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Speech of Mr. Bright
December 18, 1862
119864
AUG 1 91M0
SPEECH
OF
MR. BRIGHT, M.P.,
IN THE
TOWN HALL, BIRMINGHAM,,
DECEMBER 18, 1862.
BIRJIIKGHAM :
PUTTED BY JOSEPH ALLEY AND SON,-CANNON STREET.
$11 r. § righ t's Sjjwrlj.
Mr. Bright rose, and was received with the most hearty and
prolonged applause. He said :—Gentlemen, I ain afraid that there
was a little excitement during a part of my honourable colleague's
speech, which was hardly favourable to that impartial consideration of
great questions to which he appealed. [Hear, hear.] He began by
referring to a question—or, I might say, to two questions, for it was
one great question in two parts—which at this moment occupies the
mind, and, I think, must afflict the heart of every thoughtful man in
this country—[hear, hear]—the calamity which has fallen upon the
county from which I come, and the strife which is astonishing the
world, on the other side of the Atlantic. I shall not enter into details
with regard to that calamity, because you have had already, I believe,
meetings in this town, many details have been published,- contributions
of a generous character have been made, and you are doing—and
especially, if I am; rightly informed, are your artizans doing—their
duty ^with regard - tp'. the unfortunate condition ? of. the population
amopgbt which I Mj^}b [Cheers^ iBKt|this{^Biay, s$Sfe'dh a sentence,
that* the' "greMst,\prhM% the m'cte%)rosperou&)mranuJfecturing industry
that this country or the -world haS ever seen, has been suddenly and
unexpectedly stricken down, but by a blow which has not been unfore-
seen or unforetold. [Hear, hear.] Nearly 500,000 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 all parts of the country. [Cheers.] 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 all classes and to
every section of this people. [Cheers.] 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
will not admit that one great cause 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. [Loud
cheers.] Noble- lords who have recently spoken, official men, and
4
public men, have taken upon them to tell the people of Lancashire
that nobody is to blame, and that in point of fact if it had not been
for a family quarrel in that dreadful Eepublic, everything would have
gone on perfectly smoothly, and not a word could have been said
against anybody. [Laughter.] Now, if you will allow me, I should
like to examine for a few minutes whether this be true. [Hear, hear.]
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
■—[cheers]—not one of which, I suppose some in this meeting must
regret, has been recognised by our Government or by France. [Cheers.]
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—[laughter and
cheers] —beginning with Lord Clive, and ending, as I now hope it has
ended, with Lord Dalhousie. [Laughter.] And under that Govern-
ment I will undertake to say that it was not in nature that you could
have such improvement of that country as should ever give you a fair
supply of cotton. [Cheers.] 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. Bichards, 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 Byots,
that is, the cultivators, at their owh free disposal, and he says that they
are not suffered to know what they shall get for it until after it has been
far removed from their reach and from the country by exportation coast-
wise to Bombay; and he says further, that the Company's servants
fixed the prices from 10 to 30 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 abolished 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 price, we
received 551,000 bales, during which same three years the United
States only sent us 611,000 ;—thus you see that in 1817, 18, and 19,
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. Well, 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 that 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
5
money tax levied on Surat cotton was 56 rupees per candy, leaving the
grower only 24 rupees, or rather less than fd. per lb. 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 7cwt., 7841bs.—costing 80 rupees, which is 160 shillings in
Bombay, that the Government had taken 48 rupees as land tax and
sea duty, leaving only 32 rupees, or less than f d. per lb., to be divided
among all parties, from the Bombay seller to the Surat grower.
[Ch eers.] In 1847 I was in the House of Commons, and I brought
forward a proposition for a select committee to enquire 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, for
hundreds of the mills were working short time, and many were closed
altogether. That committee reported that, in all 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 and degraded pauperism; and I will 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 1 [" Ho, no."] It
is not to be wondered at that the quality of the cotton should be bad,
so bad that it is illustrated 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 live, one of
the ministers was deep 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, "0 Lord! but not Surat."
[Laughter.] How, 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 policy of
the Indian Government. [Cheers.] I saw, the other day, a letter
from a gentleman as well acquainted with Indian affairs, perhaps, as any
man in India—a letter written to a member of the Madras Govern-
ment—in which he stated his firm opinion that if it had not been for
the Bombay Committee in 1846, and for my committee in 1848, there
would not have been any cotton sent from India at this moment to be
worked up in Lancashire. How, in 1846, the quantity of cotton
coming from India had fallen to 94,000 bales. How has it increased
since then 1 In 1859 it had reached 509,000 bales, in 1860 562,000
bales, and last year, owing to the extraordinary high price, it had
reached 986,000 bales ; and I suppose this year will be about the same
as last year.
