Speeches on Questions of Public Policy Part 12

We sometimes are engaged in discussions, and have great difficulty to know what we are about; but the hon. Gentleman left us in no kind of doubt when he sat down. He proposed a resolution, in words which, under certain circ.u.mstances and addressed to certain parties, might end in offensive or injurious consequences. Taken in connection with his character, and with the speech he has made tonight, and with the speech he has recently made elsewhere on this subject, I may say that he would have come to about the same conclusion if he had proposed to address the Crown inviting the Queen to declare war against the United States of America. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is known not to be very zealous in the particular line of opinion that I have adopted, addressed the hon. Gentleman in the smoothest language possible, but still he was obliged to charge him with the tone of bitter hostility which marked his speech.

On a recent occasion the hon. Member addressed some members of his const.i.tuency--I do not mean in his last speech, I mean in the speech in August last year--in which he entered upon a course of prophecy which, like most prophecies in our day, does not happen to come true. But he said then what he said to-night, that the American people and Government were overbearing. He did not tell his const.i.tuents that the Government of the United States had, almost during the whole of his lifetime, been conducted by his friends of the South. He said that, if they were divided, they would not be able to bully the whole world; and he made use of these expressions: 'The North will never be our friends; of the South you can make friends,--they are Englishmen,--they are not the sc.u.m and refuse of the world.'

Mr. Roebuck: 'Allow me to correct that statement. What I said I now state to the House, that the men of the South were Englishmen, but that the army of the North was composed of the sc.u.m of Europe.'

Mr. Bright: I take, of course, that explanation of the hon. and learned Gentleman, with this explanation from me, that there is not, so far as I can find, any mention near that paragraph, and I think there is not in the speech a single word, about the army.

Mr. Roebuck: 'I a.s.sure you I said that.'

Mr. Bright: Then I take it for granted that the hon. and learned Gentleman said that, or that if he said what I have read he greatly regrets it.

Mr. Roebuck: 'No, I did not say it.'

Mr. Bright: The hon. and learned Gentleman in his resolution speaks of other powers. But he has unceremoniously got rid of all the powers but France, and he comes here to-night with a story of an interview with a man whom he describes as the great ruler of France--tells us of a conversation with him--asks us to accept the lead of the Emperor of the French on, I will undertake to say, one of the greatest questions that ever was submitted to the British Parliament. But it is not long since the hon. and learned Gentleman held very different language. I recollect in this House, only about two years ago, that the hon. and learned Gentleman said: 'I hope I may be permitted to express in respectful terms my opinion, even though it should affect so great a potentate as the Emperor of the French. I have no faith in the Emperor of the French.' On another occasion the hon. and learned Gentleman said,--not, I believe, in this House,--'I am still of opinion that we have nothing but animosity and bad faith to look for from the French Emperor.' And he went on to say that still, though he had been laughed at, he adopted the patriotic character of 'Tear-'em,' and was still at his post.

And when the hon. and learned Gentleman came back, I think from his expedition to Cherbourg, does the House recollect the language he used on that occasion--language which, if it expressed the sentiments which he felt, at least I think he might have been content to have withheld?

If I am not mistaken, referring to the salutation between the Emperor of the French and the Queen of these kingdoms, he said, 'When I saw his perjured lips touch that hallowed cheek.' And now, Sir, the hon. and learned Gentleman has been to Paris, introduced there by the hon. Member for Sunderland, and he has sought to become as it were in the palace of the French Emperor a co-conspirator with him to drag this country into a policy which I maintain is as hostile to its interests as it would be degrading to its honour.

But then the high contracting parties, I suspect, are not agreed, because I will say this in justice to the French Emperor, that there has never come from him in public, nor from any one of his Ministers, nor is there anything to be found in what they have written, that is tinctured in the smallest degree with that bitter hostility which the hon. and learned Gentleman has constantly exhibited to the United States of America and their people. France, if not wise in this matter, is at least not unfriendly. The hon. and learned Member, in my opinion--indeed I am sure--is not friendly, and I believe he is not wise.

