The Express.
London, England, 1867-01-26 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, JANUARY 26, 1867.

MR. BRIGHT, M.P., AND HIS WORK-

PEOPLE.

MANCIU FRIDAY Evs.msc..

Thisevening a meeting of about 1,2000 f the work-
people of Messrs. John Bright and Brothers, was held in the
I'ublic Hall, at Rochdale, to present to the hon. member
for Birmingham an address expressive of " their entire
sympathy with, and sincere respect for bins, under the
malignant slanders which had been urged against him as
their employer."
The .address, which was moved, second, and supported by
working men in Mr. Bright's employ—after speaking of
the attacks on his private character as base and unfounded,
said he had always endeamoured to improve their moral,
social and intellectual well-being, while as a public charac-
ter his beet endeavours had been made to raise the great
wealth-producing class to the full right of citizenship. It
preyed that his life, as an employer and statesmen, might
be long spared.
The address was carried, and presented to Mr. Bright,
who was present by invitation, accompanied by expressions
of warm affection and great cheering.
Mr. 13alearr in the course of his speech said—l thank
you with an overflowing heart for the kindness which has
induced you to call and to form this meeting to-night, and
for the most friendly and generous sentiments which you
have uttered, through the address which has just been pre-
sented to me, and which I accept with a gratification
that I find no words properly to describe and
enpress. (Hear.) This meeting isone of an unusual and
noteworthy character. (Hear.) I am not sure that oc
' any former occasion in this district or in this country
there has been a meeting like it, where a thousand per-
sons, men and women, assisting in or employed in the
I business of a particular firm, have felt it their duty to
meet for the purpose of contradicting and overthrowing
countless slanders uttered against that firm—(hear)—and'
chiefly against one member of it with a view to damage his
political influence. (Hear.) We are met for the purpose
further of expressing our confidence in, and our friendship
for, each other. (Hear.) About ten days ago a deputation
from your body—the chairman was ene of the deputation
—called upon me, to inform me that on the previous
day a meeting had been held of persons in our em-
ploy, who were anxious to have some public demon-
stration of their feeling, with regard to recent
statements, and they asked me on behalf of that
meeting if I would come to a meeting like this to
receive an address which they were wishful to present to
me. I thanked them for their kind intention, but told
them that I thought nobody whose opinion was worth
anything could believe those statements, and that we
could all, I thought, very easily outlive these slanders.
(Hear, hear.) But although in speaking to the depu-
tation I rather discouraged their idea and purpose, still
I am bound to say, on considering it further,
! I believe you have done well to hold this meeting—(hear,
! heart—not as bearing altogether upon my position with
regard to it, but as concerning your own ; for, rely upon it,
the slanders that were uttered against me had the effect,
in some degree, of reaching and damaging you. (Hear,
bear.) Clearly, if it were true that we were the oppressors
of these who lived near us, and to whom weekly we
paid wages, you were the oppressed, for there can't be the
one class without the other. If we were tyrants and
unjust, clearly you were slaves and the victims of injus-
tice ; and if we were devoid of conscience, you were proved
to be devoid of independence ; and that you suffered and
tolerated injustice from which you could not escape, and
which yen had not even the courage to resent.
' (Hear, hear.) You know—every man and woman in this
assembly knows—every honoumble man in Rochdale
knows, that there is not a shadow or a shade of foundation
for the charges that have been made against me. (Loud
cheers.) To those who live in this neighbourhood, even, I
should say, to a large portion of my countrymen, judging
either from my life at home or my public career, they might
have found a sufficient answer to those charges. (Hear,
hear.) Now, I ask you, my friends, this ques-
tion, because it is worth your while to consider it—
Why all these slanders against us and against me?
There are 500 firms in this country whose business is
carried on, who employ great numbers of people, many
far more than we do, who have their transactions of every
kind, who may have occasionally little or great differences
with their workmen ; but, of all these 100, 499 are left
untouched, and we and I alone are assailed by these men.
(Loud cheers.) Whence come these charges and these slan-
ders? They come, as you know, openly and chiefly from
obscure men in the tory ranks—(cheerst—occasionally you
hear of them from some obscure man who by accident of
party has been raised for a few months into the position
of a minister of the crown. (Hear, hear.) Our assailants,
if you examine the matter for a moment, you
will find, are the monopolists of political power
in this country, and the base creatures wbo for
selfish purposes are found crawling about them.
(Cheers.) What is my crime! That I have resisted this
monopoly of power; that since the first hour that I stepped
upon a public platform and took part in political questions
I have pleaded for the rights of the millions of the people
of this country, All I ask is that you may be heard in the
hall where it is said the representatives of the people are
accustomed to assemble. (Cheers.) Ido not ask that you
may change laws or overthrow institutions ; but I ask
i that you may be heard, and that when parliament meets,
session after session, as it will meet the week after next,
, your great class—the most numerous and the most kali.
pensable of all to the country—shall not be absolutely
' shut out. Now, I say without hesitation—and lam sure
without chance of contradiction—that it is mainly because
I pot in this claim for the people that I have been thus
assailed. You know perfectly well that I have been ac-
customed in all my public life to take an independent
I course, that I have not been a flatterer of those who are
in power, nor have I been a flatterer of that great class on
• whose behalf I have mainly acted and spoken. lam no
• flatterer ; I have not bent my knee to any class of the
community. I have sought to be guided by a higher law
than the prejudices or the passions of any
section of the people. In this course of in-
dependence it may be I have made errors,
as other men make errors, for I profess to no kind of
• infallibility, even on political subjects which I have so much
considered. Now, take as a proof of this a question on
which those persons to whom I have referred have said a
good deal, the question of the Factory Act. You know
many of you that I was in parliament twenty years ago,
when the act pulsed—that I did not feel it my duty on any
occasion tosupport it; that was, ! think, acourse which many
of you and many of those, your fathers, who are not now
here, thought wrong. I was against any interference by
parliament with the freedom of labour and of capital. I
did not wish to trust a parliament of landowners with the
control and the disposition of labour and capital in this
' "country. I knew by their infamous corn law, which
had lasted for thirty years, they had wefts.
cated an untold amount of the labour and
capital of England (hear, hear) with the view
of turning it into the channel of rest for themselves,
and therefore I did not like this body of men to
, meddle with the question. But I rejoice as much as any
one of you can rejoice that you now are working 10) hours
daily instead of 111 hours, as before. I believe that the

