Ube IDfctorian Eta Series 
 
 John Bright 
 
John Bright 
 
 By 
 
 C. A. VINCE, M.A, 
 
 Formerly Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge 
 
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 • • • 
 
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 HERBERT S. STONE & COMPANY 
 CHICAGO & NEW YORK 
 
 MDCCCXCVIII 
 
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Preface 
 
 A history of John Bright's career must needs be largely 
 a record of opinions. In constructing this record I have 
 tried, as far as possible, to use his own words, although 
 the limits of this book do not permit extended quota- 
 tions from his speeches. Such a method is facilitated by 
 the terseness of his style; and inasmuch as his opinions 
 were always clearly defined, and, being notably indepen- 
 dent of circumstances and conditions, were subject to 
 very little change, I may reasonably hope to have escaped 
 the error of misrepresenting occasional utterances as 
 definite judgments. 
 
 I have not, however, been content merely to sum- 
 marize Bright's acts and views, but have throughout 
 tried to form and to suggest a critical estimate of his 
 work and its results. With one exception the contro- 
 versies in which he was engaged are now sufficiently 
 remote, and their issues sufficiently developed, to bear 
 historical treatment. The exception is the controversy 
 raised in 1886; upon this subject, therefore, I have 
 added no comment to the account given of Bright's 
 opinions. The space allotted to the different subjects 
 treated is proportional, not to their importance, but to 
 the importance of Bright's dealings with them. 
 
 For some details of Bright's parentage and early life 
 I rely on the authority of the biography written by Mr. 
 W. Robertson of Rochdale. In studying his parlia- 
 mentary career I have resorted throughout to Hansard 
 and the newspaper files. The books of which I have 
 made most use are Mr. Morley's Life of Cohden^ Pren- 
 tice's History of the League^ the Histories of Mr. J. F. 
 
 
 48926 
 
vi Preface 
 
 Bright and Mr. W. N. Molesworth, Mr. Kinglake*s 
 Invasion of the Crimea, Charles Greville's Jourfial, Earl 
 Russell's RecollectionSj Sir G. O. Trevelyan's Life of 
 Macaulay, and the collection of Bright's Public Letters 
 edited by Mr. H. J. Leech. Wherever I have derived 
 hints from other books I have indicated the source. 
 
 I may be permitted to add that I have been from boy- 
 hood a close observer of the political life of Birmingham, 
 and for some years actively engaged in it. This work 
 has made me conscious of the still lasting influence of 
 Bright's doctrine and example on the minds of persons 
 interested in politics in this city. That influence has 
 often been neglected or under-estimated by journalists 
 and speakers who have treated the present state of 
 Liberal opinion in Birmingham as a phenomenon calling 
 for explanation. It has been a task of curious interest 
 to me to amplify and correct, by a complete study of 
 Bright's career, my conception of the character, the 
 methods, the failures and successes, the greatness and 
 the limitations, of a man who did so much to form the 
 political mind with which I am in daily contact. 
 
 I have had the advantage of consulting on some 
 points politicians whose knowledge of Bright was 
 intimate and of long duration. In particular, I have to 
 thank Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. J. Thackray Bunce, 
 who most kindly communicated to me some of their 
 personal recollections of Bright. Mr. William Wright 
 of Birmingham has allowed me the use of his large 
 collection of newspaper cuttings, and has given me 
 other assistance, which I here gratefully acknowledge. 
 
 C. A. VINCE. 
 
 Birmingham, Dec, 1897. 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Page 
 
 The Anti-Corn- Law League _ - - - - 9 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 The Radical Reformers ------ 3^ 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The War with Russia 53 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 hidia --------- ~ 73 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Parliamentary Reform ^9 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Irelaftd - - ^^^ 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Educatio7i; the Conservative Reaction; and the Eastern 
 
 Question -------- 134 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 Last Years - - 176 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Bright' s Oratory ..------ 204 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Characteristics -------- 220 
 
 INDEX ^43 
 
John Bright. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 The Anti-Corn-Law League. 
 
