Part 8

I have an illustration of this subject in the case of a society of which the honorable member for Suffolk is chairman. We have lately seen a new light spreading amongst agricultural gentlemen. We are told the salvation of this country is to arise from the cultivation of flax. There is a National Flax Society, of which Lord Rendlesham is the president. This Flax Society state in their prospectus, a copy of which I have here, purporting to be the First Annual Report of the National Flax Agricultural Improvement Association,—after talking of the ministers holding out no hope from legislation, the report goes on to state that upon these grounds the National Flax Society call upon the nation for its support, on the ground that they are going to remedy the distress of the country. The founder of this society is Mr. Warnes of Norfolk. I observe Mr. Warnes paid a visit to Sussex, and he attended an agricultural meeting at which the honorable baronet, the member for Shoreham [Sir Charles Burrell], presided. After the usual loyal toasts, the honorable baronet proposed the toast of the evening: “Mr. Warnes and the cultivation of flax.” The honorable baronet was not aware, I dare say, that he was then furnishing a most deadly weapon to the lecturers of the Anti-Corn-Law League. We are told you cannot compete with foreigners unless you have a high protective duty. You have a high protective duty on wheat, amounting at this moment to 20_s._ a quarter. A quarter of wheat at the present time is just worth the same as one cwt. of flax. On a quarter of wheat you have a protective duty against the Pole and Russian of 20_s._; upon the one cwt. of flax you have a protective duty of 1_d._ And I did not hear a murmur from honorable gentlemen opposite when the Prime-Minister proposed to take off that protective duty of 1_d._ totally and immediately.

But we are told that English agriculturists cannot compete with foreigners, and especially with that serf labor that is to be found somewhere up the Baltic. Well, but flax comes from the Baltic and there is no protective duty. Honorable gentlemen say we have no objection to raw materials where there is no labor connected with them; but we cannot contend against foreigners in wheat, because there is such an amount of labor in it. Why, there is twice as much labor in flax as there is in wheat; but the member for Shoreham favors the growth of flax in order to restore the country, which is sinking into this abject and hopeless state for want of agricultural protection. But the honorable baronet will forgive me—I am sure he will, he looks as if he would—if I allude a little to the subject of leases. The honorable gentleman on that occasion, I believe, complained that it was a great pity that farmers did not grow more flax. I do not know whether it was true or not that the same honorable baronet’s leases to his own tenants forbade them to grow that article.

Now, it is quite as possible that the right honorable baronet does not exactly know what covenants or clauses there are in his leases. But I know that it is a very common case to preclude the growth of flax; and it just shows the kind of management by which the landed proprietors have carried on their affairs, that actually, I believe, the original source of the error that flax was very pernicious to the ground was derived from Virgil; I believe there is a passage in the Georgics to that effect.[15a] From that classic authority, no doubt, some learned lawyer put this clause into the lease, and there it has remained ever since.

Now, I have alluded to the condition of the laborers at the present time; but I am bound to say that while the farmers at the present moment are in a worse condition than they have been for the last ten years, I believe the agricultural laborers have passed over the winter with less suffering and distress, although it has been a five-months’ winter, and a severer one, too, than they endured in the previous year. [Hear!] I am glad to find that corroborated by honorable gentlemen opposite, because it bears out, in a remarkable degree, the opinion that we, who are in connection with the free-trade question, entertain. We maintain that a low price of food is beneficial to the laboring classes. We assert, and we can prove it, at least in the manufacturing districts, that whenever provisions are dear wages are low, and whenever food is cheap wages invariably rise. We have had a strike in almost every business in Lancashire since the price of wheat has been down to something like 50_s._; and I am glad to be corroborated when I state that the agricultural laborers have been in a better condition during the last winter than they were in the previous one. But does not that show that, even in your case, though your laborers have in a general way only just as much as will find them a subsistence, they are benefited by a great abundance of the first necessaries of life? Although their wages may rise and fall with the price of food,—although they may go up with the advance in the price of corn, and fall when it is lowered,—still, I maintain that it does not rise in the same proportion as the price of food rises, nor fall to the extent to which food falls. Therefore in all cases the agricultural laborers are in a better state when food is low than when it is high. I have a very curious proof that high-priced food leads to pauperism in the agricultural districts, which I will read to you. It is a laborer’s certificate seen at Stowupland, in Suffolk, in July, 1844, which was placed upon the mantel-piece of a peasant’s cottage there:

“West Suffolk Agricultural Association, established in 1833 for the advancement of agriculture and the encouragement of industry and skill and good conduct among laborers and servants in husbandry, President—the Duke of Grafton, Lord-Lieutenant of the county: This is to certify that a prize of 2_l._ was awarded to William Burch, aged 82, laborer of the parish of Stowupland, in West Suffolk, September 25, 1840, for having brought up nine children without relief, except when flour was very dear; and for having worked on the same farm twenty-eight years. (Signed) Rt. Rushbrooke, Chairman.”

