — that it is impossible ;
and only men partly mad or wicked will urge Irishmen to attempt it. As to your federation
plan — the Home-Rule scheme, of which you are evidently proud to be thought the author — it is,
in my opinion, quite as impossible as the other, and I must say that it seems to be far more
absurd. To look at it for only a moment raises wonder that any man, or number of men, should
imagine or think seriously of such a scheme. How many Home Rulers — how many men of
that faith — are there in Ireland ? Certainly not more than a miUion. If I give you four
mUlions of the disaffected Home Rulers, Repealers, Irish Republicans, or other antagonists of
Great Britain — and this is more than you can fairly claim— they wUl give you only one miUion
of men, and of these not one-half have any knowledge of political or public affairs. And yet
you propose, in order to aUay the discontent of this part of your population, not only to make
a revolution in Ireland, but to do the same in England, Wales, and Scotland, In Great Britain
nobody wants two new Parliaments of Lords and Commons — nobody wants a third Imperial
ParUament; and yet you propose, with a chUdish sympathy and enthusiasm, to force upon
England, Wales, and Scotland these additional representative and legislative bodies, in order,
apparently, to justify or balance the creation or establishment of like arrangements in Ireland.
Surely so absurd and monstrous a proposition was never before heard of. Tou propose that
twenty millions in Great Britain shaU in a manner turn everything to which they are
accustomed, and with which in the main they are satisfied, upside down, in the hopeless attempt
thereby to allay the discontent of a portion of the people of Ireland, the said portion of your
people never having been able to make a clear statement of their grievances, and being, as you
must feel, totaUy unable to agree in any remedy for them. I do not enter into any explanation
of the detaUs of your Uttle book, or I might point out many inaccuracies into which you have
faUen. I confine myself in this reply to your letter to the main features of the two plans for
the regeneration of Ireland. I believe them both to be impossible, but your plan of Home Rule
seems to me eminently chUdish and absurd. I must ask you to forgive the plain speaking or
writing of this letter, but I am unwiUing to leave you in any doubt of my views, even after I
have read the little book you have been kind enough to send me. Since I have taken my part
in public Ufe, I have thought myself, and have intended to be, one of the best friends of
Leland, and I think now that I have never been more so than I am at this moment."
The poUtical calm of the House of Commons was disturbed by a
brisk little episode on the evening of the 26th of February, on the
unpromising subject of turnpikes. At that time there were a great many
turnpike trusts on the eve of expiring, and the burden of maintaining the
roads would fall on the parishes. Already the parishes, it was contended,

142 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
by Sir George Jenkinson, were overburdened, and the prospects of further
loads would become intolerable, and he suggested that the parishes ought
to be assisted out of the consolidated fund ; and one way of doing so, in
his opinion, would be for the Government to hand over to them the
carriage duty, which amounted to something like half a mUlion per
annum. Mr. Sclater-Booth, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on
behalf of the Government, blandly informed Sir George that they could
do nothing to remedy this grievance, and this led to the incident of the
evening. Mr. Bright's speech was short, but it was sharp, stinging,
sarcastic, and being deUvered with moderation of manner it produced
all the more effect. He taunted the Government with being in precisely
the same position as was Mr. Gladstone's Government when the latter
was defeated upon the question of local taxation. They had discovered
what the late Government had discovered — that it was impossible to vote
large sums of money out of the consolidated fund to purely local and
parish purposes. As long as they pursued the right course, he promised
his support, but he sarcastically reminded them that when Mr.
Gladstone's Government had adopted the selfsame policy, they had
met with no mercy or forbearance ; that Mr. Gladstone's Government
had been as anxious as any government could 'possibly be to settle the
difficult question of local taxation, but the gentlemen now in office had
prevented them, and were now doing precisely what they quarrelled
with the Liberal Government for doing. This speech aroused Mr.
Disraeli, who accused Mr. Bright of importing, he would not say venom,
but acidity into the debate. Mr. Gladstone, he said, had been defeated
by a majority of one hundred upon the subject of local taxation, and by
his own friends, and not by the Conservatives. Both speeches, although
brief, created considerable excitement by the spirited style of their
dehvery. M. Chevalier, the Cobden of France, visited Birmingham on the
28th of April, and a banquet was given in his honour on the day of his
arrival. Mr. Bright, in the course of his speech, showed how the
principles of Free Trade had spread, but he remarked that Protection still
lingered in some parts of the kingdom, and he was afraid more so among

TRADES UNIONS. 143
the very active-minded and zealous class of workmen than in any other
class. " I do not want," said he, " to go into a long discussion upon such a question, but I must say
that it seems to me that the framework of many trades unions in this country is formed upon a
principle exactly the same as that which we have so long been contending against. (Cheers.) I
am only speaking of them so far as they profess and intend by combination to affect the rate of
wages. There are twenty things in which combination among working men in many trades may
be of great advantage. They might combine for the purpose of education, or they might combine
for the purpose of creating a public opinion that should promote society. They might combine, no
doubt, with regard to the customs of their trades which are injurious to them ; but I believe that
aU combinations which are intended to affect the rate of wages are acting upon, and are based
upon the principles of Protection, which in their case is just as evil as it was in the case of the
landed proprietors, and aU the various manufacturers who at different times have had Protection
duties in their favour. (Cheers.) There seems to be a general opinion amongst many of them,
and I must say to my astonishment it appears to have been cherished and promoted somewhat by
persons who are not of the wage-receiving class — (hear, hear) — an opinion that if people would
do less and produce less, that by a sort of necromancy everybody should have rather more.
(Laughter.) Cattle in a field could be imagined to combine, and if they thought that they would
he better off by haK of a crop of grass instead of a whole one, would be just about as sensible an
idea as the idea that has been reigning very much for the last few years amongst some working
men, that if they could restrict the hours of labour, and do less work— if they could produce less of
everything than they were doing, that somehow or other everybody would get rather more out of
it. (Laughter.) Now, I do not beUeve that at all. I believe that there is a law against which
ultimately aU these combinations must faU. I have no doubt that any person who makes
observations of this kind wiU find himself very sharply taken up by those trades unions whose
object is to affect wages. There are many classes, however, who have had no trades unions whose
wages have risen as much as any other. Take the class, for instance, of domestic servants.
There have been no trades unions among them, and yet I believe within the last thirty years their
wages have risen as much as the wages of mechanics — stonemasons, or any other class of
workmen ; and I think you might go through the working classes generaUy, and you would find
there are few cases in which there appears to be any real good resulting from unions ; and my.
own opinion is, and I speak it without the least hesitation, that if there had never been a trades
union which attempted to interfere with the question of wages— and I confine myself to that
alone — the whole amount of wages paid in this country would not have been less, and might
possibly have been more, than it is at the present time. Many may think I am taking a wrong
course in expressing these views, being myself an employer ; but though an employer I am not
therefore interested in low wages. It is a great mistake to suppose that employers are interested
in low wages. What they are interested in is a constant and steady demand for what they
produce, that profits should be fair, and that wages should be fair, and that there should be that
exact division of whatever trade produces which the true and unchangeable law of the economist
would give te each and to both. (Applause.) Now, it is possible that men seeking a violation
of these laws, to gain sudden and great advantages for themselves, may inflict serious wounds
upon their own interests, and even upon their own class ; and there have been symptoms of
late, no doubt, that this to some extent has been caused in this country. I am perfectly convinced
myself — it is the result of long consideration and long experience— that by adhering to those
simple and just laws which nature has established, and established not to be violated but to be
obeyed— that by that alone the true interest of the great body of the working people can be best
consolidated. (Cheers.) What they want to learn is what perhaps we aU want to learn, but

144 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
they more because their incomes are smaller and are more precarious — that the greatest amount
of industry, the greatest amount of produce, the greatest amount of economy and habit of
saving, wherever saving is possible te them, is almost worth more than aU other virtues which can
be inculcated upon them." (Cheers.)
Mr. Bright, in reply to a letter from Mr. G. H. PhiUips, of Cherry
Street, Birmingham, gave advice on funeral reform.
" If your friends," wrote he, " or any sensible people wish to reform the funeral exhibitions
and funeral expenses, let them observe and copy the practice of the sect to which I belong — that
of the Society of Friends. Nothing can be more simple, and nothing can be better. They
would be wise also to foUow them in rejecting the fashion of wearing mourning, which is always
costly, and, as worn by many women, hideous. I am sorry to say, however, that the wearing of
mourning of late has been rather increasing with the Friends, amongst whom are many who
apparently cannot comprehend, and do not value, the principles on which the practice of their
forefathers was based."
In July, a gentleman in Sheffield urged Mr. Bright to support Mr.
Whalley in his efforts to obtain protection for a man in New Zealand,
who claimed to be Arthur Orton. Mr. Bright explained in the clearest
light the facts, or at least some of them, that convinced him that the
convict then incarcerated at Dartmoor was " the greatest criminal of his
time." He mastered the entire evidence, speeches and all, which enabled
him to thoroughly come to a just decision.
" Tou may rely upon it that Arthur Orton," wrote Mr. Bright, " will not come from New
Zealand. During the trial £1,000 was offered for him, and nobody could produce him. It was
a large bribe, and I only wonder it did not bring over a score of Ortons. The Arthur Orton is
in Dartmoor, and nobody, I suspect, knows this better than some of those who are pretending to
expect him from New Zealand. I have read aU the evidence and all the speeches of both trials,
and the summing-up of the Lord Chief Justice. This last I have read again during the last
month. And I have read more than once the evidence taken before the Chili Commission. I
know therefore as much about the matter as you can know, and much more than is known by
nine out of ten of those who are clamouring for the release of the convict at Dartmoor. I have
before me now the handwriting of the real Roger Tichborne, of the real Arthur Orton, and of
the convict, and this alone is sufficient to convince any man of common sense and observation
what is the truth in the case. If you could see this handwriting, and if you could examine the
evidence of the ChUi Commission, the evidence of the convict's own friends, to whom he referred
for proof that he was what he pretended to be, you could hardly faU to be convinced that your
belief in the convict is wrong, and your sympathy with him wholly misplaced. I mention these
two points as conclusive against him. There are many other points in the evidence on the two
trials which are fatal to his claims. He seemed to know the names of two dogs, but he did not
know the name of his own mother. Mr. TurviUe, in Australia, asks him a last question —
whether his mother was stout or thin. He said, ' Stout ; a tall, large woman.' It is not denied
that Lady Tichborne was leanness itself. Miss Nangles said she was more like a skeleton than

THE TICHBORNE CLAIMANT. 14*
anything else, and this was not contradicted by any one. If you can believe in a man who did
not know his own mother's name, and who stated that his mother, who is admitted to have been
leanness itself, was ' stout, a full, large woman,' when he first came forward in Australia, and
where he had no opportunity of picking up information and facts to support his case, I fear you
are of that credulous nature that it may be useless to reason with you. I can take no part in the
proceedings of Mr. WliaUey and his friends. To me the convict in Dartmoor is the greatest
criminal of our time. His crime has extended over many years ; it is most base in character.
and includes in it almost every crime for which evil men are brought to punishment. Tou are
much impressed, I dare say, by the declaration of those who traverse the country creating'
agitation on this question. I must ask to be permitted to value my own judgment at least as
highly as that of those persons. One of them is believed to have invested money largely iu the
case, and pecuniary interest is not favourable to an impartial decision. Another suffers from a
complaint which I call ' Jesuit on the brain,' and this seems grievously to distort almost every
thing he looks at. The third is the lawyer who faded, after a trial which lasted a hundred and
eighty-eight days, to convince three judges and twelve jurymen, or any one of the judges, or of
the jurymen, that his client was anything but an impostor, and a man most odious from his
character and his crimes. I shaU be glad if yon, and such as believe with you, will not ask me
to correspond further' on a question about which only honest men who are in entire ignorance of
the facts can, in my view, differ in opinion."
Mr. Bright was again with his constituents, in their Town Hall, on
the 22nd of January, 1876, and delivered his annual address to 5,000
of the inhabitants of that famous town. All the old enthusiasm was
shown by those present. His speech was less passionate and impulsive
than many of his former oratorical flights, but it was inspired by a
breadth of judgment and a catholicity of spirit such as few speakers
could at all approach. He advocated household suffrage in the counties
with all the force of his incomparable eloquence ; and he argued
elaborately and proved that our land laws needed recasting. The speech
was also a reply to Lord Derby's address to the Conservative working
men of Edinburgh.
" There are very few of you,'' said Mr. Bright, " who have had the opportunity of hearing a
Conservative statesman make a speech to Conservative working men. If you had you would
have perceived the extreme difficulty he was in. He is obliged to deny or forget history ; and
his speech for the most part, instead of informing his audience, appears generaUy to be intended
to mislead them. If you read Lord Derby's speech — and I hope you did — you would find that
he made this observation : ' When people ask why should a working man not be a Conservative p
I answer, why shoidd he not ? ' And he went on to make this extraordinary remark : ' Popular
politicians ' — I do not know to whom he refers ; I suppose he does not refer to his own
colleagues, they cannot be of the popular politician kind — ' popular politicians never gave any
man better wages, or better houses to live in. They may indeed profess to remove grievances of
a kind such as the law can deal with, but where are those grievances with us ? ' Well, from this
he obviously intended to say that, so far as the working' classes are concerned, one party is just
59

146 ilFJS AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
as good as another, and that you may just be as happy and contented with Conservative as with
Liberal legislation and administration. Then he went on to say that the workmen at present
have no taxes to pay, uuless on the articles of tea, tobacco, and intoxicating driuks ; but he did
not tell them that thirty-five years ago there were more than twelve hundred articles on which
taxes were levied, and that it was only after three years of persistent agitation by the Anti-Corn-
Law League that the unpopular politicians began to remove those taxes ; and that when Sir
Robert Peel adopted the policy of reforming the tariff, every step that he made lost him a
portion of the confidence of the great party of which he was then the leader and the Minister;
and that when he came to the greatest of aU articles — viz. corn, your daily bread — they
quarrelled with him bitterly and vindictively, and drove him from power, and there was no
obloquy and no insult which they did not heap upon his character and his statesmanship. . .
Tou recollect that I have been sometimes criticised for using a Latin word to describe an
unpleasant fact — the word ' residuum.' During the £10 franchise there was a residuum iu every
borough that was often hard to manage. It was ignorant, it was unprincipled, and was often
corrupt. Now, with the wide suffrage of household there was a residuum, aud the wider the
suffrage, as a matter of course, to some extent, the larger will be the class to which I have
referred ; and, of course, in the counties, if you give the franchise to the labourers, there wUl
also be a residuum. That is a fact we cannot get rid of. There is a residuum in the House of
Lords. There are lords who are what are called out-at-elbows — bankrupt in purse and bankrupt
in character ; but it does not follow from that that the House of Lords as a body does not consist
of men of great wealth and of high character too. And there is a residuum in the Church. No
one would more readily admit than I do the high character, and the great services, and the
devotion, and the disinterestedness too, of a, great portion of the clergy of the Church of
England, for example ; but there are some very odd specimens amongst them. I will not
mention any names, but there is one somewhere in this neighbourhood. If I were myself a
Churchman, I should wish that particular specimen of the residuum either got rid of or con
verted. There is a residuum almost everywhere, and so there will be a residuum if yon extend
the franchise to the county popidation ; but it will every day be growing less, we trust, and at
any rate we shall find that the whole power of the county representation, nearly throughout the
three kingdoms, but more in England than in either Ireland or Scotland, will not remain in the
hands of a very smaU number of persons that happen by descent or fortune — some, it may be, by
their virtues — to have become possessors of the maiu proportion of the soil iu the counties.
Then, I say, that the Liberal party having done so much for the towns, might turn its attention
to, and try to do something for, the counties. Why should not we enfranchise the populations of
the counties, and give freedom to tbe soil which they tiU p It was a saying, that I have quoted
before, of my friend Mr. Cobden when discussing this questiou. He said, ' Tlie men who come
forward to deliver the land of this country, to make it as free as its produce is free, will have
conferred as great a boon upon the country as we of the Anti-Corn-Law League have conferred
by the abolition of the Com Laws.' Then, Lord Derby says, what is that which Liberals are
supposed to have and which Conservatives have not p I will tell him. I think the Liberals and
the Liberal party, whether you take its history from the Revolution, or whether you. take a
shorter period — within the memory of many of us — since the time of the passing of the first
Reform Bill, have shown a sense of justice aud unselfishness in their policy which has never beeu
shown by what is called the Conservative party. I ask any man to show one measure that we, as
a Liberal party, have ever advocated or have succeeded in carrying whose object or effect has
been private or class gain, as opposed to the public interest. Aud now, if I propose to you to
move forward, having done what you have done for the towns, with a view of doing something
more for the counties, what we ask of you is that you shall free the counties as you have freed
the towns; that you shall free the men and the soil that they cultivate. Here is a policy

THE EASTERN QUESTION. 147
¦consistent with everything that we have done in the past. It is a policy worthy of all the hopes,
and the high hopes, of a great party for the future." (Cheers, i
An insurrectionary movement broke out in Bosnia and the Herze
govina in May, 1875, and the Eastern question once more troubled the
English Government. The Bulgarian horrors next startled Europe, and
Servia and Montenegro declared war against Turkey.
The members of the Manchester Eeform Club wished to hear Mr.
Bright's opinion on recent events, and on the 2nd of October, 1875, he
paid them a visit, and delivered a vigorous and eloquent speech, full of
ripe thought, and a splendid piece of argumentation : —
" At this moment we are entangled with the Treaty of 1856," said Mr. Bright, '¦ and it is not
easy, I admit — I make the admission to the Government and their friends — it is not easy to back
clean out of it, nor is it easy to teU exactly what to do iu it. One way is this — we might tear the
treaty into a thousand pieces, and say, ' We were fools in 1854 and in 1856, we will be fools no
longer.' We might, in that case, leave Turkey to fate. But then there are the negotiations of
the last few months, in which the Government has been concerned, which ParUament has not
condemned, and which the public, probably, would not wholly and absolutely condemn. If wc
cannot tear the treaty to pieces, the question is, can we negotiate on new lines ? That appears
to me to be the only alternative. If the treaty remains, and we are to take some action with the
other Powers of Europe — if the people of England have changed their mind with regard to the
policy of the country twenty years ago — then we ask ourselves, is it not possible for the English
Government to negotiate on new lines, on other principles, and with a better policy ? But, then
unfortunately, during the whole of the transactions of this year the Government has been going
upon the old lines. They did not perceive that there was a great change in public opinion, nor
¦did they perceive that the country had made a great error twenty years ago. They are pro-
Turkish during the whole of the correspondence which has been pubUshed in the blue books ;
they seem almost to have forgotten everythmg that they ought to have remembered, aud to have
learnt nothing of that which they ought to have given special attention to. Hitherto they have
gone upon this theory : ' Preserve Turkey as she is, if you can. Suppress every rising as quickly
as possible by Turkish arms — make peace somehow ; and put an end to these things which threaten
the peace of Europe without any consideration of the interests of the populations which are most
nearly affected.' But whilst this was going on, there was another rising, and a very important
one — a rising of the people of England. The terrible cruelties that have been committed — and
but a very small portion of them have been reported to us — have opened our eyes and have touched
our hearts. But whilst this rising was going on, and whilst these events are being reported to
us, the Government seemed to hear nothing and to know nothing. Their agents appeared to know
little and to say little. The fact is, every minister of England in Constantinople and every
consul knows perfectly well that unpleasant tidings from these parts are not welcome reading
for the Foreign Office. It was the same twenty-two years ago. We then pointed out what was
the state of things in the Christian provinces of Turkey. We quoted from the blue books and
from the reports of our agents and consuls how dreadful was the condition of those provinces,
and of the interior of Turkey ; aud that was a very unpleasant matter for Lord Palmerston and
his colleagues at the time that the Russian war was being discussed, and when it was being fought.
But though the Government did not hear and did not speak, others heard and others spoke ; and

148 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
when they spoke— and I say it with shame and sorrow— the Government through its chief , ridiculed
what was said, and dared even to deny its truth. In the same manner, there has been a feeling
now in the House of Commons that, when the question was treated by the head of the Govern
ment, it was not treated with that seriousness which became so grave and so sad a question.
There had not been from him, so far as I have heard, one word of hearty condemnation of those
things which the nation universally condemns. There has not been, so far as I have heard from
his lips in Parliament, any warmer sympathy expressed for the sufferers than there would have
been if they had heard that a sudden massacre had taken place of the multitude of dogs which
prowl about the streets of Constantinople. Perhaps ambition, the highest ambition, may at length
be sated ; and a man from a certain eminence may look down with cold contempt on guilt and on
wrongs that even he dares no longer to deny. But, now, what is the position we stand in, and
what action should this meeting, if we were a public meeting — which we are not — what action
ought we to take P It is obvious that the Government so far is at variance with the nation. The
Government is pro-Turk still, and would, if they could, act upon the lines of the past which the
nation has condemned. Observe the language of the Prime Minister in speaking the other day of
the Servian war. It was not the language of regret. It was condemnation of the most offensive
character — a condemnation which evidently sprang from his sympathy with the Turkish power.
. . . I have no objection if we can lead in a policy of mercy and freedom. Let us dissolve
partnership with a power which curses every land that is subject to it. One of our poets has said,
and said truly — < Byzantines boast that on the clod,
Where once their Sultan's horse has trod,
Grows neither grass, nor shrub, nor tree. '
There is no doubt whatever that desolation and ruin are lasting memorials of the Moslem power
on the once fertile shores of the Mediterranean. ... I say that the speech delivered the
other day at Aylesbury was a speech of defiance to the people of England, a speech heartless and
cruel as respects Servia and Bulgaria. (Hear, hear.) There is a demand for an autumn Session.
I believe nobody is more opposed to an autumn Session than a member of Parliament is — (laughter)
— but though it is full of inconvenience, still the demand for it seems to me at this time consti
tutional and wise. Ministers are at variance, and the Prime Minister in his speech defies the
country. If there was a dissolution now, what would happen ? I suspect the Ministry would
fear it greatly. They would be swept off the boards, and in their place a new policy and a new
Ministry would be installed. I think the chief who made that speech — a speech which I deeply
regret, and I think by this time he must have also regretted it — would by that public opinion be
swept from his pride of place and from his place of power. Let him meet Parliament, or let him
•ueet the constituencies ; I am not afraid of what would be the decision of the'country. (Cheers.
We regret, the country regrets, the sacrifices of the Crimean war. We are not now anxious to go
to war to defend the Turk, and we arc not called upon aud do not intend to go to war to defend
the enemies of the Turk. We arc at a loug distance from that part of the world. It is no business
of ours to be sending ships and troops nearly three thousand miles to effect territorial changes in
which we have no real and no direct interest. If we left it to the course of nature — nature as
explained to us by historic facts — the question woidd no doubt some way settle itself. But if we
had a Parliament, or a dissolution and a general election, the policy of England would in my
opinion be declared; and I freely state to you my judgment that we should have this solemn and
irrevocable decision on the part of the people of this country — that the blood and the treasure of
England shall never again be wasted on behalf of the Turk — (cheers) — that the vote of our
Government, the vote of England in the Parliament of Europe, shall be given in favour of justice
and freedom to Christian and Moslem alike— (cheers)— and that the Ottoman power shall be left
hereafter to the fate which Providence has decreed to corruption, tyranny, and wrong." (Great
cheering.)

THE TICHBORNE TRIAL. 149
In the Session of 1875, Dr. Kenealy introduced a petition into the
House of Commons, praying for a free pardon for " that unhappy
nobleman (the notorious Tichborne claimant) now languishing in prison,''
and the three judges were charged with acting unfairly in adjudicating
on the case. On the 23rd of April the doctor moved that a Eoyal
Commission be appointed to inquire into the conduct of the trial,
Mr. Bright, speaking on the motion, said : —
" Since the hon. member for Stoke has taken his place in this House I have felt it my duty
more than once in some sort almost to interpose on his behalf. 1 have done so, and I trust the
House has seen this, from no other object than to show that every man who comes within these
doors shaU receive the most fair and generous treatment amongst us. (Hear, hear.) I am
unwilling, however, that this debate should close without stating some reasons why I cannot
agree with the hon. member in the proposition which he has submitted to the House, and why
my name wiU be found amongst what, I trust, will be a very great majority agamst that
proposition. (Cheers.) ... It seems to me a most monstrous thing to say that this case
has not been fairly tried. Why, there has been no trial in this country so long — indeed, since
the days of the trial of Warren Hastings, it is a trial of a length perfectly without example —
but to that I wiU come by-and-by. Four judges, one of them the Chief Justice of the Court
of Common Pleas, another the Lord Chief Justice of England, and two other judges of a
reputation equal to that of any judge upon the Bench, have had the case under their considera
tion, and their judgment has been perfectly unanimous. It has been under the consideration of
two juries chosen in the most fair manner ; indeed, no one has suggested that the juries were
packed, and it is impossible to look at the names, or rather the occupations, of the jurymen,
without seeing that it is quite impossible, in our mixed society, to summon jurymen of a more
representative and of a more impartial character than were upon these juries. I noticed that
on the last jury there was one country gentleman — I give no names, and, in fact I have not got
the names with me — and one city merchant ; another was a draper ; another was a publican, and
I am not sure that there were not two who foUowed that occupation ; one bootmaker, whose
knowledge of his trade was of great use at one part of this case ; another, I think, was a man
in the position of keeping a respectable lodging house ; another was a hairdresser and perfumer ;
and another was connected with a business which has been very much before this House lately —
that of selUng milk. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) Now, I might safely leave it to the hon.
member for Peterborough to say that there was not the slightest suspicion that any of these
gentlemen were in any way influenced by the Jesuits — (hear, hear, and laughter) — and I might
appeal to the hon. member for Stoke to say that upon the face of this list there is no reason
to suspect that they were influenced in favour of the rights or claims of aristocratic and
territorial famiUes. I think these twelve men formed a jury such as the English Constitution
intended and expects shaU be caUed upon to decide great questions of personal rights and
Uberties. (Hear, hear.) On the occasion of the first trial the jury stopped the case, after
hearing a prodigious amount of evidence in favour of the then claimant, and they stopped it
on evidence of a very important character, which the claimant's counsel was unable to meet.
I am not much versed in legal matters, but I understand that if the claimant's counsel had
chosen to go on, the trial might have concluded in the ordinary manner ; but Mr. Serjeant
Ballantine, who was the principal counsel for the claimant, elected to be nonsuited, and in
that way the trial was concluded. Oil looking' back to that trial, we do not find that anybody

150 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
ever heard that Mr. Ballantmo abused the judge who presided over it, and I have not heard
that he has condemned tbe jury, but he allowed the matter to pass. He had been unfortunate
and unsuccessful, as thi' most powerful advocates may be, and as one hopes that they will
always bo when their case is not perfectly good. (Cheers.) . . . Now, I ask this House
- I ask the hon. member for Stoke— I ask the hon. member for Peterborough— whether, with
these facts before us— and I think that in no criminal trial could there bo less reason to quarrel
with the facts than in the present case— I ask whether it is right, whether it is tolerable, that
great multitudes of people should be taught that the defendant had not a fair trial P (Cheers.)
If you go among the people and teach them that there was some dark design in this — some
dark and mysterious conspiracy — I say you do a great harm to them ; you mislead them, you
wound them in their dearest interests. Ton turn them against the institutions which exist
only for their guardianship and their good. (Cheers.) I confess I am not squeamish about
criticisms on the conduct of judges or juries. I do not think that either judges or juries
are immaculate. But I say that, considering the facts I have stated — and they are but a veiy
small portion of the facts which might be stated in support of tbe view I am urging — it is
a great public injury, it i* a great wrong, that gentlemen of education, and occupying the
position of members of this House, should seek to convince persons who could not by any
possibility have had so good an opportunity of judging of the matter as the judges and jury whose
conduct is condemued — I say. it is a great evil to teach snch persons what I believe to be utterly
untrue : that the judges were partial and corrupt, and that the jury were mistaken in the view
which they took. Sir, I can take no such view. I can take no part in snch conduct. I would
uphold the institutions of this coimtry. in the main, as they exist with regard to the ad
ministration of justice ; I think the poorest in the land has at least as great an interest in that
being done as the richest in the land ; and it is because I think this that I cannot for a moment
think of giving' my vote in favour of the proposition of the hon. member for Stoke." (Loud
cheers.) The motion was rejected by 433 votes against one.
Mr. O. Morgan, on the 2 1st of April, 1875, again introduced the
second reading of his " Burial Bill." Messrs. Gladstone, Eoebuck,
Newdegate, Forster, Cross, and other gentlemen took part in the debate,
which, as it proceeded, became threadbare and uninteresting, and
gradually the number of members present decreased. While Mr. Cross
was speaking, Mr. Bright was observed to take his pencil out of his pocket
and make a few notes. This little incident was soon communicated to
the members in the ante-rooms, who began to flock in ; and as soon as
Mr. Bright rose to speak the House filled rapidly, until every seat was
taken up.
" Assume that all the burial grounds that were in existence before the passing of the Church-
rates Abolition Act were established at the cost of the parish, and, therefore, now are— as they
are indeed all established by law— the property of the parish," said Mr. Bright. "I am sure
honourable gentlemen opposite know, notwithstanding the repeal of the church rates, there are
thousands of Dissenters in this country who contribute voluntarily and constantly to the support both
of church and parochial graveyards. (Hear, hear.) Therefore I have a right to say that the grave-

THE BURIALS BILL. 151
yards, for the most part — I believe almost universally — are plots of ground in which the parish
ioners generally have a peculiar interest. Well, it will be said that every person has a right to
be buried there, but only on a certain condition : that either he must have the service of the
Established Church, or have no service at all ; for that, I think, is the argument of right honour
able gentlemen opposite. Now. it is quite open for persons to dissent, if they like, from the
services of the Church of England. About one-half ofthe popidation of England and Wales have
dissented. That, I think, is a considerable matter when you are considering this question.
There are many grounds on which men have dissented from the Church of England ; but having
beeu brought, up in circumstances of Nonconformity in their families, aud in aU their associations,
it is quite reasonable to expect, and easy to understand, that they should prefer that at a time like
this, and for a service of this nature, some other service or some other ceremony should be adopted
in their case. If that be so, I should like to have some reasonable ground stated why their wish
shoidd not be complied with. (Hear, hear.) Tou say, they shall have no service at aU. But there
must be those who, although for some cause or other they disUke the Church service, still are of
opinion that it is better to have some service, not for the sake of the dead — I hope, indeed I
beUeve, that no Nonconformist in this country is so superstitious as to believe that — but for the
sake of the living, and those who surround the grave. Why do you impose this test P Tou say
the graveyard is the graveyard of the parish. The body which is brought to the parish graveyard
is that of a parishioner whom only last week you held as a fellow-parishioner, and whom you met
in your street, on his farm, or in his garden. He dies, and his friends propose to bury him there.
Tou say 'No,' he shaU not come at all, except on certain conditions. First of all, he shall have
read over him a service arranged some 200 or 300 years ago — which I am willing to admit is very
impressive and very beautiful ; nobody I think denies that — but ' he shaU have this read over him
and nothing else. If he does not have this, he shall have nothing at all' I won't say that he is
to be buried like a dog, because that is an expression founded on a miserable superstition. I shall
be buried Uke a dog on that argument, and all those with whom I am most connected and whom
I most love ; and the Society for which in past times my ancestors suffered persecution, they have
aU been 'buried like dogs,' if that phrase be a just one. (Cheers.) But, I ask, if half the
population hold this opinion, why is it that they should have this test imposed upon them ?
(Hear, hear.) Tou have abolished the test for officers ; it is not now necessary that a man should
take the Sacrament according to the practice of the Church of England before he undertakes
any office under the Crown. That test has been swept away. Why is it when a man or the body
of a man, or one of the parishioners, is brought to your graveyard gate, and his friends ask that he
may be there interred with decency and solemnity, that you say 'No, I shall not inter him here, he is
not to be buried here * — even although his family, his friends who have gone before him, and his
chUdren who have prematurely died, lie there — unless that he has the service that we prescribe,
or unless that he has no service at all, and shall thus be buried in a manner of which his friends
may not approve. (Cheers.) .... I will take a case of my own sect, and try to draw an
argument from that. We have no baptism ; we do not think it necessary. We have no service —
no ordered or stated service — over the dead. We don't think that necessary. But when a funeral
occurs in my sect, the body is borne with as much decency and solemnity as in any other sect or
in any other case to the grave-side. The coffin is laid by the side of the grave. The family and
friends and the mourners stand round, and they are given some time — no fixed time ; it may be
five minutes, or ten, or even longer — after that private and solemn meditation, and which the
grave invites, even to the most unthinking and the most frivolous. If any one there feels it his duty
to offer any word of exhortation, he is at liberty to offer it. If he feels that he can bow the knee and
offer a prayer to Heaven, not for the dead, but for those who stand round the grave, for the com-
fort of the widow, or for succour and fatherly care for the fatherless children, that prayer is
offered. (Cheers.) But if this were doue in one of your graveyards, if, for example, such a thing

152 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
were done there, and a member of my sect, or a Baptist, an Independent, or a Wesleyan, came to
be interred in one of your graveyards, and if some God-fearing and good man there spoke some
words of exhortation, or on his knees offered a prayer to God, is there one of you on this side of
the House or on that, or one of your clergymen, or any thoughtful and Christian man connected
with yonr Church, who would dare, in the sight of Heaven, to condemn that, or to interfere with
it, by force of law ? (Cheers.) The proposition, as reduced to a simple case like that, is monstrous
aud intolerable, and I believe the time will come when men will never believe that such a thing
could have been seriously discussed in the English House of Commons. (Hear, hear.) WeU,
but, what is wanted — I don't mean by the clauses and the details, but by the principles of
this BiU ? Why, that the Nonconformists of this country — the Independents, the Baptists,
the Wesleyans, or the members of my sect — shaU be permitted to enter the parochial grave
yard and conduct, not what is commonly called service, but the ceremony of » funeral, in
the way that I have described my sect as doing. Because, although with respect to us
there is no stated and recognised, no written or printed, form, yet what does it signify
whether it is written or printed, or is the extempore utterance of the heart on a solemn
occasion of that kind? (Cheers.) I say, without any harm to the Church of England, to its
great benefit and the benefit of all that Christianity teaches, that such a system might be wisely
adopted in this country. (Hear, hear.) The right hon. gentleman (Mr. Cross) seemed to
think that a great grievance would arise, that the feelings of the ministers of the Church
would be harassed. Well, no doubt if men have feelings of that kind, nurtured by preference
and monopoly — (hear, hear) — the time will come — it constantly comes — when those feelings wUl
have to subside, or suffer something like discomfort. My right hon. friend the member for
Bradford has quoted the opinion of a distinguished lawyer and former member of this House,
.some fifty years ago, as to the case of Ireland. What is the case of Scotland at this moment?
I was down in Scotland last July, and I recollect particularly visiting a quiet little parish grave
yard there. I noticed a tomb erected in what I thought good taste. From the inscription on it
I found it was the tomb of a minister who had been the minister of that parish before the dis
ruption of 1843. Well, after the disruption — and the same thing is to be seen in many parishes
in Scotland — the minister who seceded became the minister of a Free Church in the very same
parish. At the end of his earthly career he is buried alongside of the very minister who suc
ceeded him in the parish in which he was originally settled. (Hear, hear.) In Scotland they
know no difference of this kind. Somebody will get up and say, ' Tes, but in Scotland they
don't, care about these things, because their ground is not ' — what do they call it P — ' consecrated.'
(Hear, hear, and laughter.) But may 1 tell hon. gentlemen opposite what is the course which
the Church of Scotland takes with regard to the Episcopalian Church in that country ? Tou have
Scottish bishops, and Scottish clergy, and Scotchmen who are Episcopalians. WeU, they are
allowed to be buried in their churchyards, and your own burial service is constantly and regu
larly read over the bodies of Episcopalians in Presbyterian graveyards in Scotland. (Cheers.)
Now, I ask you if in Ireland fifty years ago it was thought necessary to abolish the exclusive
system — if iu Scotland, by the Christian liberality and good feeling of the Scotch Presbyterians,
Episcopalians are treated so justly in this matter, why is it that Presbyterians in England and
Nonconformists generally should have to appeal to some 400 gentlemen in this House — all of
whom, I presume, or the g'reat bulk of whom, are members of the Established Church of England
— and that you should think it necessary to reject a biU like this P (Hear, hear.) The right hon.
gentleman, the Home Secretary, as I understand him, does not object to the principle of the
measure. He would be wiUing — for I have always noticed in him ever since he has sat in this
House a certain Uberality, which, I think, is rather in advance of some other feelings that I have
seen evinced among his friends — he, I say, is willing to adopt some principle of this kind, and
if possible, by some means that he thinks would perhaps be less hurtful to the feelings of

THE IRISH, FRANCHISE. 153
Ghurchmen, he would assent to some measure having the effect which this one is intended to pro
duce. I am sorry that in the course of his speech — having made that admission, for which I give
him credit — he did not indicate to us some mode by which he thought that could be accom
pUshed ; because, if he could point out to us any reasonable method that would be at all satisfac
tory to those who appeal to you on this question, I feel sure that tho hon. and learned member
for Denbighshire (Mr. O. Morgan) would be delighted to give him all the help in his power, and
would even withdraw his own measure and adopt the Government Bill if it succeeded in
doing that which the right hon. gentleman proposes." (Hear, hear, and cheers.)
This eloquent speech lifted the question above the level of either
politics or legal controversy, and, placing it on higher grounds, increased
the number in favour of the Bill to 234, but the majority yet against
it was 14.
Mr. Meldon, on the 25th of March, 1876, introduced into the
House of Commons the subject of Eeform for Ireland, on a motion
for the assimilation of the borough franchise in England and Ireland : —
" I believe," remarked Mr. Bright, in concluding the debate, " that if a measure of this kind
were passed it would have the effect in Ireland — it must inevitably have the effect— of teaching the
Irish people that the Imperial Parliament is not only not afraid of them, but actually invites their
¦co-operation. It invites every man of them, every householder in boroughs, to take an interest
in the political questions which are constantly debated in this House ; and I am satisfied that, if
you ask them to become partners in the discussions and deliberations of this assembly, it would
make them think that it will not be necessary for them to have a small Parliament of their own
in Ireland, seeing that this greater Parliament is wUling to do them speedy and substantial
justice. It stiU remains true — though all the officials in the world think it worth whUe to caU it in
•question — that justice done by the Government and Parliament to any portion of the population,
be it most remote, be it the most abject, stUl that measure of justice is never lost. It is com
pensated to the power that grants it, be it monarch or be it Parliament, by greater affection, by
greater and firmer aUegiance to the law, and by the growth of aU those qualities and virtues by
which a great and durable nation is distinguished."
The majority against the motion numbered only thirteen.
Mr. Dixon, on the 5th of April, introduced a bill into the House of
¦Commons with the object of establishing School Boards in all districts
where they then did not exist, and to provide for the compulsory
attendance at school of all children. Public opinion, he maintained,
was in favour of his principle, especially in rural districts ; and as to the
expense, he repeated that his bill would not add more than a penny in
the pound to the rates.
¦' Mr. Bright congratulated his hon. friend and colleague on the simplicity of the measure.
As far as the School Boards were concerned, he thought it was au argument to bo used in

154 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
favour of their universal establishment, that the Parliament of 1870 established a School Board
system as the machinery by which the Education Act should be worked; and that while this
machinery had been almost universaUy adopted iu English boroughs, School Boards wero
absolutely universal in Scotland. If the system had failed, it would have been foolish in hint
to support a proposal to extend the system, but as, instead of having failed, it had proved
successful, he thought himself justified in supporting the proposal of his hon. friend and
eodeague, which would employ the agency of School Boards in order to procure a universal
and compulsory attendance of the children at school. He did not suppose that his hon. friend
woidd object to see a system of compulsion established upon some other basis, and if either
the noble lord the Vice-President of the Council, or any other member of the House, would lay
such a proposal before Parliament, ho thought he could promise that it should be fairly and
impartially considered on the side of the House from which he was speaking'. Some hon.
gentlemen seemed to entertain a lingering dislike to what was done in 1870, when the
Educational Act was passed, and he had heard with surprise the attack which had been made
on the London School Board — an attack which had been answered, however, by his hon. friend
tho member for Bristol, who was also a member of the body which had been assailed. He for
one thought the Act of 1870, although, perhaps, it was marred by some deficiencies, which were
inevitable from the state of opinion in the country at the time of its passage, was one whose
results — even though it had only appUed to London — had been such as to justify the Minister
who introduced it, and the Parliament which passed it, in feeling proud and satisfied with the
product of their labour. Last year he visited and minutely inspected two of the schools which
the London School Board had built iu Bethnal Green, and when he had completed his visit, he
did not know whether most to rejoice at what was being done, or to grieve that for so many
generations a work of the kind had remained undone. (Hear, hear.) It was common for some
persons to speak in a slighting way of Nonconformists ; and the noble lord who had recently
addressed the House (Lord F. Harvey) had chosen to refer to them as most imclnbbable persons.
When he heard those words his mind wandered for a moment across the ocean to that part of
North America which was known as New England, and which was settled by EngUsh Noncon
formists; and he called to mind the fact that these Nonconformists established a system
of education as perfect and complete, relatively to the circumstances of the time, as the
schools which in the present day for the first time were established for the education
of the children of London. (Cheers.) The noble lord the Vice-President of the Conncil
could not have listened to the debate without feeling that there was a general con
currence of opinion in the House in favour of getting children to school, and he should think
that a system of compulsion would be much more easy of adoption in the country districts than
in the towns. In towns there were thousands of children who had never been subjected to any
kind of discipline, or had had the advantage of a decent home life ; but iu the rural districts
families were not so crowded, nor were children so neglected ; and therefore it seemed to him
that the establishment of a system of compulsory attendance would in the rural parts be much
easier than among the urban populations. It might be that some hon. members opposite, or their
constituents, feared that educated labourers might be less efficient workmen than men who had
not had the advantages of education. He would not stop to argue this question, as Parliament
had decided that education was to be given, and the only question to be settled was as to how the
work could be best done, and bow it could be best arranged that iu no part of the country
should tho Education Act of 1870 become a dead letter." (Hear, hear.)
Lord Sandon pointed out that the real object of the bill was to
establish universal School Boards, and said that this machinery had

THE ELECTORAL DISABILITIES OF WOMEN. 155
already been condemned in large divisions, and that his official know
ledge informed him that constant struggles were going on in the country
to prevent the establishment of these Boards. The bill was accordingly
thrown out by a majority of 121.
The biU to remove the Electoral Disabilities of Women, which had
become an annual theme for discussion in the House of Commons, was
again introduced by Mr. Forsyth on the 26th of April, and he went
over the familiar arguments in its support, and pointed to the numerous
petitions presented in favour of it, and other signs of growing popularity.
Taxation and representation, he insisted, were correlative terms ; but
women were the only class in the country who were taxed without the
possibUity of obtaining the franchise. Mr. Jacob Bright (Mr. John
Bright's brother) maintained that the bill trod in the lines of the British
Constitution by taking the rate book for the register, and the moral and
intellectual qualities of the female householders entitled them to the
franchise. Messrs. Law, Folkstone, Leatham, Newdegate, Smollett,
and Chaplin spoke against the bill, and Dr. Ward, Mr. Fawcett, Sir
E. Anstruther, and Sir C. Legard in favour of it.
The debate was memorable in this respect, from the decided declara
tion of Mr. Bright against the measure. It was with extreme re
luctance that he took part in the debate, but he was somewhat
peculiarly circumstanced with regard to this question. In the year
1867, when John Stuart Mill first made a proposition like that contained
in this bill to the House, Mr. Bright was one of those who went with
him into the lobby. Mr. Stuart Mill, in his " Autobiography," refers to
that fact, and states that Mr. Bright was one of those who were opposed
to the submitting of the proposition to the House, but that the weight of
the arguments in his favour was so great that Mr. Bright was obliged
to go with him into the lobby.
" Mr. Bright now informed the House that Mr. Stuart Mill was entirely mistaken in that
statement. Though he did vote with him, he voted with extreme doubt, and far more from
sympathy with him than with the proposition with which he was then identified. But if he
had doubts then, he might say those doubts had been only confirmed by the further contempla
tion he had been able to give to this question. The bill seemed to him based on a proposition
which was untenable, and which, he thought, was contradicted by universal experience. (Cheers.)

156 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Iu fact, it was a bill based ou assumed hostility between the sexes.- (Hear, hear.) He did not
believe that any of the men in the House who were about to vote for this biU entertained that
view ; but if members had been accustomed to read the speeches of the principal supporters of
this bill out of doors, and if they had had the opportunity, as he had had on many occasions, of
friendly and familiar conversations with regard to this question, he thought they would be
forced to the position that the bill as it was offered to them by the supporters was a biU based
upon an assumed constant and irreconcilable hostiUty between the sexes. (Hear, hear.) Men
were represented as ruling even to the length of tyranny, and women were represented as
suffering injustice, even to the length of very degrading slavery, and those were words which
were constantly made use of — (hear, hear) — and found in the speeches and conversation of the
women who were the chief promoters of this biU. Now, this was not said of women in savage
nations, but it was said of women in general in this civUised and Christian country in which
they Uved. If he looked at the population of this country, that which struck him more than
anything else was this — that at this moment there were millions of men at work, sacrificing
and giving up their leisure to a life of sustained hardship, confronting peril in every shape,
for the sake of the sustenance and the comfort and the happiness of women and children.
(Cheers.) The object of the bill was not the mere extension of the suffrage to 300,000 or
400,000 more persons than now possessed it ; the avowed object of the biU was to enable the
women in this country to defend themselves against a Parliament of men. (Hear, hear.) But
the facts that were brought forward iu support of the bill were of a very flimsy character.
There was the question of the property of married women. There might be injustice with
regard to the laws which affected the property of married women ; but was there no injustice
in the laws which affected the property of men p Had younger sons no right to complain p
(Laughter. ) If a, man died in the street worth £1 00,000 in land, and had made no wiU, what
did the fiat of that House say P— that the £100,000 should go to a boy because he happened to
come first into the world ; all the rest might seek their portion as they liked. Was there any
greater injustice than that p But that was an injustice which Parliament inflicted upon men as
weU as women. If there was some special and real practical injustice of which women might
complain, that was no sufficient argument for the proposition which was now before the House.
He thought there could be no doubt ou the part of any member on either side of the House,
that the House was disposed to judge as fairly on all questions affecting the property of married
women as it judged on questions of an analogous character affecting the property of men.
But there was another side to this question. He would recommend some of those who blamed
Parliament in this matter to look how much there was in favour of women in other directions.
He would take the question of punishment. There could be no doubt whatever that, as regarded
the question of punishment, there was much greater moderation or mercy dealt out to women
than to men. (Hear, hear.) Since he had been in Parliament he thought he could specify
more than a score of cases in which the lives of women had been spared, but in whieh the lives
¦of men would have been taken. (Hear, hear.) It was a horror to him to have to speak in a
Christian and civilised assembly of the possibility of the lives of women being taken by law ;
but the law ordered it, and it was sometimes done. But, either through mercy in the judge, or
mercy in the jury, or mercy in the Home Secretary, there could be no doubt that the highest
punishment of the law was much more rarely inflicted upon women for the last thirty or forty
years than upon men. In all cases of punishment judges and juries were always more lenient
in disposition to women than they were to men. He wrould point out to some of those ladies
who were so excited on this matter, that iu cases of breach of promise of marriage the advantage
on their side seemed to be enormous. (Laughter and cheers.) As far as he could judge from
the reports in the papers, they almost always got a verdict, and very often, he was satisfied
when they ought not to have got it. (Laughter.) Women-servants were not taxed, but men-

WOMEN AND THE FRANCHISE. 157
servants were taxed. That was au advantage to women as against men. There was an argument
which told with mauy on the Liberals' side of the House, and that was the argument of equal
right. It was said, a man lives in this house and votes ; a woman lives in that house, and why
should she not have a vote P That was a very plain question, and it was a question which it was
not always quite easy for men to answer. (Hear, hear.) He supposed the country had a right
to determine how it would be governed — whether by one, or by a few, or many. The country
must decide where the power must rest, and upon whom the suffrage must be conferred. Hon.
gentlemen told us that unless this biU passed, we should have a class discontented ; and
reference has been made to the condition of agricultural labourers ; but he thought there was
no comparison. If landowners only eould vote, clearly tenants would have a right to complain ;
and if landlords and tenants only could vote, he thought the agricultural labourers would have
a right to complain. But the great mistake was in arguing that women were a class. (Hear,
hear.) Nothing coidd be more monstrous and absurd than to describe women as a class. They
were not like the class of agricidtural labourers or factory workers. There were women in
the highest ranks, others in the middle ranks, and others in the humblest ranks. Who were
so near the hearts of the legislators of this country as the members of their own families ?
(Cheers.) It was a scandalous and odious libel to say women were a class, and were therefore
excluded from our sympathy, and Parliament could do no justice in regard to them. (Cheers.)
So much with regard to those political wrongs. He did not believe that the women of England
suffered in the least from not having what was called direct representation in that House. He
would not consider whether the biU had in it more than could be read iu its clauses. It had
been said in the debate that it would admit between 300,000 and 400,000 electors, or about
13 per cent, of the present constituency. But, unfortunately for those who argued about
poUtical wrongs, the measure excluded by far the greatest proportion of women — viz., those who,
if there was any special qualification required for an elector, might be said to be specially
quaUfied. It excluded married women, though they were generally older, more informed, and
had greater interests at stake. Then it was said by those outside, but not by the friends of the
biU in that House — his right hon. friend the member for Halifax (Mr. Stansfield) last year
almost went so far as to deny this, in which he was not quite accurate or judicious — it was said
by those outside that the bUl was an instalment ; that it was one step in the emancipation of
women. If that were so, it was very odd that those most concerned in the biU did not appear
to be aware of it ; because last year there was a great dispute on that matter. That would be
owned by the hon. and learned member for Marylebone, who kuew that he had only very
partiaUy the confidence of his clients. (Laughter.) They went with him, or he went with
them, a certain distance in the same direction, but after they got at the milestone indicated by
the biU they were to part company ; and then, instead of the House having to Usten to a speech
of half an hour or more on behalf of his present clients, it would have to listen to one of
equal length from him declaring that he had gone so far, and that there could be nothing more
perilous than to attempt to go any farther. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) There were many hon.
members who could not look back to their electioneering experience without feelings of regret,
and in some cases also of humiliation. WeU, was it desirable to introduce their mothers, wives,
sisters, and daughters to the excitement, the turmoil, and, it might be, the very humiliation
which seemed in every country so far to attend a system of Parliamentary representation ?
Whether it was in the United States, where so many systems were tried, or in this country, or
in France, of which they recently had an example, they saw how much there was that candi
dates could scarcely avoid and must greatly deplore, and were they to plunge the women of
England into a system like that from which they themselves could hardly emerge without taint
and pollution, on which they often looked back with shame and disgust P (Hear, hear.) Women
would be more likely to be tainted in that maimer than men were. There had been some

158 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
instances of it ever since the Municipal Act gave them the votes. He knew places in his
neighbourhood in which scenes of the most shocking kind had occurred ; aud in another town,
not very far off, at their municipal contests women were served with what certainly was not
wholesome or good for them during the morning and afternoon until they had been enabled to
be poUed. In another borough in Lancashire, at au election, women — by the hundreds, he was told,
but in great numbers — were seen drunk and disgraced under the temptations offered them in the
fierceness and the unscrupulousness of political contest. " My sympathies have always been in
favour of a wide suffrage," said Mr. Bright, in conclusion. "They are so at this moment, and I
grieve very much that a measure shoidd be submitted to this House in favour of the extension
of the suffrage to which I cannot give my support. But I confess I am unwilling, for the sake
of women themselves, to introduce them into tho contest of our Parliamentary system, to bring
them under the necessity of canvassing themselves, or being canvassed by others. (Hear, hear.)
I think they would lose much of that, or some of that, which is best that they now possess, and
that they would gain no good of any kind from being' mingled or mixed with Parliamentary
contests and the polling-booth. I should not vote for this measure if I were voting solely in the
interests of the men ; I shall vote against it, I believe with perfect honesty, believing that in
doing so I am serving the interests of women themselves. (Cheers. ) 1 recollect that an hon.
member who voted for this BiU last year, in conversation with me next day said he had very
great doubts upou the matter, because he believed that the best women were against it. Well,
I find wherever I go that all the best women seem to be against this Bill. If the House believes
that it cannot vote justly for our mothers, our sisters, our wives, and our daughters, the House
may abdicate, and pass this Bill ; but I believe that Parliament cannot be otherwise — unless it
be in ignorance — than just to the women of this country, with whom we arc so intimately aUied.
Believing that, and having these doubts — doubts which are strouger even than I have been
able to express, and doubts which have come upon me stronger and stronger the more I have
considered this question — I am obUged, differing from many of those whom I care for and
whom I love, to give my vote in opposition to this measure." (Cheers.)
The majority against tbe BiU was eighty-nine.
Mr. E. Smyth on the 12th of May brought forward a bill in tbe
House of Commons in favour of putting a stop to the sale of intoxicating
liquors on Sunday in Ireland, and quoted from the charges of judges
and other authorities to show the increase of drunkenness in Ireland ;
he also referred to the petitions, memorials, and other declarations of
opinion as evidences that total closing was universally desired in that
country. '' Mr. Bright called atteutiou to the fact that there was evidence to show that the demand for
this legislation was continuous and was growing in strength, and ho believed that if the bill was
rejected, the question would again be brought before the House the foUowing j-ear, fortified by
an expression of an opinion on the part of the Irish people even stronger than that which was
now manifested. The Chief Secretary for Ireland had told them that there was a great question
of principle involved in dealing with this subject — that he could not deal with a question of this
kind for a part only of the United Kingdom, and that if this restriction were placed upon the
liquor traffic of Ireland it would lead to much trouble iu England. This argument, however, was
disposed of when Parliament passed the Scotch Act. While listening to the rig-ht hon. gentle-

THE HOUSE AND THE DERBY. 159
man's speech he had come to the conclusion that the right hon. geutlcmau was conscious that the
stream was too strong for him, and that it was absolutely impossible for him to resist it. But
towards the end of his speech, adopting the plan that, in reference to the biU of last year relating
to the large cities of Ireland, was not unstatesuianlike, had suggested that the hours during which
public -houses were allowed to be opened should be reduced by about a fourth. If the Govern
ment and members of Parliament were in bondage to pledges which they had given, higher
motives and interests shoidd liberate them from that bondage and from these pledges. The Irish
people pleaded with no uncertain voice, and said distinctly what should be done on this occasion.
Those who resisted were not the people of England, but the publicans of England. (Cheers.)
The question had come to this : ' Choose this day whom you wiU serve.' Would they serve and
submit to the vendors of drink in England, or would they obey the will and the eloquent voice of
the whole people of Ireland P "
The motion was carried by a majority of fifty -seven, and thus the
Government suffered a defeat.
Mr. Bright on the 30th May opposed Mr. Disraeli's motion for the
adjournment of the House of Commons for several days to enable the
members to attend the Derby races, remarking —
" That they could not prevent gambling and betting by legislation, but they could at least
avoid offering a bad example to others. They could avoid giving the sanction of that assembly
whose character was as high as that of any assembly in the world, to an amusement which,
although it might be said to be innocent in itself, was nevertheless the cause of an enormous
amount of evil and vice. Let hon. members take their mind to any considerable town in the
country — to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, or Newcastle — and his own experience would teach
him, not that he ever gambled, but we must know that in all these towns there was a practice of
gambUng and sporting in connection with horse races — particularly in connection with this race —
which was inflicting untold and incalculable evil on the country." '
The resolution in favour of the adjournment was carried by a
majority of eighty-nine.
Mr. Trevelyan on the 30th of May introduced his annual motion for
the extension of the existing suffrage to counties. Mr. Bright com
mented on the much more tranquil atmosphere in which their ancient
controversy was renewed.
" The inhabitants of counties, he thought, might be divided into four classes. There were the
owners of land, the tenant farmers, the labourers, and shopkeepers in the villages and small
towns. Of these the landlords and tenant farmers had votes already, but the rest were excluded
under the existing law, which fixed £12 rating, for this meant a £15 or £16 rental. (Cries of
' £14 '.) He would take £14 if they liked, but would any one give him a good reason why a
person living in a £15 house in a country town or a village should not have a vote if a person
who occupied a £5 house in a represented borough was to vote p There must have been an
object in giving votes to such persons in boroughs, and he could see no reason why the same
reason should not apply in counties. The Prime Minister gave household suffrage in boroughs as

160 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
a means of settling the question for ever, and he could not see any reason why the same rule,
with a similar view, should not be adopted in the counties. There was seldom a, member on the
other side of the House to whom he spoke on the subject who did not say, ' We know it cannot
be put off very long.' When the extension took place a great thing would be done. The
counties then would be placed in as favourable a position for legislation on their behalf as the
boroughs already occupied. The freedom of the boroughs would be then extended to the coun
ties, and they woidd have what he feared was a great amount of social tyranny in the counties
broken up. They would have what he described as the paralysis of half the political interests
and power of the country removed and healed, and they would have the industry, the intelligence,
and the freedom of both town and country brought to combine in the election of a really free
Parliament that should be a credit. and a permanent safeguard to a great and free people."
Mr. Disraeli opposed the motion, which was lost, as the majority
against it numbered ninety-nine.
The members of the Boston Free-trade Club paid a compliment to
Mr. Bright in the month of June by electing him an hon. member
of their club. The distinguished member for Birmingham in a letter he
wrote, on the 6th of July, to the president, Mr. William Downie,
thanking the American Free-traders for the compliment conferred upon
him, commented on the objects of the Club by remarking —
" Tour platform is admirable — the third paragraph especiaUy pleases me. Protection has
upon it a taint of the great wrong of slavery. It does not steal the labourer, but it steals his
labour ; it taxes it cruelly, it lessens its result and its profit, and turns it into channels less useful
to the labourer. It says to your cultivator of the soil, ' Tou must not exchange your quarter of
wheat, or your barrel of flour, with an Englishman for the cloth or the hardware he would give
you for it ; you must exchange it only with an American, who will give you so much less for it.'
It was so with us thirty years ago. Our weavers could not exchange with your farmers a piece of
cloth for a barrel of flour, but only with an English farmer, who offered them half a barrel. So
the protective system has in it much of the evil of slavery, for the labour of the labourer is not
free ; it is by force of law diminished in value. This can only exist in a free country from the
ignorance of its people. HappUy the fraud is too transparent to live long. I hope your club will
do something to destroy it. The existing depression in your trade must teach your people how
little Protection can do to make prosperity permanent, and how much it can do to add to the
severity of present evils from which industry cannot perhaps be whoUy freed."
Lord Derby, on the 14th of July, received a large deputation in the
large Conference -room of the Foreign Office, with regard to the policy of
Great Britain as to the war in the East. The memorial had been pre
pared by Mr. Eichards, M.P., and had been signed by members of
Parliament, magistrates, ministers of religion, manufacturers, merchants
in various parts of the country, as well as representatives of Associations
in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Leeds, Sheffield,

DEPUTATION TO LORD DERBY. 161
Eochdale, and other large towns, and was in favour of strict neutrality
by Great Britain. There were many members of Parliament present,
and Mr. Bright, in introducing the deputations, informed Lord Derby —
" That they appeared to be brought together by a feeling of anxiety such as prevailed at that
moment, and had prevailed indeed for weeks past, through all portions of the people, with regard
to the transactions which were taking place in the east of Europe. He did not think the
deputation came there with the slightest disposition to express suspicion of the course of the
Government, or to blame them for what had been done, but to express their own feelings and
the feeUngs of those whom they represented in favour of strict and honourable neutrality, and
to express a sentiment which, as far as he was able to judge, was universal in the country at
large : that the country should not, by armed force and in any way whatever, give support to
the continued dominion of the Turk in that portion of Europe which was the scene of the
insurrection. The calamities of twenty years ago were fresh in the recollection of the country.
and it would be a great pity if the country shoidd not learn a lesson from the unfortunate
mistake of that period."
Lord Derby, in replying with regard to the desire of the deputation
that the Government should observe a policy of strict neutrality, except
where it might be able to interpose its friendly offices to hasten the
close of the complications, said that this feeling was absolutely and
entirely his.
" Mr. Bright next expressed the opinion that Lord Derby's speech would have a very salutary
effect in all parts of the country. At that moment there were other circumstances adding, from
the poUtical position, a great gloom over almost all the industrial and commercial interests of the
country. It was impossible to say how much was due to one cause and how much due to
another, but no doubt the whole was greatly aggravated by the threatened war. He thought the
speech of the Foreign Secretary would have some influence in removing some of that gloom, and
in dispersing some of the clouds which were hanging over them."
While Mr. Bright was spending a few days at Llandudno in
November, the Eev. W. Glover delivered a lecture, on the 22nd of that
month, at this watering-place, on the subject of international arbitration.
Mr. Pugh, the Mayor of Carnarvon, presided. Mr. Bright was present,
and, in commenting on the lecture, reminded the audience that Mr.
Glover had referred to the fifty miUions which we spent every year, one
half of it paying interest on the money borrowed to carry on wars in the
past times, and the other haU spent annually on the army and navy for
the purpose of supposed defence, or for the purpose of wars in which we
might hereafter be involved. Mr. Glover had, he said, quoted the ex
pression of Lord John Eussell, that he doubted whether there had been
60

162 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
any war during the last one hundred years, that might not have been
avoided without any sacrifice of the interests or honour of this country, by
those reasonable concessions which we were constantly making amongst
each other as individuals, and which would be in no degree injurious or
dishonourable if made between nations.
" Just one hundred years ago this year," further remarked Mr. Bright, " this country was en
gaged in a war with the colonies now forming the United States of America. What happened
when the war was over ? A change of opinion, extraordinary — no, not extraordinary, for it always
takes place ; but a change of opinion very remarkable occurred — for whilst the war was going on
the people in many parts of the country were in favour of it, ami the king and his ministers were
doggedly determined to continue the war, but a few years after it was over everybody condemned
it ; and now probably there is not a single man in this country of any political party, however be
nighted, however ignorant, however positive, however teachable, who would not condemn the foUy
and the weakness of the war with the American colonies — (cheers)— but the war was supposed to
have cost this country close upon £100,000,000 of money, and it left between the inhabitants of those
colonies grown now to be a great nation, even greater than this, so far as the population of Great
Britain and Ireland may be counted — it left between them and us feelings of anger and bitter
ness, which are now only slowly passing away from amongst us. But after the American war was
over, in a few years we engaged in another and still greater and prolonged struggle with the Re
public of France ; and the reason that we went into a war with France was because France was a
republic, and held opinions supposed to be dangerous to monarchy and aristocracy in this country;
and that war was continued afterwards for the overthrow of the Emperor Napoleon, and concluded
after almost twenty -two years of existence, and the cost to this country, I dare say, all told, amounted
to one thousand million pounds sterling ; and yet now everybody, or almost everybody, condemns
that war, and believes that by greater moderation aud greater wisdom on the part of the Govern
ment, and the press, aud the people of this country, it might have been avoided. It left us with
£500,000,000 of debt, accumulated in addition to previous debts. We condemned, I say, the
American war a few years after it was over — I mean oui' forefathers did — our forefathers con
demned the French war not long after it was over. Since thou we have had another war of great
magnitude, but not of very long continuance — the war to which Mr. Glover had referred — which
generaUy goes by the name of the Crimean war — the war with Russia— the main portion of that
struggle taking place in the Crimea. But now, as far as I can judge, everybody— perhaps I ought
not to say everybody, because, perhaps, her Majesty's Ministers would not agree with mc— (loud
cheers)— but nearly everybody condemns that war, and I think that every single man that knows
anything about it would admit that we gained absolutely nothing but discredit and loss— loss of
life and increased debt from the struggle which this country carried on with Russia, twenty-two
years ago . . . We have not a single thing of the slightest value to show for it. But, on the
other side, we have the loss of treasure, and sacrifice, and slaughter of a million of human beings.
Some people think that the loss of life in war is a common thing, and that it is not worth talking
about; they think that a soldier takes his wages, and stands his chances. I recollect being dis
gusted at the time of that war by the observation of a gentleman at the dinner of a person of high
rank in this country, and of the party by whom the war was originated. He said, ' As for the
men that are kUled, I think nothing of that ; a man can only die once, and it does not matter
very much when he dies, or how he dies.' Now I think it matters a good deal— (applause)— it
matters a good deal to widows and orphans, a good deal to parents, and brothers, and sisters, and
friends. (Applause.) It matters a great deal to thousands and scores of thousands, and hundreds

THE SACRIFICE OF LIFE BY WAR. 163
of thousands of men who arc cut off in the very flower of their youth, that they should be thrust,
with the passionate thrust of a bayonet, and rent asunder by shot and shell, killed, it may be, at
once, or left lingering on the field or in hospital, dying of intense and inconceivable agonies —
(Applause). What is it that is so valuable in life? What happens if some unfortunate visitor
to this place, or unfortunate and hapless boatman, is drowned in your bay ? Docs it not make a sen
sation in your community p Is there not a feeling of grief, that passes from heart to heart, until
there is no man, woman, or child amongst you that does not feel that a calamity has happened in
your neighbourhood ? But what if there be a wreck ? I was in this neighbourhood two or three
days after the wreck of the Rothesay Castle, forty-five or forty-six years ago, and I suppose nearly
100 men and women were drowned on the occasion. I was down at the scene of the wreck of the
Royal Charter, only a few years ago, when nearly 400 persons were drowned. Did it matter
nothing ? I saw a poor grey-headed man there, wandering along the beach day after day, in hope,
not that he might find his sou alive, but that he might even find the dead body of his son, that he
might be comforted by giving it a burial. (Applause.) These things give a shock to the whole
district, and to the whole nation, and rightly and inevitably so. Look again at the accidents on
raUways. Take the sad accident in this country — the most appalling that has ever happened on
railways in this kingdom — I mean the accident at Abergele, where men were destroyed in a moment,
apparently without a moment's warning. Take the terrible accidents that happen from time to
time iu collieries in various parts of the country. See what woe is created by them, and remem
ber how every family in the country was stirred with grief at the narrative of the disasters that
have occurred. Well, now take other things that happen, and that distress was connected in loss
of Ufe. Take private murders that are committed throughout the kingdom, and the hanging
that takes place of the criminals who have been g'uilty of those murders. All those things fill
us at times with sorrow and cover our feeUngs and hearts with gloom. But now take together
aU the accidents from boats that you ever heard of, all accidents from ships that have ever been
recorded, take aU accidents on railways since railways were first made, and all accidents in mines
since the bowels of the earth were penetrated to obtain coals for the use of man, and, besides this,
take aU the lamentable private murders which have been caused by the cupidity of vengeance ; take
aU the hangings of all criminals — and there have been far too many hangings under the laws of
this country, more brutal in this matter, I believe, in past times than even now — I say, take aU these
phases of destruction of human life, add them aU together, and bring them into one great sum, and
what are they in comparison with the miUions of human beings who have been destroyed and
slaughtered iu one single Russian war ? (Loud applause.) . . I think we ought to
begin to ask ourselves how it is that Christian nations — that this Christian nation — shoidd be in
volved iu so many wars ? If one may presume to ask oneself what in the eye of the Supreme
Ruler is the greatest crime which His creatures commit, I think we may almost with certainty
conclude that it is the crime of war. Some one has described it as the sum of aU vUlainies, and
it has been the cause of sufferings, misery, and slaughter, which neither tongue nor pen can
describe. And all this has been going on for eight hundred years after men have adopted the re
Ugion whose founder and whose head is denominated the Prince of Peace. It was announced as a
religion which was intended to bring peace on earth, and goodwiU towards men, and yet, after all
these years, the peace on earth has not come, and the goodwill amongst men is only here partially
.and occasionally exhibited, and amongst nations we find almost no trace of it century after cen
tury. Now, in this country we have got an institution called the Established Church. I suppose
that great institution numbers 20,000 or more places of worship — churches in various parts of the
kingdom. I think this does not include what there is in Scotland, and what there is in Ireland.
With these 20,000 churches there are at least 20,000 men, educated, and, for the most part,
Christian men, anxious to do their duty as teachers of the religion of peace ; and, besides these
there are 20,000 of other churches which are not connected with the established institution, but

VU LIFE AND TTMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
have been built and are maintained bv that large portion of the people who go generaUy under
the name of Dissenters or Nonconformists, and they have their 20,000 ministers also ; men, many
of them, as weU educated in tbe bulk, as much Christian and devoted men, as the others ; and they
are at work continuaUv from day to day, and they preach from Sabbath to Sabbath what they be
lieve to be the doctrines of the Prince of Peace; and yet, notwithstanding aU that, war, profligate
war. is either just behind us. or it is just before us; and we have twenty-five or twenty-six
millions a year spent in standing armies and navies in the view of wars which may suddenly and
soon take place. Now, why is it, I should Uke to ask, if there be any clergyman ofthe Church of
England, or any minister of Nonconformist bodies here, and if my words should go from this
platform to a wider circle than can now hear me, I would ask all these ministers of these churches
 on this point there can be no difference between church and chapel, for all these teachers and
preachers profess to be the servants of the Most High God, and teachers of the doctrines of His
Divine Son; and, being such, may I not appeal to them, and say, ' What have you forty and fifty
thousand men, with such a vast influence — what have you been doing with this great question
dnrino- all the years that you have ministered and called yourselves the ministers of the Prince of
Peace ? ' And I would not confine my appeal to them only, but to the devout men of every church
and every chapel who surround the minister and uphold his hand, who do in many things his
bidding, and who join him heartily and conscientiously in his work, I say, what are they doing p
Why is it that there has never been a combination of all religious and Christian teachers of the
country, with a view of teaching the people what is true, what is Christian, upon the subject ? I
believe it lies within the power of the churches to do far more than statesmen can do in a matter
of this kind. I believe they might so bring this question home to the hearts and consciences of
the Christian and good men and women of their congregations, that a great combination of public
opinion might be created which would wholly change the aspect of this question in the country,
and before the world, and would bring to the minds of statesmen that they are not the rulers of
the interests of Greece, or the marauding hordes of ancient Rome, but that they are, or ought to
be, the Christian rulers of <i Christian people. (Applause.) May I ask you then to do what you
can p Tou are not asked to do more ; but, wherever you are, and with whomsoever you may come
in contact, whenever you may have the opportunity of discussing this great question, to go to the
kernel of it, stripped of all the husk by which statesmen and the press succeed so often in mis
leading the people ; go to the kernel of the matter, and ask yourselves the question — Can it be your
duty to send out your sons and brothers three thousand miles, to the slaughter, it may be of the
Russians, or of any other people ? Can it be your duty to do this ? Ask your consciences in the
sight of heaven if it can bo your duty, and if you cannot find an answer in the affirmative, then
I say, have nothing to do with this accursed system, and wherever your influence extends let it be
honestly and earnestly in favour of Christianity and peace." (Loud applause.)
Mr. Bright next addressed his constituents at a meeting held in the
Birmingham Town Hall on the 4th of December, 1876, which had been
called to consider the foreign policy of the Government : —
" I ask you, again," said Mr. Bright, " how comes it, if our Government is so deeply auxious
for peace, and if all the other Governments of Europe are equaUy anxious for it, that we are met
here to-night under the apprehension that we may be on the brink of war ? Let us for a moment
consider that question. The difficulty has arisen, as you know, from differences between the
Turk — when I mention the Turk I mean the Government at Constantinople— differences between
tho Turk and the victims, or the children of the victims, of four centuries of oppression in the
Tnrkish European provinces ; and afterwards between Russia and Turkey, because Russia

THE TURK AND HIS VICTIMS. 165
sympathises with the Christian population of those provinces. Tou know that the Christians of
those provinces are mainly of the same Church and the same faith with the Russians. The
Russians are nearer, much nearer, than we. They sympathised with them for generations ; and
when those Christians rise in revolt, it is contrary to human nature that the people of Russia
>hoidd not sympathise with those of their co-religionists who are suffering from the oppressions
of centuries. We are afraid of what Russia may do to the Turk on behalf of those Christians.
and we back the Turk in opposition to the supposed designs of Russia. Before the Crimean
war, which very many of you remember, the Government of Russia had power under treaties to
keep a watchful guard over the condition of those Christian provinces, and to remonstrate, if any
injury was done to them, or if oppression beyond a certain point was committed upon them.
After the Crimean war Russia was no longer permitted to have tbat power, and it was supposed
-to have been transferred to the great powers of Europe. But, in point of fact, it was not trans
ferred to anybody. If you will allow me to read to you one of the clauses of the Treaty of 1856,
which has not been near so much commented upon as it ought to have been in the public press
you will see that we struck down Russia as protector of the Christians in Turkey, but we put
nobody in the place of Russia, and from that time to this there has been no protection whatever
offered to that unhappy population. Now, in the Treaty there is this clause — ' Clause 9 — His Im
perial Majesty the Sidtan, baring in his constant solicitude for the welfare of his subjects issued a
firman (that is, a decree ), which, while ameliorating their condition without distinction of religion or
race, records his generous intentions towards the Christian popidation of his Empire, and wishing
-to give further proof of his sentiments iu that respect, had resolved to communicate to the contract
ing parties (that is, the other European powers), the said firman emanating spontaneously from his
•sovereign will.' And then the treaty goes on to say that the contracting powers recognise the high
value of his communication. It is clearly understood that it cauuot in any case give to the said
powers the right to interfere, either collectively or separately, in the relations of his Majesty the
Sultan with his subjects, nor in the internal administration of his empire; and, therefore, Russia
being put aside by the force of that war, and nobody being put in the place of Russia, you will
see there has been no one to take cognisance of the oppressions of these imf ortunate populations,
and no one to remonstrate with the Porte and to insist upon better behaviour towards them. Then
comes the insurrection, spreading from one province to another ; then comes the excited sympathy
of the Russian people ; then comes the fear of England that something is about to be done un
pleasant to its ally and its great friend, the Turk ; and then comes the difficulty in which we find
ourselves. We are not to be supposed to enter into war, or to be in any danger of it, with regard
to any Power except Russia, aud with regard to Russia only on this ground ; that Russia insists
that henceforth, in spite of the Treaty of 1856, in spite of the supposed interests of England, the
Christian populations shall have a friend. And if the concerted and united Powers of Europe
¦wiU not be that friend, then Russia itself will undertake the guardianship of these people, as it
has done before. But now, why is it that we are so alarmed about Russia, because you know
Russia is a long way from us. By the Black Sea, from here, Russia is, I suppose a distance of
fuU 3,000 miles. Why shoidd we be so anxious about Russia, and why so much alarmed about
Turkey ? That is a point on which I would wish especially to speak to you. Probably all of you
have not examined the map of these countries, but many of you know that the capital of Turkey,
¦Constantinople, stands on the shores or banks of a strait caUed the Bosphorus, and that the
Bosphorus is a narrow passage which leads from the Black Sea into a small sea, called the Sea of
Marmora, and then another strait, called the Dardanelles, leads from the Sea of Marmora into the
Mediterranean. Constantinople standing upon that narrow strait has the power if it chose, and
if it had forts and guns sufficient, and people sufficient to man them, to command these straits ; and
•the Russian navy, the Russian ships of war, although they are now free in the Black Sea, and
Russia may have as many as she chooses there, as England may have as many as she chooses in

16<> LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
her sens, the Russian navy is not allowed to pass those straits in order to enter the Mediterranean.
That is just the point upon which thi- difficulty arises. England imagines that some great
danger will happen to her, that she will lose her predominance in tho Mediterranean, so that her
route to India may be molested, if Russian ships of war should come through those straits; and
therefore England is anxious to maintain Turkey in the present position, that of holding the keys
of those straits, and forbidding any portion of the Russian navy from passing through the Black
Sea to the Mediterranean. Now you see that England— I speak now of England as it has been,
and England as it is represented by the present Administration — that England is afraid that if
the Turk went out, the Russian would come in. and, therefore, we are driven to this dreadful
alternative, that we must support the Turk, with aU his crimes and aU his cruelty ; and we must
support, too, as we do practically support, tbe Mahometan religion throughout the whole of that
portion of the world. About seven hundred years ago, the people of this country, as history teUs
us, joined the Crusaders, and went to Palestine, for the purpose of liberating the holy places from
the possession of the infidel and the Mahometan. And now what do we do ? We give the blood
and treasure of England to support the Turkish Government. We give Bethlehem, Olivet, and
Calvary to the Turk. We condemn to perpetual ruin those vast regions which have become a
wilderness and a desert under the Turkish sceptre. We do aU this for the simple purpose of pre
venting the Russians from passing any ships of war from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean.
Now that was the policy which brought about the Crimean war in 1854. . I do not in any case,
as yon know, stand forward as a defender of those sanguinary struggles which continually, or at
times, take place amongst the nations ; but I know not how in some cases they are to be avoided.
There can be no arbitration unless tho parties to tbe dispute are willing. There can be no arbi
tration between such a Government as that which reigns at Constantinople and the suffering
people of whom we have lately heard so much. I only take consolation in the fact, viewing all
these tremendous scenes and frightful sufferings —
' That God from evil still educes good :
Sublime events are rushing to their birth.
Lo ! tyrants by their victims are withstood,
And freedom's seed still grows, though steeped in blood.'
(Cheers.) Let us hope, let us pray, that the efforts that are being made — offorts that I believe are
being made as sincerely by the Emperor of Russia as by the Government of this country— let us
hope that these efforts may be crowned with success, and that the storm which has been created,
and which threatens to rage around us, may be put an end to, and that tranquillity may again
speedily prevail. (Cheers.) . The late Lord Aberdeen was Prime Minister when the
Crimean war was undertaken, and to the last hour of his life, probably, there was no one event
of his life which he so greatly regretted. Sir James Graham, one of the most capable men in the
ministry, First Lord of the Admiralty during the war, said to me, in the most frank manner,
' Tou were entirely right, and we were entirely wrong.' I might quote you the opinions, iu his
later years, of Lord John Russell, who was » member of the Government, and who, in writing
since, has endeavoured to show how impolitic the war was. and how it might have been avoided.
(Cheers.) . In this country— thanks to what our forefathers have done, and thanks to
some things which we have done— we enjoy a large measure of freedom : there is room for it ta
grow and become still larger ; but it is large, and we enjoy it, and I trust we are thankful for it.
We are also, as I have aforetime said, in some sense the mother of free nations. We have
planted great nations, free as ourselves, on the continent of America, where they have grown and
become great ; we have planted them in Australia, and they are gradually becoming great ; we arc
planting them in South Africa. Our language, which has become the language of freedom in all
the world, is gradually making its way amongst all the educated class of India, and the time will

ROCHDALE WORKING-MEN'S CLUB. 167
come, and I trust it is not very remote, when there may be some kind of free institutions
estabUshed in that country. The lovers of freedom everywhere look to us ; the oppressed every
where turn their eyes te us and ask for sympathy and wish for help. They feel that they may
make this claim upon us, and we. a free people, not only do not deny it, but wc freely acknowledge
it. WeU, I put it to yon a solemn question, a question which you must answer to Heaven, and to
your children, and to y our posterity ; shall England, shall the might of England, again be put
forth to sustain so foul a tyranny as that which rules in Constantinople? — a tyranny which is
drying up realms to deserts ; a tyranny which throughout its wide range of influence has blasted
for centuries past, with its withering breath, all that is lovely and beautiful in nature, and all that
is noble and exalted in man. I ask you, Mr. Chairman, I ask this meeting of my fellow-
countrymen, I ask every man in the three kingdoms — and in this case I need not ask women —
what shaU be the answer given to this question P And I dare undertake to say there can be only
one unanimous answer from the generous heart of the English people." (Cheers.)
Mr. Bright was present at the annual meeting of the Eochdale
Working Men's Club, which wTas held in the Town Hall of that town on
the 2nd of January, 1877.
" There has never been," said Mr. Bright, on this occasion, " during the last hundred years, a
period when the farmers of this country have made less complaint to the public or to ParUa
ment than they have during the last thirty years, since the law for their protection was abolished.
And what happened to the labourer ? The wages of farm labourers have risen on the whole much
more, I believe, than 50 per cent, throughout the whole country ; and in some counties and districts,
I believe, the farm labourer at this moment is receiving double the wages he was when the Corn
Law was in existence. Wc ought to learn from this what a grand thing it is to establish our laws
upon a basis of freedom and justice. It blesses him who gives and him who takes. It has blessed
all our manufacturing districts with a steadiness of employment and au abundance they never
knew before ; and it has blessed not less the very class who in their dark error and blindness
thought that they could profit by that which was so unjust, so cruel, to tho bulk of their country
men. Look at what has come about in this coimtry with regard to the means of education, and
the possibUity of rearing your children to be intelligent young men and women, as compared
with what it was at the time to which I now refer. Now everybody has a newspaper if he
chooses to have it. I was very much amused about two months ago, when I was down at the
town of Kelso, in Scotland. It was one of the days when everybody was expecting news from
Constantinople. I went into the Market Square of Kelso with a friend of mine, with whom I was
staying, and we caUed at a shop to get a copy of the Scotsman newspaper, and I said, ' I never
saw such a sight as this before.' There was in this large square a large space, and all round it
there seemed to be groups of men, three or four, or five or six, standing together, and somebody
in each group reading a newspaper. The paper was there for anybody who wished to read it,
and who wished to leain. That is a change which has occurred merely by the change of law.
At the time I have been speaking of, the paper on which a newspaper was printed had a heavy
excise duty upon it. As soon as it went to the Observer office, or to the Manchester Examiner
and Times office, or to the Manchester Guardian office, it had to go on to a Government office
to have a stamp placed on each paper, and every stamp was charged 4d. Then, when advertise
ments were put in, the unfortunate newspaper proprietor had to pay 3s. 6d. for every
advertisement. The charge for advertisements was afterwards reduced to Is. 6d., and subse
quently the price was aboUshed ; and now it happens that you can get a newspaper every clay for
a halfpenny or a penny. Take the Evening News published in Manchester ; or the Manchester

168 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Examiner, or the Manchester Guardian, or your paper here, the Observer. Every paper of that
sort cost 7d. then; now it costs a halfpenny, or a penny at the most. These taxes were not
levied for the purpose of bringing money into the public exchequer. They were put on mostly
during the reign of Queen Anne, and the object was to limit the number of newspapers, to
strangle them, to prevent people having political information and expressing their political views ;
and those taxes remained until a few years ago, when the last of them was abolished ; and now
what a machine— what an admirable thing a good newspaper is ; your newspapers are larger
than those, and infinitely better. There are ten in the country for every one there was then ;
and what do they tell you P— everything. They are not for rich men only. The rich man gives
a penny — or threepence for The Times, which after all is probably quite as cheap as any other,
from some particularities of information which it furnishes to the public — but the rich man can
get no more out of his newspaper than the one who pays a, penny for it. What did you get ?
If you read within the last day or two, what did you see P I see in Canada there is a strike of
the engine drivers on the Grand Trunk Railway. They are no wiser in Canada. It appears
they are doomed there. (Laughter.) If you cross the frontier of the United States, you see an
account of the most appalling accident that has ever happened since railways were made ; and
you see a great discussion of the election of President. If you go a little further south, you
read about the divisions that exist in that unfortunate country of Mexico. If you cross the ocean
and go to Australia, you hear that they are discussing the price of wool, and whether one of the
colonies shaU continue its system of protection, or adopt the system of free trade estabUshed in
another. If you cross the ocean to the Cape of Good Hope — we see aU this in the paper we buy
for a penny — yon see, not aU the discussions, but what is sufficient for yon, what is going on as
to the attempt to make a confederation of South African colonies. Then you go to India, and
even this very day — Socrates and Plato and Epaminoudas, and all the ancient Greeks and
ancient Romans had never dreamt of such a thing as you see in the newspapers — read of the
grand ceremony celebrated yesterday at Delhi, in North India, and the proclamation made that
the Queen of England was henceforth the Empress of Indian dominions ; then, if you go over
land to Egypt, you read of something not pleasant about the Eg'yptian debt — (laughter) — and
then you go to Constantinople — (hear, hear) — and you hear that their affairs are in a critical
position, and yon hear, what I am very glad to see and believe, that the policy of our Government
is now more in accordance with the policy indicated by the public opinion of the country than
it was some time ago. (Loud cheers.) We must always bear in mind tbat the policy with
which our Government began their proceedings was supposed at the time to be the policy of
the nation ; but it was the policy of 1856, and of the Crimean war. It was a policy which I
was not able to coincide with, and which I condemned veiy much, as you know. The Govern
ment began the policy, and they adhered to it some time longer after they ought to have
abandoned it. I trust now they have adopted a course more in accordance with the opinions and,
I believe, the true interests of the country than the past policy of England with Turkey.
(Cheers.) But if you leave Constantinople — which I see is very difficult for you to leave — (hear,
hear) — yon read that the English fleet has gone from Besika Bay to the Pirasus, which is a part
of Greece. Ton read that the Italians, with nobody likely to attack them, are foolishly making
100-ton guns. (Laughter.) If you go to Paris, you see discussions that are going on between
their Senate and their Chamber of Deputies — that is to say, between their House of Lords and
their House of Commons — as to who should have the absolute control of the public purse. All
this you see every day in your newspaper, so far as the editor can have it, accurately and truth
fully given ; and all this in addition to the information — sometimes assuring, often instructive,
often grievous and afflicting — of all that transpires in your own coimtry. (Hear, and cheers.)
All this is bfought before you every morning, beautifuUy printed, and the price of this, when
you have had it every morning for a week, costs you no more than a single quart of very poor

'TRIUMPHS OF PEACE. 169
beer. (Loud cheers.) . Is it, not a grand history, that of the last forty years ? Are not the
•changes such as aU of us may be proud of, that they have been effected with so little, in fact with
no disturbance ? Tou cannot point, probably, to a revolution of violence in any country of late
times where there has been so much done of permanent good in the same period as has been done
for the people of this country by the wise changes in our law. And yet, I dare say, history will
not say very much of these changes. The fact is, history busies itself with other matters. It will
tell our chUdren, I dare say, of concpiests in India, of annexation, it may be in the Punjaub, of
Chinese wars — wars which were as discreditable to us as they have been unprofitable. It will tell
your children of the destruction of Sebastopol, and perhaps it may tell them that everything for
which Sebastopol was destroyed has been surrendered, or is being now surrendered, by an
English minister at Constantinople. But of all these changes which have saved the nation
from anarchy, and an English monarchy from ruin, history wUl probably say but little. Blood
shiues more upon her pages, and the grand and noiseless triumphs of peace and of wise and
just legislation too often find but scanty memorial from her hands. (Cheers) ... I believe
that workmen have need to be taught, to have it pointed out to them how much their own family
comfort and the success aud happiness of their children depends on this — that they should do all
they can do to give their children such education as is in their power. One of the American States
is the State of Massachusetts, and it is probably the most advanced and intellectual. It has a
system of general education. Massachusetts was founded about 250 years ago. From that time
to this it has had a system — a very extended system — of public schools. Eight generations
of its population have had the advantage of being educated in these schools. The men who
were driven from this country by the tyranny of the monarch and archbishop founded this
school system — the men of whom the poet I have already quoted speaks in these terms, describing
them as — • The Fathers of New England who unbound
In wild Columbia Europe's double chain' —
meaning the chain of a despotic monarchy and of a despotic and persecuting Church. Suppose
we had had in this country all that time schools for the education of your children, to what a
position this country would have risen by this time. I want to ask working men to do their
utmost to support the school system. Be it a school belonging to a sect, or be it a school belonging
to the School Board, if it be a convenient or a possible school for your children, take care that
your chUdren go to school, or that Parliament in voting £2,500,000 for purposes of education —
€2,500,000 to which you subscribe by taxes — shaU have the cordial and enthusiastic support of
the people in forwarding education to the greatest possible degree iu their power. Depend
upon it, if you support the school, the school will compensate you. . . . Tou know, I dare
say, a passage which is one of the many striking passages that you may find in the writings of
Shakespeare, where he says, speaking of the children that are rebeUious and troublesome —
¦ How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child.'
I ask working men, and I might ask every class to a certain extent, how much of the unhappiness
of families, how much of the grief and gloom which often overshadow the later years of parents,
•come from what I may caU the rebellion of children against their parents' authority, and against
the moral law. If you will send your children to school, encourage them in their learning, make
them feel that this is a great thing for them to possess, the generation to come will be much
superior to the generations that have passed; and those who come after us will see that prosperity
of whieh, looking forward, we can only see the beginnings in the efforts which are now being made.
And more than this : besides making your families happier, besides doing so much for the success

170 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
of your children in life, you will also produce this great result, that you will do much to build up
the fabric of the greatness and the glory of your country upon the sure foundation of an intelligent
and a Christian people."
Mr. Bright presided over a numerously - attended conference of
agricultural labourers, held in Exeter Hall on the Kith of May, for the
purpose of supporting Mr. Trevelyan's motion for the extension of the
franchise to counties. About twenty members of Parliament were also
present, and took part in the proceedings. Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Fawcett,
Mr. Macdonald, Sir C. Dilke, Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen, Mr. Cowen,
Mr. P. Taylor, Mr. Burt, and Mr. Chamberlain were amongst the
number. Mr. Bright's speech on county suffrage was clear, and the
statistical and historical facts brought well to the front. He began
by reminding his audience that there had been within his memory many
remarkable meetings held within the walls of Exeter HaU, but he
doubted whether there had been any one more remarkable than the one
that he then had the pleasure of looking upon ; for tbere was
assembled an unusual gathering of those that might be described as
the serfs of the hard soil, who toiled from the grey dawn to the setting-
sun, and the grinding drudgery of whose lives, from the cradle to the
grave, was seldom relieved by cultivation of the intellect, or pleasure,
or mirth. Throughout Mr. Bright's whole train of thought, however,
we constantly catch, expressed or unexpressed, the refrain of Words
worth's majestic line —
'¦ I hear the might}- waters rolling' evermore,"
inculcating the thought that he has confidence in the progress of
Nature's laws, and that it was intended by the Supreme Being that the
whole of humanity should lead useful and happy lives.
" Some of you know," said he, " that I have been charged by very high authorities — on one
occasion by no less an authority than the present Foreign Minister— -with having made an
extravagant statement in regard to the holding of land. I find from their own returns — returns
which err enormously on their side — (cheers) — that out of fifty-two millions of acres in Great
Britain — in England, Wales, and Scotland — forty millions of acres, or fonr-fifths of the whole.
are in the possession of a little over twelve thousand persons. (Cries of ' Shame ! ') Now, if
the land be so held, and if the people are excluded under a £12 rating, which is at least £16
rental — if the population of a hundred towns, each having a population of more than ten
thousand persons, are excluded by this rule of the franchise, then you will see how easy it isr

COUNTY REPRESENTATION. 171
how inevitable it is, that the political power of the counties should bo in the hands of the land
owners almost absolutely, and in the hands of those landowners that are the greatest and most
powerful. The consequence is, that while in the boroughs any man of note or prominence or pro
mised usefulness in the eoiintry can be elected and is chosen, the representation of counties falls to
some gTeat landowner, some great lord's son, or some other person whom half-a-dozen or a dozen
great landowners happen to fix their eyes upon, who they think wiU do nothing contrary to the
supposed interests of their order, and will maintain their interests in the House of Commons
Such a man as that is chosen, and although I would not say there is no freedom of election in
counties, and that no good men are returned, aud that nothing useful comes from the counties —
it would be foolish and untrue to say that — still we must generally admit that as regards county
representation, the results to the nation, politically, educationally, and commercially, are far less
satisfactory than those of the free and open representations of boroughs. (Hear, hear.) The
land laws, the laws regarding primogeniture, entail and settlement, the laws and practice by
which the transfer of land is made expensive, intricate, and difficult — all that you can scarcely
deal with, because the two hundred and eighty members who come from the counties of the
United Kingdom — the great bulk of them from England — are a constant, immovable obstacle
against any change. If you wish to deal with the game laws, you find yourself in exactly the
same position. (Hear, hear.) If it be a question of the administration of justice in the counties,
that administration is in the hands of tho country g'entlemen — (hear, hear) — and though there
are -hundreds, perhaps thousands, of honourable men exerting themselves to the best of their
powers honestly and conscientiously in the administration of justice, yet I think there would be
much greater satisfaction felt through all the population of the counties, and especially through
the humbler ranks, if there was some difference made in the administration of justice within
those portions of the kingdom. (Hear, hear.; Take a little question which is now before
ParUament — the question of the Burials Bill. (Hear, hear.) That biU does not affect towns to
any very large extent, certainly not large towns, because generally they have cemeteries, but it
affects vast numbers of the rural parishes. But these rural parishes really have no representa
tion in Parliament — (hear, hear) — and we know that the Nonconformists in counties are almost
systematicaUy excluded from the magistracy— (cries of 'Shame!') — and we know that in the
House of Commons from the counties there is for them scarcely any representation; and that this
bUl, so just and so righteous that it is amazing that any man caUing himself for a moment a
professor of the Christian religion should oppose it, is nevertheless opposed by the solid phalanx
of county members, upon whom argument and reasoning appear to have no influence whatever
(Cheers.) I wUl make reference only to one other question, and that is the question of appoint
ing or establishing a system of County Boards for the management of county affairs. A
member for one of -the divisions of Norfolk a short time ago brought forward the proposition in
a very interesting speech in the House of Commons. What did he propose ? And just contrast
it with what is done in boroughs. He proposed that there should be what at first sight looked
like a corporation or town council, but what, on being examined, was found to be wholly
different. He proposed, if I recoUect right, that one-third of at least of this body should be
composed of magistrates alone— I think, elected by magistrates, and the rest of them should
be elected by the guardians of the poor. (Laughter.) As far as I remember, there was no
direct representation at all. (Hear, hear.) The guardians of the poor are elected by persons
who give some three, some four, some five, and some six votes. I rather think that I, as owner
and occupier in the place where I live in Lancashire, have six votes as owner and six as occupier.
Well, then, this strange system of voting is to elect poor-law guardians, and these guardians
are to elect persons who are to sit on these County Boards with a number of magistrates,
whom the magistrates may select. But when you come to the boroughs, how is it P They do
not talk there about magistrates and boards of guardians ; they talk about householders and

172 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
ratepayers— (cheers)— and they ask the whole people to come in, and by their open and free
choice to say who shall be selected to manage the affairs of Birmingham, Manchester, Liver
pool, and Glasgow. When you come to the counties a very different principle is offered to the
Parliament and to the country, and the reason it is offered is this : that there is no fau- and free
¦county representation in the kingdom— (cheers)— and until you have the counties free as regards
representation, your class will be in the background, and the boroughs alone wUl enjoy the
freedom to which Englishmen arc entitled. There are many persons who have great fears of
admitting to political privileges a large class of persons who are, they think — and it is true with
regard to many, no doubt — very iU-informed upon political questions, who may be subject to
much influence by those about them ; among whom there is a class which is not only ignorant,
but is — what shall I say? — not very industrious, and not very sober. WeU, I know, and I think
you know, that in aU classes of the people, even among the aristocracy — (laughter) — you wUl
find some men who know very little of politics — (laughter, and hear, hear) — some who, as far as
I have observed during my long political life, do not appear to have been of the least service to
the country. (Cheers.) Even if you go into a select class of the clergy, you wiU find some
men very inferior to others. (Hear, hear.) Under the first Reform Bill, and with the £10
householders, I know, from having had a great deal to do with elections, that there were always
numbers of persons in the constituencies who were very bad to manage, because you could not
get at their intelligence or reason, or their sense of honour or patriotism. They were to be got
at sometimes by cajolery, sometimes by bribery, and sometimes by undue influence. There is a
¦difficulty now in the great constituencies, aud there wiU be, no doubt, a difficulty if the extension
of the franchise to the centre which we seek occurs. But that is a thing which is inseparable
from popular representation, and we must accept it with its drawbacks from the general good
we hope for. (Hear, hear.) We must place our confidence in the growing education and
intelligence of the people, and in the disposition — for there is some disposition among almost
all — to be influenced in things which they do not understand by persons in whose inteUigence
and probity the}' have some sort of confidence. (Cheers.) Whatever may be said — and I admit
that a great deal may be said on this point — still I believe there is no possibility of dealing
with the question of the county franchise except on the same basis that it has been dealt with in
the boroughs. We must accept the great population now excluded, and trust, as we trusted in
the boroughs, to the good influences which are everywhere at work to compete with and with
stand those evil influences, and in the main to give us a great and free Parliament, speaking the
voice of the whole people of the kingdom. (Cheers.) Except that I might be thought to be a
little satirical, it would be possible to say to those who oppose us in both Houses of ParUament,
' Surely the agricultural labourer has had special advantages.' (Laughter.) It is true he has
precarious employment, and much exposure to the elements, and he has had a lower rate of
wages than has been enjoyed by the average of labourers in other occupations. But he has had
fresh air and sunshine, which God gave him, and not his employer — (laughter) — he has had, as
we are all told, the special advantage of a rich man, a lord, or a squire living in his parish or
district, with the example that has thus been set him — (laughter) — he has had also the advantage
¦of an instructed and pious minister of the Church.' (' Oh, oh,' and laughter.) Now, far be it
from me to say that many squires and lords do not set good examples. Far be it from me to
insinuate that the great majority of the elergy are not instructed and pious and honest in the
performance of their duty ; but if the agricultural labourer has had so many of these special
advantages, I hope the lords and the squires and the clergy will not ask me to believe that he is
not now fit for the exercise of the franchise." (Laughter and cheers.)
Mr. Bright, on the morning ofthe 25th of July, 1877, performed the
•ceremony of unveiling a statue of Bichard Cobden at Bradford, which had

RICHARD COBDEN'S STATUE AT BRADFORD. 17S
been presented to the inhabitants of that town by a citizen of the
United States, Mr. Gr. H. Booth, who was senior partner in the
Bradford firm of Booth, Firth, & Co. Mr. Booth had placed £1,000 in
the hands of a committee for the erection of a statue of Bichard Cobden.
Mr. T. Butler, sculptor, cut the statue from a very fine block of Carrara
marble, which was remarkably free from colour, and weighed nearly
twelve tons in the rough state. The figure, with the plinth below, is
seven feet nine inches in height, and of proportionate breadth.
" We are assembled here this morning," said Mr Bright, " to partake or to engage in a ceremony
which must be of importance to many of you, and which to me has a very special interest. We
are met to do honour to the memory of a man whom I will not hesitate to describe as one of the
best and the noblest Englishmen of our time. Some poet, whose name I do not remember, has
asked — ' Why need we monuments supply
To rescue what can never die ?'
Aud I may say for myself that I have not been one of those who are eager to promote the
erection of statues and monuments, for I have believed that there are few men so conspicuous as
to deserve thein, and those who deserve them most certainly require them least. But still, we
have before us on this occasion what may be held to be the outward and visible sign of something-
that men have admired and of some qualities which have been highly attractive to them ; and the
sight of a statue like this promotes inquiries, causes answers, and leads men to consider the
qualities of the man to whom the statue is raised ; and therefore I take it for granted that it
must, in many cases, be advantageous and instructive to those who were not acquainted with the
distinguished individual who is represented before us. . Now wo come to one other point
which was a great grief to my lamented friend — that is the question of the civil war in America.
Tou know how much he sympathised, I will not say with the institutions, but with the interests
of the United States. He visited that country twice during the course of his life. He had made
there, as he had made wherever he went, many very earnest and warm friends. He, I think, was
more broken down in heart and feeling by the American war, perhaps, than any other man I
happened to know at that time in England. He had thought that there was a country spreading
over a whole continent, and that there woidd be perpetual peace. There was no great army, there
was no great navy, there were no foreign politics. America was the home of peace. But he had
not calculated the effect of a vast calamity like the existence of slavery in that country. Slavery
was one of those devils that would not go out without tearing the nation that was possessed of it.
But stiU he always had beUeved that the result of the war would be slavery abolished, and the
great Republic, still one and indivisible, henceforth, as he had hoped it would be before the war.
the advocate of peace and the promoter of civilisation. My friend did not see the fulfilment of
his wishes. It was a circumstance somewhat significant and very affecting to my mind, that on the
very day that President Lincoln and the Northern forces entered the city of Richmond, and when,
in point of fact, the slave confederacy was vanquished and at an end, on that very day  that very
Sunday, the 2nd of April, in the year 1865— the spirit of my friend left its earthly tenement anil
took its way to another, and to him, doubtless— and I do not doubt— a brighter world."
An address was presented to Mr. Bright in St. George's Hall in the

