The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-27 00:00:00

Mr. Bright, M.P., presided at St. James's Hail, Pic-
cadilly, on Wednesday evening, when the Rev. Newman
Hall delivered his lecture on " The Goodwill of Great
Britain to America." Introducing the lecturer, he ex.
plained that by presiding he took the place of the Dukeeai
Argyll, whose " just and generous view of American
affairs during the last few years of trouble " he highly
extolled ; and he assented to take the place first on,
account of the deep interest which he took in the subject
of the lecture, and secondly because of his respect and
admiration for the lecturer. Then, dealing with the
subject of the evening, he said : There is nothing with
regard to the dispute between the two conntriea
which has done so great mischief as the igno-
rance which has prevailed among us. It is not that
we are much more ignorant than any other people; the
Americans to a large extent are not very well acquainted,
with us ; and I scarcely ever read anything that h
Frenchman has written about England that does not ap-
pear to be ludicrous from its non-acquaintance with the
habits and customs and feelings of our people. But
although there are cases in which ignorance is simply
ignorance ; there are other cases in which it is prodigious
mischief and possible danger. Now it is just seven years
ago since we were all startled by the commencement of
the great events which have been of late occurring in the
United States ; State after State was erecting the banner
of rebellion and seceding from the great republic. If we
look back to that time we shall see what a misfortune it
was to us that nur people and some of those who ought to
have been best instructed were so ignorant of everything
connected with the United States. lam not quite sure
that the greatest ignorance was not found to prevail most
extensively among those who considered themselves as the
instructed classes—(hear)—for we know perfectly well,
without mentioning names, that men in the very highest
positions in the political parties in this country exhibited
an unacquaintance with American affairs which we now
know to have been very remarkable, and to have been
followed by very evil consequences. I believe really that
it may be said without exaggeration that they knew
nothing about America ; that which they thought they
knew for the most part was altogether wrong, and they
were in a rather worse position than if they had absolutely
known nothing at all. Some of them could tell you every-
thing, I believe, to the minutest detail of the Homeric
age ; they could tell you nearly all the legends of the
ancient world, but with regard to the great English
nation on the other side of the Atlantic they knew
nothing which aided them in their course, whether in
Parliament or in the Government. If I were to turn
for a moment to another class of persons who ought to be
well informed, because they not only are held to be, but often
avow themselves to be great public instructors, I should not
find much more knowledge among them. I saw not long
ago in the house of a gentleman in this city a whole shelf
of volumes, I am not sure how many, but I think at least
a dozen, composed of leading articles, of letters from corre-
spondents, and of paragraphs, of what was then supposed
to be important information in every shape, cut out from
a powerful newspaper in this country, and pasted upon
blank leaves.' But these twelve volumes which had been got
together during four or five years had been from morning
to morning published in this city, and offered to all the
people to be read, but tenc'ered more especially to the rich
and the powerful, as the gathered knowledge of the con-
ductors of that journal with regard to one of the most
stupendous events which the history of the world affords
any narrative of. So whether we speak of the mem-
bers of the Government, or of a large portion of the
members of Parliament, or I believe of a majority of
those who profess to instruct the public through the
press in this city, we know now that seven years ago
they were as ignorant as children, and if you had had a
score of crossing-sweepers they could not possibly have
made greater errors than were made by those who oughtto
have been the leaders of public opinion in this country.
(Cheers.) But the rich and the powerful classes were not
only ignorant ; they had this great misfortune—their in-
stincts on this question were altogether wrong, and there-
fore, when they saw beyond the Atlantic the greatest
struggle of 'modern times going on, in which the case
was more decided and pronounced and clear than in any
other struggle to which you can point in history, this
rich and powerful class gave, their voice and their sym-
pathy, I will say without exaggeration, for the very worst
cause for which brave men at least ever took up arms.
(Cheers.) But if we come to the great body of the
people, we find a different state of things among them.
I don't assert for a moment that what we call the mass
of the people, and I refer more particularly to the
labouring and artisan population in the counties of Lan-
caster and York, were more instructed with regard to the
geography of the United States, how its great rivers run,
where its great cities were, or what was its population and
its revenue, but they were saved from that other misfor-
tune, for their instincts were. altogether right— (cheers)—
though abundant efforts were made in the North of Eng.
