"A DAY will come when you France, you Russia, you Italy, you England, you Germany, all you nations of the continent, shall, without losing your distinctive qualities and your glorious individuality, blend in a higher unity, and form a European fraternity, even as Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, all the French provinces, blended into France.

"A day will come when bullets and bombs shall be replaced by ballots, by the universal suffrage of the people, by the sacred arbitraments of a great sovereign senate, which shall be to Europe what the Parliament is to England, what the Diet is to Germany, what the Legislative Assembly is to France.

"A day will come when a cannon shall be exhibited in our museums as an instrument of torture is now, and men shall marvel that such things could be.

"A day will come when we shall see those two immense groups, the United States of America and the United States of Europe, extending hand to hand over the ocean, exchanging their products, their commerce, their industry, their art, their genius, clearing the earth, colonising deserts, ameliorating Creation under the eye of the Creator." - Victor Hugo (1802-1885).

I think this chappie must have been the first Euro MP.

Ed Southgate, Stockton