Speeches on Questions of Public Policy Part 1

Speeches on Questions of Public Policy.

by John Bright.

PREFACE.

The speeches which have been selected for publication in these volumes possess a value, as examples of the art of public speaking, which no person will be likely to underrate. Those who may differ from Mr.

Bright's theory of the public good will have no difficulty in acknowledging the clearness of his diction, the skill with which he arranges his arguments, the vigour of his style, the persuasiveness of his reasoning, and above all, the perfect candour and sincerity with which he expresses his political convictions.

It seems likely that the course of events in this country will lead those, who may desire to possess influence in the conduct of public affairs, to study the art of public speaking. If so, nothing which can be found in English literature will aid the aspirant after this great faculty more than the careful and reiterated perusal of the speeches contained in these volumes. Tried indeed by the effect produced upon any audience by their easy flow and perfect clearness, or a.n.a.lysed by any of those systems of criticism which under the name of 'rhetoric' have been saved to us from the learning of the ancient world, these speeches would be admitted to satisfy either process.

This is not the occasion on which to point out the causes which confer so great an artistic value on these compositions; which give them now, and will give them hereafter, so high a place in English literature. At the present time nearly a hundred millions of the earth's inhabitants speak the English tongue. A century hence, and it will probably be the speech of nearly half the inhabitants of the globe. I think that no master of that language will occupy a loftier position than Mr. Bright; that no speaker will teach with greater exactness the n.o.blest and rarest of the social arts, the art of clear and persuasive exposition. But before this art can be attained (so said the greatest critic that the world has known), it is necessary that the speaker should secure the sympathies of his audience, should convince them of his statesmans.h.i.+p, should show that he is free from any taint of self-interest or dissimulation. These conditions of public trust still form, as heretofore, in every country of free thought and free speech, the foundation of a good reputation and of personal influence. It is with the fact that such are the characteristics of my friend's eloquence, that I have been strongly impressed in collecting and editing the materials of these volumes.

Since the days of those men of renown who lived through the first half of the seventeenth century, when the liveliest religious feeling was joined to the loftiest patriotism, and men laboured for their conscience and their country, England has witnessed no political career like that of Cobden and Bright. Cobden's death was a great loss to his country, for it occurred at a time when England could ill spare a conscientious statesman. Nations, however, cannot be saved by the virtues, nor need they be lost by the vices, of their public men. But Cobden's death was an irreparable loss to his friends--most of all to the friend who had been, in an incessant struggle for public duty and truth, of one heart and of one purpose with him.

Those who have been familiar with Cobden's mind know how wide was his knowledge, how true was his judgment of political events. The vast majority of those who followed his public career had but a scanty acquaintance with the resources of his sagacity and foresight. He spoke to the people on a few subjects only. The wisdom of Free Trade; the necessity of Parliamentary Reform; the dangerous tendency of those laws which favour the acc.u.mulation of land in few hands; the urgent need for a system of national education; the mischief of the mere military spirit; the prudence of uniting communities by the multiplication of international interests; the abandonment of the policy of diplomatic and military intermeddling; the advocacy, in short, of the common good in place of a spurious patriotism, of selfish, local, or cla.s.s aims, formed the subject of Cobden's public utterances. But his intimate friends, and in particular his regular correspondents, were aware that his political criticism was as general as it was accurate. The loss then of his wise and lucid counsel was the greatest to the survivor of a personal and a political friends.h.i.+p which was continued uninterruptedly through so long and so active a career.

At the commencement of Mr. Bright's public life, the shortsighted selfishness of a landlords' parliament was afflicting the United Kingdom with a continuous dearth. Labour was starved, and capital was made unproductive by the Corn-laws. The country was tied to a system by which Great Britain and her Colonies deliberately chose the dearest market for their purchases. In the same spirit, the price of freights was wilfully heightened by the Navigation-laws. Important branches of home industry were crippled by prying, vexatious, and wasteful excises. And this system was conceived to be the highest wisdom; or at any rate, to be so invincible a necessity that it could not be avoided or altered without danger. The country, if it were to make its way, could make it only because other nations were servile imitators of our commercial policy, and, in the vain hope of retaliation, were hindering their own progress.