But now, on this subject, without speaking disrespectfully of the great potentate who has taken the hon. and learned Gentleman into his confidence, I must say that the Emperor runs the risk of being far too much represented in this House. We have now two--I will not call them envoys extraordinary, but most extraordinary. And, if report speaks true, even they are not all. The hon. Member for King's County (Mr.

Hennessy)--I do not see him in his place--came back the other day from Paris, and there were whispers that he had seen the great ruler of France, and that he could tell everybody in the most confidential manner that the Emperor was ready to make a spring at Russia for the sake of delivering Poland, and that he only waited for a word from the Prime Minister of England.

I do not understand the policy of the Emperor if these new Ministers of his tell the truth. For, Sir, if one Gentleman says that he is about to make war with Russia, and another that he is about to make war with America, I am disposed to look at what he is already doing. I find that he is holding Rome against the opinion of all Italy. He is conquering Mexico by painful steps, every footstep marked by devastation and blood.

He is warring, in some desultory manner, in China, and for aught I know he may be about to do it in j.a.pan. I say that, if he is to engage, at the same time, in dismembering the greatest Eastern Empire and the great Western Republic, he has a greater ambition than Louis XIV, a greater daring than the first of his name; and that, if he endeavours to grasp these great transactions, his dynasty may fall and be buried in the ruins of his own ambition.

I can say only one sentence upon the question to which the n.o.ble Lord has directed so much attention. I understand that we have not heard all the story from Paris, and further, that it is not at all remarkable, seeing that the secret has been confided to two persons, that we have not heard it correctly. I saw my hon. Friend, the Member for Sunderland, near me, and his face underwent remarkable contortions during the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman, and I felt perfectly satisfied that he did not agree with what his colleague was saying. I am told there is in existence a little memorandum which contains an account of what was said and done at that interview in Paris; and before the discussion closes we shall no doubt have that memorandum produced, and from it know how far these two gentlemen are agreed.

I now come to the proposition which the hon. and learned Gentleman has submitted to the House, and which he has already submitted to a meeting of his const.i.tuents at Sheffield. At that meeting, on the 27th of May, the hon. and learned Gentleman used these words: 'What I have to consider is, what are the interests of England: what is for her interests I believe to be for the interests of the world.' Now, leaving out of consideration the latter part of that statement, if the hon. and learned Gentleman will keep to the first part of it, then what we have now to consider in this question is, what is for the interest of England. But the hon. and learned Gentleman has put it to-night in almost as offensive a way as he did before at Sheffield, and has said that the United States would not bully the world if they were divided and subdivided; for he went so far as to contemplate division into more than two independent sections. I say that the whole of his ease rests upon a miserable jealousy of the United States, or on what I may term a base fear. It is a fear which appears to me just as groundless as any of those panics by which the hon. and learned Gentleman has attempted to frighten the country.

There never was a State in the world which was less capable of aggression with regard to Europe than the United States of America. I speak of its government, of its confederation, of the peculiarities of its organization; for the House will agree with me, that nothing is more peculiar than the fact of the great power which the separate States, both of the North and South, exercise upon the policy and course of the country. I will undertake to say, that, unless in a question of overwhelming magnitude, which would be able to unite any people, it would be utterly hopeless to expect that all the States of the American Union would join together to support the central Government in any plan of aggression on England or any other country of Europe.

Besides, nothing can be more certain than this, that the Government which is now in power, and the party which have elected Mr. Lincoln to office, is a moral and peaceable party, which has been above all things anxious to cultivate the best possible state of feeling with regard to England. The hon. and learned Gentleman, of all men, ought not to entertain this fear of United States aggression, for he is always boasting of his readiness to come into the field himself. I grant that it would be a great necessity indeed which would justify a conscription in calling out the hon. and learned Gentleman, but I say he ought to consider well before he spreads these alarms among the people. For the sake of this miserable jealousy, and that he may help to break up a friendly nation, he would depart from the usages of nations, and create an everlasting breach between the people of England and the people of the United States of America. He would do more; and, notwithstanding what he has said tonight, I may put this as my strongest argument against his case--he would throw the weight of England into the scale in favour of the cause of slavery.