I think, in justification of myself, and of some of those with
whom I have acted, I am entitled to ask your time for a few moments,
6
to show you what has been, not so much done as attempted to
he done, to improve this state of things ; and what has been the
systematic opposition that we have had to contend with. In the year
1847, I moved for that committee, in a speech from which I shall read
one short extract. I said that " We ought not to forget that the whole
of the cotton grown in America is produced by slave labour, and this,
I think, all will admit—that no matter as to the period in which
slavery may have existed, abolished it will ultimately be, either by
peaceable means or by violent means. Whether it comes to an end by
peaceable means or otherwise, there will in all probability be an inter-
ruption to the production of cotton, and the calamity which must in
consequence fall upon a part of the American Union will be felt
throughout the manufacturing districts of this country." [Cheers.]
The committee was not refused—Governments do not always refuse
committees, they don't much fear them on matters of this kind, they
put as many men on as the mover of the committee does, and some-
times more, and they often consider a committee, as my hon.
colleague will tell you, rather a convenient way of burying an unplea-
sant question at least for another Session. The committee sat during
the Session of 1848, and it made a report from which I shall quote not
an extract, but the sense of an extract. The evidence was very
extensive, very complete, and entirely condemnatory of the whole
system of the Indian Government with regard to the land and agricul-
tural produce, and one might have hoped that something would have
arisen from it, and probably something has arisen from it, but so slowly
that you have no fruit, nothing on which you can calculate, even up to
this hour. Well, in 1850, as nothing more was done, I thought it time
to take another step, and I gave notice of a motion for the appointment
of a Royal Commission to go to India for the express purpose of ascer-
taining the truth of this matter :—I moved, " That a Royal Commission
proceed to India to enquire into the obstacles which prevent the increased
growth of cotton in India, and to report upon any circumstance which
may injuriously affect the economical and industrial condition of the
native population, being cultivators of the soil, within the Presidencies
of Madras and Bombay." Now I shall read you one. extract from my
speech on that occasion, which refers to this question of peril in
America : I said, " But there is another point, that whilst the produc-
tion of cotton in the United States results from slave labour, whether
we approve of any particular mode of abolishing slavery in any country
or not, we are all convinced that it will be impossible in any country,
and most of all in America, to keep between two and three millions of
the population permanently in a state of bondage. By whatever means
that system is to be abolished, whether by insurrection—which I would
deplore—or by some great measure of justice from the Government, one
thing is certain, that the production of cotton must be interfered with
for a considerable time after such an event has taken place, and it may
happen that the greatest measure of freedom that has ever been
conceded, may be a measure, the con sequence of which will inflict
mischief upon the greatest industrial pursuit that engages the labour of
7
the operative population of this country." [Cheers.] Now, it was not
likely the Government could pay much attention to this, for at that
precise moment the Foreign Office—then presided over by Lord
Palmerston—was engaged with an English fleet in the waters of Greece,
in collecting a bad debt—[a laugh]—for one Don Pacifico, a Jew who
made a fraudulent demand on the Greek Government for injuries said
to have been committed upon him in Greece. Notwithstanding this, I
called upon Lord John Russell, who was then the Prime Minister, and
asked him whether he would grant the commission I was going to move for.
