The Sun.
London, England, 1867-02-04 00:00:00

Mr. Bright as a Suffering Angel.

There is much about Mr. Bright that is pathetic
as well as poetical. No man is more thoroughly in
earnest, or more unfeignedly amazed at the opposi-
tion that he meets with, or more truly unable to at-
tribute that opposition to anything but wilful blind-
ness, or sheer malignity, or the instigation of the
Evil One. In all this he is like the orthodox be-
liever of the middle ages. He is, too, we believe, a
really warm-hearted, if not a tender-hearted man,
and loves his friends almost as fiercely as he hates
his enemies. But it is too much when he comes out
as he did on Wednesday at Rochdale, in the
guise of the suffering angel—the meek man who
turns his cheek to every smiter, who is always
sinned against and never sinning, and who, in very
truth, cannot comprehend what people mean by as-
sailing him. "Wondering (he says) at the various
and continued assaults to which I am subjected, I
ask myself why men should be so much more savage
in political than in religious, literary, or scientific
controversy ? No man living would in any other
line pursue an antagonist with that rancorous spirit
which is unfortunately introduced into political con-
troversy, and which has pursued me with unrelent-
ing animosity, not only for months, but for years
past." Is Mr. Bright really unconscious that he
brings all this upon himself, that he seldom opens
his mouth without giving the bitterest offence, and
that the anger and vindictiveness of which he
complains are due far less to the things he
does than to the manner in which he does
them ? Almost in the same breath—certainly
in the same hour—in which he utters the half
pathetic and wondering appeal we have quoted,
he denounces his opponents as " the miserable
writers and speakers of a miserable and hateful fac-
tion," and describes himself as the victim of " an
opposition conducted with a falsehood and a malice
which know no scruple." Mr. Cobden held opinions
nearly identical with those of Mr. Bright, and pur-
sued almost a parallel political course, yet he never
excited that bitter enmity which attends on nearly
every utterance of his coarser and rougher colleague,
and went to his grave mourned by supporters and
antagonists alike. But the member for Birming-
ham appears unconscious of the strange difference
and its simple explanation ; he reviews, with a pride
which is by no means unwarranted, the 25 years of
his political career, the glorious victories he has won,
the gallant exertions he has made ; but he adds,
with a want of self-knowledge and an obtuseness of
conscience which are almost surprising, that in all
he has done in the course of that career he can find
" nothing to condemn or to regret ;" he looks
back on what he has done and the fashion of his
workmanship, and " behold it is very good !" We
have neither space nor inclination for a detailed dis-
cussion of his discursive speech, which, as usual, was
full of vigour and empty of fairness ; but one or two
passages call for comment. What does he mean
when, after recalling the Indian mutiny and hinting
that it came because his advica had been neglected,

he adds parenthetically, " There will come another
event before long ? " We presume the illusion was
accompanied by some significant pantomime or ges-
ture which made it intelligible to his Rochdale audi-
ence, for it was greeted with loud cheers. Was he
foolish enough to mean nothing at all, ®r wicked
enough to mean what the juxtapositio❑ of the sen-
tences almost irresistibly suggests. Parliament, says
Mr. Bright, " is paralysed for good." It cannot save
the public money, it cannot reform the Church, it
cannot reorganise the army, it cannot recoi.struct
the navy, it cannot rectify the land laws of the em-
pire; it cannot, in a word, do a great many things
that we, perhaps, as well as Mr. Bright, would wish
to see done. There is much truth in the statement,
only we read its teaching differently from the orator.
Mr. Bright maintains that it cannot do these things
because it is the creation of special classes, and that
the great mass of the people are not represented in
the House of Commons. We hold that it cannot
and will not do these things because the nation as a
whole—themajority of the influential, not merely of
the represented classes—is not yet prepared to wish
them done, because, in a word, the House repre-
sents but too faithfully the bigotry, the tardy move-
ments, the partial enlightenment of the country, its
prejudices, and its fears.—Pall-mall Gazette.