his private secretary to attend a Trades Unions Meeting at St. James's Hall, which was the result of Professor Beesley's patient efforts to unite Bright and the Trades Unions on an American platform. The secretary went to the meeting and made a report which reposes some where on file in the State Department to this day, as harmless as such reports should be; but contained no mention of what interested young Adams most,—Bright's psychology. With singular skill and oratorical power, Bright managed at the outset, in his opening paragraph, to insult or outrage every class of Englishman commonly considered respectable, and, for fear of any escaping, he insulted them repeatedly under consecutive heads. The rhetorical effect was tremendous:—
"Privilege thinks it has a great interest in the American contest," he began in his massive, deliberate tones; "and every morning with blatant voice, it comes into our streets and curses the American republic. Privilege has beheld an afflicting spectacle for many years past. It has beheld thirty million of men happy and prosperous, without emperors,—without king (cheers),—without the surroundings of a court (renewed cheers),—without nobles, except such as are made by eminence in intellect and virtue,—without State bishops and State priests, those vendors of the love that works salvation (cheers),—without great armies and great navies,—without a great debt and great taxes,—and Privilege has shuddered at what might happen to old Europe if this great experiment should succeed."
An ingenious man, with an inventive mind, might have managed, in the same number of lines, to offend more Englishmen than Bright struck in this sentence; but he must have betrayed artifice and hurt his oratory. The audience cheered furiously, and the private secretary felt peace in his much troubled mind, for he knew how careful the ministry would be, once they saw Bright talk republican principles before Trades Unions; but, while he did not, like Roebuck, see reason to doubt the courage of a man who, after quarreling with the Trades Unions, quarreled with all the world outside the Trades Unions, he did feel a doubt whether to class Bright as eccentric or conventional. Everyone called Bright "un-English," from Lord Palmerston to William E. Forster; but to an American he seemed more English than any of his critics. He was a liberal hater, and what he hated he reviled after the manner of Milton, but he was afraid of no