The foreign policy of Great Britain was suspicious and irritating, for it was secret, busy, and meddling, insolent to the weak, conciliatory, even truckling, to the strong. The very name of diplomacy is and has been odious to English Liberals, for by means of it a reactionary Government could check domestic reforms, and hinder the community of nations indefinitely. The policy of the Foreign Office was constantly directed towards embittering, if not embroiling, the relations between this and other countries. It is difficult to account for these intrigues, except on the ground that successive Governments were anxious to maintain political and social anomalies at home, while they were affecting to support 'the balance of power' abroad. The abandonment of intervention in foreign politics was the beginning of agitation for domestic reforms.

Perhaps no part of the public administration was worse than that of India. The great Company had lost its monopoly of trade in the Eastern seas, but retained its administrative powers over the subject races and dependent princes of India. Its system of finance was wasteful and oppressive. Its policy was that of aggression and annexation. In practice, the Government was irresponsible. n.o.body listened to Indian affairs in Parliament, except on rare occasions, or for party purposes.

The Governor-General did as he pleased. The President of the Board of Control did as he pleased. If the reader wishes to see how the former acted, Mr. Cobden's pamphlet, 'How Wars are got up in India' will enlighten him. If it be necessary to inquire what the policy of the latter might be, the disastrous and disgraceful Affghan War is an ill.u.s.tration. Never perhaps was a war commenced more recklessly. It is certain that when loss and dishonour fell on the English arms, the statesmen who recommended and insisted on the war tried to screen themselves from just blame by the basest arts.

The internal resources of India were utterly neglected. The Company collected part of its revenue from a land-tax, levied in the worst shape. In order to secure an income through a monopoly, it constrained the cultivation of certain drugs for which there was a foreign demand; and neglected to encourage the cultivation of cotton, for which the home demand was wellnigh boundless, and to which the Indian supply might be made to correspond. The Company constructed neither road nor ca.n.a.l. It did nothing towards maintaining the means of communication which even the native governments had adopted. It suffered the ancient roads and tanks to fall into decay. It neglected to educate the native gentry, much more the people. In brief, the policy of the Company in dealing with India was the policy of Old Spain with her Transatlantic possessions, only that it was more jealous and illiberal.

Against these social and political evils, and many others which might be enumerated, a very small body of true and resolute statesmen arrayed themselves. Among these statesmen the most eminent were the two chiefs of the Anti-Corn-law agitation. Never did men lead a hope which seemed more forlorn. They had as opponents nearly the whole Upper House of Parliament, a powerful and compact party in the Lower. The Established Church was, of course, against them. The London newspapers, at that time almost the only political power in the press, were against them. The 'educated' cla.s.ses were against them. Many of the working people were unfriendly to them, for the Chartists believed that the repeal of the Corn-laws would lower the price of labour. After a long struggle they gained the day; for an accident, the Irish famine, rendered a change in the Corn-laws inevitable. But had it not been for the organization of the League, the accident would have had no effect; for it is a rule in the philosophy of politics that an accident is valuable only when the machinery for making use of the accident is at hand. Calamities never teach wisdom to fools, they render it possible that the wise should avail themselves of the emergency.

A similar calamity, long foreseen by prudent men, caused the political extinction of the East India Company. The joint action of the Board of Control and the Directors led to the Indian mutiny. The suppression of the Indian mutiny led to the suppression of the Leadenhall Street Divan.

Another calamity, also foreseen by statesmen, the outbreak of the American Civil War, gave India commercial hope, and retrieved the finances which the Company's rule had thrown into hopeless disorder.

I have selected the speeches contained in these two volumes, with a view to supplying the public with the evidence on which Mr. Bright's friends a.s.sert his right to a place in the front rank of English statesmen. I suppose that there is no better evidence of statesmans.h.i.+p than prescience; that no fuller confirmation of this evidence can be found than in the popular acceptance of those principles which were once unpopular and discredited. A short time since, Lord Derby said that Mr.

