The Duties of Government
John Bright told his Birmingham constituents that if Britain was indeed a great nation, it was because her public was contented and not because her empire was wide.
1858
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
John Bright told his Birmingham constituents that if Britain was indeed a great nation, it was because her public was contented and not because her empire was wide.
1858
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
After John Bright MP criticised British imperial policy in India, saying it was too much about the glories of empire and too little about the condition of the people, a Calcutta newspaper scolded him and reminded him solemnly of the greatness of Rome. But Bright was unrepentant, and speaking to his constituents in Birmingham on October 29th, 1858, he brought his lesson closer to home.
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.*
* Compare Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) in Lady Clara Vere de Vere:
Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,
From yon blue heavens above us bent,
The gardener Adam and his wife
Smile at the claims of long descent.
Howe’er it be, it seems to me,
’Tis only noble to be good.
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.
* Bright was making the same point as that made by US President John Adams (in office 1797-1801) sixty years earlier, in a speech to officers of a Massachusetts militia brigade. See A Moral and Religious People.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.