MR BRIGHT AS AN OLD-TESTAMENT WORTHY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 2223, 22 March 1869, Page 3

MR BRIGHT AS AN OLD-TESTA-MENT WORTHY.

[Spectator.)

Mr Bright, in his striking little speech at Birmingham on the occasion of his re-election, likened bis own feelings, when asked to become a Minister of the CrowD, to those of " the great woman" of Shnnera, in one of the most pathetic and striking of all the narratives of the Old Testament, who, when entreated by the prophet ElUha to toll htm how ho could use hia interest for her " with the King or the captain of the host," answered, with grave simplicity, " I dwell among mine own people." It is not for the first time, &nd probably not for the twentieth, that Mr Bright, in his speeches, has had recourse to the language of the Old Testament to express with the greater force and vividn- in the tree feeling at the bottom of his heart. The present writer remembers perfectly the effect produoed upon a vast audience in the days of Free-Trade roontter meetings by tbo conclusion of one of Mr Brigbt's speeches for antaxed bread, in which he reminded his audience of what " royal lips had uttered on divine authority, ' that the poor should not always be forgotten, that the patient abiding of the meek should not perish for ever.'" Quite lately ho concluded one of his finest speeches on Ireland l>y reminding the House ;of Commons —an audience rarely addretner! in language of that kind—of the promise that "to the upright there arueth light in the darkness." With a little patience we could easily multiply many fold the proofs how deeply ingrained in Mr Rripht'a imagination is th« grave and sententious passion of the Old Ttstament. We do not, indeed,.mean that either free trade or household suffrage are well-marked Old Testament ideas-that David wished for a foreign policy of nonintervention —that Solomon had conceived oven that necensnry preliminary to the policy of a "free breakmtt-t*blo." a taxed break-fast-tale— or that the compound householder of B:rmini.h*m was anticipated among tho citizens of Joppa, Jericho, or Jerusalem. The Oid Testament references to foreign p -lioy are couched mnch more in tho tone of Mr Bright's memorable " Perish, Savoy J" than in tho,tone of his universal-brotherhood speeches. Indeed. Moab and Edam are not un'rcqaently referred to in the Old Testament in terras not. unlike those use Iby Mr Bright of Turkey or Savoy, or any other State for whom England might be expected to go to war, and which Mr Bright would at sack times gladly declare to b«i bis ** washpofc," or aspire to "cast his shoe" OveT them—not lor pood luok. Otherwise Mr Bright is not quite in sympathy with tho tone of the Old Testament on foreign policy Ez«kiol apparently did not approve of Tyre'a ' eing a free port, and tho trads with the Isles of Chatim, —ths islands of the Mediterranean,—was by no means a matter of contrratuWtion with him; and yet his denunciation of th« unrighteous traffic of Tyre,—apparently tho Greek slave trade, the trade with "Javan in the persona of men," was couched in language not unlike tome of Mr Bright's. In short* though we are by no meane dupoaed to th-nk of the middle clas Member for Birmingham as strongly resembling an old Hebrew statesman or prophet, yet there is just enough of the Old Testament stamp in h'm to produce » cot tain grandeur and pictaresqnenms of effect in its contract with the inliatanct political types of our modem days.

In contrast, at least, to his chief colleagues, —to Mr Glidftone, in whom religious and sectiliir qualities are curiou»ly mixed and confused, in a subtle amalgam <f what we | may call confluent contraries r« minding one mare of the mixtures of type charactarij&c of worthies of the Now Testament era than of the grand *ni simple outlines of the Old, — to Mr Cardwell, who assuredly suggests nothing lass than such a Hetrew minister t>t war as Joab, —to Mr Lowe, whose mere ex* ittsnee tends to make the previous existence of Isaiah difficult of belief to a vivid imagination,—in contrast to these, at least, Mr Bright seems to ro-ateure us that the race of tiie Old Testament is really of one stock with the humanity of our own country and day. And there may be some interest, if there i» not much instruction, in noting the features to which we refer, and which import, as we think, through Mr Bright^ somb snatch of the stateliness and passion (in its higher sense) of that great history into our rather petty, feverish, and technical modern politics.

