which prevented their going the length to which Church and State went in France, and therefore Nonconformity in England was not extinguished; it was only persecuted, and, as far as law and practice could do it, degraded and insulted. For the last 100 years the Nonconformists of England have taken a very different position. They have been now for a long period the great advancing and reforming force in our English political life- (loud cheers)-and we must not forget, and we ought to acknowledge with thankfulness that there are large numbers of those who are not Nonconformists, but who are associated and worship with the Church of England, who have constantly and honestly co-operated with Nonconformists in all that they have done in favour of greater civil and religious freedom. (Cheers.) But yet, for all that, we must admit, and with sorrow, that even now the people of this country are parted into two great divisions-the Church and the Conformists on one side, the Dissenters and Nonconformists on the other. There seems to me a strange and a painful misfortune in this to the country at large, that there should be suspicion to a great extent, dislike to a great extent, enmity, I sometimes fear, to some extent, between large classes of persons professing to believe and to practise the religion of Christ. And why is it so? In fact, I know not why the Church should so dread Dissent and hate it and despise it. There is no difference in doctrine or in practiceI mean in the rites of Church arrangement-which can justify the feelings which exist too much between Churchmen and Dissenters in our country and in our time. What has Dissent done? If I were a Churchman I think I should sometimes ask myself that question. I have heard of an eminent Bishop, who, describing a parish, said that there were only two things in it to be lamented the beerhouses and the Dissenters. (Laughter.) That good Bishop believed, no doubt-I will not say that a Dissenting chapel was as injurious as a beerhouse, but still that it interfered with the harmony of his parish. Those who went to the chapel did not go to hear him. I recollect a clergyman I once met some years ago, from Warwickshire, who professed to be very liberal on this matter. He said he should not object at all to the Dissenters going to their own place of worship the evening if they would go to his church in the morning. (Much laughter.) I do not know whether he considered that was a case of bane and antidote, or what light he considered it in. But I said, 'As you are so liberal with regard to them, would you have any objection yourself occasionally to go to the Dissenting chapel?' But he said that was a very different question. (Renewed laughter.) He fell back upon what he called his orders, his apostolical succession-(cheers)-and it was impossible for him to make that condescension to the Dissenters which he thought it right the Dissenters should make to him. I am surprised that men who are good and cultivated, and whom one supposes to know a good deal of the world, should think that beerhouses on the one side and Dissenting chapels on the other are proper to be mentioned in the same sentence. (Hear.) As to the bishops, one might say a good deal about them. (Laughter.) But when there come questions on the sacrifice of tens of thousands of lives in distant and remote countries, they who come down, or say they come down, from Christ's own Apostles, sit there with all the dignity of great office about them, and not one of them in that House opens his mouth to condemn the transaction which in his own home and in his own soul I cannot but believe he must emphatically condemn. (Cheers.) If I were a Churchman myself, and I suppose it is very much a matter of accident that I am not―(laughter)—if they had not imprisoned my forefathers for many years in Bedford Gaol, for anything I know I might have been a Churchman now-I hope I should at least have had that sense of honour and of justice which would have enabled me to look around and behold all the great works of the great Nonconformist body in England and to regard it with admiration and honour." (Cheers.)

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE LIBERALS AGAIN IN POWER.

Dissolution of Parliament-Liberal Victory-Mr. Bright once more Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster-Capital Punishment-Visit to Stratford-on-AvonThe Burials Bill-Lord Rector of Glasgow University-Address from France, Holland, and Germany-Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Bill-Mr. Bright's Seventieth Birthday-At Rochdale-Bright Laying the Foundation Stone of the First Board School at Llandudno-His Annual Address to his Constituents in January, 1882-Speech in the House on the Rules of Procedure-His Opinion upon Libraries.

