Alt SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BRIGHT CELEBRATION.
THE great ovation of the week to Mr. Bright has evidently been anything but a pure pleasure to himself, though it must have at least convinced him that the great mass of his fellow-countrymen regard his public career with even more unmixed pride and satisfaction than he himself has ever in- dulged in his review of it. But this is precisely one of its most significant features,—that the celebration cannot in any sense have been organised solely to give pleasure to Mr. Bright, though it has been organised to do honour to him, for the motive evidently has been, and has rightly been, to find a vivid expression for the public feeling with which Mr. Bright is regarded, even though it may be very true that Mr. Bright himself would have spent the week much more pleasantly, if he had passed it in some quiet retirement on the lonely banks of a Scotch river, or in some bright retreat on the Welsh coast. These popular celebrations are not de- vised for the sake of the hero of them, but for the sake of the people whose multitude gives them their meaning and effect. It is for their sakes that Mr. Bright consents to be the prominent figure of a mighty population during so long a festivity,—and he is quite right. Nothing really does more to foster and develope the growth of popular convictions than those well-earned popular triumphs. They succeed in imprint- ing indelibly on the minds of the Democracy of the future the type of statesman which it should set before it and try to raise into an ideal. Mr. Bright will be as weary before the end of the week as he was apprehensive of his inadequacy to come up to the demands upon his strength at the beginning of it ; but he will not regret that he accepted the invitation of the town to make him the centre of its interests, if he is sure at its close, as he well may be, that for a generation to come the young people of the Midland Counties will be more disposed to hold fast by his counsels and to try their representatives by the standard of his principles than they would have been if he had followed the instinct of his own modesty, and the natural apprehensive- ness of a septuagenarian, in begging to be excused so exciting and so tumultuous a tribute to his political achieve- ments.
It is obvious from more than one of Mr. Bright's speeches that he felt keenly the insuperable difficulty of adequately interpreting the popular enthusiasm he beheld. He realised that language was absolutely and wholly unequal to the task of reflect- ing in any sense the magnitude of the demonstration. It is very hard to represent to ourselves by anything but abstract signs the difference between ten thousand grateful hearts and a hundred thousand grateful hearts ; still more, the difference between a hundred thousand and a million ; and it is quite impossible to represent the difference in any effectual speech. Yet even this absolute impossibility of conveying the impressions made upon him by the hundreds of thousands who thronged his path and cheered him as he passed, must have been in a sense satisfactory to Mr. Bright, as showing how little politics really depend on the abstract truth or falsehood of special political ideas, and how much they depend on the forces of popular sympathy which can be awakened by some natures, and which cannot be awakened, even under the influence of precisely the same thoughts, by others. It would be impossible to imagine a more potent illustration of the difference between political ideas and political force, than the Birmingham enthusiasm of this week. Not a thousandth part of the enthusiasm would have been awakened by the career of a man expressing the very same ideas, if uttered by less eloquent lips than Mr. Bright's. It was the peculiar effect with which he expressed the ideas, the power in him,—which multitudes who hold his ideas would not possess,—to thrill others with his own feelings, that has given him such a hold over the hearts of the people. He has wielded infinitely greater forces than almost any other man, though thinking exactly as he did, could have wielded ; and no doubt he derives from his experience a perfectlysagacions though an unreasoned distrust of all thoughts which seem to him ill- adapted to stir these popular emotions, of all thoughts which appeal only to the understanding, and do not send any electric current through the hearts of the people. When we reproach, as we have often reproached, Mr. Bright for his impatience of anything like an exact representation of the popular view,—a representation of the minority, for instance, ae well as of the majority,—doubtless he might reply, and reply with great force, I know better than you do the kind of thing which you can say to a multitude with full confidence that it will work ; and also the kind of thing that you cannot say with the smallest hope of its working ; and this finikin desire of yours to get a representation of the views of the minority as well as of the majority is one of these last,—a desire that you cannot express with the least hope that the multitude will take it up, or in any way respond to it. The power of dealing with a democracy is, to some extent, an instinct. I have always had the instinct, as you see, and you may trust me that you will work no wonders by those mathematical notions of yours about exact representation.' That would seem to us a very unsatisfactory sort of reply, but we should frankly recognise that it was founded at least in truth,—that you cannot affect a great democracy except by a rough sort of justice, which may at times involve no insignificant amount of injustice,— and that only the men who can put in motion the larger forces will in the end come victoriously out of the fray. Politics, as the Birmingham demonstration most impressivel;, teaches us, do not consist in the manipulation of true ideas, so much as in the manipulation of wide-spread and contagious feelings of right and justice. The man who can stir the last will always come out victorious over the man who can only verify the first.
At the banquet of Thursday, Mr. Bright, in reply to Lord Granville, took some credit to himself for his frequent political moderation in asking less than he might have obtained for the people, and, indeed, sooner or later did obtain. Thus, he said that he had advised the House of Commons in 1866 to accept a £7 borough franchise, though he had himself advocated household suffrage, and within another year carried household suffrage for the boroughs. And this is perfectly true. A part of Mr. Bright's popularity has, undoubtedly, been due to a kind of moderation. Mr. Bright has always been moderate, when his opponents were disposed to meet him half-way, just as, he is moderate now, deprecating almost the proposal to insist at once on equal electoral districts, and arguing only for a very large and substantial redistribution of seats, which shall readjust political power mainly in proportion to popu- lation. But the moderation which has made Mr. Bright so popular has been moderation towards those who were coming half-way to meet him, not moderation towards those who met all his proposals with obstinate negatives. To these, he has never been specially moderate. He has gained a great deal of his popularity by pouring the vials of his indignation. on the enemies of the popular cause, by denouncing them from time to time in no unmeasured language of scorn and invective. Moderation towards friends, inexorable wrath toward foes,— that has been one of the secrets of the immense popularity which Mr. Bright enjoys. The English people love modera- tion, when it hastens the moment of a desirable settlement ; but they are hardly educated enough to like moderation when it consists, as it often must consist, in finding excuses for
genuine enemies, and discussing the modicum of truth in the position which those enemies assume. Mr. Bright, with his deep instinct for the manipulation of popular force,.. has sympathised with both these attitudes of the popular mind. He has been ready to give something, that he might get much all the sooner,—or to go "step by step," as he says,. when he thought the first step taken, a reasonably long one. But he has himself felt too angry against those who did nothing but oppose his demands, even to attempt to do them. justice. He has been moderation itself, to those who came with honest gifts in their 'hands ; but he has been proud of his own intolerance of those who wished to fight every inch of ground with him and with the people. He would hardly have been the orator he is, had he felt otherwise. The mood of candour to real antagonists is not usually the mood in which burning words can be poured forth, such as kindle popular enthusiasm, and carry away the nation's heart.
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