Id tho G rat place, there is something of the stately simplicity of the Old Testament about Mr Bright*s political style, and in his constant and profound inrizht into the relation of politics to domestic life. The confession in his speech the other day that it had been his ambition to grow a freer man as he grew older, whereas lie found himself becoming more and more fettered by his obligations to his friends, hi* party, and his country, his evidently sincere expression of feeling that " to speak for him " to the Queen was doing Mm the very opposite of a personal service, since, like "the great woman" of Shnaem, he " dwelt among his own people," is a fair illustration of this simplicity. Bat there are other instances still more striking, not only of this dignified simplicity, bat of that value for domratic life as at the heart of national life, which reminds us of the political tone of a period when a shepherd was on the throne, and his ministers and friends brought home to him his sins ai & king, by the freshest and simplest incidents taken from domestic life. Who but Mr Bright conld have spoken to tho House of Commons,—and spoken to it with the greatest effect.—in snch language as this, in pleading for a definite line of policy on the great Civil War in America?—"l want to know whether yon feel as 1 feel on this question. When I can get down to my home from this Honse, I find half a-dczen little children playing upon my hearth. How nuny members are there who can say with mo that the moat innocent, the most pure, the most holy joy which in their past years they have felt, or in their future years they have hoped for, has not risen from coatact or association with our precious children ? Well, then, if that bo so, if, when the hand of death t»kca one of these flawers from our dwelling, our heart is overwhelmed with sorrow and our household is covered with gloom, what would it do if oar children were brought up to this infernal system—one hundred and fifty thousand of them every year brought into th» world in these Blave States, amongst their 'gentlemen,' amongst ffifc 'chivalry,' araonrst these men that we can make our friend* ?" Tho grave simplicity and the power of simple domcatio fooling in that passage, made sub«errient, as it was, to a political rebuke in the tnoet reticent and fastidions political assembly in the world, has scarcely any better parallel—different as of course tho style must necessarily be — than Nathan's narrative to David of tho pet lamb stolen by tho rich man from the poor. And thi4 tendency of Mr Bright's to roduoe political policy and events as far as ho can to their real meaning in their bearing on domestic life, though it docs, wo thmk, not nnfrequently mislead him into a view of war more husnaoe than junt, in closely allied with another great quality in which he shows tome affinity to the sUtoiintn of *ho Old Testament, —the faculty of vision which, wherever it can, puts a picture in the placo of *n argument. Political economy truly understood requires a good deal of imagination in one sense, but it is the clear imagination of intrinsically uninteresting transactions. Mr Bright, however, even in his speeches on Free Trade, trarslates his arguments into pictures of a higher kind, pictures requiring power and passion to paint. Docs not this bit of a speech delivered in 1845 at a mooting of the Anti-Corn Law Loaguo, considered as a plea against tho Corn Laws, imply a very remarkable faculty of vision,—something indeed of a Hebrew leer's power, though applied to a different field of thoueht ?—"Since tho time when we first came to London to ask the attention of Parliament to the question of the Corn Law two millions of human beings have been added to tho population of the United Kingdom. The table is here as before ; the food, is spread in about the same quantity as before ; but two millions of fresh guests have arrived. . . . These two millions are so many argument* for tho AntiCorn Law League,—so many emphatic* condemnations of the policy of this iniquitous law. I s«e them now in my mind's eye ranged before me, old men and young children, all looking to the Government for bread, some endeavouring to resist the stroke of famine, clamorous and turbulent, but still arguing^ with its,—some dying mute and uncomplaining. Multitudes have died of hunger in the United Kingdom since we first asked the Government to repeal the Com Law, and although the great and powerful may not regard those who suffer mutely and die in silence, yet the recording angel will note down their patient endurance and the heavy guilt of those by whom they have been sacrificed." Has not that in it a match of some of the prophetic descriptions of famine ? "Lift up tny hands towards the Lord for the life of thy young children that faint for hunger in the top of every street. . . . The young and tho old lie on the ground in the streets." Again, Mr Brigbt'e power of wrath, — not personal vindictiveness, for no man is usually less personal than Mr Bright in his assaults, though he did once withstand Mr Disraeli to the face for his "mixture of servility and pomposity,"—but his powei o! concentrating into a sentence scorn and loathing; for a policy that he thinks dishonest and injurious, is quite Hetrew in iU force. We need only remind our readers of his denunciation of the policy of building the Alabama:— "There m*y be men outeido, there are men sitting amongst your legislators, who will build and equip corsair ships to prey upon the commerce of a friendly power—who will disregard the laws and the honour of theii country—who will trample on the proclamation of their Sovereign, and who for the sake of the glitt* ring profit that sometimes wait* on crime will coyer thenuse yes with everlasting infamy." Has not that in it some of thai old Hebrew wrath—anger which ia not mortiGcation, not, even in. the least,degree, p*rtonal irritation, but that impersonal wrath which dilates character, the sort of wrath which Luther taid was purifying, and without which he could not write ? Moat of all, Mr Bright is, we will not say, the most religious of our statesmen—he it probably not so, certainly not more profoundly relig'ous than the Prime Ministerbut h s religion is of the Old Testament type. We do not mean thu in the sense of ecclesustics, we do not mean that it rests more on " tho law" and less on the If, ye of God thar that of other public m*m ; but that it is ol the Old Testament type in tho sense of affect ing hint directly through his (political imagination, in the sense of giving to the larger qucs tioua of political life a special religious bear ing. which they have not, at least do noi seem to have, in the minds of other states men. Of course, numbers of politician! besides Mr Bright nee the ordinary formula n> out " Providential" guidance. But M) Blight does not speak in formulas. Hi may not indeed exactly believe in tbi " Lord of Hosts," though, even of that hi showed traces during the great civil wa: in the United States* But no does bcliev< in One who overrules the evil actions evei of armies, and who brings "light out o darkness " for the upright, where man. woul< least expect it "Whether," he said, fly yean ago, ** whether the war in the Unite* States will give freedom to the race wbid white men nave trampled in. the dust, an whether the issue will purifya»ation ateepe in crimes against that race, is known only: t jsha Supreme. In His hands are alike th breath u£ man and tho life of State*. I« .••■',' ■! ■ ■■'■,-■ ■:".'■> v!'...,.-.....