On the 8th of March the dissolution of Parliament was announced in both Houses. The recent representatives of Birmingham were opposed by the Hon. A. C. G. Calthorpe and Major Burnaby in the Conservative interest. Mr. Bright arrived in Birmingham on the 19th of March, and was lustily cheered by a large crowd that had assembled to welcome him. The Town Hall that evening was densely crowded by Liberals. Mr. Jaffray presided. When Mr. Bright was called upon to address the meeting, he was received with a great burst of enthusiasm, which was continued for several minutes. said:

He

"We were now witnessing the dying hours of the worst of modern Parliaments, and beholding the spectacle of the worst of Administrations being brought up for judgment. He contended that they owed the inestimable blessings which they were now privileged to enjoy to the foresight, judgment, and indefatigable labours of the Liberal party. He pointed out that the Conservative party had systematically opposed all efforts at reform, and had obstructed instead of advancing the attainment of results at which good legislation had aimed during the past half century. In the last six years-we will not go further back-in the last six years you had no considerable, if indeed any, liberal measures," said Mr. Bright. "You have had, as you know, an extravagance unknown for many years. You have had increasing debt and increasing taxes, and if you have not paid off all that you owe it will have to be paid by somebody some day. This Government came in with a purse full with £6,000,000. They go out with a purse not only empty but £8,000,000 to the bad. (Shame.') Instead of dealing economically with your resources, extending your freedom, doing everything they could to encourage your industry, they have been marauding over half the world. (Loud and prolonged cheers.) England, the mother of free nations, herself the origin of free Parliaments-England has been supporting oppression in Turkey-(Shame')-and has been carrying fire and sword into remote territories in South Africa and in Afghanistan. (Shame.') Will you entrust your power in the future-( No, no ')-to men who have thus dealt with your interests, not in the remote past, but in the near past and in the present? ('No.') No; if you can find them, give your power to men who would be generous at home, and just and moral, and, so far as was in their power, peaceful abroad. I think it is time to adopt the words of one our best poets, who says:

"'Tis time

To snatch their truncheons from the puny hands
Of statesmen, whose infirm and baby minds
Are gratified with mischief, and who spoil,
Because men suffer it, their toy, the world."

The vast audience passed a vote of confidence in the three members.

The day after, a deputation from the Licensed Victuallers of Birmingham waited upon Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain.

"I do not suppose that it (the Liberal party) will deal with any severity in any way with you," said Mr. Bright in reply to them; "whenever it does deal with the liquor question-if it ever does deal with it—you may depend upon it, it is the last party in the country that will ever do anything that will be in a pecuniary sense unjust to your interests. What it deprives you of in the public interest, it will at any rate compensate you for, and endeavour to do justice, as it does to the whole country and to every interest. You may depend upon it, it will not be unjust to the licensed victuallers and those who are concerned in the sale of those things which, unfortunately, here it appears necessary in some degree to control."

Mr. Bright addressed two meetings on the 23rd, and was honoured with a torchlight procession through the streets, accompanied with bands of music. The day after he again spoke at Cave's Auction Mart on the necessary reforms in the land laws, and he related that Mr. Martin, the strong Nationalist, once came up to him at the door of the House of Commons and said, "I have watched your public conduct, and I have seen that you have never said one single word that was offensive, or unkind, or unjust to my country; and I wish to shake you by the hand and to tell you so."

66

Mr. Bright delivered another speech to the electors on the 29th of March ::

"It is one of the things I used to complain of myself when I held office in Mr. Gladstone's Government," said Mr. Bright. "I used to say what an extraordinary thing that the Governments of this country always spent so much time about foreign affairs, many of them of no importance to us, and spend comparatively so little time about our home affairs; and I believe if we could have an accurate account of all the Governments of England have done-the Ministers, the Cabinets-during the last hundred years or more, we should find that nine-tenths of that time, thought, and labour had been devoted to matters abroad, connected with wars, conquests, annexation, gunpowder and glory, and perhaps not more than one-tenth had been expended upon the true interests of England. Do you think that if this country had been more at peace, if its resources had been more husbanded, that it would have been left to the period of Mr. Gladstone's Government, within the last ten years, to have built these magnificent schools that I see all over your town? ('Never.") If you will take the history of the last hundred years, and look for the names of what are called great men that were in Parliament and in your public service, you will find that their time was taken up with things far remote from the interests-the true interests-of England, and scarcely a man of them ever raised his voice in favour of a system of education which would bring you labouring men, artisans as you are, with your 20s., 30s., or 40s. a week, to a condition of intelligence, and a condition of virtue, and a condition of comfort infinitely higher than you ever yet attained to. (Cheers.) Now, I am for a policy of peace (hear, hear, and cheers)--and for a policy of retrenchment (hear, hear)—and for a policy of reform; and if every country, and all Parliaments, and all statesmen, and all potentates would give their attention, their minds, and their intelligence to the wellbeing of their country, you may depend upon it the world would be more at peace, and all people would be more contented and more happy, and you would not have the terrible events you read of sometimes in Russia, sometimes in Germany; you would not have all Europe covered with soldiers, and its people burdened with

