The Sun.
London, England, 1867-01-15 00:00:00

cently been doing their best on the hustings, or
under the excitement of Conservative tea parties,
to further the ends they dread. Liberals of
unimpeachable character stand aloof from the
member for Birmingham. We find in these
speeches an expression of regret that Mr. Baines
had declined to appear at one of the meet-
ings he addressed. It is not very long since
Miss Martineau—whose faults are certainly
neither timidity nor illiberality -- denounced Mr.
Bright as a representative demagogue. It would be
easy to multiply instances of such feeling, and the
pamphlet now published shows how it arises. If
we use Miss Martineau's phrase, we do so in no
offensive sense, but it is because Mr. Bright is in-
herently a demagogue that his influence is distrusted.
Mr. Bright's power is purchased at the cost of
breadth of view. Inflamed at the sight of what he
deems, and often rightly deems, to be an injustice,
he hurries to its reparation without taking count of
the mischief he may do in the process. Like the
cannon-ball, he goes "shattering that he may reach,"
if not " shattering what he reaches." His concep-
tions of a State are alike crude and superficial. He
has never said anything to lead us to believe that he
has conceived a nation as containing an infinite num-
ber of classes, the members of which may and should
pass from one to the other, but which always remain
themselves to maintain by their varied tastes, habits,
and culture a healthy and vigorous national life. On
the contrary, Mr. Bright's arguments and plans of
Reform point to a national uniformity, which is not
redeemed by any touch of loftiness. His pattern
nation would consist of men moulded after one
fashion. His pattern Legislative Assembly would
not be a deliberative body furnished with every
variety of thinkers so much as an assemblage of
men of the same opinions shortly determining ou
the same ends. If we may borrow the party names
of the United States, we may say that Mr. Bright
is naturally a Democrat rather than a Republican,
though accident has thrown his sympathies in the
contrary direction. It is a consequence of the de-
fect we have noticed that Mr. Bright should be un-
able to see why people differ from him, though it
cannot excuse an impatience which refuses to try
and comprehend the grounds of difference. Mr.
Bright is thus habitually, if not wilfully, unjust. A
single instance may be cited out of the many with
which the pamphlet before us abounds. Referring
to Lord Stanley's speech on the amendment to
the Franchise Bill of last session, Mr. Bright
says that it led to the conclusion that Lord Stan-
ley would give no votes to any of the working
classes until he saw by the distribution of seats that
these votes could be of no use to them. No charge
could be more unfounded, and none could be more
characteristic of the accuser. Indeed, it is impos-
sible that such a misinterpretation could be made,
except by one who had narrowed his mind so as not
to admit the existence of opinions sincerely differing
from his own. If the collection of Mr. Bright's
speeches impress us only too strongly with the same
sense of the partiality of vision, the narrowness of
thought, the injustice of judgment which we felt in
reading each when it was delivered,
we shall not
copy the speaker's errors in therefore denouncing
his speeches as vain. The usefulness of the Member
for Birmingham in the body politic is sadly marred
by these defects, but his great gifts cannot be ren-
dered wholly worthless. Much of his labour has to
be counteracted ; but he still does service in urging
us forward. The main fault of Mr. Bright lies,
however, in an impatience of mental labour. In
the first of the speeches before us he told the people
of Birmingham how well he remembered 1832,
when his young heart was stirred by the trumpet
blast that was then sounded. The impressions of
early manhood are always those most vividly pre-
served ; but it is to be feared that Mr. Bright has
done little or nothing to correct the first judgments
of his youth. There is nothing in these speeches,
there is nothing in his political career to induce us
to suppose that he has modified one opinion or ad-
vanced one hair's breadth since the time of the Re-
form Bill. The ideal of representative institutions
to which his speeches point consist of household, if
not universal, suffrage, equal electoral districts,
and vote by ballot; and, it would seem that he bas
never for a moment doubted the justice or wisdom
of a creed which is founded entirely on the prin-
ciples of Lord Grey's Bill. In the years which have
passed since 1832 men have discovered the Radical
defects of a scheme which, if realised, would destroy
representation altogether, but Mr. Bright has been
unaffected by this growth in knowledge. As he
goes from town to town addressing meeting after
meeting he reproduces arguments which are of no
force, except in supporting ideas of legislation which
may be pronounced obsolete. The arguments are
embellished from time to time by quotations from
the rhetorical poets ; but they are no otherwise
varied. This absence of growth springs, possibly,
from the impatience which is the root of Mr.
Bright's other faults ; but it is in itself a main cause
why the men of the younger generation are repelled
from his side, and his apparently studied ignorance
of all that has been written or spoken for the past
thirty years on Reform justifies their refusal to ac-
cept him as a Reformer and a guide.