willing to commit to him the inue of this dread contest; but I implore of Him, and I beieooh this House, that my country may lift nor hand nor voice in aid of the most stupendous act of guilt that history has recorded hi the annals of mankind " That certainly i» not couched in the primitive and simple stylo of the Old Testament. But remembering that it was spoken ia the House Commons, it has the impress of that large and devout faith in God'a government of the world whiob is rarely enough expressed by our politicians, and which gives to politics a solemnity and Kraadeur of the ancient and higher kind. We ate by no means insensible to those j political qualities of Mr Bright which tend to identify him with some of the poorest elements of our modem middle-olass prejudice Still,take him asa whole, and we shall scarcely find another statesman in the House who does so much to give to our political life the simplicity of a passion that 1* neither petty nor personal; the vision of one who sees many of those implied meaning* of abstract policy on which other nen only reason acd think; who expresses, with so groat a power to kindle in others, the wrath which political meanness and selfisbnea* deserve ; and who discerns so steadily, through the blinding twilight which we call day, the vision of a world of order diviner and nobler than our own. Surely, with all hia fault*, Mr Bright .is not a figure whom oar national Parliament could spare.

| mmny 01 iqoso implied meaning* 01 • Detract . policy on which other nen only reason acd think; who oxpreate*, with bo groat a power to kindle in other*, the wrath which political meanness and Bclfiiibnesa deserve ; and who discerns ao steadily, through the blinding twilight which we call day, the vision of a world of order diviner and nobler than our own. Sorely, with all his faults, Mr Bright .is not a figure whom oar national Parliament oonld spare.