Bright was the real leader of the Opposition. It is true that he has given great aid to that opposition which Lord Derby and his friends have often encountered, and by which, to their great discredit, but to their great advantage, they have been constantly defeated. If Lord Derby is in the right, Mr. Bright is the leader of the People, while his Lords.h.i.+p represents a party which is reckless because it is desperate. The policy which Mr. Bright has advocated in these pages, and throughout a quarter of a century, a policy from which he has never swerved, has at last been accepted by the nation, despite the constant resistance of Lord Derby and his friends. It embodies the national will, because it has attacked, and in many cases vanquished, inst.i.tutions and laws which have become unpopular, because they have been manifestly mischievous and destructive. No one knows better how conservative and tolerant is public opinion in England towards traditional inst.i.tutions, than Mr. Bright does; or how indifferent the nation is to attacks on an untenable practice and a bad law, until it awakens to the fact that the law or the practice is ruinous.

Mr. Bright's political opinions have not been adopted because they were popular. He was skilfully, and for a time successfully, maligned by Lord Palmerston, on account of his persevering resistance to the policy of the Russian War. But it is probable that the views he entertained at that time will find more enduring acceptance than those which Lord Palmerston and Lord Palmerston's colleagues promulgated, and that he has done more to deface that Moloch, 'the balance of power,' than any other man living. Shortly after the beginning of the Planters' War, almost all the upper, and many of the middle cla.s.ses, sympathized with the Slave- owners' conspiracy. Everybody knows which side Mr. Bright took, and how judicious and far-sighted he was in taking it. But everybody should remember also how, when Mr. Bright pointed out the consequences likely to ensue from the cruise of the _Alabama_, he was insulted by Mr.

Laird in the House of Commons; the Mr. Laird who launched the _Alabama_, who has been the means of creating bitter enmity between the people of this country and of the United States, and has contrived to invest the unlawful speculation of a s.h.i.+pbuilder with the dignity of an international difficulty, to make it the material for an unsettled diplomatic question.

There are many social and political reforms, destined, it may be hoped, to become matter of debate and action in a Reformed Parliament, towards the accomplishment of which Mr. Bright has powerfully contributed. There is that without which Reform is a fraud, the redistribution of seats; that without which it is a sham, the ballot; that without which it is possibly a danger, a system of national education, which should be, if not compulsory, so cogently expedient that it cannot be rejected. There is the great question of the distribution of land, its occupancy, and its relief from that pestilent system of game preserving which robs the farmer of his profit and the people of their home supplies. There is the pacification of Ireland. The only consolation which can be gathered from the condition of that unhappy country is, that reforms, which are highly expedient in Great Britain, are vital in Ireland, and that they therefore become familiar to the public mind. There is the development of international amity and good-will, first between ourselves and the people of our own race, next between all nations. There is the recognition of public duty to inferior or subject races, a duty which was grievously transgressed before and after the Indian mutiny, and has been still more atrociously outraged in the Jamaica ma.s.sacre. Upon these and similar matters, no man who wishes to deserve the reputation of a just and wise statesman,--in other words, to fulfil the highest and greatest functions which man can render to man,--can find a worthier study than the public career of an Englishman whose guiding principle throughout his whole life has been his favourite motto, 'Be just and fear not.'

I have divided the speeches contained in these volumes into groups. The materials for selection are so abundant, that I have been constrained to omit many a speech which is worthy of careful perusal. I have naturally given prominence to those subjects with which Mr. Bright has been especially identified, as, for example, India, America, Ireland, and Parliamentary Reform. But nearly every topic of great public interest on which Mr. Bright has spoken is represented in these volumes.

A statement of the views entertained by an eminent politician, who wields a vast influence in the country, is always valuable. It is more valuable when the utterances are profound, consistent, candid. It is most valuable at a crisis when the people of these islands are invited to take part in a contest where the broad principles of truth, honour, and justice are arrayed on one side, and their victory is threatened by those false cries, those reckless calumnies, those impudent evasions which form the party weapons of desperate and unscrupulous men.

All the speeches in these volumes have been revised by Mr. Bright. The Editor is responsible for their selection, for this Preface, and for the Index at the close of the second volume.

JAMES E. THOROLD ROGERS.

OXFORD, _June_ 30, 1868.

The Second Edition of these volumes is an exact reprint of the first, certain obvious errors of the press only having been corrected.

OXFORD, _Dec_. 21, 1868.

INDIA

I

HOUSE OF COMMONS, JUNE 3, 1853.