I want to show the hon. and learned Gentleman that England is not interested in the course he proposes we should take; and when I speak of interests, I mean the commercial interests, the political interests, and the moral interests of the country. And first, with regard to the supply of cotton, in which the n.o.ble Lord the Member for Stamford takes such a prodigious interest. I must explain to the n.o.ble Lord that I know a little about cotton. I happen to have been engaged in that business,-- not all my life, for the n.o.ble Lord has seen me here for twenty years,-- but my interests have been in it; and at this moment the firm of which I am a member have no less than six mills, which have been at a stand for nearly a year, owing to the impossibility of working under the present conditions of the supply of cotton. I live among a people who live by this trade; and there is no man in England who has a more direct interest in it than I have. Before the war, the supply of cotton was little and costly, and every year it was becoming more costly, for the supply did not keep pace with the demand.

The point that I am about to argue is this: I believe that the war which is now raging in America is more likely to abolish slavery than not, and more likely to abolish it than any other thing that can be proposed in the world. I regret very much that the pride and pa.s.sion of men are such as to justify me in making this statement. The supply of cotton under slavery must always be insecure. The House felt so in past years; for at my recommendation they appointed a committee, and but for the folly of a foolish Minister they would have appointed a special commission to India at my request. Is there any gentleman in this House who will not agree with me in this,--that it would be far better for our great Lancashire industry that our supply of cotton should be grown by free labour than by slave labour?

Before the war, the whole number of negroes engaged in the production of cotton was about one million,--that is, about a fourth of the whole of the negroes in the Slave States. The annual increase in the number of negroes growing cotton was about twenty-five thousand,--only two and a- half per cent. It was impossible for the Southern States to keep up their growth of sugar, rice, tobacco, and their ordinary slave productions, and at the same time to increase the growth of cotton more than at a rate corresponding with the annual increase of negroes.

Therefore you will find that the quant.i.ty of cotton grown, taking ten years together, increased only at the rate of about one hundred thousand bales a-year. But that was nothing like the quant.i.ty which we required.

That supply could not be increased, because the South did not cultivate more than probably one and a-half per cent of the land which was capable of cultivation for cotton.

The great bulk of the land in the Southern States is uncultivated. Ten thousand square miles are appropriated to the cultivation of cotton; but there are six hundred thousand square miles, or sixty times as much land, which is capable of being cultivated for cotton. It was, however, impossible that the land should be so cultivated, because, although you had climate and sun, you had no labour. The inst.i.tution of slavery forbade free-labour men in the North to come to the South; and every emigrant that landed in New York from Europe knew that the Slave States were no States for him, and therefore he went North or West. The laws of the United States, the sentiments of Europe and of the world, being against any opening of the slave-trade, the planters of the South were shut up, and the annual increase in the supply of cotton could increase only in the same proportion as the annual increase in the number of their negroes.

There is only one other point with regard to that matter which is worth mentioning. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Sheffield will understand it, although on some points he seems to be peculiarly dark.

If a planter in the Southern States wanted to grow one thousand bales of cotton a-year, he would require about two hundred negroes. Taking them at five hundred dollars, or one hundred pounds each, which is not more than half the price of a first-cla.s.s hand, the cost of the two hundred would be twenty thousand pounds. To grow one thousand bales of cotton a- year you require not only to possess an estate, machinery, tools, and other things necessary to carry on the cotton-growing business, but you must find a capital of twenty thousand pounds to buy the actual labourers by whom the plantation is to be worked; and therefore, as every gentleman will see at once, this great trade, to a large extent, was shut up in the hands of men who were required to be richer than would be necessary if slavery did not exist.