I will say this for him, he appeared to agree with me that it was a reason-
able thing. I believe he saw the peril, and that my proposition was a
proper one, but he said he wished he could communicate with Lord
Dalhousie. Rut it was in the month of June, and he could not do that,
and hear from him again before the close of the Session. He told me
that Sir John Hobhouse, then President of the India Board, was very
much against it, and I answered, " Doubtless he is, because he speaks
as the mouthpiece of the East India Company, against whom I am
bringing this enquiry." Well, my proposition came before the House,
and, as some of you may recollect, it was opposed by the President of the
India Board, and the Commission was consequently not granted. I had
seen Sir Robert Peel—this was only ten days before his death—I had seen
Sir Robert Peel, acquainted as he was with Lancashire interests, and
had endeavoured to enlist him in my support. He cordially and
entirely approved of my motion, and he remained in the House during
the whole of the time I was speaking; but when Sir John Hobhouse
rose to resist the motion, and he found the Government would not
consent to it, he then left his seat, and left the House. The night after,
or two nights after, he met me in the lobby ; and he said he thought it
was but right he should explain why he left the House after the conver-
sation he had held with me on this question before. He said he had
hoped the Government would agree to the motion, but when he found
they would not, his position was so delicate with regard to them and his
own old party, that he was most anxious that nothing should induce
him, unless under the pressure of some great extremity, to appear, even,
to oppose them on any matter before the House. Therefore, from a
very delicate sense of honour he did not say what I am sure he would
have been glad to have said, and the proposition did not receive from
him that help which, if it had received it, would have surmounted all
obstacles. To show the sort of men who are made ministers—[laughter]
—Sir John Hobhouse had on these occasions always a speech of the
same sort. He said this, " With respect to the peculiar urgency of the
time, he could not say the honourable gentleman had made out his case;
for he found that the importation of cotton from all countries showed an
immense increase during the last three years." Why, we know that the
importation of cotton has shown an " immense increase " almost every
three years for the last fifty years. [Hear, hear, and a laugh.] But it
was because that increase was entirely, or nearly so, from one source, and
that source one of extreme peril, that I asked for the enquiry for which
I moved. [Cheers.] He said he had a letter, and he shook it at me in
8
his hand—from the Secretary of the Commercial Association of Man-
Chester, in which the directors of that body declared by special resolution
that my proposition was not necessary, that an enquiry might do harm,
and that they were abundantly satisfied with everything that these
Lords of Leadenliall Street were doing. He said, " Such was the letter
of the Secretary of the Association, and it was a complete answer to the
honourable gentleman who had brought forward this motion." At this
moment one of these gentlemen to whom I have referred, then
President of the Board of Control, Governor of India, author, as he told
a committee on which I sat, of the Affghan war, is now decorated with
a Norman title, for our masters even after a lapse of 800 years ape the
Norman style, sits in the House of Peers, and legislates for you, having
neglected in regard to India every great duty which appertained to his
high office—[tremendous applause]—and to show that it is not only
Cabinets and Monarchs who thus distribute honours and rewards, the
President of that Commercial Association, through whose instigation
that letter was written, is now one of the representatives of Manchester,
the great centre of that manufacture whose very foundation is now
crumbling into ruin. [Renewed cheering.]
But I was not, although discouraged, baffled. I went down to the
Chamber of Commerce in Manchester, and along with Mr. Bazley,
then the President of the Chamber, I believe, and Mr. Ash worth,
who is now the President of that Chamber, and many others, we
determined to have a Commission of Enquiry of our own. We raised
a subscription of more than <£2,000 ; we selected a gentleman—
Mr. Alexander Mackay, the author of one of the very best books
ever written by an Englishman, upon America—" The Western
World"—and we invited him to become our Commissioner, and, unfor-
tunately for him, he accepted the office. He went to India, he made
many enquiries, he wrote many interesting reports, but like many others
who go to India, his health declined; he returned from Bombay, but he
did not live to reach home. We were greatly disappointed at this on
public grounds, besides our regret for the loss of one of so much private
worth. Some of us, Mr. Bazley particularly, undertook the charge
of publishing these reports, and a friend of Mr. Mackay's, now no
longer living, undertook the editorship of them, and they were published
in a volume called "Western India;" and that volume received such
circulation as a work of that nature is likely to have. [Hear, hear.]
Well, now, in 1853 there came the proposition for the renewal of the
East India Company's Charter. I opposed that to the utmost of my
power in the House of Commons—[loud cheers]—and some of you will
recollect I came down here with Mr. Danby Seymour, the member for
Poole, a gentleman well acquainted with Indian affairs, and attended a
meeting in this very Hall, to denounce the policy of conferring the
Government of that great country for another twenty years, upon a
company which had so entirely neglected every duty belonging to it,
except one—the duty of collecting the taxes. [Much laughter and
cheers.] In 1854 Colonel Cotton—now Sir Arthur Cotton, one of the
most distinguished engineers in India—came down to Manchester.
9
We had a meeting at the Town Hall, and he gave an address on the
subject of opening the Godavery river, in order that it might form a
mode of transit, cheap and expeditious, from the cotton districts to the
north of that river; and it was proposed to form a Joint Stock Company
to do it, but unfortunately the Russian war came on and disturbed all
commercial projects, and made it impossible to raise money for any—as
some might call it—speculative purpose, like that of opening an Indian
river. Well in 1857 there came the mutiny. What did our rulers do
then ? Sir Charles Wood, in 1853, had made a speech five hours long,
most of it bolstering up the Government of the East India Company.
