JOHN BRIGHT.
[To THE' EDITOR OF THE "spxoreava.”1
Sra,—I had the good fortune to hear one of John Bright's greatest speeches, on November 5th, 1868, in the Edinburgh' Corn Exchange, and I remember how calmly he spoke and without gesticulation. In that speech occurred one of the most sublime passages in the whole range of British oratory. The speech was delivered shortly after the first Atlantic cable had been recovered after it had broken and disappeared, and this is how Bright referred to it :—
" What is there that man cannot do if he tries ? The other day he descended to the mysterious depths of the ocean, and with an iron hand he sought, and he found, and he grasped, and be brought up to the surface, the lost cable, and with it he made two worlds into one. I ask are his conquests confined to the realms of science ? Is it not possible that another hand, not of iron, but of Christian justice and kindness, may be let down to moral depths even deeper than the cable fathomed, to bring up from thence Misery's sons and daughters and the multitudes who are ready to perish ? "
Woodburne, Ceres, Fife.
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