JOHN BRIGHT

Possibly you are not aware of the fact that the largest sum given by any contributor to the fund is but a trifle when compared with the losses suffered by nearly all the firms in the cotton trade during the disastrous years of the American war.

Force is not a remedy.

We have had a great depression in agriculture, caused mainly by several seasons of bad harvests, and some of our traders have suffered much from a too rapid extension in prosperous years.

It was in the year 1820, when I was nearly nine years old, that I first went to a regular school.

Popular applause veers with the wind.

A year ago I was in the city of Genoa, and I found that it returned seven representatives to the Sardinian Parliament at Turin, seven being its fair share, calculated according to the population of the various cities and districts of the Sardinian kingdom.

I. cannot stoop to reply to the folly and the slander of every poor Tory partisan who assails me, and I should not have noticed you but for the fact that you are a member of the House of Commons.

The Government and the Parliament, even the House of Lords, will consent to a large increase of electors; and men who have not considered the subject fully will imagine they have gained much by the concession.

The franchise itself gives no real power, unless accompanied by the right on the part of all the possessors of it to elect something like an equal number of representatives.

The corn law was intended to keep wheat at the price of 80s. the quarter; it is now under 40s. the quarter.

With regard to the ballot, it is worthy of remark that no meeting has been held in favour of Reform at which the ballot has not been strongly insisted upon.

It is sufficient to say, what everybody knows to be true, that the Irish population is Catholic, and that the Protestants, whether of the Episcopalian or Presbyterian Church, or of both united, are a small minority of the Irish people.

Any Reform Bill which is worth a moment's thought, or the smallest effort to carry it, must at least double, and it ought to do much more than double, the representation of the metropolitan boroughs and of all the great cities of the United Kingdom.

The knowledge of the ancient languages is mainly a luxury.

Be the measure great or small, let it be honest in every part.

I hope this view of the question may be a mistaken one, because it does not seem to me very unlikely that the suffrage will be granted to women.

Demand the ballot as the undeniable right of every man who is called to the poll, and take special care that the old constitutional rule and principle, by which majorities alone shall decide in Parliamentary elections, shall not be violated.

As you know, I am neither Roman Catholic, Protestant Episcopalian, nor Presbyterian, nor am I an Irishman.

A refuge for the oppressed from every land and clime.

At all hazards you must not let this matter grow to a war with England even if you are right and we are wrong.

England is the mother of Parliaments.

Nations drift into wars.

Nations in great crises and difficulties have often done that which in their prosperous and powerful hour they would not have done.

And even if I were alone, ... I should have the consolation ... to the last moment of my existence ... that no word of mine has tended to the squandering of my country's treasure or the spilling of one single drop of my country's blood.

I am for "Peace, retrenchment, and reform," the watchword of the great Liberal party thirty years ago.