political friendship which was continued uninterruptedly through so long
and so active a career.

At the commencement of Mr. Bright's public life, the shortsighted
selfishness of a landlords' parliament was afflicting the United Kingdom
with a continuous dearth. Labour was starved, and capital was made
unproductive by the Corn-laws. The country was tied to a system by which
Great Britain and her Colonies deliberately chose the dearest market for
their purchases. In the same spirit, the price of freights was wilfully
heightened by the Navigation-laws. Important branches of home industry
were crippled by prying, vexatious, and wasteful excises. And this
system was conceived to be the highest wisdom; or at any rate, to be so
invincible a necessity that it could not be avoided or altered without
danger. The country, if it were to make its way, could make it only
because other nations were servile imitators of our commercial policy,
and, in the vain hope of retaliation, were hindering their own progress.

The foreign policy of Great Britain was suspicious and irritating, for
it was secret, busy, and meddling, insolent to the weak, conciliatory,
even truckling, to the strong. The very name of diplomacy is and has
been odious to English Liberals, for by means of it a reactionary
Government could check domestic reforms, and hinder the community of
nations indefinitely. The policy of the Foreign Office was constantly
directed towards embittering, if not embroiling, the relations between
this and other countries. It is difficult to account for these
intrigues, except on the ground that successive Governments were anxious
to maintain political and social anomalies at home, while they were
affecting to support 'the balance of power' abroad. The abandonment of
intervention in foreign politics was the beginning of agitation for
domestic reforms.