The Sun.
London, England, 1855-12-20 00:00:00

MR. BRIGHT AT MARSDEN.

(From, the Times.)
The speeches of Mr. Bright rather forcibly remind one
of those exhibitions in which the performers are adver-
tised to accomplish the most dangerous feats—to ride
on ever so many horses at once, to dance on their backs,
dash through hoops, jump over carpets, and make the
most daring somersaults, while the horses are galloping
round the ring at full speed. At the Mechanics' Insti-
tution at Marsden Mr. Bright rode on three of his hob•
bies abreast, astounded his audience by standing on his
head, by leaping to the wildest conclusions, and, after
setting every principle of reason, as the adepts of the
circus appear to set every principle of gravitation, at de-
fiance, rejoiced his friends by alighting safely on his feet
to receive their thanks for his extraordinary perform-
ance. His three hobbies were the marvels of a penny
newspaper, the wisdom of the Americans, and the glories
of Russian civilisation ; and he managed these with re-
markable adroitness, making his three horses shift their
places at will, the left going to the right, the right to
the left, and the middle taking by turns the position of
each of its neighbours. There was a skill displayed in
all this of which we can give our readers no adequate
idea; and fully to understand how he managed to talk
on all three subjects at once the speech itself must be
perused. Still more brilliant, however, were the
" dangerous feats" which were added to this remark-
able performance. We have in our day kad the plea
sure of witnessing many dangerous exploits performed
by men of facile eloquence, whe amuse us in hall and
Senate as the tumblers amuse us i❑ the streets ; and we
are bound to confess that Mr. Bright has not only out-
done every competitor, but now has outdone himself.
Such daring somersaults as Mr. Bright exhibited to the
gaping mechanics of Marsden we have never hitherto
seen.

The first had reference to the penny newspapers;
What a wonderful thing is a newspaper—not a news-
paper in the abstract, but a modern one, and the latest
form of it—a penny one ! In the dark ages there was
a fourpenny stamp on the public journals, and these w
very poorly conducted, full of mere rumour for news, full
of mere twaddle for opinion. About ten years ago the
stamp was reduced to a penny, and immediately the
character of the journals rose. The information was
more copious and more exact, the criticism was more
profound in thought and more elegant in expression,
the moral tone of the newspaper was raised, and it
ceased to indulge in scandal, and even in more harm-
less personalities. It needed but one thing more to
raise the character of the press to the highest pitch,
and that was the entire abolition of the stamp.
Mr. Bright, and a few other wise men, expressed
their views and the stamp was abolished. Behold
the result in a penny newspaper ! Every morning you
have it on your table, at least,—Mr. Bright says so,—a❑d
you cannot help thinking, " What a wonderful thing is
one of those peony newspapers !" A steamer comes in
from the United States, clippers from Australia, mails
from India and China, despatches from the Baltic, de-
spatches from the Black Sea, lettere from our own cor-
reepondent, telegraphic messages from all the great
capitals of Europe—from all the quarters of the globe
tidings are gathered into " that wonderful sheet ;" the
news is as goo 6, the tone is as high, the writing is as
powerful as in any of the old and more costly papers,
and yet you get it " all for the price of one penny." A
miracle for cheapness ! Suppose we grant all that Mr.
Bright says. Miraculous, that information which it costs
hundreds and thousands of pounds to collect from all
quarters of the globe should be presented to the public
in a small sheet, price one penny. It is a miracle of
legalised fraud. No wonder that the papers are cheap
it oosts only a few pence to get their printed matter ;
they live by the scissors, being made up of cuttings
from the more costly journals which Mr. Bright is
pleased to depreciate. Manchester men have an
inordinate admiration of cheapness. Let us suggest
to the member whom Manchester no longer delights
to honour, that if the London warehousemen could
get carpets and calicoes by merely paying the
carriage from the manufactory they could present Mr.
Bright and his friends with an article a still greater mir-
acle of cheapness than that " wonderful sheet" which
issues from the printing-presses of Lancashire and York-
shire.

Will anybody believe that after performing this dan-
gerous feat, not of praising the penny newspapers—we
shall not quarrel with him for that, seeing that we fur-
nish them with the greater part of their contents, which
are really wonderful at the price of a penny—but of
praising them at the expense of their more costly contem-
poraries, upon whom they daily depend—Mr. Bright
lights upon his legs? He does, and takes another leap
more tremendous than the first. It is in honour of Holy
Russia. Here we have some little perception of his clever-
ness in shifting the position of his horses. From news-
papers to Russia—an easy transition ! He began with the
subject of books—cheap books; then went on to cheap
newspapers, and thence to Russia and books again.
Books are wonderfully cheapened. Not long ago they
were very scarce indeed. A few rich men had them for
ostentation rather than use. Now at every railway sta.
tation books may be had for a shilling which, until re-
cently, were sold at half a guinea. Starting in this way,
he ~vent on to Russia, and to prove the advanced state of
her civilisation. It was not the number of books, he had
already said, that made a man powerful ; rich men
still, as of old, have immense libraries for ostentaticn
rather than use ; but, forgetting his own words, he pro-
ceeded to demonstrate the absurdity of all we say against,
Russian barbarism by counting the books in the Im-
perial Library at St. Petersburg. It is common for
new, papers to speak of " that barbaric empire," to de-
scribe the Czar as a savage despot, ruling over savage
hordes, and to tell of the dangers which menace the
civ:lisation of the south and west of Btu ope from the In-
roads of the northern bear. " Is it not a singular thing,"
says Mr. Bright, " that in St. Petersburg, the capital of
this barbarous empire, a city built in modern times, there
is a library, a public library, which in size ranks the
third in Europe, and is said to contain 10,000 volumes
more than the British Museum ?" And this is Mr.
Bright's argument to prove the civilisation of Russia !
We shall not dispute the fact which he brings forward,
although it might not be difficult to do so. It is not
easy to farm a comparative estimate of the extent of
libraries from the number of volumes, it being customary
in some places to count every pamphlet as a separate
volume, and in others to bind them in sets. That, how-
ever, is nothing to the present point. It is to the
point, however, to recall Mr. Bright's own remark,
that the number of books in our possession is nothing.
It is the use we make of them that is to be valued.
Why does not 111 r. Bright tell us the number of indivi-
duais who have tickets of admission to the Imperial
Library at St. Petersburg, and compare it with the num-
ber of those who daily frequent, the reading-room of the
British Museum ? Or why does he not tell us of the
penny Lewspapers, or of the newspapers at any price,
which are allowed to circulate in Runiia ?