174 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
evening, and in his speech he said that neutrality was the true and wise
policy for England in the Eastern dispute, adding —
" The old sore is before us; the old jealousy exists; the old peril comes round again; and we
have to confront it as best we may. The Turk, even by the acknowledgment of his friends, has
behaved very badly. He was brought up for trial — some sort, before the Conference held at the
close of the year — the Conference at Constantinople. The verdict went against him, but there
was no residt, for there was no European concert. I am sorry to say that the course pursued by
England, as represented by her Government, made European concert impossible. And now it
might have been thought reasonable, that if we were not wiUing to enforce the verdict, we might,
at any rate, have stood aside and left Turkey to its fate. Russia has undertaken to enforce that
verdict. I have nothing to say in defence of Russia except this : that if the Conference was wise,
if the negotiation was a just interference, if the verdict of the Conference was » righteous
verdict, it seems only in accordance with reason and with logic that somebody should enforce it.
And the Russians being upon the borders of Turkey, and suffering, of course, more than we do
from any disturbance in the Turkish provinces, the people of Russia having a great sympathy
with the Christian people of Turkey, aud that sympathy having a great influence upon the Russian
Government, Russia therefore steps forward iu accordance with the common practice of nations,
as we find in all the history of the past. She steps forward to defend that Christian populatiou,
and to put down evils and disturbances and oppressions which had become intolerable in the
sight of all Europe. We might suppose that our Government would have been entirely neutral,
but its neutrality is not exactly of that perfect Mud which I think it ought to have been. For
¦example, we say to Russia, you must not touch Egypt — but Egypt is at war with Russia, because
Egypt is constantly sending ships of war and troop-ships with soldiers to the help of the Sultan.
Russia, sensibly enough, not being anxious to come into conflict with England, pledges herself
that Egypt shaU be kept outside of the military operations in which she is engaged. But, we
say further — at least many people say, I am not quite sure whether the Government have said it
in express language, but people believe that they mean it — that Russia shall not approach Con
stantinople. But if Russia is not to approach Constantinople, what is that but to prolong the
war, and to give Turkey an inducement not to make peace, and to shut out Russia from one of the
•e-ommonest rights of a beUigerent ? For surely, to take the capital city of an empire or a kingdom
at war, and to occupy it, is the speediest mode of bringing that war to a conclusion. Our
Government now appears to hold, as far as it can, the doctrines and the poUcy of 1854. It adheres
to what has been called ' that ghastly phantom — the balance of power.' Then they talk
of Egypt, and there have been articles in the newspapers in favour of the seizure, or purchase, or
aunexation, by which it is understood that we are to obtain possession of Egypt as the highway to
India, and govern it upon the plan which we govern India. I do not say that it might not be
found an advantage to those poor wretched subjects of the Khedive, but there is one consideration
that these wild and crazy people never for a moment looked at. What, do they think, would
be thought in Europe if anything of the kind were done P Why, this, first of all : that
having seized upon something which we thought was useful for us, we left the whole of the rest
of the Turkish Empire to be seized by anybody else who was strong enough to seize it. And what
would be thought by France P France, you know, has a traditional regard for Egypt. I do not
know whether it goes further back than the first Napoleon, when the forty centuries looked down
from the Pyramids upon his victories ; but France has from that time always been endeavouring
to obtain what is caUed a strong interest with the Egyptian Government. I was talking the other
day to a Frenchman, a very eminent Frenchman, who, in aU probabUity, when there is another
Liberal Government in France — which I hope may be soon — will form an important member of

THE EASTERN DISPUTE. 175
it. We had been talking about Egypt and upon the language which was held by some people in
this country with regard to it. I said to him, ' What would be thought in France if England
were, under any pretence and by any means, whether by force or purchase, in any way to obtain
possession of Egypt P ' He said he thought it would create the very worst impression in
that country, and that his opmion was that no Government could maintain itself in France
which permitted such a measure without the strongest protest and remonstranco ; and whether
protest and remonstrance would be all, it was not very easy to determine. And all this
for what P That our ships may go through the Canal to India — and there is no power in
the world who at this moment in my belief has the smallest disposition to interfere with
it ; but all of them have a great interest, not so great as ours, but still a great interest,
in the perpetuation of the freedom of the Canal. Now, in this discord with regard to
what should be done, there is one other consideration of great importance, and that is that
England has no aUies. I believe there is no country in Europe at this moment that feels with us
iu regard to these questions. We are alone in Europe, I believe, with regard to the Bosphorus,
and with regard to the question of danger as connected with the closing of the Canal. Amongst
other nations our demands are felt to be unreasonable aud arrogant ; and I confess that I sometimes
fear that if we pursue this policy much further, we shall stand the risks of some European com
bination against us, and that we shall find ourselves not triumphant but baffled. And when the
final settlement comes of this question, unless we can be moderate and just, I suspect that there
is great danger that we may suffer a humiliation, which not the nation only as a whole, but which
all of us individually, may be made severely to feel. Now, what is our true policy ? I have
pointed out to you that a great many wars have taken place since the Crimean war — unhappily
have taken place — in which we have had no part, though we ran in some of them great risks.
None of us now regret neutrality and our pacific poUcy. We violated that policy at the time of
the Russian war, from 1854 to 1856, and now almost aU of us repent that we did violate that policy.
I believe that the policy of neutrahty is the true and wise policy for this country. Not only is it
true in morals, but it is true in statesmanship ; and, in fact, I would not dissociate at all what is
true in morals from what is true in statesmanship. I think that we might, and that we ought,
whenever honest counsel is solicited we ought te give honest counsel, and that if the time should
come — and it may be. remote — but if the time should come when the powers of Europe should
ask us, or ask themselves, what should be the future destiny of Constantinople — should the Turk
remain there with circumscribed territory and power, or should the Greek return to the possession
of his ancient seat of glory aud power ?— it would become this Government, not with selfishness, not
with this miserable jealousy, but with honest aud courageous advice, to join with the other
powers in that settlement that would be best for that region and best for the future interests and
peace of Europe. I began by saying that we were a great Empire. It becomes a great State like
this to set always to the world a great and noble example. I quote a passage from a recent speeeh
of Lord Derby, with a sentiment of the utmost admiration and with the fullest concurrence. He
said, ' We must always remember that the greatest of British interests is the interest of peace.'
Now, at home, what are we doing ? We are advancing to the uttermost of our power— and it is a
difficult and rugged process, after generations of neglect— we are advancing as much as we can the
education of our people. We are promoting to the utmost freedom of their industry; we are doing
all we can to add to the comfort of their homes, and the content aud satisfaction of
their hearts. Five years hence, if this matter be settled, and we do not interfere,
we shaU all be delighted that we did not interfere. Five years hence, if we do inter
fere, we shall lament for the dead whose blood has been sacrificed, for tho treasure that
has been wasted, for the added discord which we have brought to Europe, aud, it may
be, for the humiliation of our statesmanship and our military operations that' we may have
to undertake. Let us then, I say, turning to our foreign policy, be as wise as we are endeavouring

170 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
to be with our home policy. Let us try to be courteous to aU nations, just to all nations— as far
as we can getting rid of the jealousies that have disturbed us; let us believe that whether it be
the United States on the other side of the Atlantic, or whether it be the great Empire of Russia
in the east of Europe, that there are good, and great, and noble men in those countries ; that
there is no disposition whatever— as I believe there is none— to make quarrels with this country,
and to do evil of any kind to us. Then, great as our nation is, with its power apparent in every
quarter of the globe, great will be its influence for good ; and though the world moves on slowly
— far too slowly for our ardent hopes— to its brighter day, histoiy will declare with impartial
voice that Britain, casting off her ancient errors, led the grand procession of the nations in the
path of civilisation and peace."
The same day Mr. Bright was entertained at luncheon at the Victoria
Hotel by Mr. Jacob Behrens, President of the Bradford Chamber of
Commerce, with a large number of other guests. In replying to the toast
of his health, he said : —
" I have asked myself sometimes whether it would be advisable for somebody in this country,
whether the Associated Chambers of Commerce, who, I am afraid, occupy themselves very much
in very smaU things, the mint, tho anise, and the cummin, forgetting the weightier matters of
the law — if it were advisable for the Associated Chambers of Commerce to consider generaUy
throughout the country some great question like this ; or if it were for the Cobden Club, or some
specially -formed association, to endeavour to obtain in each of the capitals of Europe, in aU the
commercial cities of Europe, a smaU committee, if it were only half-a-dozen men, or three men (and
I am not sure that one good man does not make a very good committee on many occasions), but a
small committee of men thoroughly in earnest, who believe in the practical universality of Free
Trade for the promotion of human interests, and who beUeve that if that doctrine were accepted and
carried into operation to the extent that I have suggested, we shoidd lessen the great armies of
Europe, with their — what shall I say ? — far more than £100,000,000 sterling every year wasted,
and at least 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 of men, with all their labour, wasted also, and at the same time
with perpetual risk of the breaking out of some gigantic struggle which may drench with blood
some of tho fairest provinces of the continent. I do not pretend, of course, that that is a small
matter, and that it can be easily done, but I do contend that it is one which it is worth while all
commercial men, all thoughtfid men, aU cultured men, all Christian men in tho country just
to give, if it were only a very little, their attention to. There are young men who are looking
out for something useful to do. I am getting too old to take an active part in matters of this
kind. If I had been twenty years younger I should have been glad to co-operate with such as
would have been willing to work with a view to bring about, if it were possible, some result of
this kind — making some few,it might be feeble, steps in the direction which I have pointed out. And
there are possibly in this room, amongst those whom I now address, some who may at some future
time, and that not distant, take part in a work which would bless a suffering world, and which I
am sure it is only necessary that some sensible and benevolent and just-minded persons should
undertake. I am surrounded by dignitaries of the Chamber of Commerce — the President of your
Chamber, and Mr. Whitwell, who is a leading man in the Associated Chambers. I do not know
if it is anything that they can do, but if they eould step out a, little from the smaU but not un
important matters in which they have engaged themselves, I am not sure that they could not
make themselves a great power in this country, and acting upon Chambers of Commerce and
corresponding bodies in other parts of Europe, that they could not bring about an action that in
course of time might make a great change in this part of ^he world. The fact is, the world, as

MR. GLADSTONE AT' BIRMINGHAM. 177
we are in it but for a very short time, does not seem to go on very fast/and we must be satisfied if
we can move it only a little ; but the interests of all mankind are so bound up in this question that
it only wants that you should dispel the sort of fog which intercepts their vision, when they
would eome at once to see a promised land which was within their reach, and a fruit such as they
had never tasted that was within their grasp ; and if this view could once be opened up to the
inteUigent people in these countries of a constantly-growing inteUigence, I have a confident belief
that the time wUl come, that it must come, that it is in the decrees of the Supreme that it shall
come, when these vast evils shaU be suppressed, and men shall not learn war any more, and God's
earth shaU not be made, as it is, a charnel-house by the constant murder of hundreds of thousands
of His creatures."
On the 3rd of May, 1877, Mr. Gladstone visited Birmingham,
and delivered a series of speeches on public questions. His first speech
was devoted to the subject, whether it was just or expedient or possible
that this country should commit itself to the maintenance by war of the
system which has hitherto prevailed in Eastern Europe : —
" Tou cannot pass through the beautiful countries the Porte rules over," said Mr. Gladstone,
" without being met from spot to spot with evidence of degeneracy, depopulation, and decay. These
people (the Turks) have settled on the land to be a curse to it — settled upon it to impoverish the
soU and debase the people. (Hear, hear.) When they disappear, what will they leave behind ?
Many bitter and unhappy homes, no laws, no institutions, no public works. I read in the history
of the little State of Montenegro an account of a bridge which the late sovereign of that small but
noble territory — (applause) — had projected, or I beUeve I may say actually executed, over a
mountain stream. The historian said, smaU as this bridge might be, yet probably it is a more con
siderable work as a work of peace and utUity than has ever been executed by the united forces of
the Ottoman Government and people. (Hear, hear.) Oh, most grave is this question of the Turk !
As Arthur says in the noble poem of Tennyson — ¦
' The children born of them are Are and sword,
Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws.'
These are the fruits of the Turkish agency. (Hear, hear.) I hoped a quarter of a century ago
that the days were at hand when the soft influence of civilisation might operate upon the Turks —
that a new era might dawn upon them, a new career open. But we see things going worse, and we
cannot without abnegation of our reason, without doing spite to the laws which ordinarily govern
us in the transactions of life, pretend to look to that effete and miserable system, strong in its
cruelty alone, and commit to it the future destiny of countries that have heretofore had their
share in the noble history of the world, and that are as richly endowed by Providence with all
that tends to human happiness as any portion of the surface of the globe. Ah ! ladies and gentle
men, consider for a moment what is the condition of those countries which are represented to us
now as inhabited by people so mean and despicable. I certainly do not deny that many of them
have contracted a part of those vices which slavery must always engender in the victims to it ;
but what is the case ? Pray, what was the ancient area of the civUised world from the time of the
great Alexander, 200 B.C. ? The range of CiviUsation has extended far into Asia, over countries
that now own the sway of the Ottoman Porte. Who prepared the way for the strong and mascu-
Une institutions of Rome ? Rome established laws for the whole of that country, the area of
eirilisation at that time reaching from the Persian Gulphin the East to the Atlantic inthe West-
from the North Ocean to the deserts of Africa. Upon that area providentiaUy prepared
61

178 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Christianity did its work, but Christianity was followed by an outburst of Mahomedanism. ^ I am
not going to pronounce a general censure on Mahomedanism, or to speak even of the good it may
have done in its contrast with idolatry, but the Christian of Asia, generally speaking, was not found
strong enough to resist the tremendous outburst of Turkish power. Mahomedan influence and
propagandism reached the shores of Europe, and there it encountered, I wiU venture to say, a
noble resistance, which has made us deeply the debtors of those people by whom it was offered.
There were four nations— the Armenians in Asia, the Bulgarians in Bulgaria, the Servians in what
are now called by various names, and the Hellenic race in Greece and the whole of that peninsula.
(Hear, hear.) These four nations offered a gaUant resistance, and although the rich among them
thought their possessions more valuable than their faith, yet the bulk of the people adhered to
their Christianity, and maintained it unbroken through many long and weary generations of servi
tude and suffering. (Hear, hear.) Nor did they sink to the servitude and suffering until in
many a weU-fought field they had bravely contended with the Turk — (applause) — and do not sup
pose that was a smaU matter. Turkey, ou the contrary, as a military coadjutor was truly great ;
in warlike character, the Turk was then at the head of the nations of the world ; he had most deve
loped the military art ; his courage and skill were undisputable. It was those nations which broke
the force of the advancing deluge, and left the deluge only so much as the rest of Europe were
able to repel. They were like the shelving beach which restrained the ocean. That beach, it is
true, is beaten by the waves ; it is laid desolate ; it produces nothing ; it becomes, perhaps, nothing
but a mass of shingle, of rock, of almost useless seaweed ; but it is a fence behind which the cul
tivated earth can spread — (applause) — and escape the incoming tide ; and so it was against the
Turk the resistance of Bulgarians, of Servians, of Greeks, a resistance in which one by one they
succumbed, with the single exception of the ever-glorious mountaineers of Montenegro, who have
never succumbed." (Cheers.)
As the proceedings of the first meeting were being brought to a close,
Mr. Gladstone made a graceful reference to Mr. Bright, by saying : —
" An allusion has been made by Mr. Wright to one whom I can hardly speak of in any terms
less warm than those of affectionate regard and respect — I mean Mr. Bright. (Loud applause.)
I wiU only say of Mr. Bright that, great as are his talents, and splendid as is his eloquence, his
moral qualities appear to me for their purity and their force to be, perhaps, even more re
markable. (Hear, hear.) And, congratulating him on the constituency that he has the honour to
represent, I make bold also to congratulate you on the member by whom you have, I wiU not
scruple to say, the honour to be represented." (Applause.)
On the 1st of June the Mayor (Mr. Alderman Baker) entertained the
distinguished statesman at the Queen's Hotel. Mr. Bright, who was
also present, in responding to the toast of the borough members, said : —
" Now, I wonder, looking back over the period to which Mr. Gladstone has referred, I wonder
that anything good and anything liberal is ever done in the Parliament of this country, because
the Parliament is not a better Parliament than most Parliaments that exist, when you consider
what the constituent elements of the Conservative party in this country and the Conservative
power is. Tou know that nearly all land— three-fourths of all the land, I dare say— in the
United Kingdom is held by probably a smaller number of men than were addressed by Mr.
Gladstone last night. Well, but of aU this land, three-fourths of it at least is constantly and
steadily in a position to act on behalf of the Conservative party. And what of the Church p If
you have 20,000 educated men, with comfortable stipends, settled in all the parishes of the

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 179
country in aUiance with the land, you know what influence they can have, and you know that the
influence of the clergy, in as great a proportion as the influence of the land, is steadily exerted
against all the measures and against the principles of the Liberal party. Now, seeing that you
have also the miUtary service, persons who live upon tho taxes and revenues of the country,
and a great proportion of the professions, because you wiU find — I have found, at any rate — that
the bulk of the lawyers, and I am sorry to say, as far as my experience goes, the bulk of the
doctors, incline very much rather to their rich than their poor patrons — you will see that the
power of property and the power of social position— all this is constantly ready to support the
Conservative party. If it has plenty of friends it needs no canvassing, it is always ready at the
poU ; and I say it is absolutely a wonder that the Liberal party in the country has been able to
achieve the success and the triumphs which have marked its career during the last forty years of
our Uves. This week Birmingham is maintaining its ancient character. There is no town in
England at this moment that occupies so great, and so proud, and at the same time so responsible a
position as your town. Tou are foremost in good works, and have been for many years past. Tour
Town HaU is consecrated to freedom, but your Town Hall is now not one-quarter large enough
for aU those who would come to listen to a great speech on behalf of freedom. Tou now call
upon your sister cities and towns throughout the kingdom to come forward and to join in a great
association, in order that the opinion in England which is in favour of freedom may act with full
force by its fuU development ; and I say, then, that we have a right to hope that from this centre
and heart of the country, as you are geographicaUy and as you are politically — I say, from this
centre and heart of the country there should go forth light and warmth and heat, which should be
seen and felt in every borough in the kingdom. And if it be so, and if you get the answer I
anticipate from those sister cities and towns, there is no measure that is good and noble, nothing
that is a measure of freedom and justice, that you may not carry ; and you from this centre may
influence, as you have heretofore influenced, the administration and the legislation that touches
every portion of the great empire of which we form a part."
Sir E. "Wilmot, on the 12th of June, called the attention of members
of Parliament to the question of capital punishment, contending that
while it was not possible at that time to remove the penalty of death
altogether from the statute-book, it was desirable to consider whether the
laws under which offenders were liable to capital punishment should
not undergo revision ; and the reform he recommended was to make two
degrees for murder, and to confine the extreme penalty of the law to
cases where an intention to commit murder was proved. Mr. Pease
moved an amendment, that it was expedient to abolish the penalty of
death, and to substitute penal servitude for life. Mr. Bright took part
in the discussion, reminding the members that Parliament had previously
decided, and the public were of opinion, that public executions were
enormous evils, and that they tended, by the fierce dispositions which
they engendered among the people, rather to increase than to diminish
the frequency of murder.

180 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
"But, having got rid of the 'Bible argument' and of the 'terror argument,' they were
driven to a careful consideration of the facts and figures offered to them by this country,
and of the experience of other countries. Only a fortnight previously a friend of his, not
so old as he was, told him that when he was at school within forty or fifty miles from
London, he had been taken with the other boys by his schoolmaster on every occasion to
witness the executions in the county gaol ; and that having seen the terrible scenes enacted,
they returned home in a state of terror and anxiety which entirely destroyed their health and
their appetite for the day, when the schoolmaster assembled them, and told them that what
they had seen was the dreadful fate which befell boys who were guilty of pilfering and of
telling lies ; and they were left with the impression that if veiy careful they might possi
bly escape the gallows, but that it would most likely be the conclusion of their lives. (Laughter.) Mr.
Bright maintained that hon. members committed a mistake, which one hundred years hence men
would point to as being one of the most extraordinary mistakes which a legislature could
commit, when they endeavoured to promote the sacredness and reverence for human life
by destroying human life in cold blood, and by one of the most barbarous methods that the
most barbarous nations could devise. On the one hand, the murderer was held to be unworthy
of a place amongst mankind ; while, on the other, the chaplain said to him, ' I pass you penitent
into the presence of God, to take your place in the feUowship of the just.' Then in the grey of
morning — and it was generally on a Monday morning, just after the pious and Christian services of
the Christian sabbath — the sheriff, the governor, the policeman, and the hangman, proceeded pri
vately to strangle a human life that human life should have greater reverence amongst men. Why,
was any savage nation, any superstitious African tribe, ever so mistaken as to commit anything
so atrocious and foolish P No, it was time that this kind of thing should come to an end,
and it would come to an end, and the next generation would regret that their fathers should
ever have supported it. It was time to have a Home Secretary who would revolt from the duty
the law imposed on him. In no other Christian country did the practice exist, and it was, indeed,
painful for the Home Secretary to have to decide between his own human sympathies and the law.
The time was surely coming when he would revolt against the terrible duty, and a Parliament
also was coming which would value Christian law above the relics of barbarism. He hoped,
too, that they would soon be able to show that England was taking a new course, and that instead
of being the last she would be the foremost in the road leading from the cruelties of the past to
the wise and just mercies of the future." (Cheers.)
Upon the House dividing, it was found that the majority against
the amendment numbered 105, and 69 against the original motion;
therefore both were lost.
Mr. Bright was present at the banquet in the Manchester New Town
Hall on the 13th September, 1877, which was held to celebrate the
opening of this magnificent building. About 300 guests were present,
including Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, the Bishop of Manchester,
Mr. A. Egerton, M.P., Lord Winmarleigh, Sir E. Watkin, M.P.,
Lord Tollemache, Mr. Hibbert, M.P., Mr. E. Jenkins, M.P., Mr.
E. Hardcastle, M.P., Mr. T. W. Mellor, M.P., Mr. J. Hick, M.P.,
Mr. W. T. Charley, M.P., Mr. T. H. Sidebottom, M.P., Sir Gilbert

THE MANCHESTER NEW TOWN HALL. 181
GreenaU, M.P., Mr. B. Whitworth, M.P., Mr. Thomas Knowles,
M.P., Mr. D. Chadwick, M.P., Mr. J. K. Cross, M.P., Mr. P. Bylands,
M.P., the Lord Mayor of York, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, the
Mayors of Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, and many other
towns. The citizens of this metropolis of Lancashire had set their
hearts upon the presence of the Queen to perform the ceremony of
opening this elaborate edifice, but her Majesty was unable to do so.
The Bishop of Manchester, in responding to a toast, referring
to the absence of the Queen as a matter of profound regret, re
marked that —
" It might not be necessary at the present time to appeal to the sentiment of loyalty in this
country, but it might be necessary to do so hereafter ; and if such an occasion ever came, he
thought the Queen would regret the day when she withheld her gracious presence from among
the citizens of Manchester. (Loud and continued cheers.) Her presence would have fanned to
enthusiasm the spmt of loyalty which was so steady in every Lancashire heart, and if she came
to-morrow she would find in their welcome no trace of their present disappointment." (Renewed
cheering.) Mr. Bright, in responding on behalf of the House of Commons, in
the course of his speech, said : — -
" We wish, I presume, the health of the House of Commons, and if I may be aUowed to express
an opinion — and there are others here who can correct me if I am wrong — I should say that for
some time the health of the House of Commons has been but indifferent. (Laughter and
cheers.) I mean, if health is to be tested by vigour, and freshness of Ufe, and action.
Some nine years ago, I recoUect, and since then, the House of Commons exhibited much life,
and much freshness, and everybody felt that there was a great assembly with great armies and
doing great work. But latterly, from some cause — and I do not blame the House of Commons,
for it is what it is by the fiat of those who sent it there, but only state the fact — the
House now appears to have lost all that vigour, and to be afflicted by a languor that is most
distressing. If I were a medical man caUed in to give an opinion, I should say, from facts that
are notorious, that its appetite seems to be feeble — (laughter) — and as I have heard a doctor say
in examining a patient, the tongue, if not actually foul, is in some degree furred. (Laughter and
cheers.) WeU, what does your family doctor recommend when he finds some member of the
household a Uttle under par of deficient in energy — a little borne down, it may be, by the
weary work of city life ? GeneraUy, he thinks country air would be of advantage— (laughter) 
and I am not certain if the only remedy to which we can look, the only change which wiU be of
any benefit to that august assembly about which I am speaking, wUl not be that under some high
medical authority it should be sent back to the country. (Laughter and applause.) So much for
the House of Commons. It takes up so much of our time during six months of the year, that the
House may be content if we talk about something else during the recess, and I turn to the occasion
on which we are now met. (Cheers.) I agree with what has been said, that this is really a
memorable day in this great city. I have on my left the Lord Provost of Edinburgh. He says that

182 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
he has attended, as I believe all Lord Provosts have a right to have attended, a great many
banquets ; but he does not think that he has ever before seen anything so complete and so grand m
that line as the banquet at which he has been present to-night. (Applause.) On my right is the
Lord Chief Justice of England. (Cheers.) I could not weU appeal to any higher authority
either as to law or fact, and he says that he thinks what he has seen here to-night is absolutely
complete. This banquet, then, to-night stands distinguished amongst aU the banquets that
any of us have seen or attended. To-morrow night, I understand, these apartments wiU
be filled by, I must say, a much more brilliant assemblage, without saying anything
offensive of ourselves; and on the foUowing day we are to have, if our September skies wiU
permit, a multitudinous procession through the principal streets of the city. This shows,
I think, that all classes in the city hold it to be a memorable occasion, and that we
are engaged in something which may hereafter be spoken of, as I hope it may be for generations
and for centuries, as a great thing to have been done by the inhabitants of Manchester in these days.
(Cheers.) There are two things shown by what has been done. This could not have been done
fifty years ago ; and it shows what a prodigious growth there has been of population and of
wealth during that time, and it shows, also, what vast force there is — force of liberality and force of
generosity — in freedom everywhere, and in municipal freedom wherever we see it. (Applause.)
Fifty years ago, or less, I suppose, this town was governed by an officer who went by the
name of the Borough Reeve. I never saw a Borough Reeve. I do not know the least what kind
of person he was. He was something, however, that we have not forgotten — something we must
admit to be very antiquated. He was the symbol of a patronage which was in some degree
humUiating to a great town. In fact he is now as extinct as that almost fabulous bird the
dodo. Tou may stiU find him, it may be, at Madame Tussaud's, or the British Museum. But,
instead of having » Borough Reeve to govern the great town of Manchester, under a very
respectable Staffordshire squire, you have now my very hon. friend (Mr. Abel Heywood) who sits
in the chair — the real, undoubted, and authoritative representative of the people in this great city.
Then with regard to this edifice, it is truly a municipal palace. Whether you look at the
proportions outside, or its internal decorations, or to the costly monument which is raised by it,
there is nothing like it that I know of in any part of the United Kingdom ; and I doubt whether
in any of the great and famous old cities of the Continent of Europe there is, in what they caU
their Hotels de ViUe, or what the London people caU the Mansion House, any building equaUing
in costliness and grandeur to this. But then, after aU, I am not sure that we may not run some
risk of being a little filled with vain-glory at what has been done. It is a weakness of men, and of
cities, and of nations to be vainglorious after something considerable has been accomplished.
We are here to-night standing in the centre of a district more wonderful in some respects than is
to be traced out on the map of any other kingdom in the world. The population is extraordinary.
It is extraordinary for its interests and its industries, for the amount of its wealth, for the amount
of its wages, and for the power which it exercises in its public opinion on and over the public
opinion of the nation. But still, for all that, although the present and the past have been so
brilliant, I cannot help thinking in all conscience of the fact that the future is not without
anxiety. Even, I may say, that the present is not without its clouds. Now, I have an anecdote
in my mind with regard to this matter which I may relate here, for a, friend of many years was
concerned in it. About thirty-five years ago my late friend, and your frieud, Mr. Cobden, and
my friend who is here to-night, Mr. Henry Ashworth, and myself were in Scotland on an
expedition to preach the doctrines of the Anti-Corn-Law League— (hear, hear)— and in the course
of our journey we stayed for a night or two with the late Mr. George Hope, of Haddington, who
was one of the very first agriculturists in Scotland. He took us to see a famous ruin in that neigh
bourhood which my right hon. friend the Lord Provost is very well acquamted with, the ruins of
TantaUon Castle. This castle is the ruins of a stronghold that one time belonged to the famous

THE FUTURE OF LANCASHIRE. 183
and powerful Douglas family. As I walked in amongst these ruins my friend Mr. Ashworth
stopped me, turned round with a look of sadness, and said, ' How long will it be before our great
warehouses and factories in Lancashire are as complete a wreck as this castle P ' I have thought
of that several times since, I have thought of it with sadness, as I think of it now. One thing is
certain, if ever they come to ruin they wiU never be so picturesque a ruin as the ruin of Tantallon
Castle. (Hear, hear.) But I think sometimes we are not always aware of some of the perils
which beset us. We import as you know, most of the material of our industry from the distant
parts of the world — from Egypt, from India, from South America — but mainly from the United
States of North America, and bring it here, and we work it up here. We use a good deal in this
country for our own consumption. We export a great portion of it to other countries, some of it to
almost every country in the world, and we have to stand in every country the competition of the in
dustries of aU their people, and we have also to overcome, if it be possible, the barriers which costly
tariffs have erected against Free Trade. We are pursuing also a course at home which is not without
its danger. We have been for many years past, as you know, graduaUy diminishing the period of
time during which our machinery can work, under the idea that the condition of the people would
be improved by it. We are surrounded by a combination whose object is not only to diminish
the time of labour and the product of labour, but to increase the remuneration for labour. Every
half hour you diminish the time of labour, and every farthing you raise the payment of labour
which is not raised by the ordinary economic and proper causes, everything of that kind has
exactly the same effect upon us as the increase of the tariffs of foreign countries ; and thus we
often find, with aU our philanthropy in wishing the people to have more recreation, and with our
anxiety that the workman should better his condition through his combinations, that we are
ourselves aiding, it may be inevitably and necessarily, but it is a fact that we are aiding to
increase the difficulties under which we labour, in sending foreign countries the increased
products of the industry of these districts. And we must bear in mind that great cities have
faUen before Manchester and Liverpool were known ; that there have been great cities, great
mercantile cities, on the shores of the Mediterranean — the city of Phoenicia, the city of Carthage,
the city of Genoa, and the city of Venice. The poet says of the people of Venice : —
'Her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured iu her lap all gems in sparkling showers.'
But what are the Unes with which he concludes ?
'Venice lost and won,
Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
Sinks like a seaweed into whence she rose.'
Therefore, when we are met in this magnificent- haU, to enjoy the profuse and generous hospitality
of the Mayor and his friends, and surrounded by the vast industries of this powerful district, let
us not for a moment imagine that we stand on a foundation absolutely sure and absolutely
immovable, and that we are not Uable to the dangers which have overthrown and overwhelmed
the great municipaUties and the cities and the prosperous industries of other countries and other
times. (Hear, hear.) . . . Twenty years ago I paid a great deal of attention to Indian
matters, as some of my friends here know. At that time I was very anxious that there should be
more done for irrigation and navigation, but the railway iuterest prevailed, mainly because it was
also the miUtary, or what you may call the national, interest. WeU, the raUways have been
made. I think now that if the Government would undertake in the next six or ten years  it
would be easily done in that time— to spend about £30,000,000 in the making of canals for
navigation and irrigation, they would by the end of that time have produced a change in India

m LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
such as very few persons can form an adequate conception of. Just at the time when the
Crimean war broke out, Sir Arthur Cotton, then Colonel Cotton, came down to Manchester. My
friend Sir Thomas Bazley and myself were chiefly instrumental iu bringing him down the
members of the Chamber of Commerce gave their assistance, and in the Town Hall, in King
Street, Sir Arthur Cotton gave us a lecture. I have a book at home called < The Indian Problem
Solved ' ; in it there is a map not very much larger than this piece of paper, and on this map are
placed a number of canals according to the plan which Sir Arthur Cotton himself had laid down.
I believe that it is calculated that the whole of these canals might have been made for the sum
probably of £25,000,000, certainly not more than £30,000,000 sterUng, which, after all, is a mere
bagatelle in a matter of this kind, because it is only £1,000,000 a year in interest, and only
three times as much as was spent in that miserable Abyssinian war. If there is some question of
that kind, Parliament grants £10,000,000 or £20,000,000, and the thing is done; they say
the honour of the country is concerned. Can there be anything in which the honour of the
country is more concerned than this, that we whose fathers conquered Iudia with its 200,000,000
of people- can there be anything in which our interests are more concerned, than that we, their
chUdren, should if possible turn that bequest to the greatest account ; and having received, we
know not how or why, that great responsibility, we should endeavour, if possible, adequately
to fulfil it. Almsgiving now is general throughout the country on behalf of the Indian
sufferers ; let every man's purse be open as his heart is open, and let him give ; but I tell
him without the slightest hesitation, that though what he gives wiU carry its blessing with it now
to some poor wretch in that distant country, stUl it will do little for the future. What you want
is a new and a wiser and a broader policy, and that policy I much fear you will never have from
the government of Calcutta, until the people of England say that it is their policy and must be
adopted. In the midst then of our present position, with this gorgeous banquet before us, in this
magnificent hall, let us not forget our responsibilities. Let us not forget the perUs we may have
to encounter ; but let Manchester, the very foremost of our great cities, let Manchester, as she
has done in time past, contribute her share to that wisdom which in all times is the sure
foundation of the permanent prosperity and of the true grandeur of States." (Cheers.)
Probably the number of strikes continually taking place all over the
country, and other signs of the times, as well as an occurrence that
happened at Messrs. Bright's mills some years ago, contributed to cause
Mr. Bright to take such a gloomy view of affairs. The occurrence is
well worth relating. It was at the time when Messrs. Bright were
having a large mill erected by Mr. Peters, of Rochdale, who had under
taken to have it completed by a certain date. Mr. Peters found at last
that there was scarcely sufficient time for his masons to prepare the
coping stones, but ascertaining that there were some on sale in Yorkshire
suitable, which had been made for a new mill in course of erection there,
he purchased them, as the owner had no use for them on account of
having altered the designs of his building. Accordingly they were
removed to Messrs. Bright's mills, but Mr. Peters's masons threatened to
strike if the stones were used for the purpose for which they were

THE BISHOP OF MANCHESTER. 185
purchased, pointing out that it was against the rules of their society to
use stones in a different county from that in- which they were " dressed."
However, the workmen said there was one way out of the difficulty, and
that was to let them pretend to chisel the stones. Mr. Peters, rather
than there should be a strike, consented to pay the masons for pretending
to work, and there was no great anxiety on the part of the employed to
get through their laborious work speedily.
The Bishop of Manchester, on the 16th of September, in preaching a
sermon at the re-opening of Kirkham Church, near Preston, after
alluding to the many false prophets there were in the present day — men
who had spoken from the pulpit mildly and hesitatingly on serious
evUs, carefully applying opiates to the individual conscience — re
marked that men who spoke out boldly and manfully, who would not
speak peace when there was no peace, who had not learnt the art of
speaking in veUed phrases to fashionable people, were nowadays rarely
popular. There were many men in society who unhappily sought after a
vain, a passing, a fleeting popularity, rather than manfully and courage
ously clearing their consciences before God, and by their hiding un
comfortable truths fostered laxity of principle and conduct. Much
of what at the present time went for Christianity, and looked
so sleek, so comely, and so respectable, was, in reality, utterly
hohow; and it was marvellous how men and women could be
content just to satisfy the criticisms of the world and live with their
hearts deeply corrupted by sin. He would strongly urge individuals
to be, above aU things, genuine, honourable, and manly. Three nights
previously he heard some solemn words, which seemed to fall with an
almost prophetic power from the lips of him who was generaUy and
rightly regarded as the greatest orator of these latter days : he told the
people assembled in the Town Hall of Manchester, people who prided
themselves upon the work of their hands, and upon what, with all their
skill, wealth, and municipal institutions, they had been able to achieve —
he told them that even now, perhaps, there might be to those who could
see it some handwriting upon the wall, as there was upon the wall of
Belshazzar's palace in his hour of pride, telling them that they were being

186 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
weighed in the balance, and that, perhaps, they might be found wanting.
He told them that years ago he, in company with a friend, visited an
old ruined castle in Scotland. The thought came upon him there that
this ruined castle told of a state of things that had wholly passed
away, and he asked himself, "Will ever such ruins be seen in
Lancashire ? " Would the wheels and spindles of our multitudinous
factories and industries ever stand still ? Would the ivy ever be climb
ing up our tall mill chimneys, and the owl and bittern build their nests
in our silent mill walls ? Well, there had been great and strong nations
that had fallen from pinnacles of greatness as high, perhaps, as those
on which Britain was permitted to stand.
Mr. Bright attended the quarterly meeting of the Society of Friends
in Liverpool on the 20th of September, and the members of the St.
Anne's Ward Liberal Association of that town, learning by accident
of the right hon. gentleman's presence, waited upon him and presented
him with an address, expressing their hearty good wishes as well as their
deep sense and cordial appreciation of the value and importance of his
recent utterances on the great question of peace and the lamentable famine
among the people of India. They also expressed their unbounded
admiration of his very distinguished and honourable career, coupled
with the hope that he might be long spared to continue his useful
labours for the benefit of his fellow-countrymen.
Mr. Bright, on the 25th of September, distributed the Queen's prizes
and the certificates of merit in the Bochdale Town Hall to the successful
students of the Science and Art Classes of the town, and delivered a
lengthy speech on the progress of science and art during the past
century. " I found," said Mr. Bright, " a curious passage in a very interesting work, the ' History of
the Colonisation of the United States,' by Mr. Bancroft. He is describing the government of
the Colony of Virginia about two hundred years ago, and he gives an extract from a despatch or
letter by Sir WilUam Barclay, the Governor of the Colony, to the government, or perhaps to the
King, Charles II., at home. I will read you the despatch just to show the distance we have
traveUed since that time. Perhaps we have taken much too long a time to travel it. He seems
to have been discontented with the clergy of the day. We have not found them in this country,
except latterly, very enthusiastic, I am sorry to say, upon the question of general education, but
at the present we are aU pretty much abreast, and traveUing in the same direction, and, I trust,
with an equal zeal. Sir William Barclay writes thus. He says : ' The ministers should pray

EDUCATION. 187
oftener and preach less ; but I thank God there are no free schools nor printing presses, and I
hope we shall not have these hundred years, for learning has brought disobedience and heresy
and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best Govern
ment. God keep us from both.' Fifty years before that time, in the Colony of Massachusetts,
the Puritan Fathers, who created that State, had established an admirable and general system of
education, which has given to the State of Massachusetts and its kindred New England States
an authority in North America and an influence far beyond what they would have had from their
numbers or from their wealth. We wiU now come down a hundred years later — from the time
of the Virginian Governor to the time of the great Dr. Johnson, whom you wiU know chiefly as
the writer of a great and valuable Dictionary of our language. In one of his writings he seems
very much puzzled on the question of education ; and he says, ' Concerning that portion of
ignorance necessary to make the condition of the lower classes of mankind safe to the public and
tolerable to themselves,' that ' both morals and policy exact a nicer inquiry than will be very
soon or very easUy made.' He thought it necessary for what he called the public, by which I
suppose he meant the higher and richer classes, that there must be a large amount of ignorance
amongst what he called the lower classes — that is, lower in the scale of wealth — in order that
those lower classes might be content in their position, and that the higher classes might be safe
from their suspicions and from their attacks. Now, our object to-night is directed specially to
that question, and to the promotion of art and science. Let me teU you that there is hardly
anybody who has had the same opportunities, perhaps, of observation, who knows less of art and
science than I do. I am not in the least qualified to make a speech on a question of this nature.
Fifty years ago, when I was at school, people did not teach much about art or about science. I
was at school in this town when I was a very smaU boy. After leaving this town I was at no
less than four of what were caUed very respectable and efficient boarding-schools in that day, but
I never heard anything there, to my present recoUection, about science, and very little about art.
. . . But then, if one cannot understand science and art, one can admire and value them.
Tou have read poems, I have read many, from which I derive intense pleasure ; but I could not
comprehend at aU how the poet had originated those pictures which he describes, aud I could not
teU how it was, after having originated the pictures in his mind, he put the language together so
beautifuUy to describe them. I could not comprehend how it was done, but I could admire the
poem, and read it, and feed my mind and spirit with the beautiful things which it placed before
me ; and so with regard to science, we may know very little of it, but we may have a great
appreciation of it, and of aU those persons who have advanced it, and placed it at the service of
mankind. Now, suppose we leave politics out of view altogether, but stiU keep to the same
period, and endeavour to point out a few things in which great changes have been made, and in
which scientific men have made gains for the world which are not expected by those which had
been conferred by a more just and wise legislation. We are in a magnificent hall to-night, but
what is there in it that is strictly new P The building itself is very much like buildings that you
may see in other towns. It looks as if it were hundreds of years old from the style of the
decorations. That picture at the end (a representation of the signing of Magna Charta) speaks
of an event 600 or 700 years old ; but there is something in this room that is entirely new
and modem, by which we are enabled to see all the beautiful decorations of this hall and each
other, and that is gas, by which the room is lighted. It was only the other day, comparatively,
that there was no such thing as gasUght. I rather think that the first time I went to Paris  I
suppose it must be forty years ago— that city was lighted by ropes strung from the houses on
this side of the street to the houses on that side, and then there hung a miserable lamp, which
instead of aUowing you to see could barely be seen. (Laughter.) Tou may imagine what a
great city like Paris or London, or even what this moderately-sized town of Rochdale, woidd be
if there were no gas, and you were lighted by miserable lamps so far apart that they could

188 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
scarcely see each other, and the old town were dim and dismal. It is not longer than the lives of
some persons, probably, in this room since the first buUding in this country was lighted with gas.
I believe it was Soho Iron-works in Birmingham, and Mr. Murdock, whose name has not gained
the reputation which many men by lesser services have obtained, was perhaps the principal
person in introducing gas as a practical gain to the country. I think about 1812 or 1814
Westminster Bridge was lighted with gas. Two or three years afterwards, so astonishing
was the advantage, London itself accepted gas almost everywhere, and from that time it has
spread with great rapidity, and now all the great buildings, and in our towns almost all the cottages,
are lighted with gas. I believe there is nothing so likely to guard young men from temptations and
to make their homes happy — happy now while young, and happy hereafter, if they should become
heads of families — as taking this very common advice which everybody gives you, and which you
find very difficult to foUow, but which I beseech you to try to foUow. Look at the heads I see
before me, and strong heads that can do anything — stonemasons, carpenters, mechanics,
engineers, weavers, spinners — every occupation there is in the neighbourhood. I see men who
can work at all these trades so weU that nobody in the world can do them better, and if they
were to give a little of the energy and hard-headedness which they give to their ordinary work
to the pursuit of knowledge in an eveuing, in twelve months' time they would find they had
travelled a long distance, that their difficulties had become fewer, and what had been hard work
had become a pleasure. I do not say from Rochdale we should have many great inventors, but
great things would be done. It might remain still that you would never be rich, that you would
always find it necessary to work steadily and honestly for your daily bread; but you woidd
discover that God has given many of his best gifts so freely that the humblest are not shut out
from the blessings which He has prepared for His creatures." (Cheers.)
The Bight Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, M.P., visited Bochdale on
the 7th of November, and delivered a speech in the Town Hall
on political organisation. Mr. Bright officiated as the chairman, and, in
opening the meeting, contrasted the motives which had guided the two
great political parties in their legislative efforts ; remarking that to the
Conservatives belonged shame and humiliation, and to the Liberals a
very high degree of satisfaction and just pride, when they contemplated
the results of the last half-century of legislation and government in this
country. He gave the Conservatives credit for the possession of a sohd
and permanent organisation, the strength of which was to be found in
the landed interest, the Church, the military and legal professions, and
in the publicans ; and said that unless the Liberal party organised them
selves to advance their own cause and principles, the country would go
back, and we might even lose some of the liberties we had gained.
With respect to the landed interest, he did not advocate any system of
legislation which would deprive anybody of a single acre of land, but the
land should be divided a little more equally among the great body of

THE FAMINES IN INDIA. 189
the people ; and he objected to laws which created and maintained a
monopoly in this matter.
On the llth of December, 1877, Mr. Bright was present at a meeting
in the Manchester Town Hall. This meeting had been convened by the
members of the Manchester India Association, to discuss how the famines
had arisen, and how to put an end to them. Sir Arthur Cotton took
part in the proceedings.
" What are these famines ? " asked Mr. Bright, adding, " some of them you have never heard
of, or if you have, you do not remember them. There was a famine in 1837-8, which afflicted
8,000,000 of people, 5,000,000 with great severity, during which no less than 800,000 persons
died of famine, more than half as many again as all the men, women, and children of this great
city in which we are assembled, and the people of England scarcely heard anything of it,
excepting now and then in a paragraph extracted from an Indian paper. In 1860-1 there was
another famine. There were 13,000,000 affected ; 5,000,000 suffered intensely. The mortality,
as far as I have searched for it, is not on record ; but I do not think there is any reason to believe
that it was any smaUer than in the previous famine. In 1863 there came the famine in Bengal
and Orissa, and one quarter of the population died in some of the districts. The total amount of
the deaths was enormous. Nearly the whole of the labouring population was swept away over
large districts of the country during the pressure of that calamity. In 1868-9 occurred the great
famine in Rajpootana, and the districts around it. One hundred thousand square miles, or
one-sixth of the whole area of the country, were more or less affected by this famine, and
1,250,000 persons are admitted by the Government estimates to have perished of hunger. In
1877, the present year, it is estimated that more than all the population of this great city
have died, and those who die, or the figures given of those who die, do not represent the whole
calamity. There are multitudes who die afterwards, who suffer and linger, who know never again
a day's good health, and whose names are not on the record which tells us of the mortaUty of the
famine. . . . There is always soil, and there is always sun, and there is always rain ; but the
rain does not always fall when you want it, and it is not at the particular time just as much or as
little as you want it. But, if you have soU, and sun, and water, and human labour, you have rich
harvests throughout a great portion of India. Now, that is a very simple doctrine which I
suppose few people will be disposed to dispute. But with the rain-fad there is some difficulty,
because the rain comes down there sometimes in profuse quantities. ... If canals for navigation
or irrigation were made upon some grand scheme determined by eminent and competent engineers,
you would find the produce of nearly aU the districts of India greatly increased, and all those not
hitherto irrigated would probably be doubled. Produce would be carried cheaply to the coast,
and it would be distributed in the interior of the country, where there was partial scarcity, from
where there was great abundance, and the surplus would come to this country and help to feed
the growing population we have amongst us. (Cheers.) , . . And thus if the time should
come — and it will come — I agree with Lord Lawrence that no man who examines the question
can doubt that some time it must come — when the power of England, from some cause or other,
is withdrawn from India, then each one of these States would be able to sustain itself as a
compact, as a self-governing community. Tou would have five or six great States there, as you
have five or six great States in Europe ; but that would be a thousand times better than our
being withdrawn from it now when there is no coherence amongst those twenty nations, and
when we should find the whole country, in all probability, lapse iuto chaos and anarchy, and into

190 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
sanguinary and interminable warfare. I believe that it is our duty not only to govern India weU
now for our own sakes and to satisfy our own consciences, but so to arrange its government and
so to administer it that we should look forward to the time— which may be distant, but may not
be so remote— when India will have to take up her own government, and administer it in her
own fashion. I say he is no statesman— he is no man actuated with a high moral sense with
regard to our great and terrible moral responsibility, who is not wiUing thus to look ahead,
and thus to prepare for circumstances which may come sooner than we think, and sooner than
any of us hope for, but which must come at some not very distant date. By doing this, I think
we should be endeavouring to make amends for the original crime upon which mucli of our
power in India is founded, and for the many mistakes which have been made by men whose
intentions have been good. I think it is our duty, if we can, to approach this great question in
this spirit, and to try rightly to discharge the task committed to us, as the government and rulers
of the countless and helpless milUons of that country. If we seek thus to deal with those
millions, and men in after ages condemn our forefathers for the policy which for the time bound
India to England, they may award praise to us and to those who come after us, for that we have
striven to give them that good government and that freedom which He who is supreme over all
lands and all people within His own good time shall make the possession of all His children."
(Cheers.) Mr. Bright was present at the annual meeting of his constituents on
the 13th of January, 1878, in company with his colleagues. The Mayor
(Mr. Alderman Kenrick) presided over 5,000 of the citizens assembled in
the Town Hall, and from first to last the chord of sympathy between
the inhabitants and their representatives was unbroken.
" This meeting, as you know, has been called some days earlier than was some time ago
intended, and you know, also, that Parliament has been summoned about three weeks before the
usual time. It is because Parliament has been summoned so early that this meeting has been
caUed so early. In ordinary times the summoning of Parliament creates a considerable interest
in the country ; but, on the whole, I think it is an interest rather of a pleasurable kind. On this
occasion the announcement that Parliament was to meet on the 17th of January had the effect of
creating great anxiety; in some cases I have heard it described as consternation, and in all
the centres of trade it has caused a certain depression which has been sensibly felt. I am driven
to the conclusion, at which I think a large portion of the people have arrived, that the cause
of all this is not a fear of Parliament, but a want of confidence in the Administration. We have
been passing through something like a crisis, and we have had no decisive voice from the
Government. In point of fact, if one body of men has said that the Government has spoken in a
particular way, the next body of men that you meet would teU you that the Government intended
something entirely different. Of one thing, however, we may be quite sure, that the question
which fiUs the mind of the people at this hour, and which has filled it for a long time back, is the
great and solemn question of peace or war — and I doubt whether it would be possible to submit
to any people a greater question than that. I thought some time ago we were approaching,
and now I trust still we are approaching, better times. The present Emperor of Russia is
not the one with whom we made war. He is a man not given to military display. He is
a man whose reign before this war was signalized chiefly by the great act of liberation of
20,000,000 of his subjects. (Cheers.) He at least was wiUing to forget the unfortunate past.
He consented that his only daughter, the loved child of his heart, should marry the son of

THE WAR PARTY. 191
the English Queen. (Cheers.) I thought, then, that surely was a happy sign of a permanent
reconciliation and a blessed promise of a prolonged peace. (Cheers.) And, although it has not
borne in this political respect aU the fruits one could wish for, I am delighted to think that
there is a great change growing, which I beUeve wdl be accelerated by what will ensue
when this unfortunate war comes to an end. (Cheers.) There are still the traditions of
the Foreign Office. (Laughter.) I once expressed a wish — it was very irreverent to speak
so of such an ancient institution — I once expressed a wish that the Foreign Office might
some day be burnt down. (Laughter.) Correcting myself, I said if it should happen to be
bnrnt down, I hoped all its mad, foolish, and wicked traditions would be burnt with it.
(Cheers.) But these traditions stiU linger in the Foreign Office, and Lord Derby — to whom
they are foreign — (loud cheers) — Lord Derby himself, endeavouring to fill that eminent office, I
believe, with a true intention to serve his country, and to do right — (cheers) — Lord Derby has
been made the victim of the traditions he finds in the office he has fiUed for the last
four or five years. (Cheers.) But, I say, the heart of the nation is graduaUy changing.
I met at dinner at a friend's house in Salford only the night before last an old friend
of mine : he came up to me and said, ' Do you recollect me twenty-three years ago ?
I walked down Market Street with you that day, when you came out of the Town HaU,
where yon had been hissed, hooted, and maltreated, and not allowed to speak to the
constituency you were endeavouring to serve, and were not aUowed to pass down the street
without gross insult.' Well, now a man may have an opinion in favour of peace, and the
dogs of war will scarcely bark at him. (Loud cheers.) But yet we cannot disguise from
ourselves the fact that stUl there is something of a war party in the country, and that it has full,
free access to some, and, indeed, not a few, of the newspapers of the London Press. (Hisses and
uproar.) Now, if there is any man here who thinks the question doubtful as to our policy ;
if there is any one in the country who shall read what I say, and he has any doubt, I ask
him to look back to the policy of twenty-three years ago, and see how it was then tried, and
whether it succeeded, and how it failed. The arguments were exactly the same as they are
now. (Cheers.) The falsehoods were the same. The screechings and howUngs of a portion
of the Press were just about the same. (Laughter.) But the nation now — and if the
nation learnt nothing how long could they be sustained? — (cheers) — the nation now has
learnt something, and it has risen above this — (cheers) — because I am persuaded that
although there may be a great difference of opinion as to Russian poUcy in the main,
or Turkish policy in the main, and when we put especially the sufferings of oue side, or the
sufferings of the other — for myself I pity the sufferings on both sides — (cheers) — but whatever
may be the difference of opinion, I think this is conclusively proved, that the vast bulk of the
opinion that is influential in this country on this question leads to this, that the nation is for a strict
and rigid neutrality throughout this war. (Loud cheers.) It is a painful and terrible thing to think
how easy it is to stir up a nation to war. Take up any decent history of this country from the
time of William III. until now, a period of two centuries, or nearly so, and you will find that wars
are always supported by a class of arguments which, after the war is over, the people find were
arguments they should not have listened to. It is just so now, for unfortunately there stiU
remains the disposition to be excited on these questions. Some poet, I forget which it is
has said — ' Beligion, freedom, vengeance, what you will,
A word's enough to raise mankind to kill ;
Some cunning phrase by faction caught and spread,
That guilt may reign, and wolves and worms be fed. '
' Some cunning phrase by faction caught ami spread,' like the cunning phrase of ' the balance of
power,' which has been described as the ghastly phantom that the Government of this country

192 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
has been pursuing for two centimes, and has not yet overtaken. (Hear, hear.) Some cunning
phrase like that we have now of ' British interests.' Lord Derby said the wisest thing that has
been uttered by any member of this Administration during the discussions on this war, when he
said 'the greatest of British interests is peace.' (Cheers.) And a hundred, far more than
a hundred, pubUc meetings have lately said the same; and millions of households of men
and women have thought the same. To-night we shaU say ' Amen ' to this wise declaration.
(Cheers.) I am dehghted to see this grand meeting in this noble Town HaU. This building is
consecrated to peace and to freedom. Tou are here in your thousands, representing the countless
multitudes outside. May we not to-night join our voices in this resolution, that, so far as we are
concerned, the sanguinary record of the history of our country shall be closed ; that we will open
a new page on which shaU henceforth be inscribed oidy the blessed message of mercy and
of peace ? " (Loud cheers.)

CHAPTEE XLVI.
PROSPECTS OF WAR.
Public Works in India — Earl of Derby and Earl of Carnarvon Resign — Vote of Credit Moved
for by the Government — Mr. W. E. Forster's Amendment — Unworthy Suspicion of Russia —
Mr. Bright at a Sunday-school Teachers' Conference — Liberal Conference at. Manchester —
Protest against Hostilities with Russia.
OBD GEORGE HAMILTON, the Under Secretary of State
for India, early in 1878 introduced a motion into the
House of Commons with respect to the construction of
public works in India. Mr. Bright spoke upon the ques
tion, and said : —
" Talking of this savage and destructive war now waging in the east of Europe, we hear
of thousands being slaughtered; but aU that war has done, and all that the wars of
the past ten years have done, has not beeu equal, in the destruction of human life, to the
destruction caused by the famines which have occurred in the great dependency of the
EngUsh Crown in India. That is a question of some importance. Why should not this
committee be appointed for the express purpose of ascertaining, from such evidence as we can
get in England, and, if necessary, from India, how it is that after so many years of possession —
a hundred years of possession — we have stiU got no further than this, that there is a drought,
and then famine P There is no failure of water, except at a particular time and in a particular
district ; for taking the year through, almost without exception, there is far more water than
necessary for the cultivation of the soil. But it seems no steps are taken to make use of it. I
hear of £9,000,000 or £16,000,000. What, is £16,000,000 in India ? Why, the city of Manchester
alone requires millions. It has spent £2,000,000 already, and it is now going to Parliament to
ask to be aUowed to spend three millions and a-half more — in aU, five miUions and a-half — to
supply the inhabitants of that city with pure water and a sufficient quantity of it. But here we
have two hundred miUions in India subject to the EngUsh Government, with their vast supply
of rainf aU, and with great rivers running through the country, and the whole sum spoken of is
£16,000,000, or, according to some authorities, £20,000,000. Be it £16,000,000 or £20,000,000,
what is it when we consider the vastness of the country and the greatness of its need P (Hear,
hear.) I recoUect some years ago, when Sir James Hogg and Mr. Mangles were in this House,
and when it was contended that the Indian Government did not fail in its duties, I showed that
in the fourteen years then preceding — that was preceding 1856 or 1857 — Manchester spent more
in public works for the good of its own population than the Indian Company had spent in the
same number of years throughout the whole of the vast territories subject to their care or
neglect. I have no doubt whatever, notwithstanding what has been said or may be said as to
the condition of the finances, it is the duty of the Indian Government in some way, if possible
— and if not possible famine must come, and the doomed must die, but I beUeve it is possible 
62

194 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
to meet this great evil. If famine comes from want of water, clearly to get rid of famine
you must have water. Tou cannot have water except by works of irrigation. Tou have the
rain from heaven; you have the great rivers; and you have a great Government, which has
conquered the country, and which, having conquered it, at least ought to exercise aU the powers
of its intellect for the purpose of saving its people from this suffering and this ruin, and ought to
save this Parliament and this country from the degradation and humiliation of allowing it to be
known throughout the world that miUions of the subjects of the Crown in India, in the course of
ten years, perish by famine, which great engineers and men of character and experience say
positively might altogether have been prevented."
The House ultimately adopted the following resolution : —
" That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into and report as to the expediency of
constructing public works in India with money raised on loan, both as regards financial results and
the prevention of famine."
The Earl of Derby and the Earl of Carnarvon, finding that the
Cabinet were drifting into a war policy, resigned. The Government
apjxlied to the House of Commons in January for a vote of credit, in
order to be prepared if England was forced into war. Mr. Eorster moved
an amendment : —
" That this House, having been informed in her Majesty's gracious speech that the conditions
on which her Majesty's neutrality is founded had not been infringed by either belligerent engaged
in the war in the east of Europe, and having since received no information sufficient te justify a
departure from the policy of neutrality and peace, sees no reason for adding to the burdens of
the people by voting unnecessary supplies.''
Mr. Bright, in his speech, which was listened to by a crowded House,
deprecated tbe unworthy suspicion of Bussia, and urged the Government
not to throw their sword into the scale at a time when the combatants
appeared to be about to sheathe theirs, adding : —
" Coming to the question directly before the House, I say it is strange that when the war is
over, or nearly over, that when peace is in view, and, as we think, almost within our grasp, when
men in this country are breathing more freely, and when England and Europe are glad— I say,
it does appear to me strange beyond aU example that at this precise moment the very first
positive menace of warlike preparation should be offered by the Government for adoption by
this House. (Hear, hear.) What is our position with regard to this question of forces?
MiUions are voted in this House from session to session, and few men know how much is voted ;
but in the last session of Parliament, within the last twelve months, a sum of not less than
£•26,000,000 sterling was voted for miUtary and naval expenses. £26,000,000 sterUng ! Why, when
the Duke of WelUngton and Sir Robert Peel were in office, in the year 1838— a little more than
forty years ago— the whole expenditure of the army and navy, I beUeve, was only about
£11,000,000. This year it amounts, and it has amounted for several years past, to £25,000,000
or £26,000,000. I should say it was not unreasonable for me to assert to the House that that
seems enough. If we are not intending war, if war is not probable, if no nation is to invade or
molest, war being now impossible, surely a vote of £26,000,000 in a year is enough for this

UNWORTHY SUSPICION OF RUSSIA. 195
civilised and Christian country in this Christian age. And we are told — with a repetition of
phrase that I am sorry to say looks as if the Secretary of State was not quite sure that we could
credit it — that there is not the smallest intention of war on the part of the Government. The
war is near its end ; it would be madness to endeavour to prolong it ; but why should it now be
promulgated to all Europe that England is at last prepared to draw her sword, it may be —
though I hope it is not — to throw it into the scale at the precise moment when the warring
nations are returning their swords to their scabbards P (Hear, hear.) . . . I have no objection
to, and am not about to argue against, the sitting of an European conference, or of this country
taking its share in such conference, because it seems to me that there are points in the settle
ment of this now terminating war which it may be necessary for the good, not only of Russia
and Turkey, but. of Europe generaUy, that the Powers of Europe should consult upon and settle
in order to bring about a just and durable peace. But then comes the question which will be
much canvassed in this House aud out of it — I mean the question of what are, or are to be, the
terms of peace which are exciting so much agitation. (Cheers and counter-cheers.) Of course
if hon. gentlemen opposite know nothing of the terms, it was unnecessary for them to go into so
elaborate a description of and to say so much against them. We know, at any rate, that one of
the main points connected with the treaty must be to some extent to liberate the Christiau, and
I think also to liberate the Moslem, population of what are caUed the Christian provinces of
Turkey in Europe. I should like to ask any hon. member of this House whether he would be
wUling for a treaty of peace to be concluded which should allow the populations of whom I have
spoken to remain in the position in which they were before the war. Was it not in order that
something might be done in the direction of liberating Turkish subjects from Turkish tyranny
that one of the ablest Ministers of the Crown was sent to the conference in Constantinople ?
(Cheers.) It was surely the condition of the people I have mentioned that excited the mind of
Great Britain, and I hope, to some extent, the mind of Ireland, about eighteen months ago.
They were determined, if possible, these subject populations should speedily be delivered from
the tyranny under which they groaned. It is believed that the more free the people to whom I
allude are made the better it wUl be, not only for themselves but for others, and the more
remote wiU be the chances of wrar hereafter in the countries which they inhabit. (Cheers.) If
the terms of the peace which foUowed the Crimean war had been more wise, the probability is
that the present war would have been avoided. (Hear, hear.) I could not help, the otlier night,
when listening to the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, lamenting the tone with which
he referred to this question. (Hear, hear.) He spoke of it as if it was one in which the
interests of England were adverse to the freeing of the populations to whom I have referred.
(Loud cheers, and cries of 'No,' with an expression of- dissent from the Chancellor of the
Exchequer.) Well, if the words used by the right hon. gentleman did not mean that he should
lament the freeing of so many Bulgarians as might, under other circumstances, obtain their
liberty, the EngUsh language is something I have yet to learn. (Loud cheers.) The language
used by the right hon. gentleman the other night did not strike me as being quite worthy of
EngUsh statesmen who have, in times past, generally expressed sympathy with the suffering,
and expectation and a hope for the Uberation of those who were oppressed or enslaved. (Cheers.)
But the tone of the right hon. gentleman the other night  (Cheers, counter-cheers, and a cry
of ' Poland ' from the hon. members on the Ministerial side of the House.) With regard to
Poland, I remember when a boy that the calamities of Poland were weU and sadly known ; and
now there comes to my mind some lines in reference to the same subject. A poet wrote —
' Where Poland sees her gallant sons,
Her first, her. best, her bravest ones,
On the cold earth all gory lie,
For Poland breathe a prayer and die.'

196 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
(Cheers.1 Surely I cannot say anything offensive to the character of English statesmanship if I
say that an English statesman should have a regard for the suffering and oppressed, be they
white or black, in any aud every region of the globe. I say the speech of the Home Secretary
partook of the same fault. It was a speech which will not give the same satisfaction as one did
which he delivered last session. (Hear, hear.) Throughout the whole of the description which
the right hon. gentleman gave of the difficulties and delays attending the negotiations, he was
continually, with a dramatic action, conveying the impression to the House that somebody was
amusing the Turkish delegates and commissioners — (hear, hear) — while the armies of the Czar
were marching on to the accomplishment of something which we had reason to beUeve might possibly
be within the intention of the Russian Government. (Cheers.) We are even told that these
unfortunate Russian commissioners are scarcely to be found. They can telegraph to their wives
in Constantinople — that seems to be a government that they comprehend — (laughter) — but we
have the information — I am not sure that it does not come from the English Ambassador at
Constantinople — that although the Government there has telegraphed to them several times
during the last few days, they not only can get no answer from them with regard to the progress
of the negotiations, but not even an answer as to whether they are stUl in existence. And to
say, without knowing more than that, that the Russians are delaying the negotiations for
purposes that they will not avow, is, I think, that which a Minister of this country is not wise in
saying of a Sovereign and a Government which the Queen in her speech from the throne
described as a friendly aUy. (Cheers and counter-eheers.) . . . Hon. gentlemen opposite, I
am sure, taking them individually, would say that they are just as much for peace as I am.
(Ministerial cheers.) They know that peace is the great interest of every country. (Ministerial
cheers.) They do not wish out of a mean, and it may be an ignorant, jealousy of Russia to do
injustice to Russia. They do not wish to support perpetuaUy the grinding and odious tyranny
whieh they know has been exercised by Turkey upon the largest portion of her population.
Well, if you examine these terms, you will find there is nothing in them that ought to excite or
alarm you. There is nothing to urge you to show yourselves ignorant and selfish, or animated
by a discreditable jealousy of Russia — nothing to justify any menace to Russia or to other
Powers who may enter the conference by the passing of the vote which the Government has
submitted to the House. Let us consider for a moment what we are doing. We often boast,
and we sometimes boast too much, of the greatness of our great Empire. We say — it is often
in rhetorical leading articles said, and sometimes in speeches — that the sceptre of our Queen
rules over three hundred millions of the population of the globe. To this vast multitude we
assembled in this Chamber speak. They hear our voice. Every decree, every resolution, every
act of this House may be felt over nearly half the world. Knowing, then, that we affect the
nearest and dearest interests of this vast multitude, am 1 wrong in saying that no language can
describe, no measure gauge, the magnitude and burden of the responsibilities of this country,
and of this Government, and of this House ? At this moment we are fighting with savage
tribes in South Africa, and on the northern frontier of India. Suspicion and alarm are spreading
throughout large tracts of that portion of Asia which lies conterminous with our northern Indian
frontier. I ask this House, then, is not this warning enough for us ? Is it not worth our while
to consider this question calmly, without passion, and without unworthy jealousy or suspicion?
(Cheers.1 I ask hon. gentlemen to consider what is the condition, the growing and saddening
condition, of not a little of our home population ; and I would point out to the Government that
in this matter I think they have done— unintentionally, I am quite sure— a great injustice to our
home popidation. They have not been with the public clear enough, firm enough, decisive
enough, consistent enough. Their speeches have to-day been in one direction and to-morrow in
another. (' No.') I know it to be true. I know also that there is scarcely a single market in
the United Kingdom connected with any ot the great interests of the United Kingdom that has

SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACHERS' CONFERENCE. 197
not been disturbed and agitated. (Cheers and counter-cheers.) I know there has been deep
anxiety in almost aU the industries of the country. Having regard to these things, I say the
Government should be extremely careful that not one single word is said, and not one single
action done by them, that may shake confidence in business, or add to the inevitable troubles
with which we are Ukely for a time to be surrounded. I say also that the Eastern question and
this particular vote ought to be considered by us calmly, and deliberately, and conscientiously,
without jealousy and without prejudice ; and if the Government took that course I believe they
would find themselves honestly and fairly supported by both sides of the House. I want us to
shake off this miserable nightmare which has so long oppressed us, and for ever cease pursuing
a phantom whieh 1 am quite satisfied we shaU never overtake. I would declare this — the
Government of this country ought to declare it — the time is not far distant, I believe, when they
wUl declare it — I think it is now pretty much the mind of the people of England— that we have
no interest in any longer taking any step whatever to maintain the Ottoman rule in Europe, that
we have no interest in cherishing a perpetual animosity against Russia. There are two poUcies
before us — the old policy, which, if we leave to our chUdren, wiU be a legacy of future wars ; the
new poUcy, which I contend for and which I preach, and which if we adopt we shaU leave to
our country, not a legacy of war, but a legacy of peace, and a growing and lasting friendship
with one of the greatest empires of the globe."
After a lengthy debate, Mr. Eorster withdrew his amendment, and the
vote of credit was ultimately agreed to.
A treaty of peace between Eussia and Turkey was signed at San
Stefano on the 3rd of March, and was ratified on the 17th of the same
month at St. Petersburg. Still the English Government caused great
uneasiness by the removal of Indian troops to Malta. An address,
signed by 400 Dissenting ministers, deprecating a war with Bussia, was
presented to Mr. W. E. Gladstone, and meetings were held all over the
country, at. which resolutions were passed protesting against war with
Bussia. Mr. Bright, on the 19th of AprU, 1878, was the chairman of the
Annual Conference of the Sunday-school Teachers of the Association for
Lancashire, Cheshire, and Derbyshire, which was held in the United
Methodist Free Church, Baillie Street, Bochdale.
" Now, take the present time in which we are living — the present hour, the present moment,"
remarked Mr. Bright in opening the proceedings of the Conference. " We have, as you know —
aU men and women capable of thinking must have at this moment; — a subject of great anxiety
pressing upon them. I shaU not attempt to discuss it, because that would be apart from the
business of a meeting like this ; but I want to ask you this : — Do you think, looking from the point
of the Christian work in which you are engaged, that the common view of war is a wise or a
Christian view ? How is it regarded ? As a thing that is frequent, that is usual, that is useful,
and that is necessary. It comes as heavy rains come, as a bad harvest comes, or some other
natural calamity ; and, in fact, if we read the history of this country, or of any country, that is

198 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
exactly aU that history teaches upou this great question. History often forgets, and the people
continually forget, how trivial and how insufficient is generally the cause of war. And they forget
also until it is past, and then even they soon forget, its terrible results. Now, at this moment we
are told by certain newspaper writers, by many public men, and by some persons we meet in the
streets, that a great portion, or a considerable portion, of the population of Great Britain is very
eager for war. May I not ask you if persons of this class, if there be such, are not in aUuost total
ignorance of what it is they propose to go to war for, or to obtain by war P They have some vague
notion of national interests or national honour, which are phrases that they have heard repeated
hundreds of times, but never once have known to be satisfactorily explained. They are bUnd to
its unspeakable wickedness, to its multitudinous crimes, to its horrors and its sufferings. Now,
if our youth were instructed in these things, if they were conscious that the carnage of war sends
thousands of immortal spirits unbidden to the unseen world, surely none, in such ignorance as
prevails, would urge it upon a, Government. They woidd be, in point of fact, so enamoured
of peace that a Government seeking peace would be able to secure it. They would be so much
agamst war that they would be enabled to restrain any Government that, step by step, might seek
to involve the country in the calamity of war. The Sunday-school, as I have said, has done much,
and it may do more. I confess that when I look at its labours, I do not consider the teachino- of
reading to be in any way superior in importance to the moral influence which it may bring to bear
upon millions of our population. I think the influence of a good man or a good woman teaching
ten or twelve children in a class is an influence for this world and for the world to come that no
man can measure, aud the responsibility of which no man can calculate. The school, then, may
do more : it may raise and bless the individual ; it may give comfort in the family circle for the
blessing the child receives in the school it takes home to its famUy, and can communicate to the
circle which it finds there. It may check the barbarism, even, of the nation ; and even at this
moment it could give us all we may rightly expect of it in the future ; it might save us from the
regret and the sorrow which as a people we cannot escape, if another bloody chapter be added to
the annals of our time. I must ask you to forgive me for the last observations which I have made.
I have referred to a question which it is almost impossible to avoid speaking of, for it is
impossible to avoid thinking of it at this perilous hour. I speak to you as Christian men. If on
Sunday last it had been put, or if on Sunday next it could be put, to aU the Nonconformist Free
Church congregations throughout Great Britain, whether it were the duty or the interest of this
country to be involved in war or not, I have no doubt whatsoever that throughout aU those con
gregations, from Caithness to Cornwall, there would have been a universal and unanimous voice in
favour of the preservation of peace. Lord Derby said not long ago that the greatest of British
interests was peace. Can it be possible that the Christian men and women who are engaged in
your holy work shoidd not coincide with him in that view ? Tou are yourselves the ministers,
humble but earnest, of the Prince of Peace. It is, therefore, within your caUing, within your
solemn duty-even it may be your special duty on an occasion like this-that you shoidd express
some feeling on this question; and if there ascends from your hearts a prayer to the
throne of the Most High on behalf of your chUdren and on behalf of your nation,
et it be a prayer that He may turn the hearts of your rulers from thoughts of war, and bring
hem to sentiments of mercy and of peace. When I think of the Ulustrious lady who sits upon the
throne of these realms, when I think how bright in the main are the annals of her reign-the one
greatest blot upon them in om- time, and until now, is the war of twenty-four years ago-let us
hope that our hearts may be spared the sorrow that must afflict us, and the record of her
reign be spared the additional blot whieh woidd be cast upon it, if again the blood of our
countrymen shoidcl be shed in favour of a cause which no man can distinctly define or describe
and m pursuit of objects which no rational man in the world beUeves it is possible for arms

CONFERENCE OF LIBERALS AT MANCHESTER. 199
Mr. Bright, on the evening of the 30th of April, presided at a great
demonstration in the Pree-trade Hall, Manchester. In the morning
1,500 delegates from the surrounding towns assembled in conference to
protest against hostilities with Bussia, for there were many indications
that the public mind was disturbed with feelings of distrust of the
Government. Mr. Bright delivered one of those powerful philippics of
which he is such a master.
"Tou know Lord Derby in this country," said he, "you knew his father before him; you
know how much he has been allied with the present Prime Minister for the last five-and-twenty
years. Tou know— no, you do not know ; but you may imagine to some extent— how much it
must have cost him to sever himself from his ancient coUeague, and on this great question
from the party to which he was connected ever since he came into public life ; and yet so solemn
did Lord Derby consider the crisis at which we have arrived, so convinced was he that aU his
efforts as Secretary for Foreign Affairs would be unable to keep us out of war, that he shook
off the dust of his feet against them. (Loud applause.) He went out from among them— (hear,
hear)— declaring by this act that he would not be in any degree a participator in the great crime
they meditated against the true interests of his country. (Cheers.) If Lord Carnarvon and Lord
Derby have no confidence in the Government, of which they were members, how can the Ministry
expect us, or the country at large, to have confidence in them p (Hear, hear.) Where there is
no truth, and where you have found out there is no truth, there can be no faith. (Loud cheers.)
I ask your attention to one or two facts, which I think will justify me in the observations I have
made. Go back to the meeting of Parliament ; go on from that day about a week, and you
wUl find a notice of what was called a Vote of Credit upon the people; surely enough a vote of
discredit upon the Government. (Applause.) I took the liberty of asking in the House of
Commons what was the object of this vote — what was to be done with six millions P Are you
going into a congress — a congress of European Powers — with shotted cannon and loaded revolvers P
(Loud cheers.1 But the very smooth-tongued representatives of the Government in the House
gave us to understand that nothing could be further from their thoughts — it was, in point of fact
something of a vote of confidence. They asked that Parliament should unanimously, or by a
great majority, consent to this vote, so as to teU the nations with whom they were about
to negotiate that they represented a united party, which represented a united people ; but nothing
was further from their object than shotted cannon and loaded revolvers, and they went so far as
to say that probably very little of this money would be wanted. I am not sure that on one
occasion it was not said that possibly even none of it might be spent. WeU, what happened p
Immediately the vote was agreed to, the spending began, and it began in the most reckless
manner. We heard from paragraphs in the newspapers— in the main, I dare say, on this matter not
incorrect — that theywerebuying and ordering hundreds and thousands of sand-bags down at Dundee
to be used for fortifications ; that in Manchester they had taken a great warehouse, and were packing
hay for exportation for cavalry ; that the limit of the price of horses for the cavalry had been
raised, and that they were buying horses everywhere; and then immediately afterwards
that, although it is admitted by their own press, by their own officers, England has at this moment
a naval power at sea exceeding that combined of the rest of Europe, they bought three ironclads,
two of which, I believe, belonged to Turkey, but which Turkey could not take away during
the war, or which Turkey could not pay for ; the other is said to have belonged to the Emperor
or Government of Brazil. Now, by this means, in the course of less than two months they had

200 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
spent three-and-a-half of the six millions, and, so far as they dared, they had departed from the
kind of smooth half -promise which was given in the House of Commons, that little— if possible
none_0f this money might need be expended. Now we come to the question of the fleet. Tou
know that the fleet was ordered to the Sea of Marmora, and, having got upon its way, it received
a telegram which advised it to move back. If the forts of the DardaneUes, as was expected, had
fired on the fleet, and the fleet had returned the fire, which it certainly would have done, then
there would have been an outward and distinct act of war. The fleet came back, partly to secure
the continuance of Lord Derby in the Government. (Hear, hear.) It came back, and then only
a. very few days afterwards it was sent, with fresh orders, to the Sea of Marmora. In spite of the
refusal of the Turkish Government to allow it to pass the forts, the fleet passed the forts, and
since that time it has been anchored here and there within the Sea of Marmora. Now, I wUl not
say that sending the fleet into the Sea of Marmora was an act of war. Mr. Hardy says it was not,
and that they had a right to send it ; but if they had a right to send it, why did they ask for per
mission from the Sultan to go P (Cheers.) Now, what was the pretence on which the fleet was
sent? I beg your attention to this when you are considering the faith of this Government.
(Hear, hear.) Sir Stafford Northcote in the House of Commons — I am not now quoting the
exact words ; I am giving you the meaning of what was said — stated that the purpose of the fleet
going into the Sea of Marmora was to offer protection to the lives, and, as far as might be,
of course, the property, of British subjects, of whom there were a large number in Constantinople.
I took the liberty of asking him the question : ' Is the sending of the fleet now into the
Sea of Marmora of an entirely different character from the sending of it there on the first occa
sion, when it proceeded partly on its way there, but returned ? ' And he answered that it was an
act of a different character — meaning, of course, that the first was an act of menace — I wiU not
say of war, but an act of menace and a demonstration of force ; that in the second case it was
merely for the innocent object of protecting the lives and property of British subjects. (Hear,
hear.) Well, now, nobody said it was not true ; but no sensible man believed it — (laughter) — be
cause it was not necessary to send four or six enormous ironclads to give such protection as might
be required, if any were required ; but the fact is, none was required. (Hear, hear.) Even the
English Minister at Constantinople — ready enough to send telegrams to alarm us — (hisses) — had
not intimated to the Government that it was necessary for the protection of the Uves and the
property of Englishmen in Constantinople that any EngUsh force should be near that city.
(Cheers.) And what is more, there was not a single Minister — I mean Ambassador — of any
European Power who had hinted at such a necessity to his own Government, and no other Power
sent any fleet to the Sea of Marmora. . . . (Hear, hear.) I ask you here, it may not be worth whUe to
ask any Conservative here or outside ; there must be Conservatives so-called who vote for Conserva
tive candidates, who have, I trust, some idea beyond that of the mere superiority or success of
party— there must surely be Conservatives, as there are any number of Liberals, who consider
great national interests and great truths to be superior to the demands of party ; and I ask them
whether they wiU be led in this career and to this terrible catastrophe by a Minister— for I hold
that I am not describing the policy of the country— I am not even describing the policy of Par
liament—I may not even be describing the secret wished-for policy of the whole of the Cabinet ;
I am describing, as far as I can gather it, the policy of a Minister— a Minister who for forty years
has never yet been known of his free wiU, or from an earnest and Uberal mind, to say or do any
thing for the advance of any of those great measures of good and of freedom which have dis
tinguished the legislation of this country. ... I stated the other day at a meeting at Roch
dale, which I was permitted to address, that I thought if a poU were taken of aU the free
churches and Nonconformist congregations of Great Britain on a Sunday morning, there would
be a universal and a unanimous vote in favour of peace. Let it not be supposed for a moment
that I wished to insinuate that there were no congregations of churchmen, and no churchmen of the

MENACE AND DEMONSTRATION OF FORCE. 201
established bodies in Scotland or in England who are in favour of peace ; but they, as you know,
are more aUied in sentiment with the executive than we are, they are more accustomed to be docile
and to Usten and to submit ; but I suspect that if it was put even to them, there would be by no
means that unanimous vote in favour of the policy of the Government, and of the war to which
that policy leads, which some persons might expect from them. Now my consolation and my hope
is in this : that the love of justice, as I beUeve, the love of mercy and of peace, is not dead in the
minds of Englishmen. I wish that it may grow, and may strengthen from day to day, and that,
growing and strengthening, it may baffle a policy which is hateful in the sight of heaven, which,
to my mind, is profoundly wicked, and which I feel certain, beyond aU possibility of doubt, is a
policy which is hostUe to, and may if persisted in be fatal to, the greatest and highest interests
of the empire. (Cheers.) . . . We may differ upon many points of articles in Churches, but we
are all agreed on this : that if there be anything definite and distinct in the teachings of the New
Testament it is that which would lead to amity amongst peoples, and to love, aud justice, and
mercy, and peace on the whole of God's earth upon which His sun shines. (Cheers.) If, then,
we are agreed upon this, let us, if it be possible to throw off the hypocrite in this matter — (hear,
hear) — let us get rid of our Christianity, or get rid of our tendency and willingness to go to war.
(Hear, hear.) War is a game which, if their subjects were wise, kings would not be able to play
at ; and be they kings or queens, be they statesmen of this or that colour or party, never let any
man go headlong into any policy that directs for war untU he has thoroughly examined the ques
tion by his own best inteUect, brought it to bear on his own Christian conscience, and decided it
for himself as if he were asked to puU the trigger or to use the sword. (Cheers.) We send men
out to engage in the ravages of war who have no knowledge whatever of the question for which
they have to fight — (hear, hear) — and not satisfied now with taking them from our own midst, we
who have been — not we, but some amongst us — (hear, hear) — who have been menacing India with
an invasion from Russia, are now actually apparently on the point of invading Russia by troops
from India ; and we who have been asking Russia not on any account to go near the Suez Canal
because we require it for the traffic of our trade te India, are now employing that very canal, which
Russia has not approached, in bringing troops — Mahometan, half-savage troops — from India to
make war upon the Christian population of Russia. (Cries of ' Shame !') I think these are
questions which we are bound to consider. (Hear, hear.) I say without hesitation— and I speak
to all the people of England— (cheers)— I say that for no such cause as this shaU the torrents of
English blood be called to flow which apparently are now on the point of being shed at the com
mand — I wUl say to the people at the betrayal— of a Minister who has not one single drop of
English blood in his veins." (Loud cheers.)
Mr. Bright at this time needed the assistance of his old friend, Mr.
Cobden, to oppose the embroilment of his countrymen in warfare, for the
Liberals were against what the Conservatives termed their " spirited
foreign policy."

CHAPTEB XLVII.
THE POLICY OP THE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT CONDEMNED.
Death of Mrs. Bright— The Funeral— Statue of Villiers— The Permissive Bill— Mr. Bright's
Twenty-first Tear as Member for Birmingham — In the House of Commons in February,
1879 — Annual Address to his Constituents — Explanation of the Depression in Trade —
Movement in favour of Protection — A Powerful Speech by Mr. Bright — At a Liberal
Demonstration at Manchester — Speeches at Birmingham and Rochdale — Mr. Gladstone
Resigns his Seat as Member for Greenwich — Mr. Bright speaks at Islington.
^HE month of May is always anticipated with bright and de
lightful aspirations, for all Nature is waking by this time from
her winter's slumber. Tbe spring of 1878 had come up sooner
than usual "from the south." The swallows had already winged
their passage from southern climes, and returned to the roof of " One
Ash," when Mr. Bright left his home to attend his parliamentary duties
in London. His eldest daughter, Mrs. Clark, and her little ones were
sojourning at " One Ash." Mrs. Bright had been down to Ackworth
Schools, in which she had for many years taken a deep interest, and after
wards visited the school connected with the mills, examined the scholars,
spoken words of encouragement to them, and before leaving induced
them to sing once more one of her favourite hymns, commencing with
the words, "Let us gather up the sunbeams." On Sunday, the 12th
of May, she attended the service at the Eriends' Meeting House at
Bochdale, and at the conclusion conversed cheerfully with her fellow-
worshippers. When on the following day Mrs. Clark and her children
were about to leave for their home at Street, Mrs. Bright, whilst
affectionately taking leave of them in the nursery, suddenly feU on
the floor, in a fit of apoplexy, and died in a few minutes. A teleo-ram

FUNERAL OF MRS. BRIGHT. 203
was immediately forwarded to Mr. Bright, who returned in the
evening to his home of sorrow.
The next day her Majesty the Queen forwarded a telegram from
Windsor Castle to Mr. Bright, expressing her deep sympathy with him
in his bereavement. Prom all parts of the country, too, resolutions,
Town Council meetings, and associations of warm-hearted working men,
who turned from the contemplation of their own anguish and misery,
sent expressions of their sympathy with Mr. Bright, as he sat in the
valley of the shadow of death. In answer to a resolution of condolence
from the Manchester Town Council, he repUed : —
" I can say very Uttle of what I have felt, and now feel, of the sympathy which has been
expressed towards my famUy and myself. So far as sympathy can in any degree lessen the
burden of affliction, we have had that solace to its widest extent. I am speciaUy grateful to the
Town Council over which you preside for their remembrance of me in this time of trial."
On the 16th May the funeral set forth from "One Ash," and con
sisted of a simple hearse without even its usual adornments, and nine plain
carriages, foUowed by about 150 of Messrs. Brights' workpeople. Whit
worth Boad, and the other line of route along Yorkshire Street, and
down George Street, to the Friends' Meeting House, was thickly lined
with reverential spectators. The graveyard was thronged with respect
able inhabitants of Bochdale. At the grave-side Mr. Bright was visibly
affected, and leaned on the shoulders of his youngest son, Mr. Philip
Bright. Mr. John A. Bright, and Mr. W. L. Bright, Miss A. E.
Bright, Miss M. S. Bright, Mr. and Mrs. Clark, Mr. Jacob Bright, M.B.,
Mr. Thomas Bright, Mr. and Mrs. McLaren, M.P., Mr. E. A. Leatham,
M.P., Mr. W. H. Leatham, and Dr. Both were present. There was, in
accordance with the traditions of the Priends, an utter absence of cere
monial parade. Mr. J. B. Braithwaite, barrister, London, and Mr.
W. G. Turner, of Liverpool, spoke words of consolation and Christian
resignation. The assemblage round the grave formed a memorable picture, for
there stood a venerable central historical figure sorrowing, who had, in
days of comparative ignorance, seen clearly and spoken boldly for supreme
good, and who pointed out with prophetic foresight the only true policy

204 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
to pursue to maintain his country's happiness and greatness. There
lay before him the lifeless form of her who had solaced his bitter
moments of defeat, and graced the bright hours of triumph ; who, 'mid
the cares and disquietudes of public life, had, by her bright auguries
of the future, soothed, and in the hour of despondency, by her calm
confidence in Heaven, cheered him.
The mourners at length retired into the chapel for devotion, and an
incident of thoughtful kindness was here observed. A poor old woman,
cleanly and humbly attired, and with snow-white frilled cap and old-
fashioned silk bonnet surrounding her comely features, took a seat
opposite to Mr. Bright, and as he noticed that there was no footstool for
her use, he gave her the one which had been placed for his special
accommodation. The service proceeded, and the fervent prayers in
culcated amongst other thoughts that
" There is no death ! What seems so is transition.
This Ufe of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portals we call death."
In June, Earl Granville unveiled a statue of the Bight Hon.
C. P. Villiers, M.P., which had been erected by public subscription in
Wolverhampton, the borough which he has represented in Parliament
for many years.
" Perhaps you wiU bear with me," said Earl GranvUle, " if I teU you that within the last
fortnight Mr. Bright -(loud cheers)— volunteered to me an expression of his extreme regret at
being prevented by an oU-suffieient reason from being present here on this occasion. He
expressed himself as warmly as Mr. Cobden had done about the great services of Mr. ViUiers.
He said that while Richard Cobden, George Wilson, and himself and others had worked the
question out of doors, they had always considered Mr. ViUiers as the man who had made the
question his own in the House of Commons. He told me how Mr. ViUiers had attended manv of
their most important public meetings, and how he was ready always with his advice, which Mr.
Bright described as exceUent, practical, shrewd, and useful in proportion to its fruits, for he
added that there was only one thing on which Mr. ViUiers was earnestly intent, which was that
the thing should be done." (Cheers.)
Mr. Bright, for the first time after the death of Mrs. Bright,
appeared in the House of Commons on the 24th of June. His special
object was to attend the select committee on the Irish Land Act of 1870,

HIS CONSTITUENTS. 205
and vote in favour of Mr. Shaw-Lefevre's report, which proposed great
modifications in the bill. The report was rejected by a majority of 11
against 10.
In July, Mr. Bright, in reply to a request from the Birmingham
agent of the Alliance that he would support the Permissive Bill,
replied : —
"Dear Sir, — I thank you for your letter, and for the kind words you have addressed to me.
I regret that I have not been able to vote for Sir W. Lawson's Bill, for reasons which I have
already explained to my friends in Birmingham. I am in favour of legislation to promote
temperance, but it must be legislation that is practical and just, and which offers fair ground of
expectation that it will be useful and effective. I do not expect temperance legislation to make
progress until the Permissive BiU is abandoned, and a more practicable and reasonable measure
is offered in its place. I regret to differ from some of my friends in Birmingham and elsewhere
on this difficult question."
On the 10th of August Mr. Bright completed the 21st year of his
representation of Birmingham in Parliament, and a month before that
date his constituents began to make arrangements to commemorate
the event in the autumn of the year in a manner worthy of that
town. Mr. Bright was communicated with on the subject, and on
the 17th of July, while at home, he wrote to Mr. P. Schnadhorst the
following letter : —
" Dear Sir, — I received your note since coming from London. I do not know what to say about
the deputation. I am not returning to London, and expect to leave home for some weeks on Monday
next. I do not like to give any of my friends the trouble of a journey to Rochdale, though I
should always be glad to see them here. I am alarmed at a paragraph I read in the Daily Neivs,
teUing me what is proposed to be done to commemorate my long political connection with
Birmingham. I say I am alarmed at what is proposed, or that anything should be proposed.
I cannot now undertake long public work, or take part in any ceremony like that which has been
suggested. The loss I have so recently sustained, and the shock I have received, makes it
impossible for me to enter with any sense of fitness into proceedings such as apparently are
contemplated, and I shaU be compelled to ask my friends to postpone or to abandon the plan
which has been partiaUy explained in the newspapers. I value more highly than I can describe
the confidence which the constituency of Birmingham have shown me, during a period of
twenty-one years, and I am grateful to them for the kindness which has prompted the proposition
which has been made amongst them. I had no right to expect it, and it comes upon me as a
great surprise. I feel it a great honour, and one which I am not at liberty Ughtly to refuse; but
I am too much disturbed by recent and still pressing sorrows to enable me to join in any pubUc
ceremony of which I am the object, and in which I am expected to take a prominent part. I am
compeUed, therefore, to ask the members of the Liberal Association, and my friends in Birming
ham, not to invite me to any special gathering or ceremony during the coming recess. I shrink
from the prospect of it with something like dread. They will add much to that for which now

206 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
I have so many reasons to be grateful to them if they will spare me what, under my present
circumstances, would be a burden and a trial which I dare not accept. With expressions of
profound gratitude to the members of the Liberal Association, I am, very truly yours,
" John Bright."
Tbe Liberal Association regretted Mr. Bright's inability to take part
in the celebration during the year, and postponed it.
Mr. Bright, in answer to an invitation to attend a Peace Congress,
held in September at Savona, forwarded the subjoined letter to the
Advocate Pietro Sharbaro, Professor of Laws in the University of Macerata,
and prime mover in the commemoration of Alberigo Gentili, who, from
his chair in Oxford, first propounded the doctrine of international
arbitration. " Rochdale, Sept. 23, 1878.
"Dear Sir, — I cannot write to you at any length on the interesting subject on which you
have spoken to me, and I fear that my short letter wUl not reach you in time for your peace
congress. The situation of Europe at this moment is deplorable ; its nations are groaning under
the weight of enormous armies and burdensome taxation. They are at the same time disjoined
in interests and sentiments by tariffs which form an insurmountable barrier between the people of
the different states, and prevent that reciprocity of interests which would make it impossible for
their statesmen to drag them into war. How can wars be avoided and standing armies dissolved ?
This is the great question for Europe and for every nation of Europe. To my thinking the
directest way— I was going to say the only way — to this great end lies in Free Trade between
the peoples of Europe. If tariffs were abolished, or even if they were made very moderate,
the nations would trade freely with each other, their commerce would increase enormously, and
they would bit by bit become one grand nation ; their commercial interests would multiply on
such a scale, aud their mutual knowledge and intercourse would become so intricate, that the
ambition of monarchs and statesmen would be impotent to drive them to war. The treaty
between France and England, negotiated eighteen years ago by Mr. Cobden, has entirely
changed the sentiments of the two nations to each other, and if the tariff of France were as free
as that of England, the two states would, through their interests, become as one. If the tariffs
of Europe were abolished, Europe would not fear war, and her armies in a short time would be
reduced. Monopolies in commerce, high tariffs, protection of the trading classes at the expense
of society and the consumers, such are the allies of great armies, and the grand obstacle to a
general and lasting peace in Europe. Destroy the tariffs, or reduce them greatly, and standing
armies will be dissolved, for then almost every pretext on which they are kept up wUl have dis
appeared. Let us try for the disbanding of great armies, and the promotion of peace. I rely
on the abolition of tariffs, and on the brotherhood of the nations, resulting from Free Trade in
the products of industry. Let us try to impress upon public opinion the conviction that the
Protectionists' system, the system of high tariffs, and the monopoly which some classes are
eager to keep to the detriment of the people, are the principal causes, and the most powerful
support of standing armies and frequent wars. If this idea eould prevail in Europe then
indeed, shoidd we be able to welcome the dawn of that day in which armies wiU no longer
be considered necessary, and high tariffs a crime against the interests and happiness of the
people. I am, with great respect, yours, &c., « JoHN Beight »

INDIAN FINANCE. 207
Mr. Bright did not again address the House of Commons until the
28th of Pebruary, 1879, and as soon as he rose he was welcomed by
hearty cheers given by Conservatives as well as Liberals, and they were
glad to listen once more to the accents too long missing from the debates.
The subject he spoke upon was in favour of a committee of inquiry
respecting India, for Mr. Fawcett was desirous that the working of the
India Acts of 1858 and subsequent years should be ascertained. The
main purpose of the motion was to call attention to the present condition
of Indian finance, and Mr. Pawcett contended that the control over
Indian expenditure exercised through the council of the Secretary of
State was perilously inadequate, and contrasted very unfavourably with
the old system, which the Act of 1858 put an end to.
" What are you doing in India ? " remarked Mr. Bright. " According to my hon. friend the
member for Orkney, you extract from the people everything that can be extracted with safety ;
and you do not know where to turn for a tax of the smaUest amount. Tou put a licence tax,
which is, in point of fact, an income tax, upon men having no more income than four shiUings a
week. Tour salt tax is, I suppose, 2,000 per cent, upon the ordinary cost of common salt. Tou
have borrowed so much that you can borrow no more, and the ChanceUor of the Exchequer
suggests that we are to lend to the Indian Government two millions without interest. These are
exactly the terms on which the country lent money to the Turkish Government. (Laughter.)
Those terms were not in the agreement, but that has been the result. The money has been lent,
and no interest paid, and we call the Turkish Government bankrupt. But tbe Indian Government,
we say, is in a position of temporary embarrassment. If you are to lend India money, and India
is to pay no interest, the condition is the same as that of Turkey. In 1842 Sir R. Peel pointed
out to the House that the time might come when there would be great confusion and embarrass
ment with the finances of India, and to what an enormous aud perilous extent disturbances in the
finances of India might affect the finances of this country. People thought Sir R. Peel was
looking a long way forward for an argument in support of the change he was anxious to make
with the view of restoring our financial equilibrium, but we are approaching the time Sir R. Peel
referred to. Listening to this debate, I am impressed with the seriousness of the position in
which we are placed. The ChanceUor of the Exchequer does not know his multiplication table ;
I think we have known Ministers who did not — (laughter) — but he was brought up, I may say, at
the feet of my right hon. friend the member for Greenwich (Mr. Gladstone), with whom, if he
were not on that bench, he would agree in many financial questions ; and I am astounded that
he should have given his consent to the recent policy of the Government of India, which must
aggravate, to an extent that we cannot measure, the great calamity which afflicts the country
now — the disaster which has overtaken the Indian finances, the difficulty which this House is now
called upon to grapple with."
The motion was opposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the
part ofthe Government, and was rejected by a majority of 137 to 100.

