Excerpt from Speeches on Parliamentary Reform, &C: Delivered During the Autumn of 1866, to the People of England, Scotland, and Ireland, at Birmingham, Manchester, Leed, Glasgow, Dublin, and London
On the occasion of the great Reform Demonstration at Birmingham, which was held on Monday, the 27th August, Mr. Bright delivered the following speech in the large room of the Town Hall, to a crowded and enthusiastic audience. After the extraordinary cheering which greeted his rising had subsided, the hon. gentleman said: -
Mr. Mayor and gentlemen, - I accept the address which has just been presented to me with feelings which I shall not attempt to express. I accept it as ample compensation for whatsoever labours I have expended in your service, and I shall take it from this meeting, and hold it as a constant stimulus to whatsoever labours may lie in my path in your service for the future. There are times when I feel no little despondency at the small result of many years of public labour; but to look upon a meeting like that assembled here, and to look upon that vast gathering which your town has exhibited to the country and to the world to-day, is enough to dispel every feeling of fear or of despondency, and to fill the heart and nerve the arm to new and greater labours for the future. During the last session of Parliament, in the debate on the second reading of the Franchise Bill, I took the opportunity of offering a word of counsel and of warning to the powerful party in the House which opposed that bill. In those words of warning and of counsel I asked them to remember that if they should succeed in defeating that bill and overthrowing the Government, there would still remain the people of England to be met, and the claims of the great question of reform to be considered and settled. We have not had to wait long before that which I foretold has come to pass. Tn London we have seen assemblies of the people such as for a generation past have not been witnessed. In many other parts of the country there have been meetings greater than have been seen for thirty years, and notably to-day there has been a voice given forth from the very centre and heart of England which will reach at least to the circumference of the three kingdoms. There has been an attempt to measure the numbers that are present in this hall at this moment. There are probably six thousand persons here.
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