h peculiarly belongs
to the American people in the progress of human events has flooded all
the world at last; and we will live each golden moment of our mighty day
in a way as great as the day itself.

FOOTNOTE:

[36] By permission of the author.

THE AMERICAN QUESTION

JOHN BRIGHT

Now let me ask you, what is this people about which so many men in
England at this moment are writing and speaking and thinking with
harshness? Two centuries ago multitudes of the people of this country
found a refuge on the North American Continent, escaping from the
tyranny of the Stuarts, and from the bigotry of Laud. Many noble spirits
from our country made great experiments in favor of human freedom on
that continent. Bancroft, the great historian of his country, has said,
"The history of the colonization of America is the history of the crimes
of Europe."

From that time down to our own period America has admitted the wanderers
from every clime. Since 1815, a time which many here remember, and which
is within my lifetime, more than three millions of persons have
emigrated from the United Kingdom to the United States. During the
fifteen years from 1845 to 1860 more than two million persons left the
shores of the United Kingdom as emigrants to North America.

At this very moment, then, there are millions in the United States who
personally have been citizens of this country. They found a home in the
far West, they subdued the wilderness, they met with plenty there and
became a great people. There may be men in England who dislike democracy
and who hate a republic. But of this I am certain that only
misrepresentation the most gross or calumny the most wicked can sever
the tie which unites the great mass of the people of this country with
their friends and relatives beyond the Atlantic.

Now whether the Union will be restored I know not. But this I think I
know, that in a few years, a very few years, the twenty millions of
freemen in the North will be thirty or even fifty millions, a population
equal to that of this kingdom. When that time comes I pray that it may
not be said amongst them that, in the darkest hour of their country's
trials, England, the land of their fathers, looked on with icy coldness
and saw unmoved the perils and calamities of their children. As for me I
have but this to say, if all other tongues are silent, mine shall speak
for that policy which gives hope to the bondsmen of the South and which
ten