Thus the plantation business to a large extent became a monopoly, and therefore even on that account the production of cotton was constantly limited and controlled. I was speaking to a gentleman the other day from Mississippi. I believe no man in America or in England is more acquainted with the facts of this case. He has been for many years a Senator from the State of Mississippi. He told me that every one of these facts were true, and said, 'I have no doubt whatever that in ten years after freedom in the South, or after freedom in conjunction with the North, the production of cotton will be doubled, and cotton will be forwarded to the consumers of the world at a much less price than we have had it for many years past.'

I shall turn for a moment to the political interest, to which the hon.

and learned Gentleman paid much more attention than to the commercial.

The more I consider the course of this war, the more I come to the conclusion that it is improbable in future that the United States will be broken into separate republics. I do not come to the conclusion that the North will conquer the South. But I think the conclusion to which I am more disposed to come now than at any time since the breaking out of the war is this,--that, if a separation should occur for a time, still the interest, the sympathies, the sentiments, the necessities of the whole continent, and its ambition also, which, as hon. Gentlemen have mentioned, seems to some people to be a necessity, render it highly probable that the continent would still be united under one central Government. I may be quite mistaken. I do not express that opinion with any more confidence than hon. Gentlemen have expressed theirs in favour of a permanent dissolution; but now is not this possible,--that the Union may be again formed on the basis of the South? There are persons who think that possible. I hope it is not, but we cannot say that it is absolutely impossible.

Is it not possible that the Northern Government may be baffled in their military operations? Is it not possible that, by their own incapacity, they may be humiliated before their own people? And is it not even possible that the party which you please to call the Peace party in the North, but which is in no sense a peace party, should unite with the South, and that the Union should be reconst.i.tuted on the basis of Southern opinions and of the Southern social system? Is it not possible, for example, that the Southern people, and those in their favour, should appeal to the Irish population of America against the negroes, between whom there has been little sympathy and little respect; and is it not possible they should appeal to the commercial cla.s.ses of the North--and the rich commercial cla.s.ses in all countries, who, from the uncertainty of their possessions and the fluctuation of their interests, are rendered always timid and very often corrupt--is it not possible, I say, that they might prefer the union of their whole country upon the basis of the South, rather than that union which many Members of this House look upon with so much apprehension?

If that should ever take place--but I believe, with my hon. Friend below me (Mr. Forster), in the moral government of the world, and therefore I cannot believe that it will take place; but if it were to take place, with their great armies, and with their great navy, and their almost unlimited power, they might seek to drive England out of Canada, France out of Mexico, and whatever nations are interested in them out of the islands of the West Indies; and you might then have a great State built upon slavery and war, instead of that free State to which I look, built up upon an educated people, upon general freedom, and upon morality in government.

Now there is one more point to which the hon. and learned Gentleman will forgive me if I allude--he does not appear to me to think it of great importance--and that is, the morality of this question. The right hon.

Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the hon. Gentleman who spoke from the bench behind--and I think the n.o.ble Lord, if I am not mistaken--referred to the carnage which is occasioned by this lamentable strife. Well, carnage, I presume, is the accompaniment of all war. Two years ago the press of London ridiculed very much the battles of the United States, in which n.o.body was killed and few were hurt. There was a time when I stood up in this House, and pointed out the dreadful horrors of war. There was a war waged by this country in the Crimea; and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with an uneasy conscience, is constantly striving to defend that struggle. That war--for it lasted about the same time that the American war has lasted--at least destroyed as many lives as are estimated to have been destroyed in the United States.

