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John Bright

76 quotes

“As to the Income Tax, my opinion is that the needful revenue would be fairly and most fairly raised if paid by property, and by individuals in proportion to their property...A Property Tax should be an assessment upon all land and buildings, and canals and railroads, but not on property such as machinery, stock in trade, etc. The aristocracy have squeezed all they can out of the mass of the consumers, and now they lay their daring hands on those not wholly impoverished.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1842 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his sister Margaret on Sir Robert Peel's budget (1842), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), pp. 72-73
“Rich and great people can take care of themselves; but the poor and defenceless—the men with small cottages and large families—the men who must work six days every week if they are to live in anything like comfort for a week,—these men want defenders; they want men to maintain their position in Parliament; they want men who will protest against any infringement of their rights.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1843 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at his Durham election (July 1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 100
“Peel delivered the best speech I ever heard in Parliament. It was truly a magnificent speech, sustained throughout, thoroughly with us, and offering even to pass the immediate [repeal of the Corn Laws], if the House are willing. Villiers, Gibson, and myself cheered continually, and I never listened to any human being speaking in public with so much delight.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his sister Priscilla (16 February 1846), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 147
“Liberty is on the march, and this year promises to be a great year in European history. Our Government is blind enough, and the Parliamentary majorities are more regarded than opinion out of doors. We must have another League of some kind, and our aristocracy must be made to submit again.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Jonathan Priestman (26 March 1848) on the Revolutions of 1848, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 183
“Why cannot the Irish get and save money in Ireland? And why must they cross the Atlantic before they can get hold of a piece of land? Our "territorial" system is one which works a wide and silent cruelty, beggaring, demoralising and destroying multitudes of our people. I should like to join a League sworn or pledged to its entire overthrow. There are facts enough afloat that would suffice to make a revolution in opinion with regard to it, and it follows logically on the Free Trade movement.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Cobden (September 1849), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 164
“The division of the land is the grand source of the property and wealth of France...probably no other country has made such strides in increasing wealth and comfort as France has since 1790.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1853 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to George Wilson (24 September 1853), quoted in John Vincent, The Formation of the British Liberal Party, 1857–1868 [1966] (1972), p. 209
“This old aristocracy and Church-ridden, and tradition-ridden country will never grow wiser. Whilst we are fighting for supremacy in Europe the [United] States are working, and not fighting for it, but winning it all over the world.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1853 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Cobden (30 December 1853), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 230
“The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two sideposts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on; he takes his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and the lowly, and it is on behalf of all these classes that I make this solemn appeal.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the House of Commons (23 February 1855) opposing the Crimean War
“I am not working for failure, but for success, and for a real gain, and I must go the way to get it. I am sure the putting manhood suffrage in the Bill is not the way to get it. This has been done by the Chartists, and by the Complete Suffragists, but what has become of their Bills?”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Joseph Sturge (2 February 1858), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 270
“[H]is (Mr. Bright's) own opinions had always been very adverse to maintaining an armed squadron for the suppression of the slave trade.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (18 June 1858)
“This excessive love for "the balance of power" is neither more nor less than a gigantic system of out-door relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Birmingham (29 October 1858), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), pp. 273-274
“The moral law was not written for men alone in their individual character, but it was written as well for nations, and for nations great as this of which we are citizens. If nations reject and deride that moral law, there is a penalty which will inevitably follow. It may not come at once, it may not come in our lifetime; but, rely upon it, the great Italian is not a poet only, but a prophet, when he says: "The sword of heaven is not in haste to smite, Nor yet doth linger.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Birmingham (29 October 1858), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 275
