Mr. Bright maintains that since the beginning of the century,
£4,414,000,000 sterling have been spent by this country upon war; but we suppose that he includes in this all the expenditure which is more or less precautionary against attack, a huge slice of it. During the same time he estimates the civil expenditure .of the country at little above £1,100,000,000, or less than a fourth of what he means by the war expenditure, but which has been to a very great extent expenditure on security against war. His speech, however, contained some grand sentences. "In fact, looking at the past is to me a melancholy retrospect. There is -much of it which excites in me not astonishment only, but horror. The fact is, there passes before my eyes a vision of millions
families,—not individuals, but families,—fathers, mothers, -children, passing, ghastly, sorrow-stricken, in never-ending pro- -cession, from their cradle to their grave." "To me, it appears that we have trodden for two centuries past in the footsteps of -the Caesars, and have accepted the barbarous policy of Pagan Rome; while at the same time, with a vast and unconscious iypocrisy, we have built thousands of temples, and have dedicated them to the Prince of Peace. And I say, and say with grief and shame, that they who have ministered at his altars have, for the most part, on these matters been absolutely dumb."
Previous page
