The Sun.
London, England, 1860-11-12 00:00:00

MR. BRIGHT, M.P., AND STRIKES.

The following letter, says the Manchester _Exa-
miner, from Mr. Bright, M.P., has been written in
answer to one he has received from a spinner and
manufacturer in Blackburn, in which a complaint
is made that education, literary and religious, has
failed to teach the working classes wisdom in rela-
tion to their own interests. Mr. Blight's corre-
spondent is a gentleman who has contributed largely
to institutions for placing the means of education
within reach of the working men, and he is bitterly
disappointed that hitherto the result of the benevo-
lent labours in which he has participated has not
led to greater moderation and more regard for jus-
tice amongst workmen with each other and with
their employers :

" Rochdale, Nov. 3, 1860.
"My dear Sir,--I am glad to hear from you, and

o learn that your health is better. I am, however,

very sorry for the cause of your writing to me, and
can understand the disappointment you feel at the
small result of so many efforts to instruct the
working population around you. It is not to be
expected that the workmen in our population
should be wiser than other classes, and we know
Nell that other classes have, whenever able to do it,

enforced combination prices, and endeavoured to
make a scarcity in the articles in which they have
dealt. The fact is that among all classes there is a
lamentable ignorance of the laws which ought to

regulate labour and trade, and that the study of

political economy is totally neglected in the educa-
tion of the whole people. At this moment the
views of a large portion of the highest class—l
mean highest in position, in wealth, and in scholar-

ship—are wholly unsound on these subjects, and,
making allowance for difference of circumstances,
they support precisely the same principles as those

contended for by trades' unions. At first sight,
nothing appears more clear to a workman than
that it is a great advantage to him to be able to

force his employer to give him higher wages ; and
for this end, an end apparently so desirable,
almost everything will appear to the mind of the
workman proper and justifiable. He considers
the whole matter to be a struggle between capital

and labour, and that anything is fair in his fight
with the claims of capital. Renee the folly and in-
justice of many of the proceedings of the trades
unions, and the discord which arises between the
class of workmen and the class; of employers.
" Along with the mischief which springs from

ignorance on these questions, there is another source
of evil, to which I think employers ought to turn

their attention. The whole body of workmen,
speaking in general terms, are excluded—purposely
excluded—from the franchise. They have no
tical position, and therefore, practically, they have
no politics. In this respect they are no more free
than the labourers in Austria or in Russia, and
consequently they have no inducement to consider
political questions, and to examine or to suspect how
far their condition is affected by the policy and acts
of the Government of the country. They are shut
out from the political world ; they are told that they
ought to have, and shall have, no opinion and no
voice in the direction of public affairs ; that they are
an ignorant and a dangerous class ; and that what
are called the institutions of their country.would
not be safe if they were permitted to take any part
in them. The inevitable result is that these men,
growing every day in information, and in restless-
ness and discontent, rather it may be with their
social than their political condition, and growing
also in numbers and in the means of organisation,
maintain a contest with the only authority they see
and feel, namely, with their employers, who are to
them almost all they know and comprehend of
superior power and of governmental control.
" The fact is, our system of political exclusion has
this effect ; it makes of the working classes anation,
separated by a gulf passable only by few of them,
from that other nation to which the existing Con-
stitution pretends to give, though it does not honestly
give, political power. There is thus no real amal-
gamation of classes. The class receiving wages is
shut out from the questions and the interests which
occupy the minds and engage the energies of the em-
ploying class. Its members are limited to the
consideration of their own individual, and local,
class interests ; and their mental activity is devoted
to something like a servile war, because everything
that is broader and greater is excluded from their
view. So long as the employers of this county,
and of the neighbouring counties, are content to
allow the governing class to refuse the rights of
citizenship to the industrious men, without whose
skill and toil our national greatness could have no
existence, so long will these men, whose general
intelligence and whose energies are acknowledged
by all, concentrate that intelligence and that energy
on efforts to amend their condition within those
limits of action which are open to them. If the
capitalists practically assert that the workman is
born only to labour, and that he is incompetent to
take any part in those great discussions on public
affairs which are so deeply interesting to the more
fortunate and privileged of his countrymen, and so
important to all, and if, unhappily, the workman
should practically acquiesce in this view, and
should abstain from efforts to invest himself with
the rights of citizenship, let us be assured that his
activity will not cease, that his energies will not
slumber. He may not read and think politics; he
may not canvass for and conduct elections; hetrnay
not strive to influence the deliberations of Parlia-
ment, and to urge on or to check the action of the
Administration ; but he will not be idle, and his
own condition and that of his class will not have
lost all interest in his eyes. He will ignore the 'ob-
stacles to his wellbeing which arise from violations
of economic principles by the Government he will