severely blamed the Government for permitting the escape of the Alabama, the fitting-out of which was as notorious as the building of other vessels of war in this country for the service of the Confederates. Our neutrality, he declared, was a cold and unfriendly neutrality, or the Government would prevent the sailing of these vessels, which tended to peril our friendly relations with the United States. The unflinching attitude of the hon. member for Birmingham on the whole of the American question, gave, of course, great offence to Mr. Laird and others who sympathized with the Southern Confederacy.

We pass on from this anxious time to note one more speech of Mr. Bright on America, delivered after the great civil war had been happily concluded by the success of the Northern armies. In St. James's Hall, on the 29th of June, 1867, a public breakfast was given to William Lloyd Garrison, the wellknown anti-slavery advocate. Mr. Bright presided, and passed a glowing eulogium upon the band of anti-slavery labourers in the United States. He sketched Mr. Garrison's arduous and humane career, and the journalistic and other efforts he had laboriously made on behalf of the slave. Then he alluded to Dr. Channing, John Quincy Adams, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley, Lydia Maria Child, and others, as well as distinguished Southerners who had liberated their slaves, and devoted all they had to the service of freedom. Aptly applying a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Mr. Bright remarked that after the writer of the Epistle had described the great men and fathers of the nation, he said: ""Time would fail me to tell of Gideon, of Barak, of Samson, of Jephtha, of David, of Samuel, and the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens." I ask if this grand passage of the inspired writer may not be applied to that heroic band who have made America the perpetual home of freedom.' Alluding next to the war, and to the shadow thrown over a whole continent, but which had now vanished for ever, the speaker observed, 'An ancient and renowned poet has said,

"

Unholy is the voice

Of loud thanksgiving over slaughtered men."

It becomes us not to rejoice, but to be humbled, that a chastisement so terrible should have fallen upon any of our race; but

we may be thankful for this-that this chastisement was at least not sent in vain. The great triumph in the field was not all; there came after it another great triumph-a triumph over passion; and there came up before the world the spectacle, not of armies and military commanders, but of the magnanimity and mercy of a powerful and victorious nation. The vanquished were treated as the vanquished, in the history of the world, have never before been treated. We might now say, if history had no sadder, yet, taking a different view, it had probably also no brighter page. To Mr. Garrison more than to any other man was this due; for his was the creation of that opinion which had made slavery hateful, and had also made freedom possible in America. His name was now venerated in his own country and in Europe, and in time to come it would be the herald and the synonym of good to millions of men who now dwelt on the almost unknown continent of Africa.' Mr. Bright then referred to our own champions of freedom, Clarkson, Wilberforce, Buxton, Sturge, and Thompson; and returning, in conclusion, to the guest of the day, said: 'I have kept within my heart his name, and the names of those who have been associated with him in every step which he has taken; and in public debates in the halls of peace, and even on the blood-soiled fields of war, my heart has always been with those who were the friends of freedom. We welcome him, then, with a cordiality which knows no stint and no limit for him and for his noble associates, both men and women; and we venture to speak a verdict which, I believe, will be sanctioned by all mankind, not only by those who live now, but by those who shall come after, to whom their perseverance and their success shall be a lesson and a help in the future struggles which remain for men to make. One of our oldest and greatest poets has furnished me with a line that well expresses that verdict. Are not William Lloyd Garrison and his fellow-labourers in that world's work-are they not

"

'On Fame's eternal bead-roll worthy to be filled?'"

These are the utterances of Mr. Bright upon a question which divided Englishmen into passionate and hostile camps. He never swerved in his judgment upon the great issues at stake in the American civil war; and this is no light boast when we look back upon the momentous events of that terrible period, or regard the happy consolidation which has since taken place in that great nation, which speaks the same language as ourselves, and is moved by the same impulses. It was but natural

that his unwearied persistence in the cause of the North-a cause which he believed to rest on just and righteous principles -should earn for him the gratitude of the people of the United States. How deep and lasting that gratitude was, and is, may be gathered, amongst other things, from a statement made by an eminent merchant of New York, who a few years ago came upon a visit to this country. Addressing the children of Gravel Lane Ragged School, Salford, he said, 'If you were to ask in the schools of America, Who are the three men whom, as a country, we love the most? the reply would be: First, Washington, because he was the father of his country; secondly, Abraham Lincoln, because he was the saviour of his country; thirdly, John Bright, because he is the friend of our country.' During the progress of the war, and after the debate on Mr. Roebuck's motion, the members of the New York Chamber of Commerce sent to Mr. Bright, through the American Minister in London, a resolution which had been unanimously passed at one of their meetings, to the effect, 'That this Chamber desires to place on its records an expression of the grateful sense entertained by its members of the intelligent, eloquent, just, and fearless manner in which Mr. John Bright has defended, before the people of England in the British Parliament, the principles of constitutional liberty and international justice, for the maintenance of which the American people are contending, and that the proceedings be communicated to Mr. Bright.' This compliment, which was of no merely formal character, was suitably acknowledged.