In 1858—at the opening of the Session in 1858, I think—the Govern-
ment brought in a bill to abolish that Company, and to establish a new
form of Government for India. But that was exactly what we asked
them to do in 1853 ; but, as in everything else, nothing is done until
there comes an overwhelming calamity, when the most obtuse and
perverse is driven from his position. [Applause.] In 1858 that bill
passed under the auspices of Lord Stanley. It was not a bill such as
I think Lord Stanley approved when he was not a minister; it was not
a bill such as I believe he would have brought in if he had had power in
the House and the Cabinet to have brought in a better bill. It
abolished the East India Company, established a new Council, and left
things to a great extent much in the same state as they were. During
the discussion of that bill, I made a speech on Indian affairs, which I
believe goes to the root of the matter. I protested then as now against
any notion of governing 150 millions of people—twenty different
nations, with twenty different languages, from a little coterie of rulers
in the City of Calcutta. [Cheers.] I proposed that the country
should be divided into four or five separate, and as regards
each other, independent presidencies of equal rank, with a governor
and council in each, and each Government corresponding with,
and dependent upon, and responsible to, a Secretary of State in
this country. [Loud cries of " Hear, hear," and cheers.] I am
of opinion that if such a Government were established, one in each
Presidency, and if there was a first-class engineer, with an efficient
staff, whose business should be to determine what public works should
be carried on, some by the Government and some by private companies—■
I believe that ten years of such judicious labours would work an entire
revolution in the condition of India, and if it had been done when I first
began to move in this question, I have not the smallest doubt we might
have had at this moment any quantity of cotton whatever that the mills
of Lancashire require. [Great cheering.] Well, after this, I am afraid
some of my friends may think and my opponents will say that it is very
egotistical in me to have entered into these details. [Cries of " No, no."]
But, I think, after this recapitulation, I am at liberty to say I am guiltless
of that calamity which has fallen upon us. [Tremendous applause.]
And I may mention that some friends of mine, Mr. John Dickinson,
now Chairman of the India Reform Association; Mr. Bazley, one of the
members for Manchester; Mr. Ashworth, the President of the Chamber
of Commerce of Manchester, and Mr. John Benjamin Smith, the member
10
for Stockport, present themselves at this moment to my eyes as those
who have been largely instrumental in calling the attention of Parliament
and of the country to this great question of the reform of our Govern-
ment of India. [Cheers.]
But I have been asked twenty, fifty times during the last twelve
months, " Why don't you come out and say something ? Why can't
you tell us something in this time of our great need?" Well, 1 reply,
" I told you something when telling was of use; all I can say now
is this, or nearly all, that a hundred years of crime against the negro
in America, and a hundred years of crime against the docile natives
of our Indian Empire, are not to be washed away by the penitence
and the suffering of an hour." [Great cheering.] But what is our
position ? for you who are subscribing your money here have a right
to know. I believe the quantity of cotton in the United States is
at this moment much less than many people here believe, and that
it is in no condition to be forwarded and exported. And I suspect
tbat it is far more probable than otherwise, notwithstanding some
of the, I should say, strange theories of my honourable colleague,
that there never will again be in America a crop of cotton grown by
slave labour. [Great cheering.] You will understand—I hope so at
least—tbat I am not undertaking the office of prophet, I am not
predicting; I know that everything which is not absolutely impossible
may happen, and therefore things may happen wholly different to the
course which appears to me likely. But, I say, taking the facts as they
are before us—with that most limited vision which is given to mortals—
the high probability is that there will never be another crop considerable
or of avail in our manufactories from slave labour in the United States.
