The Sun.
London, England, 1865-08-21 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

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THE " SATURDAY REVIEW" ON MR. BRIGHT'S
PILGRI3IAGE.—It is very pleasing to find that the
proverbial ingratitude of republics is not to receive
another historic illustration in the conduct of the
Government of the United States towards its friends.
A rumour has, it appears, reached the ears of the
President that Mr. Bright desires to visit the politi-
cal paradise of his dreams, and no time has been
lost in taking measures for recognising him as the
nation's guest. The most appropriate compliment
which the President can think of for the man of
peace is to offer him a man of war. Accordingly
the Admiral of the European squadron has been
directed, so it is said, to tender to Mr. Bright a
steam-frigate in which he may make his voyage to
the promised land. At first sight, there is some-
thing rather startling in the notion of sending a fri-
gate to fetch a person to whom a frigate is the very
incarnation of all that is mischievous and abomin-
able, and the greater portion of whose life has been
taken up in denouncing frigates and all their be-
longings. It seems about as delicate an attention
as it would be to send a deputation from the Evan-
gelical Alliance to welcome the Pope to our hos-
pitable shores. One thinks that Mr. Bright on
board a man-of-war, surrounded by big guns and
balls and shells, would be as distressed as a very
nervous old lady on the engine of an express-train
on a line with plenty of long tunnels. To invite
him to place his peaceful feet on the deck of a war
steamer seems like inviting a bishop to go to a
casino. Possibly-, however, the offer of the frigate
has been dictated by that shrewd forethought for
which the Americans are famous. There is, as we
all know, no villany too atrocious for the bloated
potentates of Europe, no crime too hateful for the
vile aristocrats of the mother-country. Is it
too improbable a thing that one of these
perfidious beings should put violent hands on the
courageous orator who has laid their corruption
and grinding tyranny hare before the eyes of
all men ? At this season of the year the seas swarm
with the yachts of these fierce and haughty nobles.
What scruple should restrain them from doing a
bloody, ischief to the mild and gentle apostle of
all that is peaceful and brotherly ? Let the electors
of Birmingham be truly grateful for this most timely
shield of defence which President Johnson's careful
prudence has lied in front of their inimitable repre-
sentative. After all, it is not much more funny
that the most eminent member of the Peace Society
should take his pleasure in a man-of-war than that
he should represent a town whose chief business is
the manufacture of the most destructive engines
and the most deadly weapons. It most be a sore
trial to a man whose prime aim is to persuade the
nations to turn their swords into pruning-hooks, to
feel that he owes his seat to men who actually make
their money out of swords and rifles, or, as he might
put it, batten on the blood of brothers. Perhaps
Mr. Bright has learnt to bow with resignation before
the cruel and grotesque fate which invariably associ-
ates his name with everything that is most repug-
nant to his avowed professions, and most profoundly
inconsistent with his public aspirations. He
abhors war, and yet he represents a place which
lives on war. His sole wish is that all classes in the
land should dwell together in unity, and that brotherly
love should continue, and yet an unfortunate duty
is for ever forcing him into a position which makes
him appear to the spectator as if he were urging one
class to hate the other. Wholesale, bloodshed is, in
his opinion, so execrable a means that no end, how-
ever good, can justify it, and yet he finds himself
hotly sympathising with one of the most reckless
slaughters to be found in history. There never was
a man so persistently dogged by ill luck. The same
irony follows Mr. Bright, it would seem, even into
his pleasures. Instead of being allowed to perform
his pilgrimage to America, as the lowly man would
have wished, in the company of meek and peace-
loving brethren, he is constrained to make his entry
into that holy land in all the pomp and circumstance
of war. A shudder will run through the Peace
Society as it thinks of the men of Belial with whom
their chief will have to consort. What has the great
national peace-maker to do with admirals, and com-
modores, and boatswains, and the like sons of guns ?
It is appalling to think of the amount of powder,
and shot, and shell that will lie within a foot of his
bQd-head ; of the cursinc, and reviling which will
offend his sensitive ears—and cuming and reviling
not after Mr. Bright's own elegant pattern, but
rough, and coarse, and profane ; of the fierce tales
of chasing, and cutting-out, and sinking with
