John Bright Quotes

As to the Income Tax, my opinion is that the needful revenue would be fairly and most fairly raised if paid by property, and by individuals in proportion to their property ... A Property Tax should be an assessment upon all land and buildings, and canals and railroads, but not on property such as machinery, stock in trade, etc. The aristocracy have squeezed all they can out of the mass of the consumers, and now they lay their daring hands on those not wholly impoverished.

Any Reform Bill which is worth a moment's thought, or the smallest effort to carry it, must at least double, and it ought to do much more than double, the representation of the metropolitan boroughs and of all the great cities of the United Kingdom.

Had they [the Tories] been in the wilderness they would have complained of the Ten Commandments. Remark.

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 knowledge of the ancient languages is mainly a luxury.

I would prefer to have one comfortable room well stocked with books to all you could give me in the way of decoration which the highest art could supply.

To have two Legislative Assemblies in the United Kingdom would, in my opinion, be an intolerable mischief; and I think no sensible man can wish for two within the limits of the present United Kingdom who does not wish the United Kingdom to become two or more nations, entirely separate from each other.

The Government and the Parliament, even the House of Lords, will consent to a large increase of electors; and men who have not considered the subject fully will imagine they have gained much by the concession.

The Aristocratic Institutions of England [had] acted much like the Slavery Institutions of America ... [in] demoralis[ing] large classes outside their own special boundaries ... [in producing] a long habit of submission ... [and in] enfeebl[ing] by corrupting those who should assail them.

The beasts (Conservatives) had committed suicide to save themselves from slaughter.

The right honorable gentleman [Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke] 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.

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.

Force is not a remedy.

Rich and great people can take care of themselves; but the poor and defenceless 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.

This regard for the liberties of Europe, this care at one time for the protestant interest, this excessive love for the balance of power, is neither more nor less than a gigantic system of outdoor relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain.

What is a great love of books? It is something like a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past times. Books, it is true, are silent as you see them on their shelves; but, silent as they are, when I enter a library I feel as if almost the dead were present, and I know if I put questions to these books they will answer me with all the faithfulness and fulness which has been left in them by the great men who have left the books with us.

The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings.

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.

Popular applause veers with the wind.

In the houses of the humble a little library in my opinion is a most precious possession.

I hope this view of the question may be a mistaken one, because it does not seem to me very unlikely that the suffrage will be granted to women.

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.