(2.): To Mr. Bright

Considerations of Mr. Bright’s general course and policy.

“Dec. 29, 1859.—You will be speaking at Birmingham again soon. It is hard to tell what to say. If you are intense on Reform, you will have a hearty response from the meeting, and little beyond it. If you are cooler than your wont, you will disappoint your hearers. Were I in your place, I should not dwell too much on the Reform topic. But then, what else can you talk about? I should like to see you turn the tables on those who have wasted another autumn on another bubble cry. But perhaps people are not yet sufficiently out of breath with the cry to listen to you. I observe the Times, having led the pack all through the phantom chase, is now turning round, and saying that it was not from fear of the French that we are called on to arm. And this line is taken by its followers. I have always observed that, as the time for the meeting of Parliament approaches, the newspapers put on a more decent regard for propriety and consistency. They feel that a power of refutation and exposure is at hand when the House is in Session. This last autumn’s escapade of the good British public, calling its youth to arm against an imaginary foe, after having seen twenty-six millions voted for its protection, is one of the most discouraging and humiliating spectacles I have witnessed. The effect it has on me is to produce a feeling of indifference. To be too much in earnest in the cause of common sense, with the liability to see one’s countrymen running mad every year or two after any visionary programme launched by the anonymous writers of the Times, is only calculated to injure one’s digestion, and perhaps ruin one’s health; and so I try to cultivate a stoical apathy.

“Perhaps we are wrong in aiming at producing too large results within a given time. I do not, as I grow older, lose my faith in humanity, and its future destinies; but I do every year—perhaps it is natural with increasing years—feel less sanguine in my hope of seeing any material change in my own day and generation. I sometimes doubt whether you would not have done more wisely to rely on your House of Commons influence, and been more shy of the Stump. Your greatest power is in the House. In quiet times, there is no influence to be had from without, and if we fell into evil days of turbulence, and suffering and agitation, less scrupulous leaders would carry off the masses. You are not the less qualified to take your true position, from having shown that you are an outside, as well as an inside, leader. But I have an opinion that if you intend to follow politics, and not eschew office, you must in future be more exclusively a House of Commons man.

“And then you must make up your mind to accept certain conditions of things as a part of our English political existence during your time. For instance, the Church and Aristocracy are great realities, which will last for your life and your sons.’ To ignore them or despise them is equally incompatible with the part which I think you have the ambition to play, and which I am sure you are competent to perform. I remember that President Buchanan, the day before he left London on his return to America, in the course of a conversation over the tea-table, remarked: ‘I leave England with the conviction that you are not yet able to govern yourselves without the aid of your aristocracy.’ There are things to be done which you and I could make a so-called Liberal government do, if we were out of the Cabinet, without being held ineligible by the Court and Aristocracy (with whom the most powerful part of the middle class will be found sympathizing) to enter it, owing to any extreme democratic designs. But we are comparatively powerless if we can be assumed to be excluded from the government by either our own will, or that of the ruling class, owing to our entertaining revolutionary or fundamentally subversive doctrines. One great object with I should like to force our rulers, much against their will, to accomplish, is the limitation of our armed force, in relation to that of France. And this I will endeavour to promote, if I am spared, and my present task is successful, by an appeal to the French Government in the same unofficial way as I am now at work upon another affair. But I feel convinced that the great obstacle would be with our own ruling class.

“This could only be overcome by an honest party in the House, of which you must be the head. My talking days are, I think, nearly over; I have no confidence in my voice serving me much in future. I suffer no inconvenience now; but a hoarseness interposes if I talk much, and I feel as if half an hour’s public speaking would render me inaudible. However, I shall go to Cannes as soon as this business is decided one way or another, which must be within a fortnight. When I speak of being held eligible for office, I merely refer to the power which that gives us in the House. I have no intention to take office under any circumstances, because I think I could do more good out of office. Besides, it is too late even if I liked it. I am in my fifty-sixth year, and do not come of a long-lived parentage.

“I thought of saying a few words about the state of opinion here [Paris], the designs of the Emperor, etcetera. I have no prejudice against a voluntary armed force like the riflemen of Switzerland, or the militia of America, though it is open to question whether Joseph Hume was right in preferring a regular armed profession, on the principle of the division of labour. But the origin of our rifle corps, just after we had voted twenty-six millions for our armed professions, as a means of defence, and instigated by real or pretended fear or France, is such as to make the movement a disgraceful act of folly—speaking of the nation, and not of all the individuals who have been drawn into it.”