 John Bright was born at Green Bank, Rochdale, on 
 November i6, 1811. He was the second son of Jacob 
 Bright, a prosperous manufacturer. He came of a 
 thrifty and pious stock. At the time of the Revolution 
 his paternal ancestors were farmers at Lyneham in Wilt- 
 shire, where there is a field that still bears the name of 
 Bright's Orchard. Abraham Bright, the great-grand- 
 father of the statesman, migrated from Wiltshire to 
 Coventry, and there his grandson, Jacob Bright, was 
 born. Jacob Bright was apprenticed to William Holme, 
 a Derbyshire manufacturer; and early in this century 
 accompanied the two sons of Holme to Rochdale, where 
 he was employed by them in a cotton mill. Two years 
 before the birth of his famous son he started a mill on 
 his own account. He borrowed the capital for this 
 enterprise, but soon became independent, and in time 
 wealthy. He was shrewd in business and rigid in prin- 
 ciple, but of a just and compassionate disposition, a 
 generous giver, and, by comparison with other cotton- 
 spinners of those cruel days, notable for the kindliness 
 of his dealings with his work-people. He distinguished 
 himself by the obstinacy of his resistance to church-rates, 
 consistently refusing to pay until his goods were dis- 
 
/ ' « ' ; ' . 
 
 lo John Bright. 
 
 trained. He appears to have been worthy of the venera- 
 tion with which his son cherished his memory; and all 
 that is recorded of him is consistent with the belief that 
 it was from him that John Bright received, whether by 
 training- or by inheritance, his piety of spirit, his un- 
 bending opinion, and his strong faith in individual 
 liberty. Those who attach importance to the remoter 
 influences of heredity may think it noteworthy that 
 Bright had a small infusion of Hebrew blood, for his 
 great -grandmother, the wife of Abraham Bright of 
 Coventry, was a Jewess. 
 
 John Bright received such education as the better sort 
 of private Nonconformist schools were able to offer at a 
 time when Dissenters were still excluded from the 
 universities. "My limited school-time", he wrote in 
 1886, *' scarcely allowed me to think of Greek; and I 
 should now make but slow steps in Latin, even with the 
 help of a dictionary." He brought from his school in 
 Ribbledale a love of angling which furnished him with 
 a wholesome recreation throughout life, and sufficient 
 skill at cricket to make him a useful member of the 
 Rochdale eleven. He had also acquired a genuine love 
 of reading, but not any aptitude for systematic study, 
 and was sufficiently interested in intellectual matters to 
 join the local Literary and Philosophical Society. It is, 
 however, the common experience of provincial societies 
 bearing this honourable name that they discuss contem- 
 porary events and problems with more zest than either 
 philosophy or literature. Whatever were the defects of 
 Bright's education he never affected to deplore them. 
 
 / His devotion to politics was so complete that he applied 
 the political standard to everything; and the connection 
 
 ' he discovered between culture and Conservatism led him 
 rather to respect culture less than Conservatism more. 
 The observation, which he found frequent occasion to 
 mention, that the ancient universities returned to Par- 
 
The Anti-Corn-Law League. ii 
 
 liament the most unreasonable of Tories, made him 
 suspect that the literature studied in those seats of 
 learningf was superficial and unsound. 
 
 His father, and his ancestors for many generations, 
 were Nonconformists, and members of the Society of 
 Friends. He himself remained faithful to the religious 
 and political ideas and traditions in which he was 
 brought up. A great part of his public conduct cannot 
 be understood by anyone who either forgets that he 
 was a Nonconformist, or is ignorant of the political 
 history of nonconformity. He was proud of his descent 
 from John Gratton of Derbyshire, who was a leader of 
 the Quakers during the life of George Fox, and suffered 
 imprisonment in the persecution of Charles and James. 
 During his boyhood Rochdale was the scene of violent 
 conflicts on the question of church-rates. To this recol- « 
 lection he often recurred ; and the se/ise of injuries to be 
 resented, which Nonconformists of his age had so many 
 reasons to feel, remained in his mind to the last. A 
 certain asperity of temper is commonly imputed by 
 unfriendly critics to political Nonconformists. It is to 
 be explained, if it can no longer be excused, by the 
 bitterness of the prolonged struggle by which they 
 painfully won the elementary rights of citizenship. 
 Throughout his life Bright never spoke with so much 
 vehemence of indignation, and never, it must be added, 
 with so little concern for the susceptibility of his oppo- 
 nents, as when he was pleading for religious equality, 
 and giving voice to his resentment at the privileges of 
 the Established Church. 
 
