MR BRIGHT’S RESIGNATION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume III, Issue 692, 19 July 1882, Page 2

MR BRIGHT’S RESIGNATION.

The Dunedin Star says, the withdrawal of Mr Bright from the Gladstone Ministry cannot be regarded as a disapproval on his part of their general policy. Consistently with the religious opinions of the Christian sect of which he is a member, he could not retain his Ministerial position, as the Society of Friends hold all war to, be unlawful. He must therefore abandon one party or the other, and he has conscientiously by. his resignation, protested against the destruction of Alexandria by withdrawing from a Ministry by whom it was authorised. While the Empire thus loses the administrative services of so able and conscientious a man, the foreign policy of the Government will be strengthened by the admission of one whose views on the legality of war are more elastic than Mr Bright’s. It is unfortunate for Mr Gladstone that, with aims tending in the direction of the abolition of war and the sacredness of human life, he has by force of circumstances been compelled to sanction, both in Egypt, Ireland, and other parts of the world, courses of procedure that he would gladly have avoided. It is plain that mankind have not.yet developed sufficiently from the primeval type to accept the doctrine of universal peace. Gladstone’s efforts to establish a tribunal for the decision of national disputes, and Bright’s protests against war, though ridiculed, by the unthinking, are seed cast .into the ground, which wasted on the stony and down-trodden ways, will develope into practical statesmanship, though long : after those able men have reste i from their labors.