“I think we are bound as free men—and we townsmen are especially bound, for we only have the power to take the initiative in this great question—we are bound, so far as we are able, by our representatives in Parliament (and I have no doubt it will be one of the consequences of a real Reform Bill), to apply those great principles of political economy, which are the gospel and the charter of industry, as fully to property in land as we have already applied them to property engaged in trade.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Glasgow (21 December 1858), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by John Bright, M.P., Vol. II, ed. J. E. Thorold Rogers (1869), p. 72
“I am for "peace, retrenchment, and reform" — the watchword of the great Liberal party 30 years ago. Whosoever may abandon the cause I shall never pronounce another Shibboleth, but as long as the old flag floats in the air I shall be found a steadfast soldier in the foremost ranks”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1830 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech (28 April 1859); this phrase was first used by William IV in his speech from the Throne for the Whig government of Earl Grey (17 November 1830), quoted in The Times (29 April 1859), p. 6
“I have never uttered a word in favour of universal suffrage either in this House or elsewhere.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1860 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (4 June 1860)
“If the middle class prefer an alliance with the aristocratic or ruling party, to the cordial co-operation and help of the great nation now excluded from the franchise and from all political power, they must be content with a profligate government expenditure, and a taxation burdensome from its amount, and insulting from its inequality and injustice.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to the chairman of an anti-income tax meeting in Birmingham (11 March 1862), quoted in Public Addresses by John Bright, M.P., ed. J. E. Thorold Rogers (1879), p. 86
“I have been asked twenty, fifty times during the last twelve months, “Why do you not come out and say something? Why can you not tell us something in this time of our great need?” Well, I reply, “I told you something when speaking was of use; all I can say now is this, or nearly all, that a hundred years of crime against the negro in America, and a hundred years of crime against the docile natives of our Indian empire, are not to be washed away by the penitence and the suffering of an hour.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Birmingham (18 December 1862), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume I, (1869), pp. 148–149
“Now, take as an illustration the Rock of Gibraltar. Many of you have been there, I dare say. I have; and among the things that interested me were the monkeys on the top of it, and a good many people at the bottom, who were living on English taxes. Well, the Rock of Gibraltar was taken and retained when we were not at war with Spain, and it was retained contrary to every law of morality and honour.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Birmingham (18 December 1862), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume I, (1869), p. 214
“We may be proud that England is the ancient country of Parliaments. With scarcely any intervening period, Parliaments have met constantly for 600 years, and there was something of a Parliament before the Conquest. England is the mother of Parliaments.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at Birmingham, (18 January 1865)
“The Aristocracy in this country are almost, and really are altogether on one side – because they have special privileges to sustain, to surrender which would make them no longer an aristocracy. Our government was purely an aristocratic one from 1690 to 1830. Nearly the whole period was one of war, and war wholly needless.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1857 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to S. Fox (24 October 1865), quoted in John Vincent, The Formation of the British Liberal Party, 1857–1868 [1966] (1972), p. 203
“The right hon. Gentleman is the first of the new party who has expressed his great grief by his actions—who has retired into what may be called his political Cave of Adullam—and he has called about him every one that was in distress and every one that was discontented.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (13 March 1866)
“I am the great terror of the squires, they seem to be seized with a sort of bucolic mania in dealing with me.”
John Bright (1811–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his wife, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 354
“The Aristocratic Institutions of England [had] acted much like the Slavery Institutions of America...[in] demoralis[ing] large classes outside their own special boundaries...[in producing] a long habit of submission...[and in] enfeebl[ing] by corrupting those who should assail them.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Richard Congrieve (24 November 1866), quoted in Maurice Cowling, 1867: Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution. The Passing of the second Reform Bill (1967), p. 25
“I do not think, as some persons seem to think, that the land is really only intended to be in the hands of the rich. I think that is a great mistake. I am not speaking of the poor—for the poor man, in the ordinary meaning of the term, cannot be the possessor of land; but it cannot be a crime or an evil that any man of moderate means, any farmer, should, if he could, become the possessor of land or of his farm.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1868 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (13 March 1868)
“Since I have taken a part in public affairs, the fact of the vast weight of the poverty and ignorance that exists at the bottom of the social scale has been a burden on my mind, and is so now. I have always hoped that the policy which I have advocated, and has been accepted in principle, will tend gradually but greatly to relieve the pauperism and the suffering which we still see among the working classes of society.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1868 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Edinburgh (5 November 1868), quoted in Public Addresses by John Bright, M.P., ed. J. E. Thorold Rogers (1879), p. 136
