I think that, just now, if you can find a man who on
questions of great state policy agrees with us, at the same time having a deep
personal interest in this great cotton question, and having paid so much
attention to it as Mr. Cheetham has, — I think there is a double reason why he
should receive the votes and have the confidence of this division of the
county. (Cheers) Now, is this cotton question a great question Or not? I met a
spinner to-day, — he does not live in Rochdale, though I met him here, — and I
asked him what he thought about it; and he said, “Well, I think cotton will
come somehow.” (Laughter.) And I find that there is that kind of answer to be
had from three out of four of all the spinners that you ask. They know that in
past times, when cotton has risen fifty or eighty per cent, or some extravagant
rise, something has come, — the rate of interest has been raised, or there has
been a commercial panic from some cause or other, and down the price has gone ;
and when everybody said, “There would be no cotton at Christmas,” there proved
a very considerable stock at Christmas. And so they say now.
I don’t in the least deny that it will be so; all I assert
is, that this particular case is new, that we have never had a war in the
United States between different sections of that country, affecting the
production of cotton before; and it is not fair, or Wise, but rather childish
than otherwise, to argue from past events, which were not a bit like this, of
the event which is now passing before our eyes. They say, “It is quite true
there is a civil war in America, but it will blow over: there will be a
compromise; or the English government will break the blockade.” Now recollect
what breaking the blockade means. It means a war with the United States; and I
don’t think that it would be cheap to break the blockade at the cost of a war
with the United States. I think that the cost of a war with the United States
would give probably half wages, for a very considerable time, to those persons
in Lancashire who would be out of work if there was no cotton, to say nothing
at all of the manifest injustice and wrong against all international law, that
a legal and effective blockade should be interfered with by another country.
It is not exactly the business of this meeting, but my
opinion is, that the safety of the product on which this county depends rests
far more on the success of the Washington government than upon its failure; and
I believe nothing could be more monstrous than for us, who are not very averse
to war ourselves, to set up for critics, carping, cavilling critics, of what
the Washington government is doing. I saw a letter the other day from an
Englishman, resident for twenty-five years in Philadelphia, a merchant there,
and a very prosperous merchant. He said, “I prefer the institutions of this
country (the , United States) very much to yours in England”; but he says also,
“If it be once admitted that here we have no country and no government, but
that any portion of these United States can break off from the central
government whenever it pleases, then it is time for me to pack up what I have,
and to go somewhere where there is a country and a government”
Well, that is the pith of this question. Do you suppose
that, if Lancashire and Yorkshire thought that they would break off from the
United Kingdom, those newspapers which are now preaching every kind of
moderation to the government of Washington would advise the government in
London to allow these two counties to set up a special government for themselves?
When the people in Ireland wished to secede, was it proposed in London that
they should be allowed to secede peaceably? Nothing of the kind. I am not going
to defend what is taking place in a country that is well able to defend itself.
But I advise you, and I advise the people of England, to abstain from applying
to the United States doctrines and principles which we never apply to our own
case. At any rate, they have never fought “for the balance of power ” in
Europe. They have never fought to keep up a decaying empire. They have never
squandered the money of their people in such phantom expeditions as we have
been engaged in. And now at this moment, when you are told that they are going
to be ruined by their vast expenditure, the sum that they are now going. To raise
in the great emergency of this grievous war is no greater than what we raise
every year during a time of peace. (Loud cheers.) They say that they are not
going to liberate slaves. No; the object of the Washington government is to
maintain their own Constitution, and to act legally, as it permits and requires.
No man is more in favor of peace than I am; no man has
denounced war more than I have, probably, in this country; few men, in their
public life, have suffered more obloquy — I had almost said, more indignity —
in consequence of it. But I cannot, for the life of me, see, upon any of those
principles upon which states are governed now, —— I say nothing of the literal
word of the New Testament, — I cannot see how the state of affairs in America,
with regard to the United States government, could have been different from
what it is at this moment. We had a heptarchy in this country, and it was
thought to be a good thing to get rid of it, and to have a united nation. If
the thirty-three or thirty-four States of the American Union can break off
whenever they like, I can see nothing but disaster and confusion throughout the
whole of that continent. I say that the war, be it successful or not, be it
Christian or not, be it wise or not, is a war to sustain the government and to
sustain the authority of a great nation; and that the people of England, if
they are true to their own sympathies, to their own history, and to their own
great act of 1834, to which reference has already been made, will have no
sympathy with those who wish to build up a great empire on the perpetual
bondage of millions of their fellow-men. (Loud cheers.)
SOURCE: John Bright Moore, Speeches of John Bright, M.P., on the American Question, p. 1-7