[Renewed cheers.] We read the American papers or the quotations
from them in our own papers, but I believe we can form no adequate
conception of the disorganisation and chaos that now prevail throughout a
great portion of the Southern States; it is natural to a state of war
under the circumstances of society in that region. But then we may be
asked, what are our sources of supply, putting aside India ? There is
the colony of Queensland, where enthusiastic persons tell you cotton can
be grown worth 3s. a pound. True enough; but where labour is very
probably 10s. a day, I am not sure you are likely to get any large
supply of that material we so much want, at a rate so cheap that we
shall be likely to use it. [Hear, hear.] Africa is pointed to by a
very zealous friend of mine, but Africa is a land of savages mostly, and
with its climate so much against European constitutions, I should not
encourage the hope that any great relief at any early period can be had
from that continent. [Hear, hear.] Egypt will send us 30,000 or
40,000 more bales than last year; in all probability Syria and Brazil,
with these high prices, will increase their production to some considerable
extent; but I hold that there is no country at present from which you
can derive any very large supply, except you can get it from your own
dependencies in India. [Cheers.] Now if there be no more cotton to
be grown for two, or three, or four years in America, for our supply,
we shall require, considering the smallness of the bales and the loss
11
in working up the cotton—we shall require nearly 6,000,000 of
additional bales to be supplied from some source. Now, I want to put to
you one question. It has taken the United States 20 years, from 1840
up to I860 to increase their growth of cotton from 2,000,000 of bales to
4,000,000. How long will it take any other country with comparatively
little capital, with a thousand disadvantages which America did not
suffer from—how long will it take any other country, or all other
countries, to give us 5,000,000 or 6,000,00<> additional bales of cotton?
[Hear, hear.] There is one stimulus, the only one that 1 know of, and
although I have not recommended it to the Government, and I know not
precisely what sacrifice it would entail, yet I shall mention it, and I do
it on the authority of a gentleman to whom I have before referred, who
is thoroughly acquainted with Indian agriculture, and who—himself and
his father—have been landowners and cultivators in India for sixty
years. He says there is only one mode by which you can rapidly
stimulate the growth of cotton in India, except that stimulus coming
from the high prices for the time being—he says that if the Govern-
ment would make a public declaration that for five years they would
exempt from land tax all land which during that time shall grow cotton,
there would be the most extraordinary increase in the growth of that
article which has ever been seen in regard to any branch of agriculture
in the world. [Much applause.] I don't know how far that would act,
but I believe the stimulus would be enormous—the loss to the
Government in revenue would be something, but the deliverance to the
industry of Lancashire, if it succeeded, as my friend thinks, would, of
course, be speedy, and perhaps complete. Short of this, I look upon the
restoration of the prosperity of Lancashire as distant—most remote.
I believe this misfortune will entail ruin upon the whole working
population, and that it will gradually engulf the smaller traders and those
possessing the least capital. I don't say it will, because as I have said,
what is not impossible may happen—but it may for years make the
whole factory property of Lancashire almost entirely worthless. [Loud
cries of "Hear, hear!"] Well, this is a very dismal look-out for a
great many persons in this country ; but it comes, as I have said—it
comes from that utter neglect of our opportunities and our duties which
has distinguished the Government of India. [Applause.]
Now, sir, before I sit down I shall ask you to listen to me for
a few moments on the other branch of this great question, which
refers to that sad tragedy which is passing before our eyes in the
United States of America. [Hear, hear.] I shall not, in consequence
of anything you have heard from my hon. friend, conceal from you
any of the opinions which I hold, and which I proposed to lay before
you if he had not spoken. [Hear, hear.] Having given to him,
notwithstanding some diversity of opinion, a fair and candid hearing, I
presume that I shall receive the same favour from those who may differ
from me. [Hear, hear.] If I had known that my hon. friend was
going to make an elaborate speech on this occasion—one of two things
I should have done. I should either have prepared myself entirely to
answer him, or I should have decided not to attend a meeting where
12
there could by any possibility of chance have been anything like discord
between so many—his friends and my friends—in this room. Since I
have been member for Birmingham Mr. Scholefield has treated me with
the kindness of a brother. [Applause.] Nothing could possibly be
more generous and more disinterested in every way than his conduct
towards me during these several years, and therefore I would much
rather—far rather—that I lost any mere opportunity like this of
speaking on this question than I would have come here and appeared to
be at variance with him. But I am happy to say that this great
question does not depend upon the opinion ot any man in Birmingham,
or in England, or anywhere else. [Cheers ] And therefore I could—
anxious always, unless imperative duty requires, to avoid even a
semblance of difference—I could with a clear conscience have abstained
from coming to and speaking at this meeting. But I observe that my
hon. friend endeavoured to avoid committing himself to what is called a
sympathy with the South. He takes a political view of this great
question—is disposed to deal with the matter as he would have dealt
with the case of a colony of Spain or Portugal, revolting in South
America; or Greece revolting from Turkey. I should like to state
here what I once stated to an eminent American. He asked me if I
could give him an idea of the course of public opinion in this country
from the moment we heard of the secession of the Cotton States; and
I endeavoured to trace it in this way—and I ask you to say whether it
is a fair and full description. I said—and my hon. friend has admitted
that—that when the revolt or secession was first announced, people here
were generally against the South. [Hear, hear.] Nobody thought then
that the South had any cause for breaking up the integrity of that great
nation. Their opinion was, and what people said, according to their
different politics 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 to be discontented and
endeavouring to overthrow their Government;—all of which things
have been said against 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 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 he 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
13
that there would be no war. Well, hut 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
Chancellor of the Exchequer. [Laughter.] I am very happy that
though the Chancellor of the Exchequer is able to decide to a penny
what shall be the amount of taxes to meet public expenditure in
England, he cannot decide what shall be the fate of a whole continent.