208 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Mr. Bright and his colleagues delivered their annual addresses to
their constituents in the Town HaU, Birmingham, on the 16th of AprU,
1879. The haU was crowded to its utmost capacity. The Mayor, Mr.
Jesse CoUings, presided, and assured Mr. Bright that he had the heartfelt
sympathy of his constituents in the great domestic sorrow which had so
recently befallen him. The thoughts and the affectionate regard of the
best and truest in the town were with him in his bereavement, and tbey
heartily rejoiced that the craving for rest and retirement which in the dark
time must have been very strong, had given way to the claims of duty and
the need which the public had of him at present. At a time when we were
hovering on the verge of national disgrace it was peculiarly necessary that
we should have his counsel.
"Since I have been in Parliament it has always been a complaint with me, or a matter of
regret," said Mr. Bright, " that the Cabinet Ministers spend more time in discussing foreign
politics than home affairs. (Hear, hear.) If you go back a hundred years from now, as far as
you have an account of what the Cabinet was doing, you wiU find it was discussing how it could
force the colonies of North America to pay English taxes without being represented in the English
Parliament. That was a great policy in that day, but, as you know, it entirely failed, and the
thirteen little colonies of that time have now grown to be one of the most powerful nations on the
globe. If you come down twenty years later, eighty years ago, you find the English Cabinet con
stantly discussing how it might be with the help of the resources of this kingdom to suppress the
RepubUc on the other side of the Channel. Tet now you see that the whole of that policy was a
failure, and that there exists at this moment, with the consent and sympathy of almost aU classes
of this country, that once dreaded monster, the French Republic. (Cheers.) And if you come
down nearer to our own time, to twenty-five years ago, you would find an English Cabinet dis
cussing for almost two years nothing but questions- connected with the great contest with Russia,
carried on, as you remember, in that part of the Russian Empire which is called the Crimea.
Well, there was a partial success, as there was a partial success in the suppression of the French
Republic of 1789 and the overthrow of the Napoleonic Empire in 1815. There was a partial
success in the Crimea, yet that poUcy was rotten from the beginning, and it has been foUowed, as
you know, by an entire failure. There is not a single thing that was obtained by the Treaty of
Paris as a residt of the Crimean war that has not been surrendered and entirely given up. Tou
will see, then, from these examples— and I might occupy your time the whole evening with other
examples— that the present, almost always, with regard to foreign policy, condemns the past, and
you may argue, as I venture to predict, that the future will likewise condemn the present.
(Cheers.) ... I believe that war was only avoided last year from two causes. One was the
moderation of Russia immediately after the triumph over Turkey ; the other was the course taken
by the great Liberal party, by the Nonconformists especiaUy, as a great portion of that party, and
by the foremost man amongst the statesmen of this country. (Loud cheers.) There are men who
cavil now at the position which Mr. Gladstone occupies. I shall say nothing in his defence. The
posterity of those who now slander him will be ashamed of the opinions and of the counsel of
their forefathers. (Hear, hear.) But though we have escaped war we have had, as you know,
fleets moving in between the Mediterranean and Black Sea, moving and menacing in great force,

THE POLICY OF THE GOVERNMENT. 209
and we have had the reserves called out, as if something dreadful was about to happen, and we have
had Indian troops — a thing' almost unknown in our history — brought into the Mediterranean with
a view of carrying on war against Russia, aud we have had votes of money, which it was said woidd
probably not be spent — (laughter) — but which was very suddenly and speedily spent. (Renewed
laughter.) But what has been the actual result P The result of the Crimean war, of the American,
and of the French war, was not more absurd or more discreditable. (Hear., hear, and cheers.)
The result was this : that two of the English Ministers, special counseUors of the Queen, went to
BerUn. They agreed to everything, so far as I can learn, that was of any importance, to every
thing which Russia had agreed to with Turkey, except as regards a particular province which
Russia proposed to make wholly free from Turkish rule, but which the English Ministers, acting
in your name, objected to. That province they cut in two, and handed over half of it to the Turk.
Now, I beUeve it wiU be held by the people of England, when they consider that question fairly,
to be a great blot upon our character and our reputation. . . . Now, the taxation, as I have
said (in India), is oppressive, and oppressive to a degree that aU the authorities in India say that
you cannot turn the screw any more, and that if you do, something worse than a deficient revenue
may f oUow. Half, nearly half, of the whole net taxes of the country is devoted to the support of
the army. (' Shame ! ') There are 120,000 native troops, and lately, owing to this war in Afghan
istan, it is said they have been adding 15,000 more to their numbers ; and there are 60,000 EngUsh
troops who are said to be mainly kept there to watch the 120,000 native troops. (Laughter.) But
there is a large CivU Service — that is, gentlemen who are magistrates in the various districts, and
who coUect the taxes. There are among them men of great merit and of great service, and many
of them doubtless labour hard ; but I suspect and believe that if an accurate account were taken
it would be found that the payment of salaries and pensions which they received are more than
double the amount which is paid to any equal number of persons similarly occupied in any other
country in the world. To supply this service about thirty young gentlemen from this country, after
passing through a coUegiate examination, are sent out to India, to take places at salaries of £300
or £400 a year, which go on increasing, many of them to £1,000, £2,000, £3,000, and £4,000. They
come back home when they are middle-aged, and they return to England a very much respected
class of men. (Laughter.) . . . Tou will observe that I have not assaUed the Government ;
I leave them to the retribution which awaits them. They have played, in my view, falsely both
with ParUament and with the country. They have wasted, and are now wasting, the blood and
the treasure of our people. They have tarnished the mUd reign of the Queen by needless war and
slaughter on two continents, and by the menace of needless war in Europe ; they have soiled the
fair name of England by subjecting and handing over the popidation of a province which had
been freed by Russia, through war and treaty, to the cruel and the odious government of the Turk-
And beyond this they have shown, in my view, during an interval of five years through which they
have been in possession of office and power, that they are imbecile at home and turbulent and
wicked abroad. I leave them to the judgment of the constituencies of the United Kingdom, to
which they must speedily appeal, and to the heavy condemnation which impartial history wUl pro
nounce upon them."
In a letter Mr. Bright wrote in June, 1879, in answer to questions
asked him by one of his constituents, he referred to the depression in trade,
saying :—
" As to the present depression of trade, we owe some of it to the bad harvests, which have im
poverished many farmers who are not an inconsiderable portion of our home-trade customers ; we
owe much of it to famines in India and China, and to the commercial and manufacturing distress
63

210 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
which has prevailed in almost every country, and not least in those countries which have sought
to secure themselves by high protective duties. If our harvest this year is unfavourable, I fear the
recovery we all hope for wiU be delayed ; if it is abundant, which seems not probable, we shaU
soon see, not symptoms only, but proofs of revival. In the United States, with a great harvest last
year, trade is reviring. We foUowed them in their depression, but not to so great a depth, and we
shall foUow them in their recovery. These great changes are not in the power of Congresses or
Parliaments ; they are in the ordering of nature, and we must accept them, always endeavouring
not to ag-gravate them by our own folUes. There is one great consolation in our present condition
— the food of our people is cheap. But for the free imports the price of bread would be more than
double, the price of sugar would be three times its present price, the price of cheese and bacon
would be double, or nearly so; and of the price of labour it may be said that it would be much
essened by a greater prostration of every industry in the country not immediately connected with
the growth of food. The freedom of our imports will enable us to pass through the present time
of depression with less suffering than at any former period of disastrous seasons. As to Parlia
ment and its inquiries, I have seen much of it and of them. If Parliament would keep out of
foreign broils, if it would conduct the government of the country at an expenditure of sixty
miUions instead of eighty mUlions in the year; if it would devote its time and labours to questions
of home interest rather than to those which involve the sacrifice of the blood and treasure of our
people in remote lands, we might have hope and faith that ParUament could serve the nation in
times of depression, and we should find that such times of suffering would visit us more rarely."
Mr. Bice, the editor of the North American Revieiv, wrote to Mr.
Bright for his opinion as to the nature and extent of the alleged move
ment in favour of Protection in England. o
" I do not think there is any chance of a return in this country to the doctrine of Protection,"
repUed Mr. Bright. " We export everything but agricultural produce. To protect our manufac
tures is manifestly impossible. From another cause the protection of our land produce is not more
possible. Half our population exists on imported food. To limit this import by customs duties
in order to raise the price of home-grown food is a proposition that cannot be entertained for a
moment. Such a scheme offered to Parliament and the country would destroy any Government
and any party. We are passing through a time of commercial depression. Its causes are apparent
to those who examine and consider the facts of recent and past years ; but in times of trouble
ignorant men seize upon unlikely and impossible propositions and schemes for relief. There is no
special remedy for this malady. Time, patience, the working of natural laws, the avoidance and
cessation of the excitement and half -madness of the past, and a general economy wiU bring about
a cure, not without some or much suffering, but without failure. We adopted Free Trade in the
year 1846, but our landowners and farmers, and multitudes of our people, did not comprehend the
principles we taught, and now a new generation is on the stage, iU-acquainted even with the facts
of forty years ago. There has been no great distress since our Corn Law was abolished ; and now
when trouble has come for a time, some of the sufferers, and some of the quack doctors who are
always ready to prescribe for the public, cry out for Protection, as if we had never tried it before,
and as if it had been found a specific in other countries. There is no clanger of our going back to
Protection. The present trouble wiU pass away. It has been aggravated by the evil policy of
our Government, and that also wiU pass away, and the simpletons who are looking for relief to an
exploded doctrine and practice wiU relapse into that silent obscurity which becomes them. It is
a grief to me that your people do not yet see their way to a more moderate tariff. They are doing
wonders unequalled in the world's history, in paying off your national debt, A moderate tariff,

AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION. 211
I should think, would give you a better revenue, and by degrees you might approach a more
cirilised system. What can be more strange than for your great, free country to build barriers
against that commerce which is everywhere the handmaid of freedom and of civilisation ? I
should despair of the prospects of mankind if I did not believe that before long the intelligence of
your people would revolt against the barbarianism of your tariff. It seems now your one great
humiUation. The world looks to you for example in all forms of freedom. As to commerce, the
great civUiser, shaU it look in vain ? "
In reply to a resident of Sheffield, some months later, Mr. Bright gave
some valuable advice to intending emigrants by stating : —
" I think trade in this country will revive, and if the revival in the United States is followed
by good harvests here, we shaU have industries restored to activity and to health. As to emigra
tion, it is a question on which it is hardly safe to give advice, so much depends on the emigrant, on
his health, his character, his means, and his family. For workers in iron and aU the metals, the
States are a better field than any of our colonies, as they offer a greater and more varied field of
employment. For men connected with the land as farmers or labourers, Canada and the States
are much the same, except that in the North the winter is so severe, but this is moderated as you
go South. I hear good accounts of Nebraska and Colorado, and there is room for millions. New
Zealand has a fine climate, much superior to that of North America, but the distance is great, and
the cost of going is consequently greater. I should say that a young man, healthy, active, steady,
and sensible, may do well ; and a man with a family may do weU with his children, though he may
have to face some rough work and hardship. With a revival in America, and better seasons and
harvests iu India, our prospects are better, but we must have good harvests here before we see
our home trade active and prosperous. I hope before long we may have a Government whose
poUcy wUl not be such as to aggravate all the misfortunes which bad seasons here and abroad must
necessarily bring upon us."
Mr. Chaphn, on the 4th of July, asked the members of the House of
Commons to grant a Boyal Commission to inquire into the causes of the
agricultural depression existing in the country, and into the possible
remedies that might be found for it. Mr. Bright presented himself at
the table, and was received with a vigorous Liberal cheer. His speech,
of singular power, reminded some of his hearers of the old days which to
the younger generation are already historical.
" Mr. ChapUn's proposition carries us back a very long distance," said Mr. Bright ; " in fact,
further back, I think, than any of us with our ParUamentary remembrance could reach. He takes
us back to a period which passed between the year 1815 and the year 1846. Since 1846 — and
that is a thing to be remembered by hon. gentlemen opposite, and by those who are suspecting
the wisdom of the policy of 1846 — since that year until to-night there has been no proposal, I
believe, made te ParUament in favour of a commission or a committee to inquire into agricultural
distress. In the period which passed between 1815, when our old friend Protection was estab
lished, until the year when he was abolished, there were, at least, five Parliamentary committees
to inquire into the distressed condition of agriculture iu this country. In the year 1821 there
was an inquiry. 1820 was a disastrous year, and there were petitions presented to Parliament.

212 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
In the year 1822 there was an inquiry. Iu 1833 there was another committee ; in 1836 there was
another committee. All these were committees of this House, and in 1837 there was a committee
on the same subject in the House of Lords. Now, I must ask the House to observe one thing—
that the last two committees, the Commons' committee of 1836 and the Lords' committee of 1837,
only reported tbe evidence. They expressed no opinion to Parliament, and they gave no counsel
as to the course which Parliament should pursue. The committee of 1836 was a veiy large com
mittee, with no less than thirty-six members of the House upon it, and I shoidd suppose that what
you would call the members of most weight and influence in the House served upon it. I believe,
as far as I can find, that the present Lord Eversley and the present Lord Grey are the only
members living who, as members of this House, then served on that committee. They had before
them Mr. Jacob, the controller of corn returns. He said, what hon. members opposite have re
ferred to with perfect truth, that in the years 1833, 1834, and 1835 the harvests were above an
average, and therefore there were low prices. Well, men might now come to a sort of conclusion
of the same kind that 1877, 1878, and 1879 had been disastrous years— years of bad seasons, and
that therefore there were short crops. That is the only and the final explanation, and the only
and final result, to which the commission of the hon. member, if it be appointed, can come.
(Hear, hear.) Now, Mr. Jacob told the committee at the time that the production of wheat in
this country was about a million quarters per annum less than the consumption, and that there
fore it was necessary to receive, and that we did generally receive, something like a mUUon
quarters on an average from abroad. But he said that the consumption of wheat in relation to
the population was constantly declining, and that it was proved by one particular circumstance
among others — that there was such an astonishing increase in the growth of potatoes ; and he
said he believed that in England, or in England and Wales, two miUions of population were
entirely fed, or nearly fed, upon potatoes. Now before that committee was a large farmer,
farming 700 acres somewhere in Buckinghamshire — Mr. BrickweU, I believe — and he said that at
Christmas, 1835, he had sold his wheat at 4s. 6d. a bushel ; that would be 5s. or 6s. a quarter less
than the present price of wheat. . . . The committees of 1836 and 1837, as I have said, only
reported evidence ; that is, in all their inquiries they had discovered no remedy that any rational
man could accept. But they said one thing, which, no doubt, wiU give pleasure to the House, as
it does to me. They said that ' amongst the numerous difficulties to which agriculture is exposed,
and, notwithstanding the distress which unhappily exists, it is a consolation to the committee to
find that the general condition of the agricultural labourer in fuU employment is better now than
at any former period, his money wages giving him a greater command .over the necessaries and
conveniences of life.' (Hear, hear.) At that time the wages of the agricultural labourer in
Somersetshire were 8s. per week — (hear, hear) — but such had been the miserable condition of the
labourer before that that they point with exultation and delight to his prosperous condition, with
their price of grain and with his wages of 8s. per week. (Hear, hear.) I recoUect standing
where I am now, when your Prime Minister was fighting for a case in which he did not believe.
(Cheers, " Oh ! " and laughter.) What he did with great ability was to submit your case, but he
never told you that he believed in it (Hear, hear, and " Oh, oh ! ") But I recoUect standing
here when he was concluding one of those musty speeches, as he would caU them now, with which
he regaled the House and delighted hon. gentlemen opposite, and he struck the box and said he
would rest his whole case against those three imports on the effect which would be produced on
the agricultural labourer. I ask you what has been the effect upon the agricultural labourer?
(Cheers.) And at this very moment you feel that the position of the agricultural labourer is one
with which you are bound to express your satisfaction. The hon. member for Mid-Lincolnshire
and the hon. member who spoke last have spoken of it in the same tone, and I hope there is not a
member— I believe there is not one on that side of the House— who would wish that the agricul
tural labourer should go back by any possible legislation of Parliament to the condition from

REAPPEARANCE OF PROTECTION. 213
which he has been dragged by the influences of Free Trade. (Cheers.) But at the time when
these committees of 1836 and 1837 were reporting, you had had for your agriculture Protection
of the most stringent kind for not less than about twenty years. The last refuge of cowardice,
and idleness, and greed, which is the protective system, had been tried, and faded. (Hear, hear.)
The people were driven to potatoes, as your own witnesses had proved — ("No, no ! ") — and the
farmers had been protected to such an extent that they had to a large degree impoverished even
their customers, and the committee could come to no conclusion that you could carry Protection
higher, or that you could do anything more by way of law-making to relieve the agricultural
interest, which then clamoured to Parliament for redress. (Hear, hear.) The members of the
committee were not cotton spinners; they were not members of the Anti-Corn-Law League ; they
were, for the most part, great landed proprietors, and yet they were baffled, and unable to offer
any suggestion to the House, and Parliament found itself at a deadlock, for aU the nostrums of
aU the quack doctors, the simpletons, had either been tried or had faded, or were so absurd that it
was necessary to reject them. (Hear, hear). And after this experience we have the hon. member foi
Mid-Lincolnshire coming to try the same thing over again. (Cheers.) He comes to-night with a
speech which looks continually at Protection as something that he admires and desires and believes
to be possible, aud which, I fear, he hopes may come. (Hear, hear.) If he does, I can only hope, as I
believe, that he will meet only with a complete disappointment. (Cheers.) But stiU he asks for
this inquiry. Now I should like to ask hon. gentlemen opposite what it is they intend to inquire
into, and what they hope the inquiry may bring them to if it be not to Protection ? How many
landowners are there in this House — landowners, the sons of landowners, and persons interested
in the land ? Out of the 658 members there are probably nearly 400. Well, you are a fair
tribunal for deciding on questions of land as regards landowners, but as regards tenants it may be
another question. (Cheers.) . . . It is only about three years ago that I burnt a thousand
letters which I had received about five-and-twenty years ago from farmers in different parts of the
country on the subject of game, and complaining of its ravages, at the time when I moved for a
commitee te inquire into the operation of the game laws. (Hear, hear.) Well, but if anybody
brings in a biU here for the purpose of diminishing the power to protect, or the inducement to
protect, game, hon. gentlemen wiU come down in numbers which they could not exceed even if the
Constitution were at stake — (loud cheers) — in order to expel such an odious measure from the floor of
ParUament. . . . The ironmasters — some of them are in this House — could teU you a dreary
story. Some of those who have invested in coal mines could teU you how the inflation of five or six
years ago has been foUowed by a prostration of which hitherto there has been no experience.
What has become of the cotton trade ? In one sentence I wiU tell you. I wUl not go into
details about carding and spinning and so on, as the hon. gentleman did with regard to farming.
I ;wUl confine myself to a single fact. Here is a slip from a Manchester paper. On it are the
names of joint-stock cotton and weaving concerns in the eastern parts of Lancashire — many of
them in the neighbourhood where I live. There are given the names of the companies, the
amount of the shares, the sums paid on the shares, and their present price, showing the discount
at which they stand, and then at the end of the column is the amount of the dividend. Now, in
this list there are 122 firms, representing more than 122 mills, and out of these 122 companies
111 have the word 'ml' under the word 'dividend.' Now, do not go away with the idea that
these are old concerns with old machinery, and that they are badly managed. On the contrary,
a large number of the joint-stock companies in the cotton-trade are modern, and with abundant
capital. Their machinery is first-class, and they are managed generaUy by as able workmen as
are to be found in the whole trade of Lancashire. There are about 20 other companies named on
this slip, 14 of which are marked as giving no dividend. These are paper and other businesses,
and the one that has paid the largest dividend — 12 per cent. — is a brewery. The shares in some
of these companies of which I have spoken are standing at a discount of from 30 to 50 per cent.

214 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Now, sir, is it possible that aU people outside the farming business have none of the sympathies
of hon. gentlemen opposite P It seems to me that if labourers are unemployed, if their wages are
being reduced, if capital is wasting, if markets are closed or glutted, surely the great landowners
of this country might have a little sympathy with other classes, and ask that the House should
inquire into their condition. (Some Ministerial cheers.) Therefore I take it for granted that
none of these matters are excluded from the investigation of this commission. If you are not
wiUing to do it now, you may be quite sure that the time will come when you will have to do it.
I say, with all frankness to the hon. gentleman and his friends, so numerous around him and so
sympathetic with him, that he is opening the door, and the door cannot be closed until that fuU
inquiry has been made. (Hear, hear.) Tou will inquire, for example, into the reason why there
are so few owners of the soU. (Opposition cheers.) My hon. friend quoted a work which has
recently been published, and which I wish every member would take the opportunity of reading.
If he is on this commission it would enable him to fulfil his duty with greater aptitude, and if he
is not on the commission he would be able to give some evidence whieh would be of use to the
commission. It might be useful to them to have two or three facts which I will put before the
House. In England and Wales 66 persons hold 6,000,000 acres, 100 persons hold 4,000,000 acres,
710 persons own more than one-fourth of the soil of England and Wales ; 874 persons own over
9,000,000 acres. If they cross the Tweed they wiU find that out of 19,000,000 acres of the land of
Scotland twelve persons own 4,340,000, or nearly one-fourth of the whole land of the kingdom.
They will find that 70 persons own 9,400,000 acres, or one-half of the whole land of
Scotland. They wiU find that 1,700 persons own nine-tenths of the whole of Scotland, and the
rest (one-tenth) remains to those who are left, when you have taken 1,700 persons from the
whole population. If you go to Ireland you wiU find that out of 20,000,000 acres 292 persons own
6,500,000, or one-third of Ireland ; 744 persons, 9,500,000 acres, or half of Ireland ; and, to sum
up in three words more, you wiU find that two-thirds of England aud Wales is owned by 10,200
persons, two-thirds of Scotland by 330 persons, and two-thirds of Ireland by 1,942 persons. Now,
I think I need not ask hon. gentlemen opposite if they believe that disposition of land amongst the
population is advantageous to the popidation, or if it could prevail under any natural system such
as the law applies to all other kinds of property within the three kingdoms ? (Opposition cheers.)
The commission will have to inquire — I teU you the hon. gentleman has opened the door,
and it cannot now be closed — they .wUl have to inquire whence comes that gigantic monopoly.
How comes it the great bulk of the population is thus divorced from the soil of their native land P
(Opposition cheers.) They wiU ask how is it that there are these great farms, requiring great
capital, which are so disastrously affected by the distress which is unfortunately so prevalent.
They will ask, too, how it is — and this hon. gentlemen opposite will have to put to themselves in
all seriousness — that your tenants universally or almost universally — I hope not universaUy, but
locally and partially — how it is that your tenants all eome to you owing you money, owing you six
months' rent, and asking you to take 15s. in the pound for the debts that they owe you ? If
people owe debts to their saddler or for anything used on their farm, they would not dare to go to
their creditors and ask them to accept 15s. in the pound. They would bring themselves into
liquidation, and it would be as much as their position was worth. Many of you, perhaps, cannot
help it, but a great number from sympathy and generosity and kindness make these concessions
to their tenants ; but I confess to me there is something terrible in the idea that hundreds of
thousands of tenant farmers throughout Great Britain, many of them as much gentlemen as then-
landlords, living in good houses, keeping hunters— (hear, hear)— and educating their children as
well as their means will permit, that they should be humiliated— (Opposition cheers)— to ask
somebody to whom they owe £100 of lawful debt to take £75 instead. That is the state of things
in this great and permanent interest which you represent. I am surprised that you are blind,
that you do not open your eyes to this fact, to this extraordinary thing, that you do not appear to

AMERICAN COMPETITION. 215
regard it as anything of great consequence when it periodicaUy happens just for a time. The hon.
member for Mid-Lincoln has dwelt very much upon the influence of American produce upon
English produce, and said that the produce of the United States, or it may be of the Dominion of
Canada, will henceforth have the market of this country. There is a great deal of truth in that.
Let the commission inqnire how it comes about that the landlords of this country and the farmers
of the land are crying with alarm and in terror because produce can be brought to compete with
theirs four or five thousand miles from the other side of the Atlantic. That is a question we may
fairly examine ; and I confess I am not sure that the statements we have heard may have been ex
travagant or exaggerated. I have met within the last two or three weeks gentlemen intimately
connected with the United States, and I have been much startled with some of the facts which
they have stated to me. I find that there is being occupied in Minnesota in the States, and in
Manitoba in Canada, as I am told, soil of a magnificent quality for the cultivation of wheat.
Liverpool at this moment is as near to those farms as New Tork was a short time ago. In regard
to transport, I am not sure that at this moment it is not rather nearer ; and, speaking as I was
the other day to a gentleman who has been for many years the chairman — he is not now the chair
man — of one of the most prosperous and best-managed raUways in America, he said that the
change which had taken place in the cost of transport had been astonishing to him, and
must be astonishing to everybody who looked into it. I know there are some people
who do not Uke to hear these things. A friend of mine told me the other day he had
been talking to a farmer who was very puzzled, and evidently distressed. He said, 'WeU,
you know, I wish that cursed country had never been discovered.' (Laughter.) But the
land Columbus discovered, then inhabited by untutored savages, is now the home of nearly
50,000,000 of our own speaking people as regards the northern continent, and will in the course
of 25 years more in aU probability contain not less than 100,000,000. Now I wiU tell hon.
gentlemen opposite that which will not add to their comfort, but which it would be foolish to
conceal, that the growth of the Western States is such that the land in the Eastern States is to no
smaU extent at this moment going out of cultivation and lessening in value. There is one reason
for it there which is not here. The protective system of the United States has diverted the
capital of the Eastern States into the manufacture of protected articles with the expectation of
getting increased profits, and capital has there been to a large extent withdrawn from the land in
those States ; and therefore you find in the New England Statesand New Tork, and also I believe
te some extent in Pennsylvania, that there is much land which men don't now think it worth while
to plough, and it is in point of fact lessening in value, and so far as the plough is concerned it is
going graduaUy out of cultivation. If these Western States, then, in their growth of wheat,
have so much affected the land so near them, what wUl be the effect on land in this country ?
(Hear, hear.) In that country you must remember that when they have 100,000,000 of popida-
lation they wiU have paid off their debt ; their taxes will be at a minimum. They have almost no
army and no navy. They have no spirited foreign policy. (Opposition cheers.) Their taxes in
proportion to their population will grow less and less. How England and how Europe wUl stand
the competition of America in regard to supplies of food, with the absolute lunacy of the policy
of European nations with regard to armaments and taxes, is what anybody may try to imagine,
but I wdl not try to describe. (Hear.) The farmers in America, as you know, have no rent.
They have no tithes. They have no poor rates. Tou have aU those. With you labour is rising.
Every year labour wiU become dearer and much less effective. These are matters which it is
worth your while to consider, and which I trust this commission will consider. Tour laws as
they now are would make the labourer's condition perpetual. In America, as a poet of their
country has said of their population on the land, ' They till the land, but own the land they tiU.'
(Cheers.) That is the great and final difference between land and its cultivation in America and land
and its cultivation in this country. (Hear, hear.) I would ask hon. gentlemen opposite not to be

216 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
unduly afraid of these questions or of a commission. (Hear, hear.) Tou have the most densely
peopled country in the world, and perhaps in some respects the richest. Tou have that which is
most busy and productive. Tou have land which has always been boasted of as very fertile, and
a climate favourable to all kinds of labour. I say, that with these advantages the land of England
can not only not go out of cultivation, but must of necessity always obtain a high value, and, if you
will alter your laws as I would suggest to you, a much higher value than it holds at present.
(Hear hear.) I believe it would increase the price of land aU over the country if you would
abolish aU the ancient and stupid and mischievous legislation by which it is embarrassed in every
step you take in dealing with it. (Hear, hear.) Let us have an inquiry, then. Let us have it
wide and honest. (Cheers.) Let us look this great spectre which you are afraid of fairly in the
face. Tou cannot escape it, but if you meet it boldly it may prove to be perhaps not more
than a spectre. Let us break down the monopoly which has banished so much of labour from
your farms, and has pauperised so much of the labour that has remained. On the ruins, when
you have broken it down, there will arise a fairer fabric. It is not possible that I should Uve
to see it, yet the time will como when you wiU have a miUion homes of comfort and independence
throughout the land of England, which wUl attest for ever the wisdom and blessedness of the
new poUcy that you have adopted."
Enthusiastic and continued cheering greeted the close of this speech,
which in point of beauty, of style, of force, and, at times, of grandeur in
delivery, and of telling and effective strokes of debate, satisfied the most
fastidious of his admirers. The commission for the inquiry was granted.
On the 25th of October a great Liberal demonstration took place in
the Pomona Gardens, Manchester, when over 100,000 persons were
present. Mr. B. N. Philips, M.P., presided in the hall, and meetings
were held outside the building at the same time. The Marquis of
Hartington addressed the vast meetings.
" I feel under a sense of oppression as I look upon this vast — I think I may say unequaUed —
assembly," said Mr. Bright. " I am oppressed not only with a sense of its magnitude, but also by
the circumstances which have caUed us together. The gravity of the circumstances whieh have
caUed us together consists in this — that we are approachiug the period of a general election, and
there wiU be put before the constituencies of the country the most momentous questions,
probably, that have ever been offered to the consideration and the judgment of the people of this
country. (Hear, hear, laughter, aud cheers.) We have reason to believe that the Administration
now in power is not anxious to dissolve Parliament, and fears the appeal which must before long
be made. (Cheers.) The general election, the judgment of the constituencies, is the doom they
dread, yet dwell upon — (prolonged cheers) — and I am not surprised that they should fear
to make that appeal, when we know that ' conscience does make cowards of us all.' (Laughter
and cheers. ) They, with all their boastful oratory in defence of their case, must feel, when they
ask of their constituencies that approval which conscience wUl not dishonestly give, they will
receive an answer, I suspect, such as cannot be of any great comfort to any of them. . . . But
this Government has been doing aU manner of things which they have never in the first place
submitted to the consideration of the House of Commons. Last year they were within an inch of
war with Russia ; this year you have had two wars, one in Africa and the other in Asia. Tou

GREAT LIBERAL DEMONSTRATION AT MANCHESTER. , 217
recoUect the strain that was put upon the Government here to furnish troops to put down
a savage chief in South Africa. The King of the Zulus had few or no rifles ; he had no artiUery,
he had no horses, and therefore no cavalry ; and yet to put down this king, thousands of troops
are sent to take him prisoner, and a strain put on your military resources of which complaint and
acknowledgment was made in the very highest quarters. But what do you think of a
Government that had this difficulty with King Cetewayo — this Government, only eighteen months
ago, being within a hairbreadth of going into a sanguinary and disastrous war with the Emperor
of a country that can caU to his banner at one time no less than six, or seven, or eight hundred
thousand men ? (Shame ! ) And yet, sir, there were criminals at headquarters — (applause) — and
there were fools and imbeeUes amongst the people — (laughter, and applause) — and there was
baseness amongst the proprietors and writers of some newspapers —there was all this to give for
a time a semblance of popularity to the madness and guilt I have described. If the Zulu war
had been brought before the House of Commons ; if the Afghan war, with its slaughter, and the
chaos it has caused over that region, had been brought before the House of Commons ; if it had
been submitted to the House of Commons that we should go to war with Russia upon this single
question — for that was the whole question at last, whether Bulgaria should be part free, whether
a portion of it should be free, or it should all be free — does any one here think that the Tory
party, with its mechanical majority in the House — does any man believe that the Tory party
themselves could by a distinct vote in the House of Commons have plunged the country into any
one of these wars ? (No, no.) No, I believe it to be absolutely impossible. But Lord Salisbury
in his speeches defends aU this, and as far as I learn, he teUs you that in aU probabiUty
you wiU have plenty more of it. We have heard lately a great deal of ' Imperial policy,'
and of a ' great empire.' These are phrases which catch the ignorant and unwary. Since
this Government came into office, your great empire — upon the map — has grown much
greater. They have annexed the islands of Fiji — (laughter) — they have annexed also the
country of the Transvaal in South Africa, which is said to be as large as France. They have
practicaUy annexed the land of the Zulus, also in South Africa — and they have practicaUy
annexed — for it is now utterly disorganised, and they seem to be left alone to repair, if it is
possible, the mischief they have made— they have practically annexed Afghanistan. They have
added also to your dominions the island of Cyprus, in the Mediterranean — (laughter) — and they
have incurred enormous, incalculable responsibUities in Egypt and Asia Minor. All these add to
the burdens, not of the Empire — just listen to this — they add to the burdens, not of the Empire
in Canada or Australia — all these colonies have nothing to do, as a rule, with these things  they
add to the burdens, not of the Empire, but of the 34,000,000 people who inhabit Great Britain
and Ireland. We take the burden and we pay the charge. This policy may lend a seeming
glory to the Crown, and may give scope for patronage, and promotion, and pay, and pensions to
a limited and favoured class ; but to you, the people, it brings expenditure of blood and treasure
increased debt and taxes, and adds risk of war in every quarter of the globe. . . . Look on
our position for one moment. Tou have to meet the competition of other countries ; your own
race on the American continent are your foremost rivals. Nobody denies that, I believe. They
are fifty mUlions now, and happily for them they have not yet bred a Beaconsfield or a Salisbury
—(laughter and cheers) — to misdirect their poUcy and to waste their resources. (Loud cheers.)
If at some distant period, it may be centuries remote, an Englishman— one of that great English
nation which is now so rapidly peopUng the American continent— if such an EngUshman should
visit and explore the sources of his race, and the decayed and ruined home of his fathers, he may
exclaim, ' How are the mighty fallen ! whence comes this great ruin P ' And the answer wid be,
that in the councils of the England of the past— I pray that it may not be said in the days of a
virtuous Queen— wisdom and justice were scorned, and ignorance, and passion, and vainglory
directed her policy and wielded her power." (Loud and prolonged cheers.)

218 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
The ovation given to Mr. Bright when he rose to speak was most
enthusiastic, and not an unworthy recompense for a life spent for the
public good. Although at least 20,000 persons were in the haU, he was
distinctly heard to the utmost limits of the building, and from the
beginning to tbe end that mysterious sympathy which animates and
draws together orator and hearers was perfectly maintained. It is one
of Manchester's chief distinctions that Mr. Bright represented her
citizens in Barliament, and was associated with her in the movement
which set England free from a mischievous fiscal system. While an
" overflow meeting " was held in the open air outside, there was a
continual call for " Bright," and he at last consented to speak to them.
Appearing on a balcony, he was somewhat astonished by the vast sea
of human faces, and remarked to the immense gathering that it
was quite impossible for any one with ordinary human powers to address
with any advantage the vast, the wonderful audience, yet every word of
his short speech was heard by even the outer circle of the multitude.
The scene was very interesting and affecting. Although the large
assembly tried to get as near as possible to the balcony, and were
packed together in an uncomfortable mass, yet the dense crowd was
respectfully deferential throughout the address. Upon the high balcony
stood, with calm collected mien, a fine political veteran of stainless
career, who had devoted the greater portion of his life to the
advancing of the true interest of mankind. There he stood, in
the evening, calmly counselling his countrymen, who anxiously drank
in every word he uttered, with eyes fixed on the lineaments of
his face. He somewhat resembled the sun which was beautifuUy
setting before him, pouring light all round, even upon the clouds
that strove to dim its lustre. At the close of the speech the people
were vociferous in their acknowledgment of the favour he had con
ferred upon them, and the kind expressions interchanged by strangers
betokened their admiration for the honest politician whose whole life-
study had been directed towards feeding the poor and raising the
poverty-stricken masses. They were grateful, for while
" Others hail the rising sun,
They bowed to him whose course was run. "

AT BIRMINGHAM. 219
Upon the Prince of "Wales visiting India, Mr. Disraeli proposed the
grant to defray the expenses.
"I rose," said Mr. Bright, "for tho purpose of saying that although I had some doubts, and
although it is impossible to say and believe, that the journey of the Prince of Wales wUl turn the
current of feeling on great political questions in the minds of the natives of India, yet I think
that in aU probability by his conduct — his personal conduct — his kindness, his courtesy, his
generosity, and his sympathy with that great people over whom it may at no distant period be
his tremendous respousibility to rule, he may leave behind him memories that may be of exceed
ing value, and equal in influence to the greatest measures of State poUcy which any Government
could propound."
Mr. Bright was the chairman at a conversazione given by Mr.
Alderman CoUings, the Mayor of Birmingham, on the 31st of October,
to the teachers in aU the elementary schools, and others engaged in
educational work.
"It has been to me a subject not of wonder, but of grief, that I have been compelled to
believe that there is hardly any effort so great — an effort made in any direction with so little
results — as the effort which is made by the ministers and teachers of religion now," said Mr.
Bright. "I have read one and heard another curious explanation of this from two eminent
ministers. I read the opinion of one who was a great American divine. He said that as people
got older there was not only an ossification of the outward man, but a hardness and bonyness
that grew, and unless great care was taken, unless religion be pursued from youth, there was
great fear that the spiritual man would also become ossified. It is to adults, too, that
ministers of the Gospel have generaUy to speak. They have a material which is not plastic, upon
which they can make Uttle impression ; and I think there is nothing more to be lamented than
the fact that ministers of reUgion produce so little effect upon those amongst whom they
labour. But I heard another minister say that he found in his experience that very few
persons who had not paid any special regard to reUgion by the time they became thirty years of
age found it extremely difficult for the religious sentiment to be created in their mind at a later
period in life. I wUl not argue about that ; but I say the teachers in your schools are in an
entirely different position. They have a material upon which they are able to impress their
minds and sentiments, and although that plastic material may be moved, worked, and impressed
for evil as weU as for good, I hope the efforts of the great mass of the teachers in our schools
tend infinitely more for good than for evil, knowing that they make a lasting impression upon
the young minds with which they constantly come in contact. I must make another observation
in which I am not sure the Mayor wUl agree, as I know he is very apt to criticise — (laughter) —
and that is in regard to what we mean by education. It is not books alone. (Hear, hear.) It is
not what is caUed the ' three R's,' though as a plain education in reading, writing, and arithmetic
these are very good for the bulk of men, and they are probably sufficient for their work in life.
It is not even classics and mathematics, of which, when I was young, I knew nothing, and of
which I have not acquired any knowledge since. (Laughter and cheers.) I regard what are
caUed the classics — that is, the ancient languages of Greece and Rome — as rather luxuries than
anything else. It is a great luxury to know anything which is good and innocent. It is a great
luxury to know a great deal of the past — not that it makes you more powerful, but it is a great
pleasure to the person who knows. (Hear, hear.) But I do not believe myself that there is

22o LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
anything in the way of wisdom which is to be obtained in any of the books of the old languages
which at this moment may not be found in books of our own literature. (Hear, hear.) There
fore 1 think a man may be as great a man, and as good a man, and as wise a man knowing only
his own language, and the wisdom in it, as the man who knows aU the Latin and Greek books
that were ever written. But, I say, there is another sort of education beyond that of books. I
think MUton describes this sentiment. In speaking of some ancient person he speaks of him as
'deep versed in books but shallow in himself;' and there is no doubt that there are people
who know almost everything that may be known in a Ubrary, and yet they will hardly make
their way from one street to another." (Laughter.)
Mr. Bright was present at a large meeting of his townsmen in the
Town Hall of Bochdale on the 18th of December, 1879, who had
assembled to listen to an interesting address from Mr. T. B. Potter,
their member, on his recent tour in the United States.
" It is now my pleasing duty," said Mr. Potter, in concluding his speech, "to convey to our
great townsman, John Bright— (cheers)-the messages of affection and gratitude with which I
have been charged from meetings in New Tork, PhUadelphia, Boston, and Chicago ; as weU as
the universal expression of goodwiU towards him from every part of the United States which I
have visited, and the ardent hopes of all, from the President to the artisan, that 'he wUl not die
until he has seen America.' " (Cheers.)
" I must say," said Mr. Bright, " that I feel in regard to the message, or messages, that he
has brought to me, something which I cannot adequately express. I have had hundreds, I think,
of invitations to visit the United States. I regret very much that in past years opportunity was
not afforded me to gratify that wish. Only within the last three or four months— I think it was
towards the end of July— I received a most courteous and kind letter from the President of the
United States— (cheers)— who, having heard some rumour that I was about to visit that country
over which he presides as chief magistrate, did me the honour to ask me, if I came to the States,
to take up my residence at his house— at the White House— in Washington, and to consider
myself his guest there as long as I should be able to remain in that city. I was obUged to write
him a letter which gave me distress, but I was compeUed to decline an invitation so kind in him,
and so honourable to me, from circumstances which I need not here detail. But one thing I may
say and admit, that whatever was the — I say almost the insatiable — appetite that I had for
travelling forty years ago, now, when so many years have passed over, I feel as if I had not the
spirit and the enterprise to make a long sea voyage, and to meet the excitement — for it would be
a great excitement — of the welcome which I am assured I should meet with on the other side of
the Atlantic. (Cheers.) I hope you wiU believe, and I hope friends of mine in the United
States wUl believe, that I am sensible of their kindness, that I appreciate it fully, and regret, at
the present at any rate, and I fear for the future, there is little chance of my being able to accept
the generous invitation which they have forwarded to me. ... I was reading the other day
a very interesting little book published by one of the most eminent men who have ever adorned
the Senate of the Umted States — I mean the late Mr. Charles Sumner — (cheers) — who for many
years was Senator for the State of Massachusetts. It is a book called ' Prophetic Voices,' and it
purports to give us something prophetic with regard to the greatness of the United States, and
goes back to very early periods — you will be sm-prised when I tell you goes back even to the
time long before the United States had been discovered. He says in one of the opening passages
of this book, that the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus is the greatest event in all

AMERICA. 221
secular history ; aud I believe, when you come to examine it, you wdl agree with him in that
opinion. But even when America was unknown, imagination in some way — the imagination of
genius and poesy — pictured the discovery of a country, the grandeur and vastness of which,
perhaps, at the time scarcely anybody could dream of. Now, in the same little book, Mr.
Sumner has given us two or three passages, which I wiU read to you — one from the writings of a
very celebrated Roman, who lived about the time of the Apostle Paul, which would be fourteen
hundred years before the discovery of America. In it he says : ' There shaU come a time in
later years when ocean shaU relax his chains, and a vast continent appear, and a pUot shall find
new worlds ; Thule shaU be no more earth's bounds '— Thule being understood to represent some
new and easUy discoverable islands in the extreme north-west of Europe. Well, then, not only
the genius of Seneea gives us this passage, but Petrarch, one of the greatest of ItaUan poets,
born nearly six hundred years ago, says in one of his poems —
' The daylight hastening with winged steps,
Perchance to gladden the expectant eyes
Of far off nations in a world remote.'
There was the indication that westward were great lands and a new world to be discovered ; and
another poet, Pulci, who Uved a hundred years or more after Petrarch, but who died before the
discovery of America, has these lines : —
' Men shall descry another hemisphere ;
At our antipodes are cities, states,
And thronged empires, ne'er divined of yore ;
But, see, the sun speeds on his western path
To glad the nations with expected Ught.'
These to my mind are very interesting quotations, and show that there was in the mind of
genius and the mind of the poet — for the poet, the true poet, is always a prophet — there was
foreseeing of great things to come. Well, finaUy, the prophecy became a fact. Columbus lived
amongst men, the curtain was undrawn, and the new world appeared ; and I think if we look to
the past ages we shall probably find nothing which is equal to that great discovery and that great
transaction. Mr. Bryant, the oldest of the American poets — lately dead, at a very old age — Mr.
Bryant has an exquisite ode to the past, and in that he says —
' Far is thy realm withdrawn,
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom.'
But if we examine these old empires — the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Parthian, or the Roman
— or if we still go farther back in time and in place, and examine what we know of the great
empires of India or of China ; or if we come to a more modern time, and regard the f aU of
ancient Rome ; if we look at our own time, at the growth of the empire of Russia ; if we look
at the French revolution, with aU its vast results ; if we look at the present power of Germany
in Europe ; if we look at the vast empires over aU the world, of most of which we in this little
island are for the time the centre — I think we shaU admit after aU that there is nothing in all
these transactions of history which, for vastness and for permanence, can compare with the
grandeur there is in the discovery of the American continent by Christopher Columbus.
(Cheers.) . . . There is, no doubt, a great difference between the United States and countries
in Europe, with fhe exception of one great country — France. They differ from us in sobriety.
It is quite true Mr. Potter said he only saw four drunken people in America. Well, but he did
not see one Emperor. Call it Empress or King or Queen, or Imperial or Royal — these
institutions are not the foremost in America ; and I have no doubt where men are not inteUigent

222 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
enough and moral enough to maintain a Government like they have in the United States, they
may in some particulars still possess great benefits. I think that Mr. Shawcross, or Mr. Potter,
or both perhaps, said that they had no great army. There are persons who come to England
from Germany, France, and Russia who are surprised, and perhaps delighted, to find so few
soldiers here compared with some of the European nations. In America they disbanded their
great army of a million of men ; they have now a force of about 25,000 men. It is not main
tained for the purpose of war abroad, nor is it maintaiued for the purpose of suppressing liberty
at home ; and yet there is no country which is more universally respected throughout the globe
than the United States of America ; and there is no country where, on the whole, the laws are
better observed, and order more steadily maintained. Another thing in which they differ from
us is this, they have, as I beUeve, almost no political treaties. Washington, their first great
President, advised them to have no political treaties — commercial treaties if you like, as much
trade as you can have with all countries. They have not followed his advice in that so much as
I should like ; but in regard to political treaties, in the main they have followed his advice ; and
yet I believe there is no country with whom other countries are more friendly at this moment
than the United States. . . I saw three or four months ago an admirable letter, I believe
written by an American Consul at Newcastle-on-Tyne in this country to a Senator of a State,
whose name I do not remember, in the United States, and he complained of their tariff on this
ground. He said, ' I live here in Newcastle, and there are a million of people within a certain
distance of this town, and these people are taking from America great quantities of grain, and
all kinds of cattle, and meat, and bacon, and cheese, and so forth, but they find that their iron
and coal, which they have in great abundance, they are not allowed to send to the United States,
because the duties of their tariffs are so high that it is an unequal contest.' He said, ' Now
when a cargo of grain comes from the United States to the Tyne, and wants to go back to the
United States, the captain— of course, if he can get it — will seek a cargo to take back ; but
owing to the American tariff, there is scarcely anything he can take which wUl pay.' And the
consequence is, that he has to take his vessel across the ocean empty; and the result of that is,
as you wiU see, that the one cargo coming from Now Tork to the Tyne with corn has' to pay
freight which wiU remunerate the owner of the ship for both passages — (hear, hear)— and there
fore every farmer exporting his grain to this country who cannot get a return cargo, has a charge,
a heavy charge, upon that cargo of grain, which necessarily diminishes the quantity he can sell
here, and diminishes the price and profit which the farmer would otherwise receive. (Cheers.)
I have a belief that the Americans, with all their schools, and aU their newspapers, and aU their
free discussions, and with aU their elections— for elections are wonderful opportunities for
teaching— with aU these, I beUeve the Americans are a people of great common sense, and
before long the farmers throughout the Union will find that the protection under which they
seU everything at the cheapest and buy everything at the clearest, and which makes them pay
two freights for carrying their produce to Europe, is a system whieh they will no longer support.
I do not hope much from the convincing of the Protectionists themselves. They are, I am
sorry to say, afraid of the change, and I am not sure that I do them any injustice when I say
that from habit some of them have become what I would caU greedy of gain. But I trust to the
great heart and the great mind of the American nation. Their debt is continually lessening,
their taxes wUl continually lessen, and the great pubUc interest by-and-by wid overweigh the
clamour of private interest. What a grand thing it would be if England and aU her colonies,
including the colonies of the United States-for though a separate nation they are still
historically colonies of England— if England and her colonies, including the United States, the
colony of Canada, the colonies of Australia and New Zealand, the colony of the Cape of Good
Hope, and the whole of the Indian Empire, altogether now Hearing, and will soon attain, te a
population of nearly four hundred milUons-probably nearly one-third of the whole population

THE CONSERVATIVES AND PAST LEGISLATION. 223
of the world— what a magnificent thing it would be if these nations alone adopted the principles
of Free Trade, and set the great example to the world, which the world must before long
inevitably foUow. Not only would the influence on the world be enormous with regard to the
creation and distribution of wealth, but with regard to another question of overpowering
mterest— the question of peace. (Cheers.) With the faU of tariffs by the union of peoples
through Free Trade between nations— with the fall of tariffs, we shall find also that there will
be a fall of the mUitary system which now oppresses all the nations of the earth, and which
even in this country, in my opinion, dishonours and rejects the Christianity which we
profess." (Loud and prolonged cheering.)
On the 20th of January, 1880, Mr. Bright was present at the
ceremony of opening the Birmingham Liberal Club, and he alluded to
the prospect of the dissolution of Barliament. Mr. B. Chamberlain, the
Mayor, presided. Sir W. Harcourt was the first speaker, and he
remarked : —
"Tou will not, I hope, believe me capable of the presumption of attempting to instruct
Birmingham in polities in the presence of Mr. Bright — (cheers)— a statesman who, after forty
years of pubUc service, unsurpassed, unequaUed, is stiU left to us, with eye undimmed, wisdom
unclouded, eloquence unquenched, like, some weather-beaten and battUng cUff, a landmark of this
English nation, and against whom the waves of faction have roared in vain."
Mr. Bright's speech was chiefly retrospective, for he gave an
interesting account of our political history during the last half-century,
pointing out the obstructive part played by the Conservative party, and
stigmatised the claim of his opponents to having passed the household
suffrage in boroughs as an impudent imposture.
" The Prime Minister," he added, " has spun yarns and woven webs, and he has caught a
great many flies, and, as far as I find, the flies seem rather to like it ; and in that way we have
proof — at least the explanation— of the sort of swollen eminence to which he has attained.
(Laughter.) Take the Foreign Minister. I have nothing to say of him, except that there is a
painful inexactitude in the statements he has frequently made of late. (Laughter.) And if we
come to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I think we shall be forced to admit that in the
ingenuity of his financial explanations there is something much more to wonder at than admire.
(Laughter.) But if one of those gentlemen were here, or aU three of them, addressing a
Conservative Club, what would they do with the lookback over fifty years of life P (Hear, hear.)
WeU, what they would do would be this, that they would pass aU that over. (Laughter.) They
would assume that the Conservatives — and very Ukely with great truth — know nothing about it.
(Laughter and applause.) I saw the other day a paragraph in the papers about Dr. Johnson —
(hear, hear) — which states the case admirably. Dr. Johnson said to a young man, who was not
to be commended, ' Tou must have taken immense pains with yourself ; naturaUy you cannot be
so stupid as you are.' (Laughter and applause.) But what would these gentlemen say to this
Conservative Club F They would talk to it about the greatness of our empire — an empire so
great that the best Minister that ever lived or ever will live to rule this country will be totally

224 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
unable to do what that empire requires— (hear, hear)— an empire on which the sun never sets,
but which— and I know not from how many points— brings us constantly in danger of disturb
ances, of war ; ahnost all, if not the whole, of the cost is thrown upon the comparatively small
population of this island. (Hear, hear.) They would teU it something about glory ; they would
say, exactly in the way which Lord Derby referred to the other day— (laughter)— ' gunpowder
and glory business.' (Renewed laughter.) They would speak of the glory, and, however much
steeped in blood, they would endeavour to persuade you that this loss of human lives, though it
was to be to a certain extent regretted, yet was fully compensated by the national glory which
was brought to us and the Crown under which we live. Now, this might be all right to the
members of the Conservative party, and doubtless would be in some degree suitable to their con
dition and their digestion. But what did the Prime Minister state the other day ?— and some of
these things ought not to be forgotten. (Hear, hear.) He said that wages in this country-
referring, I think, chiefly to the wages of the farm labourer — had risen 10 per cent. ; and that
there was no symptom of discontent or disloyalty over the country, confining himself, I presume,
to England, Wales, and Scotland. But turn back to the history of England from 1760 to the
time of the accession of George III., and come down to 1830. I remember, when the agitation
was about to begin you wiU find that wages were always low ; there was not only disloyalty and
discontent, but aU over the country there were conspiracies, attempts at insurrection, and dis
order. Now, if the Tory party had been in power during the whole of that time — they
had the unanimous vote almost of both Houses of Parliament to do what they liked in
legislation and administration, yet such was the condition of the country— I ask, what
would have been its condition now if you had had them from 1830 to 1880 P Sup
pose that the present Prime Minister and his friends had been successful iu preventing
aU the measures which they have strenuously opposed, what would have been the state of
the country now, what the rate of wages, what the condition of content aud loyalty? Tou
would have had long before this chaos over the country, and anarchy, or that kind of
calm which ultimately succeeds when anarchy has passed away. Tou would have had your aris
tocracy dead as they are politicaUy dead in France ; and more than that, I think it is highly
probable that the English Crown, ancient and venerated as it is, if it had been subjected to
the strain of fifty years more of Tory Government, would have at this moment been not worth
more — if worth as much — as Mr. TurnereUi's wreath. (Loud laughter aud applause.) And if the
people of England aUowed this Government, with an unchanged poUcy, or such a Government
to proceed twenty years longer, I would not give much for the institutions of this country, which
the majority of the people value highly, but which we are sometimes told we do not think so
much of as those to whom we are opposed. If this picture be true, is it not wise for young men,
middle-aged men, aU men, to connect themselves with the Liberal party in associations or clubs
by which, by moral and just and honest means, the purposes of that party are intended to be
promoted ? Our duty, in my opinion, is to continue to work for these great objects. They are
not aU accompUshed. There is much else to be done. Much has been done in fifty years. Those
who from this platform, or from any other platform, can speak in fifty years to come, I hope that
they may be able to show that they also have done their duty in their time — (cheers) — and that
England, whether it boasts or not of being the centre of an empire on which the sun never sets,
is an England with a population educated, weU-fed, civUised, and enlightened — such a population
as we can only have under a just and a moral Government. I believe that at home we have much
to do. Now our eyes are directed to foreign countries, to wars afar off, to the sufferings of our
countrymen there, and to the appalling sufferings they are inflicting on the populations with
which we are at war. (Hear, hear.) Our eyes and our attention have been diverted from our
own immediate and real interests. It is for you, members of this club— for members of the
Liberal party throughout the kingdom— to make up their minds that, at the hour, which is

MR. GLADSTONE AND GREENWICH. 225
coming, there will be such a proclamation of opinion on the part of the universal constituencies
that shall fix for ever the mark of their condemnation upon the poUcy of the last four or five
years." (Loud cheering.)
Mr. "VV. E. Gladstone, in declining to continue to represent Green
wich in the House of Commons, remarked during his speech to his
constituents : —
" I must go one step further, gentlemen, and say that I desire that yours, as a Liberal
borough, shoidd be represented to the greatest advantage. Now, I have not a tittle of reason or
ground of complaint of any portion — or any reason to apprehend any injustice from any portion —
of the constituency. But you know that your borough comprises a very large extent of Govern
ment establishments, and I admit promptly that I have never been a friend of extended Govern
ment estabhshments, and I am a great deal more rigorous on the subject of public economy than
is the fashion in the present day. (Cheers.) One of my consolations, I assure you, in the House
of Commons upon those matters is to sit by my friend and your friend, Mr. Bright — (cheers) —
and talk with him over bygone times. I will say of Sir Robert Peel, though I am a Liberal, or,
as some say, a dangerous Radical — (laughter) — that I revere and love his memory ; and I say it
to his honour, that in those days public economy and retrenchment, and keeping down to a
minimum the pubUc estabUshments, was the motto which every politician found it necessary to
profess iu the face of the people of England. It is not so now, and I defy you now to select
a candidate who has rigid notions on the subject, without very considerable disadvantage to
the Liberal cause. That, gentlemen, is a consideration whieh has largely weighed with me."
The annual soiree of the Birmingham Junior Liberal Association was
held in the Town HaU of that town on the 22nd of January. Mr.
Bright was present, and in a speech exulted over the spread of education.
and its attendant advantages ; pointed out the necessity of the extension
of the county franchise ; and became animated in his denunciation against
the horrors of needless wars.
" I believe all wars are savage and cruel ; but I mean harsh and cruel wars on uncivilised or
half-civUised men. When I read of transactions of that kind, something always puts to me this
question : ' What is it that makes, if anything makes, this needless and terrible slaughter different
in its nature from those transactions winch we call murder ? ' Excuses had been made for these
wars — excuses which were not justified by the facts — excuses that the Zulus had attacked Natal,
which was absolutely and notoriously and entirely false. With regard to the Afghans, state
ments had been made very much of the same character, that they were going to throw in their in
fluence with another and a northern power, and that they insulted outrageously the envoy sent to
negotiate with them — aU of which I believe there was not a particle of foundation for. At most,
in regard to either of these peoples, the case was one of suspicion ; but was it right, upon a mere
suspicion, that a country like this should send, in the one case 20,000 and in the other 40,000
troops to invade territories, and to put to death not less, perhaps, than 20,000 men engaged in the
defence of their own country, which in our case we considered honourable and needful ? . . . .
I beUeve it is not possible to condemn too strongly the policy by which the hard-earned treasure
64

226 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
of your people is wasted, and by which the blood of your brethren, and those whom you are told
to call your foes, is spUt. To-day is the anniversary of what they cad the battle, or the
massacre, of Isandula, when I know not how many, but I suppose at least 1,500 men — officers,
Englishmen, native troops, and I know not how many of the Zulus — were slaughtered. This is
the anniversary of that sad day. Can any man show a justification for that transaction, or the
compensation that we have received for the enormous and incalculable loss of that one day's war?
(Hear, hear.) At this moment, in the Afghan country — a country, I am told, as large as France
and as mountainous as Switzerland — you hear of the hanging of scores of men, you hear of vUlages
burnt, of women and chUdren turned out into the snow and the cold of this inclement season, and
aU done at the command of a Government and a people professing to be wiser, more intelUgent,
more humane, and more Christian than those upon whom these attacks are made. I say, let us
abandon our pretensions ; let us no longer claim to be Christian ; let us go back to the heathen
times whilst we adhere to the heathen practices — (hear, hear) — let us no longer — as I see some
of the leading men of this country have beeu doing within the past few weeks, at the
opening of churches and at the laying of the foundation-stones of churches— join in all the
apparent regard for the Christian religion. Take down, at any rate, your Ten Commandments
from inside your churches, and say no longer that you read, or believe in, or regard, the Sermon
on the Mount. Abandon your Christian pretensions, or else abandon your savage and heathen
practices.'1 (Loud applause.)
Mr. Bright and his colleagues addressed their constituents in the Bir
mingham Town Hall on the 24th of January, 1880. Mr. Bright spoke
chiefly on the subject of Ireland, the most pressing domestic problem of
the day, for it was impossible to look at the condition of Ireland without
pain and apprehension. The disaffection had been steadily growing
during the previous three years, and though a succession of bad harvests
had greatly intensified the feeling of bitterness, yet a prosperous season
did not do much to mitigate the mischief.

cion

" At present what the Irishman wants upon his farm more than aU else is to get rid of suspi-
_ a; to get rid of the fear of injury, of uncertainty as to his tenure ; to have infused into his
mmd the opposite feelings of confidence and of hope. (Cheers.) If you would give to aU Irish
tenants that confidence and hope, every year would see them advancing in a better cultivation and
a more prosperous condition. Does anybody say that hope is nothing and of no avail in the affairs
ot men I might quote from the poet who has-what shall I say ?-created almost an immortality
for our language. He speaks of hope. He says— " White-handed Hope,
" Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings."
(Loud cheers). Bring this hope into the Irish farmer's family, and into his household, and it wiU
have an influence as complete, as blessed, and as home-riding as it wiU have in the mansions of
the rich or the palaces of the great. (Cheers.) So far as I have seen Irishmen in their own
country and m this, they are as open to good and kind treatment as any other people. They have
been the victims of untoward circumstances, which all your histories describe. We-our fore-
tTeUUvTs 7 "wr'^ I'™ ^ maltreal6d tW We Sufer * ****>"¦• «»* «*" -
then Uves through the misdoings of the past. Let us not now be weary of the attempt to bring

PERSECUTION. 227
about a reformation in that country, which, I believe, would quell the suspicion, and quell the dis
content, and banish the disloyalty which we all lament in Ireland. As to the present distress, I
hope that the duty of the Government wiU not be neglected. I hope they have not spent so
much in endeavouring to civilise Zulus and Afghans that they are not able to do something for
their poor people nearer home. (Hear, hear.) I hope, Sir, the Government in dealing with the
Irish question wiU deal with it frankly, and openly, and generously ; and that they, as they are
now under the pressure of the present distress, will open their hands to relieve the suffering
people of the West — that they will open their hearts, and their inteUects too, to the further and
the greater question of what shall be done for Ireland in the future." (Applause.)
Mr. Bright presided as chairman in Uniom Chapel, Islington, on the
10th of Pebruary, 1880, on the occasion of a lecture delivered by the
Bev. B. "VV. Dale on the " Bise of Evangelical Nonconformity."
" Since the Reformation," said Mr. Bright, in opening the proceedings, " we have had from
the earUest period the Puritans, and foUowing them, and much like them, their successors, the
Nonconformist bodies of this country. We have had persecution enough in England ; we all know
it has not vanished altogether a long time from among us. (Cheers.) In the reign of Charles IL,
Uttle over two centuries ago, there were in prison in this country not less than 4,000 persons,
members of the smaU and inconsiderable sect of which I am a member. In twelve years of that
time more than 8,000 were imprisoned, and more than 400 died in prison. In those days prisons
were not like the prisons of our day. They were abodes in which men met with intolerable and
disgusting conditions aud sufferings, and in which they encountered maladies of the most
dreadful character, and the welcome they gave to multitudes was merely the welcome of death.
Now, in the year 1684 — that is not 200 years ago, not many lives back — I lost only the .other day
an old relative and connection of mine who had lived somewhat more than 100 years ; if you take
another life like that it brings you back to the poiut which I am referring to, viz., the year 1684,
when WiUiam Penn says, referring to what was transacting in his time : ' There have been ruined
since the late King's restoration' — that is Charles H.'s, for whom aU Conformists were expected
to give thanks for ever and ever — (cheers and laughter) — ' there have been ruined since the late
King's restoration about 15,000 families, and more than 5,000 persons died under bonds for
matters of mere conscience to God.' Well, we have had this persecution, but it never reached
the point of extinction. Whatever was done, there was something either in the EngUsh people,
or in the English Constitution, or in the Protestant faith of those who were the persecutors which
prevented their going the length to which Church and State went in France, and therefore Non
conformity in England was not extinguished ; it was only persecuted, and, as far as law and
practice could do it, degraded and insulted. For the last 100 years the Nonconformists of England
have taken a very different position. They have been now for a long period the great advancing
and reforming force in our English political life— (loud cheers) — and we must not forget, and we
ought to acknowledge with thankfulness, that there are large numbers of those who are not Non
conformists, but who are associated and worship with the Church of England, who have constantly
and honestly co-operated with Nonconformists in all that they have done in favour of greater
civil and religious freedom. (Cheers). But yet, for all that, we must admit, and with sorrow,
that even now the people of this country are parted into two great divisions — the Church and the
Conformists on one side, the Dissenters and Nonconformists on the other. There seems to me a
strange and a painful misfortune in this to the country at large, that there should be suspicion to
a great extent, dislike to a great extent, enmity, I sometimes fear, to some extent, between large
classes of persons professing to believe and to practise the religion of Christ. And why is it

228 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
so P In fact, I know not why the Church should so dread Dissent, and hate it and despise it.
There is no difference in doctrine or in practice — I mean in the rites of Church arrangement—
which can justify the feelings which exist too much between Churchmen and Dissenters in our
country and in our time. What has dissent done ? If I were a Churchman I think I should
sometimes ask myself that question. I have heard of an eminent bishop, who, describing a
parish, said that there were only two things in it to be lamented— the beerhouses and the Dis
senters. (Laughter.) That good bishop believed, no doubt— I wUl not say that a Dissenting
chapel was as injurious as a beerhouse, but stUl that it interfered with the harmony of his parish.
Those who went to the chapel did not go to hear him. I recoUect a clergyman I once met, some
years ago, from Warwickshire, who professed to be very liberal on this matter. He said he should
not object at all to the Dissenters going to their own place of worship in the evening if they
would go to his church in the morning. (Much laughter.) I do not know whether he considered
that was a case of bane and antidote, or what Ught he considered it in. But I said, ' As you are
so liberal with regard to them, would you have any objection yourself occasionaUy to go to the
Dissenting chapel ? ' But he said that was a very different question. (Renewed laughter.) He
fell back upon what he called his orders, his apostolical succession — (cheers) — and it was im
possible for him to make that condescension to the Dissenters which he thought it right the Dis
senters shoidd make to him. I am surprised that men who are good and cultivated, and whom
one supposes to know a good deal of the world, should think that beerhouses on the one side and
Dissenting chapels on the other are proper to be mentioned in the same sentence. (Hear.) As
to the bishops, one might say a good deal about them. (Laughter.) . . . But when there
come questions on the sacrifice of tens of thousands of lives in distant and remote countries, they
who come down, or say they come down, from Christ's own Apostles sit there with aU the dignity
of great office a.bout them, and not one of them in that House opens his mouth to condemn the
transaction which in his own home and in his own soul I cannot but believe he must emphaticaUy
condemn. (Cheers.) ... If I were a Churchman inyself, and I suppose it is very much a
matter of accident that I am not — (laughter) — if they had not imprisoned my forefathers for many
years in Bedford Gaol, for anything I know I might have been a Churchman now — I hope I
should at least have had that sense of honour and of justice which would have enabled
me to look around and behold aU the great works of the great Nonconformist body in England,
and to regard it with admiration and honour." (Cheers.)

CHABTEB XLVIII.

THE LIBEEALS AGAIN IN OFFICE.

Dissolution of Pariiainent — The Liberal Victory — Mr. Bright once more ChanceUor of the
Duchy of Lancaster— Mr. Bradlaugh— Capital Punishment — Visit to Stratf ord-on-Avon—
The Burials BiU— Lord Rector o£ Glasgow University— The Condition of Ireland— Address
from France, HoUand, and Germany— Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land BiU— Mr. Bright's
Seventieth Birthday— At Rochdale— Laying the Foundation-stone of the First Board
School at Llandudno — Annual Address to his Constituents in January, 1882 — Speech in
the House on the Rules of Procedure — His Opinion upon Libraries — The Prevention
of Crimes BUl.
N the 8th of March the dissolution of Parliament was
announced in both Houses. The representatives of Birming
ham were opposed by the Hon. A. C. G. Calthorpe and Major
Burnaby in the Conservative interest. Mr. Bright arrived in
Birmingham on the 19th of March, and was lustily cheered by
a large crowd that had assembled to welcome him. The Town Hall
that evening was densely crowded by Liberals. Mr. Jaffray
presided. "When Mr. Bright was caUed upon to address the meeting, he
was received with a great burst of enthusiasm, which was continued for
several minutes. He said : —
" We were now witnessing the dying hours of the worst of modern Parliaments, and beholding
the spectacle of the worst of Administrations being brought up for judgment. He contended that
they owed the inestimable blessings which they were now pririleged to enjoy to the foresight, judg
ment, and indefatigable labours of the Liberal party. He pointed out that the Conservative
party had systematically opposed aU efforts at reform, and had obstructed instead of advancing
the attainment of results at which good legislation had aimed during the past half -century. In
the last six years — we wiU not go farther back — in the last six years you had no considerable,
if indeed any, liberal measures. Tou have had, as you know, an extravagance unknown
for many years. Tou have had increasing debt and increasing taxes, and if you have not
paid off aU that you owe it wiU have to be paid by somebody some day. This Government
came in with a purse fuU with £6,000,000. They go out with a purse not only empty but
£8,000,000 to the bad. ('Shame!') Instead of dealing economically with your resources,
extending your freedom, doing everything they could to encourage your industry, they have been
marauding over half the world. (Loud and prolonged cheers.) England, the mother of free
nations, herself the origin of free Parliaments — England has been supporting oppression in
Turkey — ('Shame ! ') — and has been carrying fire and sword into remote territories in South Africa
and in Afghanistan. (' Shame ! ') Will you entrust your power in the future — (' No, no ') — to men

230 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
who have thus dealt with your interests, not in the remote past, but in the near past and in the
present ? (' No.') No ; if you can find them, give your power to men who would be generous at
home, and just and moral, and, so far as was in their power, peaceful abroad. I think it is time
to adopt the words of one of our best poets, who says : —
' 'Tis time
To snatch then- truncheons from the puny hands
Of statesmen, whose infirm and baby minds
Are gratified with mischief, and who spoil,
Because men suffer it, their toy, the world.' "
The vast audience passed a vote of confidence in the three members.
The day after, a deputation from the Licensed Victuallers of Birming
ham waited upon Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain, to obtain then- views
about the liquor traffic.
" I do not suppose that it (the Liberal party') will deal with any severity in any way with
you," said Mr. Bright in reply to them ; " whenever it does deal with the Uquor question — if it
ever does deal with it — you may depend upon it, it is the last party in the country that wUl ever
do anything that will be in a pecuniary sense unjust to your interest. What it deprives you of
in the public interest it will at any rate compensate you for, and endeavour to do justice, as it
does to the whole country and to every interest. Tou may depend upon it, it wiU not be unjust
to the licensed victuaUers, and those who are concerned in the sale of those things which,
unfortunately, here it appears necessary in some degree to control."
Mr. Bright addressed two meetings on the 23rd, and was honoured
with a torchlight procession through the streets, accompanied with bands
of music. The day after, he again spoke at Cave's Auction Mart on the
necessary reforms in the land laws ; and he related that Mr. Martin, the
strong Nationalist, once came up to him at the door of the House of
Commons and said, " I have watched your public conduct, and I have
seen that you have never said one single word that was offensive, or
unkind, or unjust to my country ; and I wish to shake you by the hand
and to tell you so."
Mr. Bright delivered another speech to the electors on the 27th
of March in the Birmingham Concert Hall. Mr. "VV. H. Hart presided :—
" It is one of the things I used to complain of myself when I held office in Mr. Gladstone's
Government,' said Mr. Bright. " I used to say what an extraordinary thing that the Government
of this country always spends so much time about foreign affairs, many of them of no importance
to us, and spend comparatively so Uttle time about our home affairs ; and I believe if we could
have au accurate account of all the Governments of England have done— the Ministers, the
Cabinets— during the last hundred years or more, we should find that nine-tenths of that time,
thought, aud labour had been devoted to matters abroad, connected with wars, conquests,
annexatiou, gunpowder, and glory, and perhaps not more than one-tenth had been expended
upon the true interests of England. Do you think that if this country had been more at peace,

BEFORE THE COUNTRY. 231
if its resources had been more husbanded, that it would have been left to the period of
Mr. Gladstone's Government, within the last ten years, to have built these magnificent schools
that I see all over your town P (' Never.') If you wiU take the history of the last hundred years,
and look for the names of what were caUed great men that were in ParUameut and in your public
service, you wiU find that their time was taken up with things far remote from the interests
— the true interests — of England ; and scarcely a man of them ever raised his voice in favour of a
system of education which would bring you labouring men, artisans as you are, with your 20s., 30s.,
or 40s. a week, to a condition of intelligence, and a condition of virtue, and a condition of comfort
infinitely higher than you ever yet attained to. (Cheers. ) Now, I am for a policy of peace — (hear, hear,
and cheers) — and for a policy of retrenchment — (hear, hea*) — and for a policy of reform ; and if
every coimtry, and all parUaments, and aU statesmen, and all potentates would give their attention,
their minds, and their inteUigence to the wellbeing of their country, you may depend upon it the
world would be more at peace, and aU people would be more contented and more happy;
and you would not have the terrible events you read of sometimes in Russia, sometimes in
Germany ; you would not have aU Europe covered with soldiers, and its people burdened with
mUitary exactions which impoverish them and drive them to courses which are desperate and
wicked, it may be to desperate means, because the people have so little consideration and justice
shown them."
On the 28th of March Mr. Bright again appeared before the electors,
and addressed them : —
"Now, you would suppose from that manifesto that there was nothing so much from
the heart of the Prime Minister as binding Great Britain and Ireland together by the bond
of true sympathy and true interest ; and I take the Uberty of telUng you what many of
you must know, that for the last two hundred years the Tory party has had much of its
own way in Ireland. During much of that time, or at least for one hundred years, the penal
laws existed, and were most oppressive and most cruel, and those laws were only mitigated,
not aboUshed. During the time of the American war, when this country was endeavouring
to reconquer the colonies, it was found necessary in some degree to conciliate the Irish people,
and those penal laws were modified. Up to the year 1829, a time which many here can
remember, no Roman Catholic could sit in the House of Commons, aud it was only when
Ireland was on the point of civil war, as the Duke of Wellington admitted, that Catholic
emancipation was conceded to the Catholic population of Ireland. (Cheers.) And is it to be
wondered at, then, that the Tory party, having been, as I think, the enemy of the freedom of
Ireland for so long, is thus met by a corresponding feeling on the part of the Irish, who, with little
exception, have a constant and bitter animosity against the Tory party in this country ? (Cheers.)
So we come now to this kind of conclusion with regard to the present Government, that they are
an Administration which, during six years, have made no progress in England, and they have
done nothing to create peace and contentment in Ireland; and so long as the Tory party and
Administration are in power, I believe there wUl be no progress in England, and there wiU be no
settled contentment in the sister country. (Applause.) Before I conclude I must say a few words
upon a question which, in this manifesto, is especially referred to your consideration, and that is
the foreign policy of the Government. They boast — this Government boast, its orators in various
parts of the country boast; — that they have preserved the peace of Europe. Well, you know that
the peace of Europe was not preserved, that Russia and Turkey engaged in a desperate and
sanguinary conflict; and you know more, that the only reason why this Government did not go
into war was because all England, and all Scotland, had risen in condemnation of the Government
which had permitted the massacres in Bulgaria. All Great Britain and Ireland, too, declared that

232 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
no Government of this country should go into war in defence of a country or a government which
perpetrated such horrors upon a subject people — (loud applause)— and as they were not permitted
to go to war with Russia, stiU, such was the appetite for mischief, that, not going into one war,
they plunged almost immediately afterwards into two, which they caUed little wars. (' Shame ! ')
In South Africa was a nation, a smaU nation, I know not what its whole population was, but
probably not a population equal to that of the town of Birmingham. They never molested us.
They had lived for twenty or thirty years alongside the English colony of Natal, and had never
shown a disposition to inflict upon them the smaUest injury. This Government made war upon
them. I wiU not speak of the two or three thousand persons in the English troops who were
destroyed. I suppose their mothers, and widows, and sisters, and daughters lament their loss. I
lament, at any rate, if they were to die, that they did not die in a nobler and a better cause —
(cheers) — but I speak of the 10,000 men — courageous, loyal men of the Zulu nation, who, if they
had been of our nation, woidd have had songs written in their honour and magnificent orations
deUvered in their praise, and their leading men who feU would have found, no doubt, a home for
their bones and a tablet in Westminster Abbey. (Cheers.) That war was not enough. Another
was prepared, by the most ingenious and the most treacherous course of conduct, in Afghanistan.
It was a war begun in the dark, carried on in secret by a diplomacy which was denied in both
Houses of ParUament, and was falsely denied. (Hear, hear.) It was begun against the evidence
and opinion of the venerated Lord Lawrence — (cheers) — agamst the opinion and experience of
Lord Northbrook ; agamst the counsel of the Governor- General of India ; against the Indian
CouncU in London ; against, the counsel of all the sensible and just men who heretofore have been
thought the greatest authorities upon Indian questions — (cheers) — and it ended, as of course we
aU know it must end, when a powerful nation like this, with the wonderful ingenuity of armed
instruments which it possesses, comes into conflict with a half -civUised" people, in a slaughter of
Afghans, I dare say quite equal, but perhaps exceeding, that which had been inflicted upon the
Zulus in South Africa. Now, at this moment, in that country, what do you find P It is a country
which is said to be as large as France and as mountainous as Switzerland. Throughout the whole of
that country we have raised up a spirit of anarchy. There is no governor. The Ameer went away
and died ; his successor is a prisoner in our hands in India. There is no ruler in that country;
there wiU be contenders for the throne, and so things may be for months or years in that country,
of whose population not one man ever did anything whatsoever to insult or injure us. Tet our
Government, by its policy, has earned anarchy, and war, and slaughter, and fire throughout the
whole of that country. Tou know something of the untold miseries, at least you may judge from
what you have read of the untold miseries, which war brings upon men and women and Uttle
chUdren ; but there is one point that nobody, so far as I know, has ever touched upon, that which
has always had a certain interest with me, and which has excited my sympathy. I have seen in
some of the narratives of the Afghan war that all the region round had been swept for camels as
beasts of burden for the forces. What became of the camels ? The least number I have heard
it put at was 30,000— it has been reckoned as high as 40,000 or 50,000 camels, who have perished
in these expeditions. One of our greatest poets, in a beautiful stanza, has one line where he says,
1 Mute the camel labours with the heaviest load,' and though the camel is not able, by any voice of
his, to make protest or complaint, yet the burdened, overdriven, exhausted, dying beast— I cannot
but believe that even the cruelties inflicted upon him wiU be found written upon imperishable
tablets by the recording angel. (Cheers.) Well, now, that is the sort of Government that we
condemn. (Hear, hear.) Do not tell me that we are Englishmen, the citizens of a free country,
that these enormities may be conducted by our Government at the farthest ends of the earth, and
that we are bound to bow down and submit to the guilt being laid upon our shoulders and our
souls. (Cheers.) I blame the Government, as you blame them, and the more you examine what
they have done, the more you trace their career, the more you wUl blame them for their incapacity

13

BIRMINGHAM.

THE LIBERAL VICTORY. 233
at home, where our interests have been neglected. Ireland, as I have shown, has been uncared for
and insulted, and is driven constantly by neglect to discontent and disloyalty. Now, if they have
thus neglected our interests at home, abroad they have carried terror and anarchy and murder over
the wide regions of two continents — (hear, hear)— and two gentlemen have come down to
Birmingham — (A voice : ' And they wiU go back again ') — whose only plea bef ore you, whose argu
ment for your support, is purely and simply because they support this terrible wickedness of those
needless wars abroad. (Cheers.) Well, on Wednesday next the inhabitants of Birmingham— the
63,000 electors of this great central city of the kingdom— wiU have an opportunity of declaring
whether they are wUUng to share in the guilt of the transactions which I have so inadequately
described. (' No, no.') Tou wUl have to give then your final verdict. Tou must say whether
you wUl drive from their places of power statesmen whose tenure of office has been marked by
astounding incapacity at home, and not less astounding blundering and guilt in their policy and
their action abroad." (Loud and prolonged cheers.)
The election resulted in 22,969 votes being tendered for Mr. Muntz,
2.2,079 for Mr. Bright, 19,544 for Mr. Chamberlain, 15,735 for Major
Burnaby, and 14,300 for the Hon. A. C. G. Calthorpe, and the Liberals
were once again victorious in this their stronghold. A wave of Liberal
success it was found had passed aU over the United Kingdom, for 349
Liberals were returned, whereas the Conservatives numbered only 243, and the
Home Bulers 60. Mr. "VV. E. Gladstone was consequently called upon by
her Majesty to form a Ministry, and he undertook to discharge the duties of
the double office of Bremier and ChanceUor of the Exchequer. Mr. Bright
accepted office as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The other
members of the Cabinet were : — Lord Chancellor, Lord Selborne ; Lord
Bresident ofthe CouncU, Earl Spencer; LordBrivy Seal, Duke of Argyll;
Foreign Secretary, Earl Granville ; Secretary for India, the Marquis of
Hartington ; Home Secretary, Sir W. Vernon Harcourt ; Colonial
Secretary, Earl of Kimberley ; "War Secretary, Mr. Childers ; First Lord
of the Admiralty, the Earl of Northbrook ; Chief Secretary for Ireland,
Mr. Forster ; Bresident of the Local Government Board, Mr. Dodson ; and
Bresident of the Board of Trade, Mr. Chamberlain. Messrs. Bright and
Chamberlain upon submitting themselves for re-election were returned
unopposed. A few months afterwards, commenting on the new Farliament, Mr.
Bright said : —
"During the thirty-seven years that I have been a member of the House of Commons, I have
had very considerable experience in that House, and I say again that there never has been a Parlia
ment in my time to which the country had a greater right to look for important efforts of legisla-

234 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
tion ; and if the House and the country will behave with moderation and wisdom, they wUl find
the present Ministry not unworthy of the confidence they have placed in them."
An American, commenting on the event, remarked : —
" The area of the globe over which the result was looked for with eager anxiety was, of course,
very great, and illustrates strikingly the vastness of the empire. But what gives a touch of
splendour to the Liberal victory is that whole races in the East have seen it as a great light. To
every Christian still groaning under Turkish rule it means speedy help and deliverance. To the
Christians lately emancipated, and to the Greeks, it means the consolidation and maintenance of
their freedom and independence. To the Hindoos it means government for their own sake, and
not for the gratification of foreign pride. To the Afghans it means a cessation of pdlage and
slaughter in aid of a ' scientific frontier.' To the Turk it means that he must be clean and honest
and industrious, or die."
Mr. Bright had an audience, at a council at "Windsor Castle on the
28th of April, with the Queen, who delivered to him the seals of office
as ChanceUor of the Duchy of Lancaster, after he had made the usual
affirmation. The new Barliament met at the close of April, 1880, and the
members were soon called upon to decide whether Mr. Bradlaugh, who
had been elected to represent Northampton, should be allowed to make
an affirmation of allegiance instead of taking the oath. A lengthy and
excited discussion followed. Mr. Bright urged that the point that ought
to be discussed was simply a question of right and law, and not with
reference to religious views, and spoke eloquently on the subject several
times. " There are members of this House," said he, " of different churches, but generaUy all, I
trust, of one religion : of the religion which incidcates charity, and forbearance, and justice, and
even generosity. There are those who belong to the Roman CathoUc Church. I need not
remind them of what they and their ancestors have gone through in Ireland, for the last
200 or 300 years or more, or of how long a time they were kept out of this House, and by the very
same class of arguments which the hon. and learned member for Surrey used. (Cheers.) He
teUs us that for a very long time past there has been a gradual relaxation. Tes, no doubt. Did
he ever sit amongst those who have promoted those relaxations ? I have been here for thirty-
seven years, and I have heard these questions discussed over and over again ; but I never found
that the time had come when the party opposite, represented by the gentlemen who now sit there,
were wiUing to make those relaxations. They submitted, not to argument, not to sentiments of
generosity or of justice ; they submitted only to a majority which sat on this side of the House.
(Cheers.) Then there are the Nonconformists. I am told that there are some Nonconformists
even— but I think it is rather in the nature of a mistake or of a slander— who have got doubts
as to how they should vote on this occasion. (Hear, hear.) Do you suppose that in times past
the founder of Christianity has required an oath in this House to defend the religion which he
founded P Or do you suppose that the Supreme Ruler of the world can be interested in the fact,

THE OATH DISPUTE. 235
that-one man comes to this table and takes His name, it may be often in vain — (murmurs) — and
another is permitted to make an affirmation, reverently and honestly, in which His name is not
included P But one thing is essential for us, the House of Commons representing the English
people, which is, to maintain as far as we can the great principles of freedom — freedom of political
action, and freedom of conscience. (Hear, hear.) The electors, I know not how many thousands,
of the borough of Northampton have returned two members to Parliament. Tou admit the one,
and you exclude the other. All the constituencies of the kingdom, you may rely upon it, will con
sider this cause as their own. (Opposition and counter-cheers. ) The hon. member for Northampton
has told us to-night that amongst his constituents there are but few who can be supposed in the
least to sympathise with many of the opinions of Mr. Bradlaugh. (Hear, hear, and laughter.)
Well, hon. gentlemen who know nothing about it laugh at that. I think it very possible that,
finding that Mr. Bradlaugh, in his political opinions, was in sympathy with them, those electors
so Uttle Uked the poUtical opinions of hon. gentlemen opposite that they preferred Mr. Bradlaugh,
with his poUtical opinions, to some opposing candidates who have represented them, and whose
reUgious views might have been entirely orthodox. (Hear, hear.) Now my belief is that
throughout the great boroughs of the kingdom you wiU find the working classes taking part, not
with the House of Commons in excluding Mr. Bradlaugh, but with those who wish him to be
permitted to make the affirmation. I am of that opinion myself. (Hear, hear.) To a large
extent the working people of this country do not care any more for the dogmas of Christianity
than the upper classes care for the practice of that religion. (Cheers, and loud cries of ' Oh ! '
and ' Withdraw.') I wish from my heart it were otherwise. (Cheers, and renewed cries of
' Withdraw.') But of this I am certain, that the course which it is proposed to take in dealing out
this rigid measure to a gentleman honestly, openly, fairly, and legally elected by a great con
stituency wUl be productive of great evils, may bring this House into continued conflict with at
least one constituency, and may bring us ultimately to the humUiation which the House of
Commons underwent in connection with another case some 100 years ago. (Cheers.) Hon.
members opposite wUl, I dare say, represent to themselves and to others that they are the
advocates of religion, of orthodoxy, of decency, and of I know not what. I am here as the defender
of what I beUeve to be the principles of our constitution, of the freedom of constituencies to elect,
and of the freedom of the elected to sit in Parliament. That freedom which has been so hardly
won I do not believe the House of Commons will endeavour to wrest from our constituencies,
knowing by what slow steps we have reached the point we have now attained ; and I do not
beUeve that on the recommendation of the hon. member for Portsmouth they wiU turn back and
deny the principles which have been so dear to them."
The House decided by a majority against Mr. Bradlaugh, and orders
were given forbidding him to enter the House, and he was forcibly
removed on attempting to gain admittance.
The University College Debating Society held their annual debate on
the 2nd of June, and Mr. Bright occupied the chair. The subject for
debate was " Capital Bunishment."
" What can be more remarkable than this, that you should have a punishment which is so
outrageous that in many cases the authorities dare not inflict it ? " remarked Mr. Bright in the
course of his speech. " Half of those convicted are not executed, and that is one of the great
reasons why, in this strange uncertainty of the punishment, there can be no doubt that the
punishment is less deterrent than it would otherwise be. Tou can never make it more deterrent,

236 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
because you cannot make it more certain. If juries wiU, as Christian men, lean to the side of
mercy rather than severity— even the prosecuting counsel, to his honour be it said, wUl not
attempt to stretch his case against the prisoner, but is himself only too delighted if the verdict of
the jury wiU aUow the prisoner to leave the dock — and even if the jury may convict and the judge
sentence, you have then, in aU cases, except that of some miserable and poor wretch, who always
excites my sympathy and horror, the friends of the prisoner, who, if there be any circumstances
connected with the case favourable to the exercise of mercy, bring them before the Home
Secretary ; and Home Secretaries are not all alike, not all equaUy considerate, and, I fear, not all
equaUy sensitive. But stiU Home Secretaries, as a rule, during the whole of my recoUection,
which goes back for nearly forty years, have always shown themselves willing to listen to facts
and reason, and, I believe, are always well pleased that they are able to recommend a permanent
commutation of the sentence. Why, I have seen a Home Secretary, when I have been asking
him not to inflict capital punishment in a particular case, burst into tears and speak like a child,
sobbing with the intense pain which it gave him to execute to the full that which the law
required of his office. (Cheers.) So you will see I am not saying anything against the Home
Secretaries. But this I wiU say, that I am amazed that any man should undertake that ofiice
with that responsibility attached, and I am astonished that we never had a Home Secretary rise
in his place in the House of Commons and state that, from the experience of his ofiice, the time
was approaching when the country could be governed, and life and property preserved, without
the infliction of the penalty of hanging. Now, there is another point, and that is the strange and
terrible inequality of the punishment. If you wUl do as I have done, watch the cases of murder
which are tried in the country, you will find that they differ from each other as much as any two
crimes can differ. There are the murders through sudden passion, murders through jealousy and
drink, through excitement and street broUs, aud which are committed by persons on the very
verge of insanity; and then there is the murder deliberated and long calculated, done with
systematic intent, and which makes you wonder at the kind of man who has been guilty of it, and
yet your law gives exactly the same punishment in all of these cases. There are, indeed, some
cases where the juries acting sometimes — in my opinion not nearly often enough — relieve the
judge of the necessity of passing sentence of death by bringing in a sentence of manslaughter, in
consequence of the excessive provocation which has caused the deed of blood. I brought before
the House of Commons the case of a young man who was hanged at Glasgow, and I stated in the
House of Commons that the hanging of the man was a far greater crime in the sight of Heaven
and of man than the crime for which he was hanged. He had an excellent character. The
offence arose out of a mere street disturbance. This young mau and some who were with him
were returning from some jovial party, and he took up a hoe standing near, and with no more
idea of committing murder than I have at this moment, swung this hoe round and cut the
unfortunate man just behind the ear. If it had taken him on the shoulder it would have done
him no serious harm, but it touched him on a vital spot, and the blow soon afterwards proved
fatal. At the very time that the man was being tried there was another man tried at the same
assizes — a pitman in a coUiery, who had murdered a fellow-pitman, and who had puUed down
large stones and rolled them upon his victim to make it appear that he had been killed by the
falling of a part of the roof. Both these men were found guilty. What happened ? When
everybody was expecting that the boy of twenty, whose crime was so much less in extent, would
be respited, the respite came down for the other man, in whose favour no person in Glasgow had
made any reference whatever. As far as I can learn, nobody expected that the law would have
been enforced in this case, and it was, indeed, believed in? Glasgow that the wrong man had been
respited. It may be so. I recoUect speaking to a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, then
in Glasgow, who told me that the population of Glasgow when they heard that the young man
was to be put to death were aghast. Soon afterwards, when I made this statement in the House

THE HARES AND RABBITS BILL. 237
of Commons, I received a letter from a person living in the village where the father of the youth
came from, and he said I did not know the whole calamity to the family : for such was the effect
of the terrible strain upon the aged father, that he only lived a fortnight after the death of his
son. Now these are not soUtary cases. If any person will follow the criminal business of this
country from assize to assize as I have done for many years, he will find that the stories are of
the most terrible character, showing the terrible injustice done by our laws."
Mr. Bright, on the 28th of July, distributed the prizes to the suc
cessful scholars at Trinity College School, Stratford-on-Avon. A very
numerous audience was present.
The right hon. gentleman gave away the books, making a few
appropriate remarks to each recipient, amongst whom was his youngest
son, who received the prize for modern languages.
Mr. Bright took part in the discussion on the Hares and Babbits Bill
on the 10th of August, when the House was in committee upon the
subject. It wiU be remembered that during the Anti-Corn-Law agita
tion he directed his attention to the grievance, and ever since that time
had always taken advantage of any opportunity to assist in altering the
old obnoxious laws, which were unjust to the farmers, and the cause of so
much crime and suffering.
" The farmer rises early," said Mr. Bright on this occasion ; " he works during the day ;
there is hardly anything certain in his condition but rent day. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) He
is subject to many trials and difficulties from which other traders are to a great extent exempt.
The farmer may do everything that man can do, that industry and intelligence can accomplish,
on his farm ; he may plough, he may sow the land, and yet there may come a season which may
blight his crops and bhght his' hopes. (Hear, hear.) If there be a man engaged in industry
of any kind who has a fair demand on this House for justice and due consideration, it is the
farmer. (Hear, hear.) If that be so, would it not be better for hon. gentlemen on the other
side, instead of bringing forward trifling amendments which have no reference to the bill, to
pursue a different course ? The hon. gentlemen opposite know as weU as I do that eggs are not
the produce of ground game. (Laughter.) Tet in a bill which only refers to ground game, he
offers a very long amendment on the question of eggs. It is admitted that this question of
eggs is one of the great evils, the numerous evils, whieh are connected with the system of game
preservation, and with the barbarous code by which game preserving is sustained ; but the Home
Secretary has not introduced this bUl for the purpose of dealing with the game laws. The bill
does not in any way meet my view on the great game law question. It is brought in with the
object of reUeving a vast multitude of farmers who are suffering and who complain ; and I
trust and beUeve, whatever may be the opposition offered to the bill, that sustained by the
majority of the House, and by a multitudinous majority outside the House, before the session
closes it wiU become an Act of Parliament ; and it wiU be a message of justice and goodwUl to
that ancient and honourable industry which hon. gentlemen opposite profess to represent, but
whose interests, I am sorry to say, in my opinion they have long grossly neglected." (Cheers.)

238 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
On the 12th of August, Mr. Osborne Morgan, in his first speech from
the Treasury Bench, moved the second reading ofthe Burials Bill. Mr.
Bright, in speaking again on behalf of the Bill, said : —
"With regard to that, I was going to follow a question mentioned by my hon. friend the
member for Brighton, that this bill wiU not move in the direction of disestablishment so far as to
aUenate any members of the Church. That question does not depend upon trifling matters of
this kind. The public of this country will iu due time solve it. Perhaps they wiU determine for
generations to maintain the Church as it is. Perhaps not. I am quite wiUing to leave that
question to the determination of my countrymen. But when church rates were enforced, when
people came to my father's house, and took a handful of silver spoons for them, do you suppose
that that was likely to allure me to the Established Church ? Well, uow, with regard to this
question, just examine it in the same way. What are the sentiments of the people, men and
women, and all persons with regard to the spot of ground where their nearest relatives lie
buried ? What does a man think of the little spot where his wife lies, the widow of the spot
where her husband lies, the parents where some innocent children that have been taken from
them lie, or the children when they remember the place where their parents are buried ? Is there
not an attachment to that place, a sympathy with it, something that one can never express in
words, beyond what you will find in the minds of all of us with regard to any other spot of
ground on the face of the earth P (Cheers.) I know a very old man [Mr. Oldham, who, in his
younger clays, was Mr. Bright's gardener] ; I think he is ninety. I think he boasts he is the
oldest man in the town in which I live, and he is as proud of his age as it is possible to be.
I have heard that he, after the loss of his wife, perhaps twenty years ago, walked two miles every
Sunday for years to the cemetery where his wife was buried. There he went to think of her he
had lost, to shed a tear probably over her grave, or to offer a prayer that their separation was only
temporary, and that as he grew older the time during which they would be separated would be
every day shortened. Well, if this grave was in one of your churchyards, and if he were a Dis
senter, his affection for that place of burial would be just as great as if it had been a cemetery or
in a dissenting chapel yard, and you would find that he woidd visit it, his affections would linger
round it, he would be, no doubt, lured time after time to visit the burial-place and enter your
church ; and if he did not become a member of your Church and one of your constant congrega
tion, it would be absolutely impossible that he could be hostile to it. (Cheers.) Now, I put that
before you as an argument. Instead of being a measure of disestablishment it wUl lessen what
feeling of hostility prevails, and in cases such as I have described — and there will be thousands
of them every year — (hear, hear)— there wUl be set up a tie between persons who have been
strangers to the Established Church which would bring them nearer, and it may be unite many of
them to your constant congregation. (Hear.) I submit that as one reason why we should not be
alarmed at the passing of this bill."
The second reading was carried by a majority of one hundred and
seventy-nine votes, and ultimately the measure became law.
On the 26th of August, in the discussion on the Irish estimates,
Mr. Bright delivered a speech which produced a great effect upon the
House : —
"The condition of Ireland, everybody must admit, is deplorable," said Mr. Bright, "and it
has been deplorable as long as I have had my attention turned to it, or been able to examine it.

THE STATE OF IRELAND. 239
1 traveUed a good deal in Ireland many years ago, and from that time to this I have held very
much the same opinion with regard to the condition of that country, and the necessity of a large
and fundamental change with regard to the ownership and tenure of land. (Hear, hear. ) The
precise question before us now is that of the Irish constabulary, and I agree with a good deal
that has been said with regard to the force. It is a different force from anything we have in
this country for the preservation of peace, but it seems to be, in the present condition of Ireland,
almost a necessary incident, and the fact that it is necessary, if it be necessary, is a proof of
how much there is required to be done to change the whole social condition of the great mass
of the tenantry of Ireland — (cheers) — and the debate to-night is not got up with the idea of
preventing this vote being passed. An Irish gentleman told me the other day, and he thought it
'a very fair observation, that in Ireland the only history that the people read and understood was
the history of the wrongs of their country. WeU, that was a history of a sad and melancholy
character, and persons who had preceded them in that- House of Parliament in past years — he
spoke of the last two centuries — had been responsible for that melancholy history. But still, if
they looked back to that history, and especiaUy to the records of the last fifty years, they would
find that, even as to Ireland, backward as it was, there had been changes so remarkable, that he
thought an Lishman must be unable to take a fair view of what had been done, if he had not
come to the conclusion that the case was not absolutely hopeless, and that the Parliaments which
had in the past made such great reforms were succeeded now by Parliaments more capable and
more wUling to effect reforms. Therefore, it was an injustice to their country and themselves,
and an injustice to the people of England, to suppose that the progress of reform had been per
manently arrested, and that the great things yet required to be done for Ireland were not
attainable by the ordinary modes by which that progress had been hitherto achieved. If they
looked back to within the last fifty years, the whole population of Ireland — Catholic and
Protestant — had been represented as a very powerful party in that House. Within the memory
of all of them — and many of them had taken part in those transactions — perfect religious equality
had been estabUshed in that country ; and in a succeeding year an Act was passed which violated
almost aU the notions of property which were held, not only by proprietors in Ireland, but by
proprietors, and by very many who were not proprietors, in England and Scotland. Every con
tract between landlord and tenant in Ireland was forcibly broken by the Land Act of 1870, and
the conditions on which tenants as a whole held their farms were changed, greatly to the
advantage of the tenants ; and all was done, he did not say by the unanimous vote, but by a very
large majority in that House, and by a sufficient majority in the other House of Parliament.
Again, the Irish population had gained greatly in the last few years. During the last Liberal
Government, to Ireland was given, as to Great Britain, the system of voting by ballot. He
thought that in the very speech that he had made many years ago in Limerick, whieh the hon.
member for Galway had quoted, he stated that there were three things which would come when
a Liberal Government came into power — that they would have the Church Establishment
aboUshed; that they -would have a great change in the land system ; and that the ballot would
give absolute freedom of election to the Irish constituencies. The ballot had been a measure of
great importance to Ireland. It had dethroned at one blow the illegitimate power of the land
lord and the priest. (Hear, hear.) And in no country in the world at the present moment was there
greater freedom of election than there was in Ireland. Then there was another measure passed
— the amendment of the jury system. (Cheers.) Irishmen knew — he spoke of it with shame —
that whatever Government was in power in aU time past, it was the common and almost universal
system to pack juries in Ireland, and there were special means taken to exclude Catholics from
the juries. (Hear, hear.) He need not say that in the multitude of cases CathoUc offenders and
prisoners did not receive righteous justice from the Protestant juries that were impanelled.
(Cheers.) WeU, these were some of the changes that had been made ; they were things that had

240

LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.

been done, and he had been a party to the doing of some of them-(hear, hear)-and he could
not accept the doctrine of the Irish members who spoke as if there were some impassable barrier
to all future progress and reform. He believed they had a Government more willing, and, he
hoped, more capable of doing good to Ireland than any past Government, and he believed at the
same time they would have greater willingness on the part of the populations of England and
Scotland to join in any moderate, reasonable, and possible proposition that the Irish members
might make in that House than existed at any previous time. At the present time there were
very heavy clouds hanging over Ireland, and the anxiety which was felt by the representatives of
that country was also felt in England. They knew, however, that the clouds which obscured the
political and social aspect of a country often broke and were chased away. He was afraid, with
regard to many of those poor families in the West of Ireland, where the land was so bad and the
cUmate so precarious— he was afraid that if many of those poor tenants ever had their farms
given to them they would stiU be unable in some seasons to live without charitable contributions.
But with regard to the greater part of Ireland, there could be no doubt that, looking at the
fertility of the soil, the character of the climate, and the industry of the people, expectations
might be entertained that the whole face of Irish society might be changed, and hon. members
opposite should not assume that nothing could be done in this Parliament and country. Some
thing could be done, and it required only the earnest and serious co-operation of Irish reformers
with the Liberal party of this country, led by a Liberal Government— (cheers)— to make changes
which would be of immense and widespread benefit throughout the whole of Ireland, and from
which he believed in his conscience the landed proprietors would gain at least as much as any one
else." (Cheers.)
Mr. Bright was elected Lord Bector of Glasgow University on the
15th of November, in succession to Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Buskin had
been nominated in opposition to Mr. Bright by the Conservative students,
but he received only 814 votes, whereas Mr. Bright was elected by 1,128.
The victory was celebrated by the students, who marched in a torch
light procession through the streets of Glasgow.
On the 16th of November Mr. Bright was present at a large meeting
of his constituents. Mr. Chamberlain was the chairman. Mr. Bright's
speech was an inteUectual feat, and one of the most instructive he ever
delivered on the Irish question. No Englishman was more qualified to
speak on the subject, for it has been one of his chief studies during his
lifetime. " I recoUect some years ago making an observation, I believe on this very platform, about the
House of Lords," said Mr. Bright, in referring to the rejection by the House of Lords- of the
Compensation for Disturbance BiU; adding, "I said, in my opmion an hereditarjr House of
Legislature could not be a permanent institution in a free country. (Loud cheers.) Some time
after that, when Lord Palmerston was forming a Government, he was urged by Lord John
RusseU to offer offices in his Cabinet to Mr. Cobden and myself. Tou recollect that Mr. Cobden
was then in America, and the office which Mr. Chamberlain now holds was reserved for him,
when he should return to this country. He returned, but did not feel at liberty to accept it.