establishment of free trade about the time when the Fac-
tory Bill passed caused so great an increase of trade and
demand for labour that the Factory Lill itself bas been
made to work with a success that in all probability it
would not have met with if these changes to which I have
referred bad not been made. I think it quite possible—l
hope it is certain—that at some period even the tin.. now
worked may be to some further extent shortened. (Loud
cheers.) My own impression is, that with an economical
government, taking much less of taxation from the people,
with laws regarding the tenure and the distribution of land
in accordance with a true political economy—and with edu-
cation genemlly 1111 d universally spread amongst the people—
there will be a strong and rational 'disposition to work a
• shorter time ; that there will be great care taken of the
earnings that are made, and thus that the comfort of
families may be not in the least lessened, although the
time of labour may be shortened. (Cheers.) But refer-
ring to that question of the discussion of the Factory Bill,
I venture to say this, that if any one of you will under-
take to look back to those discussions, you will find that no
word escaped my lips that was not friendly to the operative
class of this country, and that I was as anxious to defend

thew as to defend their employers from the exaggerated
and calumnious statements of those to whom I was op-
posed. Now, once more to the question of public life and
_politica. lam one of those who believe that in a country
_people mn't be happy—cannot have that which is their
own—cannot be really free, and really growing
end improving—unleas there be • wise legislation, and a
just administration of the laws. (Hear.) An unjust law
, wound■ every beam in the country ; and that most unjust
of all laws, the corn law, penetrated every town, and every
parish, and every village, and every house, and it
wounded and injured every man in every house ; and a
just law, on the contrary, acts with universal influence.
It is like the life-giving sun—it is like a fertilising
shower, it scatters good everywhere ; and there is no dis-
trict in the country so remote, no family so humble,
no occupation so unimportant, that it does not feel
to some degree the influence of a wise and of a just
and beneficent law. (Loud cheers.) But still we must
never forget this—that laws, monarchs, houses of legis-
lation, powers that be of any kind, cannot do everything
for un— there will remain much for us to do ourselves ;
m‘ny duties to perfonn and may efforts to make. The
foundation of all abundance and comfort is industry. You
are perhaps about the most industrious people in the world.
Mr. Bright concluded by saying it was not necessary that
any people should work harder than the people of England,
but he did not think they cultivated the virtue of fruga-
lity as those of some other countries. Me also impressed
upon them, besides saving, to take more pride, like the
middle classes, in educating their children.
Mr. T. V. Porran and Mr. GOLDMAN SMITH briefly ad-
dressed the meeting.