is difficulty, and therefore you are bound to get us out of it.' We
ought not, I say, to place ourselves in a position of that kind. And
now, Sir, I have stated all, I think, that it is possible for me
to state at this time, and it remains for me only to assure the
House--knowing, as I do, how utterly impossible it is for any member
of the Executive to carry on his work effectively without the support
of public opinion--it only remains for me to say that, as far as the
nature of the case allows, I shall always be anxious that the House
shall be conversant with everything that is done.

JOHN BRIGHT October 29, 1858 PRINCIPLES OF FOREIGN POLICY

The frequent and far too complimentary manner in which my name has
been mentioned to-night, and the most kind way in which you have
received me, have placed me in a position somewhat humiliating, and
really painful; for to receive laudation which one feels one cannot
possibly have merited, is much more painful than to be passed by in
a distribution of commendation to which possibly one might lay some
claim. If one twentieth part of what has been said is true, if I am
entitled to any measure of your approbation, I may begin to think
that my public career and my opinions are not so un-English and so
anti-national as some of those who profess to be the best of our
public instructors have sometimes assumed. How, indeed, can I, any
more than any of you, be un-English and anti-national? Was I not born
upon the same soil? Do I not come of the same English stock? Are not
my family committed irrevocably to the fortunes of this country?
Is not whatever property I may have depending as much as yours is
depending upon the good government of our common fatherland? Then how
shall any man dare to say to any one of his countrymen, because he
happen to hold a different opinion on questions of great public
policy, that therefore he is un-English, and is to be condemned as
anti-national? There are those who would assume that between my
countrymen and me, and between my constituents and me, there has been,
and there is now, a great gulf fixed, and that if I cannot pass over
to them and to you, they and you can by no possibility pass over to
me.

Now I take the liberty here, in the presence of an audience as
intelligent as can be collected within the limits of this island,
and of those who have the strongest claim to know what opinions I do
entertain relative to certain great questions of