(9.): To Mr. Bright

Free Trade could only have been carried while the Nation was in a sober mood.

“To my eye, from this distance there seems a strange contempt of sober domestic politics among the English people. They have been blasés by wars in India and the Crimea and by the great events of the Continent, and are like people who have drunk to excess, or eaten nothing but spiced meats, and cannot relish anything less exciting. I have often thought how lucky we were that when struggling for Free Trade in corn, the Continent was slumbering under Louis Philippe’s soporific reign, and that we had to deal with statesman like Peel and Lord Aberdeen, who were too honest and sedate to get up a war or foreign complications to divert attention from home grievances. Think how impossible it would be in these times to keep public attention for seven years to one domestic grievance. Why Garibaldi would draw off the eyes of the country from any agitation you could raise in our day! The concentrated earnestness with which political parties were at work in the United States, inspired me with full faith that the people of the country would, in spite of the difficulties and dangers of their political issues, work out their salvation. If I had found them engaged in settling the affairs of the whole world, instead of their own, I should have despaired.”