Now I need not press that point. It is admitted by honorable gentlemen opposite—and I am glad it is so—that after a very severe winter, in the midst of great distress among farmers, when there have been a great many able-bodied men wanting employment, still there have been fewer in the streets and work-houses than there had been in the previous year; and I hope we shall not again be told by honorable gentlemen opposite that cheap bread is injurious to the laborers.

But the condition of the agricultural laborer is a bad case at the very best. You can look before you, and you have to foresee the means of giving employment to those men. I need not tell you that the late census shows that you cannot employ your own increasing population in the agricultural districts. But you say the farmer should employ them. Now, I am bound to say that, whatever may be the condition of the agricultural laborer, I hold that the farmer is not responsible for that condition while he is placed in the situation in which he now is by the present system. I have seen during the last autumn and winter a great many exhortations made to the farmers, that they should employ more laborers. I think that is very unfair towards the farmer; I believe he is the man who is suffering most; he stands between you and your impoverished, suffering peasantry; and it is rather too bad to point to the farmer as the man who should relieve them. I have an extract from Lord Hardwick’s address to the laborers of Haddenham. He says:

“Conciliate your employers, and if they do not perform their duty to you and themselves, address yourselves to the landlords, and I assure you that you will find us ready to urge our own tenants to the proper cultivation of their farms, and, consequently, to the just employment of the laborer.”

Now, I hold that this duty begins nearer home, and that the landed proprietors are the parties who are responsible if the laborers have not employment. You have absolute power; there is no doubt about that. You can, if you please, legislate for the laborers, or yourselves. Whatever you may have done besides, your legislation has been adverse to the laborer, and you have no right to call upon the farmers to remedy the evils which you have caused. Will not this evil—if evil you call it—press on you more and more every year? What can you do to remedy the mischief? I only appear here now because you have proposed nothing. We all know your system of allotments, and we are all aware of its failure. What other remedy have you? for, mark you, that is worse than a plaything, if you were allowed to carry out your own views. [Hear!] Aye, it is well enough for some of you that there are wiser heads than your own to lead you, or you would be conducting yourselves into precisely the same condition in which they are in Ireland, but with this difference—this increased difficulty,—that there they do manage to maintain the rights of property by the aid of the English Exchequer and 20,000 bayonets; but divide your own country into small allotments, and where would be the rights of property? What do you propose to do now? That is the question. Nothing has been brought forward this year, which I have heard, having for its object to benefit the great mass of the English population; nothing I have heard suggested which has at all tended to alleviate their condition.

You admit that the farmer’s capital is sinking from under him, and that he is in a worse state than ever. Have you distinctly provided some plan to give confidence to the farmer, to cause an influx of capital to be expended upon his land, and so bring increased employment to the laborer? How is this to be met? I cannot believe you are going to make this a political game. You must set up some specific object to benefit the agricultural interest. It is well said that the last election was an agricultural triumph. There are two hundred county members sitting behind the Prime-Minister who prove that it was so. What, then, is your plan for this distressing state of things? That is what I want to ask you. Do not, as you have done before, quarrel with me because I have imperfectly stated my case; I have done my best; and I again ask you what you have to propose? I tell you that this “Protection,” as it has been called, is a failure. It was so when you had the prohibition up to 80_s._ You know the state of your farming tenantry in 1821. It was a failure when you had a protection price of 60_s._; for you know what was the condition of your farm tenantry in 1835. It is a failure now with your last amendment, for you have admitted and proclaimed it to us; and what is the condition of your agricultural population at this time? I ask, what is your plan? I hope it is not a pretence; a mere political game that has been played throughout the last election, and that you have not all come up here as mere politicians. There are politicians in the House; men who look with an ambition—probably a justifiable one—to the honors of office. There may be men who—with thirty years of continuous service, having been pressed into a groove from which they can neither escape nor retreat—may be holding office, high office, maintained there, probably, at the expense of their present convictions which do not harmonize very well with their early opinions. I make allowances for them; but the great body of the honorable gentlemen opposite came up to this House, not as politicians, but as the farmers’ friends, and protectors of the agricultural interests. Well, what do you propose to do? You have heard the Prime-Minister declare that, if he could restore all the protection which you have had, that protection would not benefit agriculturists. Is that your belief? If so, why not proclaim it? and if it is not your conviction, you will have falsified your mission in this House, by following the right honorable baronet out into the lobby, and opposing inquiry into the condition of the very men who sent you here.[16]

