Mr. Bright's attack at Birmingham on the principle of the
Parliamentary representation of labour by working-men has called forth a letter of remonstrance to him from the Secretary of the Labour Representation League, Mr. Henry Broadhurst, to which he has replied with a curtness that amounts to a snub. "I do not feel," he says, "that I have anything to add to, or to take from, what I said in my recent speech at Birmingham, and the subject is one which cannot well be treated by correspond- ence." The truth is, Mr. Bright has evidently something of a prejudice against working-class Members of Parlia- ment. He is quite right in saying that it would be a wretched principle to lay down that a great class can only be represented by members of that class. That would tend to break up society into horizontal strata of a most dangerous kind. But it is also true—and this is what Mr. Bright will ignore—that it is very far from desirable that Parliament should go without the aid of members of any one of the larger classes, and it must go without the aid of working-men, who are too poor and too hardly pressed to enter into political life without special assistance, unless some- thing like a Labour Representation League helps to introduce a few such into the House of Commons. Mr. Bright's jealousies and prejudices are all those of the class to which he himself belongs, though early in life he mastered successfully one or two of them.
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