British politician & orator (1811-1889)
We have taught the people of this country the value of a great principle. They have learned that there is nothing that can be held out to the intelligent people of this kingdom so calculated to stimulate them to action, and to great and persevering action, as a great and sacred principle like that which the League has espoused. They have learned that there is in public opinion a power much greater than that residing in any particular form of government; that although you have in this kingdom a system of government which is called "popular" and "representative"--a system which is somewhat clumsily contrived, and which works with many jars and joltings--that still, under the impulse of a great principle, with great labour and with great sacrifices, all those obstacles are overcome, so that out of a machine especially contrived for the contrary, justice and freedom are at length achieved for the nation; and the people have learned something beyond this--that is, that the way to freedom is henceforward not through violence and bloodshed.
JOHN BRIGHT
speech at a meeting of the Council of the Anti-Corn Law League held in Manchester Town Hall, 2 July 1846
This old aristocracy and Church-ridden, and tradition-ridden country will never grow wiser.
JOHN BRIGHT
letter to Cobden, 30 December 1853
Force is not a remedy.
JOHN BRIGHT
speech to House of Commons, 16 November 1880
We see sad scenes by the wayside, small and wretched hovels in quarries and nooks of the roads in which some wretched family finds shelter. The children leave an impression of misery on the mind which can never be effaced. Houses unroofed and lands waste and de-populated, are the memorials of the frightful calamities through which the country has passed. The proprietors are nearly all bankrupt, great numbers of the farmers are gone away, thousands of the peasantry are in the work-houses or in their graves. I believe we can form no fair idea of what has passed in these districts within the last four years, and I see no great prospect of a solid improvement. Here we have in perfection the fruits of aristocratic and territorial usurpation and privileges.
JOHN BRIGHT
letter to his wife after visiting Ireland in the aftermath of the Great Famine, 1849
Ireland is never unanimous but on one thing -- getting something from the Imperial Exchequer.
JOHN BRIGHT
letter to William Ewart Gladstone, 15 October 1869
Rich and great people can take care of themselves; but the poor and defenseless--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
speech at his Durham election, July 1843
I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it be based upon morality. I do not care for military greatness or military renown. I care for the condition of the people among whom I live. There is no man in England who is less likely to speak irreverently of the Crown and Monarchy of England than I am; but crowns, coronets, mitres, military display, the pomp of war, wide colonies, and a huge Empire, are, in my view, all trifles light as air, and not worth considering, unless with them you can have a fair share of comfort, contentment, and happiness among the great body of the people. Palaces, baronial castles, great halls, stately mansions, do not make a nation. The nation in every country dwells in the cottage; and unless the light of your constitution can shine there, unless the beauty of your legislation and the excellence of your statesmanship are impressed there on the feelings and condition of the people, rely upon it you have yet to learn the duties of Government.
JOHN BRIGHT
speech in Birmingham, 29 October 1858
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
The Life and Times of the Right Hon. John Bright
In the houses of the humble a little library in my opinion is a most precious possession.
JOHN BRIGHT
The Life and Times of the Right Hon. John Bright
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
speech in Birmingham, 29 October 1858
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
letter to his mother-in-law Mrs. Priestman, November 1842
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
speech in Birmingham, 29 October 1858
Longfellow is, or was, a man of whom I had a little personal knowledge. I spent a morning with him once at the house of the late eminent physician, Sir Henry Holland, and, as I walked away with him through Hanover Square, he was speaking to me of his friend Whittier. Nothing could be more kindly, more generous, more affectionate than his language towards his brother poet. There was no rivalry, no jealousy. He said that he thought Whittier was a poet remarkable in one thing, that he seemed always in his writings to improve.
JOHN BRIGHT
The Life and Times of the Right Hon. John Bright
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
speech in Edinburgh, 5 November 1868
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
letter to his wife
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
speech during the general election of 1843