MEMORIAL FROM FRENCHMEN. 241
Lord John RusseU wrote to me, and explained the reason why Lord Palmerston found that he
could not ask me to join his Government ; and it was this — that I had expressed opinions, or
an opinion, about an institution in this country whieh the country thought important and
essential, and that there were persons whose support was necessary to his Government who told
him that that snpport would be withheld if I became a member-of his Administration. Well,
I should have uttered no menaces — a foolish thing for me to do — against the House of Lords ;
but if I were particularly anxious that the House of Lords should endure as long as the sun
and the moon, I should say it would be much better to have some regard for the interests and
sufferings of the population of Ireland, than to rush up in a crowd and reject a measure which
those entrusted with the administration of the country declared, upon their authority and their
conscience, to be necessary for the peace of the nation. (Loud applause.) . . . Force is not
a remedy. (Cheers.) There are times when it may be necessary, and when its employment
may be absolutely unavoidable ; but, for my part, I should rather regard and discuss measures of
reUef as measures of remedy than measures of force, whose influence is only temporary, and in
the long run, I believe, is disastrous. (Cheers.) I don't now refer to some of the remedies
you have heard of — violent and impossible schemes, where tenants are apparently to fix their
own rents ; under which, as a, body, the landlords are to be got rid of and banished ; or where
the Government is to undertake some gigantic transaction — raising two or three hundreds
of mUUons of money to buy them out of their estates, and to convey the estates over to the
farmers who now cultivate them. Now, I believe that the extravagant and the impossible and
the unjust is not required even in a case so serious, it may be so desperate, as this. Those
propositions, which no Government can listen to, which no people can submit to — those pro
positions, depend upon it, are made by men who in their hearts hate England much more than
they love the farmers of their own country."
In March,. 1881, M. Buisson, a French journalist residing in London,
presented to Mr. Bright, at his residence at Ficcadilly, a memorial on
behaU of a number of the leading French Liberals, on the subject of the
Transvaal war. About thirty members of the French Senate signed it, as
weU as Deputies and members of the Baris Municipal Council and the
French Academy. The memorial bore the signatures of M. Victor Hugo,
M. Ernest Benan, M. Legouve, M. Carnot, and M. Scheurer-Kestner.
Mr. Bright, in reply, wrote the following letter : —
"I was glad to have the opportunity of speaking to you yesterday, during your short visit,
when you presented to me an address on the subject of the Transvaal war from the eminent
French Liberals whose names I find appended to it. They have done me great honour in
selecting me as in any manner worthy to be considered a representative of the friends of
' international justice, peace, and goodwdl between nations.' I accept the address with much
pleasure, and I can ask now to be permitted to rejoice with them in the happy settlement of a
difficulty and of a conflict which has excited in their minds, as in mine, so deep a grief. I believe
the EngUsh people will gladly sustain a Government which has restored peace by a course at once
magnanimous and just, and I feel entire confidence that its policy wiU be approved in all foreign
countries by ' friends of international justice, peace, and goodwill between nations.' I ask vou
to convey to the eminent Frenchmen who have signed the address my warm thanks for the
great compliment they have paid nie."
65

242 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
An international address, which had received numerous signatures in
Holland, Germany, Hungary, France, and Italy, was forwarded to Mr.
Bright in March by Mr. Karl Blind, to whom the right hon. gentleman
replied : —
"Dear Sir— I thank you for the memorial you have forwarded to me, and for the friendly
letter from yourself on the sad question of the Transvaal difficulty. I hope the prospect is one
of peace, and not of further war, and that an arrangement may be made satisfactory to the
Transvaal people, and honourable to this country. I scarcely need to assure you that whatever
influence I possess is being, and wUl be, exerted in favour of peace. The conflict is one in
which England can gain nothing, not even military glory, which is the poorest kind of glory
in my view which men and nations strive for. I hope the time may come when nations wiU
seek and obtain honourable renown by deeds of mercy and justice."
On the 31st of March, Mr. Duncan McLaren, who for fifteen years
had represented Edinburgh in Barliament, and who, from his constant
attendance in the House, and his perfect mastery of all Scotch subjects,
was jokingly known as " the member for Scotland," was presented witb an
address by his former colleagues, on the occasion of his resignation in
favour of the Lord Advocate. The ceremony took place in one of the
committee -rooms upstairs, in the presence of all the Scotch members and a
sprinkling of Englishmen, including Mr. McLaren's brothers-in-law —
Mr. John Bright and Mr. Jacob Bright ; his two sons — the Lord Advo
cate for Scotland, and Mr. Charles McLaren, the member for Stafford —
were also present, as was also Mrs. McLaren. The scene was impressive
and interesting.
In January, 1881, the Government found that the disturbed and
lawless condition of Ireland was such that they were forced to bring
forward a Coercion Bill. Mr. Bright was twitted by some of the Irish
members with inconsistency, and in a speech he delivered on the 27th of
January, he said : —
" It has always been my wish, in anything that I have said in the last thirty years, never to
cast a slight or a stigma or a slur upon your people. I could spend a few minutes in dwelling
upon the virtues of the Irish people, and I believe their offences and their crimes and their vices
arise rather from the condition into which those who should be their superiors have brought them
— (loud cheers) — than from their own hearts. No, Sir, in our agitation there was no language, no
teaching in favour of any crimes, any outrage, any terror. I call to witness every man who
remembers the time that our speeches, strong as they might be, condemnatory as they might be
of the law which we condemned, hostUe as they were to the landowners, were stUl always

DEATH OF LORD BEACONSFIELD. 243
conceived in a moral and an elevated tone, and directed the people to their own political friends,
and to the element of justice in ParUament, to seek the remedy for their grievances. (Cheers.)
But what have these gentlemen done ? They have to a large extent demoralised the people
whom they profess to befriend." (Loud and continued cheering.)
The Bill, after a lengthy discussion, passed through both Houses, and
became law.
Mr. Gladstone, in one of his greatest oratorical achievements, intro
duced the Irish Land Bill on the 7th of April.
" Justice, Sir, is to be our guide," said the Premier. " It has been said that love is stronger
than death, and so justice is stronger than popular excitement, than the passion of the moment,
than even the grudges and resentments and sad traditions of the past. Walking in that path we
cannot err. Guided by that Ught— that Divine light— we are safe. Every step we make upon
our road is a step that brings us nearer to the goal, and every obstacle, even although it seems for
the moment insurmountable, can only for a Uttle while retard, and never can defeat, the final
triumph." On the 19th of April, Lord Beaconsfield, after three weeks' illness, ex
pired at his residence in Curzon Street, London, atthe age of 77. For
the last six years of his life he filled the dignified position of Brime
Minister with all but absolute sway, and carried out some of the fantastic
and Oriental dreams of his literary life, which had interested the readers
of his novels. Soon after entering Barliament he identified himself with
the Tories, and by adroit management, studied speeches delivered with
theatrical effect, and pointed and neatly-worded epigrams, he worked
himself into the position of their leader. For nearly twenty years
he skilfully and patiently, but with tight rein, conducted them through
political life, promoted their interest, but did very little for the
public good, for " to party he gave up what was meant for mankind,"
and thus never enriched the statute book by one large or important
measure. So passed away another historical figure, whose life was barren
of substantial measures, and wonder formed the basis of the popularity
which he enjoyed. The following is from the pen of the Editor of
the Manchester Examiner and Times : —
" It cannot be denied that he exercised a singular fascination over all who were brought into
contact with him, to such an extent that the proudest and most independent of his coUeagues were
obUged to yield to his spell. One secret of his power lay in his habitual reserve and his

244 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
remarkable gift of self-control. No man knew better when to speak and when to be
sUent. Silence was one of the adjuncts and aids of that mysteriousness which served his
purpose so weU. His followers looked wistf idly towards the dumb oracle, and, just because it
was dumb, only felt the more deeply persuaded of the unbounded resources of wisdom and
sagacity which lay behind. At last, when the shifting tides of opinion seemed to have
brought about the propitious moment, the lips of the prophet opened in epigrammatic sentences,
and the expectant crowd shook with deUght. This was not aU trickery. There was a sagacity
in it as weU. He waited till circumstances seemed likely to give force to his words, and he was
not often mistaken."
On the 26th of April, Mr. Bradlaugh presented himself at the table
of the House of Commons for the purpose of taking the oath on his re
election for Northampton. When the clerk was proceeding to administer
the oath, Sir S. Northcote interrupted by reminding the members present
that on the 22nd of June, tbe previous year, they had agreed that Mr.
Bradlaugh was not entitled either to make an affirmation or to take an
oath, and moved that Mr. Bradlaugh be not permitted to go through the
form of repeating the words of the oath prescribed by the statute. Mr.
Bright contended that the words of the oath were binding on Mr. Brad-
laugh's conscience, and the House had no right to assume the contrary.
" Tou are seeking to establish now a religious disabdity," reiterated Mr. Bright. " I ask hon.
members who belong to the greatest and oldest of the Christian Churches — those who are in
communion with the Church of Rome — I ask them to recollect what their forefathers have
suffered in consequence of opinions and prejudices such as we have heard expressed to-night from
the benches opposite. T£ there be any members of this House belonging to the Nonconformist
Churches, I ask them to recollect what their forefathers have suffered, and suffered under the
pressure of the same disposition to inflict religious disabilities upon civil and loyal inhabitants of
this country. (Cheers.) I ask every member present who is not wUling that we should return to the
system and practice of religious disabilities to oppose the principles and purposes put forward by
the right hon. gentleman the member for North Devon, and to proclaim that now and for ever no
man untainted by crime, unconvicted of crime, and elected by a constituency, shall be disabled from
taking his seat in this House upon making such a declaration or taking such an oath as ParUa
ment in its wisdom may have determined to impose. (Cheers and counter-cheers.) With
reference to the original point, that the hon. member for Northampton, not being of yonr belief —
(' No, no') — does not take the oath as a declaration binding upon his conscience — although he
tells you that that is absolutely untrue— I am sorry to see the almost violent temper with which
some gentlemen opposite come to the consideration of this question. I shoidd myself feel charity
for any member of this House holding views which I consider so extraordinary and so unfortunate.
I think the House might be caUed upon to consider that the hon. member for Northampton for
many months has sat in this House ; that there has been no member of this House who has eon-
ducted himself with greater propriety— (cheers)— that he has brought to oui- discussions at least
average, perhaps more than average, ability; and that there is not a single word that he has
uttered, not a single act that he has committed, which in the slightest degree ought to debar him

RELIGIOUS INQUISITION. 245
from taking his place in this assembly of gentlemen. I would ask the hon. members to think a
moment whether after the many years, I might almost say the centuries, of discussion of the sub
ject of the Uberties of the members of this House, you are determined to raise up another barrier
against that eiril freedom which constituencies have believed themselves to enjoy, and against that
fairness in the construction of Acts of Parliament in matters of this kind, so as to prevent a member
duly elected from taking his seat among us. One of our poets has said about bigotry of this kind
— I hope hon. members wUl forgive me if I use the term bigotry; there is such a thing as bigotry,
and I think that to bar the member for Northampton from his right, according to law, to take the
oath which is prescribed by the law, is itself an act of bigotry — one of our poets has said —
' Bigotry may swell
The sail he sets for Heaven with blasts from Hell.'
(Cheers, aud some laughter.) There can be nothing consonant with Christianity in its highest
principles, and with the reUgious freedom for which our fathers have striven, in determining still
te obstruct the member for Northampton when he goes towards the table to take the oath. I hope
no gentleman in the House who has any regard f o r religious freedom, for civil and Parliamentary
and constitutional freedom, as aU the great lights of freedom in our country have understood it —
I hope not one of them wiU give a vote which may bar the constituency of Northampton from
their due and rightful representation in this House." (Cheers.)
Mr. Gladstone characterised the conduct of those who opposed Mr.
Bradlaugh as something like a religious inquisition. On a division,
however, the motion was carried by a majority of 33.
A banquet was given to her Majesty's Ministers by the Court of
Assistants of the Fishmongers' Company on the 27th of AprU ; and Mr.
Bright, in responding to the toast of " The House of Commons," referred
to the Bill by saying —
" With regard to this Irish measure to which Lord Hartington referred, I had an interesting
letter from Ireland some weeks ago, in which the writer concluded by saying, ' if you will secure
the tenant you wiU secure the landlord.' (Hear, hear.) And the object of the BiU really is for
the purpose of giving as much security, and certainly not more, to the tenant as to the landlord,
and to give him the greatest possible stimulus for the exertion of his industry. And if tbat be
the effect of the measure, there can be no manner of doubt that it must be of the greatest advantage
to the landlord. (Hear, hear.) I believe the effect of this BiU when it comes into operation wiU
be to steady the price of land in Ireland. The price now is scarcely anything. Land cannot be
sold generaUy over the country. But suppose the landlord be shorn of anything of what are
caUed rights— great power over individual tenants— his rent, if in some degree moderate, will be
secured. He wiU be able to live among a population who no longer distrust him and hate his
agent, and among whom he may dwell in comfort and security such as in many parts of Ireland
for a long time he has not been able to enjoy. The Bill of the Government, as you may be sure, is in
aU the circumstances the best Bill that could bo offered to Parliament. ... It is impossible for
any Government to work more steadily than that of Mr. Gladstone's. There never was the head
of a Government more capable, more anxious to do good, than Mr. Gladstone. (Cheers.) Well,
that being so, those members of the House of Commons who are supporters of Mr. Gladstone
should have patience in some cases : they should have trust in otlier cases that the Government

246 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
will do aU that they possibly can do in the circumstances in which they are placed ; and if they
give that confidence to the Government, I have no doubt that the Government wiU as far as
possible justify the confidence reposed in them."
Mr. Callan on the 6th of May moved, " That, in the opinion of this
House, it is expedient and necessary that measures should be taken in
the present Session of Barliament to improve the condition of agri
cultural labourers' habitations in Ireland." Mr. Bright, in speaking on
the subject, forcibly urged : —
" I do not see why, if there was that spirit amongst the Irish classes — I am not speaking of the
poor labourer, but of the middle classes — why in the name of common sense is it that during the
last hundred years there has not been a single manufactory of any importance estabUshed and
sustained in Ireland? (Cheers.) Why is it that water runs from Lough Corrib into Galway
Harbour, and there is nothing done with it ? If it were in America, it would be used. If it were
in Great Britain, it would be used. Why is it not used in Ireland ? It is not a sufficient answer
to say that the laud laws are bad. (Hear, hear.) Our land laws are bad. But what we have
done has been in the teeth of a system of land laws which is in some respects even worse than
that of Ireland. I think Irish members and Irish gentlemen everywhere ought to ask themselves
whether it is not possible, amongst the middle classes in that country, to do something to utUise
the vast stores of water they have, and the many advantages they have. There is no single dis
advantage, except that they have not a supply of coals as good as we have. (An Irish
member : ' Nor capital.') As to capital, do you suppose that the people of Great Britain would send
their capital to every quarter of the globe, and lose scores if not hundreds of millions of it within
the last, few years — do you suppose they would not invest their capital if there was a disposition
on the part of the L-ish people to make use of the capital — (cheers) — and to convince the people
of England that their capital was secure ? " .(Cheers.)
Mr. Bright, in discussing the Irish Land Bill, on its second reading,
concluded his speech by saying : —
" The hon. member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) found some fault in his speeches outside the House
with regard to the BiU. He objected to what was said about emigration, and that nothing was
said about the labourers. The BUl indicates nothing of the kind that any single Irish man or
woman will be compeUed or lured to leave the country and cross the Atlantic. No less than ninety-
five thousand persons emigrated from Ireland last year— (cheers)— and if the reports we see in
the papers are correct, it seems that now emigration is going on at a greater rate than it was at
this time last year. I put it to the hon. member for Cork, if the great mercantile steamers were to
anchor at Cork or Galway, and to offer free passages to the families of aU the popidation of
Connaught, how many would remain behind ? Probably he would say, the whole of the population
of Connaught ; but I have not the least doubt that half of them would find their way in a very
short time to the United States. That is a country which opens its door to everybody. The Minister
of the United States in this country (Mr. Lowed), a man who has put as much wisdom as wit into
his poems, in describing that country, says —
' Whose very latch-string never was drawn in
Against the poorest child of Adam's kin.'

AT A MANSION HOUSE BANQUET. 247
(Cheers.) Therefore, whilst the bill does not propose to offer any inducement, except such as the
population now have, to any single Irish family to emigrate, yet, I am bound to say I believe it
would be far better for a great number of those families to be settled in the better parts of Canada
and the United States than to remain where they are, or to be removed from where they are to any
of those tracts of land which at a certain expense, not easily ascertained — (hear, hear)— might in
Ireland be made fit for habitation. So that I trust that these famUies that will go, and that are
going — notwithstanding the violent passions that are excited in America by statements that are,
some of them, not true, and some of them wildly exaggerated — I trust there are persons going to the
United States who before long wUl find, and wiU hear from the old country that her miseries are
abating, and that justice is being done, and that the disloyalty and the suffering that we have had
so much to regret are in a great part removed. (Hear, hear.) And with regard to the labourers,
to whom the hon. member for Cork has referred, I believe nothing wiU do so much good for them
as anything that will induce farmers to cultivate their land better. (Hear, hear. ) What shaU I
say about this biU ? If the portion of it which deals with the relations of landlord and tenant is
worked with fairness, if the other portion — the purchase clauses and powers — is worked with
energy, I dare to hope and believe we shall find it a measure of healing and blessing to the Irish
people — (loud cheers) — and I ask hon. members on every side of the House not to imagine that
the biU was not framed with a great intention, and honestly, and with a great purpose. (Hear,
hear.) Let them support, as far as they can, the Bill, and the Government which has introduced
it to the House. This night, and every night, the House prays in language that always strikes me
as very touching and very beautiful. As the representatives of the nation, we pray to Heaven for
the peace and tranquillity of the realm. It is for the peace and tranquiUity of the realm that this
BUl has been drawn up and proposed to the House ; and it is with the hope that if it passes it will
tend to that end, that we, with great confidence and not with fear, ask for it the acceptance and
the sanction of ParUament." (Loud cheers.)
On the 19th of May, the second reading ofthe Bill was carried by 352
to 176. Mr. Bright was one of the guests at the Ministerial banquet at the
Mansion House on the 6th of August, and in his speech on that occasion
he again referred to the Irish Land BiU.
" I believe that this measure is as great and as noble a measure on that question as it would be
possible for the English Parliament to pass ; that it is one which it is impossible, when it becomes
law, that the Irish people should not discover to be a great measure of satisfaction and redemption
for them, unless they are unable to understand a poUcy intended directly for their benefit.
(Cheers.) I have said that there are fears. I have fears. After the state of things through
which the Irish people have gone in so many successive periods, it is not perhaps quite certain
that all remedial measures are not too late. I will not express a strong fear that such is the case;
on the contrary, I wiU express a strong hope that such is not the case. It may be that some would
say, ' For never can true reconcilement grow
Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep ; '
but as generation after generation passes, governed by a monarchy kindly, liberal, beneficent,
like ours, legislated for by a Parliament anxious to do justice to all the people under its sway,
I wiU not doubt, I will believe, that whatever may be the passion, whatever the frenzy in

248

LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.

the minds of the Irish people, whatever the gloom that now rests on that country, all this may
pass away, and that the time may come, and come soon, when in Ireland it shall be felt, as
much as it is felt in England, that, with aU its faults, our Government does intend to do rightly
by the Irish people. (Cheers.) Therefore, looking on the session now drawing to a close,
terrible as has been the work, long as have beeu the hours and the nights of its toil, often
as we have been shocked by conduct in the House that has been distasteful and distracting to
us, nevertheless I live in the hope that men will look back to the Session of 1881, and wUl
say that if we had the greatest of statesmen to guide our affairs, in that year was passed the
greatest of measures in order to bring about tranquiUity, peace, and union in the greatest empire
on which the sun shines." (Loud cheers.)
Many amendments were made upon the Bill by the House of Lords.
The lower chamber disagreed with those amendments, which were
considered to affect the principle of the Bill, and it was again
sent up to the Lords, who passed it, and on the 23rd of August it
became law.
In autumn it occurred to Mr. Bright's townsmen that on the 16th of
November of that year he would attain the age of " threescore years and
ten," and they determined to celebrate his birthday by presenting him
with an address in their Town Hall, and by a torchlight procession and
bonfires, and the programme was carried out with great enthusiasm. As
the day drew near, applications from gentlemen from various towns
for tickets of admission were made, but not many were granted, as
it was the desire of his townsmen that it should be purely a local
demonstration. As much as a guinea was given by strangers for tickets
to local possessors of them, and an incessant roll of carriages to the
Town Hall in the evening was kept up for hours, as well as a stream
of foot-passengers. On the morning of the memorable day, a deputation from the Bir
mingham Liberal Association presented him at his residence with a
congratulatory address, and in the afternoon his workpeople, and the
Manchester and Salford Liberal Associations, and other public bodies,
also presented addresses. The streets were gaily decorated, and
Mr. Bright, as he proceeded in his carriage through the crowded
streets to the meeting at the Town HaU in the evening, was greeted
with an enthusiastic welcome along the whole line of route. The
Mayor, Mr. Alderman W. Baron, presided. The hall was densely

HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY. 249
packed, and the reception the hero of the evening received greatly
affected him.
The Mayor presented to Mr. Bright the address from his fellow-
townsmen, in which it was stated : —
" We pray that for many years to come you may be able to employ with unabated force the
powers you have already dedicated to the great ends of human happiness and progress.
" We are proud to dweU on your public career, exceptionally distinguished as it is, and has
been, by singleness of purpose, purity of motive, fideUty to principle, and indomitable energy in
pursuing the course of a true patriot.
" We vividly recall some periods of a stormy past, during which you stood unmoved,
sustained by a sense of rectitude, thereby kindling in us an ever-fresh enthusiasm and
admiration. " The gifts of inteUect and the rare powers of utterance with which it has pleased the
Almighty to endow you are recognised by aU your countrymen. It has been our privilege to
see, from your earUest years, how entirely they have been consecrated to the good of your fellow-
creatures. " Permit us to say how much we respect and esteem you for those private virtues which have
won for you the love of your workpeople and your fellow-townsmen.
" To have been an apostle of free trade, the advocate of a free press, the promoter of an
extended franchise, the uncompromising friend of peace, besides having rendered many eminent
services in the cause of civil and religious liberty, were fit passports to office in two Adminis
trations, and we can hardly exaggerate our satisfaction and delight that you, our townsman, should
occupy so conspicuous a position in her Majesty's Government.
" We cannot, within the Umits of an address, give full expression to all the sentiments we feel
on this occasion. We wiU, therefore, simply beg you to accept what we now record as an honest
indication of our feeling, and of our conviction that, with you emphaticaUy, ' a hoary head is a
crown of glory.' "
Mr. Bright replied in a long speech, refering to the several topics
mentioned in the Address.
" On some occasion," said Mr. Bright, who was visibly affected, " I forget exactly when — but
not altogether unlike this — I recoUect to have stated that I valued the good opinion and the approval
of my townsmen more than the good opinion and the approval of any equal number of my
countrymen. (Cheers.) I was born amongst you, and have been reared amongst you, and have,
for a long period which I need not repeat, been known to a great number of you, for there
are some in this meeting, I dare say, who number as many years as I myself number. But I
have the satisfaction of feeling that if there be anything in my public career that you approve of,
and that has been of any service to my countrymen in general, my friends and my fellow-towns
men here have at least partaken of that good and of that service. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) Now,
on an occasion like this— on the occasion of a birthday, and one, it may be, of the few that
may yet be left to me— on an occasion like this, it is impossible that the mind should not turn
back to a slight review of the past. The address which you have kindly passed and presented
to me touches upon several topics. One of them in particular it touches upon, and it is that which
took me from my quiet and private business Ufe in Rochdale to the poUtical field on which so
many of my years have been passed. When I think of that question— I mean the great

250

LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.

conflict which we waged against wrong in the years from 1840 to 1846-1 am saddened by
the reflection how few of those that were foremost in that struggle are now left to look
upon the fruits of their exertion. I remember at this moment that the Parliamentary leader
of that movement, Mr. Charles ViUiers, member for Wolverhampton-and the member for
Wolverhampton I think, for nearly, if not quite, fifty years-yet remains amongst us,
and with myself is a member of the House of Commons. I remember some others
-Sir Thomas Bazley, the late member for Manchester - (cheers)-I remember Mr.
Edmund Potter, the lamented member for CarUsle; I remember my revered friend, Mr. John
Petrie, of Rochdale, whose absence from this meeting to-night we regret, as I have no doubt he
regrets it; and I remember, for he is present here to-night, my honoured friend and relative,
Mr. M'Laren— (loud cheers)- the late member for Edinburgh ; aud of him it may be said that
there was no man in all Scotland who, during the time of the Free Trade agitation, did so much
to organise opinion in that country, and to bring it to bear on the legislature of the Imperial
Parliament. (Renewed cheers.) Now, touching upon the question, one is obliged to refer to a
very curious fact, that after so many years of experience there are some men who are disposed to
caU in question the policy of 1846. That is, that there are men of whom you never heard before
—(laughter)— and if you were to look down the record of their political life you would not find
a single thing that they have done, and yet they call in question the policy of such men as Sir
Robert Peel of 1846— (cheers)— and of Mr. Gladstone in the succeeding years— (loud cheers)—
and of my lamented friend, Mr. Cobden— (cheers)— whose services every one acquainted with the
recent history of this country must acknowledge. And yet these men— what I shoidd call rather
a feeble-minded class of men— (laughter)— call in question all this policy ; and they have the
courage to believe, or the simple-mindedness to believe, that the great body of ihe people of this
country, and especiaUy of the working classes, are not in any degree cognisant of the enormous
advantages which the new policy of 1846 has given to the country. (Cheers.) . . Some of
you wiU recollect the speech by the late Lord Beaconsfield in the House of Lords, in the discus
sion, I think, on the Agricultural Commission— I forget exactly the subject, but it was probably
not more than a year before the end of his life. He said there were three profits as the produce
of the soil, which were divided amongst the landowner, the tenant farmer, and the labourer.
That may be true, but this at any rate cannot be denied, that the labourer must live, or the
cultivation of the land comes to an end. (Hear, hear.) And more than that, the farmer must be
paid for his business and his capital, or else he would flee from the land; and if the labourer
should cease to work by reason of migration, and the tenant should cease to hold his land,
what would be the condition of the landowner ? He is left high and dry, as it were. He
cannot cultivate the land himself, and there is no rent from the land that nobody else will culti
vate, and the consequence is that he is forced, and must be forced, and there is no escape, to make
such arrangements with the tenant that the tenant can live, and the tenant to make such arrange
ments with the labourer that the labourer can live. (Cheers.) It comes to this, so far as I am
able to judge, that unless by some means you can stimulate greatly the production of the soil by
increased capital, increased skiU, and increased industry, there is no remedy whatsoever for the
suffering, embarrassed, and distressed condition of the farmer except by a great and permanent
reduction of the landlord's rent. (Cheers.) Now, look at the effect of the Free Trade poUcy of
1846 upon the general question of labour ; and I beg particularly, if there be a man who has
been in the slightest degree affected by some of the stuff that these weak-minded and simple-
minded men have been pouring out amongst the people — if they have been in the least affected
by it, let them just listen to one or two facts that I shaU put before them with regard to the
effect of this policy on the working classes of the United Kingdom. Now, all labour since the
year 1839 — when we began the agitation for the repeal of the Corn Law — all labour, so far as I
have been able to ascertain it by several wide inquiries, has greatly increased in value. I think

C'

AT LLANDUDNO. 251
I have once in this town — I am not sure — related a little incident that came under my notice
about the year 1842 or 1843. I was with a friend of mine in Wiltshire, on Salisbury Plain, which
was a bleak country in that day — it is more cultivated now — where those wonderful remains of
ancient and unrecorded time are to be found in the great stones of Stonehenge. There was a
man walking about those ruins with a long- rough coat on. He was evidently acquainted with
the neighbourhood, and I entered into conversation with him. He told me he was a shepherd,
and that, rain or fair, he was on Salisbury Plain tending his sheep ; and in talking to him a
Uttle, I asked him how many children he had. He said, " Only one, thank God !" (Laughter.)
"Well," I said, "how is it yon thank God that you have only one child?" "WeU," he
said, " would not you do the same if you had to spend seven days a week here tending sheep,
and your wages 8s. a week, and no more ? " I said, " WeU, perhaps I might — (laughter) — or
I might ask that, somehow or other, the 8s. might be made into 16s." (Laughter.) . . . Now,
what may I say to you as representing this great constituency ? That you will look back upon
what you have done as I look back upon it ; that you will look back upon it as a pledge that you
wUl not run away from the principles you have so long held ; that if you have, as perhaps you
have, children growing up, you wdl inculcate in their minds the sound principles which you
believe you hold, so that not the present only but the future of the constituency may be at least
up to the measure of the past. If that be done here and elsewhere we may hope that in England
progress not meaning merely change, but progress that is a change for good may go on, and that
generation after generation may see our country, I don't mean greater in area over the earth's
surface, but greater before aU the kingdoms of the world, in view of the inteUigence and the
comfort of its people, and the tranquility of its government, and of its circumstances altogether.
(Cheers). We shall find, of course, that great changes will take place, circumstances will change,
parties will change, leaders wiU change, names will change, new questions will arise ; but one
thing, at any rate, you may resolve upon, and that I ask you, as my last words, to care for : that
wherever you march, to whatever good end, under whatsoever banner you are enlisted, at least
let us have for ever on that banner inscribed these words of promise, Justice, and Freedom, and
Peace." (Cheers.)
The scene was a bright interval snatched from the turmoil of public
life, and memorable for the generous and high-minded sentiments it
suggested and ehcited.
Mr. Bright was escorted home by six brass bands of music and a
torchlight procession of about 1,400 persons. The Common in front of
his residence was Uluminated by an immense bonfire and a display of
fireworks. And thus his townsmen commemorated the praise of him who won
that day " the glory of his seventy years."
While Mr. Bright was staying at his favourite sea-side resort,
Llandudno, on the 18th of December, 1881, he laid the foundation-stone
of the first Board Schools there, and in the evening of the same day
delivered a speech in St. George's Hall, where he was presented with an
address by the inhabitants.

252 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
" The address refers to the age of your town, to the fact that a Uttle more than a quarter of
a century ago it was but a mining village," said Mr. Bright. " I think it is a quarter of a century
ago since I first came to this town, and I am not sure whether, entirely without exception, I have
not paid it a visit every year since then. (Cheers.) I have rambled over the rocks and hUls
which are in your neighbourhood, and have enjoyed the almost unsurpassed beauty of the scenes
which are offered to the eye. I have spent many, far more than I can count or remember, happy
clays upon the shores of your bay. I have had some days too of acute grief, and I have had
some months of severe suffering during a prolonged illness, and for sixteen years past I have
paid an annual visit to your mountain graveyard, where rest the remains of a precious child whom
death snatched from our family circle. . . . It is a melancholy fact that with regard to our
country— I use the term England, but I mean England and Wales— I say, it is a melancholy fact
that in the past the duty of providing education for the majority of the young people has been
almost entirely neglected. We have had universities, it is true, and two universities with
enormous wealth, but wealth which, I believe, has been very lavishly and wastefuUy employed.
We have had these universities, but they have given their advantages, such as they are, mainly
to the rich. We have had grammar schools and endowed schools in many parts of the country,
but they bave been iu the hands of persons who to a very large extent have not kept these
schools up to the fidl intention of their founders, or what the public of our age requires ; and in
point of fact we may say that generaUy the whole mass of the people have been neglected
by the Government, at least so far as what wo caU common school education is concerned.
I beUeve there have been thousands of parishes in England in which there has been no
public school whatsoever, and now at last we are beginning to find ourselves awakening to
the neglect which has hitherto prevailed, and to the necessity for greater and more strenuous
exertions for ihe future. In passing through the country, through our great towns, and through
many parts of the country outside the towns, we certainly see large public buildings, but they
have not been schools. We have seen large poorhouses and large prisons, but schools have been
very rare indeed ; and those supplied by any recent legislation— I mean recent as compared with
the universities and the old grammar schools — have been extremely few, or have not been seen at
all. I think those institutions, that is, the poorhouses and the prisons, are to a large extent memorials
and proofs of the unwisdom of past Governments — (hear, hear) — and to some extent of the charity
of the public. The pauperism which has required the budding of poorhouses aU over the
country cannot, in my opinion, be attributed fairly to any cause except to the laws and policy of
the Governments that have been bad. . . I know I shall be criticised as being a very backward
scholar myself. I am one of those who, in the sense of the high-culture people, never had any
education. (Laughter.) I learned some Latin and a very little Greek. AU the Greek has long
since gone — (a laugh) — and traces of the Latin only remain. . . Some years ago I met a
German gentleman in Birmingham, himself, I beUeve, from the kingdom of Saxony, and the
question of education was being discussed. He told me that fifty years previous, that would
now be perhaps sixty years ago, intemperance was so common in that country that if there was
a man anywhere very drunk, they said, ' Why, he is as drunk as a Saxon '—(a laugh) — but the
gentleman added, ' Now you might use the very opposite expression ; and if you wanted to
describe a man who was to be relied upou for his sobriety you would say, ' Why, he is as sober as
a Saxon.' I said, ' Tell me how this has been brought about ? ' Have you had any great changes in
your laws with reference to the sale of intoxicating Uquors ? He replied that so far as he knew
there was no such legal change of any importance, none that struck his mind ; but he added
that he believed the change had been made entirely by the schools. (Hear, hear, and applause.)
He said that they had had au admirable system of education established, and the result had been
such a change in the character of the growing generation— (applause)— so much self-respect,
so much knowledge of what was due to themselves and those around them, so much sense of

WITH HIS CONSTITUENTS. 253
what would contribute to their own comfort and happiness, that the practice and the vice of
intoxication have been almost banished from amongst them. ... I have derived
from the reading of poetry intense gratification, but I do not know that it does so much
good to other people ; but the more, I take it, that a man can gather from the wisdom of past
times which is to be found in all our libraries, the more at least he ought to be armed for the
performance of the duties of life, and of the duties which he owes to the community in which he
Uves. . . . Every man, whatever his position, who has any interest in the country, and any
children to f oUow him, has a direct personal interest in the education of the people ; so that our
Government henceforth may be a Government of wisdom, and not a Government committing
follies which I described in the earlier portions of my speech — (cheers) — and now, if you and
your children, or the children who go to your school : if the masters teach them self-respect,
respect of their playmates, respect of their parents, kindness to animals, a love of truth, a love
of industry, an idea of what is meant by prudence, aU those common virtues, aud I am afraid
with some are so uncommon — (laughter) — if they are taught all those, how great may be the
result in any town, or in your Principality, or in any community ! (Hear, hear.) I believe that
looking to our home affairs, we may expect that with regard to our legislation we may have
greater justice done between classes, and that the terms class and class may in time be almost
obUterated by the fact of our becoming a united people and nation ; and with regard to our foreign
affairs, may we not hope that, looking back to the past, the page of glory, false glory, based on
misery and blood, shall be closed, and that there shaU be a new chapter written, and that the
historian of the future shaU record in it the poUcy of our children and our children's children,
•of a time of a higher civdisation and a time of a higher and purer national morality."
(Loud' cheering.)

Mr. Bright delivered his annual address to his constituents in the
Birmingham Town Hall on the 3rd of January, 1882, and this year, as
in previous years, it was one of the important events before the opening
of Barliament. Mr. Alderman Avery, the Mayor, presided.
" The question is whether you are to aUow terror to be master in a considerable portion of
Ireland, or whether you should attempt some remedy," observed Mr. Bright, in his lengthy
speech. " Now, of the remedies, the resources of barbarism are soldiers and the gallows. The
resources of civilisation— (cheers)— are temporary restraints, and true and honest and broad
measures of relief. (Cheers.) Now, I would ask you, in all seriousness, what is this conflict
which is going on in some parts of Ireland— not aU over Ireland ? It is not, by any means,
in the majority of the counties of Ireland, but still it is so wide aud so much as to be a
matter worthy of very serious reflection. I said last year on this platform that we were on
the eve, or in the midst, of something like social revolt in Ireland. There were the elements of
discontent. There has always been, so far as I have known anything of Ireland, and there
has generaUy been some bad men wiUing to make use of and to stir up those elements of
discontent. (Hear, hear.) At present there is a conspiracy discovered, much of it seen
altogether undeniable, a conspiracy which is in reality a treason to the Crown, and whose
object is the breaking up of the United Kingdom. (Hear, hear.) It is not a love of the
tenantry of Ireland, but it is a hatred of England. If you doubt this, I wUl ask you one or
two questions. Who is it that finds the money ? Who is it that urges on men, and crowds
of men, to this extreme course ? Who is it that sends emissaries backwards and forwards

254 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
across the Atlantic ? Who is it that organises committees, even in our EngUsh towns, amongst
the Irishmen who have come here, and whom we try to treat fairly — (hear, hear)— whom we
employ readily, whom we pay honourably, and whom we are willing to accept into our
municipal and our town relationship? Who is it that organises amongst these men conspiracy
committees, iUegal oaths, the coUection of arms, and the idea— the miserable idea — that there
can ever come the time when they can influence the policy or safety of this country by
anything that their miserable conspiracies cau do ? (Loud cheers.) It is a section of Lish-
men in the United States who find the funds for aU this machinery ; and if you would like to
know a little of what they are doing there, I will give you two or three expressions from
what has been said at an Irish conventiou in the city of Chicago. . . . Then there were
a good many subscriptions, which must have been a very lively part of the undertaking, and
I wiU read yon what three of the subscribers said. It is only two or three lines. Dr. Stowe,
Massachusetts, gave 100 dols. a year 'until Ireland is independent — (loud laughter) — and to
arm, equip, and put in the field one soldier when the proper time comes.' (Renewed laughter.)
Mr. Judge Rooney, of New Tork, gave 100 dols. for the Land League and 900 dols for arms
to fight the Enghsh. After that a Mr. M'Mahon handed in five dollars, and said he would
equip a mau for the war and pay his expenses to England and back again. (Loud laughter.)
I thought probably that Mr. M'Mahon might save half the money. I doubted whether one
equipped soldier, if he came here on that errand, would ever get back again. (Laughter and
cheers.) Now, before I sit down I must give you another fact or two. Amongst these several
hundred men in Chicago I have not the least doubt that there were a considerable number who
were honest in their beUef, and patriotic in their objects and intentions to the best of their
knowledge, but I have no doubt that they judge of Ireland partly from the history of the
last century, and perhaps from stories they had heard from their grandfathers, who were
emigrants from this country and from Ireland in much worse times than we have seen of late.
. . . We Englishmen are wiUing to confess the great errors of our forefathers, and we are
willing most liberally and emphatically to condemn them. If we insist on a union of feeUngs
and of rights, we allow the Irish to partake of everything that we enjoy, and we are willing
to bear our share of every burden that may be placed upou them. They won't deny that,
surely. The best market in the world, with the highest price the world will offer for every
thing they have to sell, we give them. Here, also, is the best market in the world for
everything that they may wish to buy, and we receive, not with hatred and with something
of friendliness, the hundreds of thousands— I am not sure that there is a, miUion and a-half
—of Irish-born people in Great Britain. Then they have another advantage, and it is the last
I shall refer to, which is this : that they are geographicaUy close to, and allied poUtically.
with a country which has a greater abundance of capital than any other country in the world;
and the capital of England ranges the whole globe in search of safe and profitable invest
ments, whieh it very often doesn't find. But surely we may ask, why is it that in Ireland,
where there is a great field for it, this capital does not find constant and profitable employ
ment ? It is because in that country there is disorder and insecurity— (hear, hear)— and every
Irishman who in pursuit of political objects stirs up disorder and insecurity is not the friend,
but the enemy, of his country. (Cheers.) I have said nearly all, quite all, I think, that is
upon my mind to say. I need not tell this audience that I have for many years expressed and
condemned what I considered the grievances which the Irish people have "a right to complain
of. (Cheers.) I have spoken on platforms in Dublin, in Belfast, and in Limerick, in the
Free Trade HaU in Manchester, in this Town HaU of yours, and on the floor of the House
of Commons many, many times in explanation of what I believed was the main causes of the
constant discontent, and occasionaUy what I should caU insurrectionary movements ; and I
have besought the people of this coimtry to understand them, and besought Parliament to

THE RULES OF PROCEDURE. 255
grapple with them. (Loud cheers.) Well, I have seen great measures of relief passed by the
Imperial Parliament, and I have had some little share in making them our permanent laws.
(Loud cheers.) And now, notwithstanding troubles, difficulties, and contentions whieh may not
be immediately subdued, I may say, and I say it with perfect sincerity, that I rest now in
the belief that these great measures will not fail— (cheers) — and that Ireland will yet become
content, and tranquil, and loyal, as are the otlier portions of the dominions of the Queen."
(Cheers.) Mr. Chamberlain also addressed the vast meeting.
The House of Commons on the 30th of March was crowded by
members and strangers in the galleries who were anxious to hear Mr.
Bright speak on the rules of procedure.
" Don't let the House imagine that this is a matter which affects chiefly gentlemen sitting on
this side of the House," said Mr. Bright. " It is one which affected the late Government. The
right hon. gentleman the member for Devonshire knows perfectly well what difficulties he had
to contend with, and that these difficulties have been growing from year to year. I can speak
with impartiaUty upon this question. Though I have^been in this House nearly as long, I suppose,
as any member of it, stiU no one can charge me at any time with unduly prolonging a debate or
with offering any kind of obstruction to the Government when any measure has been proposed by
the Government, or, I think, any measure proposed by any private member. Therefore, no one
can bring any charge against me. No one can suppose that it matters very much to me what
happens to this Government with regard to the prosecution of this rule. I speak as a person who
has aU the reasons for being as impartial 'as any member of the House can be. I say, there can
be no doubt whatever that the time has come when, unless the House does something to deUver
itself of its difficulties, it wiU stand before the country as having greatly neglected its duty.
(Cheers.) . . . Now, the question is whether what is offered is effective or not. I refer to
the resolution which is brought forward by the Prime Minister with regard to what is called the
closure, or shutting up of the debate. If I were not on this bench I should say openly what I
now rather say privately — (a laugh) — and I think the measure as it is proposed, if it has any
faUing whatsoever, has this, that it is not sufficiently comprehensive and stringent. (Cheers.)
I think I shaU be able to convince some members of the House of this before I sit down. The
resolution itself is to my mind very simple and very moderate. It intends that if a debate be
unduly prolonged — and we must have an honest interpretation given to the phrase unduly
prolonged and obstructed — that then there shoidd be a mode by which the House should bring
to some definite conclusion the business upon which it is engaged. What is the proposition
the Government have made P It is a very simple one, viz. = that when a number of under forty
members continue to speak without any moderation or limit of time, and there is a general
weariness in the House, and a sense that the debate may reasonably come to a close, that then it
may be closed if there be more than a hundred members who wish it should be closed. The
other proposition is just as simple. It is that if there should be more than forty members, that
is more than a quorum of the House, then not one hundred should be allowed to close the
debate, but that two hundred should be required to enable that to be done. Now, this is no
puzzle at all. I should Uke to ask the House to observe this — what I call a very important point
— that with regard to the smaU minorities the proposition made by the Government is greatly less
severe than the proposition of those who consider a majority of two-thirds advisable.
Sir, I think that if there be within the waUs of this House a party, however smaU, avowing
objects such as these, and pursuing a course such as this, it behoves aU members of the House of

056 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
a different kind to consider the position iu which they are. I appeal to the hon. gentlemen on
that side. I differ from them, as they know, very much and in many things ; but I admit that
they are in intention patriotic— (hear, hear)— and that they would wish the honour of Parliament
to be sustained and the interests of the country to be guarded. I may, therefore, fairly appeal
to them, and I may appeal to hon. gentlemen on this side of the House— (Ministerial cheers)
—English members, Welsh members, Scotch members, loyal Irish members— I may appeal to
them, and ask them whether this House of Commons, with its centuries of renown and its
centuries of services, is to be made prostrate, powerless, and useless at the bidding and at the
action of the handful of men who teU you that they despise you and by their conduct would
degrade you ? (Loud cheers.) Do not let them suppose that they are better friends of Ireland
than I am. (Cheers. ) I taught what were the wrongs of Ireland, and urged that they should be
redressed, when some of these gentlemen were in their long-clothes. (Laughter and cheers.) I
am not less a friend of Ireland because I condemn those who, in my opinion, have been of late
her worst enemies. Leaving Ireland out of view, and confining my view only to this House, may
I say that we are six hundred men, elected men, chosen from aU parts of the three kingdoms — for
what ? For the high and noble purpose of legislating for a great and powerful empire. I ask
you whether you are willing now to assist her Majesty's Government, or any Government that
may have so great an object in view, for the purpose of so altering to some smaU extent the rules
and practices of this House, that, iu spite of the mischief of a few, the House shall find itself
henceforth able to fulfil the great duties which the people of this great nation have committed to
its charge." (Loud aud prolonged cheering.)
The close of the speech was delivered with animation, and produced
a marked impression. After Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Gladstone
spoke, the House divided, and the motion was carried by a majority of
thirty-nine. On the 1st of May Mr. Bright again spoke on the same
subject. Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain on the 1st of June took part in
commemorating the opening of a new library in Birmingham, which had
been erected in place of the building destroyed by fire in 1879. The
meeting was held in the Town Hall in the afternoon, and the Mayor,
Mr. Alderman Thomas Avery, presided.
" I learned one evening in London," said Mr. Bright, in the course of his speech — " it was
at an evening party, at which many persons were assembled — from a friend of mine, that a
friend of his and mine was lying dangerously, and, as it turned out, fataUy, UI in his chambers
in the Temple. That friend of mine was the late Sir David Dundas, who was for many
years in Parliament, and with whose friendship for many years I was favoured. I went
down the next morning to ask after him, and if it were proper to see him. He invited me,
through his servant, into his room, and I found him upon his bed of sickness, feeble, not able
to talk much, and scarcely able to turn himself in his bed. We had some Uttle conversation,
and in the course of it he offered to me something like a benediction. He said— I remember
his words very weU— ' I have never pretended to be a learned man or a scholar, but God has
given me a great love of books.' He then referred to the writings of the celebrated Lord
Bacon, and taking a quotation from a letter which that eminent person had written to a friend

LIBRARIES. 257
he turned to me and said, ' May God lead you by the hand.' < That was one of the passages
fixed in his mind from his reading of the words of Lord Bacon. That was a solemn hour
with my friend— if I may quote a very expressive and beautiful line from one of Scotland's
real, but one of her minor, poets, Michael Bruce, ' When dim in his breast life's dying taper
burned ' — at that solemn hour, reviewing his past life, reviewing the enjoyment he had partaken
of, he thanked God he had given him a great love of books. Two days after that — I think
the second or third day after that interview — that 'dying taper' was extinguished, and my
friend passed into the unseen world. It occurred to me, and has often occurred to me, what
a text the language of my friend was ; and if I were a preacher, or if I were in the mood for
preaching, I think I could give a sermon from that text. What is a great love of books ?
It is something Uke a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past times.
Books, it is true, are silent as you see them on their shelves ; but, silent as they are, when I
enter a library I feel as if almost the dead were present, and I know if I put questions to
these books they wiU answer me with aU the faithfulness and fulness which has been left in
them by the great men who have left the books with us. Have none of us, or may I not say
are there any of us who have not, felt some of this feeling when in a great library — I don't
mean in a Ubrary quite so big as that in the British Museum, or the Bodleian Library at
Oxford, where books are so many that they seem rather to overwhelm one — but libraries that
are not absolutely unapproachable in their magnitude ? The other day, on » recent occasion
when a great many persons were assembled at Windsor at a recent marriage, I had an oppor
tunity of spending a quiet hour in the library at Windsor Castle. I have been in other great
Ubraries ; I recoUect many years ago at Woburn Abbey ; on an occasion not so long ago at
Chatsworth ; and there are hundreds of libraries throughout this country which are of the
kind that I describe — such that when you are within their walls and see these shelves, these
thousands of volumes, and consider for a moment who they are that wrote them, who has
gathered them together, for whom they are intended, how much wisdom they contain, what
they teU the future ages, it is impossible not to feel something of solemnity and tranquillity
when you are spending time in rooms like these; and if you come to houses of less note you
find libraries that are of great estimation, and which in a less degree are able to afford mental
aUment to those who are connected with them ; and I am bound to say — and if any one cares
very much for anything else they will not blame me — I say to them, you may have in a house
costly pictures and costly ornaments, and a great variety of decoration, yet, so far as my
judgment goes, I would prefer to have one comfortable room weU stocked with books to all
you can give me in the way of decoration which the highest art can supply. The only subject
of lamentation is — one feels that always, I think, in the presence of a library — that life is too
short, and I am afraid I must say also that our industry is so far deficient, that we seem to
have no hope of a fuU enjoyment of the ample repast that is spread before us. (Hear, hear.)
But it is not only in the houses of royalty and in the houses of tremendous personages 
(laughter) — that these libraries are great things to possess and great things to use, and it is
not even in the houses of what we may call the middle-class wealthy, but in the houses of the
•humble a little library, in my opinion, is a most precious possession. Only the other day I
went by accident into the house of a respectable old man in my neighbourhood (John Ayrton,
the gate-keeper of Mr. Bright's miUs). He told me that he was then eighty-four years
of age. He had a few simple and pleasant pictures on his waUs, and on one side, between the
fire and the window, was a shelf with a number of books. I dare say I should have found
his Bible, and probably a Hymn Book, and a score or more of other volumes which to him
and his family were precious. That little Ubrary, though not exceeding twenty or thirty
volumes, was a proof of something higher in that house than unfortunately you will find in
many houses in this country. (Applause.) And not long afterwards I called upon an old man,
68

258

LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.

much older (Benjamin Oldham, Mr. Bright's retired gardener, late of Cronkeyshaw);
since I saw him he has passed to the other world; but he was then, I think, m his ninetieth
year or close upon it. There he was with his spectacles and a volume which he was reading,
and 'his newspaper, a weekly paper, which he read constantly; and during the ten or fifteen
years of his old age in which he had been unable to f oUow his usual and ordinary occupation
he found a newspaper or a book one of the means by which the dulness and the weariness of
a^e and solitude were very much mitigated and relieved. Now I h*ve spoken ot the biggest
Ubraries, and of some not so large, and of the twenty volumes in the home of this old man, I
wiU speak of an incident where one volume alone seemed to me to have a great effect. Some
years ago-I dare say it is twenty years ago-on the invitation of two friends of mine, I was
spending a fortnight in Sutherlandshire, ou the Elmsdale river, engaged in the healthful
occupation of endeavouring to get some salmon out of it. (Laughter.) Precarious occupation!
(Laughter.) There is, generally, almost always, either too much water or too little— (laughter)
—or, as my gillie used to say, 'The salmon are not in the humour, sir '—(laughter)— and if
they' knew what we had come about it was not likely that they should be iu the humour.
(Laughter.) But in the course of the day, walking down the river, we entered the cottage
of a shepherd. There was no one at home, I think, except the shepherd's wife, or mother, I
forget which, but she was an elderly woman, matronly, very kind and very courteous to us.
Whilst we were in the house I saw upon the window-sdl a smaU and very thin volume, and
I took the liberty of going up to it, and, taking it in my hand, I found, to my surprise and
delight, that it was an edition which I had never met with before or since— an edition of
'Paradise Regained '—the work of a poet unsurpassed in any country or in any age,
and a poem which I beUeve great authorities admit if 'Paradise Lost' did not exist
would be the finest in our language. (Applause.) I said I was surprised and delighted
down in this remote country, in this solitary house, in this humble abode of this
shepherd, to find this volume which seemed to me to transfigure the cottage. (Hear,
hear, and applause.) I felt as if that humble dweUing was Ulumined, as it was indeed, by
the genius of Milton, and, I may say, I took the liberty of asking how the volume came
there, aud who it was that read it. I learned that the good woman of the house had a son
who had been brought up for the ministry, and I think at the time I was there he was then
engaged in his labours as a Presbyterian minister in the colony of Canada. Now, whenever
I think of some of the rivers of Scotland, when I think of the river Elmsdale, if I turn, as
my mind does, to that cottage, I always see, and shaU never forget, that small, thin volume
which I found on the window-siU, and the finding of which seemed to me to lift the dweUers
in that cottage to a somewhat higher sphere. Now I am afraid you will think I am merely
telling you stories about myself — (applause) — but in one of those moments since I received the
Mayor's letter, I took the Uberty of asking a friend of mine who is not far from me on
the platform, what he thought was the kind of subject which should be spoken of here, and
how it should be treated — (laughter) — and his answer was this. He said, ' I suppose and
beheve that you have read a good many books; why shouldn't you tell us something about
them P ' Therefore, that turned my thoughts a little in that direction. I am not a critic. I
never was a writer. Some people say that critics are writers who have failed to write —
(laughter) — and being not very kindly disposed towards those who have succeeded, they become
rather spitefnl in their criticisms. WeU, I am not a critic, and still I have an opinion of books
that I have read, and I read one not very lately, at least a large portion of it, to which I should
like to refer. It is a book containing the memoirs, and poems, and other compositions of — to my
mind — the most remarkable old lady that I have ever heard of : of one Janet Hamilton, who Uved,
I think, in the town of Coatbridge, in Scotland, in Lanarkshire, if I am not mistaken. Now, I
should like to tell you what can be done by a person to whom God has given a great love of books.

JANET HAMILTON. 259
Janet Hamilton was the daughter of a shoemaker who employed one journeyman, and, as might
be reasonably supposed, she became afterwards the wife of the journeyman — (laughter) — and at a
very early age too, eariier than I should recommend in similar cases. However, during her life,
she had a family of ten children, most of whom, I beUeve, grew up to manhood and womanhood.
But she never went to school, and her mother, who was a shoemaker's wife, taught her to read.
She did not learn to write until she was fifty, and she became blind at sixty ; and she Uved, I
think, to be about seventy-five or seventy-six. So far for the points of her life. Now, she never
saw a mountain, she never saw any river but the river Clyde, and she never was twenty miles away
from her own humble dwelling. She read in her childhood, when about five or six or seven years
of age, Bible stories, Uttle stories that her mother procured for her, and at eight years of age she
found, by accident, on the beam of a weaver's loom in her neighbourhood, two volumes. One was
' Paradise Lost,' and the other was AUan Ramsay's poems. Now, she read with an extraordinary
eagerness, and did not forget what she read — as some of us are much too apt to do. She read
through aU the village library — the history, the biography, the travels. When she got to Shakes
peare, Shakespeare was like a revelation to her — (applause) — and she had no words with which to
express her admiration for his writings ; and she said that in those days it was not considered a very
good thing for serious people to read Shakespeare. (Laughter.) And there was a hole in the waU
in her house near the chair on which she nursed her children, and where she worked at some kind
of tambour-frame work, and when people came in she put Shakespeare into this hole iu the wall,
so that it might not be seen, and her conduct might not be criticised. (Laughter.) WeU, she said
that iu her chddhood her mother had led her every morning, after she could read, to read a chapter
in her Bible, which was done without intermission until she left her home and had a home of her
own. She said that her love of books was her ruling passion, and that notwithstanding that, so
far as the care of her children and the work she had to do, so far as she knew, nothing was ne
glected. But she suffered, ultimately, from sitting up to read tUl two o'clock in the morning ;
that, she believed, had had the effect of very much injuring and at last depriving her of her eye
sight. Now, somebody asked her how it was that, never having been to school, she wrote so ac
curately, not only in poems, but she wrote for one of Cassell's publications when she was fifty-
four years of age, although she only learned to write at fifty, and it is almost impossible now to
read her writing, the letters are so curiously formed. But she was asked how she came to write
so grammaticaUy, having never been to school, and she said, ' Tou might as well ask why the
laverock ' — that is the lark — ' can sing.' She said God had given her, not as Sir David Dundas
said, a great love of books, but a natural tact or gift of grammar. (Laughter.) Now, this old
lady has written poems, some of which— if there was time I would have quoted one or two of
them — but certain there are of them that if placed amongst the poems of Burns, in a volume of
his, no one would for a moment doubt they were the production of that, the greatest of aU Scotch
poets. That, I think, is an amazing story. I confess it has surprised me beyond anything I
have read for a long time, and I doubt if we have on record the particulars of a more remarkable
person than my old friend Janet Hamilton. I am very sorry I never had the opportunity of seeing
her, though friends of mine were intimate with her ; but I had the pleasure afterwards of giving
a little subscription to a fund that was raised for the purpose of putting up a memorial to her in
her town, and nearly opposite, I believe, tq the house in which she lived. (Applause.) Now, I
hope my friend who recommended me to tell about books will not think I have entirely neglected
his recommendation. But I would not wish to ask your attention only to Scotland. I have
spoken of Sir David Dundas, who was a Scotchman, and of the book in the cottage of the Elms
dale shepherd, and now of Janet Hamilton. If you will permit me for a few minutes, I should
like to ask you to cross the Atlantic, and see if there is anything we can learn there. (Applause.)
It is not very many years ago since authorities in criticism in England said, ' Can any good book
come from the United States P ' At this moment there are fifty mUUons of persons in that

260 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Republic, nearly aU of whom speak our language, nearly all of whom can read our books, not a few
of whom are writing books which we may read with advantage. It is an immense new field for
the writers of the English language in this country, and it is an immense new field for us
who take the good things which the writers in the English language there and here provide for us.
WeU, we have had a good many poets of late years ; in fact, I may say the only poets that the
United States have produced must necesarily have been of late years. But the poets who rise to
my mind at the present time are Bryant, who was the oldest, and has passed away; Longfellow,
who comes next — (applause) — known much more to Englishmen than Bryant, and who now has
passed away ; Whittier, who is beginning to be more known in this country than he has been ;
WeudeU Hohnes— (applause)— Mr. Russell LoweU, Minister from the United States to our Court,
and no less, I think I may say, Minister to our people. (Applause.) Longfellow is, or was, a
mau of whom I had a little personal knowledge. I spent a morning with him once at the house
of the late eminent physician Sir Henry Holland, and as I walked away with him through
Hanover Square, he was speaking to me of his friend Whittier. Nothing could be more kindly,
more generous, more affectionate than his language towards his brother poet. There was no
rivalry, no jealousy. He said that he thought Whittier was a poet remarkable in one thing, that
he seemed always in his writings to improve. WeU, I would like to ask you if you have ever
read what I consider the greatest of poems of the United States — that is LongfeUow's ' Song of
Hiawatha.' Many people have ridiculed the ' Song of Hiawatha ' because of the simpli
city of the metre ; but if you read only the first few lines of it, which I wiU venture to read to
you, you wUl, I hope, feel rather as I felt, and be disposed again, if opportunity afford, to read
the poem through and through if you have already read it. He begins : —
' Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
Who have faith in God and Nature,
Who helieve that in all ages
Every human heart is human,
That in even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend not ;
That the feeble hands and helpless
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God's right hand in that darkness,
And are lifted up and strengthened.
Listen to this simple story,
To the Song of Hiawatha. '
(Applause.) And then through that poem you have descriptions of Indian Ufe and Indian legends
which te me are of inexpressible beauty ; and I do not hesitate to say, as far as my reading has
led me to judge, that that is a poem that deserves to live, aud wUl live ; and at this moment it is
the finest poem of any length that has been produced by any writer of the United States. Now
I shall say a word about John Greenleaf Whittier, because, though I have not seen him, yet I
have had correspondence with him, and I have a great affection for him ; and, besides, there is a
certain other connection, as he in the United States is a member of the small Church of which I
also in this country am a member. I met some time ago during the American war an eminent
citizen of the State of Massachusetts, who told me that he thought that there was no man in the
United States whose writings at the time, and for some years before the war, had had so great in
fluence upon public opinion in that country as the writings of John Greenleaf Whittier. And, no
doubt, that arose partly from this— that he wrote strongly on the subject of freedom, and strongly
against the system of slavery which was about to involve that great country in a great civil war.
(Applause.) I would not wish to exaggerate anything with regard to the American poets, but I

WHITTIER. 261
think a great deal may be said in their favour. (Hear, hear. ) Whittier himself, when he attacks
the question of negro slavery, and the horror and the curse of it, writes in a maimer which must
have roused the indignation and excited the animosity of the people for whom he wrote against
that enormous evil. I wiU read you one stanza from one of his Uttle poems, and ask you whether
if such au enormity of slavery had existed amongst us this would not have roused our indignation.
He wrote.a poem caUed ' The farewell of a Virginia slave-mother to her daughters,' who were sold
South into a worse bondage than that of Virginia : —
' Gone, gone, sold and gone !
To the rice swamp, dark and lone ;
There no mother's eye is near them,
There no mother's ear can hear them ;
Never — when the torturing lash
Seams their back with many a gash —
Shall a mother's kindness bless them,
Or a mother's arms caress them.
Gone, gone, sold and gone !
To the rice swamp, dark and lone ;
From Virginia's hills and waters !
Woe is me ! my stolen daughters '
H God gives a real poet to a people like that, at a time Uke that, and puts into . his heart those
sentiments, and into his mouth those words, does He not verily speak to that people and ask them
to return to the ways of mercy and righteousness ? (Applause.) In one of the recent editions
of Mr. Whittier's poems he inserts a smaU preface of five or six stanzas, and the last stanza is
one which, I think, explains the tone and general object of his writings. He says -. —
1 0 freedom ! if to me belong
Nor mighty Milton's gift divine,
Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song,
As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine.'
And so the best gifts of his genius and poesy are on the side of freedom. They have helped to
do their work in the United States : they wUl do their work wherever the English language is
spoken — (hear, hear) — they wiU tend to purify the individual and to exalt the nation. (Applause.)
I was going to say that I would not exaggerate the productions of the American poets. We do
not place them on the level with MUton and Shakespeare ; but then in this country — perhaps in the
world — there is but one Milton and one Shakespeare, and without placing them on that level we
may accept them, and I think aU readers have now accepted them, as real and genuine poets, con
tributing through our language to human freedom, to human enjoyment, and to human happiness.
I recoUect many years ago — about forty years ago — in a speech in Covent Garden Theatre, at one
of our Free Trade meetings, I quoted a passage, which I forget now, from the late Leigh Hunt,
who was himself a poet, and has left poems that should not die. (Hear, hear.) In making this
qnotation, I spoke of Leigh Hunt as a ' pleasure-giving ' poet, and two or three days afterwards
I received from him a very kind note, in which he said it was impossible I could have chosen a title
which he should more delight to deserve and to have than that of a pleasure-giving poet. Well,
I say, after referring to the five or six poets that I have now mentioned, all poets of the United
States — and I might have added of them that they are in the true and the high sense ' pleasure-
giving poets,' and I am sure it would be a great addition to our knowledge of useful and charming
literature the more we become acquainted with these poets, who speak to us from the other side of
the Atlantic — I wiU mention one other book, and only one, and that is not a book of poetry at all;
it is a book of history, and, to my mind, the most instructive book of history that I have ever

262 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
read I do not mean that it contains more facts than some bigger books-facts are abundant-
but the study which it gives or offers, the lessons which it teaches, surpass to my mind those that
I have derived from or found in any other book of history. I refer to Bancroft s 'History and
Colonisation of the United States.' It is a book a good deal read in this country. It deserves to
be read bv everybody who wishes to have some true knowledge of some of the most important
events which transpired during the last century. ... My own impression is that there is no
blessing that can be given to an artisan's family more than a love of books. The home influence
of such a possession is one which wiU guard them from many temptations and from many evds.
How common it is-in all classes too common-but how common it is amongst what are termed
the working classes-I have seen it many times in my districte-where even an industrious and
carefid parent has found that his son or his daughter has been to him a source of great trouble
and pain. No doubt, if it were possible, even in one of these homes, to have one single person who
was a lover of books, and knows how to spend an evening usefully with a book, and who could
occasionaUy read something from the book to the rest of the family, perhaps to his aged parents,
how great would be the blessing to the family, how great a safeguard would be afforded; and then
to the men themselves, when they came— as in the case which I have mentioned— to the feeble
ness of age, and when they can no longer work, and when the sands of life are as it were ebbing
out, what can be more advantageous, what more a blessing, than in these years of feebleness-
may be sometimes of suffering— it must be often of solitude— if there be the power to derive
instruction and amusement and refreshment from books which your great library wiU offer to
every one ? (Applause.) To the young especiaUy this is of great importance, for if there be no
seed-time there wiU certainly be no harvest, and the youth of life is the seed-time of Ufe. I see
in this great meeting a number of young men. It is impossible for anybody to confer uponthem
a greater blessing than to stimulate them to a firm belief that to them now, and to them during
aU their lives, it may be a priceless gain that they should associate themselves constantly with
this library and draw from it any books they like. The more they read the more in all probability
they wUl Uke and wish to read. Mr. Lewis Morris, in his late charming poem called ' The Ode of
Life '—in that part of it dedicated to youth, and in addressing the imaginary youth of whom he
is writing — he says : — ' For thee the fair poetic page is spread,
Of the great living and the greater dead ;
To thee the greater gains of science lie,
Stretched open to thine eye.!
What can be better than this— that the fair poetic page, the great instructions of history, the
gains of science — all these are laid before us, and of these we may freely partake. I spoke of
the library in the beginning of my observations as a fountain of refreshment and instruction and
wisdom. Of it it may be said that he who drinks shall stiU thirst, and thirsting for knowledge
and stiU drinking, we may hope he wiU grow to a greater mental and moral standard, more useful
as a citizen, and more noble as a man."
Mr. Bright took part in the discussion of the Brevention of Crimes
(Ireland) Bill in committee, on the 23rd of June, remarking : —
" We know, further, that in America there has been a series of constant conspiracies for
some years past in connection with something Uke corresponding conspiracies in Ireland. We
know, and hon. gentlemen opposite know very well, that not many years ago a soldier of
fortune, a man ready to fight anywhere — I hope not for any cause against this country — and
who expected that his friends in Ireland would put him at the head of an army of twenty

GENERAL CHIDERAY.

263

thousand men, pubUshed afterwards an account of his experiences in one of the reviews of
this country. I had an opportunity of conversing for about an hour with him when he came
over here, and he told me the reason, which I think was not perfectly accurate, which had
brought him here. He asked me my view as to the state of opinion in this country, chiefly
with regard to Ireland, and I told him nothing could be more hazardous, nothing could be
more certain in leading to destruction, than if he entered into the path of conspiracy which
was then disclosed. I recoUect in the article that he wrote he said he had found out that
the police had discovered the whole matter, and he left London very suddenly. He said, ' On
occasions like this I travel with very Uttle luggage.' (Laughter.) General Chideray, as he
was caUed, was a very sensible man, and got out of the difficulty into which he had very
nearly plunged himself. These are the things we have in our minds in connection with Irish
men in America and the discontented Irishmen in Ireland."

CHABTEB XLTX.
WITHDRAWS FROM THE CABINET.
The War in Egypt — Mr. Bright Resigns— Speech in the House of Commons — Mr. Gladstone's
Reply— Visitors from America— Invitation to the United States— Opening a new Infirmary
at Rochdale— Rectorial Address at Glasgow— Presented with an Address from the
Glasgow Liberals— Visits the Monument of Janet Hamilton— Speaks on the Union of
Church and State — Marriage of his Eldest Son.
T the beginning of 1882 the Khedive of Egypt, yielding to
pressure, consented to reinstate one of his ministers, named
Arabi, in the war department ; and this act was considered
as a triumph of the national party. As there was a prospect
of civil war in Egypt, England and France presented a joint
note, pledging themselves to support the Khedive's authority. Arabi and
the army became more popular, and the Khedive was forced to accept a
national ministry. The Organic Law was adopted, notwithstanding the
protest of the controllers, thus subverting the authority of England and
France embodied in the control. Arabi at last became dictator, and was
secretly supported by the Sultan. England and France next agreed that
any disturbance of the status quo must be prevented. A British and
French squadron accordingly anchored in the harbour of Alexandria in
the latter part of May. On the 25th of the same month, the English
and French consuls-general presented an ultimatum to the Egyptian
Minister, demanding the temporary removal of Arabi and two other
leaders of the mutinous soldiery, and the resignation of the Ministry.
The Khedive assented, but the army and the nationalists were dis
satisfied. The army urged the restoration of Arabi, and it was
announced that if the Khedive refused, the lives and the property of
the Europeans would not be safe. The Khedive reinstated Arabi, and
many of the Europeans in Cairo removed to Alexandria, where hundreds
of them took refuge on board ship. On the llth of June a Mussulman

THE ALEXANDRIA RIOTS. 265
preconcerted riot took place in Alexandria, and a number of Europeans
were kiUed and their houses piUaged. The Khedive and his Ministers
strove in vain to allay the excitement. Arabi, who was aiming at the de
position of the Khedive's supremacy, was recognised by the Porte, who
elevated him to the highest rank of the Medjidie. France was unwiUing
to interfere. Sir B. Seymour informed the English Cabinet that the
works on the forts in Alexandria were being actively carried on. On
the 6th of July the Admiral demanded their instant cessation, under
penalty of bombardment. The Khedive protested against this act, but
the works on the forts stiU proceeded. Sir B. Seymour, on the 10th of
July, insisted on the surrender of the forts at the mouth of the harbour
as a material guarantee. The Egyptian Ministers strove to negotiate,
but the Admiral was firm in his resolution, and early on the morning of
the llth eight British ironclads and five gunboats fired on the forts, and
in a few hours they were battered down, while the vessels escaped with
Uttle damage and slight loss of life. The next day a flag of truce was
displayed, and the Egyptian forces evacuated the town, but before doing
so set fire to the European quarters, which were plundered. The British
blue-jackets and marines landed and restored order. The other powers
did not interfere, and England was left to act alone. The Cabinet next
despatched an expeditionary force " to secure British interests and
restore order." Mr. Bright then resigned his seat in the Cabinet, as he
considered that a violation of international law and moral law had been
committed. However, the war proceeded, and ended in September in
favour of the invaders. The total charge for the English military,
naval, and Indian services down to the close of the war amounted to
about £4,000,000, which the heavily-taxed Englishman would have
to pay. On July the 17th Mr. Bright entered the House of Commons, and
took a seat on the second bench below the gangway. After the
questions on the paper were exhausted, there were cries of " Bright,"
and upon rising he was received with cheers, and he said : —
" I was not intending to offer any observations to the House on this, to me, new and
pecuUar occasion. I suppose hon. gentlemen are wishful to know perhaps more than they do

266 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
know about the reasons why I am not found in my accustomed seat. To tell the truth, I
have no explanation to make. There seems to me nothing to explain, and I have nothing to
defend. The simple fact is, that I could not agree with my late colleagues in the Govern
ment in their policy with regard to the Egyptian question. It has been said— some public
writers have said, and some have said in private conversation— why have not I sooner retired
from the Government ?— (hear, hear)— and why have I postponed my resignation to this time ?
It has been asked why did not I resign last Tuesday or Wednesday ? I may answer that by
saying that my profound regard for my right hon. friend at the head of the Governments
(hear, hear, and cheers)— and my regard also for those who now sit with him, is so great that
I was prompted to remain with them until the very last moment, when I found it no longer
possible to retain my ofiice in the Cabinet. The fact is that the disagreement was to a large
extent fundamental. If I had remained in office it would have been under these circumstances
—either that I must have submitted silently to many measures which I must altogether con
demn, or I must have remained in ofiice in a state of constant conflict with my colleagues.
Therefore it was better generally — it was better for me— the House, I am sure, wiU unanimously
agree, that I should ask my right hon. friend to permit me to retire, and place my resignation
in the hands of the Queen. The House knows— at all events those who have had an oppor
tunity of observing any of tbe facts of my political life for forty years know — that at least I
have endeavoured from time to time to teach my countrymen an opinion and doctrine which
I hold, which is that the moral law is not intended only for individual life, but is intended
also for the life and practice of States. (Cheers from below the gangway.) I think in the
present case there has been a manifest violation of international law — (hear, hear) — and of
the moral law, and therefore it is impossible for me to give any support to it. I cannot
repudiate what I have preached and taught during the period of a rather long poUtical Ufe.
I cannot turn my back upon my belief and deny all that I have taught to many thousands
of others during the forty years I have been permitted, in public meetings and in this House,
to address my countrymen. One word only more. I asked my calm judgment and my
conscience what was the path of right to take. They pointed it out to me with an unerring
finger, and I am humbly endeavouring to follow it."
A deep silence fell upon the House as the last words were uttered,
and in referring to the Prime Minister he spoke with emotion.
Mr. Gladstone next rose and said : —
" In the peculiar circumstances, it is by the indulgence of the House that I rise to say a
single word, which my own feelings teU me— and I think the feelings of others wdl answer
to mine— it would be culpable on my part to omit. This is not the occasion for arguing the
question of difference that has unhappUy arisen between my right hon. friend and those who
were proud to be his coUeagues. But I may venture to assure him that we concur with him
in thinking that the moral law applies to States as it does to individuals, and that the
difference between us— a difference most painful to him, and most painful to us aU— is a
difference upon a particular case, and a particular application of the law to that case. It is
to us, as it is to him, an occasion of the profoundest pain. But he carries with him the
unbroken esteem, and, upon every other question, the unbroken confidence of his coUeagues,
and their best and warmest wishes for his happiness, and that it may follow him in the
independent position to which he has found it necessary to retire." (Cheers.)
On the 25th of September, Mr. Bright, while staying at Cassencary,

AMERICAN VISITORS. 267
Creetown, N.B., on a visit to his friend, James Caird, Esq. (now Sir
James Caird, K.C.B.), forwarded a letter to the Bev. Thomas Bippon,
of Warrington, in reply to one written by the reverend gentleman, who
held that " peace at any price " was an untenable position, and that the
Egyptian war seemed a righteous one.
" The Spectator and other supporters of this war answer me by saying that I oppose the
war because I condemn aU war. The same thing was said during the Crimean war," replied
Mr. Bright. " I have not opposed any war on the ground that aU war is unlawful and immoral.
I have never expressed such an opinion. I have discussed these questions of war — Chinese,
Crimean, Afghan, Zulu, Egyptian — on grounds common to, and admitted by, aU thoughtful
men, and have condemned them with arguments which I believe have never been answered.
" I wiU not discuss the abstract question. I shall be content when we reach the point at
which all Christian men wUl condemn war when it is unnecessary, unjust, and leading to no
useful or good result. We are far from that point now, but we make some way towards it.
" But of this war I may say this, that it has no better justification than other wars which
have gone before it, and that doubtless when the blood is shed and the cost paid, and the
results seen and weighed, we shaU be generaUy of that opinion.
" Perhaps the bondholders, and those who have made money by it, and those who have got
promotion and titles and pensions, wUl defend it, but thoughtful and Christian men wiU
condemn it."
On the 26th of July, Mr. Bright received at his London residence a
party of twenty-five American working people, who were traveUing
through Europe, and who were anxious to see him. They were
selected from among the 3,000 employes of Messrs. Jordan and Marsh,
the most extensive of manufacturing merchants and drapers, of Boston,
New England; and were travelling at the expense of their employers.
The excursion was intended as a token of recognition of their faithful
services, as weU as a pleasant schoohng in the customs and institutions of
the Old World. They were introduced to Mr. Bright by Mr. B. Armitage,
M.P. Mr. Bright spoke to them on several subjects concerning America,
and remarked that he himself had more blood relations in America than
he had in England. At the close of the interview he went through the
ceremony of shaking each by the hand, and all were pleased.
In the early part of 1883, Mr. Bright received from Mr. Evarts a
resolution unanimously adopted by the Union League Club of New
York, inviting the right hon. gentleman to visit the United States as
the guest of the Club, which was to celebrate its twentieth anniversary.

268 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Mr. Evarts, in his letter, after referring to Mr. Bright's support of the
Northern cause during the civil war, said : —
"The Union League Club has always counted among the important poUtical aids to the
support of the authority of our Government, under the stress through which it passed, the firm,
unflinching, and impregnable attitude which you and your, and our, great friend, Mr. Cobden,
opposed to the great current of commercial, social, and political interest and opinion which,
both in England and on the Continent, set so strongly against the success of the loyal power
of the country in dealing with so powerful a revolt. We have never attempted to measure the extent
of our obUgations to you, nor to calculate the misfortune to our cause had it missed the support
of so great a defender.
" These sentiments of the Union League Club are shared by the great body of the sober and
thinking people of this country, and the hospitality which we proffer you will be but one form
of the general acclaim which your presence in the United States wUl caU forth. ... In
asking you to be our guest, from the time you take the sea to make this desired visit, through
the whole of your travel in our country, and until you again reach your home, we can
promise you that every eye and every heart of all our countrymen will greet you with its blessing,
and that, beyond this, our people wiU encroach as little upon the quiet and freedom which you
may think suitable to your health and enjoyment, during your stay with us, as you may desire."
In his reply, Mr. Bright concluded his letter by saying : —
" I never liked the sea, and my once strong appetite for travel has subsided, and I cannot
but feel that the friendly welcome promised me on your side of the Atlantic would force
me into a publicity from which I shrink.
" What can I say, then, in reply to letters so compUmentary, and yet, I cannot doubt, so
friendly and sincere ? That I am deeply grateful to you, and to your and my friends on whose
behalf you have written, aud that I regret with a feeling not less strong that I am not able to
accept the kind invitation you have sent me, and the most kind welcome you have offered and
promised me. I write with difficulty ; but you wUl understand how hard it is to make a fitting,
when an unfavourable, reply to such letters as you and your friends have addressed to me. Tou
will forgive me if I cannot come. I can never forget your great kindness, and the honour you
have conferred upon me.''
As far back as July, 1879, the Hon. B. B. Hayes, the Bresident of
America, invited Mr. Bright to Washington, as at that time he had been
misinformed that the distinguished Englishman contemplated visiting
America, and assured him that he would find in all parts of the United
States a " disposition to make his stay in all respects agreeable to his
own wishes in respect to the measures and modes of their hospitality."
Mr. Bright wrote in reply to the Bresident : —
" I regret very much that I have not, in the years that are gone, visited the United
States ; my public occupations, and the circumstances or conditions of my home life have inter
fered with my wishes, and I have not been able to cross the Atlantic ; and now, when your letter
reaches me, I feel unable to avaU myself of your great kindness, and to accept the great honour

INVITATIONS TO AMERICA. 269
you offer me. I seem to have reached the age when voyages and travels have not oidy lost their
charm, but are become burdensome even to the thought, and when I dare not undertake to meet
the expressions of goodwill which I am assured would await me from my friends in your
country. I have suffered much during the past year from the heaviest of aU domestic bereave
ments, and I have lost, for a time at least, the spirit and the energy which are needful to make
a visit to America useful or pleasant. Tou refer to the course I took during the great trial
through which your country passed from 1860 to 1865. I was anxious that your continent should
be the home of freedom, and that, as respects your country and my own, although we are two
nations we should be only one people. Hence I rejoice now in your union, your freedom, and
your growing influence and prosperity. I know not if I may ever visit your great country;
I should be sanguine now to expect it. But whether I do or not, I shall ever feel grateful
for the kindness shown to me by so many of her people, and for the unexpected honour which your
letter has conferred upon me."
Mr. Bright performed the ceremony of opening in his native town,
on the 12th of February, 1883, a new infirmary which was the generous
gift of Mr. Thomas Watson, manufacturer, of Bochdale ; and in presiding
over a meeting which was held afterwards in one of the large wards, he
traced the biography of the donor from humble circumstances in early
life to his present wealthy and honourable position.
"It appears tome that there is scarcely any mode by which a population like ours can be
benefited and cared for that exceeds in value that of the establishment of an institution of this
kind," further remarked Mr. Bright. " What is our population P We are here two or three
hundred persons, but in this parish I suppose there must be not far from 100,000 people. I don't
know whether fewer or more — (a voice: 'More') — but, however, quite that. And what is the
population doing every day to obtain its three meals ? WeU, it is working in the cotton factories
and the wooUen miUs, in the foundries, engineering works, and machine-making works ; it is
found, some in coal-mines, some in stone-quarries, a great number in the building trades  car
penters, stone-masons, brick-setters, slaters, and all the labourers who are employed in the buUding
trades ; it is found in the local traffic, wagoners, carriers, conducting the business of the locality ;
it is found employed in the works upon the railway. Amongst aU this, it is easy to see, not only
are accidents Uable to occur, but we know that they do occur, and with a painful frequency
amongst a population so employed; and we who are in a condition of life— most of us, probably
—little liable to these accidents, cannot, I think, but have a great sympathy, as Mr. Watson has,
with the painful troubles which come to other persons, aud to many of them who are employed in
the different branches to which I have referred, and, when an accident happens, their condition is
not such as we should like. Their homes are smaU houses, with two, three, or four, not large
rooms ; sometimes the house is crowded. A person who is suffering from a severe accident is
brought home. It is difficult for him to have a room to himself, and the tranquiUity of a quiet
chamber. Anything that he has in excess of his ordinary habits is so much taken from the re
mainder of the family, and added to their discomfort; and if you require medical aid, which is
necessary, of course-surgical aid and nursing-it is extremely difficult to employ it and to secure
it in the best manner under the circumstances of many of these cottage homes. Well now in
this house we are in here is one of the wards ; there is another as large as this above; there is 'a
ward intended for little chUdren ; and here every person, however poor, however suffering how
ever friendless, if he is brought in from accident or suffering such as this institution is intended

070 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
for, wiU, as far as surgical aid, medical aid, and nurse aid are concerned, be just as weU attended
to as if he lived in the best house in the parish. (Applause.) This buUding, whether we regard
it outside or inside, appears to me admirably calculated for its purpose. Outside there is a certain
mixture of the modern and the almost antique, which, I think, gives it a character which is very
pleasing. Inside the arrangements are such that if you look round, as you wUl aU of you do before
you go away this afternoon, you will see how admirably everything has been done. I observe that
Mr. Watson, yielding to advice which he had better have resisted, has given my name to the
ward in which we are assembled. (Laughter and applause.) I could have suggested something
much better, but I have heard from Mr. Watson that some members of his family— I can only
hope that it wiU be the young ladies— (applause)— who are so friendly disposed to me— have insisted
upon that name. The ward above is to be known by the name of a beloved daughter of Mr.
Watson, whose removal by death some years ago left a sore gap in his famUy circle. Wherever
you look round I think you wiU find great taste and good judgment. There is nothing that is
mean or stinted in the arrangements of the place or its adaptation to its purpose ; everything has
been dictated, in my view, by good common sense and largeness of heart, and I do not know any
two things better in the world than those two qualities." (Applause.)
Mr. Bright was elected Lord Eector of the University of Glasgow
in November, 1880, and the ceremony of the installation with his address
to the students took place on the 22nd of March, 1883. The
liveliest interest was taken in the proceedings, and an audience numbering
5,000 assembled in St. Andrew's Hall. Mr. Bright, in his speech, which
occupied an hour and a-quarter in delivering, said : —
" Would you believe, that if you were to add up all the expenditure in this country since the
beginning of the century, and during the lifetime of some thousands of people now living — ex
penditure upon war, war debts, expenditure of military and naval war kind — what do you
suppose it comes to ? Tou could not guess, and if I told you, you would be no wiser.
(Laughter.) It comes to the sum of £4,414,000,000 sterling of taxes. I say, you would be
uo wiser. I don't know that we are any wiser from bearing that a man is worth a miUion,
except that he is a rich man. We don't know very weU what a mUlion is. But what is twenty
mUlions, and what are one hundred miUions, or what are a thousand miUions, or four thousand
miUions ? It is Uke speaking of those great astronomical distances of which at lectures we
hear so much and stiU know so Uttle. (Much laughter and applause.) But if these military
expenses have come to £4,414,000,000, how much has the real government, the civil government of
the country, cost during the same time ? It has cost £1,012,000,000. Less than one-fifth of all our
expenditure has been in onr civil government; more than four-fifths has been expended in wars
past, or wars prepared for in the future. This very year, I suppose, what with the estimates and
what with the debt and the repayments, the expenditure in British affairs will be very little short of
sixty miUions sterling. I want to ask any sensible body of men— (hear, hear)— be they as young
as those students— (' Oh,' and laughter)— or be they as old as we always believe professors to be
—(laughter aud cheers)— I want to ask them whether it should be necessary that the wealth, the
labour, the means, the comfort, the happiness of the population of thirty-five millions of people
of these islands should be taxed to the amount of this tremendous and inconceivable expenditure
which I have just mentioned to you P ('No,' and cheers.) ... I ask you then,
what of the people and what of the miUions? We find poverty aud misery. What does

LORD RECTOR OF GLASGOW UNIVERSITY. 271
it mean when aU these families are living in homes of one room, to us who have several
rooms, and aU the comforts of life ? It means more than I can describe and more than
I will attempt to enter into. And as need begets need, so poverty and misery beget poverty
and misery; and so in all our great towns, and not a little in some of our smaller
towns, there are misery and helplessness such as I have described. In fact, looking at the past —
to me it is a melancholy thing to look at— there is much of it which excites in me not astonish
ment only but horror. The fact is, there passes before my eyes a vision of millions of famdies—
not individuals, but famUies— fathers, mothers, children, passing ghastly, sorrow-stricken, in never-
ending procession from their cradle to their grave. (Loud cheers.) Now, I have to put to you a
question. A friend of ours in the corner there was a Uttle stirred because some of the subjects
on which I treated seemed to have a poUtical aspect. (Cheers.) Why, some one has said that the
two things of aU others in the world that are worth considering, worth talking about, are the
subjects of religion and poUtics. Now I want to ask you whether the future is to be no better
than the past ? Do we march or do we not to a brighter time ? (Cheers.) For myself, as you
know, it wUl not be possible for me to see it, but even whUst the sands of Ufe are running it may
be one's duty, if it be possible in the smaUest degree, to promote it. For you young gentlemen
that are before me, that have done me the distinguished honour to invite me here to address you,
I would say that you have before you, many of you, the prospect of writing the transactions of
the pubUc poUcy of your country for forty or fifty, or even, it may be, for more years to come.
On you and such as you depends greatly our future. What I want to ask you is whether you
wUl look back upon the past and examine it carefuUy — look round you in the present and see
what exists, and endeavour, if it be possible, to give a better and a higher tone to our national
policy for the future ? (Cheers.) To me it appears that we have trodden for two centuries past
— I keep myself to that because since that time the public opinion of the country has had
greatly increased influence — I say, for two centuries past we have trodden in the footsteps of the
Caesars, and have accepted the barbarous poUcy of Pagan Rome ; and whUst, at the same time, with a
vast and unconscious hypocrisy we have buUt thousands of temples, and have dedicated them to the
Prince of Peace, and I say — I say it with grief and shame — that they who have ministered at
His altars have for the most part on these matters been absolutely dumb. Now, Sir, I ask you
this question, shaU we reverse this policy ? ShaU we strive to budd up the honour — the true
honour and the true happiness of our people — on the firm basis of justice, moraUty, and peace P
I plead not for the great and for the rich. I plead for the mUlions who live in the homes of only
one room. (Loud cheers.) Can ye answer me in the words — words which I have quoted years
ago on a somewhat Uke occasion — words which feU from the crowned minstrel who left us the
Psalms, ' The needy shall not always be forgotten ; the expectation of the poor shall not perish
for ever ' ? " (Loud and prolonged cheering.)
Three of the gentlemen on whom the University conferred the degree
of LL.D on this occasion are residents of Birmingham, Manchester, and
Bochdale, namely— the Bev. B. W. Dale, an able preacher ; Mr. Henry
Dunckley, editor of the Manchester Examiner and Times ; and the Bev.
W. N. Molesworth, author of " The History of England from the year
1830." It may be interesting here to state that in the autumn of 1852
a prize of £250 was offered by the Council of the National Anti-Corn-
Law League for a prize essay on the general result of Free Trade. Mr.

272 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Bright and Mr. Cobden were appointed the adjudicators. Thirty-one
literary gentlemen competed, and the prize was awarded to Mr. Henry
Dunckley, MA., then residing at Salford, whose essay was pronounced
to possess more than ordinary merit. Three years before this date he
won a prize of £100 which had been offered by the Beligious Tract
Society, in a contest with 150 other competitors, for an essay on
"The Glory and Shame of Britain." It was a reasonable sequence
that a man of his natural literary ability would soon find a sphere of
action and an outlet for his talents in connection with the press, and he
ultimately became the editor of the Manchester Examiner and Times, in
which position he has ever since manifested an ability of the highest
order. The series of articles which are appearing in the Manchester
Weelcly Times, under the nom de plume of " Verax," are written by him,
and about two years ago they attracted so much public attention and
admiration that the citizens of Manchester and surrounding towns
marked their approval by a public presentation to him. Mr. Dunckley
is a native of Warwick, and was educated at an academy at Accrington,
of which the Bev. David Griffiths was the principal, and from there he
removed to Grlasgow, where he graduated M.A., and afterwards took up
his residence at Salford.
The Senate of the Glasgow University, after Mr. Bright delivered his
speech to the students, entertained the Lord Bector and other gentlemen
at luncheon. Amongst the guests were — Lord Bosebery, Mr. H. CampbeU-
Bannerman, M.P., Mr. C. Tennant, M.P., Mr. B. W. Cochran Patrick,
M.P., Mr. A. Orr-Ewing, M.P., Lord M'Laren, Sir James Watson, Lord
Kinnear, Mr. J. A. Bright, the Hon. E. Marjoribanks, M.P., Mr. Duncan
M'Laren, Sir William Thomson, Mr. Henry Dunckley, Mr. B. W. Dale,
the Bev. W N. Molesworth, and Professor Adamson.
At the residence of Mr. C. Tennant, one of the members for the city
of Glasgow, in the evening of the memorable day, the Executive of the
Glasgow Liberal Association presented Mr. Bright with an Uluminated
address, in which it was stated that : —
" The Executive of the Glasgow Liberal Association gladly avail themselves ofthe opportunity
afforded by your visit to Glasgow as Lord Rector of its ancient University to present you with

THE GLASGOW LIBERAL ASSOCIATION. 273
this address, in grateful acknowledgment of the eminent services you have rendered to your
country in the cause of industrial and poUtical freedom.
" The history of the nation for nearly forty years has been one of almost unbroken pro
gress, your part in the achievement of which has earned for you the lasting gratitude of your
countrymen. "Tour ParUamentary career, dating from 1843. forms, indeed, a brilliant example of devotion
to the political, moral, and social advancement of the people. Entering upon pubUc life at a
time when, by the operation of class privileges and unequal laws, trade was everywhere fettered,
and the consequent sufferings of the people wore unusually severe, you devoted your whole
energies, in happy association with your distinguished friend Richard Cobden, to procure the
abolition of the Corn Laws, and to establish that freedom of trade by which the wealth of the
country and the happiness and comfort of the industrial classes have been so greatly increased.
" Throughout your public career it has ever been your aim to reconcile the people to existing
institutions, by bringing these into harmony with the principles of justice ; and this beneficent
purpose has already been largely fulfiUed by the success of your long and arduous labours in
the cause of Parliamentary reform. Tou have, in brief, always trusted the people ; and that
your confidence has not been misplaced is shown by the fact that the nation has prospered in
proportion as the masses have been entrusted with the power to govern themselves.
" We cannot forget your powerful advocacy of the repeal of the taxes on knowledge ;
and we thank you for the efforts you have made to promote peace and discourage war.
" Tour unwearied exertions to remove the real grievances of the Irish people command the
approval of aU who dare to be just and fear not ; and we confidently believe that the efforts
towards this end of yourself and the other leaders of the Liberal party wiU in due time be crowned
with complete success.
" Tears ago you declared in the House of Commons that you had laboured only to destroy
that which was evU and to build up that which was good, and the verdict of your countrymen
has ratified your claim. They recognise in you a statesman who, whether as a Minister of tho
Crown or as an independent member of Parliament, has, with single-raindedness of purpose
striven unceasingly to promote the wellbeing of every class of the community, and to strengthen
the Constitution of the realm on the foundation of a contented and a prosperous people.
" We devoutly hope that your valuable life may be long spared to our country ; that for
many years EngUsh Uterature may be stiU further enriched by you with ' thoughts that breathe
and words that burn ;' and that the nation may long enjoy the privilege of your persuasive
eloquence and ardent efforts in helping to place on the statute-book those important measures
which are now ripe for settlement, and which are but the natural development of the principles
you have so long and earnestly advocated. " William Collins, Knt., President.
" W. Loeimbe, Chairman.
" William Fife, Vice-Chairman.
" Warden R. Maxwell, Hon. Treasurer.
" Alex. Macdougall, Hon. Sec."
Mr. Bright, in his reply, in speaking against the minority clause of
Lord Cairns, said : —
" The boroughs which have the privilege or insult of voting in this manner have now expe
rience, and I think their opinion ought to weigh with Parliament when the question comes to be
considered again. We are thrown into contests which would be avoided, and much expense is
incurred in contests which are forced upon us by this clause. I think this evil should be legis-
67

274 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
lated upon by ParUament, which ought reaUy to do everything it can to prevent expensive contests,
and the unpleasantness which arises from any violation whatever of the Unes of the Constitution,
such as is found in this clause. I thought, perhaps, it might be worth while to make a few
observations upon this, because we are coming now to a time when people wiU begin to think it is
not a very long way off before there wiU be a general election, or before the Government intro
duce a measure in which this clause wiU have to be considered, and might be dealt with ; and,
therefore, it might be useful to bring it before the public in your city, and before the public in all
other parts of the country, who might read the transactions of this little meeting. 1 did not
expect myself to take a very active part again in many public questions. Those for which I have
contended during the last forty years have, the most of them, either been carried, or there is
that kind of agreement with regard to them being enacted that it is only a question of time.
(Hear, hear.) The terror that men had of the suffrage is now gone. (Hear, hear.) The Con
servative party have got over the fright, and they now won't pledge themselves to oppose any
extension of the franchise to the counties, and they all say that the redistribution of seats, as a
matter of course, must come with that or soon after. Therefore the old bogie or hobgoblin which
frightened them has disappeared, and they are open at least to discuss the question in which
they naturally have just as much interest as we have, and their opinion ought to have its due
weight. But generally, I think, looking at the House of Commons, and looking at the country,
and looking at the press, there is a disposition to make the next Reform BUl one of a substantial
character, that it should not be necessary or be desirable, at least for a good many years, that the
question should be disturbed again." (Applause.)
The next day Mr. Bright was presented with the freedom of the city
of Glasgow at a large meeting in the City HaU. Lord Provost Ore
presided. Amongst the gentlemen on the platform were Lord M'Laren,
the Earl of Bosebery, Sir Donald Currie, M.B., Mr. W. Holms, M.B.,
Mr. A. Cram, M.P., Mr. J. A. Campbell, M.P., Mr. E. Marjoribanks,
M.P., Sir James Watson, Mr. C. Tennant, M.P., Mr. C. Cameron, M.P.,
Sir W. Thomson, Mr. J. Bamsay, M.P., Principal Caird, and Mr. John
Albert Bright. In responding, Mr. Bright said : —
'• A continuous examination of all political questions, an application of them to the standards
of justice and morality, justifies the growing belief of this country that whatever the people
have a right to have, whatever is good for them, whatever they claim from Parliament, Parlia
ment is continually, one succeeding Parliament after another, more and more disposed to grant.
What we have to do now is to look backwards, and there we see what I call the vanishing
darkness. What else we have to do is to look forward, where we see the advancing light, and I
am quite sure all men who are of my age, and who have had the opportunity of seeing what
England was forty or fifty years ago, and of seeing what it is now, must be conscious that our
legislation has immensely improved; that the sympathy between the governors and the governed
is stronger than it was then ; and that aU those who wish for peace in England, and prosperity
and happiness within her borders, must rejoice in the main in the changes which have been
made, and must feel their hearts opened to receive propositions for such further changes as may
be thought to be good. (Cheers.) I sometimes think that by-and-bye party politics will almost
die out, for there do not seem very many questions now on which great conflicts can arise. Every
V ariiament they are diminishing, and perhaps we shall come to be a happy company in which we

AT COATBRIDGE. 275
have hardly anything to disagree about. (Cheers.) But whether that be so or not, I exhort all
men who see what has been done in the past to have faith in it, and to beheve that egis-
lation founded on the highest and the noblest and the most moral principles is the legislation
which the people have a right to obtain, and from which they may hope to gam the greatest
advantage." (Cheers.)
Before leaving the neighbourhood of Glasgow, Mr. Bright fulfilled
a promise he made the previous autumn, to visit Coatbridge, to see the
monument erected to the memory of Janet Hamilton, the Langloan
poetess, a remarkable self-taught literary character, who died, at the age
of eighty, in 1875 (see page 259). Mr. Joseph Wright, the secretary
and treasurer of the subscription fund for the erection of the monument,
was first visited by Mr. Bright, at his residence in Academy Street,
and then the party waited upon Marion Hamilton, the favourite
daughter of the poetess. She recited to Mr. Bright one of her
mother's poems, " Erne." The memorial fountain at Langloan was next
visited, where Mr. Bright drank the crystal water to the memory of the
author of " Erne," and then, stepping across the street, tbey inspected
the house in which she had lived and died. Mr. Bright was cheered
frequently in the street, whenever he was recognised.
On the 18th of April he was present at the marriage of Mr.
W. S. B. M'Laren, one of his nephews, to Miss Eva M. MttUer,
youngest daughter of the late Mr. Wm. Miiller, who for many years
resided in ChUi, and afterwards at 86, Bortland Blace, London, and Hill
Side, Herts. Mr. M'Laren is the youngest son of Mr. Duncan
M'Laren, who represented Edinburgh in the House of Commons for
many years. Although neither bride nor bridegroom is a member of the
Society of Friends, yet on account of the connection of Mr. M'Laren's
family with that body, and the preference of the bride for their form of
marriage, it was decided that the wedding should be solemnized at the
Westminster Meeting House. There was no wedding breakfast, but
instead the wedding party, which numbered about sixty, met at the
house of the bride's mother the evening before, when a wedding supper
was given. Mr. Bright, in proposing the health of the newly-
married pair, made some humorous remarks on the frequency with which
of late he had been called upon to propose this toast. He remarked,

276 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
however, that weddings had their sober as well as their merry side.
The brightest days were succeeded by days of cloud, and it was for the
pair themselves largely to determine which of these should most prevaU.
Out of a married life of more than thirty years he had found how
happiness increased and not diminished, the later years being happiest
of all. He could commend to the lady the son of the best of fathers
and the best of mothers, who he believed would be found worthy of
every expectation. Taking for granted that his choice was as judicious
as hers had been, they might all rely on hearing of the truest happiness
and the highest usefulness as the result of this union.
A few days afterwards, Mr. Bright, Mr. Broadhurst, Mr. Samuel
Morley, and Mr. Bichards, as representative Nonconformists, signed a
public declaration expressing the conviction that the existing prohibition
of marriage with a deceased wife's sister is an oppressive and unjustifi
able restraint upon the liberty and happiness of a large number of
persons, and that the objections commonly urged against the proposed
amendment of the law are unfounded or hypothetical, and are not held
by the great body of Nonconformists, or by the majority of the public.
The Liberation Society held their thirteenth triennial conference in
the Metropolitan Tabernacle on the evening of the 2nd of May.
Mr. Bright presided, and said : —
" Now, the theory of many good people in this country who support this union — their theory
of the union is this, that the Church tends to make the State more Christian ; that is, more
just and gentle, more merciful and peacefid. I propose to ask your attention to two or three
points which I think wiU answer that question, and will meet, in my opinion, that unsound and
baseless theory. I wiU ask you for a moment to look at one great question in which, laggard as
we stiU are, we have made some progress, and that is, the condition of the criminal code in this
country in past years. I suppose it is fair to assume that the Bishops of the EstabUshed Church
are of the most learned of the clerical order, and that they are esteemed also the most holy and
the most Christian. We know they are members of the Legislature, and a very important body
in the House of Lords. They, therefore, with their position, and with their character, and with
their representative office as standing there — not indeed for the whole people, but for aU that
portion of the people connected with the Established Church — are in a position of vast influence,
and I think it is to be lamented that this influence has not been so often as it might have been
extended in behalf of kind and Christian and generous legislation. In 1776 — there are great
numbers of persons in tbis building whose parents, I daresay, were living at that time— Charles
Wesley, a name to be revered, writing to Mr. Fletcher, of Madeley, » name not less to be
revered, gives him this piece of information. He says, ' A fortnight ago I preached the con
demned sermon to above twenty criminals. Every one of them, I have good reason to beUeve,

AT A LIBERATION MEETING. 277
died penitent. Twenty more must die next week.' Now, if you will remember that in that day
the population of London was probably not more than a quarter of its present population, you
can form some idea of the terrific cruelty of a penal code that should some Monday morning,
and again, in a fortnight or three weeks, on another Monday morning, send more than twenty
criminals to the gallows, and not for the grievous offence of deliberate murder, but for offences
for which now the bulk of those criminals would not have had more than six or twelve months'
imprisonment. A few years after that, and within a year of the time of my life, a bill was
brought into the House of Lords, the object of which was to enact that henceforth the punish
ment of death should uot be inflicted on persons who had committed robberies, which we should
caU now petty larcenies, iu a house or shop, to the value of five shUUngs. Well, that bUl was
rejected by the House of Lords by a majority of thirty-oue to eleven, and in the majority of
thirty-one there were six bishops and one archbishop. It may be said, and said with a good deal
of force — in fact, with absolute truth — that those were barbarous and cruel times, though this
last one is a time which can be remembered by some in this building — by one, or more than one,
I beUeve, on this platform. But it may be said, ' Those were cruel times, and you have no right
to find fault with the bishops and archbishops that they were not less cruel than the population
among whom they Uved.' But a hundred years before that time, when WUliam Penn estab
Ushed his great colony of Pennsylvania, he swept off at once — or, rather, he did not re-enact in
that colony any of the cases in which the punishment of death could be inflicted, except it were
in cases of deliberate murder. There were therefore men — good nien— in this country a hundred
years before the time I am speaking of — Christian men, men whom this State and Church
thought it right to persecute — who knew what was true and right and Christian with regard to
this penal code. And there were not wanting abundant evidences in our own country from
which the dignitaries of the Church in the House of Lords might at that time have known what
it was becoming them as Christian ministers to do. But to show how Uttle influence the
Christian Church, the Church of England, had with the government of our country in these
matters, let me teU you that up to the reign of George the First there were in this country
sixty-seven offences that were punishable with death. Between the accession of George the
First and the termination of the reign of George the Third — I think within those limits — there
were added one hundred and fifty-six new crimes to which the capital punishment was attached.
Now, during aU these years, as far as this question goes, our Government was becoming more
cruel and more barbarous, and we did not find, and have not found, that in the great Church of
England, with its ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand ministers, and with its more than a score of
bishops in the House of Lords, there ever seems to have beeu <i voice raised, or an organisation
formed, in favour of a more merciful code, or any condemnation of the enormous cruelty which
our law was continuaUy inflicting. Was not Voltaire justified in saying that the English were
the only people who murdered by law ? But we wiU pass on from this question. I will accept
every excuse which archbishop, or bishop, or clergy, or churchman may offer. I know how slow
men are to recognise the grounds for change, and how content men in high places, inhabiting
comfortable homes, and with all that is pleasant about them-I know how difficult it is for them
to rouse themselves to undertake great changes and reforms such as this question required. But
I pass on to another question-the question of the slave trade and of slavery. We, many
of us, remember the agitation, not to put an end to the slave trade, though that required
great and strong protest on the part of the people, but to put an end to slavery in our
colonies. I think it is on record that on one occasion in the House of Lords, when it was
proposed to put an end to the slave trade, and some speeches were made against that great
iniquity, Lord Eldon, who for so long a time was Lord Chancellor, and therefore Speaker and
president of that assembly, is reported to. have said ho did not believe, and could not beUeve
that the slave trade was so hostile to the spirit of Christianity, or else it could not possibly have

278 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
been so generally, as it was, and had been, supported by the bench of bishops. What I complain
of is that there is no trace in our modern history of the influence of the bishops, or indeed of the
clergy, in favour of those great reforms which we now look back upon with intense satisfaction,
mingled only with, if possible, a more intense regret that they were not effected years, or a century
or two, earlier. The plea is, bear in mind, that the Church affects the State in the direction of
Christian principle and Christian conduct. I am showing you that the Church, as represented in
one branch of the Legislature, at any rate, has entirely failed of its duty in that respect. Let us
go on to another question that is of stiU greater magnitude, and affects us even to our day. - 1
speak of the foreign policy of our country, and of our incessant wars. We have had two
centuries — I wiU say nothing of the time beyond that — we have had two centuries of almost
incessant wars. In Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in North America, in South America, and in
some portion of the Australian colonies, in China, wherever you look all over the map — if you
had a map before you with a red cross at every point where the blood of your countrymen has
been poured out, and generaUy poured out for no real object or service to your country — I think
you would be astounded at the exhibition that that map would make ; and during these wars we
have spent thousands of miUions of treasure, produced by the toil and the sweat, and often
by the misery, of millions of our countrymen, and sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives,
with an amount of agony which no imagination can picture, and with a sacrifice of blood that it
would be impossible to gauge. Now, I want to know how it comes that with so much of real,
and so much more of what may be termed merely the profession of, Christianity in this
country— how is it, with all the great authority of this Established Church, which was
intended to guide the nation and the State in the way of righteousness, that on the whole you
have seen no check to, and heard no condemnation of, a policy which to us now appears so unne
cessary and so fearful ? There are no protests— at least, I have never seen one— there are no
protests, so far as I know, on the records of the House of Lords, and there has been no great
protest from these good people through the Press. I recollect an anecdote, which just occurs to
me, that wiU in a little way explain this. Less than thirty years ago, many of you wdl remember
that the country was engaged in a sanguinary struggle with the Empire of Russia. The late
Bishop of Winchester (Bishop Wdberforce) was a man with whom I had often pleasant conver
sation on public questions, and I met him oecasionaUy at dinner, and he was always extremely
friendly to me, although in some things we were so far apart. He told me that with regard to
the Crimean war his opmion agreed with mine. He thought it unnecessary and unjust, and
greatly to be lamented. I suggested to him whether it might not be good for him and for the
country if he would take some opportunity, in his place in the House of Lords, of addressing to
the House, and to the Government, and to the nation, a speech upon that question corresponding
with the views that he had then explained to me. Well, he looked serious-and I have no doubt
he felt the question to be a very serious one-and he said that he had taken that matter into his
deliberation, and he had not, been able to convince himself that taking that course would be pro
ductive of more good than it would of harm, and, therefore, that he had remained silent Now,
it is easy to understand how he might, with perfect honesty come to that opinion. He might feel
that m the hurry of the passion that pervaded the minds of the people, and even of many of those
m the circle m which he lived, probably or possibly he might not do very much good in the way
of peace, as in a fever of that kind no man can, but that he might diminish his own power of
usefulness m the particular channel in which it was more especiaUy his duty to employ himself.
I do not mention this for the purpose of throwing the slightest blame upon the bishop, but I can
Tmi Iffi Tf51!1011 T " memb6r °f tte H°USe °f L°rd8 aud a di^itaiT of ^ ^ate Church,
MinhS t n tt'T 7 f ^ ^ ™ " ^ ^ and *° ^ a ^ at ™™ ^h the
suppose he would conclude it would be, with the immense preponderance of opinion in the Church

THE CHURCH'S ATTITUDE TO WAR.