_From Hansard_.

[The ministerial measure for the government of India was introduced by Sir Charles Wood on June 3, 1853. The particulars of the Bill were as follows: The Government proposed that for the future the relations between the Directors and the Board of Control should be unchanged, but that the const.i.tution of the former should be altered and its patronage curtailed. It reduced the number of the Members of the Court from twenty-four to eighteen, of whom twelve were to be elected as before, and six nominated by the Crown from Indian servants who had been ten years in the service of the Crown or the Company. One-third of this number was to go out every second year, but to be re-eligible.

Nominations by favour were to be abolished. The governors.h.i.+p of Bengal was to be separated from the office of Governor-General. The legislative council was to be improved and enlarged, the number to be twelve. The Bill pa.s.sed the House of Lords on June 13.]

I feel a considerable disadvantage in rising to address the House after having listened for upwards of five hours to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman. But the question is one, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, of first-rate importance; and as I happen from a variety of circ.u.mstances to have paid some attention to it, and to have formed some strong opinions in regard to it, I am unwilling even that the Bill should be brought in, or that this opportunity should pa.s.s, without saying something, which will be partly in reply to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, and partly by way of comment on the plan which he has submitted to the House. There is, as it appears to me, great inconsistency between the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, and that which he proposes should be done; because, really, if we take his speech as a true and faithful statement of the condition of India, and of the past proceedings of the Government in that country, our conviction must be that the right hon. Gentleman will be greatly to be blamed in making any alteration in that Government. At the same time, if it be not a faithful portraiture of the Government, and of its transactions in India, then what the right hon. Gentleman proposes to do in regard to the home administration of that country is altogether insufficient for the occasion. I cannot on the present occasion go into many of the details on which the right hon. Gentleman has touched; but the observations which I have to make will refer to matters of government, and those will be confined chiefly to the organisation of the home administration. I am not much surprised that the Government should have taken what I will call a very unsatisfactory course with regard to the measure they have propounded, because they evidently did not seem exactly to know what they ought to do from the very first moment that this question was brought before them. I do not allude to the whole of the Treasury bench, but I refer particularly to the n.o.ble Lord (Lord J.

Russell), because he was at the head of the Government when this question was first brought before them. Lord Broughton, then Sir John Hobhouse, was at that time the President of the Board of Control, and he was not in favour of a Committee to inquire into the past government and present condition of India. Shortly afterwards, however, it was considered by the n.o.ble Lord (Lord J. Russell) that it would be desirable to have such a Committee appointed. A Committee was appointed, and it sat.

But at the commencement of the present Session the n.o.ble Lord intimated very distinctly, in answer to a question which I put to him, and which seemed to make the n.o.ble Lord unnecessarily angry, that it was the intention of the Government to legislate, and in such a way as to leave the Indian Government almost entirely the same as it had hitherto been.

['No, no!'] Well, I thought that the n.o.ble Lord said so, and in corroboration of that I may mention that the n.o.ble Lord quoted--and I believe that it was the n.o.ble Lord's only authority--the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Stamford (Mr. Herries), who considered that no material change was required in the const.i.tution of the home Indian Government. Well, when the n.o.ble Lord made that announcement, considerable dissatisfaction was manifested on both sides of the House, some hon. Members speaking in favour of a delay of one, two, or three years, or declaring themselves strongly against the present const.i.tution of the Indian Government. However, from that time to this, various rumours were afloat, and everybody was confident one week that there would be no legislation, or only a postponement; in another week it was thought that there was to be a very sweeping measure (which last report, I must say, I never believed); and the week after that people were again led to the conclusion that there would be a measure introduced such as the one this night submitted to the House.

Again, it was understood so lately as last Sat.u.r.day that there would be no legislation on the subject, excepting a mere temporary measure for a postponement. I confess that I was myself taken in by that announcement.

On Monday the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Danby Seymour) gave notice of a question on the same subject, and he was requested not to ask it till Tuesday. On Tuesday there was a Cabinet Council, and whether there was a change of opinion then I know not, but I presume that there was. The opinion that was confidently expressed on Sat.u.r.day gave way to a new opinion, and the n.o.ble Lord announced that legislation would be proceeded with immediately. All this indicates that there was a good deal of vacillation on the part of the Government. At last, however, has come the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Control. There were some good things in it, no doubt. I do not suppose that any man could stand up, and go on speaking for five hours, without saying something that was useful. But as to the main question on which this matter rests, I do not believe that the plan which the Government proposes to subst.i.tute will be one particle better than that which exists at the present moment.