 It is still more important that the student of his career 
 should not for a moment forget that he was a member 
 of the Society of Friends. The discipline of that society 
 has been eminently successful in promoting both private 
 virtue and a generous sense of public duty. Bright's 
 religion was the very foundation of his public as well as 
 
12 John Bright. 
 
 of his private character; and the faith he possessed by- 
 inheritance and by education was that of a sect whose 
 presentment of Christianity has sedulously given to the 
 consecration of daily life priority over observance and 
 doctrine. There is an air, surely unaffected, as of 
 saintly self-dedication in Bright's own account, quoted 
 below, of his first devotion to political work. It is 
 scarcely too much to say that his political and religious 
 convictions formed in his mind one indistinguishable 
 whole; both were articles of faith, equally unchange- 
 able, equally superior to expediency, and vivified by the 
 same enthusiasm for righteousness. He did not seek 
 for his principles in inductions from the recorded history 
 of nations, nor in any reasoned political philosophy. 
 He was content to deduce his conclusions from compre- 
 hensive premises which appeared to him to possess a 
 religious sanction. This is the source of that assertive 
 
 /temper and that disdain of compromise, which both 
 strengthened him as a leader of popular opinion, and 
 disqualified him as a parliamentary tactician. The 
 earnestness by which he kindled the enthusiasm of his 
 friends, and provoked the resentment of his opponents, 
 was akin to the zeal of an evangelist proclaiming the 
 way of salvation. Like Macaulay he was subject to the 
 reproach of being much too certain that he was always 
 in the right. Macaulay's certainty was doubtless based 
 on his consciousness of having grasped all the facts 
 relevant to the issue, and his satisfaction with his own 
 mental processes. The certainty of Bright was the 
 assurance of faith — the confidence which, however 
 exasperating in a debater, has always been recognized 
 
 * as essential to the character of a prophet. 
 
 Voltaire had long ago made Quakerism known and 
 respected by French men of letters; and a countryman 
 of Voltaire, M. Challemel-Lacour, has, with eloquence 
 and insight, deduced Bright's public character from his 
 
The Anti-Corn-Law League. 13 
 
 Quaker training-.^ **That intrepidity in conflict, that 
 indomitable energ-y, those speeches with a strain all 
 their own, reveal something deeper than merely political 
 conviction. Mr. Bright is a Quaker. He admits that 
 his sect is reputed to be making no progress; but he 
 adds that its principles are gaining more ground than 
 is commonly supposed. A craving for peace felt more 
 keenly every day, a growing recognition of the incom- 
 petence of the state in the region of the religious con- 
 science, a respect for the dignity of manhood even in the 
 most forlorn, — I may add, a sort of utilitarianism ex- 
 hibited in the increasing regard for useful knowledge, 
 and in the payment of due honour to industry, — here we 
 have traits of society as it is, and these are ideas pro- 
 fessed from the first by the sect to which Mr. Bright 
 belongs. In his speeches, even when he is dealing with 
 the most arid topics, we are always conscious of an 
 undercurrent of religious emotion that rises to the sur- 
 face only at rare intervals as by an involuntary force." 
 
 At the age of fifteen Bright was taken from school 
 and set to learn his father's business. He was the first 
 son taken into partnership, his elder brother having 
 died in childhood. The firm became Jacob Bright & 
 Son, and subsequently John Bright & Brothers. It will 
 be well to say at once what is necessary about Bright's 
 private circumstances. Though never a wealthy man 
 by comparison with the great magnates of the Lanca- 
 shire trade, he always enjoyed the means of living in 
 such comfort as satisfied the simplicity of his tastes, 
 and was free from those financial embarrassments into 
 which his friend Cobden was precipitated by his sacrifice 
 of time to the public good. Those who set any value 
 on Bright's services to the commonwealth must not 
 fail to bestow part of their gratitude on his younger 
 
 ^"Hommes d'Etat de I'Angleterre. John Bright." — Revue des Deux 
 Mondes, Feb. 15, 1870. 
 