279

of which he was so eminent a member. Now-and I hope those who will cntidse what I say, and
they are not a few, and they who disagree with me, and perhaps condemn me-I wish they would
tell me why it is that the Christian Church in this kingdom as against the crimes of the State
such as I have described-and I might add others-that the Christian Church and its bishops and
its clergy for the most part are dumb ? About five hundred years ago there lived a Franciscan
monk at the Court, I think, of Louis of Bavaria. His name was WUUam Occam, and he deserves
to be remembered for the large amount of truth that he put into a very few words. He said, ad-
dressing the Emperor, ' Thou defendest me with the sword, and I wiU defend thee with the pen ;
and if you will trace the course of history for the 500 years that have since passed over, you wdl
find that where there has been a Church influencing the people aUied with the State, it has almost
uniformly defended whatever was the policy of the potentate or the Government, and on the other
hand, the Church has been supported, not by the sword only, but by all the influence of the Govern
ment with which it was alUed. I won't dwell upon anything further that has taken place so far
back as 500 years. I will come to our own time, and I will refer to what took place so late as
September last, an event, as you know, whatever may be said about its necessity, whatever pre-
ceded it, whatever wiU be the result— an event in our history very sad and very lamentable.
There was a city bombarded and burnt, and there was a battle fought. Now, the Church has not
been dumb upou that question. Tou know, of course, that what I may caU an ecclesiastical prince,
and a great ruler in the Church, spoke to the people in regard to that question. What did he say ?
—because what a man of that mark says must be understood to represent what a great many people
are supposed to think. In a letter to the churches he made observations which were introductory,
or recommendatory, of a prayer which he offered for their acceptance. In the letter he spoke in
this manner. He said, ' Mourning as we do for those who have fallen for their country '— weU,
we aU mourn, I hope, for those that have fallen for their country. But this Christian minister,
apparently, had not in his mind at aU the ten Egyptians who fell for every one Englishman. I
do not comprehend that kind of mourning. I mourn for them all. WeU, then, he said further,
that 'our war against anarchy was an inevitable war.' I am not going to contest that, or to argue
the question in the least. Vou know, of course, my opmion. I am only at liberty to say this,
that I believe those who know most about it beUeve that it was not an inevitable war. But I leave
that, because it is quite possible, and, indeed, very likely, that there are differences of opinion in
this vast assembly on this question. I come now to the words of the prayer, and that is
what I ask you to consider for a moment. I had wished that I could have avoided mentioning this
on this occasion ; but I felt that it would be an abandonment of duty if I let this opportunity pass
without expressing to you somewhat of the feeling which this matter excited in my own mind.
An ancient heathen poet — I am not sure whether the most ancient of them aU — who dealt a good
deal in narratives of war, said : —
' Unhallowed ia the voice
Of loud thanksgiving over slaughtered men.'
And if that could be said some thousands of years ago by a heathen writer, at least we might ex
pect some little consideration from a dignitary of a Christian Church in this century of the
Christian era. Now, these are the words to which I wish to call your attention. In the prayer
he says— and this was sent round to aU the churches— I know some cases, I have heard of them,
in which the clergymen were too much shocked to permit them to be read— he said, addressing the
Supreme Ruler, ' Teach us to see that Thy hand hath done it, that Thou wast in the midst of our
camp to deliver us, and to give up our enemies before us.' Tou see what this is put into plain
words— that ironclad ships, bursting sheUs, a blazing town, the roar of artiUery, the charge of
bayonets, the ghastly heaps of the mangled and the dead— these were manifestations of the hand of
the God of Mercy. But I must remind you that these, or something like these, have been the

280 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
words which have been offered from high dignitaries of the Church during the last 200 years,
probably on every occasion of our wars, be they just or unjust to the last degree. Now, I won't
describe that language by words that present themselves to me, for I do not want to say anything
that is unnecessarily harsh, or likely to hurt the feelings of such, if there be such, as differ from
me upon this question. But I venture to ask you, and I would ask the dignitary of the Church
who used this language, and those who read it from their pulpits, is there no reason why the
millions of people of this coimtry absent themselves from the churches ? Is it possible that men
with sentiments like these, daring to approach the Throne of the Eternal with thanksgiving for
acts of this kind, can go down to the depths of society and bring up the poor and miserable, the
abject, the forsaken, and the hopeless who surround us on every side H I only think it proves the
indestructible quality there is in the Christian faith, that it shoidd have so long survived the
treason of those who pretend to teach it. But I pass now, before I conclude, to one or two other
matters of a very different kind, and in which we observe an entirely different line of conduct.
For example, three years ago, I think it is, the Houses of Parliament passed a biU which many
Nonconformists were greatly interested in, called the Burials BUl. Tou will remember,
probably, that it was said that not less than fourteen or fifteen thousand clergy of the Church of
England protested to the late archbishop against his course, and against the course of the Govern
ment and Parliament, in supporting and passing that measure. The late archbishop was not merely
an archbishop, and a Christian archbishop, but he was a statesman influenced to a large extent,
I believe, by Christian principles. He had much to do with the passing of that bill, and pre
vailing upon persons likely to be hostile to it to view it at least with something like acquiescence
if they could not entirely approve. But the clergy found their tongues. They co-operated, they
conspired, they signed memorials, they joined in a great demonstration against that bUl. Let us
come to another question that is just now — or coming just now — before ParUament. There are
two questions. I think it probable that the one you are just now taking an interest in is the
question of the admission of men to the House of Commons who shall not be required to take an
oath ; and I have seen much lately that convinces me that many men are more willing to worry a
Government than to honour God. On this question, no doubt — I judge only from the public
papers — clerical organisations are actively employed to thwart the purpose of that measure. But
there is another question that is coming before ParUament soon, and which has been before Par
Uament almost all the time that I have been there — that is, a reform of the marriage laws, whieh
is necessary for the comfort and happiness of some thousands of famiUes in this nation. Tou
know that there is a sort of clerical parliament that has been sitting lately, which is caUed Con
vocation. I can never see anything there that tends to what I should call freedom and justice
and reasonable concession to the people. On this question they are passing resolutions of, I was
going to say, an audacious positiveness. They seem to think it amazing that anybody should
take a different view, and yet at this very moment, if statements I have heard are not erroneous,
there is a majority in the House of Lords in favour of that bid. It would have passed last
session if only the temporal peers had had the vote. The bishops, the representatives of a section
of the English people, were the opponents, and I am told— though I have not examined the list
myself, but I think it is stated on good authority— that their votes rejected the biU. But whether
there be a majority there or not, this, at any rate, is certain : that if the House of Commons were
assembled with its 650 members, there is a majority of more than 150, I am told of 200, in favour
of that bill. And yet with this vast pronouncement on the part of the people of Great Britain, a
few, a handful of ecclesiastics, twenty or four and five-and-twenty in number, sitting in one House
of Parliament, reject this measure, condemn thousands of families to unhappiness during their
lifetime, and condemn thousands of chUdren, whoUy guiltless, as I believe their parents are guUt-
less— yes, I say, condemn thousands of chUdren, innocent, as I believe their parents are innocent,
to the brand of illegitimacy. I hope nobody wiU suppose that I am ignorant of the fact— nay, I

THE MARRIAGE OF HIS ELDEST SON. 2*1
believe it most fully— that there are bishops who are excellent men, and that there are thousands
of clergymen of the EstabUshed Church, who iu their various parishes and offices, as far as they
know, do honestly perform their duties, and do wish to be what the theory intends they should
be— fights to guide their parishioners in the better way ; and, of course, we all know that amongst
the vast Church population in this country, men and women, there are multitudes who can claim
to be possessed of and to exercise every virtue at, least on an equality with the best of such
amongst the Nonconformists. But then there comes the question of the alliance with tho State.
The Established Church, if it were not established, would still be a Church. For anything I
know it woidd be two Churches, and the bishops, I presume, would be bishops as the bishops in
Ireland are stUl bishops, and the clergy would have their congregations, and there is not one par
ticular in which you could show that the actual useful work of any bishop or clergyman would be
less than it is now, and less fruitful for everything that is good. But, then, when they are allied
with the State they are dumb, as I have said, when the State does anything wrong ; and you only hear
them in any transaction of the State when the State is wiUing to do some act of justice to the people.
I think that this mode of proceeding on the part of the clergy and the great powers of a great es-
tabUshment is one which is not calculated to elevate the Christian idea in the minds of the people,
but rather to shut out vast numbers of the people from any fair and open consideration of the
claims of the Christian faith. Now, I complain, then, of the Established Church in this broad
manner ; that it does nothing to guide the State in the way of righteousness ; that it is in certain
respects the bondslave of the State ; that in aU the great matters which most affect our country
the bishops and the clergy are dumb, and their activity is shown when any comparatively small
measure is discussed whieh they think treads a little upon their position and their supremacy.
WeU, now, what wiU come ? I cannot hope, and many here cannot hope, to live to see it, but pro
bably many here wui see it. Looking at the growth of your cause, as manifested here to-night,
and by many other tokens ; looking to the bondage of the Church, and the great schism which is
continually widening within its borders ; looking to the growing earnestness which I beUeve there
is amongst the clergy, and I hope amongst many of the laity, there seems to me to be signs that
it wdl not be in the power of Prime Ministers and Cabinets, of peers, and benches of bishops, to
prevent the actual— not very early but not very remote— triumph of your cause. The Church as
an Establishment wiU perish. But as a Church, when that event has taken place, it wiU flourish,
far more in the right way of flourishing than it has done when tended by the State. When free
it will look back with horror on the chains from which it has been delivered, and it wiU exult with
unspeakable rejoicing at the freedom by which it has been enriched. And the people wiU have
additional reasons for clinging to it, and I do not doubt for a moment— I speak with as solemn
a belief as I have ever uttered upon any question— that the religion, the Christian religion, taught
by the Free Churches of England, wiU be far more acceptable hereafter to the miUions of our
population."

On the 30th of May Mr. John Bright was present at the marriage of
his eldest son, Mr. John Albert Bright, to Miss Edith Eckersley Shaw-
cross, daughter of Mr. W. T. Shawcross, manufacturer, Foxholes, Boch
dale. The ceremony was performed at the Unitarian Chapel, Blackwater
Street, Bochdale, the place of worship attended by the bride's family.
Thousands of persons assembled near the chapel, but the building
accommodated only about 250 persons, and the invited guests numbered

282

LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.

about 70. The newly-married couple and Mr. John Bright and guests
passed through the crowded streets in twenty-two carriages amidst con
tinued cheering. After their honeymoon tour Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Bright
made their home at Bose HiU, a villa close by " One Ash."

CHABTEB L.
REWARDS.
The Completion of Mr. Bright's Twenty-Fifth Tear as Member for Birmingham-A
Memorial Meeting in Bingley HaU-Banquet at the Town Hall-Earl GranviUe's Com-
ments on Mr. Bright's Career— Mr. Bright entertained by the Mayor-Uncovering Mr.
Wright's statue-The Junior Liberal Club-The Departure-Charged with Breach of
PrivUege-His Defence-The Motion Defeated-The Hbert BUl— Temperance— The Leeds
Conference— Compulsory Vaccination— Speeches— The Workmen's Peace Association.
!N August, 1882, Mr. Bright completed the twenty -fifth year
of his representation of Birmingham in the House of
Commons, and long before this date his constituents had de
termined to commemorate the event by a public demonstration
and other marks of gratitude for his faithful services. Mr. Bright
at first, with his usual delicacy, tried to evade a public demonstration,
but his constituents were firm in their resolve ; and after the date was
deferred, it was at last fixed to commence on Monday, June llth,
1883, and extend over the whole week. On the previous Saturday
evenmg, Mr. Bright arrived at Stratford-on-Avon from London, and was
met at the raUway station by Mr. Bichard Curry, his son-in-law, with
whom he stayed until the Monday morning. At half -past twelve on the
appointed day he arrived at Small Heath station, accompanied by Mr.
and Mrs. Curry, Mr. and Mrs. John Albert Bright, and Mrs. Bernard
Both. They received a princely greeting, and were met by the Mayor
of Birmingham (Mr. Alderman White), Mr. George Dixon (Bresident of
the Birmingham Liberal Association), Dr. B. W. Dale, Mr. Jesse
CoUings, M.B., Mr. Wiggin, M.B., and a large number of other gentle
men. Mr. Dixon presented to Mr. Bright a gold medal struck for the
occasion, which bore the portrait of Mr. Bright, and on the reverse side
the arms and motto of the borough, "Forward," and the inscription:
" Birmingham Liberal Association, Bright Celebration, June, 1883. The

284 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Bight Hon. John Bright, elected M.B. for Birmingham, August, 1857.
Beace, Betrenchment, and Beform."
The Mayor welcomed Mr. Bright on behalf of the corporation and
the inhabitants of Birmingham, assuring him that his visit would gladden
many hearts. Mr. Bright, in the course of his reply, said —
" AU the time I have been member for Birmingham I have been treated with a generosity and
sympathy and assistance which perhaps no other representative in Parliament — few certainly —
has received from his constituents. Mr. Dixon has been kind enough to hand me this medal, which
is of a very valuable metal, a metal which I suppose is perpetual in its duration, if it is not inten-
tionaUy got rid of. (Laughter.) I hope it wiU remain with my son, or with others of my
children, and that they may bear in mind, at some time when I am not with them, that it was
presented to me on a remarkable occasion, and by gentlemen, friends of mine, to whom I owe a
debt of gratitude, which, however long I may live, I shaU never be able to repay."
The procession, a mile and a-half long, was then marshalled into
order with its numerous bands of music, and Mr. Bright, amidst
vociferous cheering, entered an open carriage, with his two daughters
and the Mayor, and rode in the rear of the procession through the
principal streets of the borough. The route was crowded throughout, and
it seemed as if the country had proclaimed a holiday. Countless thou
sands had also arrived from distant towns to witness the memorial
event, and the processionists were heartily cheered. A notable feature
was a carriage containing the surviving members of the 1832 Bolitical
Union. There were thirty-five of the veterans, and the youngest of the
party was seventy-two years of age. They carried with them the
battered banner of the Union, and the drum which heralded the news in
Birmingham of the passing of the Beform Bill of 1832.
Before the procession arrived at its destination, Mr. Bright's carriage
took a short cut, and reached the office of the Aston Local Board before
the head of the cortege arrived, and Mr. Bright himself took up a position
at one of the windows. The whole of the procession thus passed in
review before him, every person uncovering and saluting him in passing.
At the end of a four or five miles' march, the processionists entered the
Aston Lower Grounds, where in the evening a series of entertainments
took place in the great hall; concerts were given by the Canadian Jubilee
Singers, and out of doors a minstrel troupe and several miUtary bands

G. DIXON
(From a Photograph by Mr. J. AV/-/v,

Birmingham).

AT BINGLEY HALL. 285
gave performances. After the concerts there was dancing in the meadow,
in the wood, and in the great hall.
Mr. Bright became the guest of Mr. George Dixon, his former
coUeague, and spent the day following in his host's suburban retreat at
Edgbaston. One of the prominent features of the celebration was the immense
gathering in Bingley Hall on the Wednesday evening, for it was
computed that at least 20,000 persons were present, and, although 15,000
were admitted without tickets, there seemed to be a wonderful unanimity
of feeling towards the hero of the evening. The approach of Mr. Bright
was heralded with an ovation of cheering such as is seldom heard. He
was accompanied by Mr. Dixon, Mr. Chamberlain, M.B., the Mayor, Mr.
Duncan M'Laren, and Dr. Dale. A band struck up " Auld Lang Syne,"
and the vast assembly joined in singing this Scottish song, which
touched the tender theme of old acquaintance, and moistened many an
eye. Mr. George Dixon presided, and explaining the object of the
meeting, presented to Mr. Bright an address from the Birmingham
Liberal Association in which occurred the following : —
" Birmingham invited you to become its representative solely on the ground of your great
services to the nation, and for your known devotion to the cause of progress and reform ; you
accepted the caU, trusting to the traditions of the town, and to the fidelity of its people. These
were the relations of representative and constituents established at the outset of our association.
These relations have remained unbroken and unaltered from that day to this. Neither upon our
part nor upon yours has there ever passed so much as a shadow of wavering or distrust. With
the lapse of years our confidence has grown into an instinct, and our esteem has deepened into
affection. We count it one of the chief distinctions of Birmingham, we regard it as one of our
most precious memories, that so large a portion of your pubUc life should have been bound up
with ours. We cherish the hope that, so long as your life endures, the bond now existing between
us wiU never be broken. We need not- recall the vital questions which have been raised and
settled, the beneficent reforms which have been effected, and the measure of progress which has
been achieved during the period of your services as one of the members for Birmingham. These
are written in the history of our country ; and there also is imperishably recorded the great share
which you have had in bringing them about. There is no reform for which you have pleaded that
has not received support from your countrymen, and recognition from tho legislature. The
freedom of commerce, the extension of the franchise, the liberation of the press from uilwise
restrictions, the completion of the rights of citizenship by the promotion of religious equality, the
claims of the peoples of India to just administration, the concession of ecclesiastical and agrarian
reforms in Ireland, the maintenance of the Liberal watchwords of Peace, Retrenchment, and
Reform — these have been the objects of your ceaseless, endeavours ; to these you have been faith
ful in aU vicissitudes of political fortune, and under all circumstances of personal trial, undis-

286 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
mayed by momentary failure — undeterred by persistent obloquy. And, thanks in a great
measure to your advocacy, the principles for which you have contended from your entrance into
ParUament until now are largely embodied in acts of legislation  For our own share,
we desire to keep this day in perpetual remembrance by the erection of a memorial statue in our
town, so that our chUdren and our children's chUdren, for generations to come, may know the
form and features of one of whose long-continued and faithful service Birmingham is proud>
whose name it cherishes as a household word, and whose memory it wiU revere."
Dr. B. W. Dale next presented, on behalf of the Liberals of
Birmingham, Mr. Frank Holl's portrait of Mr. Bright, and a sUver
dessert service, which had cost 600 guineas, and was one of Elkington's
masterpieces. It consists of a centre-piece, a plateau, two end-pieces, and
four compotiers en suite in the Benaissance style. The work is ol
oxidised silver, relieved with dead gilding, and tbe artistic execution
of the details is the best the country can produce. There are figures
with an olive branch representing Beace, others with a laurel wreath
representing Blenty, and youthful bearers of cornucopia?. The classic
pillars supporting the glass dishes, especially designed by Osier, are
ornamented with roses and other flowers. On the base of the shield,
wreathed with forget-me-nots, is the recipient's monogram. The
plinth of the centre plateau gives in relief a view of Birmingham
Town Hall, a record of the occasion, the monogram of the Liberal
Association, and the borough arms. There is inscribed " Fresented to
the Bight Hon. John Bright, M.B., by the Birmingham Liberal
Association, on the completion of his twenty-fifth year as Member for
the Borough. June, 1883."
" We who have heard him so often," said Mr. Dale, "can never forget the music of his
voice, the simphcity and noble strength of his English style, the admiration of scholars, and
inteUigible to the least cultivated of the people. We have laughed many a time at his humour,
which has exhilarated his friends, and has inflicted so often pleasant and wholesome torment upon
his political opponents. We have been charmed by the felicity of his iUustrations, drawn some
times from the most famous of English poets, and sometimes from the most obscure, but by
preference from those ancient and venerable Scriptures whieh are dearer than all other books
besides to the hearts of the English people. Again and again we have felt the force of his
massive common sense, we have been moved to tears by his pathos, and we have been kindled to
passion by his glorious declamation. But, sir, the hearts of a great population are not to be won
by eloquence alone, no matter how splendid, and still less can eloquence hold fast their loyalty
through aU the vicissitudes of five-and-twenty years. We are here to acknowledge that Mr.
Bright has rendered immense and incontestible services to ourselves and to the whole country.
These services it is not for me to attempt to recite to-night. For nearly forty years, largely as
the result of his labours, bread has beeu more plentiful in the homes of the poor aU England

AN HONOURED MAN. 287
over. (Cheers.) Since the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 we have never known the miseries
of famine. (Applause.) If our harvests have failed, we have been fed with the harvests of all
the world. (Cheers.) These services alone would have been sufficient to secure for Mr. Bright
lasting gratitude and renown. But in addition to this he, beyond aU other men who took part
in the great struggle for reform, achieved the political emancipation of thousands of Englishmen
in aU our great towns. (Applause.) But, sir, I venture to say that the affection and the
veneration which Mr. Bright has inspired are not fully explained either by his eloquence or by
the magnificent services that he has rendered to the country. The man is greater than his elo
quence ; the man is nobler than his services. (Loud cheers.) We forget the genius of the orator
and the poUtical achievements of the statesman in our admiration for himself. (Applause.) And
the reason of this is plain : in the heart of every one of us there is an invincible conviction that
the true nobUity and glory of human life come from courageous fideUty to duty, and in circum
stances of great peril Mr. Bright has always been loyal to his conscience. Slander never
turned him aside— (hear, hear)— from what he believed to be the path of righteousness, nor
mockery, nor insult, nor hatred. He never quaded before the power of the great, and when for a
time fidelity to conseience brought upon him storms of impopidarity, and he lost the confidence
of the people he loved and served, Mr. Bright remained faithful still. (Cheers, renewed again
and again.) I beUeve that he has elevated the national idea of political morality— (hear, hear)
—and the value of that service cannot, be measured. His incorruptible integrity is the chief
secret of the confidence and enthusiastic loyalty with which we have come to regard him.
(Cheers.) To a man like Mr. Bright, with powers so great, with an influence in this nation so
immense, the review of his pubhc Ufe to which he is called to-night must have a certain
solemnity in it. We hope indeed that for a long while to eome— (hear, hear) — his integrity, his
sagacity, his knowledge of public affairs will continue to guide and to strengthen the great
Liberal party. (Cheers.) But we are reminded, by the grey hairs on his head, which to him,
being found in the way of righteousness, are a crown of honour— (loud and prolonged cheering)
— we are reminded, I say, that he has reached the age when the limits of this mortal life begin
to melt into a wider horizon. He must sometimes anticipate the judgment of posterity on his
pubUc services, and sometimes he must anticipate a judgment still more awful and august. But
for ourselves we are here to say that, in our judgment, he has discharged his great trust with «,
noble courage, and with a stainless honesty — (loud cheers) — and has served us and the nation
weU. (Loud cheering.) And now, Mr. Bright, it is my great honour, on behalf of the Liberal
party in Birmingham, to offer to you the gifts on the table before me, and the portrait of yourself
now hanging on the walls of the Royal Academy. We ask you to accept these gifts as expres
sions of our affection, of our confidence, of our veneration. We ask you to accept them as lasting
memorials of the pride and the gratitude with which we look back upon the five-and-twenty years
during which you have represented us in the House of Commons. (Cheers.) We trust that
these gifts wiU remind your children and your children's chUdren of the high place you
held in the hearts of your fellow-countrymen. (Hear, hear.) The grateful blessings of the poor
were yours, for you have lessened their miseries. (Cheers.) The confidence of the great mass
of your fellow-countrymen is yours, for you have redressed their political wrongs. (Cheers.)
Tou have won the respect of the most worthy of your opponents, and you have won the enthusiastic
devotion of your friends. In every land where the English tongue is spoken you are honoured
as the foremost champion in these times of truth, of freedom, of justice, and of peace. (Hear,
hear, and cheers.) These, sir, are glories which surpass the most splendid rewards of mere
personal ambition. They ' Make the pageantries of kings like shadows seem
An unsubtantial dream.' "
(Loud cheers.)

288 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
One hundred and fifty addresses were next presented to Mr. Bright ;
they were brought by an army of delegates, who felt it an honour to
be the bearers of such appreciative testimony from their respective
towns. The National Liberal Club sent one, and it was signed by Mr.
Gladstone. " On behalf of the National Liberal Club, now numbering 4,000 members of the Liberal
party, drawn from every part of the United Kingdom, we, its General Committee, beg to
offer you, on this great celebration of your twenty-five years' political connection with Bir
mingham, its most cordial congratulations ; and the expression of its hope that your life may stiU
be spared for many years to give to your coimtry the benefit of your mature wisdom and of your
noble example as an enlightened, earnest patriot and statesman. We regard the event of
to-day as a national event, over which the heart of the EngUsh people rejoices. Since the time,
now nearly fifty years ago, when, with your iUustrious friend Richard Cobden, you engaged in
the fight for Free Trade — for cheap bread for the people — your name has remained a loved and
honoured household word wherever the English tongue is spoken. It, has been identified with
every good cause since you first passed the threshold of your home to wage war against unjust
pririleges, bad laws, and reactionary movements. Since the days of your youth, when you
returned from a tour in the Holy Land, and gave your neighbours a modest series of lectures on
your experiences and observations, you have learned to hold a senate speUbound by your eloquence,
and you have never used that matchless power save in furtherance of reforms having for their
object the good of aU mankind. Tour career, sir, is familiar to all classes of Englishmen, so
that to recount its varied achievements would be to tell a well-known story. It runs like a silver
thread through the pages of contemporary history. We are proud to number you in the list of the
Vice-Presidents of the National Liberal Club ; for no name can be more honoured than yours is,
and must ever be, under our roof, as one whose public career has been marked by unbroken con
scientious consistency, and adorned by a rare gift of eloquence drawn from the pure well of
English undefiled. Again, sir, we tender you our hearty congratulations and our sincere and
cordial wishes."
The one presented by the National Beform Union, Manchester,
related that : —
" There are amongst us, sir, men who have been active members for the Union since it was
founded in 1864 by jour friend and colleague iu the Anti-Corn-Law League, Mr. George Wilson ;
and they remember well the leading part you took in the first great agitation which the Union
was caUed upon to promote, that, viz., for securing a wider and more equitable distribution of
political power. Some there are also — but, alas ! now few in number — who worked under the
jeadership of yourself, Mr. Cobden, and Mr. WUson, in that earlier struggle for Free Trade;
while others of us only began to take an active part in poUtics after you had reached and passed
the meridian of your life. But to all of us alike — whether we have grown old with you, and
have thus had the advantage of marching by your side along the path of progress, or whether
we have only been able to foUow in your footsteps — your Ufe has been an ensample, your career
an encouragement, your name a stronghold of political faith. There have been times when the
great party to which we aU belong has been in danger of losing sight of the end and aim of its
existence. Then your singleness of purpose shone forth like a beacon to keep us in the right
course. When the principles which we all profess have been temporarUy obscured by the passion
of party or by consideration of so-caUed national expediency, your fidelity to principle has raised

THE ADDRESSES 289
us above the influences of the moment. If we have ever felt uncertain and doubtful as to a par
ticular course of poUtical action, our confidence has been restored, or our doubt made certainty,
by the attitude you have assumed— so strong has been our faith in your political sagacity and in
the purity of your motives. It woidd be vain to attempt to enumerate all the great and beneficial
movements which yon have led or taken a leading part in promoting. With your name will
ever be associated the acquisition by your fellow-countrymen of the blessings of Free Trade', a free
press, and an extended franchise. Tour voice was raised to plead for justice to Ireland, when
few were found to hear your pleas, and fewer stiU to dare to echo them. The cause of liberty
has ever found in you a ready and an uncompromising champion ; and you have often striven,
with a courage greater than that of the soldier, to stem the tide of war, even when it flowed
with the full passion of a nation. Secure of popularity alike by the services you have rendered
to the people and by the gift of marvellous eloquence with which God has endowed you, the
breath of popular favour has never swayed your course, the influence of popular prejudice has
never shaken your resolution. Basing your own conduct in public as well as in private life on
the firm and immutable foundations of morality, you have consistently endeavoured to shape
England's policy and secure her weUbeing by a strict appUcation of the same principles to her
national Ufe. . . . There lie before us in the immediate future political problems of great
difficulty and vast importance; and, although you have grown grey in your country's service,
and have already passed the threescore years and ten to which the span of human Ufe is generally
restricted, yet we would fain hope that you may be spared to guide us through them, and to see
the fulfilment of aspirations which you have done so much to create, and which so largely depend
on you for their achievement."
The other addresses were presented by delegates from Manchester,
Salford, Bochdale, Durham, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Bradford, Oldham,
Bolton, Blackburn, Birkenhead, Halifax, Stockport, York, HuU, Bury,
Warrington, Ashton-under-Lyne, Scarborough, Wakefield, Bootle, Bacup,
Stalybridge, Duckinfield, Crewe, Doncaster, Llandudno, Greenock, Helens
burgh, Hawick, Jedburgh, Wigan, Todmorden, Accrington, Barrow-in-
Furness, Carnarvonshire, Dumfries, Chester, Londonderry, Coleraine,
Armagh, and many other towns. The addresses, as they were received
from the delegates, were placed on a table, where they grew to an
enormous pile, and showed how their recipient had not lived in vain,
and how universally he was respected.
When Mr. Bright rose to speak, the vast audience, rising with him,
cheered joyfully. He was deeply affected by the warmth of the reception,
and this unmistakable evidence of public gratitude, which " beamed forth
to gUd the evening of his day." When the cheering died away,
and the Usteners subsided into an attitude of hushed expecta
tion, he began in a clear, strong, musical voice. His humour was
readily appreciated, and seemed to be much enjoyed by his hearers.
68

290 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
He referred to the freedom of industry, to the obnoxious Corn Laws,
pointing out — "That meat was made for mouths — that God sent not
Corn for the rich men only.'
He next alluded to the improvement which has taken place in the con
dition of the agricultural labourer and the mechanic, to the cheapening
of the necessaries of life, to the spread of education, and to many other
advantages. In his telling manner he claimed these improvements to
have come to the working classes mainly through the action of the vast
changes which took place when the portals of industry were thrown open,
and all the world was invited to supply our markets. He spent more
than haU an hour in this interesting review of legislation attempted
and progress achieved, warming into fine eloquence as he spoke of
the United States, the heralded settlement of the struggle between a
protective tariff and a revenue tariff, the abolition of slavery, and the
future tbat lies before the great Bepublic when she shall have established
a perfect system of free industry.
" Perhaps, though I am speaking to this vast assembly of my own countrymen," said Mr.
Bright, " I may be permitted to address a word to the working artisan class of the United
States of America. (Hear, hear.) I am not an enemy of the United States. (Renewed
cheers.) I have fought her battle in this country — (cheers) — when, for a time I was not sure
that the contest would not go against us. (Hear, hear.) I have as much sympathy with the
United States now as I had then ; and as much, I think, almost as if I had been born upon her
sod. (Cheers.) Well, I wUl say this to the working men and artisans of the United States,
that centuries of legislation in this country — preceding centuries — have not done so much, have
not conferred so great benefits upon the labour of England as have been conferred by the great
Minister of forty years ago, Sir Robert Peel — (cheers) — and by Mr. Gladstone, the great
Minister of to-day. (Loud cheers.) WUl you permit me to dwell for a sentence or two upon the
question as it affects the United States, in which we, and they, and aU the world are greatly
interested ? I believe that the question in the United States as between a high protective tariff
and a merely revenue tariff is nearing its solution. (Hear, hear.) Opinion is growing — facts,
economic facts, which are irresistible, are coming to the front, and are offering themselves to
the consideration of statesmen there, and of every inteUigent man in that great Republic. There
is an extraordinary condition of things there, which no other country in any age of the world has
ever experienced or even dreamt of. There is an actual surplus revenue of thirty mUlions
sterling. Why, our ChanceUor of the Exchequer potters about with » mUlion or two miUions.
(Laughter.) He puts a penny on the income-tax one day, and another day takes it off again ; one
day he proposes to give a quarter of a million to the country gentlemen to help them to repair
their roads, and then finds he cannot get the money and does not do it. (Laughter.) The
ChanceUor of the Exchequer of the United States, monarch, apparently, of aU he surveys, deals

THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 291
with a lump sum, the magnitude of which you cannot measure and cannot conceive, but a lump
sum of thirty miUions sterling. Now, this thirty millions is fatal to the high Protection party.
The Government does not know very well what to do with it. It must either throw it away or
spend it in something foolish and unnecessary, or else it must refuse to receive it — by reducing
the duties. And there are other matters, which I need not go into, connected with their system
of bonds, and with their banks, which I wiU not attempt to explain ; but I think this is very
certain, that next year — although this year they have made a little alteration in their tariff— next
year the difficulty wUl be greater, and in two years there wiU be an election of President of the
great RepubUc. When that contest comes there must be some question to divide parties. They
could hardly fight if there was no question. (Laughter.) And now the great question of
slavery has been settled for ever. (Applause.) It has been written for ever in the blood of
hundreds of thousands of men that slavery shall never again exist upon that continent. (Cheers.)
Aud tho negroes in the South, who, they said, would die off if they were free — they are more
numerous than ever — (laughter) — and being the only people in the South who did. work before
the war, they work now better than ever, because they receive the reward, the honest reward, of
their labour. (Hear, hear.) Now, when that question comes te be discussed in the great forum
of a nation of fifty mUlions of people, what must be the result ? A very intelligent member of
ParUament told me two or three years ago — I am not sure that I ever quoted his opinion before,
but it is worth hearing, I think — he said that his Liberal opinions had been greatly strengthened
by what he observed in the United States. (Hear, hear.) He said, ' If you note what they do —
a great many of them talk wUdly and fooUshly, but,' he said, ' they always act very wisely.'
(Laughter and applause.) WeU, two years hence I believe that there will be a good deal of talk,
and, perhaps, a good deal of it wUd and foolish; but when that great people are brought to the
issue whether, having struck off the chain from the negro, they are to leave the fetters of pro
tection upon the industry of their countrymen, I beUeve they will do before long what we have
done — (cheers)— and they wUl declare it to be the inalienable right of every American, as it is
the inalienable right of every EngUshman, to spend his money in the cheapest market in the
world. (Loud cheers.) Now, Mr. Dixon and my friends, if you will allow me, I think I am
going rather to transgress what I mentioned at first. (Cries of ' No,' and ' Go on.') I am very
much tempted — not to satisfy the critics of whom I have spoken — (laughter)— but to satisfy my
mind in the train of argument into which I have been led— I feel almost disposed to enter for a
moment upon the region of prophecy. (Laughter.) To me— perhaps I am sanguine, perhaps
more ignorant than I deem niyself — there opens before me a grand vision of the future. England
and her colonies and dependencies at this moment have a population of fifty millions of persons.
I won't go over the colonies where they are dwelling ; but you know that there are, I suppose,
five or six and thirty millions in this country ; the United States by the last census had also
fifty miUions, they are supposed now to have fifty-five miUions, and good judges say that by the
end of the century, that by the time when a man of fifty in this audience reaches my age, the
United States wiU possess a population of 100,000,000 ; India— a dependency of this country
governed by our Government— India possessed 250,000,000 of souls— India is a Free Trade
country — (hear) — with only one exception its ports are open to aU produce from aU parts of the
world. Now, what I want to suggest to you is this— that if it should come, as I believe it will
come, that the United States wUl go down to a sensible revenue tariff, whatever that may he —
I don't point the sum or the amount, but I mean a tariff which wiU permit large freedom of
trade with aU the nations of the world— then, if England, with our 50,000,000, and if America
with her 50,000,000, growing rapidly to 100,000,000— if they take this course, what wiU be the
effect upon other nations of the globe ? What do Protectionists say now ? They say, ' It is all
very weU to teU us that England is in favour of Free Trade. Look at America. There is a
popular Government, a Republic, every man voting — (hear, hear.) — and there they have a system

292 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
of Protection most strenuous and most severe ' ; and therefore they say we, at any rate, may not
be set down as fools and ignorant if we have Protection here and f oUow the example of the free
Government and the free people of North America. But, if the United States should make the
change which I believe is impending, then the United States and England, with their hundred
miUions and more— they wUl be an argument of a different kind and of a different force to the
nations of Europe. The Free Traders of every country will say, ' Why, the people in England,
living under an ancient monarchy, are prospering with Free Trade, and the people of the
United States, living under the flag of the Republic, have foUowed the example of England,'
and they will say, ' We are trying to f oUow these countries in poUtical freedom ; why should we
not f oUow them in the not less magnificent and beneficent path of a perfect freedom of industry P '
(Loud cheers.) Now, one word to which this argument or picture leads me. May I ask you
what, at this moment, are the two great curses of Europe ? The one is the system of high
tariffs, the war of tariffs; and the other is the war of arms, of armies. (Cheers.) The one
is burdensome ; in fact, both are burdensome at all times ; the war of armies at times more than
burdensome, if employed in destruction and slaughter. If you were to destroy the tariffs of
Europe, you would destroy the pretence for the maintenance of the great armies of Europe.
(Hear, hear.) But, as I discuss it and consider it, the vision seems to grow upon me. Nations
would become one in interest, their very jealousies would vanish as their ignorance of each other
would vanish. If France and Germany in the year 1870— France and Prussia — if they had no
tariffs, if their people were trading from day to day between the two countries as the French
traded between the departments of France, and as we trade with Scotland, do you think it
would have been possible to have brought these two great nations into a sanguinary war upon
this stupid and foolish question, What prince in Europe shall be invited to occupy the throne
of Spain ? — (laughter) — a question in which neither Prussia nor France, in my opinion, had the
smallest possible interest ; and if thirty years ago Russia had had no tariff more than we had —
if aU the productions of England and her manufactures could have gone as freely to Russia as
the produce of Russia came freely to England, do you suppose it would have been possible in
our manufacturing population to have excited the frenzy and the ferocity which were displayed
during the continuance of that deplorable struggle ? The fact is, neither emperors, nor kings,
nor statesmen, nor the public press wUl be able to bring nations into war when those nations are
united in their interest by perfect freedom of interests between them. (Loud applause.) And
then the pretence for armies will be gone — I don't mean the pretence for armies which may be
necessary for internal peace in some cases, as in some degree a pohce force — but those vast
armies of Europe, now four miUions of men — four miUions of men, I wdl not say eating their
own heads off, but eating other people's heads off — (laughter) — living on the industry of others,
when they might be living honestly and happily at home upon their own industry. (Applause.)
But when this shaU come — and I think it wiU come — in that time the taxes upon aU these
peoples will be greatly lessened; their comfort will be increased; education, you may rely upon
it, wiU be more general; and the barbarity and the cruelty which distinguish Governments and
people too much wUl be discouraged and denounced. In fact, if one may aUow one's imagination
a little play, I should say that we should have not a new heaven, but we should have a new
earth. It would not be geographicaUy greater than it is at present, but it would be greater in
wealth, in comfort, and in human happiness. Forgive me if I dream; it may be so, but I wid
believe in a better time ; if Christianity be not a fable, as I beUeve and you beUeve that it is not,
then that better time must come. (Applause.)

' Earth's kindreds shall not always sleep,
The nations shall not always weep.' "

(Loud and continued cheering.)

EARL GRANVILLE AND MR. BRIGHT. 293
Mr. Chamberlain, the Bresident of the Board of Trade, also addressed
the meeting, and the gathering soon after dispersed.
On Thursday evening Mr. Bright was entertained by the members of
the Birmingham Liberal Association at a banquet at the Town Hall.
The Mayor presided over the large gathering. Earl Granville, one of Mr.
Bright's few political contemporaries, for they entered public life at the
same time, and they have been in substantial agreement on a great variety
of public questions, in proposing the health of Mr. Bright, observed : —
" Now, I was not so intimately acquainted with Mr. Bright until he became an official
coUeague of mine. I have now had a very long acquaintance with him. I have very often
conversed on some serious subjects with him, and I have more constantly been the victim the
willing victim — of his cheery and racy chaff — (laughter) — but I never attempted repartee, and,
indeed, it is not an easy thing to give a repartee to Mr. Bright. I never heard Mr. Bright beaten
in repartee except by one person, and that was a bishop. (Renewed laughter.) Now, as regards
Mr. Bright's entrance into official life, I remember in 1853, when Lord Aberdeen did me the
honour of asking me to join his Administration, and told me the composition of his future
Cabinet, that I ventured to say to him : ' If you intend to make your Cabinet so comprehensive,
why don't yon make an attempt to obtain the services of Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright ? ' (Cheers.)
Lord Aberdeen said that that was his personal wish, and I am not surprised at it, because nobody
appreciated Mr. Bright more than that great statesman did. Lord Aberdeen said he should
have liked it himself, but he feared it would alarm public opmion. (Laughter.) Now, this
answer of Lord -Aberdeen has recurred to me each time that Mr. Bright has entered, or rather
has been pressed to enter, the Cabinet on three different occasions. It appeared to me that,
instead of exciting alarm, Mr. Bright's entry into oflicial life was a matter of satisfaction to many
millions of his countrymen. (Cheers.) In the same way, when Mr. Bright retired three time:
—once on account of bad health, secondly on account of our disastrous electoral defeats, and
thirdly, I regret to say, in consequence of conscientious differences upon one subject, and one
subject alone, with his colleagues, he retired with the goodwiU of aU; and I must say, when I
just aUude to what I thought an act very graceful and in excellent taste, Lord Salisbury, who we
know has no exaggerated prejudices in favour of the Liberal party— (laughter)— paid as graceful
and as true a comphment to Mr. Bright as has ready been paid in Birmingham during the
present week. (Cheers.) This is the place and the time for giving a magnificent reception to
Mr. Bright. Between forty and fifty years ago Mr. Bright wooed and obtained the love of a
stately dame, then of a high name and of great wealth and great power. Of course it is true to
say that that love on her part continues to this very day, but in one moment of fickleness, not
peculiar, I am afraid, to her sex— (laughter)— on a difference of a character which may happen in
the best regulated families— (renewed laughter)— that stately dame rejected Mr. Bright ; and tins
great metropolis of the Midland Counties resolved to take Mr. Bright as her own. (Loud cheers.)
I read the other day a quotation from a great German poet, in which he said that the celebration
of a marriage was a thing of bad odour. (Laughter.) Now, I trust that the great majority here
present have learnt like myself that this is a poetical delusion. (Cheers and laughter.) But be
that as it may, it does not apply to the thing that has been going on this week. (Cheers.) Mr.
Bright, at the time I have alluded to, had incurred some unpopularity from his fearlessness and
conscientious adherence to what he thought right. As regarded his intellectual and physical

294 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
strength, there was at that time some doubt as to whether it could be maintained. Mr. Bright
had not even strength enough to woo in person the new love. Birmingham, the great metropolis
of the Midland Counties, rich in her diversified industries, in her institutions, in her public
buildings, in her libraries, her great schools, in her enlightened and full municipal life, in the
excellence and ability of her press, with her leading men noted for their public spirit, and the
inhabitants generally for their bold and fearless intelligence-Birmingham has decided to cele
brate this silver wedding. That event had every element of a love match. It also had the
character of a marriage, for the highest reason. I have heard it said that Mr. Bright has returned
his love to Birmingham. So far it is not quite the love described by Shakespeare in " King
Lear " :— ' A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable.
It has not had that effect on Mr. Bright, who remains one of the greatest orators ever found on
an English platform or perfected in an EngUsh Parliament. Mr. Bright is a master of his own
mother tongue— (hear, hear)— he has knowledge ; he has power of reason, of pathos, of humour ;
he has a manner which charms in public as it does in social life ; he has a voice which attracts
and which dominates. I cannot help thinking that Mr. Bright may wish to make use of some of
those qualifications this evening; that he may wish to express to the thousands before me, as he
did to the tens of thousands yesterday, the value he attaches to this extraordinary and unprecedented
reception, which is given as an acknowledgment of the great services which he has rendered te
his sovereign, to whom his chivalrous loyalty has always been of the warmest and most sincere
kind, to his constituency, and his country." (Loud cheers.)
Mr. Bright, in reply, travelled in some places out of the lines to
which he had been confining himself, and gave something more than a
retrospect of the past.
"I suppose that I may fairly presume that my friends in Birmingham, and others
from a distance, who have been at these meetings, are hi the main persuaded that
I have been actuated in my public life by an honest desire in aU cases to support what I
believe to be right— (cheers)— and also, perhaps, they give me credit for a not unintelligent
apprehension of the public questions with which I have meddled. (Hear, hear.) And yet, not
withstanding this, as I look back on several matters in which I have been right— I am some
times struck with the strange fact that at every step there has been great opposition on the part
of powerful individuals and powerful interests. During the whole of the forty years that I have
been in public life and in parUamentary Ufe, a large majority of that House to which Lord Gran
vUle belongs have been hostile to the views which I have entertained, and on not a few occasions
a majority of the House of Commons has also differed from me. And, more than that, I suppose
if I were to canvass the mUitary classes — (laughter) — the clerical classes — (laughter) — the oflicial
classes, and the professional classes, I am not quite sure whether in any one of these could have
been found generaUy a majority to support the views which I had taken upon me the liberty of
expounding to my feUow-countrymen. (Hear, hear.) I ask myself why there should be this
great difference of opinion. I may have had different opportunities and a different way of working
out public questions, and I believe that was really the fact. I have never been influenced in any
considerable question by the views of the Prime Minister of the day — (hear, hear) — or by the
views of the distinguished leaders of her Majesty's Opposition. (Renewed laughter.) I have
thought that political questions generaUy are not of that obtuse character that a sensible and
moderately weU-informed man could not of himself come to a conclusion as to the right or wrong

RECENT LEGISLATION. 295
of them. (Cheers.) . . . Now, fifty years ago it was my duty and practice from week to
week to pay wages to a large number, many scores, perhaps two or three hundred, handloom-
weavers, and those persons Uved in the villages in the neighbourhood where I lived. They
brought their work in once a week, and after it was examined they were paid for it. The pay
ment was not lai'ge, the labour was continuous, and I had great sympathy for persons to whom, if
it had been possible, I should have been glad to have paid a higher rate of wages. But then,
when a weaver had taken home his money to his wife and children, who during the next week were
to live upon his wages, I found out — it was not difficult to find it out — that he was not aUowed to
buy the articles required for his sustenance in the cheapest market. It was perfectly weU known
that the farmer in the United States wid give the weaver twice as much bread for his wages as
the farmer in Lincolnshire ; but it was then said, ' the weaver must not go to the United States
for his bread, but to the farmer iu Lincolnshire.' That was done under the pretence that the
farmers were to be protected, and that the labourers were to be better off ; and this poor weaver
at his work week after week, year after year, was compeUed to expend the small wages he re
ceived, not in the markets of the world, as he ought to have done, but in this bread market, which
the laws of our coimtry had fenced round, and in which alone he was obliged to go to expend the
earnings of the week. Now, I thought this was a very strange law. Whatever it might do for
the landowner or farmer, it was only a law of direct and serious oppression to the weavers, with
whom I came in contact from week to week ; and I complained, and came to the conclusion that
in aU certainty it was a most unjust law. Having got my eyes a Uttle opened with regard to this
one question, they opened stUl more, as men's eyes do after they get to see a little light. They
opened more and more into the perfect day, and by-and-by we found that it was very wrong that
cattle should be kept out of the country, and that sugar should only come to us from the West
Indies and from Cuba and BrazU except at a rate of duty which practicaUy excluded it. But
thenijb.ere was the question of timber, on which there was also a protective duty, and there was the
protection upon ships. One after another of these things were found out to be unjust and evil,
and under the pressure of public necessity and public opinion all these things have been entirely
redressed. (Cheers.) Then take the question of Irish land, which I have spoken of. We pro
posed to make the tenants wherever we could proprietors. What has taken place in that matter ?
At the end of last year the House of Lords' Committee on the Irish Land Act issued a report, in
which they proposed the most extraordinary change of poUcy that, I think, has ever been sub
mitted to a free Legislature in any country. And now during the last week — is it during last
week or this week ? — during this week Lord George Hamilton brought forward a proposition that
the Land BiU should be revised, and showed a great scheme which in part was taken from a pro
position I had made a long time ago, but going far beyond what I then proposed and far beyond
what I think now to be necessary. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) Is it not fair for me to say of this
great party, which is an educated party — (laughter) — they are all in the House of Lords, and go
to the University, and, in fact, the bulk of them have nothing else to do but to improve their
minds — (laughter) — is it not fair to say that, after the question of the Corn Law, of household
suffrage, of the Irish land, after they have accepted in fuU the propositions which I tried to con
vince them were right so long ago, now, having accepted them, they ought to be a little modest
and a little moderate ? (' Oh ! ') But they are not so. (Laughter.) They are as positive and
self-righteous at this moment — (laughter) — as if they had never made a single mistake. (Renewed
laughter and cheers.) Lord GranvUle spoke of the difference between those who have been right
generally on these matters and those who have been wrong. The Liberals have a right to be
cheerful and happy. (Hear, hear.) They have at least had abundant compensation for the
labours that they have bestowed on behalf of the public. Our opponents, on the contrary, should
be dismal — (laughter) — and I suppose reaUy if they are in earnest they are dismal. (Laughter.)
To my certain knowledge, if their words are to he believed, ever since I have been acquainted with

296 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
them they have seen the country descending, more or less rapidly, but always descending, to an
abyss of despair and horror. (Laughter.) Now, the House of Commons at this moment— and
it is the last point to whieh I wiU make reference— the House of Commons, in a portion of its
members, seems to me to be abandoning the character and the conduct of gentlemen as heretofore
seen in that assembly. (Loud cheers.) The party of which I have spoken, in not a few of its
members, appears willing to repudiate the authority of a majority of the constituencies. They
know that the majority believes as the constituencies believe, and wishes to do for the constitu
encies what the constituencies demand, but they are determined, if it be possible, that the
majority of the constituencies should fad in their efforts. (Hear, hear.) And, what is worse, at
this moment, as you see — you do not so much see it here as it is seen in the House — they are
found in aUiance with an Irish rebel party— (loud and long-continued cheers)— the main portion
of whose funds, for the purposes of agitation, come directly from the avowed enemies of England
— (renewed cheers) — and whose oath of allegiance is broken by association with its enemies.
tCries of ' Shame ! ) Now, these are the men of whom I spoke, who are disregarding tho wishes
of the majority of the constituencies, and who, as far as possible, make it impossible to do any
work for the country by debates and divisions in the House of Commons. (Cheers.) I hope that
the constituencies wiU mark some of the men of this party — (cheers)— and that they wiU not
permit Parliament to be dishonoured and Government enfeebled by members who claim to be, but
are not, Conservative and constitutional. (Cheers.) Our freedom is no longer subverted or
threatened by the Crown or by a privileged aristocracy. Is the time come — I quote the words
from history— is the time come to which the ancestor of Lord Salisbury referred three hundred
years ago when he said that ' England could only be ruined by Parliament P ' The great
constituencies must look to this. (Hear, hear.) The baUot has given all electors freedom. On
them the country must rely for the preservation of the honour and the free working of the House
of Commons. (Cheers.) The reform must come, and cannot long be delayed. It must suppress
the power and close the era of the men who now afflict the House, and from night to night insult
the majesty of the British people." (Loud cheers.)

On Friday morning the Mayor entertained Mr. Bright, and about 150
gentlemen who had been attending the celebration during the week, to
breakfast in the Council House. In reply to the address of welcome,
Mr. Bright spoke of the necessity which existed for us to inquire
what our duty was with regard to other nations. He referred to
two questions that at present lay between us and France and
deserved most careful attention. The first was the question of a
new Suez Canal, which had been rendered necessary by the ever-in
creasing traffic passing through the present water-way. He did not
doubt that Lord Granville would endeavour to do all that was judicious,
and would not be led away by speculators ; for great national interests
were at stake, and also the concord of two nations. The next question
was the Channel Tunnel. He ridiculed the fears of the military authori
ties, and said his impression was that the tunnel would be of enormous

UNVEILING MR. WRIGHT'S STATUE. 297
value to this country and to France. Every man, woman, and child had
an interest in the tunnel being made, and he hoped that the extraordinary
suggestions of alarm which had been offered would be utterly disregarded
and repudiated by common sense. He concluded by saying : —
"I do implore you — I don't ask you to adopt what may be called extraordinary and abstract
opinions on the question of war — I ask you to agree with Lord Derby — who made an observation
before he left the previous Government which ought never to be forgotten, that the greatest in
terest of England is peace. (Cheers.) If it had not been for the wars of our predecessors, or
the wars within two centuries of our time, it is impossible to say — if the efforts of our statesmen
had been directed to an improvement of the internal condition of our country — it is impossible to
say how great would have been the difference in the present position of the mUlions of the
labouring classes amongst us. It is for them I care most. They toil and they sweat ; they work
from early mom tiU eventime. Their reward — as far as our expenditure is compared with their
reward — is generaUy but smaU, because, although they have not many of them the same power of
impressing upon the Government their views that we have, I say, looking at their condition, we
are bound hy all that is sacred, if possible, to bring together the nations of Europe and the nations
of the North American continent into a firm, constant, enduring, and blessed aUiance with the
people of our country ; and it is for the sake of this that I have made these observations, and I
trust that aU that has been said here to-day, and what may be said on other occasions, and felt
and partly expressed, may not be without some result upon the pubUc opinion of the country.
(Cheers.) For your address, Mr. Mayor, I have only to thank you. I have exhausted in the course
of the week the language of what I may call gratitude and thanksgiving, and I have no more
words to use than those that I have already employed. I have had a reception here in Birming
ham such as I could not have possibly contemplated, such as perhaps no other man has had at any
time. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) I am humihated when I think how much you have overrated
anything that I have done. (' No, no.') I plead only that I have been, as far as I know, honest
in the pursuit of public objects — (hear, hear) — without ambition for preferment ; and if I have
been compeUed to separate myself from coUeagues for whom I have the greatest respect, you may
be quite sure it has been done only because I believed my duty to you and the public, and, what is
stUl higher, my duty to my conscience, made it necessary that I should leave an official position — -
aye, in a country Uke this, with dignity and emoluments connected with it ; but dignity and emolu
ments, and aU that office can give, are valueless unless they are accompanied by the belief that
they are held in consistency with one's duty, and with the honest endeavour to serve the people,
who have given me and shown me so much of their trust." (Loud and continued cheering.)

Mr. Bright, accompanied by the Mayor and other gentlemen, pro
ceeded to the space in front of the Town Hall, and performed the cere
mony of unveiUng the marble statue of the late Mr. J. S. Wright, who
up to the time of his death had represented the town of Nottingham in
Barliament. The statue had been erected, by public subscription. Mr.
Bright afterwards proceeded to the Town HaU, which was crowded by an
enthusiastic audience, and he thus spoke to them : —

298 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
" Mr. Mayor, — We are met on an occasion more than usuaUy interesting. At the same time I
feel it to be one which throws over my mind, and I hope over yours, a feeUng somewhat of sad
ness and of solemnity. We are met for the purpose of permitting some one — and the charge has
been committed to me— to present to the Corporation the statue of one of your lost citizens— one
who has left an abiding and fragrant memory in the minds of the population of this great town.
By the hand of death Mr. Wright was prevented from entering that field of labour to which, I
dare say, he had looked forward for some time, and in which he hoped to be of increasing service to
his country. (Cheers.) But it is a mistake to suppose that what is caUed statesmanship is the
only sphere in which men can do great service. It is a mistake to suppose that on the floor of
Parliament greater service can always be rendered than can be given in a man's native town.
There is a path of usefulness of a very high character which is open to all our common citizenship ;
and in every town in this country I am happy to believe there is some man eminently so — many
men more or less so — whose great object it is in his daily work among- his feUows to promote, es
pecially to promote the intellectual advance and the good — every kind of good — amongst the
poorest classes of the community. (Cheers) . Now, Mr. Wright's conduct here is known far more
to you than it is known to me, but I know that from morning to night, and night after night,
there was scarcely any cessation of his labours for the good of others. (Cheers.) The statue
which has been erected, and which I have just been permitted to unveil, is not required to tell you
what he was, and whom it represents. (Hear, hear.) Tou know it well enough. Even in your
homes your children must have heard of it. The extraordinary exhibition of sympathy which was
manifested on the day of his funeral is a proof of the position which he held in the feeUngs and
the hearts of his townsmen. (Cheers.) I recollect that Benjamin Franklin, of whom most of you
must have heard, said (in some letter, I think) that one of the things which had influenced him in
his life, having read it when he was young, was an extract from a little book called ' Essays on
Doing Good,' by a then and aforetime very celebrated New England clergyman. This New
England clergyman said, ' I have always set a greater value on the character of a doer of good
than on any other kind of reputation.' Franklin said that passage made a great impression on
his mind ; and during his life, if he had sought for any reputation, it was that to which these
lines referred — namely, the reputation of a doer of good. And I believe that it would not be an
improper passage to have inscribed upon the monument of our friend, or to remain in our minds
as associated with him, that Mr. Wright was emphaticaUy in his day, with his powers, under his
circumstances, a doer of good. (Cheers.) One of our poets has said — and with these Unes I shall
about terminate what it is my duty to say —
' The spirit walks of every day deceased,
And smiles an angel, or a fury frowns.'
If that h? true what I am saying about Mr. Wright — if that to which you give your sanction is
a correct description of his life and character — then I say that to him an angel must smile, and the
frowns of the fury are absent; and I cannot doubt that, suddenly as his life was closed — without
a shake of the hand, without a feeble murmur of farewell, without the faU of a tear, without even
the consciousness, probably, that he was passing from this scene of activity into another, a wider,
a more glorious scene — I think we may say, and say with confidence, that the angel smUe which
waited on his day's work here, then waited on, attended, sanctified, the Ufe's work in which he had
been engaged. (Applause.) I hope that to the young of this town the event of this day may
induce them to ask their parents,/ What is the meaning of that statue ? What did the man do
to whom that statue has been raised ? ' and you can tell them that he was a good citizen, that he
worked hard for good, that there are great numbers in this town who have owed their lifting up
to a better, a more intelligent, a more moral, a higher, and a nobler position to his exertions —
(hear, hear) — and telling this to your chUdren, it may be a stimulus to them. And I trust there

A BREACH OF PRIVILEGE. 299
may be for all future generations — when all that are here now may have passed away — there may
stUl remain men who are wiUing to do their duty in the sphere of their native town with the
laboriousness, the persistency, the self-devotion, the disinterestedness, the high and noble aspira
tions by which our friend John Skirrow Wright was actuated." (Cheers.)
Mr. Bright then formally presented the statue to the town, adding : —
" I trust it will be preserved for generations to come, to teach succeeding generations what
class of men it is that the people of Birmingham delight to honour." (Loud cheering.)
On the Saturday morning Mr. Bright was entertained to breakfast by
the committee of the Birmingham Junior Liberal Club, and in his speech
he gave an interesting sketch of his early connections with politics, and
the state of the country before the passing of the first Beform Bill. At
noon he left by train for Stratford- on- Avon, and was heartily cheered by
his friends who had assembled to witness his departure. The remainder
of Saturday and Sunday he spent at the residence of his son-in-law, Mr.
Curry, and on Monday morning he left for London, and was in the House
of Commons in the evening, to defend himself against a charge made by
Sir Stafford Northcote of breach of privilege : for he had, in one of his
speeches in Birmingham, accused the Conservative members with being in
aUiance with the " Irish rebel party," for the purpose of making it im
possible for the majority of the House of Commons to do any good work
for the country. The leader of the Conservatives had not been speaking
many minutes when it became clear that the charge was very weak. Mr.
Bright expressed himself not surprised that some of the passages in his
speeches should have caused what in ancient phraseology was said to be
" searching of hearts " among his opponents. He admitted that there
was a sense in which the word " alliance " might be offensive and inappli
cable, but he had not pointed to any compact. He maintained, however,
that the Conservatives and the followers of ~M r. Barnell did, as a rule,
practically act together in obstruction, and being asked to quote an
instance, he gave two — viz., the unduly protracted debate on the Affirma
tion BiU, and the waste of Government time by the appropriation of
Government nights, questions, and debates arising thereon. The motion
was defeated by a majority of thirty-four, and Mr. Bright's friends cheered
heartily.

300 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Near the close of the month of June, 1883, Mr. Bright was induced
by Dr. Campbell to visit the Boyal Normal College and Academy of
Music for the Blind, which is situated in Upper Norwood, London ; and
on the 18th of July, when distributing the prizes to the successful students
at their annual festival, which was presided over by the Duke of
Westminster, he related to the large audience that assembled what he had
witnessed. " Dr. CampbeU, I suppose, thought perhaps my sympathy might be excited by what I read in
his report, and so he told me he would permit me to come over to the CoUege and see what he had
to show his visitors ; so two or three weeks ago I came over, and, in company with an American
friend of mine, who was I think as pleased as I was, we saw students as you have seen them to
day. We saw them in their class rooms, some reading, some writing, some studying geography
on a raised map of Great Britain and Ireland, some engaged with plants aud leaves in the study
of botany, some modeUing in clay, some engaged in mathematics, some in mechanics, some in re
pairing some little damages to pianofortes and other musical instruments. In fact, it seems to me
that there was scarcely anything which we who can see can do that cannot be taught to those to whom
the light of the sun has been denied. We saw also the walking exercise that you have witnessed.
We saw four girls in a boat on this Uttle lake, and four boys in another boat. Each boat had a
man who could see that they did not run into one another or run ashore. I never saw any children, or
young persons, or grown-up persons who seemed more perfectly happy in the occupation in which they
were engaged than the boys and girls who were working their little boats round the island in the lake.
(Hear, hear.) Then we saw the gymnastics, as we have seen them to-day, and one only felt very
happy that there was no power which could compel us to attempt any of the extraordinary active
exercises those boys performed. (Laughter.) One thing that we observed that I think is very
striking was, that in the countenances of the blind as you see them here there is far less of that
gloom and melancholy which you see so often resting permanently on the countenances of the
blind. There was on their faces, in their actions, in every movement, every gesture, cheerfulness
and hope. (Cheers.) Having seen aU this, it was impossible for me to refuse the invitation which
Dr. CampbeU had given me, and so I am here. (Cheers.) We all know that if there be one feehng
that is more universal than any other, it is the feeling of sympathy for the blind. In our childhood
we were taught to ' pity the poor blind,' and the stories we read then and what we have seen
during our lifetime have created in our minds an intense and universal sympathy with all those who
are deprived of their sight. But there is one thing that is not general, not at aU universal, and
not even common, and that is the knowledge of what may be done with and for the blind. That
is the precise knowledge which we gather to-day from what we have seen and from what we know
of what is done here, and of the success of this noble institution. (Hear, hear.) The object of
this CoUege is to bring the universal sympathy into, if not universal, yet into general and extensive
action. If we look round and weigh the facts before us, I think we must aU admit how great and
how irresistible is the claim which this College, or any other institution like it, has upon aU those
who have money to spare and who have a heart to feel for that class of our race who are deprived
of the benefit of sight. Some may ask, what are the results P I have already stated that four-
fifths of the students, or eighty out of a hundred, who pass through the CoUege became able to
provide for themselves a Ufe of modest comfort and independence. There is a memorandum of
some of the results, although by no means aU of them. I am informed that at this moment there
are five blind young women teaching in London, who are earning from £70 to £80 a year each ;

THE ILBERT BILL. 301
that one is at Huddersfield acting successfully as a missionary ; that seven are in business in the
city of Glasgow (I presume they are young men) ; that one is in Paisley, one in Dundee, one in
Edinburgh, two in Liverpool, two in Manchester, two in Leeds, two in Bristol, one in Torquay,
one in Darlington, one in Sunderland, one in Belfast, and one in DubUn. Then we cross the ocean,
and we find there is one in Canada, one in Ceylon, one in Calcutta, aud two in Tasmania. (Cheers.)
AU these are employed in some occupation as pleasing, no doubt, to themselves as honourable and
requited labour is, and they are saved from the pain of being dependent upon the charity of
others, and of spending a life of hopeless absence of interest in aU public questions and in all social
life." (Cheers.)
On the 1st of August, 1883, a public meeting was held in Willis's
Booms, London, in favour of supporting Lord Bipon's policy in India,
more especially the Ilbert Criminal Jurisdiction Bill, which would give
power to three or four distinguished native judges, of long-proved
character and efficiency, to try criminal cases in which Englishmen might
be defendants in the provinces. There was a large attendance, and the
following gentlemen were on the platform : — Mr. W. E. Forster, M.B.,
Sir George CampbeU, M.B., Sir Arthur Hobhouse, Lord Stanley of
Alderley, Mr. Burt, M.B., Mr. Jesse CoUings, M.B., Mr. A. IUingworth,
M.B., Mr. T. B. Botter, M.B., Mr. Hugh Mason, M.B., Mr. A.
W Arthur, M.B., Mr. Arnold Morley, M.B., Mr. H. Bichard, M.B., Mr.
F. T. Mappin, M.B., Mr. J. B. Thomasson, M.B., Mr. Chas. Bussell,
M.B., Mr. Jacob Bright, M.B., Sir WUfrid Lawson, M.B., Mr. S. Buxton,
M.B., Mr. Cheetham, M.B., and Lai Mohun Ghose, of Calcutta.
Mr. Bright presided, and during a lengthy speech observed : —
" Now, I asked a question of a gentleman very intimately connected with affairs in India if he
could give me very briefly a little account of what this bill was to do, and I will try to convey to
you the ideas which he conveyed to me. He said he thought the result of it would be, if it passed
in its present shape, that it would admit three or four of the natives of India — lawyers, magistrates,
or judges — to the exercise of certain powers which now they do not possess ; that these three or
four were members of what is termed the Covenanted Civil Service; that they were Indian gentle
men, natives of India, who had come over to this country, who had been educated here, and, going
back to India, had entered the Covenanted Civil Service ; that with regard to these increased powers
with which they were to be entrusted, they were to occupy a certain rank ; that they could only
have these powers and these appointments after years of service ; and then, to be equal with
Englishmen, they must also be in the service of what is termed the same grade. Then, after all
this, they were to be admitted to have the same powers exercised with the same limitations which
are given to and operate upon Englishmen in the same position. Now, I must inform you that at
present in the three principal cities, the three presidential cities of India, in Calcutta, Madras, and
Bombay, the native judges have all the power which it is proposed by this bill to give to those few
judges who exercise their authority in the country apart from the three presidential cities. (Hear,
hear.) We have never heard that any great harm, or any harm, has arisen from the exercise of

302 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
these powers in these cities. But it must be borne in mind further that of aU the population of
India that are English subjects of the Queen, exclusive of the army, I suppose more than one-half,
I believe three-fourths, of them live in Calcutta and in Madras, and in Bombay— (hear, hear)—
and therefore this bill, which men are so alarmed about, wdl not have the sUghtest effect upon
three-fourths of the English population of India, exclusive of the army, but only upon one-fourth
who Uve in other cities and towns in country districts of the Indian empire. Well, now, that
appears to be a matter of great importance. It reduces the magnitude of the biU, and the effect
of it enables us to judge it, I think, with greater facility, and te measure the magnitude of the issue
which is placed before us. But what the opponents of the bill say is this : ' This is only a begin
ning.' Well, that is exactly what people said in this country, sixty years ago, when it was pro
posed to disfranchise places Uke Gatton and Old Sarum— (laughter and cheers) — and to enfranchise
Manchester and Leeds. ' It is only a beginning.' WeU, that is a very serious thing if it is the
beginning of evil ; but if it be the beginning of what is necessary and good, then it is no argument
against this bill. (Cheers.) They say that in future, although now there may be only three or four
that can be admitted to these increased powers, there will be more and more. Well, I hope that
is true. (Cheers.) But I regret to say that the increase must be very small for a long period, and
must come about by degrees. It makes us almost melancholy to think that such difficulties should
be interposed. Those gentlemen in future, in order to join the Covenanted CivU Service and come
into the position of these judges, must come over from India to this country ; they must be edu
cated here, they must go back, they must suffer aU the inconveniences of such a regidation, they
must be involved in all the expenditure which an EngUsh education, lasting through several years,
must necessarily throw upon any native of India who comes here. . . . Now, I must say that
whatever consideration and sympathy one can have with gentlemen who have been many years in
India, I think the clamour raised on this matter is very discreditable —discreditable, I think, to
their intelligence, and discreditable to their sympathies. (Cheers.) Its origin is to be found in
the strong feeUng of resistance prevailing among the Covenanted Civil Service. (A voice : ' That's
true.') I met with a gentleman the other day, of whom I have the highest opinion, a gentleman
liberally disposed on all Indian affairs, and he rather advanced that view to me. I am not pre
pared to deny it, but I must say when the 450 gentlemen who have aU been in the Queen's service,
when they say what the deputation said to Lord Kimberley, I am inclined to think that my friend,
who has been and is yet in the Covenanted Civil Service, rather looks with too much favour on his
coUeagues in that service. For what they say is, in effect, that although this biU will more affect
the non-official Englishman, and in particular the poorer members of that class — I always observe
they express great sympathy for the poorer classes — (laughter) — the opposition to-day is not less
strong on the part of the great body of Anglo-Indian officials past and present. I will not insist
upon it that the members of the Covenanted CivU Service are at the bottom of this commotion.
Some say that the non-official Englishmen in India have done much to promote it. They are like
the 450 that I mentioned as forming a portion of the deputation to Lord Kimberley ; and some
say — and after aU there is a great deal of reasonableness in the statement — that a great deal of
trouble has arisen from the conduct and agitation of the lawyers in Calcutta. (Cheers.) There
are one or two facts that go to support that. We know the lawyers are very ingenious everywhere
in every country, and we know also that they are a class of persons who in most countries, and in
this as in others, enjoy more of the good and fat things of the Government than any other class in
the kingdom. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) I am told that recently a judge in Bengal — a native
lawyer of eminence — has been appointed pro tempore, in the absence of his coUeague, Chief
Justice of Bengal. We know that this is a veiy unpleasant bill for the English lawyers there —
(a laugh, and Hear, hear) — some one of whom might, I suppose, have been expected to take that
office ; and they fear that this may be a precedent that may be followed. I am told further that
a native member of the bar has recently been appointed standing counsel to the Government of

REFORM IN INDIA. 303
India. These two appointments, and a suspicion that more may f oUow, have disturbed the ordhiary
tranquiUity of the members of the Calcutta bar. (A laugh, and Hear, hear.) On the basis ot this
jealousy, men in India, the 750 here and a great many more in India, presume to tell us that to
foUow out the principles laid down in the Act of 1833, and in the great proclamation of 1858, is
to degrade EngUshmen and to convulse India. For my part, I am not able to come to that opinion.
(Applause.) I have known a great deal in this country of what is caUed setting class against
class. I know no great measure that has been discussed in this country by persons in favour of
even the most judicious reform who have not been charged with setting class against class. ( Hear,
hear.) That is what is said now, viz., that you wiU have a perpetual animosity between the EngUsh
race in India and the great subject races - the natives of India. My opinion is, that every measure
of justice and generosity to the natives of India, on the part of the Government now controUing
their fate, tends very much more to break down the barriers of discontent and animosity, and must
tend to the tranquillity and peace of that empire. (Cheers.) But I am afraid that our friends the
malcontents have other reasons for hostility to Lord Ripon and to his policy. (Hear, hear.) In
a sentence or two I wUl mention two or three things whieh Lord Ripon has done whilst he has
been in India. He has freed the Indian press from the shackles which the preceding Government
had fixed upon it. Now, I shoidd think that it was of the first importance that the Indian
Government should know what it is that Indian writers, and the leaders of Indian papers, are
thinking of the measures of the Government. (Hear, hear.) They need not obey the instructions
they receive if they are satisfied that they are doing right ; but I am quite sure that the Governor
of any country, whether the Czar of Russia, or the President of the United States, or the Presi
dent of France, or thegreat Governor of the Empire of India, must be better, wiser, and more com
petent to govern if he knows the prevailing opinion among all classes of the people on the measures
which he is intending to pass. (Cheers.) Then Lord Ripon has proposed a very moderate scheme
for extending municipal government to the great cities and towns of India. Does anybody
beUeve that municipal government, if it he found to be good, as I believe it is in every other
nation, and among every civdised and Christian people, should be a measure of mischief amongst
the population of India ? What has it been in this country ? Scarcely a better measure has
passed for fifty years than the Municipal Reform Bill, which established municipal government
throughout aU the great towns and cities of the United Kingdom. . . . Lord Ripon is under
stood also to be in favour of private enterprise in India, and it would be a most blessed thing for
that country if it were possible for rich natives, people who have funds, and united it may be with
persons who have wealth in this country, to originate and carry forward and maintain many great
works by private enterprise in India. I think this would be much better if it were possible than
that everything should be in the hands of the Government, and that people should be unable to
take part in measures which so deeply interest and concern them. (Hear, hear.) Looking myself
at the policy which Lord Ripon has pursued, so far as I have been able to understand it from a
reading of the papers here and the many papers which come to me constantly from India, I am
bound to say that I beUeve it is a policy not based upon suspicion or on ancient prejudice, or in
a spirit of monopoly, hut on what is just and generous and on broad views of statesmanship.
(Cheers.) Now, when the policy of conquest is condemned as I have condemned it, we are told
that Providence, for some great design which we are not able to measure, has permitted this
wonderful thing in the history of the globe, that the 200 or 250 millions of people in India should
be subject to the control of a Parliament representing 25 millions of people in Great Britain and
Ireland. WeU, I am not about to deny this at all. I know it has been said on high authority
speaking of the Supreme, that even the wrath of man shad praise Him ; and possibly it may he that
the results which may foUow the conquest of India and its government. by this country may in
some degree compensate for the crimes and the sufferings which were committed and were endured
during the period of that conquest. (Cheers.) But I shall say that one thing is perfectly certain

304 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
— that India was not committed to our control to be held as a field for EngUsh ambition and
English greed. (Loud cheers.) Our fathers may have erred— in my opinion they did greatly err
— but their children may make some compensation to the countless miUions now subject to their
rule by a policy of generosity and of justice — (cheers) — a policy which, in my opinion, India and
the world at large have a right to expect and to demand from a Christian people, as we profess to
be. (Cheers.) I believe Lord Ripon desired to advance this policy, to maintain the principles
laid down in the Act of 1833, a paragraph from which I have read, and in the noble proclamation
of the Queen issued to the people of India in the year 1858. Can I err, then, in believing that
this meeting wiU sustain the Governor- General of India in the arduous and conscientious perform
ance of the duties of his high ofiice ? (Cheers.) I gather consolation from the answer which the
Secretary of State for India made the other day to the deputation. (Cheers.) He told them that
her Majesty's Government had not the least idea of even suggesting to Lord Ripon to withdraw
that bill. Our business to-day is to support Lord Ripon in that policy — (renewed cheers) — and 'to
give by a united voice, as I hope we shall do, our utmost support to the Government existing in this
country, under whom, of course, Lord Ripon is acting in India."
Mr. Forster, M.P., entirely agreed with Mr. Bright that the great
feature of this agitation was its exaggeration, and moved — " That this
meeting expresses its confidence in the administration of the Marquis
of Bipon, Viceroy of India, and its belief that his policy is calculated to
promote the welfare of all classes of her Majesty's Indian subjects."
Sir G. Campbell seconded the motion, which was passed by a large
majority, and with cheers.
Mr. Bright was again with his constituents on the 29th of August,
1883, performing the ceremony of opening a very handsome building
erected by tbe Birmingham Coffee House Company, at a cost of more
than £10,000. The Mayor, Mr. Alderman White, presided, and Sir
Wilfrid Lawson, M.B., Mr. S. Storey, M.P., Mr. J. Brinton, M.P., were
present. The building was christened the " Cobden Coffee House," and
Mr. Bright said that he might say, with the greatest confidence, that if
his lamented friend, Mr. Cobden, had been living now he would have
been one of the warmest supporters of the movement, and would have
felt the compliment they had paid him in associating his name with the
fine building erected for so admirable a cause. He recollected hearing
Mr. Cobden say more than once that, though he was in the habit, as
most people were, of taking a glass or two of wine daily, yet, when he
was driven by hard work, either of much speaking or much writing, he
found it was better for him to abstain from wine altogether, as he
could perform his work better without it than with it. He (Mr. Bright)

F, SCHNADHORST.
(From a Photograph by. Mr. J. Nor; is. fliniiincj/inm.)

TEMPERANCE LEGISLATION. 305
had been in the habit during the last ten years of observing total absti
nence from all those things. It was supposed that when a man attained
a certain age, and especially if his health had for some time been very
indifferent, nothing apparently could be better for him than very fine
claret, or something that contained some proportion of alcohol. He was in
that condition at an age when people were supposed to begin to take care
of themselves. He had been a long time — two or three years — in very bad
health ; but he had not found that an entire abstinence from these things
had been in the slightest degree prejudicial to himseU. His own opinion
was that the great bulk of people would find that the less they took
of this description of stimulant the better their health and temper —
(laughter) — and he thought they would very likely be more pleasant
neighbours and friends, and their lives in all probability would be
prolonged . (Applause . )
A public meeting was afterwards held at the Town Hall, presided
over by the Mayor. Mr. Bright delivered a very interesting speech on
the temperance question, remarking : —
" We are now assembled in this haU, where we have discussed aU kinds of joohtical questions
for the last five-and-twenty years ; and it seems to me desirable, at least permissible, that on the
question of temperance reform generally, and of legislation which may be caUed in to promote
it, it may be desirable that there should be something of a wider discussion than the subject
generaUy obtains. (Hear, hear.) I think it is quite likely that there are a good many gentlemen
here who are either members of the United Kingdom Alliance or who sympathise— probably a
great majority sympathise — to a large extent with the objects and the proceedings of that
organisation. If there be such persons here, I think I may assume that there are some who have
probably in past years felt something of surprise, and perhaps something of pain, that I have
not been found in my place in the House of Commons directly supporting my hon. friend who is
now present, Sir Wilfrid Lawson — (cheers) — and that I have not given my vote in favour of the
proposition which in past years he has so frequently submitted to the House of Commons. Well,
when I recoUect and observe the zeal with which he has worked in the cause which he has made
his own— a zeal which knew no abatement, and with a labour that knew no respite, with a temper
remarkable and most admirable, and with a wit which has gilded and enlightened the most sober
of subjects of debate— (laughter)— I 'myself am willing to confess that I have often felt it a grief
and a misfortune that I was not able to march under his banner, and to advance towards that great
triumph which he has so often promised to his followers. (Hear, hear.) But the fact was, my
hon. friend and his friends did what many politicians do— for after all it is a question of politics,
as Parliament is appealed to— they did what many politicians do ; they had— I won't say precisely,
but speaking generaUy— in the desire to promote temperance, they had an admirable question and
a praiseworthy object ; but it seemed to me always that they had not very admirable tactics, and
that in point of fact the mode of proceeding was not the most likely to attain the end they had in
view. Now, I shaU explain this, because I want to make some observations as to what I think is
69

306 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
the mode which ought to be pursued. The biU which was presented to the House of Commons
for many years called the Permissive BiU may be said to have had a great and, in the eyes of
most persons, a most admirable purpose ; but it was a bill in the present state of opinion, and in
the present condition of Parliament, absolutely impossible of success. Now, the bill, as you will
recollect, proposed at one step to get everything or to get nothing. It did not go step by step, as
nearly all the great reforms and improvements in our legislation must necessarily go. It did not
arrange itself to work in a manner gradual, and in accordance with the public opinion of the country.
It did not appear to me to take into consideration the conditions — the special conditions — of various
towns and of various parishes to which it was intended to be applied. It had no regard to the
minority of opinion upon the question, and upon the strain and the pace which, on a question of
this kind, the minority of the people can bear. And further, in every borough and in every
parish where it failed to be applied, there was no remedy. The magistrates were left omnipotent
as heretofore, and as at present, and aU that was to be done was to wait for a year, or three years,
some time I believe specified in the bill, when another conflict could take place with a view
to applying the principles of the bill. My opinion is, that if a trade in this country is permitted
by law, that trade has a right to be defended by law. The trade of the licensed victualler, of the
seUer of alcoholic drinks, is a trade that has been permitted, and is now permitted, and I think
Parliament and the law are not justified in inflicting upon it unnecessary difficulties and unne
cessary irritation. (Applause.) I think that so long as it is not condemned by Parliament it has
a right to demand that it should not be subjected to passionate and hasty legislation. (Applause.)
I wiU apply that to the case of this great town, and another town as great with which I was
politically connected — the town of Manchester. In Manchester and in Birmingham there are 4,000
houses connected with the sale of intoxicating drinks. These 4,000 houses, I may say, without
being perfectly accurate, were in the occupation of something Uke 4,000 persons and families ; but
in the bill that was submitted to Parliament there was no consideration of the interests of those
4,000 families. There was no valuation provided for, there was no compensation offered or
suggested, and the plan was one of what you would caU root-and-branch reform ; and the publicans
and Ucensed victuallers, wherever you got a majority, were to be exterminated as if they had been
vermin. I do not think a policy of this kind, in any country, I am sure in this country when
it is fairly examined, wiU be held to be statesmanlike or just. (Applause.) I think I may say
that, being neither statesmanlike nor just, happily it is not possible to be enforced. (Applause.)
I am against dealing with a question of this nature, affecting the interests of many people, by
what you may call a hurricane that is fit only for times of revolution. I should Uke to deal
with it in a more just and a more statesmanlike manner, accordmg to the legislation that becomes
inteUigent people in tranquil times. (Applause.) Well, these are grounds which presented
themselves to my mind so strongly that, whilst wishing success to all reasonable efforts
for promoting temperance, I was unable to support the bill. And you will see what was
the result in Parliament — that notwithstanding the admirable speeches of my honourable friend
and the enthusiastic support of multitudes out of doors, still the minority voting for that bUl from
year to year scarcely increased at all. I happen to know and to be quite sure that many of those
who most consistently voted for the bill themselves voted because they had no other opportunity
of showing their opinion upon the question of temperance ; not so much that they agreed in the
principle or clauses of the bill. Now, I took the liberty in the year 1878 of writing a letter to a
correspondent of mine — I think in the city of Tork — in which I said that there was no hope of
parliamentary progress on this question so long as the Permissive BiU blocked the way, because
in its present form it was impossible that it should be accepted by the House of Commons. The
consequence of that letter, which was pubUshed, was to bring me a letter from the Executive of
the AUiance — men most earnest in their purpose, most honourable in the pursuit of it — men
anxious, if it be necessary, I believe, to change their course and to adopt a better course. They

THE TEMPERANCE ALLIANCE. 307
asked me to meet them in consultation and to discuss this question. I went to Manchester and
saw the Committee, I presume — seven or eight gentlemen, I think, of the Executive of the
Alliance — and we had a discussion on this question which lasted for three hours. That was on
the 4th of October, 1878. I won't go over the arguments which I used with these gentlemen,
which they received, I must say, in a manner that was complimentary to me and creditable to
themselves. Nothing could exceed the fairness with which they discussed the whole matter.
I told them that if they would withdraw their bill and substitute for it a resolution, in the very
next division in 1879 they would double their minority in the House of Commons — double their
vote ; and that whenever it was submitted to the House of Commons after a general election
they would have a majority in favour of the resolution in the House. (Applause.) Well, what
happened ? As soon as the biU was withdrawn a resolution proposed by my hon. friend was sub
mitted to the House. That was in 1879, and the vote in favour of the resolution was, I think,
about double, or nearly so — I don't recollect the figures exactly — those who had voted for the
biU ; and when the general election took place, and the new Parliament assembled, and the
resolution was submitted, the resolution passed the House of Commons by a majority which has
been increased, I think, on two or three subsequent occasions and divisions. WeU, we are in this
position, which in my opinion is much more favourable than it was for discussion and consider
ation of this question. The biU has gone. The resolution has been carried. It has been accepted,
not only by the House, but it has been accepted by the Government, and the House and the
Government may be considered, therefore, pledged to action on this resolution. (Hear, hear.)
And I think everybody in the country in favour of temperance reform has congratulated my
hon. friend on the great progress that he has made and the triumph that his principles
have achieved. (Applause.) Now, what we want, and what all temperance reformers are now
considering, is some plan which will unite the temperance feeling of the country, give it
power, and make its advance and progress possible. There have been various plans suggested,
aU of them very difficult, ad of them open to objection. . . . Nearly fifty years ago— in
the year 1835— Parliament passed one of the most admirable bdls ever enacted by an EngUsh
legislature; that is, the bUl for the reform of municipal corporations. That bUl proceeded
—and I rather liked the kind of procedure— on the old lines of our constitutional rights
and our constitutional practice ; and in that biU, as it passed the House of Commons, there
were clauses which transferred the power of licensing from the magistrates to the new
corporations, wherever corporations were established, that is, in those boroughs where they
then existed, or where, under this Act, they would be created. I regret to say— not that
the thing wiU startle anybody— that the House of Lords rejected those clauses. (Laughter.)
In fact you wiU find that, looking over the course of the House of Lords for the last
fifty years, where they have not been able or have not had the courage to reject a good
measure, they have generaUy gratified an unhappy propensity by mutilating it. (Laughter
and applause.) I may say, in a parenthesis, I should not be at all surprised if the day was coming
when the people of England would be asking themselves the question whether it was necessary
that every measure that passed the House of Commons should be pared down to a minimum,
so that it may hope to pass the House of Lords. (Loud and prolonged cheers.) I propose
to put to you this question, ' Why should we not examine, at any rate, and perhaps return
to, the plan proposed in the first Reform Parliament ? ' Do not understand mc, if I recommend
this plan, as saying that it is open to no objection. I have already said, as I believe, that
it wiU be impossible upon this question to propose any plan to which some fair objection may
not be offered. I believe, in the nature of the question, it is almost more difficult to propose
something perfect and certain to succeed than upon any other political question that can come
before us. (Hear, hear.) . . . Well, what does your Corporation do ? It is entrusted to
supply to you your gas. It is entrusted to supply you, when everybody is afraid of getting

308 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
some malady by drinking what is not wholesome in the way of water, with wholesome water.
It has the power of paving aU your streets, of making aU your sewers. It engages and
controls your poUce. Tour Corporation has, I think, now almost— I do not know whether
complete— at any rate a very large power over your educational institutions— I speak of the
Grammar School particularly. (Cheers.) For myself I have always been very sorry that
the Education Bill of 1S70, which proposed to give the educational action in the boroughs to
the Corporations, that that plan was not continued. There is nothing within the limits
of the borough which the Legislature almost has not entrusted to your Corporations. Well,
if that be so, what has been the result all over the kingdom P There is no act of the
Legislature in my time — that is, of any enacting biU — that has worked so admirably as the
Corporation Reform BiU of 1835. It has worked weU everywhere, and you scarcely ever
hear complaint from any borough that the Corporation has behaved in any degree unwisely
or corruptly. People are satisfied with what has been done. They make blunders some
times, as all bodies and individuals will make blunders; but their objects are in the main
right, and those objects have been in the main successful. Now, I should like to ask why,
if any change is to be made, if you cannot do with the magistrates, why you shoidd not
entrust to the Corporation additional power to be added to those other powers I have just
referred to. A committee of the Town Council, appointed to work under an Act of Par
liament which prescribed the necessary limits to their powers, might be trusted upon a
matter of this kind. May I suggest, if I was to recommend what should be done, what
I think might be in some particulars reasonable limits? I would enact, for example, that
no Corporation in the kingdom, in any borough, should increase the number of licences
which at present are granted — I mean, in proportion to the population. The question of
whether, when the population largely increased, there should be other licences granted, is
another matter. But assuming, as I think one may fairly assume, that with the present
population the licences are at any rate sufficient, there should be no extension of them.
Then I would establish another limit : that it should not be in the power of the Corporation
or their Committee to reduce the number of licences where the population remains the
same to a degree of less than one-half. I do this because I think in legislating on a
matter of this kind violent changes are not necessary and are not wise, and I think we
have no right to create that alarm, that depreciation of property, that would take place if
it were believed that the Committee of the Corporation would at once or in a short time sup
press aU pubUc-houses within the limits of their authority. Therefore, I would put a limit
of the kind I have mentioned ; and, more than that, I would enact that with regard to this bill,
and these limits, it should itself have a term, say, of ten years, during which a fair experiment
would be made as to its working. At the end of that time the temperance opinion might
be advanced, and might be stronger, and might require from ParUament measures —
I wiU not say more severe, but more comprehensive than those I have endeavoured to indicate.
Now, there is one other point which appears to me most essential. Tou know that it has
been the opinion of the present Government — I think Mr. Gladstone has himself once or
twice mentioned it — (cheers) — that it would be desirable to apportion some specific tax to
the purpose of corporations, boroughs, and counties, with a view to ease the pressure of local
rates. (Hear, hear.) Now, suppose that Parliament were to say that every borough — for I
would confine the bill that I am suggesting to boroughs ; I would have that as the great experi
ment, and after experience of its working it might be extended to the counties — I would confine
it to boroughs. Suppose we were to take the town of Birmingham as an instance. I believe
the taxes paid to the Government by aU the public-houses and sellers of alcoholic liquors
amount to something like £15,000 a year — it may be more now. I would transfer aU that
charge of £15,000 a year from the ChanceUor of the Exchequer to the Finance Minister — if

HIS LICENSING SCHEME. 309
there be such an officer of the Corporation of Birmingham. (Applause.) With regard to
another point, I would give to tho Corporations the power, within certain prescribed limits,
to add to the amount of the charge whieh might be laid upon each house in which those drinks
are sold. In all probabiUty it would not be necessary to extend it much, perhaps not to extend
it at all ; but I think, as the temperance opinion grew in the borough, it might be necessary
and desirable that they should take that one mode of rather preventing- the increase of licences
by making the taxation upon them somewhat heavier. Tou grant a monopoly when you grant
a Ucence, and you have a certain right if you like to make a certain charge for the preference.
Now, what wiU you do with this £15,000 a year ? Tou might employ it to remove the pressure
of your education rate ; you might employ it for the purpose of removing a portion of your police
taxes ; you might employ it for the purpose of removing a class of houses in certain neigh
bourhoods which are injurious, and far too numerous, and by giving compensation, reasonable
compensation, to the owners and occupiers of those houses. (Applause.) There is a class
of houses breaking the law occasionally. All these the Corporation may suppress at once,
as the magistrates might, if they were faithful enough and strong enough ; but there is auother
class of houses which do not openly break the law, which are injurious, being too numerous,
and conducted in a manner which is found to be hurtful to the district in which they are
placed, and the Corporation might select these and remove a number of them, and make
compensation out of the £15,000 a year. Thus, by a self-acting machinery of temperance opinion,
you would elect a trusty and weU-chosen Corporation, and the Corporation through its com
mittee would deal with this matter — it would act just according to the pressure and the
pointing of that temperance opinion. It would withhold licences if public opinion was in favour
of their being withheld ; it would suppress houses that are injurious, profligate, and ill-conducted ;
and in some cases it would also suppress houses by paying a fair compensation to those
interested in the property connected with them. (Hear, hear.) Now, if this plan were adopted,
what would be the result ? Clearly this ; that the houses where intoxicating drinks are sold
would be fewer, they would be veiy much more respectable in their character, and there
would he no confiscation of property. I think what you caU dram-shops would, under this
system, be probably entirely got rid of, and that licensed victuallers throughout the town
would be of a class that woidd be far more iu harmony with public opinion. I think that
would be a good thing— (hear, hear)— for I confess I am myself often, and have been, pained
by the language which has been addressed to a large body, comprising many respectable and
honourable men, on account of the conduct and condition of a smaU minority of them. Under
this system I hope that whatever Ucensed victuallers remained— and I have no doubt mauy
would remain— they should be of a character that would save them from attacks of this nature,
and it would be found that they were much more in harmony with an honourable and moral
public sentiment than a great many of their brethren have been in past times. So that we
should remove some of the odious features of the trade, and the machinery would be self-
acting. As the temperance opinion strengthened in any borough, so would this action strengthen,
until that state of things had arisen which the moral sense of the population felt to be suffi
cient, and further pressure or further suppression might not in their view be necessary. Now,
I have not been supposed by persons who misrepresent me to be very conservative in my
view of legislative changes. (Laughter.) But every one is liable to be misrepresented. I am
in this matter, as generaUy in others— I am not pressing for what are colled heroic and violent
changes. (Hear, hear.) I do not think such are needed in tranquil times such as we now
have the happiness to live in. But we should have, I think, a general and sensible improve-
ment, and as opinion grew and strengthened, if further legislation or further pressure were
necessary, it could be brought to bear in advancing this question. I should Uke to say one
word of appeal to those gentlemen who may think that my views are very inadequate upon

310 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
this question. I say that the temperance opinion in this country, if you can combine it, is very
powerful ; but it is only powerful, and will only be successful, when brought to bear in favour
of practicable and moderate measures. (Applause.) If the advocates of the withdrawn Per
missive Bill, and the proposers of the resolution for Local Option, if they mean by that the
Permissive BiU, then they will fail, as they have failed up to this time. The Government wUl
have to propose something. I beg all men and all women who may judge of the Government
proposition — and I know no more about it than any of the several thousands of persons assembled
in this hall — but whatever they may propose, let it be judged with fairness and with moderation."
(Applause.) Two thousand delegates from about 500 Liberal organisations located
in various parts of England held a conference in the Albert Hall, Leeds,
on the 17th of October, 1883, on Barliamentary Beform and other
subjects. Mr. John Morley presided, and amongst other members of
Barliament present were Sir Andrew Fairbairn, Sir B. CunUffe, Messrs.
H. Broadhurst, E. Carbutt, H. H. Fowler, H. Shield, J. Barran,
Mappin, Holden, IUingworth, Heneage, and Firth. The conference
after a long discussion recommended the Government to extend the
franchise in counties to the same extent as in boroughs, and that
women also should have the privilege of voting. In the evening the
delegates were entertained at a conversazione in the Town Hall by Mr.
James Kitson, the Bresident of the Leeds Liberal Association. Mr. John
Bright was accompanied on the platform by Mr. H. Havelock- Allen, M.F.,
Mr. Isaac Holden, M.B., Mr. John Morley, M.B., Mr. H. Gladstone,
M.B., Mr. E! H. Carbutt, M.B., Mr. Barran, M.B., Mr. H. H. Fowler,
M.F., Mr. B. Hill, and Mr. D. Grant, M.B., and they were lustily
cheered. Mr. Bright delivered a short speech, in which he informed
the gathering that the inhabitants of the West Biding had, as
long as he could recollect, been the very foremost in the country
in their adherence to Liberal opinions and Liberal progress; and
when the residents of Lancashire had fallen behind, as they did
some years ago, in the West Biding of Yorkshire there had been
adherence to principle, and great strength and resolve in supporting
that principle ; and they had set an example which had not been exceeded
in the constituencies of the kingdom. Therefore it was fitting that the
originators of that conference should ask the associations to send their
representatives to Leeds. There was no more genial soil in the United

LIBERAL CONFERENCE AT LEEDS. 311
Kingdom for the growth and the permanence and the grand progress of
Liberal principles than in the West Biding of Yorkshire, of which Leeds
was the centre. He hoped when the proceedings of the conference and
other meetings were before the country that they would meet with
general acceptance from friends all over the kingdom, and that they should
give some additional strength to the already strong Government, to enable
them to proceed in the next and in the succeeding session, and, he
trusted, in the succeeding Barliament, in the policy which was wise and
just ; and would enable people in years to come to point to the day in
which they had been acting as a day when true patriotism, and true
wisdom, and true moderation directed their counsels and their acts.
Tbe conference was continued next day, and in the evening there was
an imposing demonstration in the Victoria Hall, for every part of it was
densely packed. Mr. Bright presided, and he spoke with undiminished
interest. " It is worth whUe," said he, " to consider what has been done, for the sake of an argument
that I shaU use immediately after giving you some of the subjects which have been disposed of.
They include the great Corporation Reform BiU— (hear, hear) — by which all the towns of the
kingdom have been put under an admirable government of their own populations ; the poor-law
reform, which, whUst it has treated the poor with greater real kindness, has saved vast numbers
of our population from sinking into degraded and abject pauperism ; and the abolition of slavery in
the case of more than 800,000 of our feUow-creatures who were slaves under the dominion of the
Sovereign of England. A question of much smaUer importance, but a very irritating one, was
the question of the constant payment by Dissenters for the maintenance of the fabrics of the
Estabhshed Church, to the overthrow of which Sir W. Lawson has referred, and in which he has
given more credit to me than I can possibly deserve. (Cries of 'No.') I did what I could.
(Cheers.) Mr. Charles ViUiers— (cheers)— the member for Wolverhampton, my lamented friend
Mr. Cobden— (cheers)— my lamented friend Mr. George Wilson, who was the chairman of the
Council of the Anti-Corn-Law League— I might give you a list of much more than an ordinary
paragraph of the names of men who served in that great army, and it were difficult to say which
did his duty most. The great measure was finally accomplished ; and to give you a proof which
no man can withstand of its magnificent results, I may tell you that between the 30th of September
last year and the 30th of September this year-three weeks ago, we have imported, not less, but
more, than 20 miUions of quarters of wheat from all parts of the world to be the substantial
supply of the principal article of food of the 35 millions of population of this country. (Cheers.)
As with the Corn Law, so with many other things-the monopoly of sugar, the monopoly of the
navigation laws ; and not long afterwards we abolished the scandalous and odious taxes by which
the instruction of the people in political affairs and all other affairs was, as much as possible, sup
pressed; I mean the taxes upon the newspaper press. (Cheers.) Then there came the great
Suffrage Bill of 1867, which would not have been possible at that time unless you had had the
great biU of 1832. Tou find that every time you bring in an additional popular strength to the
Government, additional great results follow. After 1867, when the new constituencies had defeated