which filo zncn of blood' his hosts, will regale his
after-dinner hours. But perhaps we may reason-
ably hope that sailors who have had the privilege of
being reared under the purity and simplicity of a
Republic are free from the debasing vices that are
to be expected in the crouching victims of a mon-
arch, or the hirelings of an oligarchy. And we all
know how alien is all outrageous boasting, and curi-
ous swearing, and irreverent imagery to the American
taste. So there is some hope that Mr. Bright may
escape all strong and bad language. Still the position is
not without its dangers. Evil communications corrupt
the very best manners, and the close intimacy which life
on board ship compels with men whose trade is
fighting may turn even a Bright into a fighting
man. True, this saintly messenger of peace never
for a moment allows himself to be carried away by
gusts of passion. He is, by nature and habit alike,
quite incapable of the shocking emotion of hatred.
Peace on earth and good-will towards men has ever
been his text. It is not as if he were a man of
vehement anger and irrepressible fierceness of dis-
position. There is no material in that gentle spirit
which the tales of cutting-out and sinking South-
erners would be likely to kindle into a pestilent
enthusiasm for war. However, one never knows
what revolutions in character may spring from a
sudden change of surrounding ; and, dreadful as it
is to contemplate, Mr. Bright may possibly return
with a downright admiration for what in other times
he has so powerfully denounced as the bane and
scourge of the human race. His enemies, indeed,
malignantly declare that the revolution has already
gone as far it could, that the furious sympathy with
which he looked upon the slaughter of men and
destruction of property is one of the 'coarsest and
most flagrant pieces of inconsistency of which a
prominent politician was ever guilty. The war
levied by the North against the South may have
been just or unjust, and it is worth remembering
that success is no indisputable proof of either the
wisdom or the justice of beginning a war. But in
either case the spectacle of the eloquent, powerful
preacher of peace-at-any-price exerting all his power
and all his eloquence to encourage a nation to pour
out blood more recklessly, and consume treasure
more lavishly, in a contest for territorial aggran-
disement, is a sight which will recur strikingly to
men's minds when Mr. Bright next has occasion to
denounce the profligate expenditure on armies
and fleets in his own degraded country. Luckily
for the commander of the steam-frigate, the voyage
to America is not too long. His illustrious guest
will not have time to get restless and wearied with
the monotony of life on board ship. Otherwise
the commander might awake some morning and
find the illustrious guest delivering a turbulent and
seditious harangue to the crew. Mr. Bright, after
a little repose, would surely sigh for new worlds to
conquer, new crowds to fill with a sense of the
iniquities of their rulers. In lack of the Free-
trade Hall at Manchester, the deck of a steamer
would be sufficiently capacious to gratify his ambi-
tion. The infamous tyranny of the captain would
be for the moment as good a subject as the infamous
tyranni of the Englishlando yner. All men are born
equal. Why, then, should they be ground to the
earth with toil and anxiety, be badly paid, and ill
led, at the beck and bidding of a despotic official
strutting too and fro in the tawdry majesty of gold
lace ? All the illustrations which have excited a

sense of their atrocious wrongs in the bosoms of
thousands at Birmingham or Manchester would be
just as useful and just Is appropriate as addressing
the crew of his frigate. Why should there be any
difference between captain and men ? Do not the
men earn scanty bread with the sweat of their brows,
_ • .

I rising up early and taking rest late, while their
pampered rulers, the captain and the lieutenant,
live on dainty meats, and 101 l languidly in gilded
saloons ? If Mr. Briglit would only act thoroughly
up to his principles, we do not see how he can pos-
sibly reconcile it to lib conscience to abstain from
stirring up a mutiny. But perhaps he may learn
to look at things rather differently when he gets to
what Mr. Elijah Pogram called his " bright home
in the setting sun."
"THE SATURDAY REVIEW" ON HIGII-PRINCIPLED
MURDER.—The balance is recovering itself. The
gentle sex has had almost a monopoly in murder of
the Innocents. Celestina Sumner, Catherine Brough,
Constance Kent, and the hag Winsor seemed to show
that the art of slaying children was a woman's
speciality. But the mcent exploits of Stephen
orward are redressing the disparity which the
sexes displayed in this matter ; and the career of
that very exceptional honicide brings into one focus,
repeats and presents in a condensed and available
compass, though in an extreme form, that theory of