With mere politicians I have no right to expect to succeed in this motion. But I have no hesitation in telling you, that, if you give me a committee of this House, I will explode the delusion of agricultural protection! I will bring forward such a mass of evidence, and give you such a preponderance of talent and of authority, that when the Blue-Book is published and sent forth to the world, as we can now send it, by our vehicles of information, your system of protection shall not live in public opinion for two years afterward.[17] Politicians do not want that. This cry of protection has been a very convenient handle for politicians. The cry of protection carried the counties at the last election, and politicians gained honors, emoluments, and place by it. But is that old tattered flag of protection, tarnished and torn as it is already, to be kept hoisted still in the counties for the benefit of politicians; or will you come forward honestly and fairly to inquire into this question? I cannot believe that the gentry of England will be made mere drum-heads to be sounded upon by a Prime-Minister to give forth unmeaning and empty sounds, and to have no articulate voice of their own. No! You are the gentry of England who represent the counties. You are the aristocracy of England. Your fathers led our fathers; you may lead us if you will go the right way. But, although you have retained your influence with this country longer than any other aristocracy, it has not been by opposing popular opinion, or by setting yourselves against the spirit of the age.

In other days, when the battle and the hunting-fields were the tests of manly vigor, your fathers were first and foremost there. The aristocracy of England were not like the noblesse of France, the mere minions of a court; nor were they like the hidalgos of Madrid, who dwindled into pigmies. You have been Englishmen. You have not shown a want of courage and firmness when any call has been made upon you. This is a new era. It is the age of improvement, it is the age of social advancement, not the age for war or for feudal sports. You live in a mercantile age, when the whole wealth of the world is poured into your lap. You cannot have the advantages of commercial rents and feudal privileges; but you may be what you always have been, if you will identify yourselves with the spirit of the age. The English people look to the gentry and aristocracy of their country as their leaders. I, who am not one of you, have no hesitation in telling you that there is a deep-rooted, an hereditary prejudice, if I may so call it, in your favor in this country. But you never got it, and you will not keep it, by obstructing the spirit of the age. If you are indifferent to enlightened means of finding employment to your own peasantry; if you are found obstructing that advance which is calculated to knit nations more together in the bonds of peace by means of commercial intercourse; if you are found fighting against the discoveries which have almost given breath and life to material nature, and setting up yourselves as obstructives of that which destiny has decreed shall go on,—why, then, you will be the gentry of England no longer, and others will be found to take your place.

And I have no hesitation in saying that you stand just now in a very critical position. There is a wide-spread suspicion that you have been tampering with the best feelings and with the honest confidence of your constituents in this cause. Everywhere you are doubted and suspected. Read your own organs, and you will see that this is the case. Well, then, this is the time to show that you are not the mere party politicians which you are said to be. I have said that we shall be opposed in this measure by politicians; they do not want inquiry. But I ask you to go into this committee with me. I will give you a majority of county members. You shall have a majority of the Central Society in that committee. I ask you only to go into a fair inquiry as to the causes of the distress of your own population. I only ask that this matter may be fairly examined. Whether you establish my principle or yours, good will come out of the inquiry; and I do, therefore, beg and entreat the honorable independent country gentlemen of this House that they will not refuse, on this occasion, to go into a fair, a full, and an impartial inquiry.

JOHN BRIGHT.

The most eloquent of the orators of the Liberal party in England was born at Greenbank, a village now forming a part of Rochedale, in 1811. His father was a manufacturer of some prominence, and the son at the age of fifteen left school and became identified with the business interests of the firm. The education of John Bright was neither comprehensive nor thorough. He early showed an unusual fondness for English literature, and he acquired a large knowledge of English history; but in other respects his education was simply of that fragmentary nature which comes from quick intelligence and large opportunities of observation. His teachers have left no record of any remarkable promise in his early days. About the time of attaining his majority he travelled extensively on the continent; and the first evidence of great oratorical promise was given in a course of lectures embodying his recollections of a tour in Europe and the Holy Land in 1835.

