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Bright, John, 1811-1889

"Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1"

Ask
Garibaldi. Is there in Europe a more disinterested and generous friend
of freedom than Garibaldi? Ask that illustrious Hungarian, to whose
marvellous eloquence you once listened in this hall. Will he tell you
that slavery has nothing to do with it, and that the slaveholders of the
South will liberate the negroes sooner than the North through the
instrumentality of the war? Ask Victor Hugo, the poet of freedom,--the
exponent, may I not call him, of the yearnings of all mankind for a
better time? Ask any man in Europe who opens his lips for freedom,--who
dips his pen in ink that he may indite a sentence for freedom,--whoever
has a sympathy for freedom warm in his own heart,--ask him,--he will
have no difficulty in telling you on which side your sympathies should
lie.
Only a few days ago a German merchant in Manchester was speaking to a
friend of mine, and said he had recently travelled all through Germany.
He said, 'I am so surprised,--I don't find one man in favour of the
South' That is not true of Germany only, it is true of all the world
except this island, famed for freedom, in which we dwell. I will tell
you what is the reason.


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