My hon. Friend the Member for Montrose, who, I think, is not in the House, made a speech in Scotland some time last year, in which he gave the numbers which were lost by Russia in that war. An hon. Friend near me observes, that some people do not reckon the Russians for anything. I say, if you will add the Russians to the English, and the two to the French, and the three to the Sardinians, and the four to the Turks, that more lives were lost in the invasion of the Crimea, in the two years that it lasted, than have been lost hitherto in the American war. That is no defence of the carnage of the American war; but let hon. Gentlemen bear in mind that, when I protested against the carnage in the Crimea-- for an object which few could comprehend and n.o.body can fairly explain-- I was told that I was actuated by a morbid sentimentality. Well, if I am converted, if I view the mortality in war with less horror than I did then, it must be attributed to the arguments of hon. Gentlemen opposite and on the Treasury bench; but the fact is, I view this carnage just as I viewed that, with only this difference, that while our soldiers perished three thousand miles from home in a worthless and indefensible cause, these men were on their own soil, and every man of them knew for what he enlisted and for what purpose he was to fight.

Now, I will ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and those who are of opinion with him on this question of slaughter in the American war--a slaughter which I hope there is no hon.

Member here, and no person out of this House, that does not in his calm moments look upon with grief and horror--to consider what was the state of things before the war. It was this: that every year in the Slave States of America there were one hundred and fifty thousand children born into the world--born with the badge and the doom of slavery--born to the liability by law, and by custom, and by the devilish cupidity of man--to the lash and to the chain and to the branding-iron, and to be taken from their families and carried they know not where.

I want to know whether you feel as I feel upon this question. When I can get down to my home from this House, I find half a dozen little children playing upon my hearth. How many Members are there who can say with me, that the most innocent, the most pure, the most holy joy which in their past years they have felt, or in their future years they have hoped for, has not arisen from contact and a.s.sociation with our precious children?

Well, then, if that be so--if, when the hand of Death takes one of those flowers from our dwelling, our heart is overwhelmed with sorrow and our household is covered with gloom; what would it be if our children were brought up to this infernal system--one hundred and fifty thousand of them every year brought into the world in these Slave States, amongst these 'gentlemen,' amongst this 'chivalry,' amongst these men that we can make our friends?

Do you forget the thousand-fold griefs and the countless agonies which belonged to the silent conflict of slavery before the war began? It is all very well for the hon. and learned Gentleman to tell me, to tell this House--he will not tell the country with any satisfaction to it-- that slavery, after all, is not so bad a thing. The brother of my hon.

Friend the Member for South Durham told me that in North Carolina he himself saw a woman whose every child, ten in number, had been sold when they grew up to the age at which they would fetch a price to their master.

I have not heard a word to-night of another matter--the Proclamation of the President of the United States. The hon. and learned Gentleman spoke somewhere in the country, and he had not the magnanimity to abstain from a statement which I was going to say he must have known had no real foundation. I can make all allowance for the pa.s.sion--and I was going to say the malice--but I will say the ill-will of the hon. and learned Gentleman; but I make no allowance for his ignorance. I make no allowance for that, because if he is ignorant it is his own fault, for G.o.d has given him an intellect which ought to keep him from ignorance on a question of this magnitude. I now take that Proclamation. What do you propose to do? You propose by your resolution to help the South, if possible, to gain and sustain its independence. n.o.body doubts that. The hon. and learned Gentleman will not deny it. But what becomes of the Proclamation? I should like to ask any lawyer in what light we stand as regards that Proclamation? To us there is only one country in what was called the United States; there is only one President, there is only one general Legislature, there is only one law; and if that Proclamation be lawful anywhere, we are not in a condition to deny its legality, because at present we know no President Davis, nor do we know the men who are about him. We have our Consuls in the South, but recognizing only one Legislature, one President, one law. So far as we are concerned, that Proclamation is a legal and effective doc.u.ment.

I want to know, to ask you, the House of Commons, whether you have turned back to your own proceedings in 1834, and traced the praises which have been lavished upon you for thirty years by the great and good men of other countries,--and whether, after what you did at that time, you believe that you will meet the views of the thoughtful, moral, and religious people of England, when you propose to remit to slavery three millions of negroes in the Southern States, who in our views, and regarding the Proclamation of the only President of the United States as a legal doc.u.ment, are certainly and to all intents and purposes free?