[Hear, hear.] 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 so great a loss to the commerce of the whole world. 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, "Well, 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 that was a
feeling that was abroad. [Hear, hear.] Now, I am of opinion that, if
we judge a foreign nation in the circumstances in which we find America,
we ought to apply it to our own principles. My honourable friend has
referred, I think, to the question of the Trent. I was not here last
year, but I heard of a meeting—I read 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 Government 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. [Hear, hear.] 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 Government, 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.
[Cheers.] 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—[laughter]—
and a good many people at the bottom, who were living on English taxes.
[Renewed laughter.] Well, the Rock of Gibraltar was taken and retained
by this country when we were not at war with Spain, and it was
retained contrary to every moral and honourable code. [A voice,
" No, no."] No doubt the gentleman below is much better acquainted
with the history of it than I am—[loud laughter]—but I may suggest
to him that very likely we have read two different histories.
[Renewed laughter.] 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 war-
fare. Suppose, at this moment, you heard, or the English Govern-
ment heard, that Spain was equipping expeditions, by land and sea,
14
for the purpose of re-taking 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 embitter-
ing, as statesmen have admitted, the relations between Spain and
England, (if he were to go to Madrid with an offer of the Rock of
Gibraltar, I believe he might have 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.)—[Applause.]—I say, don't you think that if you heard Spain
was about to re-take that useless rock, mustering her legions and her
fleets, that the English Government would combine all the power of
this country to resist it ? [Applause.] If that be so, then I think—
seeing that there was a fair election two years ago, and that Presi-
dent 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 upon,
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? [Loud cheers.]
Row I shall not go into a long argument upon this question, for
the reason that a year ago I said what I thought it necessary to say
upon it, and because I believe the question is in the hand, not of my
honourable friend, or in that of Lord Palmerston, or 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 which men
often will not regard when it is passing before them, but which they
look back upon with awe and astonishment some years after they are
past. [Loud cheers.] So I shall content myself with asking one or
two questions. I shall not discuss the question whether the Rorth
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 recognition of the South, or mediation or intervention
for the benefit of the South, you should consider what are the ends of
the South. [Hear, hear.] 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, in America, his father
and his grandfather having held the office of President of the
Republic. You have your own minister just returned to Washington.
Is this hypocrisy ? Are you, because you can cavil at certain things
which the Rorth, the United States Government has done, or. has not
done—are you eagerly to throw the influence of your opinion into a
15
movement which is to dismember the great Republic ? [" No, no."]
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—[applause]—
that the object of the war on the part of the South is to maintain the
bondage of four millions of human beings. [Cries of " No, no," over-
whelmed by tremendous cheering.] That is only a small part of it.
The further object is to perpetuate for ever the bondage of all the
posterity of those four millions of slaves. [Prolonged cheering,
mingled with some dissentient voices.] You will 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 somewhat hinders me in speaking. I could
quote their own documents till twelve o'clock in proof of what I say;
and, if I found a man who denied, upon the evidence that had been
offered, I would not offend him, or trouble myself by trying further to
convince him. [Hear, hear.] The object is that a handful of white
men on that Continent shall lord it over countless millions of blacks,
made black by the very hand that made us white [Prolonged
applause.] The object is that they should have 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 glimpse of that knowledge which separates us
from the brute—for in their laws it is criminal 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. [Loud
and prolonged cheers.] 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
ally is to be built up. [Renewed cheers, and cries of "No."] It has
been said that Greece was recognised, and that other countries had
been recognised. Why Greece was not recognised till after they had
fought Turkey for six years—[hear, hear,]—and the Republics of
South America, some of them, till 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. [Applause.]
