John Bright Quotes
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This excessive love for 'the balance of power' is neither more nor less than a gigantic system of out-door relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain.
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Peel delivered the best speech I ever heard in Parliament. It was truly a magnificent speech, sustained throughout, thoroughly with us, and offering even to pass the immediate repeal of the Corn Laws, if the House are willing. Villiers, Gibson, and myself cheered continually, and I never listened to any human being speaking in public with so much delight.
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I am for peace, retrenchment and reform, the watchword of the great Liberal Party thirty years ago.
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Popular applause veers with the wind.
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The franchise itself gives no real power, unless accompanied by the right on the part of all the possessors of it to elect something like an equal number of representatives.
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I. cannot stoop to reply to the folly and the slander of every poor Tory partisan who assails me, and I should not have noticed you but for the fact that you are a member of the House of Commons.
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As you know, I am neither Roman Catholic, Protestant Episcopalian, nor Presbyterian, nor am I an Irishman.
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It is sufficient to say, what everybody knows to be true, that the Irish population is Catholic, and that the Protestants, whether of the Episcopalian or Presbyterian Church, or of both united, are a small minority of the Irish people.
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We have had a great depression in agriculture, caused mainly by several seasons of bad harvests, and some of our traders have suffered much from a too rapid extension in prosperous years.
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I hope this view of the question may be a mistaken one, because it does not seem to me very unlikely that the suffrage will be granted to women.
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If this phrase of the 'balance of power' is to be always an argument for war, the pretext for war will never be wanting, and peace can never be secure.
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To have two Legislative Assemblies in the United Kingdom would, in my opinion, be an intolerable mischief; and I think no sensible man can wish for two within the limits of the present United Kingdom who does not wish the United Kingdom to become two or more nations, entirely separate from each other.
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The corn law was intended to keep wheat at the price of 80s. the quarter; it is now under 40s. the quarter.
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This old aristocracy and Church-ridden, and tradition-ridden country will never grow wiser. Whilst we are fighting for supremacy in Europe the United States are working, and not fighting for it, but winning it all over the world.
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A year ago I was in the city of Genoa, and I found that it returned seven representatives to the Sardinian Parliament at Turin, seven being its fair share, calculated according to the population of the various cities and districts of the Sardinian kingdom.
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Demand the ballot as the undeniable right of every man who is called to the poll, and take special care that the old constitutional rule and principle, by which majorities alone shall decide in Parliamentary elections, shall not be violated.
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It is not Bradlaugh's atheism which they hate, but his unconscious Christianity.
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I am the great terror of the squires, they seem to be seized with a sort of bucolic mania in dealing with me.
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With regard to the ballot, it is worthy of remark that no meeting has been held in favour of Reform at which the ballot has not been strongly insisted upon.
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Any Reform Bill which is worth a moment's thought, or the smallest effort to carry it, must at least double, and it ought to do much more than double, the representation of the metropolitan boroughs and of all the great cities of the United Kingdom.
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Force is not a remedy.
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The Aristocratic Institutions of England had acted much like the Slavery Institutions of America...in demoralising large classes outside their own special boundaries...in producing a long habit of submission...and in enfeebling by corrupting those who should assail them.
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I am not working for failure, but for success, and for a real gain, and I must go the way to get it. I am sure the putting manhood suffrage in the Bill is not the way to get it. This has been done by the Chartists, and by the Complete Suffragists, but what has become of their Bills?
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Liberty is on the march, and this year promises to be a great year in European history. Our Government is blind enough, and the Parliamentary majorities are more regarded than opinion out of doors. We must have another League of some kind, and our aristocracy must be made to submit again.