incident attaching to him individually, but there was a growth both in himself and in the estimation in which he was held by others, which, not perceptible then, is very clearly traced as, from the present, we look back upon his ca

reer.

A determination which is invincible and deterred by no obstacle, moral or practical, and a steadfast advocacy of that which is clearly seen to be right—a disregard, often too brusquely evinced, yet so evinced as to leave no doubt of its honesty, of old modes of thought and ceremonious observance of antique humbug-such qualities as these, in the long run, must make themselves felt; they must win converts; they must, by-and-bye, assert a power which is not to be blinked, sneered at, and then forgotten; but must be met, respected, and joined in the issue on equal terms. The administration of jaunty Lord Palmerston retarded English civilization, and held on to office on false pretences. Pretending to be a Liberal, the wily old Lord did the work of the Tories far more comfortably and effectually than they could have done it themselves. He was, unhappily for the cause of English Liberalism, endowed with the faculty of keeping men together, and under him, in a wonderful degree; so he soldered real Liberals, who were weak, but anxious to do well, and mock Liberals, who were set and determined to do nothing, into a seemingly harmonious body, and having thus built up his power, he could afford quietly to snub earnest and independent Brights and Cobdens, to wave away their advocacy of reform with a courtly gesture and a jocose smirk, and to do the work of the aristocracy, the squirearchy, the hierarchy, and all effete things, to his heart's content. Just as George IV., by a blunt, bullying sort of Hanoverian obstinacy, delayed the first Reform for twenty years or more, and just as his dull-brained, pious old father before him, persistently throttled every scheme of Catholic Emancipation, so Palmerston, in the blandest and courtliest and jolliest of manners, pooh-poohed reform, went on with his foolish

wars and gross administrative blunders, and delighted the squires, while he made the true Liberals, the real friends of a progress in earnest, mourn over the superficial tendencies of his rule, and the utter want of seriousness which marked his expressions of political faith.

Men less bold, less honest, and less certain of the truth than Bright, would have yielded, and did yield to this smooth, subtle, malign influence of the Palmerstonian kind. Gladstone, hesitating, almost vacillating, in his uncertainty of opinion; certain pseudo-Liberal lords, by no means honest in the political sense; timid men like Lowe-these afford us types of the great Palmerstonian Liberal party. The little coterie struggled on, however, undismayed, against these tremendous obstacles; and there was one fact which gradually developed itself, which rejoiced them and gave them courage. Their oft-repeated predictions were one by one coming true, despite Palmerstonianism and its attendant ills. Old fogies did not see it that was hardly strange; but what was strange was, that men so clear-headed as Gladstone, as Disraeli, as Clarendon, did not see it. The first great triumph, achieved in an apparent mystery, was the great Treaty of Commerce with France. On all the great questions of his generation, John Bright has not only been right, but has actually been proved to be right out of the very mouths of his proudest and most vehement enemies. The death of Palmerston was the signal of Liberal emancipation; it put forward the crisis of the drama so rapidly, that within a year after that event, the pseudo-Liberals had to unmask and display the Tory blue of their real opinions. But even in the winter of 1865-'66, Earl Russell and Mr. Gladstone had not awakened to the fact that John Bright was the great true prophet of English progress, and that he was fast becoming the autocrat of English good sense. The finest oratorexcepting only Gladstone himself-in the lower House, the idol of the few, but ever augmenting far-seeing think

ers, the sturdiest of modern Tribunes, John Bright was offered no place in the reconstructed Cabinet, the Cabinet which was at last to grapple with the giant question of reform. There was yet, in this new Russell-Gladstone Cabinet, a leaven of the old Palmerstonianism-a spice of squirearchism. After all the promises to increase the franchise, to give at last to the English people their full share in the sovereignty of the Empire, pitiful was the handful of suffrage which this Liberal government offered. They proposed to put the new reform on a basis of seven-pound rental; that meant that all men who paid seven pounds a year rent should vote; all below this grade of society were still excluded. Bright, bitterly disappointed, doubtless, yet had the sense to see that this concession was at least better than nothing, and might lead to more. He gave the bill his support-explicitly telling the House, however, in his inimitably strong English, that he accepted it only as an installment. But the bill, strangled by the pseudo-Liberals, fell through; then came in the old true blue Tories, under my Lord Derby and Benjamin Disraeli, and threatened, bullied, cajoled, and forced, by public opinion, now grown hard to restrain and impossible wholly to resist, they, marched grimly up to the hateful goal of household suffrage; stole thus de liberately the twenty-years' thunder of John Bright, and crowned him a great statesman and political authority, whom they would have rejoiced in devoting to political perdition.