I want to know who they are who speak eagerly in favour of
England becoming the ally and friend of this great conspiracy
against human nature F [Loud cheers.] Now I should have no kind
of objection to recognise a country because it was a country that held
slaves; to recognise the United States or to be in amity with it.
The question of slavery there, and in Cuba, and in Brazil is, as far as
respects the present generation, an accident, and it would be
monstrous that we should object to trade with, and have political re-
lations 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
16
basis of slavery. [Cries of "No" "No," which were drowned
in cheers.] Slavery is blasphemously set up to be its chief
corner stone. I have heard that there are 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, with
their riches, and thriving unwholesomely within the atmosphere
of a privileged class; that there are conductors of the public press
who would barter the rights of millions of their fellow-creatures that
they might bask in the smiles of the great. [Mingled approbation
and disapprobation.] 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 public
writers of eminence and honour, who will not barter human rights
for the patronage of the great. But most of all, and before all, I
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 hopeless millions 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. [Prolonged cheers.]
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 matter—they generally end by saying that the
Republic is too great and too powerful, and that it is better for
us—not " us," meaning you, but the governing classes, and the
governing policy of England—that it should be broken up. But
we will suppose that we are in New York or Boston, and are
discussing England; and if any one there were to say that England
has grown too big—not in the thirty-one millions that it has in its
own island, but in the one hundred and fifty millions it has in Asia,
and nobody knows how many millions in every other part of the
globe—and surely an American might fairly say that he ha$ not
covered the ocean with fleets of force, or left the bones of his citizens
to blanch on a hundred European battle-fields—he could say, and a
thousand times more fairly say, that England was large and powerful,
and that it would be perilous for the world that she should be so
great. [Applause.] But, bear in mind, that every declaration of
this kind, whether from an Englishman who professes to be strictly
English, or from an American strictly American, or from a Erench-
man strictly Erench, whether he talks in a proud and arrogant strain,
and says that Britannia rules the waves, or whether, as an American,
he speaks of manifest destiny, and of all creation adoring the stars
and stripes, or a Frenchman who thinks that the eagles of that
nation having once over-run Europe, may possibly have a right to
repeat the experiment,—I say all these ideas and all that language
17
are to be condemned. It is not truly patriotic; it is not rational; it
is not moral. Then, I say, if any man wishes that Republic to be
severed on that ground, in my opinion he is only doing what tends
to keep alive jealousies which in his hand will never die; and if they
do not die, for anything I see, wars must be eternal. Bnt then, I
shall be told that the North do not like us at all. In fact, we have
heard it to-night. It is not at all necessary that they should like us.
[Laughter.] If an American be in this room to-night, will he think
he likes my hon. friend ? 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. [Laughter.] That he will admit, I think. [Renewed
laughter.] 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 built in
the Mersey—that she was built, it is said, and I have reason to
believe it, by a member of the British Parliament—that she is
furnished with guns of English manufacture and produce—'that she is
sailed almost entirely by Englishmen—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, or probably in favour of breaking up the Republic,
did not think them of much consequence, but afterwards the opinion
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 Ciapoms' Authorities of Liverpool would be responsible for any-
thing 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 la^ officers,
whose opinions agreed with that of Mr. Collier, they did what
Government officers generally do, and as promptly—a telegraphic
message went down to Liverpool to order that this vessel should be
arrested, and she happened to sail an hour or two before the message
arrived. [Laughter.] She has never been into a Confederate port;
they have not got any ports; she hoists the English flag when 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, and pillages and burns it. I think that if we were citizens
of New York, it would require a little more calmness than is shown
18
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 words
that have been said in America, in reference to that question. [Hear,
hear.] But they do not know in America so much as we 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. [Applause.] . 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 use to stimulate in Lancashire, amongst the suffer-
ing population, an expression of opinion in favour of the Slave States.
They have not been able to get it. [Loud cheers.] 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 you one other question before I sit down, how
comes it that on the Continent there is not a liberal newspaper, nor a
liberal politician that durst say, or ever thought of saying a word in favour
of this portentous and monstrous shape which now asks to be received
into the family of nations ? Take the great Italian minister, Count
Cavour. You 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. [Cheers.] Is there in Europe a more disinterested and
generous friend of freedom than Garibaldi ? [Cheers, and " No, no."]