1880.]

THE ZULU AND AFGHAN WARS.

505

military exactions which impoverish them and drive them to courses which are desperate and wicked, it may be to desperate means, because the people have so little consideration and justice shown them.

"Now, you would suppose from that manifesto," said Mr. Bright, in a speech to the electors, on the 28th of March, "that there was nothing so much from the heart of the Prime Minister as binding Great Britain and Ireland together by the bond of true sympathy and true interest; and I take the liberty of telling you what many of you must know, that for the last two hundred years the Tory party has had much of its own way in Ireland. During much of that time, or at least for one hundred years, the penal laws existed, and were most oppressive and most cruel, and those laws were only mitigated, not abolished. During the time of the American war, when this country was endeavouring to reconquer the colonies, it was found necessary in some degree to conciliate the Irish people, and those penal laws were modified. Up to the year 1829-a time which many here can remember-no Roman Catholic could sit in the House of Commons, and it was only when Ireland was on the point of civil war, as the Duke of Wellington admitted, that Catholic emancipation was conceded to the Catholic population of Ireland. (Cheers.) And is it to be wondered at, then, that the Tory party, having been, as I think, the enemy of the freedom of Ireland for so long, is thus met by a corresponding feeling on the part of the Irish, who, with little exception, have a constant and bitter animosity against the Tory party in this country? (Cheers.) So we come now to this kind of conclusion with regard to the present Government, that they are an Administration which, during six years, have made no progress in England, and they have done nothing to create peace and contentment in Ireland, and so long as the Tory party and Administration are in power I believe there will be no progress in England, and there will be no settled contentment in the sister country. (Applause.) Before I conclude I must say a few words upon a question which, in this manifesto, is especially referred to your consideration, and that is the foreign policy of the Government. They boast-this Government boast, its orators in various parts of the country boast that they have preserved the peace of Europe. Well, you know that the peace of Europe was not preserved, that Russia and Turkey engaged in a desperate and sanguinary conflict; and you know more, that the only reason why this Government did not go into war was because all England, and all Scotland, had risen in condemnation of the Government which had permitted the massacres in Bulgaria. All Great Britain and Ireland, too, declared that no Government of this country should go into war in defence of a country or a Government which perpetrated such horrors upon a subject people-(loud applause)-and as they were not permitted to go to war with Russia, still, such was the appetite for mischief, that, not going into one war, they plunged almost immediately afterwards into two, which they called little wars. (Shame.') In South Africa was a nation, a small nation, I know not what its whole population was, but probably not a population equal to that of the town of Birmingham. They never molested us. They had lived for twenty or thirty years alongside the English colony of Natal, and had never shown disposition to inflict upon them the smallest injury. This Government made war upon them. I will not speak of the two or three thousand persons in the English troops who were destroyed. I suppose their mothers, and widows, and sisters, and daughters lament their loss. I lament, at any rate, if they were to die, that they did not die in a nobler and a better cause- -(cheers)-but I speak of the 10,000 men -courageous, loyal men of the Zulu nation, who, if they had been of our nation, would have had songs written in their honour and magnificent orations delivered in their praise, and their leading men who fell would have found, no doubt, a home for their bones and a tablet in Westminster Abbey. (Cheers.) That war was not enough. Another was prepared, by the most ingenious and the most treacherous course of conduct, in Afghanistan. It was a war begun in the dark, carried on in secret by a diplomacy which was denied in both Houses of Parliament, and was falsely denied. (Hear, hear.) It was begun against the evidence and opinion of the venerated Lord Lawrence-(cheers)-against the opinion and experience of Lord Northbrook; against the counsel of the Governor-General of India; against the Indian Council in London; against the counsel of all the sensible and just men who heretofore have been thought the greatest authorities upon Indian questions (cheers)—and it ended, as, of course, we all know it must end, when a powerful nation like this, with the wonderful ingenuity of armed instruments which it possesses, comes into conflict with a half-civilised people, in a slaughter of Afghans, I dare say, quite equal, but perhaps exceeding, that which had been inflicted upon the Zulus in South Africa. Now, at this moment