With regard to the question of patronage, I admit, so far as that goes, that the plan proposed by the right hon. Gentleman will be an improvement on the present system. But I do not understand that the particular arrangement of the covenanted service is to be broken up at all. That is a very important matter, because, although he might throw open the nominations to the Indian service to the free compet.i.tion of all persons in this country, yet if, when these persons get out to India, they are to become a covenanted service, as that service now is const.i.tuted, and are to go on from beginning to end in a system of promotion by seniority--and they are to be under pretty much the same arrangement as at present--a great deal of the evil now existing will remain; and the continuance of such a body as that will form a great bar to what I am very anxious to see, namely, a very much wider employment of the most intelligent and able men amongst the native population.

The right hon. Gentleman has, in fact, made a long speech wholly in defence of the Indian Government; and I cannot avoid making some remarks upon what he has stated because I wholly dissent from a large portion of the observations which he has made. But the right hon. Gentleman, above all things, dreads that this matter should be delayed. Now I will just touch upon that point. The right hon. Gentleman has said that he has not met any one who does not consider it highly desirable that the House should legislate upon the subject of the Government of India this year; and that it will be a great evil if such legislation is postponed. In support of this view he produces a private letter from Lord Dalhousie upon the subject. Now I do not consider such evidence as by any means conclusive, because the House knows that Lord Dalhousie has been connected with the system that now exists. That n.o.ble Earl is also surrounded by persons who are themselves interested in maintaining the present system. From his elevated position also in India--I do not mean his location at Simlah--but from his being by his station removed from the ma.s.s of the European population, and still more removed from the native population, I do not think it at all likely that Lord Dalhousie will be able to form a sounder opinion upon this question than persons who have never been in India. In my opinion, no evil can possibly arise from creating in the minds of the population of India a feeling that the question of Indian Government is considered by the House of Commons to be a grave and solemn question; and I solemnly believe that if the decision on the question be delayed for two years, so as to enable Parliament to make due inquiries as to the means of establis.h.i.+ng a better form of government in India, it will create in the minds of all the intelligent natives of India a feeling of confidence and hope, and that whatever may be done by them in the way of agitation will be rather for the purpose of offering information in the most friendly and generous spirit, than of creating opposition to any Government legislation. However, the question of delay is one which the House in all probability will be called upon to decide on another occasion.

But pa.s.sing from that subject, I now come to the principle upon which the right hon. Gentleman founded his Motion. The speech of I he right hon. Gentleman was throughout that of an advocate of the Indian Government, as at present const.i.tuted; and, if Mr. Melville had said everything that could possibly be dragged into the case, he could not have made it more clearly appear than the right hon. Gentleman has done that the Government of India has been uniformly worthy of the confidence of the country. My view of this matter, after a good deal of observation, is, that the Indian Government, composed of two branches, which the right hon. Gentleman does not propose to amalgamate into one, is a Government of secrecy and irresponsibility to a degree that should not be tolerated in a country like this, where we have a const.i.tutional and Parliamentary Government, I have not the least idea in any observations which I may make either in this House or elsewhere of bringing a charge against the East India Company--that is to say, against any individual member of the Board of Directors, as if they were anxious to misgovern India. I never had any such suspicion. I believe that the twenty-four gentlemen who const.i.tute the Board of Directors would act just about as well as any other twenty-four persons elected by the same process, acting under the same influences, and surrounded by the same difficulties--having to act with another and independent body-- the Board of Control. Neither am I hostile to the Board of Control, because I think that the duty imposed upon it is greater than any such body can properly perform. The right hon. Gentleman, the enormous labours of whose office could not be accomplished by any one man, coming into office in December, and having to propose a new Government for India in the month of May or June, must have found it extremely difficult to make himself master of the question. But beyond this the House should bear in mind, that during the last thirty years there has been a new President of the Board of Control every two years. Nay, in the course of last year there were no less than three Presidents of the Board of Control. Thus that Board seems framed in such a manner as to make it altogether impossible that any one man should be able to conduct it in the way which it ought to be conducted. Beyond this, the President of that Board has to act in conjunction with the Court of Directors.