312 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
that imposture of a Government that then existed — (hear, hear) — there came on the great question
of Ireland, which ought to have been dealt with long and long before. (Cheers.) The Irish
Church was disestablished as a State institution, and with it was abolished probably the most
scandalous institution which a Christian country has known — (hear, hear) — an institution which
not only made it impossible for the Catholics of Ireland ever to become Protestants, but made it
impossible for them to be loyal. (Hear, hear.) Well, that Church was abolished, and it was one
of the direct results of the Suffrage Bill of 1867. A year after, the Irish Land Bill was passed
— a bill of great promise and a bill of great value, but not sufficient to meet the then and since
condition of Ireland. (Hear, hear.) At the same time there was passed a measure which many
of us then found fault with in some particulars, but, it was a great measure, and is working
now with great results — I mean the measure for the general education of the coimtry. About
the same time there was passed another measure which our opponents said would be fatal,
that is, the biU for the estabhshment of the ballot. I recollect a very much-respected member
of the House of Peers telling a friend of mine, in a state of exceeding agitation, that he
thought there was no hope for the country if the baUot were once granted ; that it would
destroy all the influence of property and the propertied classes, and woidd hand over the
interests of this great empire to an uncultivated and unlettered — what should I call it P — a very
unwise mob. WeU, nothing of the kind has happened, and the ballot is found to have this effect
— it enables your elections to be carried on in an ordinary and tranquil manner, as becomes
the sensible citizens and electors of a great and a free country. Then, coming down to the
other clay only, to the beginning of this very Parliament, in 1880 you recollect that a biU was
passed that gave great satisfaction to the farmers by dealing with the game laws in their
favour. (Hear.) Another biU was passed which gave great satisfaction to Dissenters generaUy,
and principaUy in the Principality of Wales— an Act which was called the Burials Act. There
was another bdl, caUed the Disturbance BiU, passed that year, or rather it was not passed, but
it passed the House of Commons, and went up to the House of Lords. It was a message of
peace and concUiation to the suffering people of the west of Ireland. The Lords scarcely
discussed it. Before they attempted to discuss it their opinion of it was well known, and
they kicked it out of their House in a manner which showed their utter disregard of the
perilous condition of a great portion of the population of Ireland. Well, then, in 1881 the
great Land Act of this Parliament was passed— (hear, hear)— a bill the most remarkable and
the most generous in the manner and in the extent to which it has conferred rights upon the
main body of the tenantry in Ireland ; and if there be men, as there are men— and I am not
sure whether the leader of the Tory party in the House of Commons has not insinuated as
much recently while on his visit to the province of Ulster, when he has spoken as if he would
have it to be understood that he beUeved that if great benefits had been conferred upon the
tenant there had been conferred an equal amount, not of justice, but of injustice to the
proprietors of the sod— if any man has that opinion, I want to ask him a question. I met
one night in the lobby of the House of Commons a member, now of the House of Peers,
but then a member of the House of Commons, and he was upbraiding me for supporting a
measure of that kind, and he said, ' What good has it done you, or wid it do ? Is it not
already a failure ? Has not your Irish policy faUen through altogether ? ' I said, ' I will teU
you what it is that has failed : it is your Irish policy, the old policy, that has failed ; its
failure has made our new policy inevitable and necessary, but hitherto it has had no sufficient
trial.' I said, ' Tou say your estates are being lowered in their rental 15, 20, I may say 25 per
cent. ; I would like to ask you if the present Government had done nothing in Ireland in
regard to the land, if they had conferred no greater security on the tenants, if they had not
held out to the population the hope that the Parliament was willing to do them justice, what
would your land have been worth now ?' It would have been worth to the landlord about as much

THE COUNTY FRANCHISE. 313
as it was worth when there was not a single tenant upon the whole surface of Ireland. (Hear,
hear.) Well, then, the year after there came another bill — the Arrears Bill. (Hear.) If you
recoUect the discussion, you wdl know that the gentlemen sitting on the Opposition benches
said, ' What a dreadful thing this is ; you are going to give, not a considerable sum out of the
Irish Church Fund, but a sum of two or three miUions sterling which you wiU have to
take from the taxes of the people of England, and you are going to take these
from the people of England to enable the tenants in the poorest parts of Ireland
to pay their rents to their landlords.' They also gave us to understand what a tremen
dous thing this would be when they came to talk to the constituencies about what
the Government was doing. What has been done ? The whole of the arrears question has
been settled with immense satisfaction in Ireland, I believe, to both tenant and landlord.
The whole sum has come, as far as I recoUect, to just about £800,000, about that which
the Government said it would come to, and aU of which will be taken from the Irish Church
Fund, and not one single farthing will eome from the taxation of the people of England, or any
taxes whatsoever. The whole thing about which our opponents were afraid has proved to be
absolutely untrue and without the least foundation. (Cheers.) Well, I have told you in a
few words what have been the greatest measures which have been passed in this country —
first, since the Reform BiU of 1832, and secondly, since the Reform BiU of 1867. What
have the Tories being doing during all that time ? Are there any of these measures which
you can fairly attribute to them? Not one. (Hear, hear.) Speaking of them in the main,
with little exception they have all had the persisting and hearty opposition of the Tory party.
(Hear, hear.) There were two bdls indeed which they supported with a good deal of sincerity :
I mean the bUl in 1881 for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland, and the
bid which goes under the name of the Irish Crimes Act— biUs which you may be quite sure
I, at least, should never have supported by my voice or my vote if I had seen any other escape
from the calamities and difficulties of the country. (Cheers.) Those bids were agreed to by
the Government and passed by Parliament to the infinite grief of the Liberal party. They
were measures — I do not blame them for it, it was right for them to do it — but they were
measures which the Opposition Tory party supported persistently during their whole course
through Parliament. I only hoped— but I have been disappointed, and, I am afraid, must be
disappointed — that they would some time as generously and as effectuaUy support the Govern
ment in the passing of some great and good measure for the people. (Hear, hear.) I am told
by an authority which must be aUowed to be a leading authority with our opponents, by the
leading Conservative newspaper in London, I think, that there was no occasion to hold this con
ference or to hold this meeting ; that in point of fact it was like an attacking army battering at
an open door; that there was nothing for it, as the garrison had either capitulated or run away,
there was nothing for it but for us to march in and take possession of the fortifications. There
is some force in that, some show of truth, because I observe that in Manchester only a fortnight
or three weeks ago a Conservative gentleman, who if he had not mistaken his way would have
been a Liberal, was returned for that great city, and in the pronouncement of his opinions
to his hoped-for constituents, he said he was in favour of conferring the household franchise
upon the inhabitants of the counties. Well, that is a considerable advance for a Conservative
candidate and member. I rather think that, though I am not so positive about it, for I speak
from memory, at the last election for Liverpool the candidate of the Tory party, who was not
successful, avowed to some extent opinions more liberal than are usual in his party, and I
think even on this very question agreeing somewhat with the gentleman who has recently been
returned for Manchester. WeU, now, we may take this to mean a good deal, and perhaps it
does, but I turn for a moment to what has been said in the province of Ulster by the leader
of the Opposition in the House of Commons. (Cheers.) Sir Stafford Northcote says they must

314 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
beware of the supremacy of numbers. WeU, that is a polite and rather gentle way of saying
what they said in 1858— namely, that if you brought the franchise down to £7 you would swamp
all the educated and higher classes, and that the wage-receiving class— what we call the working
men generally— would have political power solely in their hands. We know what happened in
the year after. Instead of being content with a £7 franchise, which they said was destructive,
they abolished that limitation, and accepted a suffrage which was based on no pounds at all,
but on mere occupation, however humble. I don't know how far we are to trust words like those
which Sir Stafford Northcote has uttered. If he means they are about to fight this question
and to resist the extensiou of the franchise to county householders, then we shall have a little
battle, no doubt, perhaps stiff for the moment, but there is only one way, I believe, in which
the victory can incline. (Cheers.) May I ask you, for I will not argue the question, if the borough
householders are to have the vote, why not the farm labourers P Tou know how often we
have been told in pamphlets, newspaper articles, and speeches all over the rural districts that
the agricultural, the farm labourers have had the advantage for years, even for aught I know
for centuries, of the example of the country gentlemen and the squires ; and that beyond this
they have had another very sovereign blessing, and that is the teaching of the gentlemen
put over them by the State as the ministers of the Established Church. (Laughter.) They
have had the example of the squire and the ministrations of the clergyman in every parish,
and surely they ought now to be in a condition at least equal to that of their brethren
in the towns. (Hear, hear.) Now, I have just lately been reading what I found a very
interesting book. It is called, 'Peasant Life in the West of England,' and is written by
Mr. Francis George Heath. He has paid great attention to the condition of the population
in those counties, which are counties in which the population has been in the worst con
dition of any in all our time. He wrote of them some years ago ; he has written of them
again now, and he says that during the last ten years even he can notice a very signal
improvement in the condition of the popidation. (Hear, hear.) They are living, many of
them, in better houses ; they are better dressed, better fed ; they are more instructed, and
they are somewhat more advanced in all conditions which we would be glad to see connected
with all those who have to exercise the franchise. I spoke of the farm labourers, but
it is not the farm labourers who are the whole popidation of the counties. If you have
seen Mr. Noble's ' ParUamentary Manual,' a little book which gives you far more facts
than are necessary to convince you of the goodness of our case, you will see that Mr.
Noble says that there are 150 towns or districts which are not purely agricultural, but
in every one of which there is a popidation of over 10,000 persons. In these 150 places
there is a population of nearly 3,000,000, and they for the most part are not of the farm-
labourer class ; but in all those places no man can have a vote unless his rent comes some
where between £15 and £20 a year ; because, as the rating franchise in the counties is £12,
and in some districts the assessment is very much higher than the rates, they must be
assessed at £15, £16, £17, or £20 before they can have a vote. I beg your pardon, I made
a mistake. (Hear, hear.) The assessment is lower than the rent. (Hear, hear.) They must
really have a rental varying from £15 to £20 before they can be placed on the register. I
shaU leave the suffrage question with one quotation. Tou will remember we have had a good
many reform bUls, several of them abortive and worthless, of late years, and one of them
was brought in by the late Lord Derby's Government in 1859. That bill proposed to bring
the county franchise down to £10, so as to make it equal with the borough franchise, which
was then, as you remember, £10. What was the language used in the House of Commons
by the leader of the party, the late Mr. Disraeli ? This is what he said, and I beg your
especial attention to it. He said : ' In order to bring about a general content and sympathy
between the different parties of the constituent body, the Government propose to recognise

THE REDISTRIBUTION OF SEATS. 315
the principle of identity of suffrage between the counties and towns.' (Laughter.) That is
exactly the policy we are endeavouring to pursue, only we propose to procure that general
content and sympathy, and to recognise the principle of identity of suffrage on the basis, not
of £10— that limited suffrage— but on the basis of an extensive suffrage, namely, that of the
household, as now exists in the boroughs ; so that we are endeavouring to bring about that
general content and sympathy between the different portions of the constituent body by a plan
I think much more effectual than that which was offered to Parliament, but rejected, in the
year 1859. (Cheers.) Now, I shaU ask you to turn for a little while to that otlier branch of this
question, which shoidd never in our consideration be separated from that which I have already
treated upon. (Cheers.) The great question, that which wiU meet with most opposition, and
which wiU require your most strenuous efforts, is that which refers to the rearrangement or
distribution of parUamentary seats amongst the constituencies. That is far more complex and
far more difficult than the comparatively small question of a short biU giving the franchise to
householders in the counties. I dare say, probably during the conference, there have been some
facts laid before you, but in looking over Mr. Noble's book I put together two or three things
which I think I may be permitted to mention, and which I am sure cannot be too often explained
to aU those who are anxious honestly to consider the question. We are not discussing now the
detaUs, though I have had a great deal to do with this question, and once prepared a very
extensive distribution biU of my own. If you take the whole of the boroughs under 10,000 of a
population, you wiU find that there are seventy-two of them, and they return seventy-two members
to the House of Commons. WeU, let us go a little further, up to 20,000. Between 10,000 and
20,000 of a population there are forty-eight boroughs, and they return seventy-two members,
because a good many of them return two members each ; although, as probably you know, if the
members were divided fairly according to the population every member would have a population
as his constituency of 53,000 persons. Therefore, if you take aU the boroughs under a popula
tion of 20,000 you wiU find that they return 144 members to Parliament. Then if you go a
step higher, up to 30,000, you wiU find that there are twenty -two boroughs returning thirty-two
members, because as to some of these boroughs ten of them return two members. Although one
member should have 53,000 of population, yet here are ten members whose population is under
30,000, two of them representing less than 30,000 of a population. WeU, now, if you are to
deal with aU these you would have 154 seats to deal with, and the Government would be
required, of course, to distribute them amongst the larger populations in the other towns and
cities and amongst the large populations of the counties. Let me add here one word of
explanation. When a borough is disfranchised under the biU that is to come, not one single
man in it would himself be disfranchised. (Cheers.) A borough as a borough in its little limits
would no longer be subjected to the corruptions and the temptations of the turmoil of an
election, but no single elector in that borough would be disfranchised. Instead of voting for
the one man sitting for his Uttle borough, he would perhaps vote for two, or it might be
three, members representing the county in which the borough was situated — (cheers) — and
therefore as regards electors there is no single man that would be disfranchised. If any
of these boroughs no longer continued to return members, they would form parts of the
county, and they would give as many votes as the county returned members. And now there
is only one other fact before I have finished with this matter, and it is one more astounding,
if it is properly looked at, than any fact that can be extracted out of Mr. Noble's book, and it
bears also upon the question of the minority clause, in which you here are interested, as
we are interested in Birmingham, and as, I beg leave to say, the whole country, well understanding
the question, must feel itself strongly interested. (Cheers.) Now, I have told you that there
are 142 boroughs that return 176 members to ParUament— that is about one-fourth of the whole
Parliament— with a population of 1,751,000. Now, the four great cities, Liverpool, Manchester

316 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Birmingham, and Glasgow, have a population of 1,832,000, or 800,000 more than the whole
population of these 112 boroughs returning 176 members. (Hear, hear.) But that is not aU.
Let us go to an election for these boroughs with the minority clause. Tou know what the
minority clause was intended to do. The House of Commons had given three votes to the
big towns, and the House of Lords said, ' No, we wUl invent a plan which will not only
give them three, but which will deprive them of the influence of two.' (Hear, hear.) So
they passed the minority clause. Let us go to an election in these four boroughs. I wUl
assume that the boroughs have a great majority of Conservatives, if you Uke, or a great
majority of Liberals ; but the election takes place, and in each borough two members are
returned for the majority party, that is eight members in aU for the four boroughs, and one
member in each of them for the minority party, which is four members in all for the
minority party. And now we will go to the House of Commons when Parliament meets,
and we will see these twelve gentlemen take their seats. Eight of them sit on one side and
four of them sit on the other. I am not now discussing the question as to which party
they belong to, for this measure reaUy in my opinion has no influence that is appreciable or
worth mentioning upon one party or another. Well, you see these sit down eight on one
side and four on the other ; but let us wait until there is a great debate and a great
division — a contest, it may be, in the new Parliament as to who should he Speaker, a
contest upon some great proposition of the Government, and as to their policy. An adverse
vote might change the Government, and in the eye of the world and foreign nations change
not only the home tbut the foreign policy of the Empire. (Hear, hear.) We wiU suppose
that we are allowed to remain in the Strangers' Gallery. We shaU see eight gentlemen
going to the right. ' Ayes to the right ' the Speaker says, and those who are voting with
the ayes go round from the Speaker's chair and come in at this door ; the ' Noes ' go out at
this door, go round and come in behind the Speaker's chair; and you see that there are
eight members on one side in the division and four on the other. Then the numbers are
called by Lord Richard Grosvenor, it may be, as I hope it always wiU be — (cheers) — or by
the leading whip of the Conservative party. He caUs the division and states what the
vote comes to, as it was on the question of the Reform BiU of 1866, as it was on the
question of the Affirmation BiU — (hear, hear) — as it was on the University of Ireland
Education Bill some years ago, and as I have known it to be many times since I have
been in Parliament, where the eight gentlemen who went on one side representing the
majority, and four on the other side representing the minority ; the actual result of the great
process of a great contested election in these four boroughs representing nearly two millions
of population, is just this : that whilst the other 142 boroughs return 176 members, they in effect
return four members, and that is all the influence they have in the great division. (Hear,
hear.) WeU, now, I ask you is not that an astounding fact P Does it not say a great deal,
I wiU not say for the moderation, but for the absolute dulness and the carelessness, and the
faith in other people doing their work for them, that prevails or prevaUed amongst those
four constituencies, that these two millions of persons have never risen up and protested in
the loudest voice they could raise against an arrangement so scandalous, and I will undertake
to say so unequaUed in the representative system of any other country in the world ? Well,
we are doing no good here, our conferences mean nothing whatever, our speeches are nothing,
our listenings and cheers are nothing, unless it be possible to put an end to a monstrous
injustice and inequality like this. (Hear, hear.) If this Government deserves our confidence
— and I believe it does — (loud cheers) — we shall expect of it, I wdl not say a complete,
an arithmetically complete arrangement of seats to electors, but so large a measure, that
we shaU all feel that at least another great step has been made in the direction of the
complete reform and soUd and real representation to which every free people has a claim.

ADVICE TO THE GOVERNMENT. 317
(Cheers.) Before I sit down there are two questions I should like to say a little about,
because I understand they have been a good deal discussod. (Hear, hear.) Some people
have asked the question, whether on this great reform subject there should be one bill or
two biUs — that is. whether the whole question of suffrage and seats should be put into one bill
or in two separate bills. WeU, in 1S66, I very strongly advised the Government, having taken
great interest in the question, to deal with the suffrage first. (Hear, hear.) Tou will re
member, no doubt, many of you, that a strenuous effort was made by the Opposition, in which
they were joined by some men on our side — men who, like some of those very old people,
so old that it is fabulous whether they ever lived or not — (laughter) — were caUed cave men.
There was formed what was caUed a cave, and a number of men on our side joined the people
outside, and the Government BiU was iu point of fact frustrated and rejected, and the
Government itself was overthrown. I am of the same opinion now. It is absolutely necessary,
if any progress is to be made on this question, that the question of the suffrage should be dealt
with first, and in a separate measure. (Cheers.) Well, then, there is a question whether
what should be done should be begun in this session or in the session of 1885. WeU, I
think there cannot be much doubt about that. I think that when you have got a great measure
in prospect, and which necessarily will be the foundation of greater power for other good
measures — (hear, hear) — it is desirable that you should take the very earliest opportunity
— (cheers) — of fortifying yourselves by the secure passing of that measure. (Hear, hear.) I
hope nobody wdl suppose that I am either stating the views of the Cabinet — for they do
not teU the views of the Cabinet to the members who have gone out from them — (laughter) —
nor that I am saying anything here for the purpose of putting an undue pressure upon
the Cabinet — (hear, hear)— for I am giving my own unbiassed opinion — (hear, hear)— as an
honest friend of parliamentary reform, and as an anxious supporter of the Government in
aU that they do in regard to this question. (Cheers.) Now, if gentlemen have ever con
sidered this matter as regards parUamentary practice, they wiU know that a Suffrage BiU
compared with a Redistribution BiU will be a very short and a very simple proceeding— I
know not of how many clauses, but not very many ; and I believe that on that bdl it will
not be quite possible for the Opposition to bring into the field aU their forces. On a
motion, which probably they wiU try, that the two bUls should be tied together, they can
probably bring aU their forces into action ; but I have no expectation whatever that they
wdl be able to succeed in opposing the proposition of the Government if it should be made
in the sense which I should recommend. Now, the other bill must necessarily be one complex
to a high degree, and difficult beyond most measures that come before ParUament, because
it must have schedules of disfranchisement, in which a good number, I hope, would see
aU those to which I have referred will be put in as boroughs more or less relieved from
their duty as boroughs ; and then there wiU be all the new boroughs which are to be created,
and the large boroughs which are to have additional members ; and the populous counties
which must also be fairly considered and have additional members; and there would be also
the question with regard to the present mode of the suffrage in the counties, though that,
no doubt, would be dealt with in the Suffrage BiU. But. the Rearrangement BiU will be
complex and difficult to a great degree. I must say, in opposition to what is said by some
persons on the matter, that these two bdls are not nearly related, except as it may be said
that they are in some degree connected. Supposing, now, if the suffrage was as perfect as we
desire, that household suffrage was granted, and everythmg granted any reasonable person
could wish-if that were so, still you would require to have a rearrangement of seats; but
suppose, on the other hand, you had the rearrangement of seats, and that the members were
apportioned fairly and accurately to the electors throughout the country, you would still
require to have a biU for the extension of the suffrage. One biU is for a time independent

318 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
of the other. When they are both passed I hope they will work together for a real repre-
sentation of the people, and for the great good of the country. (Cheers.) Everybody who
asks the Government to go on with the Suffrage Bill and the Seats BiU as one measure
and at one time wiU be committing the great mistake which our old friend General Thompson
used to describe by the man who insisted on driving six omnibuses at once through Temple
Bar. (Laughter.) Temple Bar is gone now, but at any rate it serves to illustrate what is
meant by this plan of tying up a very critical and most important measure with a very
complex and difficult one, and in the face of a great opposition to endeavour to thrust them
both in the same session through Parliament. I should recommend, if I were asked my
opinion, that the Government should deal during the coming session with the County Suffrage
Bill and the London Corporation Reform BiU. (Cheers.) The County Suffrage BiU affects
the whole country, and probably at least a, miUion of electors. The London Reform BUl
affects the municipal government of between four and five millions of persons — a population
as large as ten of our very largest cities excepting the metropolis. That is a biU complex
to a considerable degree, and will cause great debate, and I have no doubt much discussion
and many divisions. But there is nothing in the Suffrage Bill that makes it in the least
degree improbable that the London Reform Bill might not form part of the budget of
work for the coming session. (Hear, hear.) Now, I said that I had confidence in the
Government, without applying to them the phrase of a Radical Go-eminent, a, phrase which
I don't in the least degree like. It is very well Sir Wilfrid Lawson has gone out. (Laughter.)
He adopted the title of Radical. [Here Mr. Herbert Gladstone left the platform, and his
departure was the signal for a loud outburst of applause. ] The right hon. gentleman, resuming
said : I am told there are about 30,000 people outside, and that they are very anxious Mr.
Herbert Gladstone should go out and say a few words to them. (Cheers.) I was about to
say that I have never ranged myself by name under the title of a member of the Radical
party ; I don't know exactly what it means — (laughter) — I don't know exactly how far it wUl
go; I do know that there are certain things which are not yet ripe for acceptance by the
Government and the people ; I know there are some other things which some Radicals like,
but which I hope never wUl be ripe for any Government or for any people. But, regarding
the position of the Government, I have special authority and special reason for knowing that the
position of every Government is very difficult, and I am not sure that the position in this country
yet of the best Governments is not the most difficult. I know that the obstacles they meet are
almost insuperable. I recollect being told this by a member of the House of Peers, who at the
time he told me was a member of the then Government. He said : ' If ever you become a
Minister you will find — though you won't see exactly what are the difficulties that meet you — you
will find that hardly anything can be done that is good, though you won't know exactly who
opposes you or what is the difficulty that meets you, for you cannot grasp it, you cannot
in language condemn it, you cannot in any way meet it. There is some sort of
atmosphere about everything you attempt and everywhere you move that makes it almost
impossible for anything to be done ; ' and he further said what was a most remarkable thing
for him : ' I am almost surprised in this country that anything good is done under the
difficulties we constantly meet with.' (Hear, hear.) Say that on behalf of the Government
— (cheers) — and I hope that the Liberal party, whilst they express with great freedom and
great honesty their views on these public questions, will not imagine that the Government
can go on galloping over the difficulties which are constantly in their way. (Hear, hear.)
But if you see that you have an honest Government — (cheers) — with a great and au honest
and patriotic Minister — (loud cheers) — give them as far as you can your confidence. If
there are opponents, let them be seen in the ranks of their avowed enemies — (cheers) — but do
not let them have opposition and difficulties raised from amongst the ranks of their friends.

FUTURE QUESTIONS. 319
(Renewed cheers.) I have only one more sentence to utter. There are other questions which will
come up, no doubt, for discussion and for settlement. There is one which I think is not very
remote. It is a great question which wiU have to be faced. It does not come within the
object exactly of this conference, according to its announced proceedings, nor yet of this
meeting, but I may take this opportunity of referring to it. (Hear, hear.) The question is,
and will be. how to deal with the constant conflict between the Lords and Commons.
(Great cheering.) It is in my mind a conflict which is full of peril to one of them —
(laughter) — and fuU of humiliation to both of them. (Hear, hear.) It has been the common
opinion, supported by many writers on constitutions, and especially on our constitution, that
two Houses are necessary, and that no steady Government, can exist in any country whose
policy and whose legislation is determined by the vote of a single representative chamber. I
recoUect myself when I was a boy writing an essay in defence of that very opinion.
(Laughter.) I think the conduct of the majority of the Peers is fast dispeUing that opinion
and that delusion. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) How do we stand with regard to that chamber p
The Crown cannot now reject any bill sent up for its acceptance. No one of you ever
heard that the Queen, or the kings who have preceded her, have vetoed any measure
which has passed both Houses of Parliament. If the Crown be limited in this way, why
not the Peers? (Prolonged cheers and hurrahs.) Why not enact that if the Peers have
rejected a biU once, and it has been reconsidered in a subsequent session by the Commons,
and after due deliberation has been again sent up to the Peers, that then the Peers shall
pass it on, and it wiU receive the Royal assent, and it will become law P (Hear, hear.) Now,
I have said years ago — I should not be surprised if one or two of my Birmingham friends
do not recoUect the occasion on which I said it, for it caused a good deal of discussion
afterwards — I have said that a house of legislation, hereditary and irresponsible, cannot be a
permanent institution in a free country. (Cheers.) Bear in mind what I say — 'hereditary
and irresponsible.' (Hear, hear.) By some method the two Houses, if they are to continue
to exist, must be reconciled. They must be made equaUy or sufficiently responsible to the
national wants and to the national conscience. (Cheers.) The task, perhaps, is difficult, but it
is not impossible. I wdl say no more. (' Go on.') This is not the time, but I recommend
the observations I have made to the calm consideration of the people of this country. (Hear,
hear.) For my part, I may see very little of the future. My political career draws very
near its close ; but I wiU cherish the hope and the faith that my countrymen, whatever the
form of their Government, will in the changes that are before us exhibit the wisdom and the
moderation which becomes an inteUigent and a Christian people." (Loud cheers.)
Sir Edward Baines proposed a hearty vote of thanks to Mr. Bright
for his conduct in the chair and for his great services to the country in
the past.
Mr. Henry Fell Fease seconded the motion, which was put by Mr.
Kitson, and carried by acclamation.
Mr. Bright, who was again loudly cheered, said : —
" I need not say, after what I heard from my friend Sir Edward Baines, how deeply I am
touched by the language with which he has felt himself able to speak of any services whieh I
have endeavoured to render to the country. Sir Edward Baines himself bears an honoured name.
(Cheers.) The father of Sir Edward is represented here by that marble statue. During his life-

320 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
time, in the conduct of his paper, in his labours for the public service, I doubt if it would be possible
to find a man of a more useful and a more spotless life. Sir Edward Baines is his worthy son —
(cheers) — and his name has been associated during aU the time of my political career with great
measures of g'ood, and now in his advanced age he receives, as he deserves, unmeasured honour iu
the minds of aU his fellow-townsmen. To you I must return my thanks that you have Ustenecl to my
speech with such attention. I was afraid that I was in some respects about to repeat a many-times
old tale, but it is a tale of that kind, of that importance, that breadth of statement, that depth of
principle, that I don't think it can be too often told — (hear, hear) — especially to the young' men
amongst us, whether they be openly Liberal, or some of them even of the Conservative part}-.
(Hear.) I cannot understand how young men who have any real regard for their country, its
past history, its future progress, and for their share in its future, can possibly look back over the
fifty years which I have sketched, and many subjects which I have referred to, without coming to
the conclusion that, surely, the party which has done all these things must have been in the main,
whatever its faults and shortcomings, the rightly and truly wise and patriotic party — (hear, hear,
and cheers) — and that those who have been always opposing aU these measures and have always
been disappointed in their prophecies — (cheers) — that they must have been, I wUl not say un
patriotic iu their intention, but they must have been mistaken, and either been ignorant of the
facts of our history, or have wrongly interpreted those facts, and have made the blunders .which
as we see, have marked their political career."
While the meeting in the Town Hall was being held, a mass meeting
(at Avhich there were about 30,000 persons present) took place in the
Town Hall Square, which was illuminated by means of tbe electric light.
Speeches were delivered by Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Mr. Herbert Gladstone,
and other gentlemen.
A Leicester gentleman in the early part of December wrote to Mr.
Bright, asking his opinion as to the enforcing of the Compulsory Vacci
nation Acts, the seizure of goods, and the imprisonment of persons for
refusing to have their children vaccinated; and, further, if it was consistent
with personal freedom that respectable men should be put in prison on
any such matter of conscience ? A case was also stated in which a workman
in a condition of distress was apprehended by the police while his four
children were at his knee saying their prayers, and the correspondent
asked whether this was the sort of man for whom the state ought to
provide prisons. Mr. Bright replied : —
" Dear Sir, — I fear I cannot help you in your complaint against the vaecination laws. I think
compulsory vaccination doubtful, and the repetition of penalties as now practised monstrous. The
repetition of penalties creates or intensifies the agitation against the law, and so long as they are
inflicted I suspect we shall see only a greater hatred of the law. As to compulsory vaccination, I
am of opinion that if it had never been insisted on or enforced, vaccination might have been as
general as it now is without the fierce opposition to it which now prevaUs in many quarters. The

AMONGST THE BLIND. 321
facts appear to me to be in favour of vaccination ; but that it often fails of any good effect, and
sometimes causes much evil, and even death, is admitted even by its warmest supporters. To me
it is doubtful if persuasion and example would not have been more effective than compulsion ; but
to inflict incessant penalties upon parents and to imprison them for refusing to subject their
children to an operation which is not unfrequently injurious and is sometimes fatal, seems to me
a needless and monstrous violation of the freedom of our homes and of the rights of parents.
The instances of harshness and cruelty you mention shock me greatly. After so much contest for
mUdness in our laws, are such things stiU possible in our country P "
Mr. Bright while at home accompanied his eldest daughter, Mrs.
Clark, on the evening of the 6th of December, to the annual tea party
provided for the blind at the Chapel for the Destitute, Bope Street,
Rochdale, and interested the gathering by relating some incidents that
had come under his observation during his visit in the previous
July to Norwood CoUege for the Blind. He there made some very
appropriate remarks, and instancing what could be done by perseverance,
he referred to the case of a girl who was not only deaf and dumb, but
also blind. This girl was, nevertheless, taught to read and write,
and all was done through the sense of touch.
He amused them by stating that a blind man visited his residence
on one occasion, and said he was anxious to " see " the bookcase
which was publicly presented to Mr. Bright. The blind man mounted
a chair, and felt the bookcase all over ; he then remarked, " I see it
all; I see what it is like." Mr. Bright also related that while he
was sojourning in Scotland, he one morning took a stroll with
Mr. Fawcett, the Postmaster-General, and when they arrived at a
particular spot, Mr. Fawcett asked him to describe the scenery— a
splendid landscape with a river flowing away to the right, and on
the other side of the river a mansion nestled amongst the trees.
Mr. Fawcett afterwards remarked that Mrs. Fawcett had given
a similar description of the scenery. Blind people are thus not
altogether bereft of the capacity to enjoy the beauties of the out
side world.
Mr. Bright, on the 12th of December, visited his old friend, Mr.
Isaac Holden, the member for the Northern Division ofthe West Eiding,
at Ms residence, Oakworth House, Yorkshire. The first day about fifty
ofthe principal gentlemen in the district partook of lunch with the host

70

322 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
and his guest, and in responding to the toast of his health, Mr. Bright
spoke of the necessity of extending the franchise in counties. With
reference to Ireland he also expressed the opinion that what had
been done for that unhappy country would result in a beneficent
change, and that its future peace and prosperity would be promoted.
Foreign affairs made him somewhat anxious, for he thought that the
outlook was not altogether promising. Our first interference with Egypt
would be less free from complications in its ulterior effects than was
perhaps at first anticipated.
The following evening Mr. Bright distributed the prizes and certifi
cates to the students of Oakworth Mechanics' Institute in the Oakworth
Wesleyan School, which is situated only a short distance from Mr.
Holden's mansion. A little more than a mile from the viUage of
Oakworth itself, which by the way is situated on a hillside, there
extends the famous village of Haworth, where resided Charlotte
Bronte, the distinguished authoress, whose clouded early life closed
in sunshine on the 31st of March, 1855. Mr. Bright told the students
of the Oakworth Mechanics' Institute that he noticed with interest that
they had a libraiy and news-room, and assured them that he was more
concerned with libraries and books than with some of the subjects that
he had often to turn his attention to.
" There was not, to his mind, a more valuable possession than a library, and by that he
meant, not a waggon-load of books, but a shelf or two shelves of good books. He would not
go on to condemn any class of books. There were some persons who confined their reading
to novels. WeU, novels were of two or perhaps three kinds. There were some which
were not of much value for any persons to read, there were some which had no harm in them,
and some that had not a little good, and it must be left to the conscience of the readers
which class one should read. But there were other classes of books of more advantage. There
was the story of our own country, the history of foreign countries, and ancient history.
There were works of biography, of the lives of eminent, and not eminent only, but good men, that
they should read. There were besides these books of poetry, from which he thought aU those who
could read and comprehend them would derive a pleasure which could hardly be surpassed. There
were the poets of our own country, weU worthy of study. There were also the poets of the
United States of America, some of whom were greatly worthy of their attention. He had no
doubt that the students in the American colleges and universities made it a point of becoming
acquainted with the poets of this country, and he thought that with great advantage they might
make themselves acquainted with the poets of the United States. There was a certain freshness
of idea and language in these writings which had given him peculiar pleasure, and from which he
had received intense satisfaction. They would find in them, as far as his experience went, nothing

AMONGST OLD FRIENDS. 323
in the slightest degree distasteful to them. Besides the library they had another branch in their
institution which he considered of the greatest importance — that was, a supply of newspapers.
They had several daily and weekly papers, and also, he supposed, some maps and reviews. Great
change had taken place in regard to the supply of these important articles. Inthe time of Queen
Anne people iu high quarters did not like the pubUc to discuss what they were doing, and as in those
days they had not the power to say that newspapers should not be published, they endeavoured to
strangle them by laying such heavy duties and taxation that made it almost impossible that a paper
could be pubUshed with profit to the proprietors. The great questions of the day were discussed
both in the newspapers and in public speeches, and thus they would become practically, as he said,
a portion and an acting and valuable and invaluable part of the country in which they lived. One
of the great objects of the institution was that young men might have another channel offered to
them, other pursuits brought before them, otlier influences to act upon them, and other sources of
amusement and instruction which wid give them every inducement to avoid the evil and pursue
the good. (Hear, hear. ) Let them get what advantage they could from the institution, and it
was, in his opinion, impossible for any language to express the advantage which they would gain,
of the actual value of the change which it would make in the lives and the characters and the cir
cumstances of the future of the students there, who were so much indebted to the benevolent and
inteUigent teachers of that institution. Let them remember they formed the people of a great
country, celebrated in history, spreading its arms, he was afraid sometimes too widely, over the
earth ; that they influenced millions around them by their political example — the example of their
foreign poUcy. What they did as a nation told in every portion of the globle. It was impossible
to measure or estimate the future advantages and good of the education and intelligence of our
people, and of the wisdom and morality with which they exercise their political power."
On the afternoon of the 14th of December Mr. Holden gave a dinner
in honour of Mr. Bright's visit, and Mr. W. E. Forster was one of the
invited guests. It was a matter of great satisfaction and pleasure to Mr.
Bright that Mr. Holden had given him the opportunity of meeting so
many gentlemen, some of whom he had known forty years ago, when with
his late lamented friend, Mr. Cobden, he conducted the battle of the
Anti-Corn-Law League in the West Biding. The great public questions,
Mr. Bright reminded the gathering in the course of a short speech, seemed
by a peculiar circumstance to grow to a certain point when nothing could
stay them, and assumed positions from which it was impossible to dislodge
them. •' This was the case, he had no doubt, of the proposed wide extension of the franchise to the
householders of the counties. Most of them knew how strange had been the position of this
country with regard to the position of the boroughs and the populations of counties. ^ The
political life of the kingdom, it might be, had almost all been centred in the towns, and if it had
not been for the towns there would have been no Reform BiU, nor scarcely any good measure
which had been obtained for the country during the last fifty years. If they went back for the
last 200 years in the history of this country, they would find there had been no thought of advan
tageous legislation until recent times, when the towns were called into active life by the Reform

324 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
Bill. If they went back to the big men of the last two generations — Fox, Pitt, Burke, Sheridan,
and haK a dozen others —they would find that they discussed hardly any questions of real interest
to the country, but those infernal questions of foreign policy and foreign complications which had
brought upon the country an amount of expenditure of blood and treasure which never could be
remedied, and which was at the bottom of the vast sum of misery and discontent which we were
told existed to so alarming an extent in our large towns. This misery and discontent came only
from ttie conduct of statesmen and the ignorance of the population of this country during the last
two centuries. If Parliament in the reign of George III., instead of endeavouring to coerce the
colonists of America to pay taxes without representation, instead of endeavouring to assist a
certain famdy to a seat upon the throne of France, had directed their great intellects to do what
was just and necessary for the condition of the population of the United Kingdom, did they sup
pose they should have had Ireland in a state of rebellion, that they should have had their great
cities fiUed with miserable classes who made those who were better off miserable even in the com
forts they were enabled to enjoy P He had no doubt at aU that a vast deal of what we had to
complain of came from the neglect, errors, and crimes of those whom we were obliged to caU our
ancestors, and from which it was impossible to escape ; and since the period when the Reform
Bill infused political life into the towns there had been a party in the House of Commons who had
been opposed to every Liberal measure that had been proposed and carried ; but he doubted not
that when the counties were brought into a line with the boroughs, when the two hundred places
in the kingdom having a population of over 10,000 inhabitants, and who were not now represented
as householders, were brought into direct representation, we should find that hereafter there would
be a greater harmony between the representation of the counties and the representation of the
boroughs. We might hope that whatever was just and liberal would hereafter receive much more
sympathising attention in the House of Commons than now or in past times, and possibly even in
the House of Lords. The House of Lords, after all, was not an assembly absolutely unteachable.
It had been called the House of Incurables. His impression was that the House of Lords, when
the people of the United Kingdom were fairly in power, would show that they were not absolutely
incurable. As long as they were able to resist, and had nothing to shake them, and when they had
a very large party in the House of Commons to back them, they thought no great danger could
beset them ; but when the counties were placed on an equal footing with the boroughs, and took
the same line of view in Liberal politics, then, necessity being the mother of invention and a good
many other things, he had no doubt whatever that we should find their high and mighty lordships
would begin to think that they had not thought much so far."
In the evening a deputation from the Liberal Association of
Keighley waited upon Mr. Bright at Oakworth House, and Mr. John
Brigg, the senior Vice-Bresident, presented the following address : —
" To the Right Hon. John Bright, M.P.
" We, the members of the Keighley Liberal Association, desire to offer you a most cordial
and- hearty welcome on the occasion of your visit to our respected friend and member,
Isaac Holden, Esq., M.P.; and we do so not only on our own behalf, but as the duly
elected representatives of the Liberal voters of this poUing district, aU of whom, had it
been possible, would gladly have assembled, to show by their presence how feebly these words
express the depth of their feeUngs. The remembrance of your long and active life, crowded
as it has been by so many conflicts with ignorance and prejudice, and crowned by so many
victories over injustice aud oppression, excites in our minds the warmest enthusiasm and

Vice-Presidents.

KEIGHLEY LIBERALS. 325
the deepest gratitude. Tour name has been so intimately connected with aU the great
measures of the last forty years, that to speak of them separately would be but to chronicle
a continuous record of the progress of England ; for it would be difficult to find any important
occasion when your voice has not been raised in the cause of truth and justice. We recall
with particular pleasure in this community your lifelong endeavours for the promotion of free
intercom-se between aU nations ; and, though we deeply regret that the sound principles you have
so long and so powerfuUy advocated have not yet secured universal adoption, we yet confidently
beUeve that the truths you have taught must ultimately prevail, and the bonds which now so
materiaUy restrict the free international interchange of products and manufactures will eventually
be relaxed. Tour devotion to the public interests, your varied abilities, and your matchless
eloquence, have long aroused our respectful admiration ; but above aU we would place your high
sense of Christian conscientiousness, which has only recently led you to resign a high official
position rather than sUently acquiesce in a policy of which your conscience could not approve.
May England's statesmen ever be guided by such a noble example. In conclusion, we would add
that our earnest wish and prayer is that you may long be spared to receive the reverence and the
love of your grateful countrymen. — Signed on behalf of the members of the Keighley Liberal
Association,
"John Bbigg,
John Clough,
Swire Smith,
John Sugdbn,^
Jonathan Whitley, Secretary."
Mr. Bright, in reply, said : —
"We have learned now not much to distrust, and not at all to dread, our country
men. Fifty years ago, there is not the least doubt of it, the aristocracy held the rotten
boroughs, purchasing honours by their support of a particular Ministry, laying taxes upon
aU the people except themselves— (hear, hear, and cheers) — and dividing among them aU
the profits of the vast expenditure of a great nation. They had some cause to distrust
and even to dread the advent of the power of the people whom they plundered, and for so
long misgoverned. (Loud cheers.) But now the state of things is different. The aristocracy
have learned a great deal. We have learnt a good deal, too, and throughout the country
there is no fear iu any inteUigent mind of the extension of the franchise. It was a Tory
Minister who consented to it in 1867— (hear, hear)— and the Tories voted for it at first. When
the elections turned in their favour they were enthusiastic in favour of it. Since then, when the
tide has flowed in another direction, they begin to have some doubts ; but still, taking household
suffrage as it is, and taking Parliament as it has been since 1867, and the great measures that
are passed, and taking the content there is throughout our vast population on political questions,
I say that a man must be something like a fool if he does not freely acknowledge that the exten
sion of the franchise has been attended by none of those great evils which in former times were
anticipated, and that in point of fact it has been the foundation upon which not only the proper
freedom, but the greater content, has been generated amongst our population. (Cheers.) Well,
now, we have a Government, a very different Government from any I have known, even of the
Liberal party. When I went into Parliament first, Sir Robert Peel and his Government were
in office, but afterwards there came Governments which were aristocratic and exclusive to a large
extent, and if we wanted anything done we had to be very pressing about it. They did not like
to extend the boundaries of freedom. They wanted to remain just where they were. I dare say
they were patrioticaUy disposed, but it was a patriotism which had its flaws. (Hear, hear.) We
have a different Government now, a Government that has wider sympathies— (cheers)— and
that feels that the greatness of the country, and the great future, and the tranquillity, success

326 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
and happiness of the nation requires that there shoidd be a closer tie between the Parliament
which legislates, and the Government which administers, and the people who are expected to
obey the law. (Hear.) Therefore, in considering this question of reform which is now coming
on — it is at the very door, at the threshold — we must, as I think we may fairly, consider that
we have a Ministry that is anxious to do the best that it can in favour of the principles
that it holds, and the principles which the Liberal party hold in the country, and as far as
the difficult circumstances wiU permit. (Hear, hear.) ... If we are to add anything
more, if the contentment of the people is to be continued and strengthened, it must be by
supporting men mainly of the character, and the quality of those that now direct the affairs of
the nation. (Hear, hear.) Tou know that I have no reason, from the position I am in now,
to become the advocate of the Government. I left the Government on a great question,
on which it was impossible for me to agree with them — (cheers) — but I am not less conscious
at this moment of their great merits otherwise in their administration and in the legislation
that they promote. (Cheers.) Although I am, as you know, at this moment as independent
of Governments now or of Governments in the future as any man in this had, stUl I feel
myself at liberty to say that I think the Liberal party throughout the country are bound,
if they are consistent with their principles and have any regard for their country, for
themselves, and for their children, to give the utmost support they conscientiously can to the
Administration which now directs the affairs of this great empire." (Cheers.)

A few days after, Mr. Bright visited Sir Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth,
at his residence, Gawthorpe Hall, near Padiham. Mr. Childers was also
a guest at the same time; and on the T8th of December a crowd of
about 2,000 persons gathered at this ancient hall, with a band of music,
and were anxious to see the two iUustrious visitors, and testify their high
appreciation of the great services they had rendered to the Liberal party
and to the country.
" I believe that during the last fifty-two years," said Mr. Bright, in reply to a speech
from Mr. Cronshaw, of Padiham, "since the time of the first Reform BUl, there has been
more done in this coimtry in the direction of justice and right in our legislation, and on
behalf of the true interests of the people, than has been done in the same time in any other
country, and that we have done it without disorder, and without shedding one drop of our
country's blood ; and that what we have done has tended to unite class and class in a manner
which heretofore has not been known amongst us. (Hear, hear.) I am satisfied now that
loyalty to the Government — I am not speaking of the present Administration— loyalty to
the Throne, and to the most important institutions of the country— that that loyalty is
more common now and more accepted by the people by far than it was when I was young, and
when I first entered into public life. I am satisfied also that the actual condition,
the physical condition, the health, the inteUigence, the comfort of the homes, the general
contentment throughout the whole of the country, vastly surpasses that which prevaUed forty
or fifty years ago. My friend has alluded to the question of the Corn Laws. Now, it is
a thing amazing that iu a country like this, with a harvest so fluctuating, now and then
abounding, aud often short, that there should have been a law to have denied to the great
mass of the people the right to import food from auy part of the world where Providence

AT GAWTHORPE HALL. 327
had permitted it to be grown. In those days the rich always had enough upon their tables;
but the scarcity visited always, and only, the homes of the labouring classes. WeU, all that
is gone; it is a thing of the past— a curse that has vanished, though it has left its evUs
behind it yet. These evils are being diminished. My friend has referred to the tax upon
newspapers. There is nothing that is a greater instrument of inteUigence, knowledge, and
altogether of good, than the dissemination throughout the country of a well-conducted and
moraUy -influenced press. The newspapers of this country, so far as they are well-conducted
—and I believe no newspapers in the world are better— are working silently every day,
as they enter your houses, a beneficent revolution, altering the minds of the people, extending
to them knowledge, showing where there are grievances, defending their rights, and, I believe,
spreading throughout the whole country, and through our legislation, principles of good and
principles of morality whieh in times that are past were little thought of amongst the people.
(Hear, hear.) . . . I am sorry to hear that with regard to home affairs — I mean affairs
at Padiham— there is a Uttle distrust at present and a little difference of opmion. Times
have been bad for some time ; they have pressed hardly upon manufacturers and spinners,
and in some degree upon workmen. All I would say of it is this : Be as moderate as you
can, demand no more than is just, concede if you can concede, bear in mind that the burdens
of these adverse times are burdens not only upon workmen, they are burdens upon employers
also. I am afraid I do not know how it is, but whenever there is any spurt of business
there seems to be a general rush to increase the volume of trade, and by-and-by it is followed
by reaction and by difficulty whieh it is very hard to meet. WeU, these difficulties come upon
us who employ, and they come upon you who are employed ; but in all questions as between the
employer and the employed there is always the great rule of doing, if we can, as we would
be done by, of endeavouring to discover what is moderate and what is just, and of meeting,
if it be possible, sometimes by compromise, sometimes by entire concession, the difficulty which
besets us, and restoring classes and districts to amity and to peace. (Hear, hear.) Tou wdl
say that is a common piece of advice that everybody gives. WeU, if it be common, one
reason is because it is so generaUy accepted to be prudent and wise. There is an admission
of Christian principle even necessary, desirable, and possible in the most ordinary affairs of
Ufe — as in families, as in circles, as between employers and employed. We have tried to
give peace to the country by just and wise legislation. I hope I may speak as a friend to
those I see around me ; and I hope, with regard to the differences which exist here, and in
this northern division of the county, that we shall find very soon that the clouds have dis
appeared, that better spirits have entered the minds of all of us, and that we shall find a
time of returning prosperity in which we may forget some of the troubles that are past."
(Hear, hear.)
Mr. Childers also addressed the gathering, who, after cheering
lustily, dispersed.
On the 20th of December Mr. Bright and Mr. Childers left
Gawthorpe Hall, and upon the train stopping at Accrington they were
heartily welcomed by a large number of persons who had assembled on
the platform. Mr. Alderman Smith, the Mayor of Accrington, and
Mr. Alderman Bhodes, the President of the Liberal Association, greeted
the traveUers. In response to a general wish Mr. Bright presented

328

LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.

himself at the carriage window, and informed the gathering that he used
to pass through Accrington when he was a schoolboy. He found that it
had grown very much larger, and he hoped that by-and-by they would
have the opportunity of sending a good Liberal member to the House of
Commons. Amidst great cheering the train steamed out of the station.
Mr. Bright returned home, and Mr. Childers continued his journey
to Hawarden Castle.
Messrs. Bright, Chamberlain, and Muntz delivered their annual
address to their constituents on the 29th of January, 1884, in the
Birmingham Town Hall. The Mayor (Mr. Alderman Cook) presided,
and was supported by Mr. H. Wiggin, M.B., Mr. Jesse CoUings, M.B.,
Mr. Cameron Corbett, Mr. Jaffray, Mr. Bichard Tangye, Dr. B. W. Dale,
Dr. Crosskey, Mr. Powell Williams, Mr. George Dixon, and a large
number of other gentlemen. Mr. Bright, in alluding to the speeches of
Mr. Charles Villiers which had been just published, and referring to those
delivered by the distinguished member for Wolverhampton in opposing
the Corn Laws, said : —
" But one reason why I mention this publication of those speeches is to bring to your notice
one strange and pamful fact : that during those years those speeches, so convincing, so absolutely
unanswerable, were spoken in the House of Commons as it were to men moraUy stone-deaf.
(Laughter.) The arguments were not answered, the facts that were adduced were not dis
proved, the appaUing suffering of the people was not denied, that poverty, crime, and mortality were
steadily and rapidly increasing was a matter and a thing conclusively shown, and that famine was
at the door, and that fever and death were upon the threshold of several thousands of families ;
and yet it had no effect upon that great party of three or four hundred gentlemen who sat opposite
to Mr. VUliers in the House of Commons. Now, what is to me at this time incredible, if I did
not know it to be true, is that during these eight years of which I have spoken not a single man
of that party — that is, the party of the majority of the peerage, of the great landowners, of the
country gentlemen, of the majority of the clergy, and, I am afraid, a large number of professional
men — that not one single man of that party, during the whole of those years, and during the
delivery of all those speeches, stepped forth from the ranks of his party to say one word or give
a vote in favour of the freedom of industry, of a plentiful supply of food to the toUing mUUons
of his countrymen, or of any reform whatsoever on the great question which Mr. YUliers was
discussing before them. (' Shame ! ') Until Sir Robert Peel — (cheers) — convinced, as he was con
vinced, by the arguments offered, and staggered at the spectre of the famine that was approach
ing — until he surrendered there was not a symptom of confession on the part of that great portion
of ParUament ; and it was only when he enabled us to carry out, I wiU say, one of the most
momentous transactions of our modern history that a portion of his party, acting with the Liberal
party, enabled a great victory to be won. But further than this, so embittered was the great Tory
party against their great leader that they not only would not follow him, but they determined to
destroy him and to drive him from office. I should like to tell you two Uttle incidents that were

A RETROSPECT. 329
within my personal knowledge at that time. Tou are aware, many of you, that at that time the
opposition to Sir Robert Peel and to Free Trade was led by Lord George Bentinck and Mr.
Disraeli. Lord George was the figurehead, and Mr. Disraeli did the most effective fighting. Now,
I walked np from the House of Commons one night with Lord George F. Bentinck. I had become
acquainted with him during the inquiry into the game laws under a committee which I had moved
for, and he sat upon that inquiry. Walking up with him from the House of Commons he spoke
most strongly against Sir Robert Peel, and against the manner in which he was betraying his
party. He said he did not care about the Com Laws, he had horses— Lord George was a great man
upon the turf— (laughter) — he had horses in, I think he said at least, three counties, and he said
his friends told him that he could save £1,500 a year if the Corn Laws were repealed, and the food
of horses — (laughter) — he did not care much about the food of men — (hear, hear) — was so much
cheaper. But he said what he resented was that his party, the agricultural and the Tory party,
should be betrayed and sold by their leader, and he told me the story. He said that when it was
rumoured that Sir Robert Peel was about to capitulate, he wrote a letter to Mr. Sidney Herbert,
who was then a member of Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet, and he told him that if that rumour were
true he hoped he would read the letter to the Cabinet — and I believe he did so — and if the rumour
were true he would — I forget the word — he would attack, he would f oUow Sir Robert Peel with
the most relentless animosity, and he and his friends, if they could, would destroy Sir Robert
Peel's Government. Well, I need not tell you that the promise was most faithfuUy kept, that
Lord George Bentinck and Mr. Disraeli attained a great notoriety, and Mr. Disraeli ultimately
obtained the leadership of the party by the violent and ferocious attacks upon Sir Robert Peel.
And the party afterwards, as you know probably — (disturbance at the back of the hall) — the party,
I was about to say, have raised a statue to each of those gentlemen, and now the party are asking
you to throw out the Government of Mr. Gladstone and to take those of whom you have had so
much experience into your confidence. (Laughter.) Well, another little incident on that same
point. Soon after Sir Robert Peel was driven from office I met him in the division lobby of the
House of Commons, and he was speaking to me about the state of feeUng in Lancashire. I told
him I thought if he went into Lancashire that the people of the whole county would come out to
greet him and to thank him for what he had done. (Cheers.) There passed over his countenance
for a moment a look of great gratification, and then he said, ' But how I am hated by the mono
polists ! ' And that was true, and they treated him as if he was their personal and their mortal enemy,
and they did this although he had given up office and power in order that he might place two
loaves on every one of your tables in place of the one which was there before — (cheers) — for the law
was intended to keep the price of wheat at 80s. the quarter, and to-day it is only 40s. the quarter.
Sir Robert Peel incurred the hostility, the bitter and malignant hostility, of the majority of that
party, because he gave up office and power to save his country from the madness of those whom he
had been accustomed to lead. Now, some people wUl say, very good sort of people, and intending
quite honestly to speak what they believe to be true : ' Times are very much changed; aU that is
thirty-five or forty years ago. Why teU us that story ? ' My opinion is that it is a story that all
industrious, laborious people should never forget. (Cheers, and a voice : ' Never wiU ! ') But if
the times have changed, I shoidd like to ask you if our friends of the Tory party have changed
with the times P (Laughter, and cries of ' No.') If they have, I should like somebody to teU me
the manner in which the change is proved and the precise time when the change took place. Let
us leave the years 1846 and thereabouts, and come down fifteen years, to 1861. I will give you
another illustration, and you wUl then see whether the party had changed. Tou will recollect
that Mr. Gladstone, being ChanceUor of the Exchequer— (cheers)— proposed to remove and repeal
aU the taxes upon paper, the object being to free a great trade from the exciseman, and to enable
a cheap and free and good press to circulate among the people. (Hear, hear.) WeU, the
natural instinct of the party who would not aUow the people to be fed, would

330 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
not allow your bodily wants to be freely suppUed, would be to object to any
free supply for your mental wants, and therefore they revolted against the proposal to
repeal the duty upon paper. And what happened ? The House of Commons passed the bill ;
it went np to the House of Lords, and the House of Lords, having a majority on that side which
was only represented by a minority in the House of Commons, rejected the biU — (' Shame ! ')— as I
believe violating the constitution and infringing violently the privileges of the House of Commons.
(A voice : ' Better times are coming.') And how did they reject it ? Lord Derby summoned
aU the obscure peers he could hear of in all parts of the country in Great Britain and Ireland to
come up to the rescue, and they came— (laughter)— and so many of them that I recoUect
soon after a member of the House of Peers telling us that he was astounded to see aU about him
faces that he had never seen before— (laughter)— and it was said, and I believe with truth, that
the doorkeepers of the House of Lords seized two or three men going into the House of ParUa
ment— (laughter and cheers)— and informed them that this was not the place for them, this was
the place for the peers. (Laughter.) Those obscure peers turned, no doubt,' with an indignant
glance at the doorkeepers and told them they were Lord This or Lord That, and so were permitted
to pass in ; and, passing in under the direction and guidance of the late Lord Derby, they rejected
this bUl, they violently infringed upou the privUege of the House of Commons, and at the same
time they for another year continued the odious excise upon paper, and for the period they made
it almost impossible for a good and cheap paper to live. Shall I give you an illustration— (' Tes ')
 to show you how much these gentlemen have changed with the change of time P (Laughter,
and a voice : ' Show them up.') Tou know, all of you, all the children who go to the Board
schools know— (laughter)— that England and France are great nations lying very near each other,
with but a streak, as it were, of salt water between them. AU who read anything of history must
know that these two nations, so near neighbours, so intended by Providence, so calculated from their
positions to be helpful to each other, have passed almost centuries in warfare ; and you who are
anywhere near as old as I am must know that within the last hundred years, from 1793 to 1815,
a period of nearly a quarter of a century, there was what may be called incessant war between
those two nations. Multitudes of mon were slaughtered, blood that cannot be measured or esti
mated was spilled, and more than a thousand mUlions of pounds sterling were spent by this
country alone in that war. (' Shame ! ') WeU, who paid the thousand millions P (A voice : ' Not
the Lords ! ') No ; the thousand millions were paid partly, I dare say, by aU the people, but by
the incomes of the working classes of this country and the sweat by which their incomes were
produced, they paid far more than their honest share of the vast expenditure of our Government at
that time. A dear lamented friend of mine, of whom you have heard and I hope many of you
have read, Mr. Cobden — (cheers)— thought the time was opportune for an endeavour to place the
relations between the Governments of the peoples of these two countries on a better footing, and
he entered into communication with a friend of his and mine, the late M. ChevaUer, a very noted
French economist, to ascertain if something could not be done. M. Chevalier ascertained that the
Emperor would be very glad to enter into some arrangement of the kind, and the result was, as
you know, that in 1860-61, a treaty of commerce between Great Britain and France was agreed
to be signed. Now, one would have supposed that an object of this kind was, upon the face of it,
so admirable and so blessed that it ought to have been blessed by all good men, and all Christian
men, as doubtless it received the blessing of the Most High. One would have supposed there was
not a human being in this country, much less an educated gentleman, who would have said any
thing in opposition to the objects of that treaty — greater commerce between England and France
and continued peace between two great and professedly Christian nations. And yet, what took
place P Why, our friends, who have changed or who have not changed, opposed the propositions
of the ChanceUor of the Exchequer which were necessary to enable the treaty to come into effect,
and they were led in this opposition by the very man who had assailed Sir Robert Peel for repeal-

THE "FORWARD" CLUB. 331
ing the Corn Laws, who had opposed to the utmost the abolition of the paper duty, and now
opposed a measure which one would have said could not be a party measure at all, but for the
natural, inherent, incurable, eril spirit of the Tory party. (Laughter and cheers.) Now, I would
Uke to ask you, in one sentence, about that matter. Tou know some of the tilings that have been
going on within the last two or three years, and more particularly within the last two or three
months. Tou know that the late Government obtained possession of the island of Cyprus.
(Laughter.) Tou know that the French established some kind of protectorate of Tunis, on the
northern coast of Africa. Tou know that France has been engaged in operations which we deeply
regret in Madagascar, and that they are apparently in great danger of war with China. Tou know
that, on grounds whieh I wiU not admit, and here wiU not attempt to dispute, we have entered
into military operations and great transactions in Egypt. Tou will see at once how much these
things tend to cause suspicion in the minds of the French Government and people, and suspicion
in the minds of the EngUsh Government and people ; and the time has been when it would have
been impossible for any of these things to take place and not to have embroUed the two nations in
war. And yet I believe, mainly on account of the changed feelings amongst millions of French
men and miUions of EngUshmen, arising in great measure from that treaty, and from the extended
commerce between the two nations, the two Governments have been able to do things which I wish
they had not done, and which were likely to be mutuaUy irritating, and yet the amity, the friend
ship, and the good feeUng between England and France have remained in the main undisturbed.
(Cheers.) But if this party, this constitutional party — (laughter) — if they had had their way, and
the treaty had been rejected, the irritation of France must have been great, that their offer so
friendly had not been accepted ; and it is highly probable, that instead of having the tranquillity
that now exists between the two nations, we must have had a state of things that would have filled
the other pages of our history with blood and massacre and with shame."
The foUowing evening Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain were present
at a political and social gathering of the " Forward " Liberal Club,
which was held in the Birmingham Town HaU. The chair was occupied
by Mr. B. Tangye.
"There is the question of the franchise," said Mr. Bright, "which is coming on almost
immediately, and there is the far more difficult, question of the rearrangement of seats. I
shaU not go into either one or the other ; all I shall say is, that I hope the measures of the
Government may be such as aU honest reformers may combine to support, and that the
combined action of the great Liberal party, united for a great purpose, may be successful,
and promote the lasting prosperity and happiness of the people of this kingdom. (Hear,
hear, and cheers.) As we are a 'Forward' club, we will for a little time go beyond the
parliamentary reform question, which has taken a shape now that is definite and well understood,
and we wUl go on to ask what next ; for there will come a time before long when the House
of Commons, strengthened, L hope, by an increase of the popular element, will be asked to
undertake some further measures which are likely to be advantageous to the people. Iu
my opinion, reaUy the first and greatest question which a reformed ParUament will be asked
to undertake, and wiU justly and wisely turn its attention to, is the reform of the laws which
affect the ownership of and the tenure of land in this country. (Cheers.) Now, we have
had of late, as you know, notwithstanding the pressure of the Reform question, a great deal
of discussion upon the question of the laud, and some discussion which is rather of a mild
kind, and propositions which probably very few would be likely to support. We are in a
different position from those who have discussed this question in former years, for we have

332 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
before us the very striking lesson which has been taught us by the recent condition of
Ireland, and the course which Parliament has taken with a view to the improvement of the
condition of that country. Thirty years ago or more— as far back as the year 1849—1 paid
a great deal of attention to the question of the land in Ireland, and studied carefuUy the
evidence given before the great Commission presided over by Lord Devon, appointed by
Sir Robert Peel in the year 1845. No man in England— I should think it probable no
man— studied the report and the evidence of that Commission more carefully than I did
at that time— (hear, hear)— and I came to certain conclusions as to what I thought was
necessary to be done with the Irish agricultural farming population. As some persons here,
the elder members of this great assembly, possibly may recoUect, I was very much criticised,
and, as has often been the case, very much condemned. (Laughter.) The outrageous suggestions
and propositions were chiefly two. One was that the Irish farmer had a perfect right
that the law should secure to him full enjoyment of possession of the improvements which
he had made upon his farm— (cheers)— and the other that the whole land system of
Ireland was in peril so long as so large a proportion of the land of the country was held in the
possession of so few persons, and the great mass of the people were not owners of an acre
of ground. I said, if you want to make the holding of land safe you should have multitudes
of landholders. The people then will not be divorced from the soil, and one landowner wiU
support another, and the whole population will have an interest in the preservation of the
property and the proprietors of the soil. (Hear, hear.) This was my idea, and I proposed
certain things to be clone. The London companies held large estates in some portions of
the north of Ireland, chiefly, I think, in the county of Londonderry. I proposed that the
Government shoidd compel the sale of these estates, the farms being offered to the tenants
who were cultivating them. The landlords were to get a fair market price for their property.
Nobody would be robbed, nobody injured. I stated then that there was a considerable
number of English noblemen — the names I mentioned at the time, and it is not necessary to
repeat them now — who held large estates in Ireland. Some of them went over for a few
weeks once a year, or once in two or three years. I have heard of one who owned a large
estate which he had not visited for twenty years. I proposed that the Government should
appoint a Commission and entrust to them the necessary funds, and give them the powers to
negotiate with these English noblemen non-resident in Ireland for the purchase of these great
estates at a fair price, and then by a system which would not be costly to transfer them to
those tenants who were wishful to buy those farms which they occupied, and that the Govern
ment should make advances on such terms as would enable the farmers to become absolute
possessors of their holdings at the end of twenty-five or thirty years. WeU, I need not tell
you that nothing was done. As a rule, nothing ever is done. (Laughter.) I was criticised
and I was condemned, and I was charged with wishing to rob the proprietors and to distribute
their estates gratuitously amongst their tenants, for which charge, as you know, there was
not the shadow of the shade of foundation. (Cheers.) Nothing was done until three or
four years ago, when there came upon parts of Ireland something like a famine, and great
severity of suffering amongst the people ; and accompanying this there came what many have
described, and what I have described before on this platform, as something like a social revolt
of the people. Now, at the present moment we can look at the state of Ireland, and see
that something far beyond anything I suggested thirty years ago has been done. For example,
instead of securing to the tenant the improvement he had made on his farm, we give him
by law not only the improvements he has made, but actuaUy permanence of possession of
his holding or tenancy ; and besides this, besides the holding being permanent and the improve
ments being secured to him, we give him also the opportunity of a free sale in the market of the
tenancy and the holding which he occupies. Then the holding is very often saleable in the

¦LAND NATIONALISATION. 333
market for as much as the fee-simple or ownership of the land would amount to. Besides
that, look at the condition of the landlords. There was not a landlord in Ireland who came
forward to support the propositions that I made, and no doubt the bulk of them most heartily
condemned me, but what of the landlord now P His position is this, that practicaUy he has not
the choice of his own tenants ; he cannot disturb the tenant so long as the tenant pays his
rent; he cannot evict him; he cannot change him for somebody else he would like better,
and that probably, as he might think, would be likely to vote in accordance with his view. He
cannot offer any of these terms, and, moreover, that power is taken from him which he had
hitherto of determining the rent of a farm. At present it is not the tenant who says
exactly what shaU be paid, but if more is asked than he likes to pay he can appeal to an
impartial tribunal, the Land Commission, who can hear the case and determine what is fair
between the parties. Tou see hy this that the whole condition of the tenant, and in Uke
manner the whole condition of the landlord, is changed. Thirty years ago when I discussed
the question men would hardly have imagined it possible, and yet under the pressure of
the great neglect which has been shown in regard to this matter, this change has come
about ; and we do sincerely hope, and I as sincerely as ever I did in my life, that it may be
found te be the case that the tranquillity of Ireland is gradually but surely being restored.
(Cheers.) The result of the old system, which was evU, has been that it has entirely broken.
down, and no return to it is ever possible with regard to the agricultural condition of
the population of Leland. Now, I said that there were a good many wdd schemes afloat,
and I daresay the wUd schemes have been made rather wilder by what has taken place in
Ireland. Mr. John Stuart Mill was a man of great celebrity — (cheers) — and in many respects a
very admirable man ; but he seemed always to have this failing : that being a most sincere
foUower of the truth as far as he could see it, very soon after he thought he had secured
it on a given question he found out that it was not true, and he had to go further in the
endeavour to find something better. And in many things, with aU his admirable qualities,
I must say I think, poUticaUy, he was not a leader that I would like to trust myself to
follow. But in the case of land he made a suggestion that what he called ' unearned increment,'
that is, the unearned increase, the improved value of the landed property of a town or a
vUlage, or wherever it is — an improvement which did not come from any expenditure on the
part of the landlord— he held that that improvement was no just property of his, and might
be fairly appropriated by the State. Without going into the abstract principle, that proposition
is absolutely impracticable, as could be easily shown, and as he in effect partly admitted
it. I think the question is not necessary to be discussed, and therefore I pass on to one or
two other things. There is an association, I think, in London established for the purpose
of what is called the Nationalisation of the land. I don't know precisely how it proposes to
act, but I believe it does intend that if land on your estates— and I hope several of you have
estates— (laughter)— is taken, that the Government should feel it their honest duty to compensate
you for that of which it deprived you. Besides that, we have had propositions even more
extraordinary; and the greatest, the wildest, the most remarkable that we have had has
been imported lately by an American inventor. (Laughter and cheers.) I know a great
many Americans, and have met a great many who have come to this country with inventions.
(Laughter.) I suppose a good many of them would have to apply to my right hon. friend
and colleague, and avail themselves of his Patent Act— (laughter)— but this is an invention
which has not been patented; it has only been generaUy explained; and for the benefit of
the public it begins, I am sorry to say, according to my view, in what is a general system
of confiscation such as the world has never yet heard of, and, beginning in confiscation, my
own opinion is that it would end in confusion and immeasurable evU. (Loud cheers.) I
suppose, looking over the aspect of this country of Great Britain, we should find, if it came

334 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
into active operation, that all the great houses in which the nobility and the gentry and
sometimes rich merchants live who are possessors of land, that these great houses would, in
a short time, become ruined, because the income upon which they are sustained would be
appropriated to the State. They would become in time, no doubt, covered with ivy and moss,
and I know not what, and might become more picturesque even than at present ; but they
would not be dwellings of wealthy and in many cases happy families, but would be there
merely to form a landscape in which in the future they would be of no use but that of ornament.
At the same time it would be necessary on this plan to divide all the great, farms, because it
is assumed that every baby that comes into the world has a right to a portion of the land.
I suppose that if we had a policy of this kind carried out that it would not be possible to prevent
the fierce competition for farms, probably far more fierce than at present, and if there was the
wild competition for farms, or even as strong a one as there is now — I mean in ordinary prosperous
times — the rents must necessarily rise ; but instead of the rents being paid to the present owners
of the soU, they would have to be paid to our friend Mr. Childers, who would be the Exchequer
landlord for the whole of the United Kingdom. Tou may imagine, but I think you cannot even
endeavour to measure, the amount of favouritism and of corruption that would prevail throughout
the whole country if the letting of plots of land everywhere was entrusted to the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, or to a Commission, or to the officers who might be appointed by him for that
purpose. I have been charged that I wanted to Americanise all our institutions. This was
another exaggeration, but one thing is curious — that this invention has not been tried in America.
(Loud cheers.) In the United States there are many miUions of acres of land which are not
occupied by private owners, and are stUl, I believe, in the possession of the general Government
or of the State Government of the Union. Therefore, there is an opportunity, without molesting
anybody, without confiscation, of adopting this plan. I am surprised that a preliminary trial,
which might possibly have some chance of success, should not have been made in the country of
the inventor instead of in this country, where until recently, he has been a stranger. (Hear,
hear.) ... On the plan now offered, it is proposed to confiscate the whole property of
all landowners of this country, and I suppose every other country, and to make us compensa
tion. I think the utmost offered is that the poor widows should have a hundred a year.
(Laughter.) But what was the proposition of the slave-owners p Not that the land was to be
confiscated, but that all labour of honest workmen throughout Europe and throughout the
Northern States of America should be permanently confiscated, as the labour of the three or
four millions of negroes in the South had been confiscated for generations past. It is just
as great a cruelty, as great a foUy, as great an injustice, a thing as impracticable to at
tempt to confiscate the property of all the landowners of the nation as to make all work.
men into slaves. One thing is about as bad or about as good as the other, and any person
coming to this country to make such a proposal must have imagined two things : first of
ad, that the people of England had lost whatever they had had heretofore of common sense,
and that they had lost all belief in, and aU regard for, a certain document of very old date,
which goes by the name of the Ten Commandments. (Cheers.) Now, let it not be imagined
that because I am condemning this new proposition that I am wiUing to support the
existing system of our land laws in England. (Hear, hear.) On the contrary, I have always,
since I have taken any part in public affairs, condemned it, as having serious defects which it is
necessary to remedy. (Hear, hear.) The basis of our system has been to buUd up and to
preserve great estates, not because of love for a particular duke or lord, but for the purpose of
supporting a political fabric. Tou have great estates, the owners have great power, and it has
been thought convenient on the part of monarchs of preceding generations and of the heads of
great f amflies that these great estates should, as much as possible, be fostered in order that they
might unite aU those great owners with the monarch for the support of a Government under

HOW TO RESTORE THE LAND. 335
which — I do not pretend to say that it was hoped to do injustice to the people — but under
which at least the power of the people should be limited to the narrowest extent. (Hear, hear.)
The result has been, as you know is the case here, and has been the case in Ireland, that as far
as the ownership goes the people have been to a large extent — to an extent beyond that in any
other country in Europe— separated and divorced from the soil. They are driven into towns.
There would be scores of thousands more farmers in comfortably-sized farms and in fair farm
houses, with a fair measure of comfortable living and prosperity, if this system had not endured
so long or had never prevaded. With freedom you would observe this state of things, that the
natural laws of accumulation and of dispersion would have their reasonable and fuU effect.
Ton know that there are forces of accumulation. The love of landed property, of real estate,
under the belief that that investment is more certain, the pleasure a man has in looking over
his estate, the health-giving process which Dr. Johnson so much approved of, that a man should
take a walk of two miles every morning before breakfast, and, if possible, upon his own land —
weU, aU those are forces of accumulation ; but there are forces of dispersion just as constantly
at work. The death of a proprietor is a cause often of a dispersion of landed property ; it
ought to be much more so than it is. (Cheers.) Then there is the wish to obtain a larger
percentage for a given sum of money invested in land by investing it — it might be in our
friends' coffee-house, which I observe has just paid a dividend of 15 per cent., or in the
hundreds and hundreds of modes in which property may be safely invested at a higher rate of
interest than farming land generaUy yields. The forces of accumulation, if the laws were just,
would always he in force ; the natural forces of dispersion, if the laws were just, would always
be at work ; and they would be at work to their natural extent, and the result would be, I have
no doubt whatever, that accumulation would be in many cases discouraged, and dispersion in
many cases would be encouraged; and, with the perfect freedom which the law not only should
give, hut ensure, that the land would graduaUy and naturally go into the hands most requiring
it, most desirous of having it, most able to pay for it, and most capable of working it for the
pubUc advantage. (Cheers.) Well, it is no abstruse question, and it is no difficult question, if
the Government and ParUament would undertake it, seriously wishing to meet the public
necessity in regard to it. It is a very easy matter to abolish the law of primogeniture. (Cheers.)
In fact, more than a dozen years ago, when I was a member of Mr. Gladstone's first Govern
ment; — (cheers) — the question had been discussed and a biU was under preparation for that
precise object; and I think myself that there would be no difficulty whatever in these days,
opinion having changed and advanced so much, in passing such a measure through the House of
Commons. I predict nothing of the House of Lords, but I suspect even in that House a great
change has taken place, for only the year before last a biU of very considerable value in the
direction of which I am speaking, as to the freedom of the land, was brought into Parliament
by Lord Cairns, and passed through both Houses with ahnost no difficulty. WeU, then, we
should have sons and daughters treated as sons and daughters, not as outcasts. When a man
dies the law gives the eldest son his handsome estate and his fine house. ; and what does it give
to the other sons or to the daughters P The law gives, I believe, just nothing. What would any
man say to the father of a famUy who took his eldest son and gave him an education— sent him to
one of your great schools in your neighbourhood, or to Oxford, or to Cambridge, or elsewhere,
and gave him the best education that money could buy, and then left the other sons and the
daughters without learning even so much as their alphabet— suppose such a case as that arose,
what would humanity say? What would the moral sense of the whole country say to a dis
position Uke that ? Surely, this man is bound to give aU an education, such a fair education as
he can offer them; he is equaUy bound, out of the means of which he is possessed and blessed,
to make some provision for them. I do not speak now of an exactly equal provision, but some
reasonable and righteous provision for all his children— (cheers)— and if he neglects or omits to

336 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
do this it becomes the duty of the law — (hear, hear) — and of a Christian Parliament to interpose.
The law should be consistent with natural justice, and with the course which a just and honest
and affectionate and Christian parent would have pursued if he had done his duty. (Cheers.)
There is no reason why settlements and entails should be limited so as to be practicaUy abolished.
Transfers might be made perfectly simple— shares and properties of other kinds can be trans
ferred almost without cost. A friend of mine, a member of the House of Commons, told me
last week that he had lately bought » house in London. There was no difficulty about the title
or the deeds and so forth, but the transfer of that house cost him £200. (Cries of ' Shame ! ') It
might have been done and not cost two hundred shiUings, or even less than that. All this is
possible. I have no doubt a great many lawyers would not like the change — {laughter) — but
there are many lawyers in favour of these changes. The amount of business and of transactions
would be enormously increased, and we have never heard that in those countries where these
changes have been made the lawyers have been driven to beggary and starvation. (Hear, hear.)
The difficulty of these things is not great ; the danger is nothing. Whenever this new measure
of reform becomes established as the law of the land, I hope the first great, measure that wUl be
undertaken will be to free the land of England from its feudal and ancient claims, and that it
may be made free, as we succeeded thirty-five years ago in making its produce free. People do
not seem always to recollect that freedom and justice and morality will heal a great many
political and social diseases. I should like to try this plan as far as I have explained it. I might
wish to make some additions, perhaps, but as far as I have explained it I should like to see it
tried ; and until it is tried I would advise the people of this country not to have recourse to those
extravagant — some of them unjust and some of them impracticable, as I think — schemes which
have been offered to them. The county population is very soon to be invited to take part in the
great national deliberations in the House of Commons. There are, I forget how many, but I
think three millions of people, who live in towns and villages of ten thousand and upwards, who
are not directly represented under the household suffrage scheme. Then there are about to be
brought in the agricultural labourers who are householders. All these are to be added to the
constituencies that already exist in the boroughs of the United Kingdom. It is fitting that they
should be present by their representatives when this great question of the land is considered and
finally settled. (Cheers.) I believe that as far as I have described it many landowners would
concur in the scheme. I believe there is no inconsiderable number of the members of the House
of Peers who would be wUling to assent to a great change and amendment in the law. This
reform is, in my opinion, of the first magnitude, after the question of ParUamentary reform
which is awaiting the decision of Parliament. Tou are members of the 'Forward Club.'
' Forward ' is the motto of your town. (Cheers.) ' Forward ' describes the character which the
population of the country has given to you, observing what you have done, whether it be in
manufactures and industiy, or in politics and education, during the last twenty years. Let
' Forward ' be your motto stiU, but march with that circumspection which wisdom demands,
which morality wUl indicate to you ; and then, not being standstill, not being backward, but being
honestly and carefully and wisely advancing, you wiU become more and more teachers to your
country and guides in the great political future which is before us." (Cheers.)
On the 13th of February, 1884, Mr. Bright, while attending to his
Barliamentary duties in the metropolis, sent a letter to the Workmen's
Peace Association (the annual meeting of which was held in London in
February), thanking them for sending him their map of our national
expenditure for the last fifty years.

THE DEATH OF MILNER GIBSON. 337
"It affords a lamentable exhibition of our folly as a nation," wrote Mr. Bright, "and it
should be put up in some prominent place in the dwelling of every working man in the three
kingdoms. In war the working men find the main portion of blood which is shed, and on them
fall the poverty and misery which are occasioned by the increase of taxes and damage to
industry. Household suffrage in boroughs and counties wiU provide means by which our people
may defend themselves against these enormous evUs. It will now rest not with a few, but with
multitudes, to say whether the future shall be as the past, whether the blood and treasure of our
people shaU continue to be shed and squandered on distant shores in causes in which we have no
real interest. I hope your Workman's Peace Association may send your chart of expenditure
through the country. It can only do good in every family in which its figures are examined and
understood." Mr. Milner Gibson, while beginning his annual cruise in the Medi
terranean on the 25th of February, on board his yacht, the Resolute, was
taken in, somewhat suddenly, and he died, leaving a fast- diminishing
number of the prominent figures of the Corn-Law agitation. He did not
seek to re-enter Parliament after the election of 1868, for up to that time
he had been in the forefront in all the great subjects of debate, served
his country well, and merited retirement. Mr. Bright was present at
the burial of his old friend in the pleasant churchyard of Theberton
Church, near Saxmundham, Suffolk.
Mr. Bright, in answer to a letter from Mr. Hope Hume, of Torquay,
respecting the land laws, replied on the 27th of February : —
" The time is near when our land laws wdl be revised, some of them abolished. The law of
primogeniture wiU vanish, and entails and settlements wiU be got rid of, or wdl be so far limited
as to be deprived of their pernicious influence on the pubUc welfare. I believe that opinion has
so far advanced on these questions that Parliament wfll consent to changes which a few years ago
men thonght almost impossible. The ease with which the Settled Estates BiU, brought in by Lord
Cairns, passed both Houses is a proof that opinion has changed, and that landowners have been
instructed by adverse times through which they have recently passed. I need not teU you that I
have no sympathy with some wild propositions which have been brought before the public. The
path of justice and honesty in regard to land and the owners of land is one from which I would
not depart, and I believe aU our people of every class have no real or permanent interest in
schemes of confiscation which have recently been offered for public acceptance. When the
measures of Parliamentarv reform now contemplated have become law, I think the changes which
are required in our land system wdl not be difficult to accomplish if undertaken in an honest spirit
and on honest principles. I am satisfied that in the main the owners of the soil will profit by the
change not less than other classes of our population. Our reforms hitherto have been good for
the whole nation. Acting on the same lines we shaU meet with a like result. Some may be
timid, some may doubt, but future years will prove the wisdom of the changes we have suggested,
and which cannot now be long delayed."
Mr. Augustin Jones, of the Friends' Boarding School, Brovidence,
71

338 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
America, informed Mr. Bright, by letter, that a marble bust of the
distinguished Bochdale Friend was being placed in the Lecture Hall of
their school.
" I was surprised to hear of the project ; but I cannot but be much gratified at the friendly feeling
manifested to me by yourself and the authorities connected with your institution," replied Mr.
Bright, on the 10th of March, while in London. " Tou say that I was a friend to your country
in the day of need. I did what I could to prevent discord between the two English nations, and
to teach our people the nature of the great issue which depended on the conflict in which twenty
years ago your people were engaged. I lamented the conflict ; but I wished that England should
offer her sympathy on the side of freedom to the slave, and in favour of the perpetual union of
your great Republic. I look back on the part I took with unaUoyed satisfaction, and would with
draw no word I uttered in connection with a contest on which England and the civdised world
looked with a profound interest. The question of peace, to which you refer, claims the sympathy
of all Christian nations. On your continent we may hope your growing miUions may henceforth
know nothing of war. None can assail you ; and you are anxious to abstain from mingling in the
quarrels of other nations. Europe, unhappily, is a great camp. All its nations are armed, as if
each expected an invasion from its neighbour, unconscious, apparently, that great armies tempt
to war the moment any cause of dispute arises. The potentates and governments of Europe,
I doubt not, dread war. They seek to guard themselves against it by armaments. We, in
England, are not free from blame ; but with us the love of peace is increasing, and no government
can engage in war without risking, and even losing, the support of our people. We are so
involved with territory and populations over half the globe that difficulties are almost constantly
arising, and our danger of war is greater than that of any other nations. I am, however, confident
that our feehng against war is sensibly increasing, and I trust and beUeve the moral sense of our
people wUl more and more condemn it. I have read with much interest the report of your great
school which you sent me. I hope your efforts in behalf of a sound, liberal education may pros
per, and that your students as they enter and pass through the world may strengthen the moral
sentiment which pervades so large a portion of your population. I can only wish you success in
your great work, and thank you and aU connected with your institution for the kindness you have
shown me. England and your United States are two nations, but I always like to regard them
as one people. On them the growth of aU that is good in the world greatly depends."
In the absence of Mr. Gladstone, through illness, the second reading
of the Bepresentation of the Beoples BiU was moved by the Marquis of
Hartington on the 24th of March, and the debate was opened by Lord
John Manners. The gaps on the back benches were rapidly "filled as
soon as it was known that Mr. Bright had risen. He confined himself
to a purely debating speech, and was very effective in turning the tables
upon the opponents of the measure.
" I believe it to be a great bill," said Mr. Bright, " drawn up with statesmanlike sagacity ahd
wisdom, and I believe that is the opinion throughout the country. (Ministerial cheers.) And I
put it to hon. gentlemen opposite whether they are not convinced that throughout the country,
during the discussions of the last six months, there has been a more unanimous expression of
opinion in favour of the extension of the franchise to householders in the counties — (' No,' and
Ministerial cheers) — than we have had on any other great, political question for very many years.

THE COUNTY FRANCHISE. 339
(Cries of ' No," and cheers.) Well, I think I could provo that, if it was necessary to go into
proof. (Hear, hear.) But hon. gentlemen opposite are not agreed in their opposition to this biU,
and it is for that reason this amendment is proposed. (Hear, hear.) Why have you not said
' No,' or agreed to say ' No,' when the question was put P Why have you not done that which is
common and usual, and moved that the bill be read this day six months ? Many hon. gentlemen
opposite wiU remember an expression of Mr. Disraeli, so far back I think as 1859, when he
brought in one of his abortive reform biUs. I wUl read the quotation to the noble lord, and I am
not sure whether he was a member of the Government at that time. Explaining what was meant
by the biU then introduced, he said ' they wished to bring about a general content and sympathy
between the different portions of the constituent body, and they proposed, therefore, to recognise
the principle of identity of suffrage between the counties and the boroughs.' (Hear, hear.) Are
you ready now to f oUow a leader whom you pretend greatly to revere ? Are you ready to bring
about that ' general content and sympathy between the different portions of the constituent
body' which he thought so important that he actually sacrificed two of the most respectable and
respected and honoured members of his Cabinet rather than surrender it P We know that Mr.
Henley and Mr. Walpole retired from the Government of Lord Derby at that time because they
would not consent to equaUse the franchise of the counties and boroughs ; and it was not exactly
upon the question of the lowering of the franchise, but because they thought that there was some
constitutional principle involved, and that county representation should always be maintained, if
possible, as it was more conservative than that of the boroughs. Mr. Disraeli took that view, his
Cabinet took that view, and I have no doubt part of his party took that view, and therefore they
did not feel very strong in opposition to this measure. This measure wiU bring about general
content and sympathy between the different portions of the constituent body. I met the other
day a Conservative peer, and he said that the bUl was a very good biU ; and I heard or read of a
speech of another Conservative peer, not long ago, who, in referring to the question of the county
franchise, spoke, perhaps not as strongly as I do, but spoke in a manner which indicated that he
thought it reasonable, and that it would have to be granted. (Ministerial cheers.) Well, if that
be so, hon. gentlemen opposite are taking a very reasonable course in not making any general or
direct opposition to the biU. I beUeve that if they were to move that this bill be read this day
six months they could not carry the whole of their party into the lobby against it— (hear, hear)—
because even amongst gentlemen opposite on this question I am bound to believe there has arisen
amongst them glimmerings of common sense. (Laughter and cheers.) The noble lord had
some figures before him, but did not treat us to many of them. But I would ask hon. members
te remember that which is stated in many publications, namely, that there are 150 towns with
districts of an area so limited as to be like towns in the counties not represented, and those towns
represent a population of more than a miUion and a half. Well, those people who live in all
these smaU unrepresented towns are just the same kind of people as those who live in the towns
that are represented. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) The householders are of the same quality,
pursue the same industries, have the same inteUigence, are educated in the same manner, under,
as a rule, the same influences, and if you give, as the noble lord consented to give, the franchise
to the householders of the boroughs, surely he need not be so alarmed at the prospect that
the present Government should extend the franchise to the counties. The noble lord has spoken
of women who are farmers, and who are not liked by the landowners because they cannot vote. I
heard the other day from a lady, the widow of a farmer in Warwickshire, and she said she
believed that the only reason why she could not keep her farm was because she had no vote.
(Hear, hear.) That wiU be very easUy settled when this franchise bill comes into law, because
the franchise wUl be so extensive that it will not be worth while for a landlord to do so foolish or
so harsh a thing as to get rid of a woman tenant-farmer because she has no vote. (Cheers.)
The noble lord drew a picture of what would happen when this lady farmer paid her wages. She

340 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
paid her carter so much, and her shepherd so much, and her labourer and gardener so much, and
all these men under this bdl could vote, and she would not be able to vote herself. I do not
know whether he wished to excite our sympathy for the mistress of the farm, or contempt of the
persons to whom the vote is to be given ; but it seems that these labourers have had the
advantage of the example of country gentlemen who exercise great influence over them, and Uve
in the same parish as the clergyman whom the State has provided for them. (Laughter, cheers,
' Divide,' and ' Order.') They have had, further, the advantage of having been educated in
Church schools ; and I say that we have a right to claim, and you have no right to deny, that
those labourers are just as quaUfied to exercise the franchise as the vast numbers to which
you gave the franchise in the year 1867. There is no indisposition to discuss another question,
and that is the question of the redistribution, and especiaUy connected with Ireland. In fact, I
think my right hon. friend the member for Ripon himself and others have spoken with more
earnestness upon the Irish branch of this question than upon any other. The objectors to this
biU wish to proceed in the management of Ireland entirely on the old lines. (Hear, hear.)
Ireland has always been treated differently from England with regard to this question, and the
object of the Opposition now is to continue that different treatment. That was done when there
was nothing of that strong assumed disloyalty in Ireland, and when there was nothing of the sore
disturbance that has been the case during the last three years. During the Government of Lord
Melbourne, from 1835 to 1841, on this particular side of the House, the Whig administration of
that day made many efforts to do some things that would be just in Ireland, but aU those efforts
were thwarted by hon. gentlemen who sat opposite ; or if by any good luck they escaped from
this House and made their appearance in the other, they were very soon rejected and destroyed.
And it is upon record that Mr. O'ConneU during these years put an end for a time to the
agitation with which he had been connected, and gave his most honest assistance to the
Government in order that some of the measures might pass which might tend to the pacification
of his country. Those measures were not passed — (Hear, hear, from the Irish members) — and
until the time when the present First Minister became Minister in 1868, there was no strenuous
attempt to force measures of that kind through Parliament. (Hear, hear.) This policy has been
continued. It began a couple of centuries ago — perhaps more ; but it has been continued nearly
ever since. It has not been rejected until within very recent years ; and if there be in the world,
or if there be within this Empire, any plot of ground on which the principles of the Tory party
have had full aud undisputed play, that spot of ground is in the kingdom of Ireland. (Hear,
hear, cheers, and laughter.) Mr. Disraeli told us, in a very remarkable speech, that in Ireland
you had an alien Church. What is an alien Church, planted amongst an alien people ? It is a
source of irritation and constant outrage. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) Tou had a great bulk of
the land confiscated and held under your system of laws, under a class monopoly, so that it
coidd never be dispersed amongst the people of Ireland, with proprietors who cared little for the
most part for the interest of the population, who had no sympathy with the reUgious teachers of
the people, and they cared — and I hope nobody will suppose I include everybody — generaUy only
for the coUection of their rents. They had a government in Dublin Castle, and whether you had
members on that side of the House or this, or one party or the other, the government in Ireland
was the same. It was aU carried on through the majesty of a particular colour. (Hear, hear.)
We know, hon. gentlemen opposite know, the whole House knows, or ought to know, that
until recently legislation for Ireland was a farce. Whenever there was a county contest in
Ireland there was a local civil war, and if you turn to the blue books containing the evidence
given before the Ballot Committee in 1869, you wiU see that the mUitary officers in Ireland had
to gather together soldiers here and there all over the county in order that the peace of the
county might not be disturbed. (Hear, hear.) I think, and the English people think, much
change is due to the machinery of the ballot. Whatever other result has taken place, the

THE FRANCHISE IN IRELAND. 341
elections are much more tranquil than they were in past times. What was the reason for it P
That the people were discontented, as they have been for the last fifty years, and before that ; but
as none of us are responsible for more than that period, I confine my observations to fifty years.
And now, in 1884, we have an hon. gentleman from Ireland, representing one of her chief cities,
with great influence in the country, speaking of himself here as a foreigner almost. (Hear,
hear, from Irish members.) Tes, but that is not a very enthusiastic cheer. (Laughter.) But
there are hon. gentlemen there who have not repudiated the statement that they were here as
something Uke a rebel party. (A loud ' Hear, hear,' from a member of the Irish party.) I am
coming to my argument on this question, and therefore I may be permitted to speak with a little
freedom. Some of these gentlemen — the party, I suppose — are in league with persons in
a distant foreign country, who, so far as their stupid, malignant, wicked ideas will enable them to
do it, are trying to make war on this country. Now, this is not a thing of to-day — it is a thing
of a hundred years old — for in this very House Lord North, in his speech on the American War,
deplored the fact that some of the bitterest enemies of the English Crown were to be found
among the Irish people who had emigrated to the American colonies. This is what I want
to ask the House : I would ask my right hon. friend, and anybody who has a doubt on the matter,
whether it is worth whde going on with Ireland upon the old lines — whether there is anything in
the poUtical history of this country more completely a shameful failure than the government of
Ireland — I wUl not say by the Imperial Parliament, for it was bad, or even worse, when a
ParUament sat in Dublin. I ask them whether we are to go on upon the old lines, or whether we
shall try some new Unes. Now, I am for a new line. Tou may, if you like, give justice equally
to all your people throughout the three kingdoms, or you may act with injustice and contempt as
far as regards five millions of people in Ireland. Tou may rule — you have ruled for centuries —
in that country as if the people were for ever to be a conquered people ; or you may rule them as
a portion of a great free nation. Tou may keep and rule by force— force is the great remedy of
the party opposite— (' Oh, oh ! ' ' Coercion,' ' Withdraw')— you may, if you like, rule in Ireland
by force, and there is nothing there you cannot do by force. Tou can put down aU insurrection,
aU rebeUion, and defy the efforts of those Irishmen who hate England, whether they are in
Leland or on the American continent. Tou have the power if you like to sustain, and it may be
make more severe, your absolute power over the government of the Irish people. I am speaking
now of that power of which it was Mr. DiUon, I think, who some three or four years ago spoke in
this House. He appeared, he said, to carry on a war, but he would have preferred another
method of doing so had it been open to him. That was a candid statement. It is known
by every sensible Irishman — and who among us does not know that what Ireland gets from
England is because it is impossible to withhold it ? They know this : England could be more
cruel, if possible, than she has been before. She has power enough to dp anything she Ukes
there, but depend upon it that is not the wish of the English people. (Hear, hear.) If there
was ever a people in this world who had associations with another people, and wished that people
weU, it is the people of Great Britain. (Hear, hear.) But for my part, if ancient Unes are to be
worked upon, and Ireland by no means to be tranquiUised and united to this country, I can only
wish, repeating a simUe I have used before, that the island could be moved from her foundation
in the deep and taken some thousand miles westward. (Hear, hear.) I ask the House if there is
not another and a better policy; and, if England does prefer that latter policy, will it not be more
satisfactory to the people of this country that we should give full justice, and that they should
have fuU confidence in that justice as regards the question of representation ? We have removed
the grievance of an aUen Church in Ireland; we have given to the Irish cultivator a security he
scarcely ever hoped for— a security, I believe, about as good as the freehold which hon. members
opposite wish they could induce him to buy. WeU, if this is so, if we have done all this, what
shaU we do in regard to the franchise and the power of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament ? The

342 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
noble lord (Manners) pointed to the hon. member for Cork, and spoke of the terrible things
that would happen after a general election. I do not believe in these terrible things. The
hon. member for Cork is not a fool. (Laughter.) The hon. member for Cork, no doubt,
has wishes, honest good wishes, differing from mine in some respects, in regard to the
country of which he is a native. But depend upon it, they wiU not be worse, whatever
the fair representation of Ireland in this House. If any party in this House endeavoured
to do the thing the noble lord suspects and fears, depend upon it the English House of Commons,
with its vast majority of 550 members representing Great Britain, will find out a way of meeting
whatever difficulty may be interposed by any number of men, however ill-disposed, who come here
from Ireland. What we desire in this bill, and what I am sure my right hon. friend desires, espe
ciaUy in regard to Ireland, is this : We desire to purchase tranquiUity, by no special sacrifice from
England, but by a measure that may win the people from disorder, conspiracy, and rebeUion, and
a happy union with a free nation in whose name and by whose authority we are assembled here.
Any member is at liberty to say it is absolutely impossible, and I am not at liberty to say it is
absolutely possible. But I can say your other plan is impossible, for it has been tried longer than
the lifetime of any living man amongst us ; so therefore, at all risks, try if it is not possible to
undo that which our forefathers have done, and see if Ireland will not be as tranqud as Wales or
Scotland at this moment. I have spoken of the franchise. And now two sentences on the
distribution of seats. I think my right hon. friend beldnd me spoke upon that, and my right hon.
friend the member for Bradford wrote a letter upon it, which, I believe was not accurate.
(Laughter.) It is very easy to be inaccurate in a matter of this kind. I find everybody giving
a story different from everybody else. My story will not differ upon mere statistics. I accept
the statement of the late Chief Secretary, who said that 96 or 97 was the proper number for
Ireland. I am not at all particular about two or three. London has 4,000,000 inhabitants, and
will soon have more. Lancashire and Torkshire have more than 6,000,000; making in all
10,000,000— a third of the whole of Great Britain. But my right hon. friend does not propose—
he rather gives us a contrary view — to give to this population the actuaUy precise number this
population could claim. How many members lose half the year in London ? How many London
newspapers are there which come every day with intimations, persuasions, and menaces to
members of the Government, and all parties in the House ? The influence of London is far too
great, and is, I believe, the source of very many grievous errors which our administrators make,
especiaUy m dealing with foreign Governments. (Hear, hear.) Ireland has a claim to a certain
number of representatives. The Reform Bill of 1832 added five members : two have vanished,
and the Irish members are now 103. Have hon. members ever thought of the Act of Union P
(Hear, hear.) The noble lord did not mention it, nor anybody else that I have heard, but it has
been constantly present in my mind. The Act of Union is final with regard to this matter.
(' Oh, oh ! ' and ' Irish Church.') As I expected, an hon. member opposite speaks of the Irish
Church. The Act of Union declares in one of its clauses that the Protestant Church of Ireland
is to be united for ever with the Church of England. Well, we know what ' for ever ' means.
(Hear, hear.) Let me give the House the facts. The Act of Union was not, though it was some
thing in the nature of a treaty, a treaty entirely on one side, made by Great Britain, a powerful
nation, and forced upon the Irish nation. Notwithstanding the wickedness and corruption of that
transaction, it is a great proof of the sense of justice in the English Government of the
time, and it should not be forgotten that they put in that Act that Ireland should have 100
members in the Imperial Parliament. They could have inserted a smaller number— there was
nobody to contest it— but the number was, in my opinion, in excess of the proportion Ireland
could then upon proportion of population claim. (' No, no.') That is my opinion. It redounds
to the credit of the Pitt Government in history that they did a, just and a generous thing in
offering the Irish nation 100 members in this House. The hon. member up there spoke of the

THE ACT OF UNION WITH IRELAND. 343
Irish Church. Now, the more powerful party has a right to surrender anything which he after
wards believes to be unjust to the weaker party. We surrendered the Irish Church establishment
because we knew it was a grievance to the Irish people, and that it would be an advantage not only
to the people, but to the Church if the Establishment was removed. And what has happened P
For these last few years we have never heard a word from Land Leaguers, Fenians, or whatever
they may be; not a word in public, and I doubt if a word has been written in the newspapers,
attacking the clergy of the Protestant Church in Ireland. (Hear, hear.) Is that not a proof
that they have been removed from a position they never should have accepted P And I beUeve
the bishops, the clergy, and thousands of their more intelligent laity, if they came on the floor
of this House to tell the truth, would say it has been an advantage to Protestantism and to the
tranquiUity of the Church in that country that the Establishment was removed. Therefore, the
Government of England were at liberty to do that, for it was a concession to the Irish people ;
but when you come to restricting the rights of the Irish people, then I say there is nothing on
earth can ever persuade me, unless I see it done, that Parliament, the Liberal party, and the
representatives of Great Britain wid restrict the rights which the Act of Union gave to Irish
representatives. The population of Ireland, though now reduced, is very near the same — rather
more perhaps — as when the number of members was originally fixed at 100. Some hon. members
say the population is diminishing. It has been up to this time, but I am not quite sure it is to go
on diminishing. I shaU be disappointed in the residt of the Land Act if it does not to some
extent retain the men in that country and in this land. I observe with great satisfaction that the
hon. member for Cork is now appearing as the chairman of a company which is intended to buy
estates and transfer them to tenants from the more thickly-populated parts of Ireland. I also see
that he has obtained the support of three or four other members of this House, and, what is more,
that he is acting under an Imperial Act of Parliament, and is obtaining money out of Imperial
funds. (Hear, hear.) It looks to me as if hon. members opposite were willing to unite them
selves with Englishmen on this side of the House. If that be so, I want to ask the House
whether the statement of the right hon. gentleman at the head of her Majesty's Government was
an injudicious or an unwise statement. I am determined to stand by the Act of Union. Nothing
shaU persuade me to vote for less than this ; but this I declare most solemnly, that I think the
House would commit a most grievous injury, a most cruel affront, and a most cruel injustice to
Leland if they tampered with this Act of Parliament which is caUed the Act of Union, and upon
which the Irish people surely have a right impartiaUy to rely. I have, I think, finished what I
have to say, and I wiU conclude by merely making one observation. There are two paths which
are open to us — the union by force and on the old lines, or the union with justice, and, notwith
standing what hon. members opposite may say, I believe, within a short period, with prosperity
and peace. (Hear, hear.) The one path leads to disloyalty, discontent, conspiracy, and anarchy.
Our past conduct has led to aU those calamities, and the line which I would point out to the House
is a different one. I run all the risk of doing justice to Ireland — (cheers) — and I believe it is only
by that and by confidence that you wdl overcome the disturbed state of f eeUng that has for some
time unhappily existed in Ireland. This great measure of right which we are now discussing was
explained a short time ago, and defended in a speech great as the subject with which you deal.
It has, I am convinced, the approval of the vast majority of our people. I trust and beUeve the
House wdl give its hearty sanction to it, and that it may prove hereafter to be a new charter of
freedom and of union of the three nations in whose name we sit here and for whose welfare we
have the honour to labour." (Cheers.)
The second reading of the Bill was ultimately carried by the splendid
majority of 130.

