Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1Bright, John
History
Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1
Bright, John
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
But, Sir, there is another side to this question. All England is not
included in the rather general condemnation which I have thought it my
duty to express. There is another side. Looking to our own population,
what have the millions been saying and doing--the millions you are so
much afraid of?--especially the noble Lord the Member for Stamford, who
objects to the transference of power to those millions from those who
now hold it, and, from his position, naturally objects. I beg leave to
tell the House that, taking the counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire--
your great counties of population--the millions of men there, whose
industry has not only created but sustains the fabric of your national
power, have had no kind of sympathy with the views which I have been
condemning. They have been more generous and more wise; they have shown
that magnanimity and love of freedom are not extinct. And, speaking of
the county from which I come--the county of many sorrows, whose griefs
have hung like a dark cloud over almost every heart during the last
three years--all the attempts which the agents of the Confederacy have
made there by money, by printing, by platform speeches, by agitation,
have utterly failed to get from that population one expression of
sympathy with the American insurrection. And, Sir, if the bond of union
and friendship between England and America shall remain unbroken, we
shall not have to thank the wealthy and the cultivated, but those
laborious millions whom statesmen and histories too frequently take
little account of. They know a little of the United States, which
Gentlemen opposite and some on this side the House do not appear to
know. They know that every man of them would be better off on the
American continent, if he chose to go there, and would be welcome to
every right and privilege that the people there are in possession of.
They know further that every man may have from the United States
Government a free gift of 160 acres of the most fertile land in the
world. [A laugh.] I do not understand that laugh, but the gift, under
the Homestead Act of America, of 160 acres of land is a great deal for a
man who has no land. I can tell you that the Homestead Act and the
liberality of the American Government have had a great effect upon the
population of the North of England, and I can tell you further--that the
labouring population of this country--the artisans and the mechanics--
will never join heartily in any policy which is intended to estrange the
people of the United States from the people of the United Kingdom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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