“Ireland is never unanimous but on one thing – getting something from the Imperial Exchequer.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1857 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (15 October 1869), quoted in John Vincent, The Formation of the British Liberal Party, 1857–1868 [1966] (1972), p. 51
“To have two Legislative Assemblies in the United Kingdom would, in my opinion, be an intolerable mischief; and I think no sensible man can wish for two within the limits of the present United Kingdom who does not wish the United Kingdom to become two or more nations, entirely separate from each other.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Mr. O'Donoghue (20 January 1872), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 444
“They [the Conservatives] say that we—that is, the Liberal party—have disturbed classes and interests unnecessarily, that we have harassed almost all sorts of people, and have made ourselves very unpopular thereby. Without doubt, if they had been in the Wilderness, they would have condemned the Ten Commandments as a harassing piece of legislation, though it does happen that we have the evidence of more than thirty centuries to the wisdom and usefulness of those Commandments.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1874 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Birmingham (31 January 1874), quoted in J. E. Thorold Rogers, Public Addresses by John Bright, M.P. (1879), p. 216
“Tell the merchant that he must not rely for one moment on the Home Rulers for any one thing that is wise and good, nor indeed on any political combination of Irishmen. They have never yet done anything for themselves or their country and have never yet as a party shown what ought to be done. The absence of political and economical knowledge in Ireland is remarkable, and what there is of a sensible middle class is apparently crushed or smothered by the extreme men, who are always in pursuit of some phantom and who seem not to know the substance even when they see it.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1874 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Mr. O'Donoghue (15 March 1874), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 445
“The public exactions and expenditure have much to do with poverty. To raise not less than eighty millions sterling per annum for purposes of government, to expend thirty millions of it in military preparations and means of offence and defence, the bulk of which is only rendered apparently necessary by a mistaken foreign policy, must act as a burden on the people, and must press multitudes of prudent and virtuous families to poverty.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1878 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Dr. Whitelaw (November 1878), quoted in The Public Letters of The Right Hon. John Bright, M.P. (1885), pp. 220–221
“There is no nation on the Continent of Europe that is less able to do harm to England, and there is no nation on the Continent of Europe to whom we are less able to do harm than we are to Russia. We are so separated that it seems impossible that the two nations, by the use of reason or common sense at all, could possibly be brought into conflict with each other.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Public Addresses (1879), p. 459
“It is not Bradlaugh's atheism which they hate, but his unconscious Christianity.”
John Bright (1811–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remark to his son, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 428.
“Force is not a remedy.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1880 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Birmingham referring to the Irish question (November 1880), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 429. Variation in C. N. Douglas, Forty Thousand Quotations (1917): "Force is no remedy.
“What is a great love of books? It is something like a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past times.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1882 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Birmingham Town Hall (1 June 1882), quoted in William Robertson, Life and Times of the Right Hon. John Bright (1883), p. 522. Variation in C. N. Douglas, Forty Thousand Quotations (1917): "What is a great love…
“[W]hat more a blessing, than in these years of feebleness—may be sometimes of suffering—it must be often of solitude—if there be the power to derive instruction and amusement and refreshment from books which your great library will offer to every one? (Applause.) To the young especially this is of great importance, for if there be no seed-time there will certainly be no harvest, and the youth of life is the seed-time of life.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1882 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Birmingham Town Hall (1 June 1882), quoted in William Robertson, Life and Times of the Right Hon. John Bright (1883), p. 527
“The task of the wise government of so vast an empire may be an impossible one—I often fear it is so—we may fail in our efforts, but, whether we fail or succeed, let us do our best to compensate for the wrong of the past and the present by conferring on the Indian people whatever good it is in our power to give them.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1883 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Major Evans Bell (25 August 1883), quoted in The Public Letters of The Right Hon. John Bright, M.P., ed. H. J. Leech (1885), p. 282