344 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
As the keen days of March were drawing to a close, Mr. Bright
caught a chiU one night as he was leaving the House of Commons, and
his left lung was slightly affected. Several days elapsed before the
misfortune became known beyond his family circle, and numerous were
the visitors and inquiries made, until at last the medical attendant found
it requisite to limit the number of personal interviews. By medical
skill and constant attention on the part of two of his daughters, he
recovered gradually, and on the 2nd of May, 1884, was able to leave
the metropolis and travel to his home at Bochdale.
Mr. Bright's constituents, upon learning the misfortune to their
senior member, assured him by a resolution " of their sincere and hearty
sympathy in his temporary loss of health and strength, and they
would again express the universal affection and respect in which he
is held by the great constituency he has served so long."
Mr. Bright, after thanking them for their kind resolution, added
in his letter : —
" I am glad to be able to say that my iUness has passed away, and that I hope that when
the weather becomes more mild I shaU be able to resume my usual habits and occupation.
I am grateful to your committee for the expression of their sympathy and kindness."
While the hon. gentleman was detained at his apartments in
Piccadilly by the severe east wind and unfavourable weather, he
received a letter from Mr. Thomas WiUiams, of Llandudno, informing
him of the death of a poor widow, who was one of Mr. Bright's
pensioners, at this pleasant sea-side resort. Mr. Bright wrote in reply : —
"And so the poor old woman is gone— I doubt not, to a happier world. To visit her
was a lesson. Her cheerfulness and patience was wonderful, and her faith seemed always
to sustain her. She was in bed for nineteen years, and yet life appeared to have a pleasant side
even to her, with all her prolonged affliction."

CHAPTEB LI.
MR. BRIGHT AS AN ORATOR.
Mr. Bright's Personal Appearance — His Audiences — His Reception— Oratory — Earnestness
— Gesture — Pathos — Invective — Irony — Sarcasm — Simile — Allegory — Fable — Parable —
Humour — Quotations — Perorations — Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden as Counterparts — The Art
of PubUc Speaking— The Cobden Club — At Hawarden Castle.
HIS biography which is now drawing to a close would be in
complete without a description of the personal appearance
and oratorical delivery of its subject.
The great orator and friend of the working class has
been so often seen in public, and so repeatedly photographed,
that his lineaments and figure are familar to the civilised world. He
may be described as robust of frame, five feet nine inches in height,
¦ broad-chested, and of graceful deportment. His face is broad and full,
and decidedly Saxon; his forehead high, expansive, and prominent,
bordered with venerable locks sUvered by time. Dark and heavy brows
overhang his keen eyes, which are of a tender blue, full of sweet gravity,
and wonderfully intellectual, which can flash fire, or melt into tears, and
captivate all who come within the sphere of their influence. His
mouth, though large, is firm and indicative of the greatness of his
heart, and has an expression of good humour. The lips have, in their
fleshy and massive outline, abundant marks of habitual reflection and
intellectual occupation. " The streak of the unfaded rose still enlivens
his cheeks." When animated during a speech his comely Saxon features
brighten into unmistakable beauty, and when seen in the profile are
even finer than when viewed from the front. Altogether his ex
pression indicates intellectual dignity, candour, serenity, and lofty
repose. For the last thirty years or more his oratory has been so popular
that when he has given his promise to address a meeting in any town

346 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
the number of persons applying for admission tickets has exceeded
by thousands that which the building could accommodate. The con
sequence is that thousands assemble round the door for the purpose of even
obtaining a glance at the great orator ; and so valuable are his speeches
considered that at these meetings about sixty reporters are present to
record every sentence, and herald his speech, not only through the
United Kingdom, but even across the broad Atlantic. As soon as he
arrives the mass of people outside the building huzza vigorously, and
this joyful announcement is heard with pleasure by the more fortunate
assembly inside, who at once rise to their feet and direct their eager
attention to the door by which he is expected. As soon as the hero of
the evening is seen, he is welcomed with deafening cheers, and waving of
hats and handkerchiefs. He walks quietly towards the table, apparently
unaffected by the excited reception, but a close observer might detect
that it is with difficulty he suppresses his emotion. So anxious are they
to hear him speak that the preliminaries of the meeting are hurried
through, and at length the orator stands up. He is received with
rapturous and sustained applause, and while they are enthusiastically
greeting him he quietly arranges his position, places his hat on the
table before him, and on the rim of it lays his scanty notes, and then sur
veys the vast assembly with subdued emotion. Then he appears abstracted,
as if summoning the mental powers to work. As soon as there is
a perfect calm he begins his speech in a low, quiet tone, which gradually
gathers force, and increases in volume. It is the medium pitch, or
conversational key, which is the most easy and harmonious both for
speaker and hearer. The tone is natural, with graceful variations of the
voice according to the subject upon which he speaks. It is of great
compass, but exquisitely modulated, and from his lips the most trifling
sentence becomes impressive. It is clear, round, full, mellow-toned,
with a peculiar musical vibration in it which penetrates the air, and
enables him to be heard with distinctness at a great distance with
apparently little effort. His accents flow with artless ease, like a stream
which gurgles its own music as it runs. He can equally sound the
depths of pathos or scale the heights of indignation. His delivery is

HIS EARNESTNESS. 347
slow, candid, manly, weighty, and unhesitating, though he sometimes
pauses as if to select words, which are " exquisitely sought," often
consisting of one or two syllables, which are distinctly pronounced, and
the full sound given to them. The simplicity and strength of the
language strikes its meaning direct into the mind. He goes straight into
his subject as an arrow flies, with no more curve than is necessary fbr
hitting the mark, and this absence of prelude gives him an immediate
grasp upon the attention of his hearers. He expresses himself with
such forcible clearness that the highly cultivated and the unlettered
alike feel its force and charm. The general effect is one of perfect
naturalness — a movement of mind upon mind free from mannerism, and
he gives his hearers sufficient time to think as he proceeds. Not a
single Unk in the chain of reasoning is lost by dropping the voice, or by
haste in pressing along to the next sentence. His logic is never con
fused, nor his resources commonplace, and there is a fine sense of pro
portion in his speeches.
As soon as he begins to speak he becomes animated, and his
countenance, dilating in every fibre, is impressed with a character of
peculiar energy. He has the courage of Gideon, and his deportment
gives an insight into the nature of his ardent mind. He seems alive
only to the truth, which is the central quality of his speeches and the
very soul of his eloquence. He is impressed with the importance
of what he speaks, and of the consequences dependent upon it. Some
critics were of opinion that his intense earnestness was incompatible
with elevated statesmanship, but all history teaches that those who
have brought about great good for mankind were men of intense and
earnest natures. Further, it is well known that when a speaker is
sensibly touched he easily influences his audience. No living statesman
is more thoroughly imbued with moral enthusiasm than Mr. Bright,
and it was the fervour of his nature which Lord Balmerston meant
to sneer down when he addressed him as "the honourable and reverend
gentleman." " I consider that when I stand upon a platform, as I do now, I am engaged in as solemn a
labour as Mr. Dale when he addresses his congregation," admitted Mr. Bright in one of his

348 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
speeches ; remarking further : " It is not only upon the affairs of the other world that men must be
true to themselves and to their consciences. (Applause, and hear, hear.) The heart itseK is
often in these matters more at fault than the head ; but if people would obey the true impulses
of their consciences and their hearts, the progress of nations would be less interrupted than it is
now, the misery of populations would be diminished, the unwisdom of om- Governments would be
checked, and we should find over aU the earth a growth and a progress towards that brighter and
happier day of which we see now only glimpses and the dawning, but of which more shall be
seen by some generations that shaU succeed us."
The serenity of Mr. Bright's brow during the passionate earnestness
of his appeals imparts additional weight to its influence by giving the
idea of innate strength — of the repose which is imagined in the rock
when the tempest is around it. His speech is the natural expression of
a mind at once beautiful and strong.
The whole of his characteristics point to the conclusion that nature
designed him for an orator, and his quick apprehensions of the wrongs
which weigh upon the poorer classes and the oppressed seem to have
given their point and direction to the powers of his oratory, for it has
been the study of his life to try to remove the cause of suffering, or
alleviate the woes and sorrows of the poor, the helpless, and the down
trodden. Bossessing the poetical temperament, he is able to clothe his
sentiments in language that goes at once to the understanding and the
heart. His demeanour impresses his hearers that he is in earnest, for
the whole man speaks, and convinces them that there is credit in his
words, and that his main object is to improve humanity, and banish
squalid poverty. Batriotism and deep though subdued , earnestness are
features of his strength.
The profound and meditative gravity of his expression, the natural
play of his features, his sustained and measured utterance, the weighing
of every reason, the deliberation of his tones, his self-collectedness and
concentration, and the look of superiority by which he is characterised,
fix a universal gaze upon him, and excite general curiosity. From what
ever point of view his hearer looks upon his subject, he can make him see
it by just and clear reasoning ; and, possessing the superior and master
power by which all emotions are swayed, he succeeds in charming the
listening ear, and in allaying self-interest and prejudice.
His habit in speaking is to hold his head rather more backward than

HIS LOVE OF TRUTH. 349
erect. He prefers also to speak to an audience whose seats are
graduated in height, rather than to have them on a level lower than
himself. Tins position, no doubt, allows the free action for the organs
of the voice. There is no appearance of difficulty, but an attitude
of graceful ease.
He owes his oratorical success not to any one quality, but to a
combination of qualities, like the light and shade of a picture. He
speaks with a composed air, and unfolds his facts easily and yet correctly,
exhibiting a thorough grasp of his subject matter. His narrative is
excellent, and it is impossible to expose the details of a complicated
subject more luminously. His speeches are models of clear and per
suasive statements, and are cast in a single and symmetrical mould.
They are eminent for their unlaboured clearness and compactness of
reasoning, and for the noble and unaffected simplicity of their style —
without affected brevity or terseness, or " linked dulness long drawn
out." His speeches have force, fervour, passion, and grandeur, and
touch the heart, the conscience, and the inteUect.
His information on affairs is accurate and wide. There is a ripeness
in his knowledge which bears witness that it is not forced for the
occasion, but is the fruit of years ; a memory which lets nothing escape
that he has once considered, whether large in size or imperceptibly small,
and a penetration that never leaves his own point of the case unexplored.
He weighs things with the greatest impartiality, and comes to the most
rational conclusion. He repeats the lesson of experience, and displays
things as they are. The turn of his intellect and the bent of his
character are obviously practical, and he aims at the attainment of real
good. His thoughts are always just, and somewhat novel; but although
generaUy he speaks with the precision of words and compression of
ideas which characterise a deep thinker, he expresses himself with that
perspicuity which can only be attained from practice, and his poetical
diction imparts warmth and brilliancy even to the coldest reasoning.
His opinions have the authority of evidently proceeding from deep and
settled principles. His utterances are never dry, and his fancy is lively
enough to shed light upon the darkest subject, and to strew flowers and

350 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
fruit round the most barren tracks of inquiry, and light it up with
pleasantry. The extraordinary depth of his views, the penetra
ting sagacity which he occasionally applies to the affairs of men and
their motives, and the curious felicity of expression with which he
unfolds principles and traces resemblances and relations, are separately
the gift of few, and in their union probably without any example. He
speaks sometimes in tones of warning, and even suppressed menace ; but
more often he appeals to reason. A want of speaking plainly has never
been his fault. He has power of hard, stringent reasoning and cogent
argument. He always concedes what is undeniable in fact and clear to
an unprejudiced mind, not glossing it over or leaving it untouched. He
never raises a cloud between himself and the truth, nor does he seek to
blind his opponents, or bewilder them. Tet he can flit over his
opponents' arguments as lightly as a sunbeam on the water, equaUy
master of the jocular and serious, of the playful and severe. He can
either bring his masses of information to bear directly upon the subject
to which they severally belong, or he can turn any portion of them to
account for the purpose of illustrating his theme. His views range over
aU the cognate subjects. His reasonings are derived from principles
applicable to other subjects as well as the one in hand. Arguments pour
in from all sides, which are the natural growth of the path he is
leading his audience over ; while to throw light round their steps, or to
serve for their recreation, illustrations are fetched from different quarters ;
and an imagination marvellously quick to detect unthought-of resem
blances enables him to turn his information to the greatest use.
He is not sparing of rhetorical figures, yet when he uses them
they are happily brought in. One of these felicitous figures occurred in
his speech on Beform at a meeting at St. James's HaU, London,
in 1866 :—
" These opponents of ours, many of them in Parliament openly, and many of them secretly in
the press," said Mr. Bright, "have charged us with being the promoters of a dangerous
excitement. They say we are the source of the danger which threatens ; they have absolutely the
effrontery to charge me with being the friend of public disorder. I am one of the people.
Surely, if there be one thing in a free country more clear than another, it is that any one of the
people may speak openly to the people. If I speak to the people of their rights, and indicate to

AN EFFECTIVE ILLUSTRATION. 351
them the way to secure them — if I speak of their danger to the monopoUsts of power — am I not
a wise counseUor, both to the people and to their rulers P Suppose I stood at the foot of
Vesuvius or Etna, and, seeing a hamlet or homestead planted on its slope, I said to the dweUers
in that hamlet or in that homestead, ' Tou see that vapour which ascends from the summit of the
mountain — that vapour may become a dense, black smoke that will obscure the sky. Tou see
that trickling of lava from the crevices or fissures in the side of the mountain — that trickling of
lava may become a river of fire. Tou hear that muttering in the bowels of the mountain— that
muttering may become a bellowing thunder, the voice of a violent convulsion that may shake half
a continent. Tou know that at your feet is the grave of great cities for which there is no
resurrection, as history teUs us that dynasties and aristocracies have passed away, and their name
has been known no more for ever.' If I say this to the dwellers upon the slope of the mountain,
and if there comes hereafter a catastrophe which makes the world to shudder, am I responsible for
that catastrophe ? I did not build the monntain, or fiU it with explosive materials. I merely
warned the men that they were in danger. So, now, it is not I who am stimulating men to the
violent pursuit of their acknowledged constitutional rights. We are merely about our lawful
business ; and you are the citizens of a country that caUs itself free, yet you are the citizens to
whom is denied the greatest and the first blessing of the constitution under which you live. If
the truth must be told, the Tory party is the turbulent party of this nation."
WhUe Mr. Bright was delivering this beautiful passage there was
a deep stillness, and when the pause came the audience, moved by an
irresistible and unanimous impulse, sprang to their feet, and greeted the
orator with rounds of deafening cheers.
His main weapons of attack are invective, irony, sarcasm, simile,
drawn out to aUegory, allusion, quotation, fable, and parable. A fine
poetic vein runs through numberless passages of his speeches, and his
hearers often feel the impression of true poetry; in fact his greatest
speeches not unfrequently appear like poems. If there be cold ascetics
in the world who scout everything that a line cannot measure and a
diagram demonstrate, still there are others left who can appreciate the
mighty visions of the imagination. The best relation of facts accurately
given in cold narrative would not do half as much in any good cause, as
when embellished by the graces of style and eloquence which touch the
passions and affect men to noble exertion for the benefit of mankind.
Ideal goodness must be contemplated if we would avoid retrograding. A
route as trackless as the eagle's must be foUowed to keep hope alive. Mr.
Bright possesses the great materials of poetry, and preserves an ascendant
tone of inspiration through aU his speeches, yet he does not always speak
in the same character of style. His passion for poetry is lofty and pure,
and often he weaves beautiful couplets into the texture of his speeches.

352 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
In description he can hardly be surpassed, for he has all the qualities
that conduce to it — ardour of purpose, vivid but not too luxuriant fancy,
clear conception, and the faculty of shedding over mere inanimate scenery
the glow imparted by moral association. His charming pictures represent
all objects with so much truth, and his choice expressions are so perfect,
that "fair trains of imagery before us rise ; " and as we listen we seem to
hear a voice touched to aerial sweetness, like soft music over a tract
of waters, or to breathe the air of the mountain, or witness the
panorama of the valley, or inhale the perfume of flowers ; or he can
pourtray with truthful vividness the wretched condition of the suffering
poor. The prevailing characteristic of his oratory is pathos, which some
times deepens into touching melancholy, and he can, with apparently
little effort, move his audience to tears. It is like music wakening slum
bering memory by some welcome string, or the mind soaring o'er departed
scenes with outstretched wing, and fascinatingly recalling incidents of
nearly forgotten years. As an illustration of this we may mention that
in the month of August, 1877, he delivered a masterly speech at Bradford
on the life of his departed friend, Bichard Cobden. He spoke as if
inspired, and the minds of the audience could not help wandering to
that peaceful sweet spot in West Lavington churchyard, where Cobden
is interred. " Methinks I hear his voice ! sweet as the breath
Of balmy ground flowers, steaUng from a spot
Of sunshine sacred ....
To everlasting spring."
" Well, it was at that time that I was at Leamington," said Mr. Bright, " and one day
Mr. Cobden caUed upon me, for he happened to be there also on a visit to some relatives. I
was there in the depth of grief, and I might almost say of despair, for the light and sun
shine of my house had been extinguished. AU that was left on earth of my young wife,
except the memory of a sainted Ufe and of a too brief happiness, was lying stUl and cold
in the chamber above us. Mr. Cobden caUed upon me as his friend, and addressed me, as
you might suppose, with words of condolence. After a time he looked up and said, ' There
are thousands of houses in England at this moment where wives, mothers, and chUdren are
dying of hunger. Now, when the first paroxysm of your grief is passed, I would advise
you to come with me, and we wid never rest untU the Corn-Law is repealed.' (Cheers.) I
accepted his invitation." (Cheers.)
The effect of this beautiful passage, "immortal in its tenderness,"

A TRYING MOMENT. 353
touched the hearts of every one present, and even the reporters, who by
usage in most cases keep their sympathetic feelings under complete
control, vainly tried to refrain from shedding tears. These strong
impressions cannot be conveyed to the minds of others, except when
the mind producing them is face to face with truth and nature. It
is not feeling alone that electrifies an audience, the feeling must be
rightly based. It is true that the original master-touches that go to
the heart must come from it.
" Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us ; and the heart repUes."
The following extract from one of Mr. Bright's speeches in Ireland
exempUfies his strength in appealing to the emotions ; for pathos it
is unsurpassable : —
" On this point I wish to refer to a letter which I received a few days ago from a most
esteemed citizen of Dublin. He told me that he believed that a very large portion of what
he caUed the poor, amongst Irishmen, sympathised with any scheme or any proposition that
was adverse to the Imperial Government. He said, further, tbat the people here are rather
in the country than of it, and that they are looking more to America than they are looking to
England. I think there is a good deal in that. When we consider how many Irishmen have
found a refuge in America, I do not know how we can wonder at that statement. Tou will
recoUect that when the ancient Hebrew prophet prayed in his captivity, he prayed with his
window open towards Jerusalem. Tou know that the foUowers of Mohammed, when they pray,
turn their faces towards Mecca. When the Lish peasant asks for food, and freedom, and
blessing, his eye follows the setting sun ; the aspirations of his heart reach beyond the wide
Atlantic, and in spirit he grasps hands with the great Republic of the West."
With the hearts and ears of his audience at his command, Mr. Bright
can as easily excite another chord of feeling. With a slight touch of
sarcasm he can arouse ridicule or indignation, and scathe the object of his
scorn more terribly than by the bitterest, or most violent invective. He
is also most exquisite in his tone of irony.
Another phase of oratory for which he is noted is his humour ; this,
however, is not used merely for the sake of amusing. It is peculiarly
his own: — varied, always agreeable, and seldom severe; it is lively,
playful, and directed to ridicule rather than lacerate. He confuses
rather than wounds his opponent, unless he chooses to be strongly
sarcastic. Many of them are home-thrusts, and the members of the
House of Commons, bored by the continual prosings— and commonplace
72

354 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
philosophy of would-be statesmen, are always obliged to any one who
by smart humour amuses them. His mirth is always tempered with
sensibility, and is of that kind which is built, not on a paucity, but upon
a superabundance, of feeling. It is a droll, quiet, cutting, and sarcastic
style, but never coarse ; and while he delivers his sparkling don mot,
which makes his audience roar with laughter, and while
" All around
Catch the contagion and return the sound —
Convulsive mirth on every cheek appears,"
he seems the least affected by it, so perfect is his self-control. When
he is contemplating an amusing passage, there is no indication in
his manner of what is approaching, but a close observer would notice
a pleasant agitation in the neighbourhood of his eye.
He can give a comic description of anything with remarkable power.
Sometimes he will utter a sentence or two, which, aided by the quaintness
of the style, will flash the whole scene at once on the view. It is not
like painting a picture, but unrolling it.
" I recoUect a little time ago," related Mr. Bright in the House of Commons, " a gentleman
writing about the serious things which had happened in his time, and he said, amongst other
things, that there was a man down in the same country — I don't know whether it was in Buck
inghamshire or where it was — (laughter) — and the man was not a Cabinet Minister, he was only
a mountebank — (renewed laughter) — but he set up a stall and offered to the country people to seU
them pdls that were very good against earthquakes." (Roars of laughter.)
Again, when referring to Lord Derby's professions about Beform in
1858, he said : —
" It would be like the sort of feast that a Spanish host set before his guests, consisting of Uttle
meat and a great deal of table-cloth."
Another is the joke about the Syrian monks, to whom " tears were
as natural as perspiration." Then there was the sarcasm hidden in the
parenthetical remark about the standing boast of the aristocracy, who
continually claim that their ancestors came over with the Conqueror—" I
never heard that they did anything else."
He on one occasion described Mr. Disraeli as " the mystery man of
the Tory party." And speaking of the Conservative leader he said,
at another time : —

HUMOUR.

355

" If they had been in the Wilderness he woidd have complained of the Ten Commandments
as a harassing piece of legislation."
During the American war an attempt was made to keep some of
the mill hands partiaUy employed by the use of Indian cotton, known
as " Surat," which was the most difficult and troublesome to work.
Mr. Bright related that on one Sunday morning a minister was -praying
that merciful Heaven would grant a plentiful supply of cotton, when
a man in the congregation, a cotton spinner, cried out — "Yes, Lord,
but not Surat ! "
Another instance is the story of the old gentleman who used to say
that " a hole would last longer than a patch."
In a speech on Beform, Mr. Bright remarked : —
"For, after aU, the bid of the last session, honest and weU-intended and valuable as it was,
was stiU but a tinkering of a very bad system. But the Tory party refused even to have
it tinkered. They remind me very much of a wealthy but a most penurious old gentleman, who
Uved some years ago in my neighbourhood, and who objected, amongst other expenses, very
much to a taUor's bdl, and he said he had found out that a hole would last longer than a patch.
I am not sure that this is not the case with Lord Derby and his friends ; for it was one of their
great arguments that if the biU of the Government passed, it would inevitably follow that some
thing more would almost immediately be demanded."
Mr. Gladstone, in relating for this biography an anecdote, states : —
" I remember an expression of Mr. Bright's about Mr. Cobden. There was a discussion of
some Church matter in the House of Commons. Some one pleading with Mr. Bright said that
Cobden was favourable to the Church view of it. ' Oh, yes,' said he, ' Cobden is turned
Puseyite.' I need hardly say that he did not mean this to be taken UteraUy."
Sir B. Peel, when he was Irish Secretary, extolled the " gentlemen "
of "South America during the civil war, and demanded the recognition of
the South, and bitterly attacked the North. In a debate in the House
of Commons Mr. Bright said : —
" The other day, not a week since, a member of the present Government — he is not a statesman,
be is the son of a great statesman, and occupies the position of the Secretary for Ireland — dared to
say to an EngUsh audience that he wished the Republic to be divided, and that the South should
become an independent State. If that Island which, I suppose, in punishment for some of its
offences has been committed to his care — if that Island were to attempt to secede, not to set up
a slave kingdom, but a kingdom more free than it has ever been, the Government of which he is
a member would sack its cities and drench its soil with blood before they would aUow such a
kingdom to be established."

356 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
The following are further illustrations from his speeches of the
comic element that he sometimes indulges in : —
" Gentlemen wdl consent to be mado the instrument to reimpose upon the country the excise
duties which have been repealed, or the import duties which in past times inflicted such enormous
injury upon trade," said Mr. Bright in his speech in March, 1854. "The property -tax is the
lever, or the weapon, with which the proprietors of lands and houses in this kingdom will have to
support the ' integrity and independence ' of the Ottoman Empire. Gentlemen, I congratulate
you that every man of you has a Turk upon his shoulders."
" There is a curious affinity between the Turkish language and our own which I noticed,"
remarked Mr. Bright in 1854. " Tou observed there was an emeute — a disturbance in Constan
tinople a while ago. A great number of people made a disturbance, and were very anxious to go
to war, and to force the Government to war, and not treat at aU according to the recommendations
of the ambassadors ; and the Sultan, it is said, determined that half of them should join the army
in Roumelia, and the other half should go to the fleet. Well, that class of persons were called
' Softas '—(laughter) — in English (and here is the remarkable affinity between the two languages)
we merely caU them softys. (Laughter.) Now I have not the least objection, I confess, that
our foreign enlistment act should be suspended — that every man who feels a burning — I don't
exactly know what te call it — something that on subjects of this kind I never felt niyself — but
every man who has a burning desire to be avenged upon Russia, or some high mission to save
Turkey, I should like him to be at perfect Uberty to go. (Laughter and cheers.) Now, in aU the
enthusiasm that I have heard of, I have not met with a single man who offers to go."
(Laughter.) "A great many people in this country,'' said Mr. Bright, in speaking on 'Fair Trade' — "I
hope a diminishing number — think that because other countries do not aUowus tosend our goods
into their markets free of duty, therefore we should not allow them to send their goods to this
market free of duty. They think that two bad things are better than one. They remind me
veiy much of what it would be if a man had got a sound box on the side of his head,
and he was to go about complaining that nobody gave him another sound box on the other
side." " One of the candidates for the inferior position of minority member for Birmingham," said
Mr. Bright, in November, 1868, " complained on a recent occasion that I had not read the
speeches of his colleague in the candidature, and that I had not, in duty bound, undertaken to
answer him. The fact is, I am too busy in these days to dwell very much on works of fiction,
and the speeches of Mr. Lloyd are what I caU dull fiction, and the speeches of his colleague,
though not less fiction, are certainly of a rather more sparkling and sensational character." ¦
" There was a dear old friend of mine, the late Colonel Perronet Thompson," related Mr.
Bright, " who once said to me when there had been some talk somewhere of a revolt of troops,
that it is a very dangerous thing when the extinguisher takes fire. He thought there was not
much chance of the conflagration being put out."
" By-the-by, the valour of the yeomanry has never been more conspicuous," said Mr. Bright,
in a speech in July, 1844 ; " it was once proposed, in an Act which was passed to raise a troop of
yeomanry, that they should uever be aUowed to go out of the country, except in the case of an
invasion." His rising in the House of Commons is always an event. There is a
difference between his two styles of oratory as displayed inside and out-

IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 357
side the walls of Barliament. He is more argumentative in the House,
whereas at public meetings he indulges in a more eloquent style of
speaking. In premeditated speeches he is great and convincing, and is
always ready to take part in any debate that may suddenly arise in the
House. In the course of the discussion he is constantly on the alert to
detect salient points, in order that he may either contradict or eulogise
them, and with the matter thus collected he is able to deliver an admir
able speech. Before he rises to address the House, he has been noticed,
as previous speakers were proceeding, to write short pencil-notes. He
shows signs of nervousness by a restlessness on his seat, but as soon as he
has risen he appears cool and collected. He is greeted with a sudden
cheer, and in an instant there is a hush, except a slight bustle caused by
the rush of members to their seats. Those absent in the library and tea
room are suddenly apprised that " Bright is up," and there is a general
exodus for the House, and in less than five minutes every seat is filled.
No wonder that those who have once heard that clear and powerful voice,
beheld that manly figure and those unaffected but imposing attitudes,
who have seen the lightning of his eye, and been borne along by the
majestic flow of his distinctly-articulated words, will be the first to
seize an opportunity of enjoying the treat again. His powerful ally,
Mr. Gladstone, has described him as "the man whose voice the
House loves to hear." His name is worthily associated with the
names of Chatham, Burke, Fox, and Gladstone. Edmund Burke's
oratory was chivalrous and classic, whUe Bright's is distinguished
by a noble simplicity, an unbroken chain of reasoning, illumined by
flashes of wit, humour, and grand imagery. If he is interrupted while
speaking, he promptly replies in such a manner as to show that he
thoroughly understands his argument, and is not to be diverted from it
by any interference whatever ; the result being that his opponent is utterly
discomfited. Mr. Bright then cooUy resumes the thread of his discourse
and proceeds with his argument. He can put the most difficult question
clearly before his audience, for his words are plain and his meaning
transparent, and the driest subject under his management becomes inter
esting. In every part of his speech the most just and constitutional

358 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
principles of policy are enforced ; and he throughout displays that curious
felicity, which, in its application to the mere concern of diction, is an
exquisite accomplishment, but which, when directed to the more impor
tant task of selecting, arranging, and mutuaUy harmonising the topics
and arguments belonging to the whole subject, rises into the very highest
sphere of oratorical excellence. Sometimes it is his custom to direct his
address more particularly to his opponents in politics who are before him,
and his eye ranges calmly along their ranks, and he speaks to them
almost individually. The book of experience, the lessons of history he
points out, are to them a sealed volume, that with unvarying
obstinacy they rejected its dictates and disregarded its warnings.
He reminds them that he has been right on all the great questions
of the last quarter of a century, and forcibly puts the question whether
it is not possible that he is right also on the subject under discussion,
and they, Broteus-like, would again shift their ground. The ready
"No, no," escapes the lips of his opponents, but Mr. Bright, nothing
daunted, pursues his course and manfully proves his position. He analyses
the Conservatives with the greatest freedom, reminding them with a
bitterly emphasised " you, at such a time, did this, in such circumstances
you did that, and at the present time, if we would let you, you would
do anything equally bad." Breserving the most perfect self-possession, he
summons up modern English history as a record of progress, points out
the decayed monuments of error, and the wonderfully long list of
triumphs are aU clearly enumerated ; and he shows that past opinions
advocated by himself, which they had at first strenuously resisted, had
ultimately been adopted by his political opponents, and converted into
Acts of Barliament ; that these measures they now tried to claim as their
own, and that their leader had deceived them with the tinsel of language,
as they could not discern the sterling ore of thought. There is no dis
puting the fact that the great measures of the last forty years are to a
considerable degree connected with his name, and that whatever develop
ment of opinion years have made, there has been no departure from the .
principles avowed at the beginning, and his opponents are further aware
that he never changes his opinions after they have been maturely formed.

HIS CLAIMS TO HONOUR. 359
His political sagacity and forethought have been even more re
markable than his accomplishments, and there is no denying that
his triumphs have placed him foremost amongst the statesmen of the
age. Men have no distrust of the ground which feels solid under their
feet. They also follow a leader who not only gains triumphs, but never
vacillates in his strategy.
" My conscience tells me that I have laboured honestly only to destroy that which is evil and
to budd up that which is g'ood," he reminded the House on one occasion, adding : " The political
gains of the last twenty-five years, as they were summed up the other night by the hon. member
for Wiek, are my political gains, if they can be called the gains in any degree of any living
Englishman. And if now, in all the great centres of our population — in Birmingham with its
busy district, in Manchester with its encircling towns, in the population of the West Riding of
Torkshire, in Glasgow, and amidst the vast industries of the West of Scotland, and in this great
Babylon in which we are assembled — if we do not find ourselves surrounded by hungry and
exasperated multitudes ; if now more than at any time during the last hundred years it may be
said, quoting the beautiful words of Mr. Sheridan, ' Content sits basking on the cheeks of toil; '
if this House and its statesmen glory in the change, have not I, as much as any living man, some
claim te partake of that glory ? "
Many statesmen and many writers may justly share with him in such
glory, but Bright, Cobden, and Gladstone have performed the greatest
share in the noble work. It has been the ambition of Mr. Bright's life
that England may long be pointed out as the abode of tranquillity,
freedom, industry, free trade, and rational enjoyment ; that its inhabitants
may be adorned with every great and good qualification, and made the
chosen instruments for the support and diffusion of the truth, justice
and reUgion. Distinctions such as these are nobler than the distinc
tions of the battle-field, and add a greater lustre to the glory of any
nation ; they are also the surest means that can be adopted to avert
the hour of a nation's decay.
In these discussions he carefully upholds the dignity of debate, and
looks at the questions honestly on- all sides. Barty has not blinded his
judgment, his attention having been directed more to class than to party
questions. He is particularly careful not to speak on subjects he has not
thoroughly mastered ; and his speeches are founded on a solid substratum
of hard facts, embellished by the flowers of rhetoric. His opinions have
been received as always resulting from general principles deliberately

360 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
applied to each emergency ; and they have been looked upon as forming
a connected system of doctrines, by which his own sentiments and conduct
were regulated, and from which after-times may derive the lessons of
practical wisdom.
With such a rare combination of qualities he can safely use imagery
which few other members of the House dare to employ. In pathos he
stands positively pre-eminent, and no member dare A'enture with impunity
to touch such a chord except a master of the art. He has heart as weU
as brain, and the House yields itself to bis spell ; and in softened accents
and with inexpressible tenderness he appeals to the conscience of men of
all parties, and he touches, amidst the most hushed silence, the tenderest
chords of the human heart. At such times his earnestness is overpowering,
and no one can listen to him wholly unmoved ; and no matter how a
hearer may dissent from every opinion he maintains, it is yet impossible
not to yield some tribute of admiration.
He almost seems to foresee the future results of current events.
He, like the seers of old, and with the gift of genius approaching to the
powers of divination, and the prophetic soul of Daniel, launches out into
the sea of futurity, brings home from the remotest shores spoils of
which we are only yet learning the value and meaning, and delights in
announcing that the day of light and liberty is approaching. He opens
to the admiring gaze of his hearers a flood of riches, those better riches
which grow naturally upon the earth's surface, and not the fictitious
wealth which is derived from war. History, however, is his guide, for
he believes that " the best prophet of the future is the past," and that
" certain signs precede certain events ; " and the best of it is, there has
been a realisation of these prophecies once derided, and the acceptance of
proposals once despised. The words he uttered in 1862, when the future
of the North was at its darkest in the great American struggle, were an
illustration : —
" The ChanceUor of the Exchequer (Mr. Gladstone) as a speaker is not surpassed by any man
in England, and he is a great statesman ; he beUeves the cause of the North to be hopeless, and
that their enterprise cannot succeed," said Mr. Bright. . . . " I have another and a far brighter
vision before my gaze. It may be a vision, but I wiU cherish it. I see one vast confederation
stretching from the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wdd

PERORATIONS. 361
bUlows of the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main ; and I see one people
and one language, and one law and one faith, and over all that wide continent the home of freedom
and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and of every clime."
The uniform care he bestows on the perorations, which are brief and
powerful, and given with breadth, depth, and solemnity, adds greatly to
the impressiveness of his speeches. They sweep along, gathering grandeur
as they rise beautifully to a climax. The tide of clear, strong English
roUs on, evincing more beauty as it proceeds, period after period of
exalted and sweUing thought, with the cumulative power of wave on
wave, until the tone rises to a sonorous and majestic height to fall in a
solemn cadence, even as the uttermost biUow lifts its weight of crested
thunder to break and die along the shore. The hearer is spell-bound and
filled with admiration, and the huzzas generaUy are of the most enthusi
astic kind, and taken up again and again, and are by no means confined
to one side of the House : for the Conservatives, however little they might
agree with his speeches, are not so ungenerous as to refuse the tribute to
the singular oratorical powers which he displays.
Speeches when translated through the cold medium of the Press
inevitably suffer from the loss of the inspiration and energy of the speaker,
from the absence of the immediate action of the mind upon mind,
from the want of the inexpressible touching tones of the voice, and the
sympathetic flow of the emotions that agitate a great assembly. The
united effect of his speaking is now attractive, now touching, now pleas
ing, now fearful, sometimes crushing, and occasionally enrapturing. AU
these effects evaporate to a great extent in the transcript, although every
word is faithfuUy recorded. The difference between his spoken and
published speeches is the difference between the House of Commons in
daylight laid open to the studious contemplation of a solitary visitant,
and the same edifice beheld lighted up, when thronged by excited
members listening in breathless silence to majestic eloquence which is
occasionaUy interrupted by bursts of cheering. Still, the intellectual
eye will find in reading his speeches that they are models of rhe
torical composition, and, as specimens of popular English declamation,
his efforts rank high ; and, as they float on the bosom of time, they will

362 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
delight, and carry the riches of the English language wherever they
flow. " I beUeve that ignorance and suffering might be lessened to an incalculable extent, and that
many an Eden, beauteous in flowers and rich in fruits, might be raised up in the waste wilderness
which spreads before us," said Mr. Bright, in a peroration on Reform at Glasgow. " But no
class can do that. The class which has hitherto ruled in this country has failed miserably. It
revels in power and wealth, whilst at its feet, a terrible peril for its future, lies the multitude
which it has neglected. If a class has failed, let us try the nation. (Great cheering.) That is
our faith, that is our purpose, that is our cry — Let us try the nation. (Renewed cheering.) This
it is which has called together these countless numbers of the people to demand a change ; and, as I
think of it, and of these gatherings, subUme in their vastness and in their resolution, I think I
see, as it were, above the hiU-tops of time, the glimmerings of the dawn of a better and a nobler
day for the country and for the people that I love so weU." (Enthusiastic cheering.)
" It is a fact," said Mr. Bright, in concluding his speech at Birmingham in 1870, " that no
Government, that no Administration, that no laws, that no amount of industry or commerce,
and that no extent of freedom, can give prosperity and solid comfort in the homes of the people,
unless there be in those homes economy, temperance, and the practice of virtue. This is needful
for aU ; but it is especially needful, most needful in some respects, for those whose possessions
are the least abundant and the least secured. If we could subtract from the ignorance, the
poverty, the suffering, the sickness, and the crime which are now witnessed amongst us, the
ignorance, the poverty, the suffering, the sickness, and the crime which are caused by one single,
but the most prevalent, habit or vice of drinking needlessly, which destroys the body and mind
and home and family, do we not all feel that this country would be so changed, and so changed for
the better, that it would almost be impossible for us to know it again ? Let me, then, in conclusion,
say what is upon my heart to say, what I know to be true, what I have felt every hour of my life
when I have been discussing great questions affecting the condition of the working classes — let
me say this to all the people : that it is by a combination of a wise Government and a virtuous
people, and not otherwise, that we may hope to make some steps towards that blessed time when
there shaU be no longer complaining in our streets, and when our garners shall be full, affording
all manner of store."
" These men are in error who teU you that nothing has been done, and that all remains to be
done," said Mr. Bright, at Birmingham, in October, 1873, adding : " those men are not less in
error who tell you that what has been done is evil, and that it is evil to do anything more. What
you should do is to act upon the principles and the rules of past years, steadily advancing in
favour of questions which the public has thoroughly discussed, which it thoroughly comprehends,
and which Parliament can honestly put into law. For my part, looking back over these forty
years, I feel some little sense of content. But it does not in the least degree lessen, on the con
trary it rather adds to and strengthens, my hope for the future. The history of the last forty
years of this country, judged fairly — I speak of its legislation — is mainly a history of the conquests
of freedom. It will be a grand volume that tells the story, and your name and mine, if I
mistake not, will be found in some of its pages. (Cheers.) For me, the final chapter is now
writing. It may be already written ; but for you, this great constituency, you have a perpetual
youth and a perpetual future. I pray Heaven that in years to come, when my voice is hushed,
you may be granted strength, and moderation, and wisdom to influence the councils of your
country by righteous means for none other than noble and righteous ends." (Cheers.)
" The fact is, the world, as we are in it but for a very short time, does not seem to go on very
fast, and we must be satisfied if we can only move it a little," remarked Mr. Bright, in speaking
on Free Trade and the prevention of wars, at Bradford, on the 25th of July, 1877 : " but the

PERORATIONS. 363
interests of aU mankind are so bound up in this question, that it only wants that you should
dispel the sort of fog which intercepts their vision, when they would come at once to see a
promised land which was within their reach, and a fruit such as they have never tasted within
their grasp ; and if this view could once be opened to the inteUigent people in these countries,
I have a confident belief that the time will come, that it must come, when these vast
evils shall be suppressed, and men shaU not learn war any more, and God's earth shaU
not he made, as it is, a charnel-house by the constant murder of hundreds of thousands
of His creatures."
"I am a plain and simple citizen, sent here by one of the foremost constituencies of the
Empire," said Mr. Bright, in concluding a speech in the House of Commons, in December,
1854, against the war with Russia ; " representing, feebly perhaps, but honestly, 1 dare aver, the
opinions of veiy many, and the true interests of aU those who have sent me here. Let it not be
said that I am alone in the condemnation of this war, and of this incapable and gudty Adminis
tration. And even if I were alone, if mine was a solitary voice, raised amid the din of arms and
clamours of a venal Press, I should have the consolation I have to-night — and which I trust will
be mine to the last moment of my existence — the priceless consolation that no word of mine has
tended to promote the squandering of my country's treasure or the spilling of one single drop of
my country's blood."
" But let me add, that this which you have erected to-day," said Mr. Bright, when performing
the ceremony of unveiling the statue of Richard Cobden at Bradford, on the 25th of July, 1877,
" which is erected in your midst, is by no means the greatest monument, that has been buUt up to
him. There is one far grander and of wider significance There is not in the country a home-
stead in which there is not added comfort from his labours, not a cottage the dweUers in which
have not steadier employment, higher wages, and a more solid independence. This is his enduring
monument. He worked for these ends, and for these great purposes, and he worked even almost to
the very day when the lamp of life went out. He is gone ; but his character, his deeds, his life,
his example remain a possession to his countrymen. And let this be said of him for generations
to come, as long as the great men of England are spoken of in the English language ; let it be
said of him that Richard Cobden gave the labours of a life, that he might confer upon his
countrymen perfect freedom of industry, and with it not that blessing only, but its attendant
blessings of plenty and of peace."
When Mr. Bright has finished his speech and resumed his seat, he im
presses his audience with the idea that he has by no means exhausted his
subject, but that he could, if he had pleased, have said a great deal more
and equally effective. His audience feel the sense of the fulness of his
knowledge on the great subjects, and are confident of the exactness of his
facts, and that his views are perfectly clear and defined. There are very
few topics, whether of home or foreign policy, on which he has not
expressed his opinion ; yet, after so many years of public speaking,
he admitted a short time ago that he was always happier the
morning after a meeting than before it, showing that even with all
his practice he, in common with other great orators, suffers slightly
from nervousness.

364 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
So exclusively does he express himself in vigorous Saxon that a word
of Greek, Latin, or French is rarely heard from him. It is a stream of
pure unadulterated English, flowing copiously. Still, though the texture
of his language is homely Saxon, sometimes he resorts to the Latin
element of our composite tongue. " The august mother of free nations "
is one instance in which he used a word of Latin origin, which gave
grandeur to the sentence. He is often cited as an example of the useless-
ness of studying the dead languages. He is a master of the art of
investing plain facts and statistics with interest. This he does by com
parisons, by which he not only rivets the attention of his audience, but
makes his statement perfectly plain to the simplest intelligence.
For a long period he has stored his mind with treasures of the
English poets as well as the classics of other countries, and his attention
has been absorbed in the finest imagery, fables, and comparisons. His
quotations have been chiefly from the Bible, Dante, Chaucer, Milton,
Shakespeare, Byron, Wordsworth, Southey, and other poets congenial to
his cast of mind. He, amongst other things, studied the objects which
these poets sought. Chaucer, the father of English poetry, he discovered,
painted the manners of his age ; Shakespeare mirrored humanity ; MUton
vindicated the ways of God ; Wordsworth showed the divinity in nature
— the thoughts too deep for tears enfolded in the meanest flower ; Byron
dashed defiance in the face of man and God; Shelley had a happier
faith, and believes that man is "of soul and body formed for deeds
of high resolve ; " Crabbe pleaded, like himself, the cause of the poor
by photographing their manners; and Southey taught a Christian
morality through the medium of the gigantic myths of India and
Arabia. For years, while studying the poets, it has also been Mr. Bright's
practice to write select quotations in a small book. These extracts are
remarkable for point, polish, and for pathetic beauty, and in addition
he has a fine taste for other descriptions of literature. There is much
of the old Buritan about him. If he does not, like the old Buritan, often
quote the language of Scripture, he has almost always in his finest
passages some reference to a Bible phrase.

HIS FAME. 365
When he rises to speak it is because he has something worth
listening to, not because he wishes to display oratorical power ; and his
remarks are made in a clear, business style. One of his charac
teristics is that of quiet strength, giving the impression of great
power. He approaches subjects of public interest in a fair and
impartial spirit. There is an absence of personalities in his speeches.
If he refers to public men, he does so simply because of the
utterances they have made in a public capacity. He is seen at
his best when he is attacking that which he thinks is an abuse,
and then his remarks are very crushing, and are calculated to confound
the sophistical. When he is explaining how a measure might be
improved and accepted for what it is worth, he is interesting, and in
both capacities it is the critical element of his character that comes into
play. Iconoclastic he certainly is, but his object is to improve upon
that which exists. There is no attempt to evade the difficulties of a
question, but he will even exhibit them in all their naked literalness, and
wrestle with them as an intellectual athlete, "for the brave man
never despairs." When, then, such an one is free to exercise his own
faculties, he creates, forms, quickens, organises, blessing what he
produces by communicating to it the essential qualities of his own life.
The measures he advocated were no wild experiments, but the measures
of a master-mind, for directing in the best channels the energies of the
people. They were all connected with the public benefit, which was the
result of sound judgment and superior comprehension. He has taken up
large questions, and dealt with them in a way that was not without a
greatness of its own. His fame is connected with every interest of his
country, whether in domestic or foreign policy ; and he has stamped on
his age the genius of his character. He has bravely striven for rio-ht
and justice with an honesty which is partly the result of his domestic
training, and partly the gift of nature. He avowed his opinions openly
and unreservedly. If statesmanship consists in wide and varied political
-knowledge, in tbe firm grasp and intelligent exposition of great
principles, in the possession and proclamation of advanced convictions
which, though unpopular at first, have passed at length into the public

366 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
opinion of the nation, then Mr. Bright has established his claim to stand
in the front rank of modern statesmen.
His life has been consistent throughout, and very few statesmen can
look back with such unmingled satisfaction on the work they have
done for their country. Far as he yet is from having carried the whole
of his ideas fully into effect, he knows that every past year has chronicled
some step in advance. The past thus becomes the pledge of the future,
and he can allow his opinions to unfold themselves naturally and
gradually. His penetration led him to fling behind him the prejudices of
the past, and steer his course by the light of better principles. He has left a
triumphant and briUiant example for his successors to follow, and
England will inscribe his name among the illustrious men that will
figure in the scroll of her proud history. Numberless students
will linger over his speeches of majestic march of reason and modu
lated music of expression, long after the resonant tones which gave
them their principal charm have sunk into the silence which awaits all
human voices.
There are other members of Parliament who can speak good English,
and turn neat periods, and strike off smart antitheses, who are yet not
very influential in the promotion of public opinion, nor do their
public addresses -usually make any great impression. Mr. Bright,
on the other hand, is sure to have all England for his audience,
and is invariably reported in the first person ; and this is the result
not only of eloquence, but even more of the honesty of his purpose
and the plain-spoken truths of his politics. There are more who
read and reflect now than ever ; there are fewer now who wiU take
the ipse dixit of another upon any subject of importance without thinking
something about it themselves. They form silently their judgments from
the conflicting parties, and often set right those who are ostensibly their
preceptors. No fact in history is more striking than the indifference
with which even the lives of common men were formerly regarded ; but
now they, and all other classes and bodies of men, have become better
acquainted with their own power, and are daily pressing forward to
better times.

BRIGHT AND COBDEN. 367
Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright were admirable counterparts of each
other, and invariably worked in unison. Their usual custom was for
Mr. Cobden to speak first, grappling with the financial and economic
aspects of the subject. In due course Mr. Bright would rise, after other
members had expressed their opinions, and he would truly tear to shreds
the flimsy arguments of those opponents by his irresistible persuasiveness
and a strong battery of facts. The Bight Hon. W. E. Forster, M.P.,
during the earlier part of 1877, related a circumstance that came under
his own observation. He said : —
"I remember very well talking to Mr. Cobden about some debate in which he took a
great interest. Mr. Cobden said, ' I don't know how I shall get on, for I am afraid Bright
wUl not be there.' I replied, ' I should have thought you could have done very weU without
him.' He said, ' No, I am always used to acting with him. I begin, but he always comes
in at the end, and I know that whoever attacks me in the course of the debate always gets the
worst of it.' "
Cobden gave the prose of eloquence, and Bright the poetry as well as
wit and metaphor. Cobden's style was his own, and in it he had no
equal in the House of Commons. He at once won the attention of
audiences, for he only sought to deal with facts and arguments. He
never spoke without maturing what he had to say ; not in the way of
elaboration, but in the way of turning the subject over and over in
his own mind, and in considering, as he phrased it, " the best way of
putting it."
As a rule, Cobden did not indulge in sarcasm, especially in the House of
Commons, where he thought aU should be serious and earnest. Yet he
could do a little of the scathing when he chose, as was evident from his
vigorous speeches delivered at various times during the French-invasion
panics, in one of which, at Edinburgh, he turned the tables on our friend
Punch with capital effect. Punch had displayed Cobden in a cartoon,
with the ears of an ass, looking into the muzzle of a cannon, and declaring
that it was harmless ; but the invasion fever at last subsided, and Cobden
created "roars of laughter" by asking his audience, "Who has got the
long ears and the fool's cap now?" In his speeches he adapted himself
to his audience, who felt quite at home with him, for he had the air of

368 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
one arguing alone and familiarly with himself ; and while he was speaking
they felt it almost impossible not to range themselves on his side. His
unaffected good nature, his natural pleasantry, were irresistible.
Cobden and Bright derived pleasure from the inspiration of then*
subjects and the good work they were conferring on the poor. They,
like the sun and light, were diffusive, and glad to see poverty, whether
in friend or foreigner, relieved. They glanced over the busy world,
detected error and mischief, and pointed out modes of improvement.
The grandeur of their work was an argument with them not to stop
short, but to proceed. They, like Arnault, although growing old, were
not desirous to rest, for they had all eternity to rest in.
Mr. Bright, having received from a student in a Nonconformist college
a letter, asking his opinion on the art of public speaking and on reading
sermons, returned the following answer : —
" Tou ask me two questions, to one of which I can give a ready answer. I have never
been in the habit of writing out my speeches; certainly not for more than thirty years
past. The labour of writing is bad enough, and the labour of committing to memory would
be intolerable ; and speeches ' read ' to a meeting are not likely to be received with much
favour. It is enough to think over what is to be said, and to form an outline in a few brief
notes. But first of all, a real knowledge of the subject to be spoken of is required ; with
that, practice should make speaking easy. As to what is best for the pulpit, I may not
venture to say much. It would seem that rules applicable to other speaking will be equally
applicable to the pulpit. But in a pulpit a man is expected to speak for a given time,
on a great theme, and with less exact material than is obtainable on other occasions and
on ordinary subjects. And, further, a majority of preachers are not good speakers, and perhaps
could not be made such. They have no natural gift for good speaking; they are not logical
in mind ; not fuU of ideas nor free of speech ; and they have none of that natural readiness
which is essential to a powerful and interesting speaker. It is possible, nay, perhaps very
probable, that if reading sermons were abolished, while some sermons would be better than
they now are, the majority of them would be simply ehaos, and utterly unendurable to
the most patient congregation. Given » man with knowledge of his subject and a gift for
public speaking, then I think reading a mischief; but given a man who knows little and
who has no gift of speaking, then reading seems to be inevitable, because speaking; as I
deem it, is impossible. But it must be a terrible thing to have to read or speak a sermon
every week on the same topic to the same people ; terrible to the speaker and hardly less so
to the hearers. Only men of great mind, great knowledge, and great power can do' this
with great success. I wonder that any man can do it. I forbear, therefore, from giving
a strong opinion on the point you submit to me. When a man can speak let him speak
 it is, no doubt, most effective ; but when a man cannot speak he must read. Is not this
the sum of the whole matter p"
A few years ago, Mr. E. Botter, M.P., informed the members of the

AT HAWARDEN.

369

Carlisle Debating Club, at one of their meetings, that he heard Mr.
Bright say at a dinner party that —
" ' The whole secret of effective speaking is here— of course, if you mean to speak, you must
first know what you are going to say; and when you have resolved on that, the next point
is to speak very deliberately — every word, in fact every syllable, should be expressed.' And
Mr. Bright added, 'If you do this, and if you have matter worth listening to, you will
be Ustened to, and you will acquire a confidence and ease you won't acquire in any other
way.' That he (Mr. Potter) thought good advice, and he was sorry they could not at aU times
attend to it, because one was sometimes in the habit of slurring over one's speaking, under the
idea that the audience were getting impatient."
Mr. Gladstone has contributed the following incident to this bio
graphy : — " Mr. Bright was on a visit to Hawarden, when I was residing
there under the roof of my brother-in-law, Sir C. J. Glynne, who had other
guests, amongst them a distinguished Tory publisher and an archdeacon
of the High- Church school, a man universally respected and beloved.
On the evening before his departure, Mr. Bright and I went into a side
room for a poUtical conversation. When we returned these two guests
had retired to their rooms, and Mr. Bright was vexed at not having
bidden them farewell. Some one took notice of his remarks, and let them
know. Bresently they reappeared ; the archdeacon had assumed his
costume as a dignitary of the Church, and the publisher was extremely
well got up in a comfortable winter dressing-gown. It was on all sides
a pleasant exhibition of personal good feeling."
At a local pastime known as " Bushbearing," it is customary for
children to carry from house to house garlands of pretty device to exhibit,
and "One Ash" has always been a favourite place at which to display
them. If Mr. Bright is not at home to admire them, and contribute his
annual gift, some of his daughters, with his grandchildren, are generally
present to witness the sight and encourage the exhibition.
It is a fine Sunday in summer time. A ray of light from the east
glimmers over the town of Bochdale, and with the progress of the sun's
morning beams the inhabitants bestir themselves. The flying shuttle
rests, for the labouring loom is stiU ; " the anvil's din has ceased ; " the
dizzy rounds of the whirling stone are stopped ; the roll of heavily-laden
carts is no longer heard, for the stiff, unwieldy steed lies in the green
73

370 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
pastures. The air is free from the factory smoke ; the waves of worldly
business are calmed ; and the soft green meadows and their upland glade
are peaceful. The mountains surrounding Bochdale throw their shadows
on the emerald fields at their base ; a graver murmur gurgles from the
rills ; " the gales that lately sighed along the groves have hushed their
downy wings in dead repose ; " bright butterflies float gaily along the
refreshing fields ; skylarks, linnets, and thrushes warble in tones less
shrill ; the merry peal of church bells faintly sweeps over the distant land
scape, imparting a feeling of gladness and dreamy peacefulness ; the
clouds forget to move ; " the rooks float by in silent, airy drove." There
is no clatter in tbe streets from the iron-bound clogs, for neatly-shaped
shoes encircle the feet of the passer-by ; the week-day shawl-begirt face is
now crowned with a delicately-woven straw and choice sprays and
wreaths of flowers, and nicely-fitting garments are donned. There is a
general air of beautiful repose, and the people speak in subdued tones.
It is a day of quiet domestic enjoyment, not saddened, but hallowed;
for this day is the couch of time, and the Sabbath calm is round
everywhere. " See, through the streets that slumber in repose,
The living current of devotion flows —
Its varying forms, in one harmonious band,
Age leading childhood by its dimpled hand."
The elderly gentleman quietly walking down the street has
made St. Stephen's re-echo again and again with his impressive
eloquence. The place of worship to which his footsteps tend is
the quiet unpretending little meeting-house of the Friends, situate
in George Street, with its little trim grass-plot burial-ground in
front, encircled by a high wall. It is a plain stone structure, without
Corinthian beauty or Ionian grace, nor has it piUared lines crowned
with sculptured foliage, nor is there contrition rolled forth from a
majestic organ. There are no painted windows here to exclude
the light; no old-fashioned pews, richly curtained and cushioned,
where drowsy natures might indulge in balmy sleep ; no rich-liveried
servant clattering up the aisle to perform the essential offices of
carrying one little prayer-book, and shutting the door of his employer's

¦-

; I

;

-

THE FRIENDS' MEETING HOUSE, ROCHDALE.
(From a rh.-iU-i-jniph hv Mr. J. Jarksou. Rorhdnic )
THE FRIENDS' MEETING-HOUSE. 371
pew, who professes to go to church to abjure all the pomps and vanities
of this world. The interior and exterior of this edifice could not be
plainer ; yet there is an air of comfort in the cleanness and plainness of
everything. A gallery extends across the back part of it, underneath
which there are several rooms in which committee meetings are held.
Along the side of the room most remote from the entrance-door is a
raised platform, which is set apart for the various officers and ministers
of the church, while for the use of the laity there are benches in the
remainder of the room. Small indeed is the number of worshippers, yet
there may be found amongst them representatives of every class and
condition of life. Old and young, rich and poor, the heads of great
manufacturing firms, and the humble workmen of various employments.
Liberty, humanity, and spiritual religion are deeply indebted to the
members of the Society of Friends, who were persecuted in Old England
by Boyalist and by Buritan — persecuted in New England by the
descendants of the Bilgrim Fathers with brutality which showed that
those good men did not hesitate to copy, in their turn, when in power,
the harshness against which they had protested when it was exercised
against themselves. The records of the early Quakers furnish stories
of cruelty and constancy, of torture and endurance, as thrilling as any
that can be found in the history of the Covenanters. This religious
body has never defiled itself with slavery, and it has always been
associated in the popular mind with philanthropy and benevolence.
" One's age should be tranquil, as one's childhood should be playful;
hard work at either extremity of human existence seems to be out of
place; " and Mr. Bright is conscious of the truthfulness of this aphorism ;
and having for over forty years worked hard for the benefit of his
countrymen, he is now entitled to more leisure, and, as he has remarked,
he is now wishful to leave platform work for younger men. Yet after
this life of toU he has still higher aspirations for a better system in
State affairs ; his ardent mind promises itself many gratifications in the
fulfilment of plans which his superior sagacity has sketched out in earlier
years, from the intellectual wealth with which he has stored his mind,
. and which he has improved by observation. He has stamped his image

372 LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BRIGHT.
and superscription on all that was sound and solid in the policy of his
day. He has always been in favour of providing plenty for the
sustenance of the masses, and making them happy, rather than
extending our dominions and increasing squalid poverty. There is no
great work of statesmanship existing under whose foundations we should
not find the coinage of Bright, Gladstone, and Bichard Cobden. They
have created for themselves in Acts of Barliament for the public good
monuments more durable than could be constructed of marble or brass.
They deserve the praises of their countrymen, and it may almost be
said of them that " The earth has not
Nobler names than theirs."

INDEX.

Aberdeen, Lord, I., 119, II., 11,
79, 80, III., 166 ; Ms ministry
resigns office, II., 55 ; Bright
visits him, 74 ; his appreciation
of Bright's services, III., 293.
Abstainer, Bright a total, II., 338.
Accrington, Condition of the poor
in, before Free Trade, I., 134.
Acland, Sir Thomas, Bright's inter
view with, I., 156.
Adderley, Mr. C. B., Bright's re
ference to, n., 377.
Afghan war of 1839, Inquiry into
the, IL, 254—258; the war of
1879, 226.
Agricultural depression, Bright on
the causes of the, III., 211—216.
Agricultural labourers in Sussex,
The, I., 86 ; Cobden on the low
wages of, 86 ; the Dorsetshire
labourers, 194 ; distress of the
labourer, 225 ; prizes for the
benefit of labourers, 214, 261 ; Mr.
Benett's wish to be au agricultural
labourer, 286, 321 ; their condi
tion in 1845, 287 ; their meetings
and statement of privations,
291 — 293 ; their inability to rise
from their present state, IL, 162 ;
the possible possession of the land
by the labourer, III., 123 ; im
proved condition of the labourer
a few years later, 130 ; Bright at
a conference of labourers for
county franchise, 170 ; the
labourers' supposed special ad
vantages, 172 ; their suffrage
claims stUl to he redressed, 336.
Agricultural poachers, I., 230.
Aids and suppUes to the Sovereign,
the sole gift of the Commons,
IL, 219, 220.
Alabama, Affair of the, IL, 302,
303.
Alien BUl, The, IL, 283, 284.
Alnwick, Effect of Bright's speeches
at, L, 171, 172; Free Trade
meetings held at, L, 171, 192.
Amberley, Viscount, III., 54.
America, Great labour-saving in
ventions from, IL, 158, 159;
working men in, IL, 307,
308; education in, III., 22;
poUtical parties in, 23 ; Bright's
great speech at Eochdale on
America, 220—223 ; the Irish
in, 353.
American Books, III., 260, 261.

American civil war, The, IL, 271 ;
Bright's advice to his country
men to be neutral, 273 ; his
review of the history of the
United States, 277—288; effects
produced in Lancashire hy the
civil war, 297 ; the South no
cause for secession, 299 ; doubt
ful result of the contest, 299 ;
the affair of the Trent, 274, 275,
299, 300; object of the war,
301 ; want of sympathy for the
South, 303 ; slavery the real
question to be settled, 308 ; the
one foul blot ou the American
fame, 309; British piratical
vessels, 312 ; the North not
likely to acquiesce in the with
drawal of the South, 313; the
cotton supply from the South,
314 ; slavery the chief difficulty
to get over, 314; its abolition a
means of opening up the whole
country to industrial enterprise,
314 ; influence of the States
upon England, 315 ; Mr. Eoe
buck and the recognition of
the Southern Confederacy, 316,
317 ; the United States not an
aggressive State, 318 ; difference
between slave and free labour,
319 ; chUdren of slavery, 320 ;
proclamation of President Jeffer
son Davis, 320, 321; the Northern
President the only President,
321 ; the advocates of freedom
not hypocrites, 321 ; persuasion
to abstain from war, 321 ; end of
the war the day of Cobden's
death, 356, III., 173; arbitra
tion between England and
America, III., 122.
American protective tariff, I., 127,
III., 290, 291.
American Institutions, Lectures by
Lord Carlisle and Lord John
EusseUon, IL, 159.
American competition, Effect of,
III., 215.
American newspapers, Frequent use
of, by the operatives of Eochdale,
III., 11.
American war of 1775, IL, 40, 41.
Americanising England, IL, 149,
158, 159.
Ancestors of John Bright, I., 6, 7.
Anglo-Saxon origin of the name of
Bright, I., 6.

Annual budgets, III., 123.
Anti - Corn - Law League, Tho :
its establishment, 1., 84 ; its first
members and funds, 84 ; Cobden
joins the League, 84, 85 ; its
place of meeting, 87 ; the cam
paign commences, 89 — 91; its
actual leaders, Bright and
Cobden, 125, 126 ; delegate meet
ings in Manchester, 126 ; report
on the Eochdale poor, 127 — 130;
meeting in London, 132, 135 ;
special meeting in Manchester,
141 ; the League evidently gain
ing ground, 141 ; conference ia
London, 141 ; attempt to raise
£50,000, 143, 145, 151, 152 ;
festival iu Birmingham, 148 ;
erection of the Free Trade Hall,
Manchester, 151, 152 ; slow pro
gress of League opinions in
Parliament, 153; important meet
ings in Manchester, 154 ; Drury
Lane Theatre rented, 158 ; the
League gains an advocate in
Parliament in John Bright, 184,
185 ; demonstrations in Liver
pool and London, 188, 190 ;
proposal of a fund of £100,000,
192 ; Manchester . subscribes
£20,000, 196; how the funds
were collected, 205 ; the League
bazaar iu London, 238, 239 ;
amount realised by the bazaar,
239; bazaar in Manchester, and
amount realised, 253, 254 ; activity
of the League in view of distress,
262 ; they endeavour to raise
£250,000, 262; subscriptions in
aid of the league, 289, 290; the
closing struggle, 295, 297, 302 ;
the subject in Parliament, and
its triumphant termination, 309
— 338 ; dissolution of the League,
346 ; Bright's enumeration of its
services, 346 ; what it did for the
working classes, IL, 20.
Arbitration between England and
America, III., 122.
Aristocracy, Bright's sentiments on
the, L, 172 ; duty of the country
not to submit to the rule of the,
298 ; what the aristocracy might
do for their tenantry if they
tried, 303; the "Protestant
interest" a gigantic system of
out-door relief for the, IL, 142.
Army, Effect on Europe of the,

374

INDEX.

IL, 47 ; increased cost of
the, III., 194, 209; number of
armed men now ready in Em-ope
to be engaged iu the hope of
slaughtering each other, 292.
Armaments, Madness for home and
foreign, II. , 182 ; increase in,
203 ; mutual reduction of, 204.
Arrears Bill, The (Leland), III.,
313.
Arrow, Affair of the, in China, IL,
75.
Art, Bright's views on, IL, 339.
Ashley, Lord, I., 173, 194, 210.
Ashton-under-Lyne, Free Trade
meeting held in, L, 150.
Ashworth, Mr. Henry, L, 96, 157,
189, 191, 192, 197, 205, 267, IL,
16, III., 112.
Australia, Protection of the trade
of, IL, 175, 176.
Ayr, Free Trade meeting held in,
L, 202.
Ayrton, Mr. A. S., III., 32.

Bad harvest of 1845, I., 260 ; of
1853, IL, G3.
Balance of power, Sum expended
in unnecessary wars to maintain
the, IL, 67, 140, 142 ; Americans
have never fought for, 273.
Ballot, Arguments for the, IL, 22,
115, 156, 161,217; unsuccessful at
tempt to in troduce the, 52; reasons
why it was withheld from the
people, 155 ; Cobden an advocate
of the, 182, 209 ; Bright hints at
its future possibility, III., 104,
120; Tory fear of the ballot,
312.
Banker, A timid, of Leeds, IL,
146.
Barnsley, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 198.
Barnstaple, Free Trade meeting
held at, L, 15S.
Bath, Free Trade meeting held at,
I., 278.
Hath Chronicle, Bright refutes the
propositions of the, L, 278.
Bath, Eobert, the Puritan vicar of
Eochdale, I., 112, 113.
Batley, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 222.
Battue system, Bright denounces
the, I., 232.
Bazley, Mr. T. (afterwards Sir T.),
L, 157, 163, 391, IL, 70, 78,266,
LTL, 118, 250.
Beaconsfield [see Disraeli).
Bentinck, Lord George, as a Pro
tectionist, I., 318, 336, III., 329.
Berkeley, Grantley, on the value
of crows to farmers, I., 257, 258.
Berwick-on-Twoed, Free Trade
meeting held at, L, 191, 192.
"Biglow Papers," The author of
the, IL, 194, 345, III., 30.

Biography, Benefit of the study of,
IL, 13.
Birmingham, Free Trade meeting
held at, I., 148 ; Bright invited
to become its member, IL, 109 ;
his address to the electors, 112;
his election, 113 ; takes his seat,
115; presents a petition for Ee
form, 115, 116 ; first meeting
with his constituents, 135 — 137,
13S — 149 ; Eeform meeting at,
16S— 175; general election, 1S3
— 187 ; Bright's nomination
speech, 188 — 191 ; Bright meets
his constituents, 249 ; the Ameri
can cotton supply suddenly pre
vented by the American war,
288, 289 ; Bright's speech on the
American civil war, 297 — 304 ;
addresses the Chamber of Com
merce, 304, 305 ; addresses his
constituents, 326 — 328 ; soiree at,
328—330; speech in the New
Exchange, 343, 344 ; addresses
his constituents, 344 — 346 ; his
election, 375 ; speech at Bir
mingham, 377—379 ; great Ee
form demonstrations at, III., 18
— 20; Bright's speech on Eeform,
18 — 20 ; Eeform demonstration
at, and Bright's speech, 48 — 50 ;
technical education advocated for
artisans, 67, 68 ; Bright addresses
his constituents at, 69, 70 ; his
address to the electors of,
81, 82; deputation of Bir
mingham gunmakers to Mr.
Bright, S5, 86 ; great speech at,
101 — 104; ill health prevents his
attendance in 1872, 108 ; the
constituency again disappointed,
115; meets his constituents at
last, 117—119 ; his speech, 119—
125; again addresses his con
stituents, 129 — 131 ; once more
among his constituents, 133 —
136 ; addresses the Liberal
Association, 136 — 138 ; Sir
Josiah Mason's scientific college,
140 ; his speech on county house
hold suffrage to his constituents,
145, 146 ; Bright on the right of
the Government to defend Tur
key, 164 — 167 ; Gladstone's
speech on the evil effects of
Turkish rule, 177, 178 ; Bright's
reply to, 178, 179 ; speech to his
constituents on the war party,
190 — 192 ; Bright declines a
commemoration of his twenty-
one years' membership, 205 ;
speech on the policy of the
Government, 208, 209 ; remarks
on education, 219 ; speech to the
Liberals on the prospect of a
speedy dissolution, 223 — 225 ;
speeches at Birmingham, 225,
226, 229, 230 ; elected for Bir
mingham, 233 ; addresses his
constituents, 240, 241 ; annual
address to his constituents, 253

— 255 ; g'reat speech on the open
ing of the new library, 256 — 262;
celebration of his twenty-five
years' membership, 283 ; con
gratulatory addresses, 285 — 289 ;
his reply, 289 — 292 ; great meet
ing of the Birmingham Liberal
Association, 293 ; Bright's speech
in reply, 294 — 296 ; he unveils
the statue of the late Mr. J. S.
Wright, 297—299 ; he breakfasts
with the Liberal Club, 299 ; he
opens the "Cobden Coffee House,"
304 ; great temperance speech iu
the Town HaU, 305—310; he
addresses the "Forward " Liberal
Club, 331—336.
Bishops and Dissenters, III., 228.
Bishops, The, against modem
changes, HI., 280.
Black bread the food of the English
peasantry, I., 93.
Blackburn, Free Trade meeting-
held at, I., 203, 223 ; Bright de
scribes the Tory party at, 1 1.,
376, 377.
" Blanketeers," The, of Manchester,
L, 47.
Blind, The, LTL, 300, 321.
Board Schools, Bright on the es
tablishment of, III., 121.
Blouses, Effect of dressing soldiers
in, causing a hatred of war, II. ,
72.
Books, Bright on the love of, III.,
257; on American books, 260,
261.
Borough franchise, Bright on the,
III., 51, 53, 54.
Borough representation, its defects,
XI., 154 ; the small boroughs,
179, 180.
Borough suffrage, IL, 345.
Bowring, Dr., a Free Trade advo
cate, I., 151, 152, 180, 185, 204,
283, 389.
Bowring, Sir John, Governor of
Hong Kong, IL, 75, 376.
Bradford, Yorkshire, Free Trade
meeting held at, L, 221 ; Eeform
meeting held at, II., 164 ; Bright
unveils a statue of Cobden at,
III., 173 ; great speech on the
Eastern dispute, 174—176 ; re
plies to the toast of his health,
178, 179.
Bradlaugh, Mr. , and the House of
Commons, HI., 234, 235, 244.
Branding of soldiers, Bright on the,
IL, 330, 331.
Bribery and corruption at elections,
Bright's remarks on, II., 225.
Bright, Benjamin, son of Jacob
Bright, L, 15 ; his early death, 18.
Bright, Esther, daughter of Jacob
Bright, I., 15 ; her marriage and
death, 18.
Bright, Grattan, son of Jacob
Bright, L, 15 ; his early death, 19.
Bright, Jacob, Birth of, I., 8 ;
early life of, 11 ; his first earn-

INDEX.

375

ings, 11; settles at Greenbank,
near Eochdale, 12 ; his first wife,
13 ; her death, 14 ; he marries a
second time, 14 ; birth of John
Bright, 15 ; other members of
his family, 15, 18; gradual im
provement in the condition of
his operatives, 15 ; death of his
second wife, 17, 18; marriage of
his daughters, 18 ; his character
as an employer, 19, 20 ; his
characteristic benevolence, 21,
22 ; his abhorrence of church
rate demands, 22 — 25, 57 ; other
acts of benevolence towards his
workpeople, 26 — 31 ; increase in
his business, 31 ; loss by fire, 31 ;
condition of his workpeople dur
ing the distress, 32 ; his general
liberality, 32, 33 ; his third mar
riage, 33 ; his death, 34.
Bright, John Albert, son of John
Bright, IH., 274, 2S3 ; his
marriage, 281.
Bright, Margaret, daughter of
Jacob Bright, I., 15 ; her mar
riage, IS.
Bright, Miss Priscilla, daughter of
Jacob Bright, I., 15, 122; her
marriage, 18.
Bright, Miss Sophia, daughter of
Jacob Bright, L, 15 ; her mar
riage and death, 18.
Bright, Samuel son of Jacob
Bright, I., 15 ; his death, 19.
Bright, Thomas, son of Jacob
Bright, I., 15.
Bright, John: his ancestors, I.,
6, 7 ; his father, 8, 11, 12 ; his
mother, 14, 17 ; his birth, 15,
37 ; his brothers and sisters, 15,
18 ; his first new suit of clothes,
16 ; his infant education, 37 ; his
school life, 37, 38 ; his love of
dogs and sweetmeats, 39 ; his re
moval to Ackworth and Newton
schools, 40, 41 ; his return again
to the parental roof, 42 ; incidents
of his career when approaching
manhood, 43 — 45; the Peterloo
massacre, 54 ; his early indigna
tion fired at the recital of the
deed, 54 ; his attention turned to
newspaper information before the
Eeform Bill era, 56 ; his mind
affected by the stirring public
events of this period, 57 ; his
character at manhood, 58 ; his
first public speech at a temper
ance meeting, 59 ; subsequent
speeches, 60 ; the Eev. John
Alois's account of John Bright at
this time, 61 ; character of his
oratorical attempts, 62 ; his
Shakesperian motto, 62 ; im
promptu speech at Eochdale on
Palestine, 62, 63 ; a, prognostica
tion of his future career, 64 ;
fond of athletics at this
period, 64 ; amateur attempt
at debating, 65 ; gains informa

tion from an old soldier, 65 ; his
attention to the comfort of his
father's workpeople, 66 ; his
interest in the success of the
Eeform Bill, 67, 68; his first
visit to London, 68, 69; his warm
sympathy for Ireland, 70 ; gene
rosity to an Irishman, 70 ; the
Eochdale Literary Society, 70 
72 ; his travels to foreign parts,
73 ; visits the Holy Land, 75 ;
an exhibition in his own town,
77 ; becomes acquainted with
Cobden, 79 ; becomes a member
of the Anti-Corn Law League,
84 ; meeting held at Eochdale,
89 ; Mr. Bright's arguments on
the occasion, 90, 91 ; Bright's re
tentive memory, 92 ; his grasp of
the subject, 96 ; his marriage,
94 ; his daughter, 94 ; he opposes
Dr. Molesworth at a meeting on
the Queen's marriage, 95, 96 ;
meeting at Eochdale to oppose
the corn laws, 97; he takes a
prominent place in his own town
against the proposal for a church
rate, 9S ; his spirited speech on a
tombstone on the occasion, 100 —
103 ; his untiring activity during
the unseemly contest, 108 ; his
answer to Dr. Molesworth, 109;
the church rate eventually aban
doned, 110; John Bright's lite
rary productions in " The Vicar's
Lantern," in reply to the vicar,
111, 112; his opinion of George
III.'s conduct during the Ameri
can war, 113; the bench of
bishops censured for the defence
of slavery, 114; John Bright's
opinion of Lindley Murray, 114,
115; his kind deeds to aid the
destitute and erring, 115; his
generosity sometimes imposed on,
116 ; his sympathy on behalf of
a young recruit, 116; becomes
deputy to the League from Eoch
dale, 118 ; Mr. Villiers's descrip
tion of his first interview with
John Bright, 118 ; death of Mrs.
Bright, 121 ; how Cobden com
forted his sorrow by encouraging
him to persevere, 121, 122 ;
how he was engaged during
this period, 125, 126, 127—130 ;
his first speech in London,
132; interview with Lord Ei
pon and Mr. Gladstone, 135;
exhorts the working men of
Eochdale to preserve the peace,
139, 140 ; his exertions during
1842, 141—143, 145—147 ; visits
Scotland, among other places, 148,
149 ; opmion of the Scotsman
newspaper on Bright, 149 ; speech
in Manchester, 150; in the new
Free Trade Hall of that town,
151, 152 ; reply to an attack
from Lord Brougham, 165, 156;
how his interview with Sir

Thomas Acland ended, 156; visits
Bristol, 157 ; speech in Drury
Lane Theatre, 158; goes to
Tiverton, Gloucester, and Chel
tenham, 158, 159; prospects of
Durham election, 160, 161 ; visits.
Taunton, Devonport, Liskeard,
and Plymouth, 162, 163; the
value of phonography, 164, 165 ;
on^ the shortness of human life, '
165, 166; speaks in London,
Dorset, Lincoln, and Norwich,
167 — 169 ; issues an address to
the Durham electors, 170; the
Alnwick farmers listen to him,
171, 172; powerful election
speech, 176 ; elected member for
Durham, 178; congratulations,
180 ; his first speech in Parlia
ment, 181, 182; tho Illustrated
News' opinion of the new member,
183 ; visits Salisbury and Canter
bury with Cobden, 186, 187 ;
various places in England visited
in succession, 188 — 197 ; how the
country was awakened in 1844,
in visits to various towns, 198 —
205 ; debate on protective imports
in Parliament, 206, 207 ; his care
for the education and welfare of
his work-people, 209 ; explains
the principles of Free Trade,
210 ; gives valuable information
about Lancashire, 212 — 214 ; de
scribes the growth of the cotton
industry, 214; supports Mr.
Villiers's motion for immediate
repeal, 215, 216 ; denounces the
game laws in an effective speech,
217; how the autumn of 1844
was occupied in incessant labours,
218—222 ; his speech in Man
chester on the present state of the
prospects of the League, 219 ;
freedom the privilege of man,
221 ; commencement of 1845,
and description of the League's
labours, 224 ; his speech in Par
liament, 225 ; evil effects of the
game laws described, 226 — 233 ;
speech in the House on the corn
laws, 239, 240 ; on the misery of
the lower classes, 241 ; on the
comparative prices of food and
crime, 242, 243 ; he comforts his
friend Cobden, 24.5, 246; hard
ships of the game laws on farmers
and labourers, 254 — 256 ; Grant-
ley Berkeley and the value of
crows to the farmer, 257, 258 ;
great speech in Manchester, 267
— 273; speeches at Wolverhamp
ton, Preston, and Bath, 275 —
279 ; actively engaged during
the early part of 1845, 280, 283—
289, 290, 291 ; his untiring ac
tivity at Newcastle - on - Tyne,
Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester,
294—296, 297—299, 300, 301,
303—306 ; speech on the Minis
terial proposal to abolish the

376

INDEX.

Com Laws, 320 — 325 ; listens to
the debates in the Lords, 337 ;
how the Free Trade victory was
celebrated in Eochdale, 341 — 345 ;
public present in recognition of
his services, 349 ; prophecies and
opinions regarding Bright, 352,
353 ; his elocution, 355 ; speech
at Durham after the victory of
Free Trade, 355 ; his speech about
the Ten Hours' Bill, 357 ; popu
lar recreation, 358, 359 ; his
work people in favour of the new
bill, 359 ; no coercion of his work
people permitted, 360 ; his ser
vices solicited as member for
Manchester, 360 ; elected for
Manchester, 365 ; his second
marriage, 367, 368 ; his sons and
daughters, 368 ; his domestic
habits, 368, 369 ; his method of
study, 370; his unostentatious
manners, 371 ; his love of dogs and
horses, 372 ; his residence, 372,
373 ; distinguished visitors, 373 ;
Llandudno a favourite resort,
374—376 ; death of his little boy,
376, 377; marble tablet, 378;
his sympathies for Ireland, 379 ;
his opposition to the Coercion
Bill of 1S47, 379, 380 ; disestab
lishment of the Irish Church in
prospective, 379, 380 ; Parlia
mentary representation of the
sister isle, 382, 383 ; speech on
rate of aid for Irish distress, 383
—389 ; the state of Ireland, 384,
385; Lish land, 385—388; in
favour of abolishing flogging,
389 ; the supply of cotton, 391 ;
Protectionist compensation, 390,
391 ; India as a source for the
supply of cotton, 391, 392 ; capi
tal punishment, 393, 394 ; advo
cates decreased national expendi
ture, 394 ; financial and parlia
mentary reform, 394, 395 ; the
Peace Society, 395, 396 ; speech
in honour of the American
minister, 398 ; danger of foreign
invasion visionary, 398 — 400;
votes against the Ecclesiastical
Titles Bill, IL, 3 ; invited to he-
come member for Eochdale, 7 ;
declines, 8 ; opposes Disraeli's
motion to compensate the agri
cidtural interest, 8, 9 ; speech in
Manchester in May, 1851, 9, 10;
expounds the principles of the
Manchester party, 10 ; again
elected for Manchester, 12, 13 ;
recommends to young men the
study of biography, 1 3 ; attends
a banquet at Belfast, 13 ; in
favour of removing Jewish dis
abilities, 13, 14 ; the threatened
invasion from France, 15 ; the
future of the Manchester party,
16 ; speech at Oldham on current
events, 20—22 ; on the bill for
the future government of India,

23 — 25 ; the beginning of the
Crimean war, 25, 26 ; Bright
tries to avert England entering
into war in the defence of Tur
key, 27 ; his speech on the horrors
of war, in reply to Sir C. Napier,
at Edinburgh, 28 — 31 ; his un
popularity for a short time on
account of his peace principles,
31 ; a Eeform conference at Man
chester, 32 ; speech in Parliament
at the commencement of the war,
36—41 ; his letter from Ehyl
condemning the war, 41 — 44 ;
his consequent unpopularity, 44
— 46 ; consolation of his friends,
47 ; great speech in Parliament
on the miseries of war, 48 ; he
contrasts the quiet decorum of
Peel with the flippancy of Palmer
ston, 49, 50 ; the Oxford Univer
sity Bill, 51 ; speeches on sundry
questions, 52 ; Liberal conference
at Manchester, 52 ; speech at
Manchester on the commercial
consequences of the war, 63 ;
powerful speech in Parliament on
the horrors of war, 55 — 57 ; ad
dresses at Manchester on war,
58 ; further speech in Parliament
on the objects and authors of the
Crimean war, 59 — 63 ; defends
his conduct at Hulme, 64 ; speech
at Eochdale on Mr. Sharman
Crawford's testimonial, 64 ; he
urges the reading of biography
and history, 65 ; an old employe
of his father's favourable impres
sions of the old country, 65, 66 ;
addresses the Manchester electors,
67 ; meets with Mr. Gladstone on
a later occasion at Birmingham,
68 ; Bishop of Manchester's
opinion of Bright's conduct, 69 ;
contemplates a temporary retire
ment, 69 ; receives the approval
of his constituents, 70 ; visits
Wales, Algiers, and Italy, 74,
75 ; interview with the Empress
of Eussia, 75 ; congratulates
Cobden on the defeat of Palmer
ston, 76 ; his letter to the Man
chester electors, 77 ; not re-elected
for Manchester, 83 ; a coalition
of Conservatives and Palmerstons
carry the day, 83 ; opinions of
the press on the loss of Bright
and the Manchester School, 84 —
102; his farewell address to the
Manchester electors, 103 ; his
antipathy to war, 105 ; he reviews
the policy of the Manchester
School, 105, 106 ; his utterances
on international arbitration, 107 ;
invited soon after his return home
to represent Birmingham, 109 ;
the proposal well received at
Birmingham, 110, 111 ; his ad
dress, 112; his election, 113;
takes his seat for Birmingham,
115 ; presents a Eeform petition,

115, 116; speech in Parliament
on the new Bill for the govern
ment of India, 119—123; the
best method of governing India,
123 — 133; his first speech to his
Birmingham constituents, 135 —
137; Bright's speech in the
Birmingham Town Hall, 139 —
149 ; the Saturday Jtev'mv's
opinion of Bright's speeches, 149 ;
Eeform meeting in London, 150 ;
great political speech at Man
chester, 151 — 160; visit to Edin
burgh, 160, 161 ; great Eeform
speech at Glasgow, 161 — 164;
invitation to Eochdale, and speech
of Mr. Bright there, 164—166;
the new Eeform Bill, and Bright's
speech thereon, 167 ; speech at
Birmingham on the empty pro
posals of Disraeli's Eeform Bill,
168 — 175; Bright thinks that
Australia ought to provide for its
own coastguard ships, 176; speech
on the East India Loan Bill, 177
— 179 ; opposes Disraeli's new
Eeform BUl, 179, 180 ; an appeal
to the country decided upon by
the Government, 180 ; Bright a
candidate a second time for Bir
mingham, 183 — 187 ; addresses
the electors, 188 — 191 ; elected
again, 191 ; the Italian war, 192 ;
his speech in the new Parliament,
193 — 196; powerful speech in
Parliament, 199 — 206 ; a com
mercial treaty with France the
result, 206 — 209 ; his speech in
Parliament on India, 209 — 215 ;
speech at Huddersfield, 215 ;
speeches at Liverpool and Lon
don, 216, 217 ; great speech in
Parliament on the rejection of
the paper duty by the Lords, 217
— 225 ; corrupt practices at elec
tions, 225 ; refers to " the man
overthe water," 226, 227 ; speeches
in Parliament, 231, 232, 233, 234,
235 ; speech in Manchester, 236 ;
statement in Parliament of the
public benefits flowing from the
Eochdale Co-operative Society,
237—239; withdrawal of the Be
form Bill, 239, 240; speech in
Parliament on our national de
fences, 240 — 244 ; speech at
Wakefield, 245, 246 ; calls atten
tion in Parliament to Turkey,
246 — 247 ; dissension between
the two Houses on the paper
duty, 247, 248; his idea of a
happy nation, 248 ; speeches at
Leeds and Birmingham, 248,
249 ; Eeform again withdrawn,
250, 251 ; the hop tax, 252, 253 ;
speech on the navy estimates,
253 ; speech on the circumstances
which led to the death of Sir
A. Burnes, 255 — 258 ; speech on
church-rates, 259 — 262; the
Nonconformist Burial Bill, 264,

INDEX.

377

265 ; the navy estimates, 265,
266; speech at Eochdale, 267,
268 ; urges the claims of the
Rochdale cotton-spinners on the
Government, 274 ; speech at
Eochdale on the American civil
war, 277 — 288 ; some facts about
¦maritime law, 289 — 291 ; on iron
clad vessels, 291, 292; on the
distress in Lancashire on account
of the American civil war, 292 —
294 ; speech at Birmingham on
the American civil war, 297 —
304; speech to the Birmingham
Chamber of Commerce, 304, 305 ;
speech at Eochdale on the Ameri
can civil war, 305 — 310 ; speech
in London on the American war,
310, 311 ; remarks in Parliament
on the war, 312 ; speech in Lon
don on the war and the cotton
supply, 313 — 316 ; speech in
Parliament against recognising
the Southern confederacy, 316 —
322 ; compliments and presents
from New York, 322, 323;
Bright's speeches to his con
stituents, 324—326, 327, 328;
soiree at Birmingham, 328 — 330 ;
speeches in Parliament, 330, 331 ;
on American recruiting of Irish
men, 332, 333 ; on insane crimi
nals, 333 ; on capital punishment,
334, 335 ; declines a proposal to
visit America, 335, 336 ; the Per
missive Bill, 336, 337; on tem
perance, 338 ; on art, 339 ; some
of our dealings with China, 339
— 342 ; two gigantic trees called
after Bright and Cobden, 343 ;
Bright's speeches at Birmingham,
344 — 346 ; speech in Parliament
on the pollution of rivers, 347 ;
speech in Parliament on the
Canadian defences, 348 — 353 ; on
fortifying Quebec, 353 — 355 ;
speech on Cobden's death, 361 ;
speech at Eochdale to elect his
successor, 373 — 375 ; speech at
Birmingham, 375 ; on Admiralty
mismanagement, 375 ; at Black-
bum, -376, 377 ; speech at Bir
mingham, 377 — 379; at Eochdale,
379 — 381 ; speech in Parliament
on past government in Ireland,
381—383; speeches in Parlia
ment on the Eeform Bill of 1866.
in. 1—5, 6—8, 10 ; its effect on
the House, 5, 6 ; speech on the
Elective Franchise Bill, 8, 9;
speech at a Sunday-school meet
ing at Eochdale, 12 — 14 ; speeches
at Birmingham on Eeform, 18 —
20; at Manchester, 20—22; at
Leeds, 23, 24 ; at Glasgow, 24,
25 ; at Dublin, 26, 27, 28, 29 ; at
Manchester, 29 — 31 ; in London,
31, 32; slander on Mr. Bright,
34, 35 ; his speech in reply to, 35
— 41 ; his opinion of the easy
acquisition of the French language

by children, 42 ; speeches in
Parliament on Eeform, 43 — 45,
46, 47, 48 ; great speech at Bir
mingham on Eeform, 48 — 50 ;
defends the Eeform question in
London; 51 — 52; advocates dis
solution of the Irish Church in
Parliament, 53 ; speeches in
Parliament, 53, 54 ; entertained
by the Fishmongers' Company,
55, 56 ; presides at a breakfast to
Mr. W. L. Garrison, 57—60;
speech on the Eeform Bill in
Parliament, 60 — 62 ; speech at
Manchester, 63 ; advice to Libe
rals, 64; speech at Eochdale on
the Eeform Bill opposers of 1866,
64 — 67 ; advocates technical edu
cation at Birmingham, 67, 68 ;
addresses his constituents, 69,
70 ; alludes in Parliament to
Irish discontent, 71 — 73; approves
of Mr. Gladstone's proposal to
disestablish the Dish Church, 73
— 75 ; speeches in Parliament on
the Conservative retention of
office, 75 — 77 ; onllr. O'Sullivan's
liberation, 78 ; speech on the
Irish Church at Liverpool, 79 ;
presents a petition on Nova Scotia
to Parliament, SO ; public break
fast in Limerick, 81 ; address and
speech to his constituents, 81,
82 ; speech at Edinburgh, on re
ceiving the freedom of the city,
83 — 85 ; on military expenditure,
85, 86 ; becomes a Cabinet Minis
ter, 87 ; speech thereon, 8S, S9 ;
royal condescension to Mr. Bright,
89, 90 ; his first official reply, 90,
91 ; speech on Irish Church dis
establishment, 91—93; the Lords
and Mr. Bright, 93—95 ; speech
on the Deceased Wife's Sister
Bill, 95, 96 ; speech on the Scotch
Game Laws and remedial measures
for Ireland, 97, 98 ; the results of
the French commercial treaty,
99 ; at the Trinity House, Lon
don, 100 ; addresses his con
stituents, 104; failing health and
resignation of his office, 105, 106 ;
receives the Queen's sympathies,
106 ; his return to the House,
109 ; proposal to make him a
Republican president declined,
110 ; presentation of a cabinet to
him, 111 ; speech on the occasion,
112, 113; visits Scotland and
other places, 113; something
about the French treaty, 114;
unable to visit Birmingham, 115 ;
again in the House, 115 ; unable
to support the Permissive Bill,
116; Bpeaks at a conference of
Liberal members and delegates,
116, 117 ; becomes Chancellor of
the Duchy of Lancaster, 117;
meets his constituents again, 117,
118; his speech, 119—125; its
great length, 126 ; his visits while

at Birmingham, 1 26 ; on the drink
ing system, 127 ; slanders on Mr.
Bright, 128; elected for Birming
ham, 129 ; addresses his con
stituents, 129 — 131 ; temperance
legislation, 131, 132; great speech
at Birmingham, 133 — 136 ; his
speech on the choice of a new
Liberal leader, 138, 139 ; laying
the foundation-stone of Sir Josiah
Mason's scientific college, Bir
mingham, 140 ; taunts Disraeli
in Parliament, 142 ; on trades
unions, 143 ; advocates funeral
reform, 144 ; Arthur Orton, and
his case, 144, 145 ; meeting of his
constituents, 145, 146 ; speech at
Manchester on Bulgaria, 147,
148 ; speech in Parliament on the
Tichborne trial, 149, 1 50 ; speeches
in Parliament on the Burials Bill,
150 — 153 ; the Irish franchise,
153 ; on the School Board system,
153, 154; on the electoral dis
abilities of women, 155 — 158 ; on
temperance in Ireland, 158;
against horse-racing, 159 ; on
county household suffrage, 159;
elected a member of the Boston
Free Trade Club, 160; heads a
deputation to Lord Derby on our
Eastern policy, 160, 161 ; on the
loss of fife by war, 162 — 164 ; ¦
addresses his constituents on the
Government foreign policy, 164
— 167 ; great speech at Eochdale,
167 — 170; speech on coimty
representation, 170 — 172 ; unveils
a statue of Cobden at Bradford,
173 ; speech at Bradford on
neutrality in the Eastern dispute,
174 — 176; speech in reply to his
health, 176; Gladstone's reference
to Bright, 178 ; returns thanks
for the toast of his health, 178,
179 ; speech in Parliament on
capital punishment, 179, 180;
speech at a banquet at Manches
ter, 180 — 184 ; remarks on strikes,
184 ; Bishop of Manchester's
admiration of Bright, 185 ; at a
Friends' meeting at Liverpool,
186 ; educational speechat Eoch
dale, 186—188; speeches at Bir
mingham and Manchester, 188 —
190 ; meets his constituents, 190
— 192; speech in Parliament on
the construction of public works
in India, 193 ; on unworthy
suspicion of Eussia, 194 — 197 ;
speech to Sunday-school teachers
in favour of peace, 197,
198 ; denounces the manner in
which the six millions voted by
Parliament had been squandered,
199 — 201 ; sudden death of Mrs.
Bright, 202 ; her funeral, 203,
204; again appears in Parlia
ment, 204 ; declines a commemo
ration of his twenty-one years'
membership for Birmingham,

378

INDEX.

205 ; advocates the doctrine of
international arbitration, 206 ;
speech in Parliament on Indian
finance, 207 ; on the cause of the
depression in trade, 209, 210 ; he
has no fear of a return to Pro
tection, 210 ; great speech at
Manchester against the doings
of the Conservative Government,
216, 217; he believes that the
visit of the Prince of Wales to
India may have a beneficial in
fluence, 219 ; speech on educa
tion at Birmingham, 219 ; great
speech at Eochdale on America,
220 — 223 ; review of our recent
political doings before the Liberals
of Birmingham, 223 — 225 ; speech
at Birmingham on the Zulu wars,
225, 226 ; on the condition of
Ireland, 226 ; on Nonconformity,
227, 228 ; on the dying hours of
the Conservative Parliament, 229 ;
great meetings and torchlight
processions at Birmingham, 230,
231 ; a review of Tory doings,
231 — 233 ; elected once more for
Birmingham, 233 ; his hope in
future legislation of the new
Liberal Government, 233 ; be
comes Chancellor of the Duchy
of Lancaster, 234 ; speech on
capital punishment, 235 — 237 ;
distributes prizes at Stratford-on-
Avon, 237 ; speech in Parliament
on the evils of the game laws,
237 ; the Burials Bill becomes
law, 238 ; on the evils produced
in Ireland by bad government,
238—240 ; elected Lord Eector
of Glasgow University, 240 ; ad
dresses his constituents ; 240 ;
receives a memorial from French
men, and an international ad
dress, 241, 242 ; speech on Brad
laugh and the oath, 245 ; speech
at the Fishmongers' Company's
banquet, 246 ; on agricultural
labourers' habitations, 246 ; on
the Irish Land Bill, 246, 247 ;
his speech at the Mansion House
on the Irish Land Bill, 247;
address at Eochdale on his
seventieth birthday, 248, 249;
his speech, 249 — 251 ; speech at
Llandudno, 251 — 253 ; on Irish
matters at Bu-mingham, 253 —
255 ; speech in Parliament on
the cloture, 255, 256 ; speech at
Birmingham on the beneficial
effects of libraries, 256 — 262 ; on
crime in Ireland, 263 ; resigns
his seat in the Cabinet on account
of events in Egypt, 265 ; his
speech, 265, 266; on "peace at
any price," 267 ; receives in
London a party of American
working people, 267 ; receives an
invitation to visit the United
States, 267; declines it, 268;
declines also an invitation from

President Hayes, 268, 269 ; opens
a new infirmary at Eochdale,
269 ; elected Lord Eector of the
University of Glasgow, 270 ; his
speech, 270, 271 ; three gentle
men have the degree of LL.D.
conferred upon them, 271, 272 ;
presented -with an address, 272,
273; Bright's reply, 273, 274;
presented with the freedom of
the city of Glasgow, and his
reply, 274; marriage of his
nephew, 275 ; Bright's great
speech at the Liberation Society's
meeting in London, 276 — 281 ;
marriage of his eldest son, 281 ;
celebration of his twenty -five
years' membership of Birming-
ham, 283 ; congratulatory ad
dresses on the occasion, 285 —
289; Bright's reply, 289— 293 ;
he gives a retrospective view of
recent legislation, 294 — 296 ; he
unveils the statue of Mr. J. S.
Wright at Birmingham, 297 —
299 ; he charges the Conservative
party with deliberate obstruction,
299 ; he opens the " Cobden
CoffeeHouse," Birmingham, 304 ;
great temperance speech at Bir
mingham, 305 — 310 ; g'reat
Liberal conference at Leeds, 310;
Bright's speech on modem politi
cal affairs, 311 — 319; compulsory
vaccination, 320 ; Bright on the
condition of the blind, 321 ; his
visit to some old friends in York
shire, 321 — 327 ; he addresses
the " Forward " Liberal Club at
Birmingham, 331 — 336 ; his ad
vice to the Workmen's Peace
Association, 337 ; his opinion on
the land laws, 337 ; his bust is
placed in the Providence lecture-
hall, U.S., 338 ; great speech in
Parliament on the second reading
of the Franchise BiU, 338—343 ;
laid aside for a short time by in
disposition, 344 ; some particulars
about his personal appearance,
his earnestness, and his oratorical
style, 345 — 352 ; some instances
of his humour, 353 — 356 ; how
his speeches are listened to by
the House, 357, 358 ; his perora
tions, 361 — 363 ; his intimate
knowledge of the poets, 364 ; his
fame, 365 ; Bright and Cobden
admirable counterparts, 367 ;
Bright's advice on public speak
ing, 368, 369 ; Gladstone's inci
dent of Bright, 369 ; a Sunday
summer scene at Eochdale, 369,
370 ; some account of the Eoch
dale Friends' meeting-house, and
Mr. Bright, 370, 371; Bright's
manner in the House of Com
mons, 357 ; Gladstone's opinion
of Bright, 357.
Brighton, Free Trade meetmg held
at, I., 215.

" Bright's Orchard," I., 7.
Bright's "John BuUism," HE.,
94, 95.
Bristol, Free Trade meetmg held
at, I., 157, 279.
Brotherton, Mr. J., I., 84, 93, 151,
163, 168, 169. <
Brougham, Lord, and John Bright,
I., 155, 156.
Buckingham, Duke of, I., 307 ;
sale of his Somersetshire estates,
III., 72.
Buckingham, Mr. J. S., L, 62,
154, 163.
Bulgarian question, Bright's speech
on the, III., 147, 148.
Burials BiU, III., 312; Bright's
speech on the, 150 — 152, 171;
the bishops and clergy on the
bUl, 280.
Burnes, Sir A., Motion of inquiry
into the Afghan war of 1839 and
the assassination of, IL, 254 —
258 ; speeches of Mr. Dunlop and
Mr. Bright on, 254—258.
Burnley, Free Trade meeting held
at, L, 275 ; Bright urges self-
education at, II. , 65.
Burritt, Elihu, I., 342, 343, H, 27,
28 ; great speech at Rochdale,
343.
Bury, Free Trade meeting held at,
I., 188, 224.
Butcher-meat, SmaU quantity ob
tained by the poor, in manu
facturing cities, 134; by agri
cultural labourers, 293.
Butter used for grease, I., 131, 201.
C
Cabinet, Alterations in Sir E. Peel's,
caused by dissensions on the corn
laws, I., 265 ; change in Lord
Palmerston's, on the Crimean
war, II. , 55 ; change in the, in
1859, 193 ; change in the, 375
further changes in 1866, HI., 12 ;
Gladstone's first, 87 ; his col
leagues, 89 ; re-construction of
his Cabinet, 117 ; a Conservative
Cabinet again in office, 131; the
Liberals once more in power, 233.
Cabinets, some curious facts about,
329.
California, Giant trees in, named
after Bright and Cobden, II. ,
342.
Canterbury, Free Trade meeting
held at, L, 187.
Capital punishment, Bright on, IL,
334, 335, IH., 179, 180.
Carlisle, Earl of, Lecture on Ameri
can institutions by the, IL, 159.
Carlisle, Free Trade meeting held
at, L, 146, 199.
Carnarvon, Earl of, m., 194.
Catholic Emancipation, Eeason for
the granting of, IL, 155 ; disbke
of the Tories for, 377 ; why it
was passed, in., 66.