['Oh!'] The hon. and learned Gentleman may say 'Oh!' and shake his head lightly, and be scornful at this. He has managed to get rid of all those feelings under which all men, black and white, like to be free. He has talked of the cant and hypocrisy of these men. Was Wilberforce, was Clarkson, was Buxton,--I might run over the whole list,--were these men hypocrites, and had they nothing about them but cant?

I could state something about the family of my hon. Friend below me (Mr.

Forster), which I almost fear to state in his presence; but his revered father--a man unsurpa.s.sed in character, not equalled by many in intellect, and approached by few in service--laid down his life in a Slave State in America, while carrying to the governors and legislatures of every Slave State the protest of himself and his sect against the enormity of that odious system.

In conclusion, Sir, I have only this to say,--that I wish to take a generous view of this question,--a view, I say, generous with regard to the people with whom we are in amity, whose Minister we receive here, and who receive our Minister in Washington. We see that the Government of the United States has for two years past been contending for its life, and we know that it is contending necessarily for human freedom.

That Government affords the remarkable example--offered for the first time in the history of the world--of a great Government coming forward as the organized defender of law, freedom, and equality.

Surely hon. Gentlemen opposite cannot be so ill-informed as to say that the revolt of the Southern States is in favour of freedom and equality.

In Europe often, and in some parts of America, when there has been insurrection, it has generally been of the suffering against the oppressor, and rarely has it been found, and not more commonly in our history than in the history of any other country, that the Government has stepped forward as the organized defender of freedom--of the wide and general freedom of those under its rule. With such a Government, in such a contest, with such a foe, the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Sheffield, who professes to be more an Englishman than most Englishmen, asks us to throw into the scale against it the weight of the hostility of England.

I have not said a word with regard to what may happen to England if we go into war with the United States. It will be a war upon the ocean,-- every ship that belongs to the two nations will, as far as possible, be swept from the seas. But when the troubles in America are over,--be they ended by the restoration of the Union, or by separation,--that great and free people, the most instructed in the world,--there is not an American to be found in the New England States who cannot read and write, and there are not three men in one hundred in the whole Northern States who cannot read and write,--and those who cannot read and write are those who have recently come from Europe,--I say the most instructed people in the world, and the most wealthy,--if you take the distribution of wealth among the whole people,--will have a wound in their hearts by your act which a century may not heal; and the posterity of some of those who now hear my voice may look back with amazement, and I will say with lamentation, at the course which was taken by the hon. and learned Gentleman, and by such hon. Members as may choose to follow his leading.

['No! No!'] I suppose the hon. Gentlemen who cry 'No!' will admit that we sometimes suffer from the errors of our ancestors. There are few persons who will not admit that, if their fathers had been wiser, their children would have been happier.

We know the cause of this revolt, its purposes, and its aims. Those who made it have not left us in darkness respecting their intentions, but what they are to accomplish is still hidden from our sight; and I will abstain now, as I have always abstained with regard to it, from predicting what is to come. I know what I hope for,--and what I shall rejoice in,--but I know nothing of future facts that will enable me to express a confident opinion. Whether it will give freedom to the race which white men have trampled in the dust, and whether the issue will purify a nation steeped in crimes committed against that race, is known only to the Supreme. In His hands are alike the breath of man and the life of States. I am willing to commit to Him the issue of this dreaded contest; but I implore of Him, and I beseech this House, that my country may lift nor hand nor voice in aid of the most stupendous act of guilt that history has recorded in the annals of mankind.

AMERICA.

VII.

LONDON, JUNE 29, 1867.

[The following speech was made at a public breakfast given to William Lloyd Garrison, in St. James's Hall, at which Mr. Bright occupied the Chair.]