“The fact is that the abolition of the corn laws which allowed the importation of wheat from every part of the world whence it can be grown cheaper and sent here and the unhappy pressure of the last few years' bad harvests have broken down the landed system of England and no power on earth can set it up again. (Hear, hear). What I want with regard to the land system is not many or any new fangled propositions. What I want is that we should at first remove all the obstructions which the present law puts in the way of the easy transfer and the division of land.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Somerset (12 October 1885), quoted in The Times (13 October 1885), p. 7
“To the Working Men of Rochdale: A deep sympathy with you in your present circumstances induces me to address you. Listen and reflect, even though you may not approve. Your are suffering—you have long suffered. Your wages have for many years declined, and your position has gradually and steadily become worse. Your sufferings have naturally produced discontent, and you have turned eagerly to almost any scheme which gave hope of relief. Many of you know full well that neither an act of Parliament nor the act of a multitude can keep up wages. You know that trade has long been bad, and that with a bad trade wages cannot rise. If you are resolved to compel an advance of wages, you cannot compel manufacturers to give you employment. Trade must yield a profit, or it will not long be carried on...The aristocracy are powerful and determined; and, unhappily, the middle classes are not yet intelligent enough to see the safety of extending political power to the whole people. The working classes can never gain it of themselves. Physical force you wisely repudiate. It is immoral, and you have no arms, and little organisations...Your first step to entire freedom must be commercial freedom—freedom of industry. We must put an end to the partial famine which is destroying trade, and demand for your labor, your wages, your comforts, and your independence. The aristocracy regard the Anti-Corn Law League as their greatest enemy. That which is the greatest enemy of the remorseless aristocracy of Britain must almost of necessity be your firmest friend. Every man who tells you to support the Corn Law is your enemy—every man who hastens, by a single hour, the abolition of the Corn Law, shortens by so much the duration of your sufferings. Whilst the inhuman law exists, your wages must decline. When it is abolished, and not till then, they will rise.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1842 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address (17 August 1842), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), pp, 81-82
“I do not see that it is possible, nor can I discover that it would be right, for me now to withdraw from the cause in which I have so long taken so deep an interest. The work is great, and vast are the results depending upon it, and unhappily our laborers are not abundant...But conscious of the increasing hazard we run owing to the long continuance of monopolies, and beholding the appalling sufferings of multitudes of my fellow-creatures, and satisfied that all benevolence and charity and the teaching of religion and of schools fall short of much of their full effect owing to the degraded and impoverished condition of the people—I should feel myself guilty, as possessing abundance and leaving others to hunger, nakedness and immorality and deepest ignorance and crime, if I were to retire into domestic quiet and leave the struggle to be carried on entirely by others.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1842 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his mother-in-law Mrs. Priestman (November 1842), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), pp. 102-103
“I believe that the intelligence of the people in Scotland is superior to the intelligence of the people in England. I take it from these facts. Before going to the meetings, we often asked the committee or the people with whom we came in contact, "Are there any fallacies which the working people hold on this question? Have they any crotchets about machinery, or wages, or anything else?" And the universal reply was, "No; you may make a speech about what you like; they understand the question thoroughly; and it is no use confining yourself to machinery or wages, for there are few men, probably no man here, who would be taken in by such raw jests as those." …I told them that they were the people who should have repeal of the Union; for that, if they are separate from England, they might have a government wholly popular and intelligent, to a degree which I believe does not exist in any other country on the face of the earth. However, I believe they will be disposed to press us on, and make us become more and more intelligent; and we may receive benefits from our contact with them, even though, for some ages to come, our connexion with them may be productive of evil to themselves.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1843 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Manchester (January 1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), pp. 84-85
“The Corn Law is as great a robbery of the man who follows the plough as it is of him who minds the loom...If there be one view of the question which stimulates me to harder work in this cause than another, it is the fearful sufferings which I know to exist amongst the rural laborers in almost every part of this kingdom...And then a fat and sleek dean, a dignitary of the Church and a great philosopher, recommends for the consumption of the people—he did not read a paper about the supplies that were to be had in the great valley of the Mississippi—but he said that there were swede, turnip and mangel-wurzel; and the Hereditary Earl Marshal of England, if to out-Herod Herod himself, recommends hot water and a pinch of curry-powder. The people of England have not, even under thirty years of Corn Law influence, been sunk so low as to submit tamely to this insult and wrong. It is enough that a law should be passed to make your toil valueless, to make your skill and labor unavailing to procure for you a fair supply of the common necessaries of life—but when to this grievous iniquity they add the insult of telling you to go, like beasts that perish, to mangel-wurzel, or to something which even the beasts themselves cannot eat, then I believe the people of England will rise, and with one voice proclaim the downfall of this odious system.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1843 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at an Anti-Corn Law League meeting (summer 1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), pp. 93-94