If the size of ono liLrary is to be taken as the test of
civilisation, the incautious reader may suppose that the
United States have no chance of a high place in Mr.
Bright's estimation, an their libraries are nothing to
boast of. The incautious reader would be very much
mistaken. Mr. Bright thinks the United States of
America the most favoured land the sun shines on, and,
if we may judze from some of the expressions in which
he ie apt to indulge, fully intends to emigrate there some
rainy day. He draws a very bright picture of that
pleasant land—no taxes, no beggais, no ignorance, no
errey, no navy, cheap newspapers. On these he dwells
at considerable length, making only a parenthetical ob-
jection to slavery, and not saying a word as to the
weakness of the executive Government. But the
especial excellence on which Mr. Bright dwells is the
smallness of the army, and the nothincmcss of the navy-
" Yet nobody thinks of insulting the United States. An
American ii as free from violence abroa 1 as an English
man ; and it is by no means certain that be is not more
sure of redress, in case of insult." What does Mr. Bright
mean ? Does he mean that the United States have a
pious horror of war, that it is their principle not to re-
sent injury, and, because they are known to be of this
peculiarly meek disposition, foreign states show them
unusual respect ? Mr. Bright knows that the very con-
trary is the case, and that if the united Statesarehuuen:
un-
prepared for war, the attitude they
atshseume when-
ever ever they fancy their rights are invaded
bel-
licose. It is certainly not by acting on the principles of
the Peace Society that they win
upon
but because they threaten the reverse, foreign States,
and itis knownwr
that what they threaten they can accomplish.hen
will Mr. Bright cease to practisethis inglorious tumbling?
We estimate his abilities too highly believe that he
suchar ty ofStatement,
hurneeassoning,and
wish
that he were
himself can be
content
deceivedwith by
vulgar
which, if it be bad taste, we have the bad taste to prefer
to all the brilliancy of his sophistical arguments.

A FIiTURR CAMPAIGN IN THE _BALTIC.

The Slide of yesterday anticipates a future cam-
pai,ga in the Baltic provinces, and after having
enumerated the forces possessed by Russia in these
regions, which it values at 200,000 men, the jour-
nal thus marshals the armies which the Allies, in
conjunction with Sweden and Denmark, could dis-
pose of if necessary :

" Admitting that Sweden were to furnish 70,000 tne
alid Denmark 30,000, the Western Powers would hay
to furnish 100,000, or 70,000 French and 30,000 English.
France could even increase her contingent if the military
organisation of our neighbour were not to permit them
to complete theirs, for our country possesses a military
strength really formidable. Thus it constituted the
French army :—lnfantry of the line, 328 battalions;
light infantry (rifles), 30 ditto—artillery, 241 compa-
nies ; siege train, 20 ditto ; engineers, "c'i"°uc
sap-
pers,
11 ditto—cavalry, 373 squadrons ;gendarmes
firemen of Paris, 119 squadrons or companies _t'
here of an
of all arms, 17 companies. It is not question_
coyeaosvead.royf,
heuovernment of
veterans
improvised force. At the advent of t
the 2d December, the arm was cavalry, and 240
327 bat-
talions of infantry, 813 squadrons 1
has thus only been ang.
companies of artillery.
mented by 80 battalions It
tof
ithout any offence we may
infantry and 60 aqua-
drona of cavalry.
'SY
has been organised under the
say that this great
had found in Algeria the tra-
ditions of victory.
constitutional regima,ecnalnikde to hear the roar of cannon
since heard this African cannon, and
it.' Europe
has
enemies know that it fires well. A great ex-
pedition to the Baltic
in Algeria,' said Louis Philippe; ' Europe does not bear
friends and is Eng-
landher alliance in vessels, and our soldiers will
therefore not impossible.
find at Crons
pay
Ytadt another Malakhoff."
will

TESTIMONIAL TO A CLERGYMIN.—A most chaste and
elegant design in silver, from Savory's, in Cornhill, with
a private communion service, formed from an ancient
model, has been presented to the Rev. Charles William
Ord, M.A., by his congregation, upon his retiring from
the charge of
_the parish church of Bottishata,
market.