The question whether British eccentricity was ever strength
weighed heavily in the balance of education. That Roebuck should
mislead the rebel agents on so strange a point as that of
Bright's courage was doubly characteristic because the Southern
people themselves had this same barbaric weakness of attributing
want of courage to opponents, and owed their ruin chiefly to such
ignorance of the world. Bright's courage was almost as irrational
as that of the rebels themselves. Every one knew that he had the
courage of a prize-fighter. He struck, in succession, pretty
nearly every man in England that could be reached by a blow, and
when he could not reach the individual he struck the class, or
when the class was too small for him, the whole people of
England. At times he had the whole country on his back. He could
not act on the defensive; his mind required attack. Even among
friends at the dinner-table he talked as though he were
denouncing them, or someone else, on a platform; he measured his
phrases, built his sentences, cumulated his effects, and pounded
his opponents, real or imagined. His humor was glow, like iron at
dull heat; his blow was elementary, like the thrash of a whale.
One day in early spring, March 26, 1863, the Minister requested
his private secretary to attend a Trades-Union Meeting at St.
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