privileged class; there is complete education extended to all; and every man feels that he is 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.'

But that country was now the scene of one of the greatest calamities that could afflict mankind; and he showed that the question which was being tried was not merely whether four millions of slaves in America should be free, but whether the vast number of slaves in Cuba and Brazil should also be liberated. But further, the freedom of men of all races was involved in this great strife, and Mr. Bright cited extracts from Southern writers and speakers to prove that the freedom of white men even was not safe in the hands of the Southerners. He reiterated his opinion, based upon Southern utterances as regarded slavery, that the great strife had its origin in an infamous conspiracy against the rights of human nature. Their doctrine was the doctrine of devils, and not of men; and all mankind should shudder at the enormity of the guilt which the leaders of the conspiracy had brought upon that country.

Mr. Bright went on to show, from the papers of the South, that both before and after the secession the universal opinion of the Southerners was that the stoppage of the supply of cotton would be our instantaneous ruin, and that if they could only lay hold of it, keep it back in the country, or burn it, so that it never could be used, that then the people of 7

VOL. II.

Lancashire-merchants, manufacturers, and operatives in mills-everybody dependent upon this vast industry-would immediately arise and protest against the English Government abstaining for one moment from the recognition of the South, from war with the North, and from a resolution to do the utmost that we could to create a slave-holding independent republic in the South. These men had sent their envoys to this country, and the latter had been received by some as though they came from the most honourable Government, and with the most honourable mission. Slave-owners, buyers, sellers, and breeders asked Englishmen-Englishmen with a history of freedom-to join hands in their atrocious conspiracy. Some of our statesmen and some of our newspapers had been wrong upon this question; but the working men of England, and the great body of the middle classes too, had not been wrong. Witness the great meetings in London, Manchester, and elsewhere. Public opinion had not changed, but men were learning more about it every day. What shall we say with regard to this great question? asked Mr. Bright; and he furnished the answer in this eloquent passage, which formed the conclusion of his address:

'I do not believe it is possible to be strictly, coldly neutral. The question at issue is too great, the contest is too grand in the eye of the world. It is impossible for any man who can have an opinion worth anything on any question, not to have some kind of an opinion on the question of this war. I am not ashamed of my opinion, or the sympathy which I feel, and have over and over again expressed, on the side of the

free North. I cannot understand how any man witnessing what is enacting on the American continent can indulge in small cavils against the free people of the North, and close his eye entirely to the enormity of the purposes of the South. I cannot understand how any Englishman, who in past years has been accustomed to say that "there was one foul blot upon the fair fame of the American Republic," can now express any sympathy for those who would perpetuate and extend that blot. And, more, if we profess to be, though it be with imperfect and faltering steps, the followers of Him who declared it to be His Divine mission "to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised," must we not reject with indignation and scorn the proffered alliance and friendship with a power based on human bondage, and which contemplates the overthrow and the extinction of the dearest rights of the most helpless of mankind?

'If we are the friends of freedom, personal and political,-and we all profess to be so, and most of us, more or less, are striving after it more completely for our own country,-how can we withhold our sympathy from a Government and a people amongst whom white men have always been free, and who are now offering an equal freedom to the black? I advise you not to believe in the "destruction" of the American nation. If facts should happen by any chance to force you to believe it, do not commit the crime of wishing it. I do not blame men who draw different conclusions from mine from the facts, and who believe that the restoration of the Union is impossible. As the facts lie before our senses, so must we form a judgment on them. But I blame those men who wish for such a catastrophe. For myself, I have never despaired, and I will not despair. In the language of one of our old poets, who wrote, I think, more than three hundred years ago, I will not despair,

"For I have seen a ship in haven fall,

After the storm had broke both mast and shroud."

From the very outburst of this great convulsion, I have had but one hope and one faith, and it is this—that the result of this stupendous strife may be to make freedom the heritage for ever of a whole continent, and that the grandeur and the prosperity of the American Union may never be impaired.'

There was no cessation of the meetings, either in the metropolis or the provinces, on the American question. On the 20th of March, a meeting of the Trades Unionists of London was held in St. James's

Hall, to express sympathy with the Northern States of America, and in furtherance of the cause of negro emancipation. Mr. Bright presided, and was supported by Mr. Stansfeld, M.P., Mr. P. A. Taylor, M.P., Mr. John Stuart Mill, Professor Beesly, the Rev. Newman Hall, and others. In the course of his opening speech, Mr. Bright said that some persons and some writers thought it no great matter which had caused this contest in the United States. He maintained that a whole continent was at stake, with its teeming millions, and their present and future fate. What were the sympathies of England, and especially what was the interest in this contest of the men before him? Privilege, with blatant voice, had cursed the American Republic; privilege had beheld an affecting spectacle for many years past. 'It has beheld,' continued Mr. Bright, thirty millions of men, happy and prosperous, without emperor, without king, without the surroundings of a court, without nobles, except such as are made by eminence in intellect and virtue, without State bishops and State priests,

"Sole vendors of the lore which works salvation,❞—

without great armies and great navies, without great debt and without great taxes. Privilege has shuddered at what might happen to old Europe if this grand experiment should succeed. But you, the workers,— you, striving after a better time,-you, struggling upwards towards the light, with slow and painful steps,

-you have no cause to look with jealousy upon a country which, amongst all the great nations of the globe, is that one where labour has met with the highest honour, and where it has reaped its greatest reward. Are you aware of the fact that in fifteen years, which is but as yesterday when it is past, two and a half millions of your countrymen have found a home in the United States,-that a population equal nearly, if not quite, to the population of this great cityitself equal to no mean kingdom-has emigrated from these shores? In the United States there has been, as you know, an open door for every man,—and millions have entered into it, and have found rest.'

After comparing the two sections of the United States engaged in the struggle, the speaker remarked that the whole question was one most fitting for discussion by the trade societies of London. It was said that trade would be ruined; but if the South began the war, could we be their friends? If they had destroyed cotton, or withheld it, could we therefore take them to our bosoms? Cotton had been withheld from this country with the single object of creating in the manufacturing districts of France and England a state of suffering that might at last become unbearable, and thus compel the Governments of those countries to take sides with the South against the North. He was sorry to believe that many Englishmen had taken portions of the loan being raised on behalf of the Southern Confederacy, whose great object was to pay in this