It’s an opportune moment to repeat John Bright’s very famous speech on a great federation of the nations that speak the Anglo-Saxon tongue.
The speech was given me when crossing the Atlantic by a splendid citizen of the United States, where I had just been receiving boundless hospitality and a wonderful welcome, and had realised the truth about a prophet when not in his own country, and had been asked to “stump the Middle West” to advocate the cause of friendship amongst all those who speak our incomparable tongue, and to establish a Great Commonwealth of Free Nations. There can be no secret treaties and no secret diplomacy when the Government is of the People, by the People, for the People.
This is John Bright’s speech:
“Now what can one say of the future of our race and of our kinsmen? Is that merely a dream? By no means.... Look where we are now?...
“In this country, in Canada, and in the United States there are, or soon will be, one hundred and fifty millions of population, nearly all of whom owe their birth and origin to the comparatively small country in which we live. It is a fact that is not paralleled in any past history, and what may come in the future to compare with it or excel it, it is not for us to speak of, or even with any show of reason to imagine; but we have in all these millions the same language, the same literature, mainly the same laws and the institutions of freedom. May we not hope for the highest and noblest federation to be established among us? That is a question to which I would ask your special and sympathetic attention. The noblest kind of federation among us, under different Governments it may be, but united by race, by sympathy, by freedom of industry, by communion of interests and by a perpetual peace, we may help to lead the world to that better time which we long for and which we believe in, though it may not be permitted to our mortal eyes to behold it.”
That was said by John Bright.
The time has now come for this great federation which he desired—for this great Commonwealth of Free Nations.
There is only one type of treaty which is effective—“Community of Interests.”
All other treaties are “Scraps of Paper.”
It is maintained by eminent men that the late appalling and disastrous war, in which so many millions of human beings have been massacred or maimed, would never have occurred had there been a real Democracy in power in England. They say, as a small instance, that the great Mutiny at the Nore and other mutinies were brought about by trampling on Democracy.