14 John Bright. 
 
 brothers, who, with admirable g-enerosity and public 
 spirit, released him from his share in the work of the 
 business as soon as his vocation to public life became 
 apparent to himself and to them. 
 
 He interested himself at an early age in the activities 
 of his town, and made several public appearances soon 
 after reaching* his majority, which fell in the year of 
 the Reform Bill. His first speech on the Free Trade 
 question was made at Rochdale in 1838. In the autumn 
 of the same year he became a member of the first pro- 
 visional committee of the Manchester Anti-Corn-Law 
 Association. He was the only member not resident in 
 Manchester. Cobden joined the committee a week later. 
 This association was the nucleus of the famous Anti- 
 Corn-Law League, the date of whose birth is March 20, 
 1839. Bright took his share in the work of the League 
 from the first ; but he dated the beginning- of his public 
 services and of his memorable friendship with Cobden 
 from September 13, 1841. What happened on that day, 
 the turning-point of his life, must be recorded in his own 
 language. 
 
 ** I was at Leamington when Mr. Cobden called upon 
 me. I was then in the depths of grief, — I might almost 
 say of despair, — for the light and sunshine of my house 
 had been extinguished. All that was left on earth of 
 my young wife, except the memory of a sainted life and 
 of a too brief happiness, was lying- still and cold in the 
 chamber above us. Mr. Cobden called upon me as his 
 friend, and addressed me, as you may suppose, with 
 words^f condolence. (After a time he looked up and 
 said/* There are thousands of homes in England at this 
 moment where wives, mothers, and children are dying 
 of hunger. Now,' he said, *when the first paroxysm of 
 your grief is passed, I would advise you to come with 
 me, and we will never rest till the Corn Law is repealed. 'J^ 
 I accepted his invitation. I knew that the description 
 
The Anti-Corn-Law League. 15 
 
 he had given of the homes of thousands was not an 
 exaggerated description. I felt in my conscience that 
 there was a work which someone must do. From that 
 time we never ceased to labour hard on behalf of the 
 resolution which we had made. We were not the first, 
 though we became, before the public, the foremost. 
 There were others before us; and we were joined, not 
 by scores, but by hundreds, and afterwards by thousands, 
 and afterwards by countless multitudes. At last famine 
 itself, against which we warred, joined us, — necessities 
 became very great, — a great minister was converted, — 
 and finally the barrier was entirely thrown down. Since 
 that time, though there has been much suffering in 
 many homes, yet no wife, and no mother, and no little 
 child is starved to death as the result of a famine made 
 by law." 
 
 Such was the inception of a task that occupied more 
 than four years. In a short time Cobden and Bright 
 became famous in every part of England and Scotland 
 as the chief of a great company of apostles of Free 
 Trade in corn. As the anti-corn-law agitation forms 
 the subject of a volume in the series to which this little 
 book belongs, it is unnecessary to attempt here a full 
 account of the work of the League, or of the question 
 at issue between the Protectionists and the Free-traders. 
 But since Bright's future career took its colour from this 
 early work, and since his opinions and methods were 
 largely determined by the experiences of those four 
 years, it will be proper to call attention to those aspects 
 of the controversy which made the most permanent im- 
 pression on his mind. Of the earlier history of the 
 struggle the briefest summary may suffice. 
 
 The Corn Law enacted in 181 5, at a time when the /i ' 
 close of a long period of warfare threatened a fall in the 
 cruel prices to which food had been forced by the war, 
 prohibited the importation of wheat at any time when 
 
i6 John Bright. 
 
 the market price of home-gfrown wheat fell below 80s. a 
 quarter. This limit was lowered to yos. in 1822. In 
 1828 the Duke of Wellington's Corn Law established a 
 duty on imported corn varying with the market price. 
 For example, the duty on wheat was 10^. 8d. when the 
 price was 70^., 26s. 8d. when it was 60s., and 36^. 8d. 
 when it was 50^. 
 