But perhaps the most interesting reminiscence relating to Mr. Bright and the United States is one respecting which we are able to give the following particulars. The staff used by President Lincoln was bequeathed to Mr. Bright by the Rev. Dr. J. Smith, of Springfield, Illinois, the latter having first received it from Mr. Lincoln's family. The President's goldheaded staff, or cane, bears the following inscription on the gold head: 'J. A. M'Clernand to the Hon. A. Lincoln, June, 1857;' and on a gold ferule below are the words, 'Presented to Rev. Jas. Smith, D.D., late pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Springfield, Ills., by the family of the late President Lincoln, in memoriam of the high esteem in which he was held by him and them as their pastor and dear friend, 27th April, 1868.' On another gold ferule, lower down, is the following: 'Bequeathed by the Rev. Dr. Smith, U. S. Consul, Dundee, to the Right Hon. John Bright, M.P., in recognition of his tried friendship to the United States.'

The following is an extract from the will of Dr. Smith:

'I give, devise, and bequeath unto John Bright, Esq., member of the British House of Commons, and to his heirs, the gold-mounted staff, or cane, which belonged to the deceased President Lincoln of the United States, and presented to me by the deceased's widow and family as a mark of the President's respect; which staff is to be kept as an heirloom in the family of the said John Bright, as a token of the esteem which the late President felt for him because of his unwearied zeal and defence of the United States in suppressing the civil rebellion of the Southern States."

Mr. Reid, the Executor of Dr. Smith, in a note of the date of July 17, 1871, informing Mr. Bright of the bequest, says, 'I may mention that the late President's family are much pleased at Dr. Smith's bequeathing it to you, as it was the President's wish that you eventually should get it.'

There have been some moral campaigns upon which men have entered with hope and courage, whose results have not, unhappily, during the lifetime of those engaged in them, been witnessed in the furtherance of the cause of truth and freedom. But it was the good fortune of Mr. Bright, and those who laboured in the same cause, during the great American struggle, to witness the attainment of the noble ends for which they strove, viz., the liberation of the slave, and the reknitting with surer and stronger force those great national bonds which had been momentarily severed.

CHAPTER IV.

THE COBDEN-DELANE CONTROVERSY.-THE LAND QUESTION.CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, ETC.

Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright at Rochdale.-Speeches on the Land and the Labourers.-Misrepresentation by the Times.-Correspondence between Mr. Delane and Mr. Cobden.-Mr. Bright defends his Opinions and those of Mr. Cobden at Birmingham.-Severe strictures upon the Times.-The Land and the Labourers.-Evils of Primogeniture.-Effects of the Territorial System.-Proposed Reforms.-Inducements to Emigration offered by the United States.-Mr. Bright on the History of the Reformed Parliament.-Great Triumphs achieved.-Reform and Emigration-Ireland and Foreign Affairs.-Mr. Bright on the Death Punishment and Townley's Case.-Important Speech on capital Punishment.-Temperance and the Permissive Bill.-Arguments against Arbitrary Legislation.

WHEN Mr. Cobden met his constituents at Rochdale on the 24th of February, 1863, he was accompanied by Mr. Bright, and their speeches on that occasion-which were chiefly on the subject of the English laws affecting land and labourers-led to a controversy well-known as the Cobden-Delane dispute.' In the course of his speech, Mr. Cobden said, 'With regard to some things in foreign countries, we don't compare favourably. You have no peasantry but that of England which is entirely divorced from the land. I don't want any agrarian outrages by which we should change all this; but this I find-and it is quite consistent with human nature-that wherever I go the condition of the people is generally pretty good, in comparison with the power they have to take care of themselves; and if you have a class entirely divorced from political power, while in another country they possess it, they will be treated there with more consideration, they will have greater advantages, they will be better educated, and have a better chance of holding property, than in a country where they are deprived of the advantage of political power.'

What Mr. Bright said at the meeting on the subject of the land was this: I should say, if we were fairly represented, that feudalism, with regard to the land of England, would perish, and that the agricultural labourer throughout the United Kingdom would be redeemed from that poverty and serfdom which, up to this time, have been his lot. It would