“I am amused to find the fuss our Darlington friends and relatives are making about the Education Bill. Edward Pease, John Pease, etc., all attending a public meeting, making speeches, moving resolutions, promoting agitation, leaving their sweet retirement and the enjoyment of their otium cum dignitate for the tumult of political strife, and all because the Government are disposed to add another link to the fetter which has galled us. Alas! and can these men be really blind to the causes of the miseries of the people, and to the source [viz. the Corn Laws] of the physical and moral degradation which permits the heartless aristocracy of Britain to trample unpunished upon every right, human and divine? The time will come when all will have to speak. Aggression follows aggression; enthralment of the mind naturally treads upon the heels of physical prostration, and we are becoming a people powerless, spiritless, and trained to bonds and to wrong.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1843 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his mother-in-law Mrs. Priestman (1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), pp. 105-106
“I am a working man as much as you. My father was as poor as any man in this crowd. He was of your own body, entirely. He boasts not—nor do I—of birth, nor of great family distinctions. What he has made, he has made by his own industry and successful commerce. What I have comes from him, and from my own exertions. I have no interest in the extravagance of government; I have no interest in seeking appointments under any government; I have no interest in pandering to the views of any government; I have nothing to gain by being the tool of any party. I come before you as the friend of my own class and order; as one of the people; as one who would, on all occasions, be the firm defender of your rights, and the asserter of all those privileges to which you are justly entitled. It is on these grounds that I offer myself to your notice; it is on these grounds that I solicit your suffrages.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1843 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech during the general election of 1843, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 113
“If a man have three or four children, he has just three or four times as much interest in having the Corn Laws abolished as the man who has none. Your children will grow up to be men and women. It may be that your heads will be laid in the grave before they come to manhood or womanhood; but they will grow up, and want employment at honest trades—want houses and furniture, food and clothing, and all the necessaries and comforts of life. They will be honest and industrious as yourselves. But the difficulties which surround you will be increased tenfold by the time they have arrived at your age. Trade will then have become still more crippled; the supply of food still more diminished; the taxation of the country still further increased. The great lords, and some other people, will have become still more powerful, unless the freemen and electors of Durham and of other places stand to their guns, and resolve that, whatever may come of Queen, or Lords, or Commons, or Church, or anybody—great and powerful, and noble though they be—the working classes will stand by the working classes; and will no longer lay themselves down in the dust to be trampled upon by the iron heel of monopoly, and have their very lives squeezed out of them by evils such as I have described.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1843 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech during the general election of 1843, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), pp. 113-114
“Going into the House last night, the caution lately given me by a poor but honest Scotchman struck me. He said to me, "Mr. Bright, I'll give you a piece of advice. You are going into bad company; and now that you are in, remember that you stick to what you said when you were out." If one had dropped from the clouds upon the floor of the House and listened to the debate last night, I never should have dreamed that there was the least distress or discontent in the country. It was true that Lord John Russell made a very clever speech and some hard hits at the ministry...Then came Lord Palmerston, and he made a very clever speech, if there was no country; it would have been very well at a debating club; it had some hard cuts at the ministry, interspersed with references to Afghanistan and the Ameers of Scinde, and everything but the condition of England question.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1843 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at an Anti-Corn Law League banquet (29 July 1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), pp. 116-117
“The preservation of game involves a list of evils to the farmer of which the loss of money is probably not the greatest. It destroys his self-respect and the independence of his character. He takes a farm and contracts to pay a rent; he stocks it with cattle and sheep; he ploughs and sows and reaps—his landlord also stocks the same farm with hares and rabbits and pheasants, and enjoys his battue, or sends to market the game which his tenant's produce has fed. The tenant has his servants, to superintend or conduct the operations on his farm, and to feed and protect his cattle and his flocks—the landlord has his keepers to secure his game, and these keepers are a spy upon the tenant himself, and traverse his field by day or night, as though superior to his servants and himself. In all this there is a fruitful source of depredation to the farmer. Men of capital and independent feeling will shun an occupation which involves so much humiliation.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1843 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech on the Game Laws (1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), pp. 125-126
