“Entrance of the Allyed [sic] in Pekin, the 22nd October 1860” by French lithographer Henri Jannin (1816-?). At the time when Bright gave his speech to members of his Birmingham constituency, Britain was tangled up in the Second Opium War with China, an attempt to bully a weak Imperial China into becoming a satellite of the British Empire by forcing her to accept drug trafficking coming out of India. For background, see The First Opium War. A major concern was to keep China out of Russia’s hands, so soon after France and Britain had allied together to fight the Crimean War over Russia’s support for Balkan states against their masters in Turkey. See The Crimean War.
Part 1 of 2
I HAVE not, as you have observed, pleaded that this country should remain without adequate and scientific means of defence. I acknowledge it to be the duty of your statesmen, acting upon the known opinions and principles of ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in the country, at all times, with all possible moderation, but with all possible efficiency, to take steps which shall preserve order within and on the confines of your kingdom. But I shall repudiate and denounce the expenditure of every shilling, the engagement of every man, the employment of every ship which has no object but intermeddling in the affairs of other countries, and endeavouring to extend the boundaries of an Empire which is already large enough to satisfy the greatest ambition, and I fear is much too large for the highest statesmanship to which any man has yet attained.
Précis
In a speech delivered in 1858, John Bright gave his full backing to the armed forces in the defence of the realm, but spoke out against other military interventions abroad. He said there could be no justification for spending so much blood and treasure on bullying other nations, or widening an empire that was already too large to be governable. (59 / 60 words)
Part Two
‘News from My Lad’, painted in 1858-59 by Liverpool-born artist James Campbell (1828-1893). Bright was wholeheartedly behind the British armed forces, and it was for that very reason that he objected strongly to wasting so much blood and treasure on what in an individual citizen would be considered gross meddling and intimidation. These interventions raised taxes on hard working members of the public, and robbed them of their sons while achieving very little in the context of geopolitics, and doing no more for Britain than placing in the hands of our vainglorious politicians vast and burdensome responsibilities of government which they were not equipped to handle.
I ASK you then to believe, as I do most devoutly believe, that the moral law was not written for men alone in their individual character, but that 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.”*
We have experience, we have beacons, we have landmarks enough. We know what the past has cost us; we know how much and how far we have wandered, but we are not left without a guide. It is true we have not, as an ancient people had, Urim and Thummim — those oraculous gems on Aaron’s breast — from which to take counsel,* but we have the unchangeable and eternal principles of the moral law, to guide us, and only so far as we walk by that guidance can we be permanently a great nation, or our people a happy people.
* Bright does not enlarge on what this law is, but he makes it clear that it is Christian, and the whole tenor of his speech agrees well with these words of St Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12: “We beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more; And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; that ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.” See also The Prayer of St Ephraim.
* The poet is Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), in The Divine Comedy: Paradise Canto XXII.
* Mentioned in e.g. Exodus 28:30, the Urim and Thummim (traditionally, ‘lights and perfections’) were precious objects attached to the High Priest’s vestments and apparently used for divination. When King Saul enquired of the Lord concerning the army of the Philistines, “the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams nor by Urim, nor by prophets”. See 1 Samuel 28:5-6.
Précis
Bright went on to declare his belief that nations should be guided by the same moral principles as those that guide good citizens. Just as individuals who break the moral law eventually find that actions have consequences, so too history teaches us that national wrongdoing invites divine retribution, sooner or later. (51 / 60 words)