in that country what do you find? It is a country which is said to be as large as France and as mountainous as Switzerland. Throughout the whole of that country we have raised up a spirit of anarchy. There is no governor. The Ameer went away and died; his successor is a prisoner in our hands in India. There is no ruler in that country; there will be contenders for the throne, and so things may be for months or years in that country, of whose population not one man ever did anything whatsoever to insult or to injure us. Yet our Government, by its policy, has carried anarchy, and war, and slaughter, and fire throughout the whole of that country. You know something of the untold miseries, at least you may judge from what you have read of the untold miseries, which war brings upon men and women and little children; but there is one point that nobody, so far as I know, has ever touched upon, that which has always had a certain interest with me, and which has excited my sympathy. I have seen in some of the narratives of the Afghan war that all the region round had been swept for camels as beasts of burden for the forces. What became of the camels? The least number I have heard it put at was 30,000it has been reckoned that as high as 40,000 or 50,000 camels have perished in these expeditions. One of our greatest poets, in a beautiful stanza, has one line where he says, 'Mute the camel labours with the heaviest load,' and though the camel is not able, by any voice of his, to make protest or complain, yet the burdened, overdriven, exhausted, dying beast-I cannot but believe that even the cruelties inflicted upon him will be found written upon imperishable tablets by the recording angel. (Cheers.) Well, now, that is the sort of Government that we condemn. (Hear, hear.) Do not tell me that we are Englishmen, the citizens of a free country, that these enormities may be conducted by our Government at the farthest ends of the earth, and that we are bound to bow down and submit to the guilt being laid upon our shoulders and our souls. (Cheers.) I blame the Government, as you blame them, and the more you examine what they have done, the more you trace their career the more you will blame them for their incapacity at home, where our interests have been neglected. Ireland, as I have shown, has been uncared for and insulted, and is driven constantly by neglect to discontent and disloyalty. Now, if they have thus neglected our interests at home, abroad they have carried terror and anarchy and murder over the wide regions of two continents--(hear, hear)—and two gentlemen have come down to Birmingham-(A voice: And they will go back again)-whose only plea before you, whose argument for your support, is purely and simply because they support this terrible wickedness of those needless wars abroad. (Cheers.) Well, on Wednesday next the inhabitants of Birmingham-the 63,000 electors of this great central city of the kingdomwill have an opportunity of declaring whether they are willing to share in the guilt of the transactions which I have so inadequately described. ('No, no.') You will have to give then your final verdict. You must say whether you will drive from their places of power statesmen whose tenure of office has been marked by astounding incapacity at home, and not less astounding blundering and guilt in their policy and their action abroad." (Loud and prolonged cheers.)

The election resulted in 22,969 votes being tendered for Mr. Muntz, 22,079 for Mr. Bright, 19,544 for Mr. Chamberlain, 15,735 for Major Burnaby, and 14,308 for the Hon. A. C. G. Calthorpe, and the Liberals were once again victorious in this their stronghold. A wave of Liberal success it was found had passed all over the United Kingdom, for 349 Liberals were returned, whereas the Conservatives only numbered 243, and the Home Rulers 60. Mr. W. E. Gladstone was consequently called upon by Her Majesty to form a Ministry, and he undertook to discharge the duties of the double office of Premier and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Bright accepted office as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The other members of the Cabinet were:-Lord Chancellor, Lord Sel