“Does Irish discontent arise because the priests of Maynooth are now insufficiently clad or fed? I have always thought that it arose because one-third of the people were paupers. I can easily see how, by the granting of this sum, you might hear far less in future times of the sufferings and wrongs of the people of Ireland than you have heard heretofore. For you find that one large means of influence possessed by those who have agitated for the redress of Irish wrongs is the support which the Irish Catholic clergy have given to the various associations for carrying on political agitation. And the object of this Bill is to tame down these agitators—it is a sop given to the priests. It is hush-money, given that they may not proclaim to the whole country, to Europe and to the world, the sufferings of the population to whom they administer the rites and the consolations of religion.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1845 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (16 April 1845) against the Maynooth grant, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), pp. 161-162
“I take it that the Protestant Church of Ireland is at the root of the evils of that country. The Irish Catholics would thank us infinitely more if we were to wipe away that foul blot than they would even if Parliament were to establish the Roman Catholic Church alongside of it. They have had everything Protestant—a Protestant clique which has been dominant in the country; a Protestant Viceroy to distribute places and emoluments amongst that Protestant clique; Protestant judges who have polluted the seats of justice; Protestant magistrates before whom the Catholic peasant cannot hope for justice; they have not only Protestant but exterminating landlords, and more than that a Protestant soldiery, who at the beck and command of a Protestant priest, have butchered and killed a Catholic peasant even in the presence of his widowed mother. The consequence of all this is the extreme discontent of the Irish people. And because this House is not prepared yet to take those measures which would be really doing justice to Ireland, your object is to take away the sympathy of the Catholic priests from the people. The object is to make the priests in Ireland as tame as those in Suffolk and Dorsetshire. The object is that when the horizon is brightened every night by incendiary fires, no priest of the paid establishment shall ever tell of the wrongs of the people among whom he is living...Ireland is suffering, not from the want of another Church, but because she has already one Church too many.”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1845 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (16 April 1845) against the Maynooth grant, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), pp. 161-162
“Notwithstanding the hope that my friend [Cobden], who has just addressed you, has expressed, that it may not become a war of classes, I am not sure that it has not already become such, and I doubt whether it can have any other character. I believe this to be a movement of the commercial and industrial classes against the Lords and great proprietors of the soil...Since the time when we first came to London to ask the attention of Parliament to the question of the Corn Law, two millions of human beings have been added to the population of the United Kingdom...I see them now in my mind's eye ranged before me, old men and young children, all looking to the Government for bread; some endeavouring to resist the stroke of famine, clamorous and turbulent, but still arguing with us; some dying mute and uncomplaining. Multitudes have died of hunger in the United Kingdom since we first asked the Government to repeal the Corn Law, and although the great and powerful may not regard those who suffer mutely and die in silence, yet the recording angel will note down their patient endurance and the heavy guilt of those by whom they have been sacrificed...”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1845 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Covent Garden (19 December 1845), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), pp. 141-142
“We have had landlord rule longer, far longer than the life of the oldest man in this vast assembly, and I would ask you to look at the results of that rule. The landowners have had unlimited sway in Parliament and in the provinces. Abroad the history of our country is the history of war and rapine: at home, of debt, taxes, and rapine too. In all the great contests in which we have been engaged we have found that this ruling class have taken all the honours, while the people have taken all the scars. No sooner was the country freed from the horrible contest which was so long carried on with the Powers of Europe, than this law, by their partial legislation, was enacted—far more hostile to British interests than any combination of foreign powers has ever proved. We find them legislating corruptly: they pray daily that in their legislation they may discard all private ends and partial affections, and after prayers they sit down to make a law for the purpose of extorting from all the consumers of food a higher price than it is worth, that the extra price may find its way into the pockets of the proprietors of land, these proprietors being the very men by whom this infamous law is sustained...”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1845 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Covent Garden (19 December 1845), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 142