John Bright on American Affairs

John Bright is well known as the honest, intelligent and independent member of Parliament from Manchester.  He had the courage ten years ago to condemn the Russian War in advance.  He has now taken the government in hands for their threats in the Trent affair.  The following is the close of his speech on the 18th of February.

“We shall do well to remember that the power which is for a moment partially disabled and crippled, yet gives its support to the Washington government, consists at the present moment of 22,000,000 of people.  Those Northern states, ten, twenty and thirty years hence, will increase as rapidly as they have ever done before in population and power.  They are our countrymen to a great extent.  We have few enemies there, except those who left these shores with feelings of discontent against this government because their grievances were not removed.  And it is worth our while, on grounds of self-interest, that we should in all our transactions acknowledge our alliance and kinship with such a nation, and not leave behind an incredible and undying sting, which it would take many years, perhaps a generation or two, to remove.  The war of independence eighty years ago, left such a sting; the war of 1812 inflicted similar mischief.  The course taken by the government is not in the demand made, not in the dispatch by which that demand was accompanied, not in the courteous manner in which Lord Lyons managed the negotiations (cheers,) but in the instantaneous and alarming menace of war, coupled with the offensive charges made every day by the press which supported the government, tended to leave on the mind of every American a felling that England had not treated the United States in that magnanimous and friendly manner which they had a right to expect from us.  I am glad to see that a remarkable change has operated day by day, both in this House and out of it.  It is obvious that since the course taken by the American government has been known a great change has taken place in the opinion of this country.  It has become more friendly to the Washington government, for people now see that it is a real government, not ruled by a mob or disregarding the law, but struggling to maintain the integrity of a great country.  They see in that country the home of every man who wants a home, and moreover, they believe that the greatest of all crimes that any people in the history of the world has ever been connected with, the crime of keeping in slavery 4,000,000 of people, is, under the providence of a Power very much higher than that of a Prime Minister of England, or the President of the United states, marching on as I believe, to its entire abolition.”

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 15, 1862, p. 3