 From the first there was a body of public opinion ad- 
 verse to protective duties. "The people", said Bright, 
 *' never acquiesced in that Corn Law. You passed it 
 under a protest of the most fearful kind.*' But for many 
 years there was no attempt to organize a Free-trade 
 party. Mr. Huskisson, until his death in 1830, and, 
 from that time till the advent of Cobden, Mr. Poulett 
 Thomson (Lord Sydenham) were successively regarded 
 by the Free-traders as their political leaders. At the 
 elections which followed the reform of 1832 the question 
 was raised on the hustings of the Lancashire boroughs. 
 In 1833 a resolution condemning the Corn Laws was 
 discussed in the House of Commons, and the next year 
 the policy of a fixed duty, which was afterwards dignified 
 with a place on the official programme of the Whig 
 party, was advocated by Hume, and supported by 
 about one-third of the members voting. In 1837 the 
 anxiety of the Lancashire manufacturers, who had 
 learned to attribute the depression of their industry to 
 a law which prevented the free exchange for foreign 
 corn of the products of their looms, was increased by 
 numerous bankruptcies; and at the elections which 
 followed the Queen's accession many boroughs returned 
 Free-traders. The year 1838, which witnessed the for- 
 mation of the Manchester Association, was also the first 
 year of Mr. Villiers's annual motion for a committee to 
 consider and repeal the Corn Laws. A Free-trade party 
 was now fairly organized both in the House and in the 
 
 country. 
 
 ( M 433 ) 
 
The Anti-Corn-Law League. 17 
 
 In 1 84 1 the Whig- Ministry of Melbourne was com- 
 pelled to try to meet a deficiency of revenue by modifying 
 a tariff the severity of which diminished the income of 
 the state by discouraging the importation of duty-payingf 
 gfoods. After a statement on the financial difficulty by 
 Baring, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord John 
 Russell proposed a fixed duty on corn, which was esti- 
 mated to yield a larger revenue than the variable duty. 
 The ''monopoly" of corn, as the Free-traders loved to 
 call it, was part of a system of similar monopolies, of 
 which the most important were those of timber and 
 sugar. The sugar duties were such as practically to 
 exclude from our markets all sugar not grown in a 
 British colony. The new tariff was to be no longer 
 prohibitive, though still offering' a large advantage to 
 the colonial sugar-planter. ^ "You monopolists", said 
 Bright later, "all hang- together. Neither of these 
 interests really cares one straw for the rest any longer 
 than they all hold together." On the question of the 
 sugar duties, which were taken first, the agriculturists 
 who desired protection for corn, and those who were 
 interested in the maintenance of the sugar or the timber 
 duties, were reinforced by the anti-slavery party; for 
 sugar not grown in our colonies was slave-grown sugar, 
 and the virtual exclusion of foreign sugar was regarded 
 as part of the price to be paid for emancipation. The 
 Government was easily defeated by this combination; 
 Parliament was dissolved; and Sir Robert Peel came in 
 with a majority of about eighty. Mr. Gladstone was Vice- 
 President of the Board of Trade in the new Ministry. 
 
 There were now three policies before the country: 
 the Free-trade policy of Mr. Villiers and the League, the 
 
 ^Colonial sugar paid 24s., foreign sugar 63^., a hundredweight. It was 
 proposed to reduce the latter duty to 36^. The duty on colonial timber was 
 to be raised from los. to 20s. a load ; while the duty on Baltic timber was 
 lowered from 55^. to 50J. 
 i. (^ioB) B 
 
i8 John Bright. 
 
 policy of a moderate fixed duty accepted by Lord John 
 Russell and the Liberal party, and the sliding-scale 
 policy of Peel and the Conservatives. Though many 
 causes contributed to the defeat of the Whigs, the inci- 
 dents that immediately preceded the dissolution gave 
 to Peel's victory the appearance of a triumph of protec- 
 tion and the agricultural interest. Yet the distress of 
 the country was so serious that Peel was constrained, 
 at the risk of dividing his own party, to attempt some 
 measure of relief. 
 
