Quotes from John Bright

Be the measure great or small, let it be honest in every part.

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.

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.

England is the Mother of Parliaments

I am for peace, retrenchment and reform, the watchword of the great Liberal Party thirty years ago.

So then because some towns in England are not represented, America is to have no representative at all. They are our children; but when children ask for bread we are not to give a stone.

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.

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.

The corn law was intended to keep wheat at the price of 80s. the quarter; it is now under 40s. the quarter.

As you know, I am neither Roman Catholic, Protestant Episcopalian, nor Presbyterian, nor am I an Irishman.

He is a self-made man and worships his creator.

Popular applause veers with the wind.

England is the mother of Parliaments.

Possibly you are not aware of the fact that the largest sum given by any contributor to the fund is but a trifle when compared with the losses suffered by nearly all the firms in the cotton trade during the disastrous years of the American war.

There is no nation on the continent of Europe that is less able to do harm to England, and there isno nation on the continent of Europe to whom we are less able to do harm, than Russia.We are so separate that it seems impossible that the two nations, by the use of reason or common sense at all, could possibly be brought into conflict with each other.

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.

The right honorable gentleman is the first of the new party who has retired into his political cave of Adullam and he has called about him everyone that was in distress and everyone that was discontented.

I am for peace, retrenchment, and for reformthirty years ago the great watchwords of the great Liberal Party.

Had they been in the wilderness they would have complained of the Ten Commandments.

The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two side-posts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on; he takes his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and lowly.

Force is not a remedy.

If there be no seed-time there will certainly be no harvest, and the youth of life is the seed-time of life.

The moral law was not written for men alone in their individual character, but it was written as well for nations, and for nations great as this of which we are citizens. If nations reject and deride that moral law, there is a penalty which will inevitably follow. It may not come at once, it may not come in our lifetime; but, rely upon it, the great Italian is not a poet only, but a prophet, when he says: "The sword of heaven is not in haste to smite, Nor yet doth linger."

Rich and great people can take care of themselves; but the poor and defenseless--the men with small cottages and large families--the men who must work six days every week if they are to live in anything like comfort for a week--these men want defenders; they want men to maintain their position in Parliament; they want men who will protest against any infringement of their rights.