Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1

by John Bright

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 recollect 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 generally very amusing. But this was a very amusing speech. This gentleman had travelled; he had been in the United States, and being intelligent 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 York, he found that 'everybody spoke Suffolk.' Now, if anybody from this neighbourhood should visit New York, I am afraid that he will not find everybody speaking Lancashire. Our dialect, as you know, is vanishing into the past. It will 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 York speaking Lancashire, we should find them speaking English. And if we followed 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 well than there are in the thirty millions of population of Great Britain and Ireland.

And if we leave their literature and turn to their laws, we shall 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 government, we shall find that it is in its principle, in its essence, not very dissimilar 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 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?

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 life- 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 all its people a degree of prosperity which in these old countries is as yet unknown.

I should like now to speak specially to the working men who are here, who have no capital but their skill 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 million four hundred thousand persons. Millions 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 political and social equality in their own land—a revolution which commenced in the War of Independence, which has been going on, and 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 full enjoyment of all 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 lives that the noblest buildings are the school-houses to which his children are freely admitted. And among those twenty millions—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.

And, 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 life. In the United States that hope prevails everywhere, because everywhere there is an open career; there is no privileged class; there is complete education extended to all, 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 will 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 military 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, generally, one only has been discussed. There is the question whether negro slavery shall continue to be upheld amongst Christian nations, or whether it shall be entirely abolished. Because, bear in mind that 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 well 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; all 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 will, 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 millions of slaves in America shall be free, but whether the vast number of slaves (I know not the number) in Cuba and Brazil shall also be liberated.

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. Now, I will not trouble you with pages of extracts which would confirm all that I am about to say, but I shall read you two or three short ones which will explain exactly what I mean.