 Parliament met for the session of 1842 on February 3. 
 The League, exhilarated by the meetings they had held 
 in the country, and by some electoral successes, includ- 
 ing the return of Cobden for Stockport, endeavoured to 
 impress the House of Commons by a demonstration of 
 their enthusiasm in the metropolis. Delegates from the 
 provincial associations met on February 8 at the Crown 
 and Anchor in the Strand, and there Bright made a 
 speech which was received with great acclamation. The 
 fame of his eloquence was carried into the country by 
 the delegates; and from that time he was recognized 
 as the chief lieutenant of Cobden in the work of propa- 
 gation. 
 
 Peel refused to meet a deputation; but Lord John 
 Russell, the leader of the Whig opposition in the Com- 
 mons, had an interview with Bright and five other 
 Leaguers. He held out no hope of advancing beyond 
 his timid expedient of an eight-shilling fixed duty.^ In 
 spite of this discouragement the Leaguers resolved to 
 continue their agitation for total and immediate repeal. 
 This resolution was a final declaration of their indepen- 
 
 ^ "On the part of the Whigs, I had declared my intention of proposing 
 a fixed duty on corn. This was likewise an error. Cobden and Bright 
 proposed the only natural course, that of a total repeal of the duties on 
 corn. But the Whig country gentlemen were not prepared for so bold a 
 measure." {Recollections and Suggestions, by John, Earl Russell (1874), 
 p. 236.) 
 
The Anti-Corn-L,aw League. 19 
 
 dence of the Liberal party. The cry was: "A fixed duty 
 is a fixed injustice ". 
 
 Peel's new tariff^ reduced the duties at the prices of 
 70^., 605-., and 50^. to ^s., 12s., and 20^. respectively. 
 It was intended that the price should oscillate between 
 the narrow limits of 585-. and 54^. Cobden denounced 
 the measure as ''a bitter insult to a suff'ering- people"; 
 the price of corn still rose; and by midsummer the dis- 
 tress had agfain become acute. 
 
 The eff"orts of the Free-traders to enlist the support 
 of the working--classes brought them into collision with 
 the Chartists, of whose leaders some, like Feargus 
 O'Connor, who held that free trade would ruin Ireland, 
 were Protectionists; others traced the distress to other 
 causes rather than protection, and all were disposed to 
 call first for political reforms. The Rochdale Chartists 
 had carried an amendment against Bright at a meeting 
 in 1839; and five years later Bright had a public wrangle 
 with O'Connor himself before the Northampton boot- 
 makers, resulting in a doubtful vote. It was even 
 suspected that Chartist agitators were taking the pay 
 of the Protectionists. In August, 1842, a general strike, 
 or, as it was then called, a turn-out, was organized in 
 Lancashire. Bright issued a long address to the work- 
 ing-men of Rochdale, calling on them to return to their 
 employment. ** Neither act of Parliament nor act of a 
 multitude can keep up wages. You know that trade 
 has long been bad, and with a bad trade wages cannot 
 rise. If you are resolved to compel an advance of wages, 
 you cannot compel manufacturers to give you employ- 
 ment. Such attempts have always failed in the end; 
 and yours must fail. To obtain the Charter now is just 
 as impossible as to raise wages by force. The principles 
 of the Charter will one day be established; but years 
 may pass over, months must pass over, before that day 
 arrives. If every employer and workman in the king- 
 
20 John Bright. 
 
 dom were to swear on bended knees that wages should 
 not fall, they would assuredly fall if the Corn Law con- 
 tinues. No power on earth can maintain your wages 
 at their present rate if the Corn Law be not repealed." 
 I The address, which is composed in the plain and nervous 
 i style to which Cobbett had habituated the artisans, 
 is a popular exposition of the economic doctrine of the 
 Manchester School, applied to the distresses and discon- 
 tents of the moment. It is a document of some per- 
 manent value, as indicating with precision important 
 and lasting" differences between the Radicalism of Bright 
 and that of the trades-unions. 
 
