Public addresses Author:John Bright Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV. BIRMINGHAM, FEBRTJAET 5, 1868. [On this day a breakfast was given by Mr. J. S. Wright, the Chairman of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, to the artis... more »ans who had, at the instance of the Society of Arts, visited the Paris Exhibition. Several of the speakers expressed alarm at the risks which, in their opinion, English manufactures were running from the rivalry of foreigners, and were urgent that the Government of the country should give assistance, by public grants, to technical education.] Before I say anything upon the special object of this meeting, I must be allowed to thank you for the most kind expressions which you have used with regard to me. I am very sorry that there should be any great subject on which you and I are supposed very much to differ, but if there be such I can only say that I give you that full credit for purity of intention and for honest convictions which you give me, and I hope that in our walk through life, though we do not take exactly the same course, we may have the honest intention of doing something if we can to help forward the one great end which you have described as the promotion of the interests of our fellow-men and of our common country. With regard to the purpose of this meeting, I feel myself rather as if I had been entrapped on this occasion, because my mind has not for a long time past been running much on the subject of education, and I find myself in the state of some of our Conservative friends who are being dragged on ata rate which almost bewilders them. There is a very feverish anxiety abroad to do something for the education of the people. Years ago, in discussing the question of the Suffrage, I have often argued that the ignorance in which we find a very large proportion of our population was in itself a fact stron...« less