Now observe John Bright, in these days when his hair has grown snowy white, and broad wrinkles cross his broad English face, and he has passed his prime in an entirely novel character. Rienzi has paid his homage to Colonna, and Mirabeau has kissed the hand of the Bourbon. The great Tribune of the people and Thor of English politics has turned courtier. Plain Quaker John Bright consents to receive the aristocratic title of Right Honorable, and we read of him in the Court Newsman as visiting, "having the honor

of dining" &c. at Windsor and other royal palaces; he is gazetted as going hither and thither: above his name and below it appear high-sounding titles which we have heard of before in Hume's pages, and Macaulay's. He is a Minister of the Crown, a distinguished servant of the Queen, one of the powerwielders of the Empire which, they tell us is so vast, that the sun never sets upon it. More: next to the Premier himself, there is no man in England who holds so large a share of real authority: he could doubtless destroy the Cabinet to-morrow: Gladstone will heed his word, and will think long before he dissents from it. Have monarchy and aristocracy come to John Bright, or he to them? Is he there to serve them, or to mould them to serve the people? In his long public career he has been busy, "Americanizing" English institutions is it that he is now relapsing into feudalism? Few who know the man and have observed him-how earnestly and amid what obstacles he has toiled

how he has used his brilliant talents to shock prevalent opinion, and has in no instance conceded a whit to olden ideas,—will believe that he has entered the Cabinet with any other motive than that of wielding a longer influence in the direction in which he has all his life been aiming. He has become a power there, where no man of his generation and opinions has been before. The very fact that John Bright has grown great enough to be offered a seat at the royal council board, has advanced the ideas of which he is the exponent more than can well be calculated. process of "hating, then pitying, then adoring" Bright's democracy, has been going on: enthroned in power by the advancement of its apostle, men and masses have drawn near the truths which before, not knowing them, they detested. It is a new era in English politics; an era destructive of many shams, and dangerous to all. If Bright sits in council with an Argyll, a Clarendon, a de Grey, and a Cavendish, it is because the feudal houses of England prefer bending to breaking; they have

The

come to him; it is the Commoners, not the Peers, in English Cabinets of the present day, who hold the reins of ministerial power, and frame the nation's policy.

Bright the orator is the illustration and exponent of Bright the man. It has often been observed how pure and Saxon is his language, how straightforward his tone, and how bold his speech on every occasion. His presence is that of a man self-reliant, and both physically and intellectually powerful. His form is robust, not corpulent; he holds his head high and frank, fearing the eye of no man, always looking you full in the face; his full round face and bold straight nose; his clear, often stern gray eye; his rounded and firm-set chin and positive mouth; his straight, active figure, produce an impression hardly equalled by that produced by any other Parliamentary orator. His complexion is of that clear white Saxon color which is often seen in Englishmen thirty years younger; the color of his cheeks is a sign of healthy blood rather than selfindulgence. When he rises to speak, the crowded hall is hushed, all are intent, and wait almost breathless for the orator's opening sentence. A hot reformer, he is yet far from being a torrentlike or passionate declaimer. Gladstone, Lowe, Salisbury, Derby, are all far more fiery and impetuous. Bright seems to say, "I am so perfectly in the right, you are so entirely in the wrong, that I can afford to be calm, while you may storm as men in error only do." Deliberate, clear, strong, firm, easy, with

fine modulation of a voice naturally hoarse and somewhat harsh-his form and head erect, his eyes rivetted upon the Tory phalanx, his hand resting on the bench or inserted in his waistcoat; not the slightest embarrassment betraying itself, as if he were on ground thoroughly tried and wholly congenial-his address unruffled by the taunts and sneers and muttered "Ohs!" of his opponents-occasionally, with an infrequency which greatly enhances the effect, rising to a noble and poetic metaphor, or quoting from the Sacred Volume-more often making his appeals unadorned save by an art of sincere logic which gives him his most powerful weapon-direct and strong in his blows, making every one tell, every one complete and endowed with its fullest ⚫ strength: these qualities constitute him one of the classic orators of this century in England. The deliberation with which he speaks is well in keeping with the seriousness and weight of what he says; for he is a man in earnest, a man who, having labored for thirty years toward the end which seems now in sight, cannot afford to dally with pretty phrases, or linger playing by the wayside, or raise a laugh, or use his precious moments lightly, or leave incomplete the chain of reasoning which he constructs.

Such a man is not likely to lose himself in the dazzle of a court, or amid the ambitious and restless pleasures of political authority; and England will one day bless the fortune that threw him into the political struggles of the day.

NEW organizations, and not new applications of old ones, appear to be necessary means for new reforms.

Whenever the fibre of ramie, the "coming plant" of the textile future, shall be supplied in marketable quantities, the cotton spinner will not be able to work it with his present machinery. Complete new suits of machines must be invented for the new fibre.

Every new political idea proceeds in the same way. It is far enough from receiving a welcome into existing political organizations. They reject it and struggle against it even unto death, and it really has to fight its way by a moral conquest of the nation, before it passes into the government of it.

With religious organizations it is the same. The great missionary movements, Romanist and Protestant, the Methodist Reformation, the English Puritan movement under the Tudors and Stuarts, the Lutheran Reformation,

were not applications of the old organizations to propagate new ideas, but new bodies, formed by and for new souls.

The history of the primeval religion, as followed by the Jewish and then by the Christian church, seem to indicate that the Almighty adopts this principle in His dealings with men.

It would be easy to adduce instances under these heads, but it is unnecessary. A single characteristic of recent reformatory movements should, however, be mentioned. It is, that they proceed rather by the voluntary action of numerous coöperators, than by the operation of a single despotic will. Wesleys are every year less likely; coöperative societies are from year to year more nume

rous.

The system of Young Men's Christian Associations, which is at present in full vigor and energetic activity throughout Protestant Christendom, is a specimen of the clan of organizations now spoken