INDEX.

379

Catholic tenantry of Ireland, No
leases granted to the, III., 26.
Cattle plague, The, IL, 283.
Cave of AduUam men, HI., 317.
Chamberlain, Mr. Joseph, III., 133,
136, 170, 188, 255, 256, 285, 293.
Channel Tunnel, Great value of
the, III., 296, 297.
Charity, Number living in Leeds on,
before Free Trade, L, 142, 158.
Chartist feeling of discontent in
England, I., S9.
Chartists, their agitation during
1S42, 136; they stop the
factories, 136, 137 ; the " plug
dragoons," 137 — 139 ; Bright
refutes the fallacies of Feargus
O'Connor, 218.
Cheltenham, Free Trade meeting
held at, I., 159.
Cherbourg, French fortification at,
H, 145, 146.
Childers, Mr., IH., 326, 327, 328.
China, Wars with, H, 75, 143;
some of our dealings with, 339 —
342; Bright's speech on, 340—
342.
Chorley, Lancashire, Free Trade
meeting held at, I., 222.
Christianity and war, IL, 30, 31,
HI., 198.
Church, Landowners and the snug
family Uvings in the, IL, 154.
Church of England, Bright's
opinion of the, I., 112, H., 3,
HI., 40, 280, 281 ; always on the
side of the Tories, IU., 137, 138.
Church-rates : abhorrence of Jacob
Bright to demands for, I., 22 —
25, 57 ; violent contest in Eoch
dale, 98 ; struggle between
Churchmen and Dissenters, 99,
100 ; Bright's tombstone speech
on the occasion, 100 — 103; seizing
a dying man's Bible for the rate,
101 ; a poU demanded, 103 ; at
tempts to coerce the rate-payers,
104; the five days' poU, 104,
105 ; a threatened riot, 104 ; the
poU prolonged by the vicar's
orders, 106; result of the poU,
107; Bright's activity, 107, 108,
nine persons summoned for re
fusing to pay the rate, 110;
Buccess of the opposition, 110;
unsuccessful attempts to aboUsh
church-rates generaUy, IL, 52,
165 ; Bright's speech in ParUa
ment on the aboUtion of church-
rates in 1861, 259—262; the
subject settled in 1868 by Mr.
Gladstone's AboUtion BiU, 263 ;
money spent in the contest of
1840," 259; Bright's motives to
encouragement and liberaUty,
260, 261 ; his speech on the
abolition in 1862, 296, 297.
Civil Service, The Indian, its cost
and its incapacity, IL, 125.
Clay, Mr., and the Elective Fran
chise BiU, III., 8.

Cleckheaton, Free Trade meeting
held at, I., 222.
Clergy and the corn laws, I., 114,
161, 162, 205, 304; the clergy
and war, IL, 72.
Cloth, Comparative value of wheat
and, L, 290, 291.
Clothing to the army, On the
supply of, IL, 144, 145.
Coals, Alarm at the possible future
failure in oui- supply of, IL, 263.
Cobden, Eichard, I., i25, 132, 134,
140, 142, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150,
157, 158, 161, 162, 163, 167, 168,
179, 1S4, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190,
191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197,
199, 200, 202, 203, 206, 207, 211,
212, 214, 215, 21S, 220, 221, 222,
223, 224, 225, 233, 240, 265, 274,
275, 276, 277, 27S, 279, 280, 282,
283, 290, 294, 296, 297, 300, 301,
302, 319, 327, 330, 331, 333, 396,
399, 400, IL, 31, 32, 34, 47, 52,
75, 76, 289 ; birthplace of, I., 85 ;
settles iu Manchester as a calico
printer, 86 ; joins the Anti-
Com-Law League, 87 ; first
attempts at public speaking, 87,
88, 118; enters Parliament, 119;
how he was there received by
the monopoUsts, 120, 122, 123;
Bright's account of Cobden's first
speech, 124 ; scene in the Com
mons with Sir E. Peel, 154, 155 ;
the League defends him, 157 ;
the Manchester address, 163 ;
describes his manufactory and
workmen, 215; his pecuniary
embarrassments, 245 ; his home,
283 ; subscription to reUeve him,
347 ; describes his early business
career, 348 ; chaUenged to a duel,
397; death of his son, IL, 73;
def eatsPalmerston's Government,
76 ; defends the conduct of Bright,
78 — 81 ; gives his opinion of
Palmerston, 79—81 ; faUs pro
strate at Huddersfield from ex
haustion, 82 ; not elected at
Huddersfield, 84 ; opinions of the
press as to his value, 85, 86, 89,
92, 95, 96, 98, 100; Cobden's
disgust at Bright's non-election,
108 ; his exultation at Palmer
ston's overthrow, 119; he con
gratulates the Bumingham people
on their restored representative,
138 ; on a new source in favour
of Eeform, 167; invited to repre
sent Eochdale, 181; Bright
furnishes some particulars about
Cobden's career, 181—183; re
turned for Eochdale, 183; Cobden
declines the post of President of
the Board of Trade in Palmer
ston's new Ministry, 197, 198,
208 ; sent to Paris to negotiate a
commercial treaty, 206 — 209 ;
completes the treaty of commerce
with France, 227 ; Bright's re
ference to Cobden's services, 22S,

230 ; Cobden declines a baronetcy,
245 ; addresses his constituents,
266, 267, 294, 295; criticisms on,
268, 269 ; a later visit to Eoch
dale, 324, 325 ; dispute with the
Times newspaper, 326 ; non
intervention in Chinese matters,
339, 340 ; his last visit to his
constituents, 343 ; again decUnes
public ofiice, 346 ; Bright de
scribes his last moments, 356 ;
his death, 356 ; sympathy for
him, 357, 358; Palmerston's
speech, 359; Disraeli's testimony,
360 ; Bright's broken utterances
of sorrow, 361 ; his character,
362 ; his resting-place, 363 ; the
funeral procession, 363 — 365 ;
visitors to his tomb, 365 ; Bright's
speech on unveiling his statue,
366, m., 173 ; Gladstone's testi
mony to his merits, IL, 366, 367 ;
Cobden's disUke of unnecessary
foppery, 368 ; his memory pre
served, 369 ; unveUing a statue
of Cobden, III., 50, 51, 173;
Bright's reference to Ms labours
for Free Trade, 250 ; his latest
reminiscence of Cobden's sym
pathy with him at the loss of
his first wife, 352 ; Cobden and
Bright admirable counterparts,
367.
Cobden, the " farmer's friend," L,
277.
Cobden Coffee House, Birmingham,
III., 304.
Cockermouth, Free Trade meeting
held at, I., 192.
Coercion Bill of 1847, Bright's
opposition to the, I., 379, 380.
Colchester, Free Trade meeting
held at, I., 215.
CoUege and Academy for the Blind,
Norwood, in., 300.
Commerce, No sympathy of landed
proprietors with, H, 154 ; pro
gress of commerce during the
Middle Ages, 344.
Commercial treaty with France,
Proposal for a, IL, 206 ; how it
was received by the French
Emperor, 206 ; Cobden's depar
ture for Paris, 207 ; completion
of the treaty, 227; Bright's
Uking for it, 228 ; his account of
Cobden's labours, 228, 230, 239 ;
Cobden declines a baronetcy for
his services, 245 ; Cobden de
scribes the beneficial effects of
the treaty, 267 ; some facts about
the treaty stated by Bright, III.,
99, 114, 124, 330.
Committals and the price of food
during the Corn-law agitation,
I., 201.
Commons, House of, its_ power of
representing public opmion, IL,
152, 153 ; its failure to do this,
as at present overridden by the
power of the landed proprietors,

380

INDEX.

153; 400,000 voters entirely
ignored, 153; a sort of deputy to
the House of Lords, 154; its
hatred of changes and economy,
154 ; right of the House of, to
pass money biUs independently
of the Lords, 218—224.
Compound householder, The, III.,
52.
Confederate States of America,
Bright's speech on neutraUty of
England with the, H., 322 ; size
of the American cotton-producing
countries, 314 ; the cotton trade,
319.
Congratulating Her Majesty, Meet
ing at Eochdale for, I., 95 — 97.
Congratulatory address to Mr.
Bright, Decline of a, LH., 109.
Conservative Government, their
conduct on the Eeform question
somewhat like the Christy Min
strels, III., 19 ; the last Eeform
measure reaUy passed by a, from
outside pressuie, 53, 62 ; Bright's
regret that the measure should
come from a Tory statesman, 52 ;
once again in power, 131.
Conservative policy, Bright on the,
III., 124.
Conservative speeches to Conserva
tive working men, III., 145.
Conspiracy to Murder BiU, The,
IL, 117.
Constitution, What is meant by the
British, IL, 153; the English
constitution never yet fuUy en
joyed by EngUshmen, 306 ; value
of the United States constitution
to Englishmen, 307.
Co-operation, Benefit of, IL, 19,
237—239.
Corn a, better panacea than mono
poly, I., 275.
Com Law Bill of 1842, Sir E.
Peel's new, I., 126 ; the abolition
biU of 1846, 318; its progress
through ParUament, 329, 330,
334—338.
Corn Laws, Bright's first interest in
the, L, 79 ; old laws affecting
corn, 79 ; its importation pro
hibited, 80 ; high prices produced
by legislative protection, 81 ; the
Corn BUl passed, 82 ; poverty of
the people the result, 82 ; Henry
Hunt denounces the new law,
83 ; the Corn Law of 1822, 83 ;
revision of the Corn Laws re
fused, 83 ; the monetary crisis of
1836 causes a commercial col
lapse, 84 ; the Corn Law seen to
be the true cause, 84 ; agitation
for the repeal of the Com Laws,
84 ; Bright's intimate knowledge
of the subject, 92 ; the Act of
1815 the greatest iniquity on the
statute book, 118, 150, 169;
Carlyle on the Corn Laws, 143 ;
distress produced by the, 219,
224 ; faUacies underlying the

Com Laws, 267, 268; evils
directly traceable to the influence
of the tax on food, 270, 271 ; re
peal of the Corn Laws an urgent
necessity, I., 271, 272, 283, 289 ;
Bright denounces the Corn Laws,
287 ; no good to any one, 300 ;
destruction of human food caused
by the Corn Laws, 201 ; required
a famine to obtain the repeal, II. ,
155 ; Bright's review of our corn-
law past history, HI., 130, 326.
Cork, Bright's address to the Far
mers' Club of, III., 27, 28.
Corrupt practices at elections,
Bright on, IL, 225.
Cotton crop, the greatness and
grandeur of Lancashire, I., 214.
Cotton supply from India proposed,
I., 391—323, IL, 289 ; the Ameri
can war stops the supply from
America, IL, 273, 274; Bright
faUs to obtain a committee to
inquire into the growth of Indian
cotton, 289, 293, 298 ; effect pro
duced in Lancashire by the with
drawal of American cotton, 297 ;
the Indian cotton supply, 298 ;
Surat cotton, 299, 305 ; high
price of American cotton, 305 ;
American and Indian cotton, 305.
Counties, Two classes of voters in
the, II. , 153 ; inadequate repre
sentation of, 153, 186.
County household suffrage, Bright
on, HI., 145, 146, 159, 170—172.
County registration, The League
proposals for, I., 325.
County representation, The land
owners great obstacles to any
change in the, III., 171 ; unfaU
representation of the, 172 ;
Bright's hope in county repre
sentation, 172.
Court, Evils resulting from a
corrupt, II. , 378.
Covenanted CivU Service of India,
The, III., 301, 302.
Covent Garden Theatre rented for
the use of the League, I., 190,
194, 201, 204, 205, 210, 211, 212,
214, 216, 221, 225, 238, 240, 283.
Crawford, Mr. Sharman, I., 3, 221,
IL, 7, 64.
Crimean war, The, causes which
led to it, IL, 25, 26 ; Bright's
endeavours to prevent, 27 ; Sir
C. Napier's speech, 28 ; Bright
shows the losses to England if
the war be undertaken, 28 — 31 ;
his consequent unpopularity for
a time, 31, 32 ; Palmerston
carries the people with him, 34 ;
Bright's speech in ParUament
against entering into war, 36 —
41 ; he points out the probable
cost, 44 ; crimes and atrocities
committed during the, 44 ; mis
management of the commissariat
department, 53, 54 ; Eoebuck's
committee, 54 ; change in the

Mmistry, 55 ; Lord Palmerston
becomes Premier, 55 ; the war
denounced in ParUament in a
powerful speech from Bright, 55
— 57 ; loss of human life in the
Crimea, 57 ; objects of the war,
60, 61 ; the authors of the war,
62, 63 ; end of the war, 71 ; its
estimated cost to England, 71 ;
Bright regrets not the course he
took, 187 ; his aUusion to the
Crimean war, 277, 287; Cobden
on the war frenzy, 295, III.,
367 ; Bishop WUberforce and the
war, HI., 278.
Criminal code of the last century,
Excessive severity of the, III.,
276, 277.
Crown and Anchor tavern, Strand,
Corn Law meeting at the, I.,
132, 135, 156, 180.
Crown, Power of the, IL, 153.
Crows, Grantley Berkeley's admis
sion of the great value to the
farmer from, I., 257, 258.
Curry powder a suggested remedy
for the distress during the Corn
Laws, I., 281, 287, 306.

D
Dark age of EngUsh politics, The,
IL, 141.
DarUngton, Free Trade meeting
held at, I., 146.
Dead languages, Uselessness of
studying the, Hi., 364.
Death, The angel of, in the Crimea,
II., 57.
Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, Bright
on the, III., 95, 96, 280.
" Defence of the Uberties of
Europe," Bright on the, IL, 67.
Defencesof Canada, Bright's speech
on the IL, 348 — 353 ; sum asked
for, 353.
Denominational education, Objec
tions to, III., 121.
Derby, Earl of, his opposition to
Eeform, II. , 136 ; his knowledge
of county representation, 153 ; his
knowledge of the use of words,
189 ; facts about his Government
in 1859, 215 ; his last Ministry,
HI., 12 ; their resemblance to
Christy Minstrels, 19; Tory belief
in the Earl, 65 ; Bright's opinions
of his Eeform professions, 354.
Derby, Earl of, jun., on the neu
traUty of the Conservative
Government, III., 160, 161, 191 ;
his resignation, 194, 199.
Despatches, Garbled, IL, 257.
Destitution in Oxford before repeal
of the Com Laws, I., 261, 262.
Devonport, Free Trade meeting
held at, L, 162.
DUke, Sir Charles, III., 170.
Diplomatic lords, II. , 163; cost of,
163.

INDEX.

381

Discontent, Popular, caused by the
pressure of the Corn Laws, I.,
89.
DisraeU, Mr., becomes the Pro
tectionist leader in ParUament,
I., 318; his attack on Sir E.
Peel, 334; Peel's reply to his
slanders, 334 — 336 ; Protectionist
compensation advocated by Dis
raeli, 390, 391, III., 130 ; on the
faUure of the Vienna negotiations
for peace, II. , 59 ; becomes a
second time ChanceUor of the
Exchequer, US; proposes a new
bill for the Government of India,
119 ; his position a proclamation
of Conservative incompetency,
163 ; his proposals for Eeform,
168 ; their rejection, ISO ; appeal
to the coimtry, 180; advocates
peace, 199 ; his Indian policy,
258, 259 ; Bright's description of
his abUities, 374, HI., 47 ;
becomes ChanceUor of the
Exchequer again, III., 12 ; his
Eeform resolutions, 43 ; with
drawal of, and a bolder scheme
proposed, 45, 46 ; Bright's
criticism of his Eeform scheme,
48 — 50 ; his opinion of DisraeU,
52 ; DisraeU's difficulties regard
ing the minority clause, 63 ;
advises the Queen in 1868 to
dissolve ParUament, 75 ; he
wishes to maintain the Estab
Ushed Church in Ireland, but
fails to succeed, 76, 77 ; becomes
Premier again, 131 ; resigns,
233 ; his death, 243 ; opinion of
his poUcy, 243, 244; Bright's
lastreference to, 250 ; hisaUusions
to DisraeU's former proceedings,
329; the "mystery man of the
Tory party," 354.
Dissenters, Bright enumerates the
former condition of the, III., 82.
Dissenting ministers in Deland,
Vote to, IL, 52.
Dixon, Mr. George, of Birmingham,
IH., 283, 285.
Doncaster, Free Trade meeting
held at, I., 191.
Dorset, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 167.
Drinking system, Evils of the, III.,
127.
Drummond, Mr., Peel's secretary,
shot, I., 331.
Drunkenness, its comparative rarity
in modern times, IL, 336 ;
necessity for counteracting, III.,
132.
Drury Lane Theatre rented for the
holding of the League meetings,
I., 158, 165.
DubUn, Eeform demonstrations at,
HI., 25; Bright's speeches, 26,
27, 28.
Ducie, Earl, I., 274, 279.
Dudley, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 147.

Dudley Stuart, Lord, IL, 79, 80.
Dumfries, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 202.
Dundas, Sir David, HI., 256, 259.
Dundee, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 149.
Dungannon, Lord, member for
Durham, I., 160, 170; unseated,
173 ; Bright elected in his place,
178.
Dunlop, Mr., and the death of Sir
A. Bumes, II. , 254.
Durham, Lord Dungannon un
seated for, L, 173 ; Bright a
candidate, 173, 174; his speeches
and addresses, 170, 174, 176 ; the
election, 177, 178; congratula
tions, 179, 180 ; Bright's visits to
his constituents, 191, 223.
Duties, Trifling, The Conservative
Government propose to remove
in 1841, 1., 119.

E
East India Company, Bright's
speech in 1853 on the, IL, 23,
24 ; BiU for the abolition of the
company; 119; excessive taxation
and extravagance of its power,
124, 125 ; extraordinary nature
of its government, 133 ; end of
the company's rule, 133.-
East India Loan BiU, Bright on the
second reading of the, IL, 177 — ¦
179.
Ecclesiastical Titles BiU, Bright's
speeches on the, II, 1 — 5.
Economy, Unpopularity of, in
ParUament, IL, 154.
Edinburgh, Free Trade meetmg
held at, I., 149, 199, 200, 246—
253 ; peace conference held at,
IL, 27 ; Bright's speech at, 28—
38 ; Eeform meetmg held at, 160,
161; Bright presented with the
freedom of, IH., 83, 84; social
reform speech at, 84, 85.
Education of the people, Great
need of the, III., 22, 24, 25;
America far ahead of England in,
22 ; Bright hints at the proba
bUity of a scheme of national, 103,
104.
Education of Mr. Bright's work
people, I., 209.
Education franchise, Proposal for
an, III., 9.
Education, Sum wasted on, in
England, IL, 231 ; nothing
reaUy done by the Tory party to
educate the people, HI., 22 ; sum
voted by ParUament for educa
tion, 169 ; Bright's Bpeech on
education at Birmingham, 219 ;
his speech at Llandudno on
education, 251 — 253.
Egyptian affairs, Mr. Gladstone's
Government and, III., 264,
265.

Election expenditure, Brie-ht on
III., 49.
Elections, Quietness of American,
IL, 326.
Electoral disabilities of women,
Bright on the biU to remove the,
HI., 155—158.
Elective Franchise BUl, Bright's
speech on Mr. Clay's, III., 8.
Elementary Education Act, Bright
on the, III., 116, 120, 121.
EUiott, Ebenezer, the Corn-Law
rhymer, I., 102, 202.
Emerton, Dr., and the acquisition of
the Freneh language, III., 42.
Emigration of the poorer classes, I.,
113, 118, 133, 242, 243; IL, 18;
307, 311, HI., 26; Bright's
advice to emigrants, 211 ; no need
to emigrate after the Irish Land
BUl was passed, 246.
Emperor Napoleon, Attempted
assassination of the, IL, 117;
intimate aUiance between Eng
land and the, 145 ; hasty recog
nition of the, 194 ; fulsome
adulation of the, by the English
Ministers, 145, 195 ; his entry
into the Russian and Chinese
wars, 145, 195; his supposed
designs for mischief not exer
cised, 195 ; unnecessary panics
about French influence, 203 ;
fleet-building competitions, 204,
205 ; honourable competition in
trade counselled, 206 ; Bright's
speeches produce favourable im
pressions on the Emperor's mind,
206 ; Bright has confidence in
the Emperor, IL, 226, 227, III.,
124 ; his interview with him, II. ,
224 ; III., 52.
Employer and employed, Bright's
advice to the, III., 327.
Encumbered Estates Court, Estab-
Ushment of the, III., 66.
Enemies of England, The monopo
Usts the, I., 305.
England, Greatest number of weU-
to-do people and Uliterate masses
of poor in, II, 324.
EngUshmen, Voting possible to,
in our colonies and the United
States, III., 345.
EngUshman's independence of the
foreigner, W. J. Fox's description
of the, I., 193.
EngUshmen in India, Behaviour of,
IL, 130.
Enormous revenues, Nothing tends
more to the corruption of a
Government than, H., 144.
Entailed property, Bright on, H.,
327, IH, 171.
Essex, Earl of, and the preservation
of game, L, 234.
EstabUshed Church, Promotion stiU
the rule in the, III., 120.
EstabUshed Churches of England
and Deland, Bright on the, III.,
53.

382

INDEX.

Excise duties, Abolition of the,
IL, 221.
Ewart, Mr., I., 158, 165, 181, 212,
215, IL, 334.
Exeter, Free Trade meeting held at,
L, 158.
Expenditure, Condemnation of
unnecessary, IL, 231, 240—244,
265, 375, III., 40, 123; cost of
ParUamentary elections, 49.

Factory children, Condition of, in
earlier times, L, 19; Mr. Jacob
Bright's Uberality to, 30, 31.
Factory workmen, Mr. Jacob
Bright's attempts to improve the
condition of, I., 19, 20, 21, 27.
Famine of 1845, The impending, I.,
269, 270, IL, 155; Bright's
picture of what a famine is, I.,
270, 271; Indian famines, HI.,
189, 193.
Farm labourer, Wages of the, III. ,
25 ; improvement in the con
dition of the, 130, 167.
Farmer, Servile condition of the,
L, 195, 328 ; grievous position of
the, caused by the Game Laws,
234, 235 ; advice to the farmer,
237.
Farmers, Injuries caused to, by the
Game Laws, L, 227, 228.
Farringdon HaU, London, Free
Trade meeting held at the, I.,
222
Fawcett. Mr., HI., 133, 138, 155,
170, 207, 321.
Fenian agitation, The, IL, 381,
III., 70 ; Bright asked to inter
cede for the prisoners, 105.
Ferrand, Mr. W. B., L, 123, 331,
332.
Field, Cyrus, and the American
cable, IL, 335, HI., 24.
First year's income, Devotion of the,
to Church improvements, L, 101.
Fishmongers' Company, Bright's
speeches at the, III., 55, 56, 245.
FitzwUliam, Earl, 1., 83, 118, 191,
IL, 185, 186.
Five mUUons, No power to forbid
the, entering Parliament, IL,
345, III., 19.
Flannel trade, Condition of the,
caused by unwise laws, L, 127.
Fleet-bnUding competitions, IL,
204, 205.
Food and crime, Price of, I., 242,
243.
Food, Destruction of, in times of
scarcity, I., 131, 201, 302.
Food-growers, Our Eussian, become
our enemies by the Crimean war,
IL, 44.
Food of the farm-labourers, I., 207.
Foreign affan-s, More time devoted
by the Conservatives to, than
home matters, IH., 208.

Foreign policy, Our, IL, 163 ; how
little we understand it, 163 ; our
Conservative foreign policy, HI.,
164—167, 193, 195, 196, 199—
201, 208, 209, 216, 217.
Foreigner, Supposed independence
of the Englishman from the, I.,
193.
Forster, Mr., HI., 194, 197, 301,
304, 323, 367.
Fortifications of Quebec, Bright's
speech on the, IL, 352 — 355.
" Forward " Liberal Club, Bright's
speech to the, III., 331 —
336.
Fox, Charles James, an advocate
of peace and reform, IL, 139,
157.
Fox, Mr. W. J., Speeches by, L,
190, 191, 193, 196, 201, 210, 280,
289, 302 ; amusing description of
a English landowner's independ
ence of the foreigner, 193 ; the
Oldham electors present a testi
monial to, II. , 17 ; great speech
on recent ParUamentary events,
17—20; not re-elected at Old
ham, 84.
France, Sardinia, and Austria, War
between, IL, 189, 192 ; Bright's
aUusion to, 277.
Franchise, The £10, IL, 146, 156,
158, 184, 186; working classes
excluded by the, 157, 345, 374 ;
what can the working classes
obtain by the franchise ? 163 ;
smaU number of persons entrusted
with the, 153; English people
in a condition to be trusted with
the, 160 ; no disposition to grant
it, 294 ; referred to in the Queen's
speech, 325; "lateral extension
of the Franchise," 374; proposed
extension of, in 1866, III., 1—5,
6, 7, 9, 1 1 ; the Queen not afraid
of the, 20, 21 ; Bright's hopes on
the subject, 22 ; DisraeU's views
on the, in 1867, 46 ; Bright's
examination of the Conservative
Eeform BiU, 47, 48, 49 ; why the
franchise is lower in England
than in America, 56 ; Bright re
minds the Birmingham people of
their past poUtical condition, 83 ;
the Irish franchise, 153 ¦ Bright
on the recent extension of the
franchise, 323, 325, 331 ; on the
Eepresentation of the Peoples
BiU, 339 ; on the extension of the
franchise in Ireland, 341.
Free breakfast table, PossibiUty of
a, III., 104, 105, 123.
Freedom, Heaven's first gift to
man, I., 221 ; America the land
of, IL, 306, 307; England famous
for personal, 346.
Freedom of election, Limited powers
of the EngUsh voters in, IL, 153 ;
one cause of bribery, 153.
Freehold Land Societies, EstabUsh-
ment of, IL, 5.

Free sale of land in Ireland, Ob
stacles to the, I., 387 ; Bright's
explanation, III., 127.
Free Trade : Prices of com in
1815, effects of the long war, L,
82 ; the Com BiU, 82 ; ineffectual
attempts to obtain a revision of
the Corn Laws, 83 ; agitation for
a repeal, 84 ; establishment of the
National Anti-Com-Law League,
84 ; its first members, 84 ; Cob
den joins the committee, 84 ;
meetings of the committee, 87 ;
commencement of the campaign,
89 ; Bright a member of the
committee, 90 ; his knowledge of
the subject, 92, 94 ; his first speech,
93 ; a branch formed at Eochdale,
94 ; temporary office of the
League, Manchester, 95 ; steady
perseverance of the League at
first in 1840 and 1841, 117, 118 ;
dissolution of ParUament to de
cide the question of Free Trade,
119 ; Cobden enters ParUament,
119; opposition to him in the
House, 122, 123; Bright earnestly
occupied out-of-doors, 125 ; slow
progress of Free Trade principles
in ParUament, 126 ; meetings
held in London, 132—135 ; the
misguided Chartists hinder Free
Trade progress in the country,
136 — 140 ; conferences in Lon
don, 141, 142 ; meetings held in
Manchester, Yorkshire, and other
places, 143 — 148 ; activity of the
Free Traders during 1843, 148—
198 ; Bright elected for Durham,
178 ; Free Trade the one demand
of the League, 185 ; the cause of
-Free Trade graduaUy gains
groundinl844, 199—222 ; George
Thompson on Free Trade, 211;
Free Trade begins to feel its
power and influence in 1845, 222
— 289 ; Macaulay in favour of
Free Trade, 247 ; effect of the
bad harvest of 1845 on the ad
vance of Free Trade, 260 ; the
League redouble their exertions,
the end of the Corn Laws being
imminent, 262 ; What is the
object sought to be attained in
the possession of Free Trade?
294 ; Sir E. Peel now on the side
of the Free Traders, 309 ; his biU
for the repeal of the Corn Laws,
318 ; progress of the biU, 319,
326—330, 333, 334, 337, 338;
triumph of the Free Traders,
340 — 345 ; what it has accom
pUshed, IL, 18, 19, III., 51 ; im
proved condition of the agricul
tural labourer, III., 130 ; Lord
Beaconsfield's reference to the
landowner, tenant-farmer, and
the labourer, 250 ; Bright's hope
in the United States adopting
Free Trade principles, 291, 292.
Free Trade almanacks, I., 211.

INDEX.

383

Free Trade HaU, Manchester,
Erection of the, 151, 152 (see
Manchester) .
Free-traders, Difficulties encoun
tered in Parliament by the early,
I., 120, 122, 123, 185, 206, 207.
French, Fear of the, IL, 226 ; Duke
of Wellington's fear of the, 242.
French invasion, Panic on the sub
ject of, H , 15, 16, 134, 146, 244,
263.
French language, Bright on the
easy acquisition of the, by chU
dren, III., 42.
FrugaUty urged on the working
classes by Mr. Bright, ni., 36.
Funeral reform, Bright on, HI.,
144. G
Game laws, EvU effects produced
on the tenant-farmers by the,
I., 217, 226—233 ; excessive sen
tence on a poacher, 231 ; grievous
position of farmers, 234, 235,
322 ; advice to farmers, 236, 237 ;
injustice of those laws to both
farmers and labourers, 254, 256,
H., 155; Bright pubUshes a
volume of game law evidence
at his own cost, 254 ; gams
adverse information from Grant-
ley Berkeley on the value of
crows to the farmer, I., 257, 258 ;
Sir E. Peel's incapabiUty in the
matter, H, 156 ; Bright on the
eril effects of the Scotch Game
Laws, IH, 97, 98 ; the Act of
1880, HI., 312.
Game-preserving, EvUs caused by
the practice of, I., 232.
Garrison, Mr. WiUiam Lloyd,
Bright's speech at a breakfast
given to, IH., 57 — 60 ; his early
life, 57 ; reward for his capture,
37 ; the slavery aboUtionists, 58,
59.
Gas, Bright on the invention of,
ILL, 187, 188.
George III., FoUy of, in the
American war, H, 40, 41.
Gibraltar, Eock of, Bright's hope
of its restoration to Spain, II.,
300.
Gibson, Mr. Milner, L, 152, 205,
210, 217, 223, 279, 364, H, 9,
16, 32, 52, 67, 71, 76, 78, 217 ;
elected for Manchester, I., 365,
H., 12, 13; his non-election, 83;
loss of his services, 85, 96 ; elected
for Ashton-under-Lyne, 115 ; his
first act in ParUament, 117, 118 ;
in office under Lord Palmerston,
197; his death, HI., 337.
Gladstone, Mr., L, 135, 199, 265,
IL, 68, 217, 263, 376, III., 1,
23, 73, 90, 1.09, 150, 225, 245,
250, 256 ; proposes the repeal of
the paper duty, IL, 217 ; suc
ceeds, 263; his Eeform BiU of

1866, III., 1, 23 ; Bright's eulogy
on his abilities, 50 ; becomes
Premier, 87 ; proposes a biU for
the disestablishment of the Irish
Church, 91; Bright's speech in
support, 91 — 93 ; the Dish Land
BiU of 1870, 107 ; reconstructs
his cabinet, 117 ; his resignation,
131 ; retires from the leadership
of the Liberal party, 138; Bright's
reference to, 135, 136 ; his speech
on pubUo questions at Birming
ham, 177, 178; speech at Bir
mingham on the evil effects of
Turkish rule, 177 ; once more in
office, 233 ; his Irish Land BiU,
243, 246, 247, 248; Bright's
opinion of Gladstone, 245, 360 ;
on Bright's withdrawal from the
Cabinet, 266.
Glasgow, Free Trade meetings held
at, I., 199, 301, 302; Eeform
meetmg held in, II. , 161 — 164;
Bright's speech on Eeform, III.,
24, 25 ; his speech on being-
elected Lord Eector, 270, 271 ;
on being presented with an
address, 272, 273 ; presented with
the freedom of the city, 274.
Glory, The expense of, IL, 142, 143.
Gloucester, Free Trade meetings
held at, I., 149, 159, 277.
Goat-acre, near Lyneham, WUts,
Friends' burial-ground at, L, 7 ;
strange meeting of agricultural
labourers at, 291—293 ; Bright's
comments therein, 298, 321.
Gordon, Governor, of Jamaica, H,
380.
Government Factory BiU, Lord
Ashley on the, I., 210.
Government of London BiU,
Bright's views on the, HI., 342.
Governor- General of India, Vast
power exercised by the, IL, 125
— 127 ; suggestion for the im
provement of his influence, 127
— 129; his ignorance of the
twenty languages of the country,
210; his official isolation from
the native people, 210 ; how to
remedy this in the future, by
decentraUsing the Government,
211.
Graham, Sir James, I., 119, IL,
22, 287 ; his unseemly jokes at a
banquet to Sir C. Napier, and
Bright's disapproval in Parlia
ment, IL, 33, 287; resigns his
office, 55 ; he owns his error in
the Crimean war, III., 166.
GranvUle, Earl, HI., 89, 117, 139,
204; his testimony to Bright's
labours, 293.
Gravesend, Free Trade meeting
held at, L, 216.
Grattan, John, the Quaker preacher,
I., 5, 6.
Great Exhibition, Duke of
WeUington' s fear of foreign
influence, IL, 242, 243.

Greenbank, near Eochdale, I., 14,
31.
Greenock, Free Trade meeting held
at, L, 201.
Grey, Earl, the Eeformer, an
advocate of peace, IL, 139 ; his
motions for household suffrage,
157.
Grey, Sir G., I., 379, 381 ; H., 55,
335, 347, 381, 383.
GuildhaU, London, Free Trade
meeting at the, I., 282.

Habeas Corpus Act, Suspension of
the, IL, 18, 283, 284, 381, 382 ;
HI., 53, 103, 313.
Haddington, Free Trade meeting
held at, I., 191, 192.
Hadfield, Mr. IL, 52, 151.
Halifax, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 196.
HaU of Commerce, London, Free
Trade meetings held at the, I.,
167, 168.
HamUton, Lord George, HI., 193.
Hamilton, Janet, Extraordinary
abilities of, HI., 258, 259;
Bright visits her tomb, 275.
Hanley, Free Trade meetings held
at, L, 281.
Hansard, MonopoUsts unwilling to
change on account of their former
conduct being recorded in, I., 240.
Happy Nation, Bright's idea of a,
II. 248.
Hartington, Marquis of, IH., 89,
140,216; becomes the leader of
the Liberals, 139, 140.
Hastings, Sir Thomas, I., 396, 397.
Hawick, Free Trade meeting held
at I. 149.
Hay, Eev. W. E., I., 50, 52; how
he gained the vicarage of Eoch
dale, 55.
Henley, Mr. J. W., L, 189.
Heyworth, Mr. Lawrence, L, 163,
223, 297; IL, 52.
Highland farms, Large size of, II. ,
162.
High Wycombe, Free Trade meet
ing held at, I., 167
Holme, Miss Sophia, first wUe of
Jacob Bright, L, 13; her early
death, 14.
Holmfirth, Free Trade meeting
held at, L, 146, 195. _
Holy Land, Bright's visit to the,
I., 73 ; his account of, 73, 74.
Holy Places, Dispute about the,
resulting in the Crimean war,
IL, 25, 26.
Home reform delayed by useless
wars, IL, 141.
Home rule, Bright not an advocate
of, III., 107, 141.
Hop duty, Proposed aboUtion of
the, IL, 252, 253.
Horse-racing, Bright on, III., 158.

384

INDEX.

Horsman, Mr., his opposition to the
Eeform proposals of Mr. Glad
stone, HI., 4; Bright ridicules
his fears, 4, 5.
House of Commons, Bright's
speeches in the, L, 181, 182, 187,
206, 207, 210, 215; the Game
Laws, 217, 225, 226—233 ; Free
Trade, 231, 240, 320—325; on
Ireland, 380 ; on parUamentary
representation of Ireland, 381 — •
383 ; on Ireland generaUy, 383 —
389; on Protection, 390,391; on
capital punishment, 393 ; on the
budget, 394 ; on reduction of
national expenditure, 399; on the
Ecclesiastical Titles BiU, IL, 2—
5 ; on Protection, 8, 9 ; on the
MUitia BiU, 11; on removal of
Jewish disabiUties, 13, 14 ; on
India, 23 — 25 ; on Palmerston's
untimely jokes, 33, 34; on the
state of Turkey, 36 — 41 ; on war,
48 — 50 ; on Oxford University
Eeform, 51 ; on the Crimean war,
55 — 57, 59 — 63 ; on the new India
BUl, 119—123, 123—133; on
national expenditure, 176; on
the East India Loan BiU, 177,
178; on the Eeform BiU, 179,^
180 ; on mUitary preparations,
193 — 196; on financial matters,
199 — 206; speech on India,
209 — 215 ; speech on the rejection
of the paper duty by the Lords.
217—225, 247, 248 ; bribery and
corruption, 225 ; the budget, 227
— 232; oflicial salaries, 231 ; on
annexation of Savoy to France,
232, 233; the China war, 233,
234; reform, 235; the Indian
army, 235, 236 ; reform and the
benefits of co-operation, 237 —
239, 240 ; our national defences,
241—244 ; on Turkish affairs,
246, 247 ; the reform question,
250, 251; the hop duty, 252;
the navy estimates, 253 ; the
Afghan war of 1839, and the
death of Sir A. Burnes, 255 —
258 ; church-rates, 259—262 ;
the budget and the paper duty,
263, 264 ; the Burial BiU, 264,
265 ; navy estimates, 265, 266 ;
speech on the Trent dispute, 275,
276 ; speech on maritime law and
advocacy of peace, 289 — 291 ; on
iron-clad vessels, 291, 292; on
the Lancashire distress, 292 —
294 ; Bright declines to recognise
the Southern confederacy, 316 —
322; the Mutiny Bill, 330;
decline of the population of Ire
land, 331 ; recruiting in North
America, 332, 333 ; on the aboU
tion of the punishment of death,
334, 335 ; speech on the Eiver-
water poUntion Bill, 347 ; on the
defences of Canada, 348 — 353 ;
on the fortifications of Quebec,
343 — 355 ; on Admiralty extrava

gance, 373 ; on the Fenian con-
spfracy, 381 — 383 ; speeches on
the reform question of 1866, HI.,
1—3, 6—8, 9, 10—12; on Mr.
Locke King's Eeal Intestacy BiU,
16 ; on DisraeU's Eeform resolu
tions, 43 — 45; on the new Eeform
BiU, 47, 48 ; on various questions,
53, 54 ; on the Eeform BiU, 60—
62 ; on Dish discontent, 71 — 73 ;
approves of disestablishment of
the Irish Church, 73 — 75 ; on Nova
Scotia, 80 ; his repUes as a
Cabinet Mnister, 90, 91 ; speech
on the Irish Church disestablish
ment, 91 — 93 ; speech on the
Deceased WUe's Sister AboUtion
Bill, 95, 96 ; speech on the Game
Laws and Irish grievances, 97,
98 ; something about the French
commercial treaty, 99 ; sppaks on
the Tichborne trial, 149, 150;
his speech on the Burial BiU,
150 — 153 ; on the Irish Fran
chise, 153 ; on the estabUshment
of school boards, 153, 154; on
the electoral disabiUties of
women, 155 — 158 ; on the sale of
intoxicating liquors on Sunday
(Ireland), 158 ; on horse-racing,
159 ; on county representation,
159 ; on capital punishment, 179,
180 ; on the construction of
public works in Didia, 193 ; on
unworthy suspicion of Eussia,
194 — 197 ; on' Indian finance,
207; on the causes of agricultural
depression, 211 — 215; on Brad
laugh and the oath, 244, 245 ; on
agricultural labourers' habita
tions, 246 ; on the Irish Land
BiU, 246, 247; on the cloture,
255, 256 ; on the Prevention of
Crimes BiU, 262; on the
Egyptian question, 265, 266 ;
Bright defends himseU from a
charge of obstruction, 301.
House of Lords, an institution
unknown in America, I., 286;
rejection of the paper duty by
the, IL, 217 ; Bright's speech on
their power and privUeges, 217 —
225 ; he rehearses the whole his
tory of contests between the
Lords and Commons, 218 — 223 ;
the reason why the Paper
Duty BiU was rejected, 223;
Bright's opinion of the conduct
of the Lords in negativing the
concessions of the Lower House,
223, 224 ; their isolation from
the people on great matters, HI.,
21 ; Lord Derby's difficulties in
getting the Lords to pass his
Eeform BUl, 63; Bright criticises
the conduct of the Lords on the
Irish Church BiU, 93, 94; a
House of Incurables, 324 ; how
they treat urgent questions, 312 ;
how to avoid in the future any
conflict with the Lords, 319.

Household suffrage, Lord Grey and
Fox advocates for, IL, 157, HI.,
31 ; Bright's reminiscences of the
suffrage question, HI., 63 ; on
the county household suffrage,
145, 146 ; change in 1867 in the
tactics of the Tory party on the
suffrage, 314.
Howick, Lord, I., 153, 154.
Huddersfield, Free Trade meetings
held at, I., 145, 195, 221 ; poUti
cal meeting held at, II. , 215.
Hudson, George, returned to Par
Uament, I., 242, 244.
Hull, Free Trade meeting at, I.,
203.
Human life, Effect of the Corn laws
in shortening, I., 166.
Hume, Joseph, I., 142, III., 86.
Hunt, Henry, and the early
reformers, I., 49, 51 ; the
Peterloo massacre, 61 — 53 ; Lord
Palmerston and' Lord Sidmouth
defend the mUitary, 54 ; Hunt on
the Corn Laws, 83.
Huntingdon, Free. Trade meeting
held at, I., 168.

Ilbert Criminal Jurisdiction BUl in
India, Bright's speech in ap
proval of the, HI., 301—304.
Incendiarism in agricultural dis
tricts before the Free Trade era,
Increase in, Bright on, I., 217.
Income-tax, Glaring injustice of
inequaUty of taxation, IL, 154,
200 ; unjust towards farmers,
200 ; its total repeal proposed,
III., 108.
India: Bright's statistics on the
BUl of 1853, IL, 23 ; educational
statistics, 23 ; gross revenue, 23 ;
expense of ecclesiastical estabUsh-
ments, 23 ; some facts about the
East India Company, 23, 24 ;
Bright's views eventuaUy adopt
ed, 25; improbabiUly of fears
for India caused by Eussian ad
vance in the East, 29 ; the
Sepoy mutiny, 108, 109 ; Bright's
speech on the BiU to aboUsfi the
East India Company, 119 — 123;
Bright's idea of the future
government of Didia, 123 — 133 ;
heavy taxation in India, 123 ;
cost of the government of India,
123; difference of labour between
India and England, 125 ; extra
vagance of the East India
government, 125 ; great salaries
of the Indian civU service -officials,
125 ; the Governor-General of
Didia, 125 ; facts about the Bur
mese war, 126 ; vast power exer
cised by the Governor-General,
126; advisabUity of aboUshing
the office, 126 ; impossibUity of
adequately fulfilling its duties,

INDEX.

385

127 ; laws for twenty nations
speaking twenty languages, 127 ;
proposal to substitute five Presi
dencies, 127 ; each Presidency to
be a government for its own
people, 128; competency of
Indian officials for oflicial posi
tions, 128 ; constant rivalry for
good of the several Presidencies,
129 ; length of time of England's
government of India, 129 ; possi
biUty of each Presidency forming
a compact state in the event of
England's sovereignty being
withdrawn, 129 ; how the new
appointments should be fiUed up,
130 ; EngUsh rule viewed by the
natives of India sometimes with
suspicion, 130; a general amnesty
for past offences, 131 ; general
toleration of reUgious systems,
132 ; proposal to estahUsh a
Court of Appeal to settle disputes,
132 ; how to promote a better
feeling towards England on the
part of the natives, 132, 133 ; the
government of India ultimately
transferred to the Crown, 133 ;
Bright's speech in Parliament,
209—215; Sir C. Trevelyan's
judicial reforms, 209 ; the
Governor-General's ignorance of
the natives and their twenty
languages, 210 ; his official isola
tion, 210 ; some facts concerning
the working of the civil service,
210 ; no government in India
except for raising money and
spending taxes, 210 ; no system
of book-keeping in operation,
211; the want of a decentraUsed
government in Didia, 211; easier
to have separate governments for
every 20,000,000 people than
150,000,000, 211; suggestions by
way of remedy, 212 ; Indian
education and reUgious instruc
tion, 212 ; the Queen's proclama
tion, 212, 213; candidates for the
Indian civU service, 213, 214;
official responsibUities, 214 ; sug
gestions for improvement, 214,
215 ; the Indian army, 235, 236 ;
the Afghan war of 1839 and Sir
A . Burnes, 254—258 ; Disraeli's
Indian poUcy, 259 ; benefit to
India if the cotton supply had
been adopted, 289 ; the cotton
supply in the past, 298 ; Surat
cotton, 298, 299, 305 ; cotton cul
tivation rendered ineffectual by
the poUcy of the East India
Company, 299 ; Bright's speech
on the cost of construction
of pubUc works in India,
III., 193; Bright on the
finances of India, 207; India a
Free Trade country, 291 ; Bright
supports the Hbert Jurisdiction
BUl, 301—304; Lord Eipon's
Indian reforms, 303.

Indian CivU Service : The great
salaries paid to officials, IL, 125,
HI., 209 ; other facts concerning
the working of the, IL, 210, 213,
214.
Indian famines, Bright on the pre
vention of, HI., 189.
Indian raUways and canals, Cost of,
III., 184.
Industry of the population, Large
sums annually expended out of
the, to maintain unnecessary
wars, IL, 140, 141, 163, 243.
International arbitration, Bright on
the subject of, HI., 161—164,
206.
Intervention of England in foreign
wars, No necessity for, IL, 40,
247.
Intimidation of electors in Kendal,
Bright's amusing description of,
I., 194.
Intoxicating Uquors, Sale of, on
Sundays (in Ireland) BUl, III.,
158.
Deland : Bright's early love of, and
interest in, L, 70 ; increase of
famine in, 142 ; Bright visits
that country, II. , 13 ; decline of
the population of, II., 331 ; the
past government of Ireland, 381 —
383,' III., 26, 27 ; no man more
friendly towards the Dish than
Mr. Gladstone, IH., 40; Tory
treatment of, 65, 66 ; Bright
recommends just treatment of
that country, 66, 67 ; he proposes
reconcUiation in our future
treatment of that people, 69 ;
cause of the discontent in, 71 ;
tbe Earl of Mayo's proposals to
ameUorate the condition of the
people, 72, 73 ; Bright's remedy,
72, 73 ; the poor not owners of
the land, 79, 214; Bright's speech
at Limerick, 81 ; he proposes that
England shall undo her past
treatment of the Dish, 81 ; bene
ficial measures recommended, 98;
what might be done by England
for Deland, 102, 103; number of
landowners in Deland, 214 ; the
remedy for Deland, 226; Bright's
speech on the Coercion BiU, 242 ;
Gladstone's Irish Land BUl, 243,
246, 247, 248 ; Bright's review of
recent Dish legislation, 332,
340; he again urges concUatory
measures to the Irish, 341 ; on
the Act of Union with Deland,
342, 343 ; instance of Bright's
pathos in speaking of the Irish
people, 353.
Dish Crimes Act, HI., 313.
Dish disaffection, Bright on the,
III., 253—255.
Irish Disturbances BiU, III., 312.
Dish Established Church, The,
H, 378, 379; Bright on the,
III., 53, 70 ; Gladstone recom
mends the disestablishment of,

73 ; Bright supports this view,
73 — 75 ; Gladstone's resolutions
carried against the Conservatives,
78; some statistics concerning the
revenues of the, given by Bright
at a meeting at Liverpool, 79 ;
Gladstone and Bright on the dis
establishment of, 91 — 93 ; it
eventually passes, 93 ; Bright's
aUusion to the matter a few years
later, 101, 313, 343.
Irish franchise, The, in., 153.
IrishLand Bill of 1870, Gladstone's,
III., 10, 312 ; his Bill of 1881,
243, 246, 247, 248.
Irish land question, Difficulties of
the, HI., 102, 103, 126 ; Bright
on the recent doings in the, 333.
Irishmen enlisting in the American
army, IL, 332, 333; Dishmen
in America hostile to England,
379.
Irish peasant, Condition of the,
in., 26, 27; what he wishes for,
226.
Dish Tory poUcy, Failure of the,
III., 312.

Jacobs, Martha, ancestress of John
Bright, L, 7.
Jerusalem, Bright's visit to, I., 75.
Jewish disabilities, Bright in favour
of removal of, LL, 13, 14.
Justice in the counties, Administra-
tion of, IH., 171.

Keighley, Yorkshire, Free Trade
meeting held at, I., 222.
Kelso, Free Trade meeting held at,
I., 171.
Kendal, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 146, 192.
Kenealy, Dr., and the Tichborne
case, in., 149.
Kershaw, James, H, 52.
Kilmarnock. Free Trade meeting
held at, I., 202.
King, Mr. Locke, IL, 5., III., 16.
Kinglake, Mr., I., 173, 353, IL,
141.
Kossuth, theHungarian patriot, H.,
10 ; refuses to see Palmerston,
79.

Labourers and landlords, I., 229.
Lancashire, Bright's description of,
I., 212—214; the distress in,
caused by the American civil
war, H, 292—294, 297, 304;
the past and future history of
Lancashire, III., 182, 183.

74

380

INDEX.

Lancaster, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 149, 189.
Land, its freedom of possession,
II., 162, 327, III., 123, 127.
Land, Large holdings of, in the
hands of a few proprietors, III.,
170, 214.
Land laws, Simplicity of the
American, IL, 306, 327; its
adoption in Australia, 327 ;
the land laws in the United
States, III., 334.
Land nationalisation, III., 333.
Land question, The, IL, 326 ; Parlia
ment adverse to any alteration
of the, HI., 40.
Land transfer, Bright on, IL, 327,
III., 123, 171 ; how to restore
the land, 335 ; great cost of the,
at present, 336.
Landed proprietors, no sympathy
with commerce or reform, IL,
154 ; only the sons of noblemen
eUgible for county representa
tion, III., 171.
Landlords, their opposition to Free
Trade, I., 153 ; duties of land
owners to their tenants, 229.
Landowner, Description of the
power possessed by a, I., 194;
selfishness of the landowners, 207 ;
farmers at the mercy of the, 224 ;
duties of landlords, 229 ; their
residence on their own estates,
and influence over their people,
232 ; their mterest in the tithes,
304 ; advantages possessed by
landowners, 322 ; unfortunate
position of some farmers, IL,
9.
Landlord and tenant question, Mr.
Bright on the, HI., 28, 29, 71—
73, 101, 102, 332.
Landlords, Irish Acts of Parliament
passed for the benefit of the, IL,
378, III., 26.
Landlords' rule, Mr. Bright
denounces, I., 284, 285.
Lapdog, Incident of a, I., 74.
Large estates, the property of the
aristocracy, IL, 162, HI., 102,
214.
Large farms, Difficulty of possession
of, to English tenants, IL, 327,
328.
Lavish expenditure of the country's
money, Bright denounces, II. ,
229, 240—244, III., 86.
Law, Cromwell's opinion of the
English, III., 40 ; simplicity of
the American, 40.
Law of nations, Bright's speech on
the, II. , 41—44.
Laws, SimpUcity of American, IL,
159, III., 40.
Lawyers in ParUament, IL, 371,
III., 65.
League fund of £250,000, The pro
posed, I., 263.
League, One demand of the, L,
185 ; objects of the, 325.

League funds, The, I., 143, 151,
192, 290, 297, 300, 304, 305.
Leatham, Mr. E. A., IL, 215, 245,
248 ; III., 135, 203.
Leatham, Miss, Bright's second
wife, I., 367.
Leeds, Free Trade meetings held
at, I., 196, 299—301; popular
meeting at, IL, 248 ; great Eeform
demonstration at, III., 23 ; great
Liberal conference at, 310;
Bright's speech on modern
politics, 311—319.
Legacy duty, IL, 200, 201, 202.
Legislation, Peel beUeves the price
of food cannot be fixed by, L,
184.
Liberal and Conservative statesmen,
Promises by, HI., 146.
Liberal defeat of 1874, Bright on
the causes of the, III., 136 —
138.
Liberation Society, Bright's great
speech at a meeting in London
of the, III., 276—281.
"Liberties of Europe," Sum
expended in maintaining the
defence of the, IL, 140, 142.
Libraries, Bright on ' the benefits
afforded by, HI., 256—262, 322.
Life peerages, II. , 152.
Lincoln, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 168.
Liskeard, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 162.
Littlewood, Mr., Bright's old
schoolmaster, I., 37, 38, 183.
Liverpool, Free Trade meetings
held at, I., 188, 195, 212, 297—
299 ; Lord J. Eussell's speech at,
IL, 144 ; Bright's speech at a
financial reform meeting held at,
IL, 216; Bright's speech at a
meeting at, III., 77, 78.
Llandudno, Bright's speeches at,
III., 251—253.
Lodger franchise, The, III., 1,
49.
London Tavern, Great speech by
Bright on the American war, II. ,
313—316.
LongfeUow, the American poet,
III., 260.
Lords, A government of, II. , 58, 59 ;
diplomatic, 163.
Louis XIV., Extravagant expendi
ture of, II. , 243.
Lowe, Mr., IH, 1—3, 5, 16, 60, 89;
his opposition in 1866 to further
Eeform, 1 — 3; slander on the
working class by, 16.
Lowell, Mr. EusseU, the American
Ambassador, III., 260.
Lower classes, Miserable condition
of the, before the Corn Laws
were repealed, I., 241.
Lyneham and the ancestors of the
Bright family, I., 6, 7.
Lytton Bulwer, Sir E., PoUtics of,
dissected by Bright, HI., 5
—7.

M
Macclesfield, Free Trade meetings
held at, I., 166.
Macaulay, Mr. T. B., andFree Trade,
I., 200 ; declares himself a Free
Trader, 246 — 252 ; his estimation
of Lord Palmerston and SU
J. Graham, IL, 35.
Mackay, Mr. A., I., 392, 393.
McLaren, Mr. Duncan, I., 132, 200;
H, 113, 161; III., 118, 203,
250, 275, 285 ; receives an
address, 242.
Magazine of John Bright and his
friends, I., 111.
Magistracy, Nonconformists ex
cluded from the, III., 171.
Mahometan rule, No need for
maintaining, in Europe, II. ,
43.
Manchester, Free Trade meetings
held at, I., 87, 118, 126, 141, 142,
143, 145, 146, 147, 152, 154, 157,
163, 179, 192, 126, 218, 219, 223,
233, 253, 265—274, 279—281, 289
—291, 302—306, 361—364, 365:
erection of the Free Trade HaU
in ; meetmgs on the cotton
supply, I., 391, 392, 393 ; meet
ings on Papal aggression, II. ,
1 , 2 ; meeting to congratulate
Kossuth, 10, 11; the general
election, 12 ; fears of a French
invasion, 15, 16; the forthcoming
session, 16 ; meetings on war
with Eussia, 27, 46, 47 ; Eeform
meetings held in the town, 32,33,
151 — 160, 167; on war and its
consequences, 52, 53, 58 ; meet
ing of the electors of Manchester,
67 ; meeting of the Lancashire
Eeformers' Union, 226 ; great
Eeform demonstrations and
speeches in 1866, III., 20—22;
Bright's address to the Eeform
conference at, 29 — 31 fun veiling
of a bronze statue of Eichard
Cobden, 50, 51; Bright's speech
on the minority clause in th«
Eeform BiU, 63; Bright's
speech to the Manchester Ee
form Club on the Bulgarian
cruelties, 147, 148; Bright's
speech on the opening of the
New Town Hall, 181—184;
speech on Indian famines, 189 ;
denounces the expenditure of the
vote of six miUions, 199 — 201 ;
great speech by Bright, 216,
217.
Manchester, Bishop of, on Mr.
Bright, IL, 68 ; HE., 185.
Manchester, Free Library, The,
IL, 13.
Manchester School, Principles of
the, H, 10 ; its benefits to the
working classes, 21 ; Cobden's
defence of the, 81 ; opinions of
the press on the non-election of
its members in 1857, 84 — 102.

INDEX.

387

Mangel-wurzel and Swede turnips
recommended for food by Dr.
Buckland, I., 281, 287.
Manners, Lord John, I., 358, 359.
Maritime Law mvolved in the Trent
dispute, IL, 274, 275, 286, 287.
Massachusetts, School system of,
III., 169, 1S7.
Maturity in old age, Only men
seem to come to, IL, 35.
Maynooth, Endowment of, Bright's
reminiscence of, HI., 44.
Mayo, Earl of, HI., 71, 78.
Meat, its rarity among the poor
before the Free Trade era, L,
134.
Meetings in 1866 about ParUamen
tary reform, III., 18, 23.
Merrimac and Monitor, and our war
vessels, H, 291.
MeteaU, Miss Mary, third wife of
Jacob Bright, I.) 33.
MiaU, Edward, L, 3 ; H, 8, 22, 52,
150 ; III., 15.
Middle classes, Burdens of the,
ni., 30.
MUitary and naval forces, Largeness
ofthe, in 1859, H, 193; con
demnation of the, 243.
MUitary expenses, Eise of our, in
twelve years, II. , 144 ; reform
suggested in our expenditure,
HI., 85, 86, 123; excessive
modern military expenses, com
pared with a few years back, 194.
MiUtary glory, Ludicrousness of,
H, 194.
Militia, Bright on the duties of the,
H, 11, 12; his opinions on the
military, 12.
MUl, Mr. J. S., HE., 23, 155, 333.
MUlowner, Loss to the, by the
American war, H., 295.
Ministry, Delicate business of
foreign affairs settled by the,
IL, 329.
Minority clause in the Eeform BUl,
The, IH., 62, 63 ; Bright on the,
273, 274, 361.
Moderate estimates formerly on
mUitary expenditure, H. , 242 ;
increase of, 242.
Modern legislation, The Corn Laws
the greatest blunder in, L,
287, 288.
Molesworth, Dr., Vicar of Eochdale,
I., 95 ; his conduct as chairman
of a meeting in congratulation of
the Queen on her marriage, 95,
96 ; an address subsequently
carried, under Mr. Bright's
presidency, 96, 97; unseemly
conduct of the vicar at a church-
rate contest, 98—100; Bright's
tombstone speech on the occasion,
100 — 103;iUegal seizures, 101;
the poll and the result, 104—108 ;
the vicar's address, and Bright's
answer, 109, 110; abandonment
of the rate, 110; the vicar's
magazine, and Bright's rejoinder,

111 — 114; attempts to stop the
bell-ringing on the Free Trade
triumph, 340, 341.
Molesworth, Rev. W. N., I., 110,
III., 271, 272.
Monarchy, Cause of the overthrow
of, in the seventeenth century,
III., 110.
Money, Bright's speech on, IL, 267,
268.
Monopolists aud Protection, I.,
207.
Monopolists, The Corn-Law, com
pared to monkeys, I., 151.
MonopoUsts, Macaulay on the argu
ments of the, I., 248, 249, 250 ;
their silence in committees as to
the condition of the agricul
turists, 234.
Monopoly, The Corn-Law a great,
I.. 133, 147, 150, 176, 219, 220,
224, 248.
Moore, Mr. E. E. E., I., 143, 151,
162, 163, 167, 168, 169, 175, 196,
253.
Morning JBerald, Bright's opinion
of the, III., 21, 22.
Morpeth, Lord, Bright's reference
to the speech of, L, 203.
Mutiny BUl, Bright on the, IL,
330.
Mutiny, The Indian, H, 108, 109 ;
Bright's allusion to, 277.

N
Naas, Lord, HI., 12 (see Earl of
Mayo).
Napier, Sir C, Speech of, at a
meeting of the Peace Society at
Manchester, IL, 27, 28; un
timely jokes at a Eeform Club
banquet before leaving for the
Baltic, 33 ; Bright's objections,
33, 34 ; Prince Albert's dis
approval, 35 ; Macaulay's disgust,
35 ; the Syrian war of 1840,
246.
Napoleon, Cost of the eleven years
of war with, IL, 65.
National Debt, The, largely due to
the American and French wars,
H, 41 ; increase in the, 141,
144 ; its growth in sixty years,
268 ; its extension since the
Eevolution, 268.
National Defence Commission, Ex
penses of the, IL, 240, 241.
National defences, Extravagant
expenditure on the, IL, 240 —
244.
National expenditure, The people
no control over the, IL, 248.
National EepubUcan Conference,
Bright has no sympathy with,
IH, 110.
Navigation Laws, Abolition of the,
IL, 182, 215 ; beneficial results
of the, IH, 130, 131.
Navy estimates, Expenditure ou the,

IL, 253; extravagant expenditure
in the, 265.
Negro slavery, its former helpless
condition, ML, 82.
Neutrality, Bright doubts the
sincerity of the Conservative
party in favour of, IL, 193.
Newcastle-on-Tyne, Free Trade
meeting held at, I., 146, 149, 172,
294—297.
New MUls, Derbyshire, Free Trade
meeting held at, I., 211.
Newspapers at the time of the
Eeform BiU, I., 56 ; their
denunciations of Bright's peace
sentiments, IL, 31 ; their
clamours for war on former
occasions, IL, 62, 64, HI., 191 ;
American machines used for
printing English newspapers,
II. , 159 ; newspapers under
West-end influence, 303; increase
in the value of newspaper pro
perty, III., 108 ; comparative
cheapness of newspapers, 167,
168 ; why they were originaUy
taxed, 168 ; what newspapers tell
us, 168; abolition of the news
paper tax, 311 ; value of news
papers to the community, 323 ;
tax on newspapers, 327.
New York, Sympathy from, II. ,
305, 322.
Noble's "ParUamentary Manual,"
Facts derived from, HI., 314,
315.
Nonconformist Burial BiU, Bright's
speech on the, IL, 264, 265,111.,
153—153, 238 ; the bUl becomes
law, 238.
Nonconformists and the State
Church, III., 53; the School
Board and Dissenters, 154 ;
Bright's speech about Noncon
formity, 227, 228.
Non-intervention, Bright maintains
the doctrine of, in Turkish affairs,
IL, 40, 41, 44, 247; in the
American civU war, 281.
Norfolk, Duke of , and curry powder,
L, 287, 306.
Northampton, Free Trade meeting-
held at, I., 218.
Northcote, Sir Stafford, H, 217,
263, IL, 12, 48, 255, 299.
Norwich, Free Trade meetmg held
at, I., 168.
Nottingham, Free Trade meeting
held at, I., 146, 160.
Nova Scotia, Bright inquires into
the political condition of, HI.,
80. O
Oath, The Parliamentary, HI., 280
(see Bradlaugh).
Occupiersof land or houses, Number
of, as county voters, IL, 153.
O'Connell, Daniel, a Free Trader,
I., 132, 142, 152,111., 28, 29 ; his

388

INDEX.

autographic gift to Mr. Bright,
III., 70.
O'Connor, Feargus, and the
Chartists, I., 136—139, 218 ;
Bright answers his sophistries,
141.
Office, Tory love of the sweets of,
III., 65.
Official salaries, Extravagant ex
penditure on, IL, 231.
Oldham, Presentation tc Mr. W. J.
Fox at, IL, 17 ; Bright's speech
at, 20—22.
Old lords, Advantage of Uving under
a government of, -II., 67.
One Ash, John Bright's residence
at Eochdale, I., 1, 5, 94, 349, 350,
372, 373.
Opium war, Enormities committed
in the, IL, 143.
Ormerod, OUver, I., 59, 60, 111,
III., 112.
Orton, Arthur, and the Tichborne
case, Bright on, III., 144, 149.
O'Sullivan, Mr. W., a suspected
Fenian, HI., 78.
OttomanEmpUe, Blood and industry
of England bound by treaty to
preserve the, IL, 142, HI., 166 ;
stiU the feeling of the Conserva
tive Government, III., 148.
Oude, Seizure of, IL, 121, 125, 147.
Oxford, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 89.
Oxford University Eeform BiU,
Bright on the, IL, 51.

Pagan nations no guide for a
Christian country to foUow, H,
148.
Pakington, Sir John, Mismanage
ment of the pubUc money by,
IL, 265 ; Bright's summary of
him, 377 ; his multifarious duties,
HI., 47.
Palace Yard, London, Anti-Com-
Law meetings held at, I., 141,
142, 167.
Palmerston, Lord : becomes a Free
Trader, I., 119; eulogises Cob
den's exertions, 330 ; past history
of Palmerston, 356 ; his position
as Home Secretary, IL, 11, 21 ;
his foreign poUcy one cause of
the Crimean war, 26, 27 ; un
timely jokes at a banquet before
the war, 33 ; Bright's answer in
ParUament, and Palmerston's
insulting rejoinder, 34 ; Peel's
decorum and Palmerston's flip
pancy, 49, 50 ; succeeds Lord
Aberdeen as Premier, 55 ; con
sidered by Bright as the author
of the Crimean war, 63 ; Cobden
defeats Palmerston, 76 ; Palmer
ston appeals to the country, 76 ;
Cobden describes Palmerston's
character, 78, 80, 81 ; Palmerston's
victory, 82, 83 ; his Cabinet, soon

after overthrown, 118; Lord
Derby recaUed to office, 118 ;
Palmerston's new Ministry, 197 ;
tries to obtain Cobden's services,
but in vain, 197, 198 ; Cobden's
reference to these offers, 207,
208 ; Bright's altercation with
Palmerston about the death of
Sir A. Burnes, 255—258 ; Bright
and Palmerston on Chinese wars,
340—342 ; death of Palmerston,
375 ; his wasted opportunities,
376.
Panics, The origin of, IL, 351.
Papal aggression, Bright's opinions
on, IL, 1 — 5.
Paper duty, Eepeal of the, proposed
by Mr. Gladstone, IL, 217 ; re
jected by the Lords, 217; Bright's
speech on the subject of contests
between the Lords and the Com
mons, 217 — 225 ; history of the
paper duties, 220 ; value of the
tax, 220, 221 ; why the paper
duty was rejected, 223 ; the duty
not repealed at the time, 225 ;
. the matter not forgotten by
Bright, 247, 248 ; repeal at last
carried, 263, 264 ; the conduct of
the peera who opposed the paper
duty repeal, 330.
" Paradise Eegained," Bright meets
with a copy in a Scotch shep
herd's cottage, III., 258.
ParUament, England can never be
undone except by a, TL., 243,
III., 296 ; no power to prevent the
millions entering ParUament, 345 ;
apopular ParUament, in., 25 ; its
present inabUity to save the
pubUc money, 39 ; difficulty of
passing any good popular measure
in, 41.
Parliaments, England the native
country of, IL, 344.
Passport system, The, in France,
III., 42.
Patronage, Something sacred in,
IL, 345.
Paulton, Mr. A. W., Anti-Com-
Law League lecturer, I., 93, 190.
Paupers, Number of, during the
Com Law era, I., 158, 241 ; in
crease of, during the Crimean
war, IL, 53 ; one cause of
pauperism, unnecessary wars,
141 ; number of paupers in
Britain, IL, 147, ni., 25 ; con
dition of a pauper, H, 166 ; cost
of, III., 25.
" Peace, retrenchment, and re
form," the watchword of the
Liberal party, IL, 190.
Peace Society, The, I., 395, 396 ;
Admiral Napier's threat to
"beard the society in its den,"
IL, 27, 28 ; Bright's answer,
showing the ruinous expenditure
and other evUs caused by war,
28 — 31 ; his temporary unpopu
larity, 31 ; exertions of the

society to prevent the war, 32 ;
their horror of war and its evils,
72 ; distinguished advocates of
peace in former times, 138, 139 ;
Disraeli in 1859 advocates peace,
199 ; Bright proposes peace with
France, 205, 206; the clergy
ministers of peace, HI., 163, 164 :
triumphs of peace, 169 ; England
and America friends, 338.
Peel, Sir Eobert : becomes Premier,
L, 119; interview of the League
delegates with him, 135 ; his
anxiety at their harrowing state
ments, 136; proposes no change,
153 ; Cobden holds him respon
sible for the state of the country,
154, 155 ; dismay of Peel at tho
coining famine, 262 ; he resigns
and resumes office, 264, 265 ;
Bright's opinion of the wiUing-
ness of Peel to help, 272, 273,
275 ; Peel denounced by Pro
tectionists, I., 295, IL, 155 ; his
difficult position, L, 299 ; his
speech at the opening of the
session of 1846, 309 — 318;
Bright's defence of him in ParUa
ment, 323 ; past misunderstand
ings between Peel and Cobden
explained, 323 ; his reply to the
invectives of DisraeU, 334 — 336 ;
his last speech as Minister, 338,
339, 356, IL, 139; his death, I..
395 ; an advocate of peace, IL,
139 ; Bright's reference to his
great work, IH., 225, 250, 329.
PeeUte Government, What is a,
IL, 21.
Peer, Bright's definition of a, IL,
136, 137 ; origin of the present
peerage in the rotten borough
system, 249 ; Bright has no faith
in the peers, 249, 250.
Peerage, Bright's sentiments on the,
I., 219; objection to its inter
ference with popular representa
tion, IL, on the origin of tho
peerage, 190, 249.
Peers, the dominant power in
England, H, 67, 136.
People, Scandalous treatment of
the, at any attempt to obtain
Eeform, I., 53; power of the,
176 ; their inability of controlling
the national expenditure, II. ,
248 ; their determination to pre
vent being dragged into foreign
wars, 329 ; what they can do,
330 ; the true source of political
power, IH, 39, 41 ; the cost of
the foreign wars of the last
century paid by the people, not
the Lords, 330.
Persecution of the Nonconformists,
Bright denounces, HI., 227, 228.
Permissive BiU, Bright on the, II. ,
336, 337, HE., 127, 205.
Perth, Free Trade meeting held in,
I., 150 ; Bright's visit to, in 1872,
ni., 110.

INDEX.

389

Peterloo massacre, The, I., 51, 52,
53, 55, IL, 151, 152 ; haU on the
site of the, I., 95 ; aUusions to,
H, 78, 151, 152.
Petrie, John, I., 110, III., 250.
Phonography, Bright's testimony
to the great value of, I., 164, 165.
Pigs, Mr. Jacob Bright and the, I.,
28, 29.
Pitt, Mr., and General Wolfe, IL,
35.
Plymouth, Free Trade meeting
held at, I., 163.
Poachers and gamekeepers, I., 230,
231.
Poets and Historians, Famous
American, H, 159; love of
EngUsh poets by the Americans,
306; Bright on the American
poets, HE., 260, 261.
Poets, Bright's knowledge of the
EngUsh, HI., 364.
PoUcy, Expenditure dependent on
foreign, H, 163.
PoUtical treaties, Washington
advises the Americans to have no,
HE., 222.
PoUution of rivers, Bright on the,
H, 347, 348.
Pontefract, Free Trade meeting
held at, L, 222.
Poor, Heart-rending condition of
the, during the Corn Laws, L,
134, 152, 158, 166, 185, 261.
Poor-Law guardians, Election of
the, HE., 171.
Poor-rates fourfold in Oldham, L,
134.
Pope, Bright on the power of the,
H, 3, 4.
Popular discontent at the close of
the war at the reduced wages,
I., 46.
Ports, Opening the, an ineffectual
means to remedy the coining
distress, I., 266.
Portsmouth, Free Trade meetmg
held at, I., 216.
Potatoes, the common food of the
labouring classes before the
advent of Free Trade, I., 270.
Potter, Sir Thos., L, 3, 157, 192 ;
H, 83.
Potter, Mr. T. B., IL, 370, 372 ;
TTL, 15—20, 31, 113, 220, 301.
Prentice, Mr., one of the first
members of the League, L, 84,
88, 171, 222.
Presentation to Mr. Bright, in.,
110; his acceptance and reply,
112, 113.
President, The American, how he is
elected, IL, 279.
Preston, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 146, 222, 276, 277;
Bright's remarks at, on the
increased prices of food, 276, 277.
Priestman, Miss Helen, John
Bright's first wife, L, 94 ; her
daughter, 94, H, 74.
Primogeniture, Bright on the

abolition of, HI., 17, 127, 171,
335.
Probate duty, II„ 200, 201.
Promotion in the army no longer
purchasable, III., 120.
Property tax, The, H, 200, 201.
Proprietors, Bright advocates smaU,
as a benefit to Irelend, III, 72.
Prosperity, National, dependent on
our Industry, IL, 246.
Protection, Bright denounces, I.,
181 ; fallacies of its supposed
benefits, 193, 195, 218, 224, 241,
297, 303, 311 ; uselessness of
meetings in favour of Protection,
294, 295 ; a delusion, 303 ; the
Times onProteotive doctrines, 306
— 308; arguments in favour of
Protection, 310, 311, 312 ; Protec
tive duties and prices, 313 ; its
leader ia the House of Commons,
318 ; its impossibUities, 324 ;
DisraeU's speech on Protection,
326 ; Cobden's reply to, 327—329 ;
Disraeli advocates compensation
to agriculturists, 390, 391 ; the
death of Protection, II. , 17,
18 ; unfounded alarm on the
subject of Protection, 146; the
American protective tariff, 279 ;
difference in the cost of a free
breakfast table under Protection
and Free Trade, III., 105 ; our
past history recapitulated, 130 ;
Bright has no fear of England's
return to a Protective course,
210; Protection reviewed, 212;
he denounces the re-appearance
of Protection, 213 ; his hope
of Protective duties being given
up by Americans, 222.
Protectionists, Bright addresses a
meeting of, I., 168.
Protection Society, Sarcastic
remarks of the Times on the
members of the, I., 306—308.
Proxies, Existence of, in the House
of Lords, IL, 224.
PubUcans, their influence in def eat
ing the Liberals in 1874, 136 —
138.
PubUc business, Free Traders
charged with obstructing the,
I., 185.
PubUc debts, Shifting of the
burden of, not removing, IL. 216.
Public expenditure, The public no
command over the, II. , 163 ;
Bright in favour of lessening the,
III., 109.
Public revenue, Londoners derive
a large part from the, IL, 154.

Q
Quakers, Imprisonment of, in the
seventeenth century, IL, 3.
Queen, a friend to Free Trade,!.,
346 ; not afraid of an extension
of the franchise, HI., 20, 21 ;

Bright's defence of the Queen,
32, 33 ; her sympathies with Mr.
Bright, 105, 106, 107.

E
Earey, the American horse-tamer,
III., 159.
Eeading, Bright's recommendation
of tfie love of, II. , 65 ; more
persons capable of, in America,
306, 321, 322.
Eeading, Free Trade meetmg held
at, L, 187.
Eeal Estate Intestacy BUl, ID.
Locke King's, III., 16.
Eeform BiU of 1832, Bright's
interest in, I., 67 ; places eUgible
to send members of ParUament
before the, IL, 20 ; supposed
passages in the Prayer Book
favourable to the, 166, 167; great
changes since 1832, 378 ; Bright
remembers the BUmingham
eagerness for Eeform, III., 20;
beneficial measures passed since
that time, 313.
Eeform in the ParUamentary repre
sentation, First hint of in 1853,
IL, 21 ; excitement caused by the
Crimean war dismisses the idea,
32 ; the hiU withdrawn, 33 ;
Bright once more reverts to the
subject, 136, 137; popular expec
tation that a bUl on Eeform would
be initiated by Bright, 153 ; sham
representation, 153 ; landed pro
prietors have no sympathy with
commerce or Eeform, 154 ; why
previous attempts have failed,
156 ; working classes excluded by
the £10 franchise, 157 ; house
hold suffrage the best plan of
Eeform, 157 ; Americanising
England by Eeform, 158 ; a
Whig Eeform measure inadvis
able, 160 ; the baUot a portion of
the new Eeform BiU, 162 ; Bright
expounds his Eeform BiU, 164;
DisraeU's proposals for Eeform,
168 ; Bright's criticism of the
proposed biU, 168 — 175; the utter
uselessness of the Tory proposals
exhibited, 169—175 ; Bright's
description of the bUl in Parlia
ment, 179, 180 ; the bUl thrown
out, 180 ; Bright reassures the
friends of Eeform to wait their
time, 183, 185 ; Cobden and
Bright appear together on behalf
of* Eeform, 207 ; Eeform confer
ence held in London, 216, 217,
the second reading of the bill,
234, 235, 237; the bill withdrawn,
239 ; hopes of its re-introduction,
240 ; once more deferred, 250 ;
Bright unable to induce the
House to take up the question,
250, 251 ; the question remains
tiU after the death of Palmerston

:-wo

INDEX.

tUl the session of 1866, III., 1 ;
Mr. Gladstone's proposals, 1 ;
opposition of Messrs. Lowe and
Horsman to the proposed changes,
2 — 5 ; the Scotsman's account of
the effect of Bright's speech, 5,
6 ; Eeform demonstrations in
various parts of the kingdom, 18
— 32 ; Bright shows up the Tory
Government, 29 — 31 ; the subject
re-opened in 1867,by the "thirteen
resolutions " of Mr. Disraeli, 43 ;
Bright shows the inadequacy of
the Government proposal, 43 —
45 ; withdrawal of the resolutions,
45 ; Bright's remarks thereon,
45 ; Disraeli's new proposals, 45,
46 ; Bright's criticisms thereon,
46 — 48 ; Bright views with sus
picion these changes, 48 ; he dis
sects the biU of DisraeU, 48 — 50,
63 ; rapid progress of Eeform
since the advent of Earl EusseU
and Mr. Gladstone to power, 52 ;
Bright on household suffrage, 61,
62 ; the biU at last passed, 62 ;
the bill really altered according
to Liberal views, 62 ; the minority
clause, 62, 63, 273; Bright's
advice to new electors, 64 ;
slander on Mr. Bright, 128.
li'eligious inquisition, House of
Commons' conduct towards Mr.
Bradlaugh a, III., 244, 245.
Representative system, EvUs of our,
III., 32.
" Residuum," The word, HI., 146.
"Reverend," The title of, HI.,
134.
Revolution, The Glorious, Effects
of the, on William HI. and the
territorial families, IL, 140.
Richard, Mr., III., 118, 160.
Richmond, Duke of, I., 324.
Rifle movement, a movement of
party tactics, II. , 194.
Ripon, Earl of, I., 135; Bright
approves of, and supports his
Indian poUcy, 301 — 304.
Roby, Mr., I., 95, 96, 97.
Eochdale and its associations, I., 1,
2, 4 ; its industries, 3, 4 ; first
enfranchised by the Eeform BiU,
4, 57 ; the Eochdale Literary
Society, 70—72, 76—78; Anti-
Corn Law meeting held, 89 — 91 ;
uproarious meeting held to con
gratulate the Queen on her
marriage, 95 ; Bright's conduct
on the occasion, 96, 97 ; riotous
meeting held in promotion of a
church-rate proposal, 98, 99 ;
Bright's tombstone speech in
opposition, 100 — 103 ; result of
thepoU, 104, 105; the Eiot Act
read during the struggle, 106 ;
UI feeling excited, 107, 108 ; the
Vicar's address and Mr. Bright's
answer to it, 109 ; the church-
rate eventually abandoned, 110;
present feeling of the parties, 110;

pubUcation of " The Vicar's
Lantern," and the statements
therein, 111 — 114; statistics of
the distress among the operatives,
117; state of the flannel trade in
1841, 127; shopkeepers' condition,
128, 129; visit of the Chartist
rioters, 136—139 ; Bright's advice
to the people, 139 — 140 ; decay
of the woollen trade, and the
preservation of business by the
cotton exports, 221, 221; ultimate
triumph of Free Trade at, 340 —
345 ; Bright's home, 350, 351 ;
the Freehold Land Society, IL,
5, 6 ; presentation of a testimonial
to Mr. Sharman Crawford, 64 ;
Bright's visit, 164 — 166; Reform
meeting at, 167 ; Cobden elected
for Eochdale, 181, 183; his soiree,
207; Bright's speech at, 208,
209 ; the Eochdale Co-operative
Society, 237—239 ; Cobden's
visit, 266, 267, 294, 295 ; the
supply of American cotton stopped
by the civU war, 274 ; Govern
ment funds for the relief of the
operatives, 274 ; Bright's speeches
on the American war, 277 — 288,
305 — 310 ; statistics of the town
in 1862, 294, 295 ; Cobden's last
speech at, 343 ; election of a new
member, 372 ; Bright's speech at,
379 — 381 ; speech on co-operation
at Eochdale, III., 11 ; his speech
at a Sunday-school meeting at,
12 — 14 ; speeches on Eeform at,
15, 15 ; meeting at, to defend Mr.
Bright from slanderous reports,
35, 37 — 41 ; Bright's speech on
the French language at, 41, 42 ;
Bright's speechat, 64 — 67 ; speech
on newspapers at the Working
Men's Club, 167—170; how a
strike was averted, 184; great
speech on the progress of science
and art during the past century,
186—188 ; Mr. Chamberlain's
speech, 188 : Bright's speech to
Sunday-schoolteachers, 197, 198;
his great speech on America, 220
— 223 ; address from his towns
men on his seventieth ffirthday,
248, 249 ; his speech, 249—251 ;
Bright's speech at the opening of
a new infirmary, 269, 270.
Eochdale Co-operative Society, The,
IL, 237—230, III., 11. "
Eoebuck, Mr. L, 331—333, IL, 54,
63, 80, 150, 168, III., 150.
Eoman Catholics, Bright on the
former condition of the, III., 82.
Eoyds, Mr., the Eochdale banker,
L, 95, 96, 106, 107.
Eural parishes, no representatives
in Parliament, HI., 171.
EusseU, Lord John, IL, 21, 22, 48,
49, 78, 79, 136 ; proposes repeal
of the corn laws, I., 126 ; his
famous letter at the close of 1845,
in which he urges repeal, 263 ;

invited to form a Ministry, 264 ;
fails to do so, 265 ; takes office
later, but resigns, IL, 54, 55 ; hia
testimony to the value and ser
vices of Bright, 51, 138 ; his
speech at Liverpool, 144 ; lecture
on American institutions by, 159 ;
on the causes of disunion in the
United States, 281, 282; on the
blockade of the ports, 294 ;
becomes Premier again, 376 ; hiB
finality to further Eeformin 1832,
III., 3.
Eussia, Jealousy against, I., 87,
IL, 29, IH, 165,166; unworthy
suspicion of the Conservative
Government towards Eussia, 194,
195 ; war with Eussia deprecated,
197, 198, 199—201.
Eussia, Emperor Nicholas of,
Deputation from the Peace Society
to try to avert the Crimean war,
IL, 32 ; Emperor Alexander con
cludes a peace, 71 ; the Empress
wishes to see Mr. Bright, 75 :
serfdom abolished by Emperor
Alexander, 281, 306.

SaUsbury, Free Trade meetings
held at, I., 186, 192.
Savoy, Annexation of, to France,
Bright on the, IL, 232, 233.
Schofield, Mr., IL, 183, 187, 191,
III., 18, 49.
School Boards, Bright on the sub
ject of, III., 121, 154.
Scotch peasant, Food of the, IL,
147.
Scotch terrier, Bright's reference to
a, III., 4.
Scotchmen more national than the
Irish, III., 70.
Scotland, Bright's description of his
visit to, I., 204, 205 ; the land of,
in the hands of a few proprietors,
IL, 162.
Seat, What many members pay to
obtain a ParUamentary, HI., 49.
Seats, Ee-distribution of ParUa
mentary, IH., 8, 10, 46, 315 ;
Bright's advice to the Govern
ment, 317.
Sebastopol, Appointment of a com
mittee to inquire into the con
dition of the army before, IL,
54.
Serfs, The Eussian, H, 281 ; extinc
tion of serfdom, 305.
Settlement, The law of, III., 171.
Settlements and entails, On the
gradual abolition of III., 336.
Shaftesbury, Earl of, on suffering
needlewomen, 19.
Sheffield, Free Trade meetings held
at, I., 146, 202, 276.
Shopkeepers of Rochdale, Condition
of the, during the Corn Law
distress, I., 128.

INDEX.

3yl

Shuttleworth, Sir U. K., III., 326.
Slander on Mr. Bright, III., 34 ;
Bright's reply to, 35—37 ; his
speech in reply to an address,
38 — 41 ; another occasion of slan
der and its refutation, 128.
Slaver}': Bright denounces it and
its history in America, II. 278,
280, 301, 304 ; the object of the
Southerners to perpetuate, 301 ;
England taking active steps in
supplying means for, 309 ;
Bright's opinion of slavery, 356 ;
the question settled for ever in
the United States, III., 291 ; the
bishops and slavery, 277, 278.
Slaves, The working class and their,
IL, 20.
SUding scale, The, I., 82, 131, 144,
247.
Society of Friends, Association of
the early members of the Bright
family with the, I., 7 ; theu-
meeting-houses at Oldham and
Eochdale, 13.
Southern States, their representa
tive predominance at Washing
ton, IL, 279 ; difficulties of sepa
ration, 283.
Speculation, Great mania for, in.,
124.
Spiritual Peer, Bright's opinion of
a, H., 137.
Standard, The, its opposition to Free
Trade facts, I., -269, 273, 281,
304, 328.
Stamp duty on newspapers, IL, 52.
Stanley, Lord (afterwards Lord
Derby), L, 324 ; opposition to
the Free Trade BUl by, 337.
Stanley, Lord, jun., IL, 184, 185.
State education, Bright on, III.,
121.
Statute of Kilkenny, Tho, IL, 2.
Stirling, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 148.
Stourbridge, Free Trade Meeting
held at, I., 148.
Strikes, UnadvisabUity of , IL, 244,
HE., 184.
Stroud, Free Trade meetings held
at, I., 227.
St. James's Hall, London: Bright's
speech on the American civil
war, II. , 310, 311 ; reform meet
ing at, HI., 31, 51.
Subscriptions and contributions in
aid of the League, L, 145, 146,
149, 151, 192, 194, 195, 196, 197,
199, 201, 202, 203, 211, 239, 253,
254, 289, 291, 299, 300, 304, 305,';
Bright's allusions to, 224 ; opera
tive subscriptions, 301.
Succession duty, an instance of
inequaUty of taxation, IL, 154,
200, 201, 202.
Suez Canal, The, III., 296.
Suffrage, The £10, IL, 146, 156;
number of working men esti
mated to be admitted to the, HI.,
1, 23.

Sugar monopoly, Repeal of the, IL,
182, 215; the differential duties
on sugar, III., 17, 18.
Sums extracted from the industries
of the EngUsh people to pay for
costly wars, IL, 140, 141.
Sunday, Bright on, III., 13, 54.
Sunday schools, Bright on the
benefit of, HI., 12—14 ; the duty
of Sunday-school teachers to use
their influence in favour of peace,
197, 198.
Sunderland, Free Trade meeting-
held at, I., 146, 172, 202, 242.
Surat cotton, IL, 299, 305, HI.,
355.
Surrender, No, on the Corn Law
question, I., 300.
Surpluses : Large sums at the dispo
sal of the American Chancellor of
the Exchequer, HI., 290, 291.

Taylor, Mr. A. P., I., 125, 141, 142,
151, 167.
Taunton, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 161.
Taxation, Duke of WeUington on,
I„ 329; sixteen years' taxation of
Didia, IL, 23 ; increased taxation
on account of the Crimean war,
41 ; extravagance of Indian, 124,
125 ; increase of English, since
the time of WUliam III., IL,
141, 143, 188; inequality of , 154,
200, 201, 202 ; clumsiness of
Indian taxation, 211 ; no financial
statements to be met with, 211 ;
matters of taxation, House of
Lords no ground for rejecting the
paper duty, 217 ; no control by
the people over the sums spent in
taxation, 248 ; income-tax re
pealed one penny, 263, 264 ; taxes,
money taken from the people,
268 ; growth of the taxes in
sixty years, 268 ; who pays the
taxes — the people, 292 ; taxes on
intoxicating Uquors, 337 ; tax on
the Chinese trade, 342 ; money
asked for the defences of Canada,
353, 354, 356; reason why news
papers were originally taxed,
HI., 168 ; cost of education in
England, 169 ;' Bright denounces
increased taxation, 208, 209.
Taxes, Money taken from the
people, IL, 268.
Technical education of artisans,
Bright on the, HI., 67, 68.
Temperance, Bright recommends,
II. , 338; much need for, III.,
131, 132; his aUusion to the
temperance question, 135; speech
on temperance, 305 — 310; his
licensing scheme, 308, 309.
Telegraphic communication, its
rapidity, IL, 241.
Tenant, No Irish, Act of Parlia

ment passed in favour of a, II.
378.
Tenant-farmers, their grievances,
I., 238 ; IL, 8, 9 ; IH, 123.
Ten hours' agitation for labour in
factories, The, 210, 357; IL, 19.
Territorial families, Supremacy of
the, in England, IL, 140, 142 ; the
game laws an instance of the
power of, 156.
" Thinker," John Bright gains the
name of The, I., 57.
Thompson, Colonel P., I., 146, 148,
149, 152, 157, 158, 167, 194, 197,
199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 211, 242,
297,300; IL, 52; HI., 356.
Thompson, Mr. G., I., 211.
Tichborne case, Bright well-read
in the, III., 149.
Time - honoured institutions
defended, I., 124, 125.
Tithes, Increased, caused by the
high price of com, L, 111, 112.
161 ; the landowners and the,
304.
Tiverton, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 158.
Tombstone speech, Blight's cele
brated, I., 100—103, 350.
Tories : their method of answering
advocates of Free Trade, I., 120,
122, 123, 124, 184, 185, 206, 207 ;
W. J. For, on concessions by
Tory Governments, IL, 17, 18;
Bright denounces the tactics of
the party, 184, 185 ; they die off,
or change, 321; their opposition
to change, 328 ; Bright on the
Tory party, 376," 377 ; how they
would settle the Reform question,
III., 19, 30, 50 ; their love of
office, 23, 24, 30, 64, 65 ; Bright
urges no more votes to be given
to the, 83 ; the pubUcans and
the Tories, 136—138; on the
doings of the Tory party fifty
years back, 224, 294—296, 313;
have the party changed within
the last few years ? 329.
Tory administiations, The demands
of the people superior to, IL,
17, 18.
Trade and commerce, Hindrance
caused to, by the Crimean war,
II, 62.
Trades unions, Bright on, III., 143.
Treaties made by England, Some
of the,' to maintain other
countries, IL, 142, 143 ; Bright
on treaties, HI., 147.
Trelawny, Sir John, and the
aboUtion of church-rates, IL,
259, 296.
Trent dispute, The, 22, 274, 299,
300 ; Bright's advice to his
countrymen, 286.
Trevelyan, Mr., HI., 159, 170.
Trinity House, Bright at the, III.,
100.
Troops in the Crimea, Perishing
condition of the, IL, 53, 54.

392

INDEX.

Turkey, Eussia's dispute with, IL,
25, 26 ; commencement of the
Crimean war, 27 ; Bright's
denunciation of 27 ; Bright's
speech in ParUament on the
commencement of the war, 36—
41 ; gradual decay of the Turkish
power, 37 ; Eussian demands on
Turkey, 37 ; the Turks advised
to resist, 38 ; the Vienna note,
38, 39 ; sudden loss in trade, 39 ;
loss of human Ufe involved, 39 ;
dangers resulting from a French
alUance, 40 ; our best policy, non
intervention, 41 ; Bright's enu
meration of the results of our
interference, 246, 247 ; extrava
gance of Turkish officials, 246 ;
Turkish cruelties in Bulgaria,
on, III., 147, 148 ; England not
caUed upon to go to war to de
fend the Turk, 148, 165—167,
174—176.
Turkish indolence, CivUisation de
layed by, IL, 25.
Turkish rule a bUght and a curse,
III., 161.
Turnpike trusts, Discussion of, III.,
142, 143.
Tweedale, Samuel, John Bright's
manager, I., 116. 359.

U
Ulster custom of leaseholds, The,
HI., 107.
Under-fed condition of the poor,
143.
Unenfranchised, Bright the advo
cate of the, IL, 379.
Union workhouse, Description of
the inmates of the, I., 194, 195.
United States, Peel's decorum in
shadow of anticipated war with,
II. , 49 ; sum wasted a hundred
years ago in a costly war with
the, II. , 143 ; the Americans
English colonists, 277 ; annual
expenditure of then- government
about fifteen miUions, 278 ; the
blot of slavery, 278 ; Jefferson's
protest on slavery, 278 ; England
a party preventing the slavery
question being aboUshed, 278 ;
progress of the cotton growth,
278 ; predominance of the
Southern power generaUy over
the Northern in Presidential
elections, 279 ; the last elections
determined principally by the
North, 279 ; the secession an
immediate result, 279; the South
well represented at Washington,
279 : the protective tariff, 280 ;
slavery the real reason of the
disunion, 280 ; the North an
advocate of freedom, 280 ; Eng
land's proper course to pursue,
231 ; geographical difficulties of
separation in the several States,

382, 283; neutrality the best
course for England to pursue,
285 ; the Trent dispute and its
difficulties, 286, 299, 300; neu
trality advised, 286 ; maritime
law, 287 ; he advises caution in
dealing with the matter, 287 ;
gigantic struggle borne by the
States, 325 ; the Conservative
slaveholders, 378 ; Bright refers
to the war later, III., 112, 113 ;
Bright's speech on the protective
tariff, and its remission, 290 —
292 ; future population of the
States, 291.
Uxbridge, Free Trade meeting held
at, I., 212.

Vattel, The Crimean war defended
on the authority of, H, 41;
Bright's letter urging non-inter
ference, 41 — 43.
" Vicar's Lantern," Publication of
Mr. Bright and his friends in
opposition to Dr. Molesworth's
magazine, 111, 114.
Vienna, Lord John EusseU faUs to
obtain a settlement of peace
during the Crimean war, IL, 55.
Vienna note, The, IL, 38, 39, 41, 42.
FilUers, Mr. C. P., I., 118, 120,
132, 142, 168, 174, 190, 221, 274,
283, IL, 155, 274, III., 139, 250,
311; endeavours to obtain a
Parliamentary committee to in
quire into the Corn Laws, I.,
88, .118; becomes the leader of
the party in Parliament, 125 ;
proposes in 1844 the abolition of
the Corn Laws, 215; his success
in 1845, 239 ; diminution in the
majority, 240; his testimony to
the great efforts made by Bright,
353; statue of Mr. ViUiers un
veiled by Earl GranvUle, III.,
204 ; Bright refers to VUliers'
early speeches, 328.
Visit to America, Bright's reason
for declining a, IL, 335, 336, III.,
268, 269.
Vote of credit, The Conservative,
for six mUlions, HI., 194; Bright
describes the way in which the
vote was squandered in war pre
parations, 199, 200.
Vote, Only one man in six possesses
a, I., 185 ; an EngUshman's vote,
HI., 5.
Voter, Limited power possessed by
the English county, IL, 153.
Voters, Number of, in Gladstone's
proposal of 1866, III., 1,
vV
Wages do not vary with the price
of provisions, I., 311 ; farm-
labourers' wages, 321 ; employers
and low wages, TIL, 143.

Wages of the agricultural labourer
under Protection and afterwards,
IH, 130, 212.
Wakefield, Free Trade meetmg
held at, I., 162, 203, 221, 278;
soiree at, IL, 245.
WalsaU, Free Trade meeting held
at, L, 218.
War, The threatened Italian war
of 1859, IL, 189, 190; the
threatened Eussian war of 1878,
Bright denounces preparations
for, HI., 197, 198.
War, Sacrifice of Ufe by, III., 162,
163.
War expenditure deprecated, I.,
398 — 400 ; Bright opposes un
necessary wars, IL, 12, 15, 187,
189, 190.
War panics deprecated, IL, 65 ;
patriotism ineffectual to prevent,
295.
War party, Bright on the, HI.,
190—192, 196, 197, 216, 217.
War poUcy, Sir E. Walpole's
opinion on the foolishness of a,
IL, 138.
War, Bright's speech on the
horrors of, IL, 28 — 31 ; its cost,
28 ; taxation increased by, 30 ;
sufferings of tbe working classes,
30 ; its difficulties in modern
times, 290; Cobden on the frenzy
of the people for war, 295, III.,
191; sum total expended in,
since the present century, 270 ;
bishops afraid to denounce war,
278 ; Bright's hope in its future
impossibUity, 292; Egyptian loss
in the recent war, 279 ; the
bishops countenance war by their
prayers, 279.
Warrington, Free Trade meetings
held at, L, 197, 222.
Wars, Costly, England's entry into,
since the Eevolution, II. , • 140,
143, HI., 162; value of the
interest on the sum spent, IL,
140, 141, 144 ; inquiry into the
cause of the Afghan war of 1839,
and the death of Sir A. Burnes,
254—258; the Afghan war of
1879, 225, 226.
Wasted sessions of Parliament, H,
215, 351.
Wasteful expenditure, IL, 229,
240—244, III., 199, 200, 209,
270.
Wellington, Duke of, I., 119; his
opinion on taxation, 329 ; his
love for his own order, IL, 242 ;
his dread of foreigner's in his
old age, 242 ; his dread of
popular feeling at the time of
the first Eeform Bill, in., 4 ; his
reason for consenting at last to
Catholic emancipation, 66.
West Eiding of Yorkshire, Eeform
meetings in the, HI., 23.
Weymouth, Free Trade meeting
held at, I., 167.

INDEX.

393

Wheat, Price of, I., 80, 224, 263,
266, 267, 268, 269 ; quantity im
ported in 1883, III., 311.
Whig Government, A sound, and
what may be expected from it,
IL, 240 ; the party in office and
out of it, 325.
Whitehead, Jacob Bright's em
ployee, his emigration to America,
and subsequent visit to Eochdale,
IL, 65, 66.
Whittier, the American Quaker
poet, IL, 272, HI., 260, 261.
Wilberforce, Bishop, and Mr.
Bright, III., 278.
WiUiam HI., Value of the sum
extracted from EngUsh industry
to spend on foreign wars since
the time of, H, 140, 141, 144.
WUson, Mr. George, I., 143, 151,
154, 157, 165, 168, 190, 194, 204,
205, 220, 221, 253, 265, 279, 302,
346, 361, 365, 395, IL, 10, 15, 16,
32, 52, 69, 70, 76, 77, 78, 83, 151,
167, 236, 266; IH, 20, 29, 50,
51, 311.
Winchester, Free Trade meeting
held at, L, 171.
Wine,' French, H., 267.

Winter of 1841, The, I., 121.
Wolverhampton, Free Trade meet
ing held at, I., 147, 274, 275.
Women, Loss of 140,000 men in
war, the probable future com
panions for, IL, 147.
Women, Electoral disabUities of,
Bright on the, HI., 155—158,
339, 340.
Women and the franchise, III.,
156—158.
Wood, Sir O, I., 390, H, 21, 23,
24, 209.
Wood, Miss Martha, second wife of
Jacob Bright, I., 14 ; her family,
14, 15; her benevolent care of
the poor in her husband' s factory,
16, 17 ; her personal appearance,
17 ; her death, 17, 18.
Wootton-under-Edge, Free Trade
meeting held at, L, 279.
Working classes, Condition of the,
at the general peace and reduc
tion of wages, L, 46 ; their treat
ment at the Peterloo massacre,
51 — 53 ; their condition at the
time of the Eeform BUl, 56 ; dis
tress during the corn law agita
tion, 127 — 131 ; the cause of the

distress weU known, 133; their
misery described, 241 ; must
look to themselves to remedy
grievances, IL, 19 ; the "slaves"
of the, 20 ; their inability of
controlling the national expendi
ture, 248, III., 39; their non-
participation in political matters,
III., 11, 19, 32; Mr. Lowe's
slander on the, 16 ; advantages of
an extension of the suffrage to
the, 25 ; no hope of Eeform from
the Tories, 30, 31 ; condition of
the working classes as defined in
1867 by Mr. Bright, 39; their
condition in America, 68.
Wortley, Mr. Stuart, H, 185, 186.
Wright, Mr. J. S., III., 67, 115, 119 ;
Bright unveils his statue at Bir
mingham, 297, 298.

York, Free Trade meeting held at,
I., 203.
Yorkshire, Com Law disaffection
among the operatives of, I.,
136.

OAS3ELT. AND COMPANY, LIMITED, BELLE SAUVAGE WORKS, LONDON, E.G.