when he comes to consider public questions, whether regarding this country or that other country to which reference has already been made, and where that great struggle is being carried on, will endeavour to be animated by the disinterested, the noble, and the Christian spirit by which your late eminent townsman was distinguished.'

Mr. Bright then referred to the Poor Law Amendment Act passed by the Whigs, which did credit to their administration. Then came a very quiet and unsatisfactory time. The Whigs had settled comfortably into their places. They had a motto, he believed, which they had not publicly announced. It was this, A place for every man, and every man in his place.' They were thrown out of office in 1841, and Parliament assembled after the general election with a majority of ninety pledged to oppose the abolition of the Corn Law. Sir Robert Peel and his great party looked down with contempt upon all who were moving in that question; but the result showed how much was to be done by continuous and disinterested labour on behalf of a great cause, and by appealing to the sympathies of the whole nation. The great work was not achieved by a number of benevolent ladies and gentlemen forming societies all over the country, and giving people alms, but it was by repealing the Corn Law-by a simple act of justice, an act that was so just that he had never, or scarcely ever, heard a man deny its justice, except on something which they called political considerations, which

meant that there were political reasons why that great act of justice should not be done. But the question of corn was not all-there was that of sugar. In 1840 the single article of sugar in this country cost-by reason of the monopoly-not less than six millions sterling more than it would have cost if it could have been bought freely in the market of the world. The fall of the corn monopoly, which was the keystone of the arch, let everything supported by it down. The sugar, timber, and other monopolies fell, amongst them being that important monopoly which our shipowners had, whose abolition had been so advantageous to the whole country. Once there was a tariff with 1,200 articles paying duty; now there were, perhaps, only twelve or fifteen articles upon which duties were levied.

The French Treaty was next referred to. Englishmen had been taught to regard the French as their natural enemies, but the Emperor showed that he was willing to have more intimate relations with this country. The treaty was eventually effectedeffected solely, on the part of England, by Mr. Cobden; and he (Mr. Bright) believed that it was the most important document of the kind that had ever been signed by the rulers of any two nations in Europe. The last of the reforms touched upon was that for securing the freedom of the press, in which no persons in Parliament were more actively concerned than Mr. Milner Gibson, Mr. Cobden, and the speaker. Referring to the Birmingham Post in

order to illustrate the operation of the paper duty, Mr. Bright said, 'You pay a penny for your admirable newspaper in this town, and when doing so you are not conscious, perhaps, of what happened only a very short time ago. The paper on which it was printed, say ten years ago, had a stamp of a penny upon it : the paper itself did not cost probably more than a halfpenny, and therefore there was over a hundred or perhaps two hundred per cent. of taxation upon the paper before our friend Mr. Jaffray could touch it. Well, then-I am not speaking now of the stampthere was also a tax of, at one time, threepence, and at another time three-halfpence, per pound upon paper itself at the paper mill.' The impost was removed, the penny press would bear comparison with their dearer neighbours, and there was but one opinion as to the inestimable benefit which the freedom of the press had conferred upon the country. Every single thing he had mentioned was now by general consent admitted to have been a just and beneficial change. You can hardly find a Tory now. It is a blessed thing, but somehow or other either the Tories die off, or they change themselves, or they do certainly take a little different colour. You can hardly find any of them now but will admit that a great number of these changes-some will admit that all of them have been wise changes, and beneficial to the country. And yet it is very odd that the very same men at this moment set up to be authorities in politics.' After After being wrong in everything for

twenty-five years back, they yet called upon the constituencies to believe that they were the men, and that wisdom would die with them.

Having touched upon the question of Reform, observing that the Act of 1832 was insufficient, and that there must be another substantial measure before long, Mr. Bright dealt with the question of emigration. The largest portion of the emigrants went from Ireland; and, as he had said before, it was a curious fact that whenever an Irishman planted his foot in any foreign land, he became an irreconcilable enemy of England. 'But if the government of England in Ireland had been a just government—if it had been just even since the time of the Union, sixty years ago-all that hostile feeling might have · been cleared away long since, and Irishmen would have been as loyal and contented as any class of Englishmen. And if they had found it necessary from any cause to transport themselves to the United States, you would have found in the United States the feeling that they had not been driven by injustice from their native land, but that, turning back to that land with the loving, longing gaze of patriots, they might have said,

"Breathes there a man with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land?"

But now-now, under the feelings created by a long course of misgovernment, continued from father to son, directed against their social, their political, and

their religious feeling, there is hardly an Irishman in the United States who is not the victim of any man who chooses to make political capital by exciting hostility against England. There can be no just government of Ireland until you abolish the Irish Protestant Church.'

The hon. gentleman next discussed the situation of foreign affairs, and the doctrine of non-intervention. The people of England must before long make up their minds whether they would accept the doctrine of non-intervention in its entirety and completeness, or whether they would allow it when it was convenient, and repudiate it when their passions had been a little stirred. Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell-the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary-had been saturated with the theories and doctrines upon the question of non-intervention and foreign affairs which prevailed near the beginning of the century, and it was in consequence of these feelings that they could not keep themselves out of the Crimean War. Yet notwithstanding our foreign policy, and the conflict which had occurred, the affairs of Europe were not settled on a permanent basis, and Europe had doubled the armed men and doubled the military expenditure which it had before the Crimean War. Then there was the question between Denmark and Germany. It was not yet settled, though perhaps it might be settled. Such questions could only be permanently settled by those who were deeply interested in them. We are not