Ask that illustrious Hungarian, to whose marvellous eloquence you once
listened in this Hall. Will he tell you that slavery had nothing to do
with it, and that the slaveholders of the South would liberate the
negroes sooner than the North through the instrumentality of the war?
[Cheers.] Ask Victor Hugo, the poet of freedom—the exponent, may
I not call him, of the yearnings of all mankind for a better tiurn. Ask
any man in Europe who opens his lips for freedom—who dijwpi^pen
in ink that he may indite a sentence for freedom—whoever has a
sympathy for freedom warm in his own heart; ask him—he will have
no difficulty in telling you on which side your sympathies should lie.
[Cheers] Only a few days ago a German merchant in Manchester was
speaking to a friend of mine, and said he had recently travelled all
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
19
official capacity, in wliich 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 I discovered the universal congratulation
that the Republic was likely to be broken up." But, sir, the Free States
are the home of the working man. Now, I speak to working then
particularly at this moment. Do you know that in fifteen years
'2,500,000 persons, men, women, and children, 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 millions is in a position of much
higher comfort and prosperity than he would have been if he 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."
[Great cheering.] And there, there are no six millions of grown men—
I speak of the Free States—excluded from the constitution of their
country and their electoral franchise—there, there is a free Church—•
[cheers]—a free school, free land, a free vote, and a free career for the
child of the humblest born in the land. [Renewed cheers.] My
countrymen who work for your living, remember this ; there will be one
wild shriek of freedom to startle all mankind, if that American Republic
should be overthrown. [Applause.] Now, for one moment let us lift
ourselves, if we can, above the narrow circle in which we are all 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 Republic; it is a hideous
outrage against human right and against Divine law; but the pride, the
passion of man will not 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, have
broidjfcfebout the abolition of slavery in America, but the suicide which
the^jj^Hbi has committed and the war which they have commenced.
[Cheer^] Sir, it is a measureless calamity—this war. I said the
Russian war was a measureless calamity, and yet many of your leaders
and friends told you that was a just war to maintain the integrity of
Turkey, some thousands of miles off. Surely the integrity of your own
country at your own doors must he worth as much as the integrity of
Turkey. [Hear, hear.] Is not this war the penalty which inexorable
justice exacts from America, North and South, for the enormous guilt
of cherishing that frightful iniquity of slavery for the last eighty years 1
I do not blame any man here who thinks the cause of the North
hopeless, and the restoration of the Union impossible. It may he
hopeless ; the restoration may he impossible. You have the authority
of the Chancellor of the Exchequer on that point. [Laughter.] The
20
Chancellor, as a speaker, is not surpassed by any man in England; but
unfortunately be made use of expressions in the North of England—
now, I suppose, nearly three months ago—and he seems "to have been
engaged during the whole succeeding three months in trying to make
people understand what he meant-. [Laughter.] But this is obvious
—that he believes the cause of the North to be hopeless ; that their
enterprise cannot succeed. Well, he is quite welcome to that opinion,
and so is anybody else. "I do not hold the opinion,, but the facts
are before us all, and as fats, as we can discard passion and sympathy,
we are all equally at liberty to form our own opinion. But what
I do blame is this. I blame men who are. eager to admit into the
family of nations, a State which offers itself to you as based upon a
principle, I will undertake to say more odious and more blasphemous
than was ever heretofore dreamt of in- CJiristian or Pagan, in civilised
or in savage times. [Loud cheers.] The leaders of this revolt propose
this monstrous thing—that over a territory forty times as large as
England, the blight and curse of slavery shall be for ever prepetuated.
I cannot believe, myself, in such a fate befalling that fair land, stricken
as it now is with the ravages of war. [Cheering.] I cannot believe
that civilisation in its journey with the sun will sink into endless night
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 oq mankind."
[Enthusiastic applause.] I have a far other and far brighter vision
before my gaze. [Renewed cheering.] It may be but a vision, -but
I will cherish it. I see one vast Confederation stretching from the
frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wild
billows of the Atlantic, westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific
main—and I see one people, and one law, and.one language, and one
faith, and over all that wide Continent, the tome of freedom, and a
-refuge for the oppressed of every race and of every clime. (The hon.
gentleman resumed his seat amid an enthusiastic burst of cheering.)
LI8RAF? V ' \
AUG 19 1940
AND SON, IEINTEES, CANNON STREET, BIRMINGHAM.