Though Bright had taken an active part in the local agitation for reform in 1832, it was not till he became identified with the Anti-Corn-Law League in 1839 that he became prominent as a public speaker. In the course of the agitation that followed he was closely identified with Cobden in the work of the league. Bright’s oratory, while less persuasive than that of Cobden, was of a loftier tone, and was better adapted to arouse the attention of the people to the importance of the subject. Throughout the whole of the Anti-Corn-Law movement the names of Cobden and Bright were closely associated, and the intimate and beautiful friendship then begun continued without interruption till Cobden’s death. It was the popular influence they acquired by their speeches in behalf of free trade that brought them both into Parliament. Bright took his seat in 1843, and delivered his maiden speech in August of the same year in behalf of extending the principles of free trade. Though defeated in 1857 by the city of Manchester, on account of his energetic opposition to the course of the government in the Crimean War, he was immediately taken up by the electors of Birmingham and returned by a triumphant majority. His career in the House of Commons, therefore, has been uninterrupted for more than thirty years.

During the whole of this period Mr. Bright’s powers have been consistently exerted in behalf of certain definite lines of political policy. From first to last he has been the uncompromising advocate and champion of the principles of free trade. He has been a thorough student of American affairs; and at the time of the American civil war, it was his eloquence more than any other one thing that restrained England from following the lead of France into the policy of acknowledging the independence of the seceding States. In domestic affairs he has advocated the general policy of retrenchment, a more equitable distribution of the seats with reference to population, and a wide extension of the rights of suffrage. In 1857 his strenuous and eloquent opposition to the methods of Palmerston cost him his seat in the House; and in 1882 he resigned his place in the cabinet, because he was unwilling to share the policy of Mr. Gladstone which led to the bombardment of Alexandria. On each of these subjects he has left a group of speeches that are likely to retain an honorable and permanent place in the history of British eloquence. It has been his lot to be more frequently opposed to the government than in sympathy with it; and although he can hardly be said to have originated any great lines of policy, his influence has always been felt in behalf of peace and of an extension of popular freedom.

JOHN BRIGHT.

ON THE FOREIGN POLICY OF ENGLAND; DELIVERED AT A BANQUET GIVEN IN HONOR OF MR. BRIGHT, AT BIRMINGHAM, OCTOBER 29, 1858.

[The foreign policy of Lord Palmerston in the Crimean War had been severely criticized by Cobden and Bright, and in consequence of this criticism, Bright had lost his seat for Manchester. He was at once, however, elected by Birmingham; and the speech here given was delivered in the Town-Hall on the occasion of his first visit to his constituents.]

The frequent and far too complimentary manner in which my name has been mentioned to-night, and the most kind way in which you have received me, have placed me in a position somewhat humiliating, and really painful; for to receive laudation which one feels one cannot possibly have merited, is much more painful than to be passed by in a distribution of commendation to which possibly one might lay some claim.

If one twentieth part of what has been said is true, if I am entitled to any measure of your approbation, I may begin to think that my public career and my opinions are not so un-English and so anti-national as some of those who profess to be the best of our public instructors have sometimes assumed. How, indeed, can I, any more than any of you, be un-English and anti-national? Was I not born upon the same soil? Do I not come of the same English stock? Are not my family committed irrevocably to the fortunes of this country? Is not whatever property I may have depending, as much as yours is depending, upon the good government of our common fatherland? Then how shall any man dare to say to any one of his countrymen, because he happens to hold a different opinion on questions of great public policy, that therefore he is un-English, and is to be condemned as anti-national? There are those who would assume that between my countrymen and me, and between my constituents and me, there has been, and there is now, a great gulf fixed, and that if I cannot pass over to them and to you, they and you can by no possibility pass over to me.

Now, I take the liberty here, in the presence of an audience as intelligent as can be collected within the limits of this island, and of those who have the strongest claims to know what opinions I do entertain relative to certain great questions of public policy, to assert that I hold no views, that I have never promulgated any views, on those controverted questions with respect to which I cannot bring as witnesses in my favor, and as fellow-believers with myself, some of the best and most revered names in the history of English statesmanship.

About 120 years ago, the government of this country was directed by Sir Robert Walpole, a great minister, who for a long period preserved the country in peace, and whose pride it was that during those years he had done so. Unfortunately, toward the close of his career, he was driven by faction into a policy which was the ruin of his political position.[18]

Sir Robert Walpole declared, when speaking of the question of war as affecting this country, that nothing could be so foolish, nothing so mad, as a policy of war for a trading nation. And he went so far as to say, that any peace was better than the most successful war.

I do not give you the precise language made use of by the minister, for I speak only from memory; but I am satisfied I am not misrepresenting him in what I have now stated.

Come down fifty years nearer to our own time, and you find a statesman, not long in office, but still strong in the affections of all persons of Liberal principles in this country, and in his time representing fully the sentiments of the Liberal party—Charles James Fox.