The Sun.
London, England, 1867-01-26 00:00:00

Mr. Bright, M.P., and his Workpeople.

MANCHESTER, Friday Evening.

This evening a meeting of about 1,200 of the
workpeople of Messrs. John Bright and Brothers was
held in the public hall, at Rochdale, to present to
the hon. member for Birmingham an address ex-
pressive of " their entire sympathy with and sin-
cere respect for him under the malignant slanders
which had been urged against him as their em-
ployer."
The address, which was moved, seconded, and
supported by working men in Mr. Bright's employ,
after speaking of the attacks on his private cha-
racter as base and unfounded, said he had always
endeavoured to improve their moral, social, and in-
tellectual well-being ; while as a public character
his best endervours had been made to raise the great
wealth-producing class to the full right of citizen-
ship; it prayed that his life as an employer and
statesman might be long spared.
The address was carried, and presented to Mr.
Bright, who was present by invitation, accompanied
by expressions of warm affection and great cheering.
Mr. BRIGHT, in the course of his speech, said—l
thank you with an overflowing heart for the kind-
ness which has induced you to call and to form this
meeting to-night, and for the most friendly and
generous sentiments which you have uttered
through the address which has just been presented to
me, and which I accept with a gratification that I
find no words properly to describe and express.
(Hear.) This meeting is one of an unusual and
noteworthy character. (Hear). lam not sure that
on any former occasion in this district, or in this
country, there has been a meeting like it, where a
thousand persons, men and women, assisting in or
employed in the business of a particular firm, have
felt it their duty to meet for the purpose of con-
tradicting and overthrowing countless slanders
uttered against that firm—(hear)---and chiefly
against one member of it, with a view to da-
mage his political influence. (Hear.) We are
met for the purpose, further, of expressing our
confidence in, and our friendship for, each
other. (Hear.) About ten days ago a deputation
from your body—the chairman was one of the depu-
tation—called on me to inform me that on the pre-
vious day a meeting had been held of persons in our
employ who were anxious to make some public de-
monstration of the feeling with regard to recent
statements; and they asked, on behalf of that meet-
ing, if I would come to a meeting like this to receive
an address which they were wishful to present to me.
I thanked them for their kind intention, but told
them that I thought nobody whose opinion was
worth anything could believe those statements, and
that we could all, I thought, very easily outlive
these slanders. But although in speaking to the
deputation I rather discouraged their idea and pur-
pose, still I am bound to say, on considering it far-
ther, I believe you have done well to hold this meet-
ing--(hear, hear) —not as bearing altogether upon
my position with regard to it as concerning your
own; for rely upon it, the slanders that were uttered
against me had the effect in some degree of reaching
and damaging you. Clearly, if it were true that we
were the oppressors of those who lived near us, and
to whom weekly we paid wages, you were the op-
pressed, for there can't be the one class without the
other. If we were tyrants and unjust, clearly you
were slaves and the victims of injustice ; and if we
were devoid of conscience, you were proved to be
devoid of independence ; and that you suffered ani
tolerated injustice from which you could not escape,
and which you had not even the courage to resent
(Hear, hear.) You know—and every man and
woman in this assembly knows—every honourable
man in Rochdale knows--that there is not a shadow
or a shade of foundation for the charges that have
been made against me. (Loud cheers.) To those
who live in this neighbourhood, even, I should say,
to a large portion of my countrymen, judging either
from my life at home or my public career, they might
have found a sufficient answer to these charges. Now
1 ask you, my friends, this question, because it is
worth your while to consider, " Why all these slan-
ders against us and against mc?" There are 500
firms in this country whose business is carried on,
who employ great numbers of people, many far more
than w.! do, who have their transactions of every
kind, who may have occasionally little or great dif-
ferences with their workmen, but of all these 500
499 are left untouched, and we and I alone am as-
sailed by these men. (Loud cheers.) Whence come
these charges and these slanders ? They come, as
you know, openly and chiefly from obscure men in
the Tory ranks. (Cheers.) Occasionally you hear
of them from some obscure man, who by accident
or party has been raised for a few months into the
position of a Minister of the Crown. (Hear, hear.)
Our assailants, if you examine the matter for a mo-
ment, you will find are the monopolists of political
power in the country, and the base creatures who
for selfish purposes are found crawling about them.
(Cheers.) What is my crime ? That I have re-
sisted this monopoly of power--that since the first
hour that I stepped upon a public platform and took
part in political questions I have pleaded for the
rights of the millions of the people of this country.
All I ask is that you may be heard in the hall where
it is said the representatives of the people are accus-
tomed to assemble. I do not ask that you may
change laws to overthrow institutions ; but I ask
that you may be heard, and that when Parliament
meets session after session, as it will meet the week
after next, your great class, the most numerous and
the most indispensable of all to the country, shall
not be absolutely shut out. Now, I say without
hesitation that I am sure, without chance of contra-
diction, that it is mainly because I put in this claim
for the people that I have been thus assailed. You
know perfectly well that I have been accustomed in
all my public life to take an independent course,
that I have not been a flatterer of those who are in
power, nor have I been a flatterer of that great class
on whose behalf I have mainly acted and spoken. I
am no flatterer ; I have not bent my knee to any
class of the community ; I have sought to be
guided by a higher law than the prejudices or the
passions of any section of the people. In this course
of independence .it may be I have made errors, as
other men make errors, for I profess to no kind of
infallibility, even on political subjects which I have
so much considered. Now, take as a proof of this
a question on which those persons to whom I have
referred have said a great deal—the question of the
Factory Act. You know, many of you, that I was
iii Parliament 20 years ago when the act passed ;
that I did not feel it my duty on any occasion to
support it. That I think a course which many of
you, and many of those, your fathers, who are not
now here thought wrong. I was against any inter-
ference by Parliament with the freedom of labour
and of capital. I did not wish to trust a Parliament
of landowners with the control and the disposition
of labour and capital in this country. I knew by
their infamous corn, law, which had lasted for 30

years, they had confiscated an untold and countless

amount of the labour and capital of England, with-
the view of turning it into the channel of rent for
themselves, and therefore I did not like this body
of men to meddle with the question. But I rejoice
as much as any one of you can rejoice that you now-
are working 10i hours daily, instead of 111 hours,
as before. I believe that the establishment of free
trade about the time when the Factory Bill passed
caused so great au increase of trade and demand for
labour that the Factory Bill its:;if ltai been made to
work with'a success that in all probability it would
not have met with if these changes to which I have
ref.Tred had not been made. I think it quite pos-
siille—l hope it is certain—that at some period
even the time now worked may be to some further
extent shortened. (Loud cheers.) My own impres-
sion is that with an economical Government taking
much less of taxation from the people, with laws re-
garding the tenure and the distribution of land in
accordance with a true political economy, and with
education generally and universally spread among
the people, there will be economy, and with edu-
cation generally and universally spread among
the people there will be a strong and rational
disposition to work a shorter time ; that
there, will be greater care taken of the earnings
that are made, and thus that the comfort of families

may not be in the least lessened, although the time
of labour may be shortened. (Cheers.) But, re-
ferring to that question of the discussions of the