land to lead the people to espouse the cause of the South,
and to proclaim their wish that the Union should be dis-
solved. But if we had the sad spectacle on the one hand
that the rich were supporting a rebellion the main object
of which was the continued oppression of a whole race, we
had on the other hand the grand and magnificent spectacle
that the great body of the people were, as they always wish
to be, the supporters of justice and freedom. It was in the
month of December 1861 that the excitement arose in con-
nection with the seizure of certain envoys from a certain
steamer by an American ship of war, and I remember at
that time speaking my sentiments to a meeting in the
town in which I live. I shall refer only to one expression
I used upon that occasion. I advised the Government,
the Parliament, and the people of England to treat the
American nation during their great and calamitous struggle
with a generous and frienclly neutrality. I did not for a
moment suppose that anybody could urge that it was our
business as a nation to take up arms or to interfere directly
in that great struggle, but I thought we had the power by
a generous and friendly neutrality at any rate to express
our sympathy with whatever is good in the United
States. But the Government of the day, probably in-
fluenced by the unfortunate atmosphere with which it was
surrounded, treated the whole question with what I will
call a cold and an ungenerous neutrality—(hear)—and the
result of that I need not enter into ; it is written in a pile
of blue-books ; it is felt now in the office of almost every
merchant ; it touches now the feelings and sometimes
excites the alarm of almost all thoughtful men, and I
believe, also, of thoughtful women in this kingdom. Now,
if the Government of that time had taken that very
simple advice which I tendered them, what would have
been the result? The two nations would have been knit
together in bonds which no Minister, and no Cabinet, and
no press could by any means have burst asunder. I know
this from the excessive kindness with which I have been
treated by Americans in this country and in their own.
Others of those around me may say the same for them-
selves ; but if all the people of England, including all the
rich class, the powerful conductors of the press, and your
Cabinet Ministers, had held the same generous language
towards the people of the United States, we should have
been as one together as if there was not a drop of ocean
between us, and I might have defied any man or any body
of men, or any Government, or any nation, or any acci-
dent, or any cause, to have separated these two great
nations in times to come. They would have been one
nation in sympathy, and they would have been a
great guarantee for freedom and civilisation in the world.
(Cheers.) At the present, instead of that, we are separated
by many suspicions and by much dislike, and I am afraid
in the address to which we are about to listen we shall
hear that there is in the United States among many a very
bitter
lfeelingastn se seven
whenyr s
Now,memoryl am n
turns backot n
toe
of those the
who
events of
the
believe that the state of things between England and
America is without remedy, or that it is highly alarm-
ing I don't believe that the negotiations on questions
which are now pending between the two countries are
absolutely close i, and I have the most complete faith
that there are good men enough in numbers in the
United States and in England to bring about before long
a just and a complete settlement of all the important
questions which are now unsettled between the two
nations. However, we must admit one thing. I admit
it, not with
.surprise, but, I confess it, with great sorrow,
that the ignorance which prevailed seven years ago has
been of enormous injury to both nations, and probably
throughout the whole of this generation there will
be felt in the United States the kind of feeling which we
have as individuals when we had received an injury from
one from whom we had a right to expect good ; and that
is a feeling far worse, which goes far deeper, and is far
less accessible to remedy than if we received similar injury
from a person whom we had deemed heretofore hostile to
us.

It is impossible for an Englishman to know how
much the Americans value the opinion of this country.

(Hear, hear.) We cannot trace our ancestors back to
those parts of the Continent from which many hundreds
of years ago they came. We arc here where we were
born, and where our families have lived for generations ;
we have no special sympathies with distant countries as
the Americans hc.••e with us. When they come over here
you may find them in all parts of the kingdom almost,
searching parish registers and churchyards, and looking
up old books endeavouring to find out where their great-
grandfathers came from ; and it is to them an intense
satisfaction when they can trace their families to some
spot to them henceforth a favoured spot in this islariti.
Then remember their case during perhaps four of the last
seven years. Many thought them on the ground with the,
garotter at their throats ; they were struggling for very,
life, for all that every citizen of that republic holds to be
dear in public affairs, and they felt that we did not treat
them with that friendly and generous neutrality which
they had a right to expect from us, a nation from which
their fathers went forth. (Mr. Bright concluded by intro.,
Liming the lecturer in complimentary term.)