Without saying anything which would impute blame to any party, it must be obvious that two such bodies combined can never carry on the government of India wisely, and in accordance with those principles which have been found necessary in the government of this country. The right hon. Gentleman has been obliged to admit that the theory of the old Government of India was one which could not be defended, and that everybody considers it ridiculous and childish. I am not at all certain that the one that is going to be established is in any degree better. It was in 1784 that this form of government was established, amid the fight of factions. In 1813 it was continued for twenty-years longer, during a time when the country was involved in desperate hostilities with France.

In 1833 another Bill, continuing that form of government, pa.s.sed through Parliament immediately after the hurricane which carried the Reform Bill. All these circ.u.mstances rendered it difficult for the Government, however honestly disposed, to pa.s.s the best measure for the government of India. But all the difficulties which then existed appear to me wholly to have vanished. Never has any question come before Parliament more entirely free from a complication of that nature, or one which the House has the opportunity of more quietly and calmly considering, than the question now before them.

I should have been pleased if the right hon. Gentleman had given the House the testimony of some two or three persons on his own side of the question. But, as he has not done so, I will trouble the House by referring to some authorities in support of my own views. I will first refer to the work of Mr. Campbell, which has already been quoted by the right hon. Gentleman. It is a very interesting book, and gives a great deal of information. That writer says--

'The division of authority between the Board of Control and the Court of Directors, the large number of directors, and the peculiar system by which measures are originated in the Court, sent for approval to the Board, then back again to the Court, and so on, render all deliverances very slow and difficult; and when a measure is discussed in India, the announcement that it has been referred to the Court of Directors is often regarded as an indefinite postponement. In fact, it is evident that (able and experienced as are many of the individual directors) twenty-four directors in one place, and a Board of Control in another, are not likely very speedily to unite in one opinion upon any doubtful point.'

That, I think, is likely to be the opinion of any man on the Government of India. There is another authority to which I will refer, Mr. Kaye, who has also written a very good book. It was actually distributed by the Court of Directors; I have therefore a right to consider it a fair representation of their views of what was done, especially as the Chairman of the Court has given me a copy of the book. Mr. Kaye, in referring to the double Government which existed in Bengal in 1772, makes use of these expressions. When I first read them, I thought they were a quotation from my own speeches:--

'But enlightened as were the instructions thus issued to the supervisors, the supervision was wholly inadequate to the requirements of the case. The double Government, as I have shown, did not work well. It was altogether a sham and an imposture. It was soon to be demolished at a blow.... The double Government had, by this time, fulfilled its mission. It had introduced an incredible amount of disorder and corruption into the State, and of poverty and wretchedness among the people; it had embarra.s.sed our finances, and soiled our character, and was now to be openly recognised as a failure.'

This is only as to Bengal. The following are the words he uses in respect to the double Government at home:--

'In respect of all transactions with foreign Powers--all matters bearing upon questions of peace and war--the President of the Board of Control has authority to originate such measures as he and his colleagues in the Ministry may consider expedient. In such cases he acts presumedly in concert with the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors--a body composed of the chairman, deputy-chairman, and senior member of the Court. The Secret Committee sign the despatches which emanate from the Board, but they have no power to withhold or to alter them. They have not even the power to record their dissent. In fact, the functions of the Committee are only those which, to use the words of a distinguished member of the Court (the late Mr. Tucker), who deplored the mystery and the mockery of a system which obscures responsibility and deludes public opinion, could as well be performed "by a secretary and a seal."'

Further on he says--

'In judging of responsibility, we should remember that the whole foreign policy of the East India Company is regulated by the Board of Control; that in the solution of the most vital questions--questions of peace and war--affecting the finances of the country, and, therefore, the means of internal improvement, the Court of Directors have no more power than the mayor and aldermen of any corporate town. India depends less on the will of the twenty-four than on one man's caprice--here to-day and gone to-morrow--knocked over by a gust of Parliamentary uncertainty-- the mistaken tactics of a leader, or negligence of a whipper-in.