 On July 25, 1843, Bright entered Parliament, at the 
 second attempt, as member for Durham city. **The 
 Whigs", said Cobden, ''tried to make it a Whig triumph, 
 which Bright spoilt by his declaration at the Crown and 
 Anchor that it was not a party victory." The time had 
 not yet come when Bright could sit in Parliament as a 
 loyal member even of the Liberal party. It was impos- 
 sible that the leaders of that party should command 
 from him the respect which alone could secure the 
 loyalty of a man of his independent disposition. Lord 
 John Russell, who led the party in the Commons, was 
 regarded by Bright as a timid, time-serving, and un- 
 . imaginative aristocrat, raised to eminence, despite the 
 mediocrity of his talents, by industry and vigilance, with 
 the prestige of a great historic name. To Lord John's 
 competitor, Palmerston, though he was a man of more 
 popular gifts. Bright had a still more deeply rooted 
 antipathy. It was not until the accession of Mr. Glad- 
 stone to the leadership of the party that Bright abated 
 his independence of party obligations. 
 
 Bright made his first parliamentary speech on August 
 7 of this year. He did not fail to speak his mind. 
 ** Crime has often veiled itself under the name of virtue; 
 but of all the crimes against the laws of God and the 
 
The Anti-Corn-Law League. 21 
 
 true interests of man, none has ever existed more odious 
 and more destructive than that which has assumed the 
 amiable term of protection." A cabinet minister had 
 argued that the Corn Law was necessary to enable 
 land-owners to discharge the settlements made on the 
 marriage of their daughters. ** I have attended", said 
 Bright, *'many large meetings of agriculturists, and 
 I have never found a single farmer who seemed to be 
 aware that this House had ever bestowed any attention 
 on the means of providing portions for farmers' daugh- 
 ters." *' The increase of our population is every year so 
 great as to require for its support an annual increase of 
 food equal to the whole produce of the county of War- 
 wick. The Government has no power to add a county 
 of Warwick every year to the country." 
 
 By this time Bright had addressed meetings on the 
 question in every part of the kingdom. The conversion 
 of the manufacturing towns having been accomplished, 
 he and Cobden began their appeal to the farmers, hold- 
 ing open-air meetings in market towns on market days. 
 Cobden's biographer describes this enterprise as the 
 most striking and original feature in the whole agita- 
 tion, and gives an animated narrative of some incidents 
 of this campaign.^ They repeatedly obtained a vote for 
 total repeal from audiences that at the outset were un- 
 convinced or even hostile. In the autumn of 1843 they 
 began a remarkable series of demonstrations in Covent 
 Garden Theatre. Their success at last roused the Pro- 
 tectionists to a sense of peril. **The League is a great 
 fact," exclaimed the Times ^ in a leader that became 
 historic;^ "a new power has arisen in the state." '' If 
 I were the Conservative party of England," wrote Car- 
 lyle about this time, *'I would not for a hundred thousand 
 pounds an hour allow those corn laws to continue." 
 
 1 Morley, Life, of Cobden, chap, xii, ^ November i8, 1843. 
 
22 John Bright. 
 
 A list of the labours of a single month may serve as 
 an example of the immense amount of work undertaken 
 by Bright. In January, 1844, he spoke at Bury, Carlisle, 
 Glasgow, Edinburgh, Greenock, Paisley, Ayr, Kilmar- 
 nock, Dumfries, Sheffield, York, Hull, Blackburn, and 
 Wakefield. Wherever he went his eloquence, youthful 
 and immature, but always fearless, energetic, and stimu- 
 lating, never failed of its effect in strengthening the 
 popular resolution. 
 
 Notwithstanding the rapid extension of free-trade 
 opinion in the country, the party in Parliament received 
 few accessions, and year by year the divisions showed a 
 strength of only from 120 to 130 votes. But the resist- 
 ance of the Protectionists was becoming less confident; 
 and the Free-traders often had occasion to welcome 
 grave admissions made in debate by ministers, especially 
 Mr. Gladstone and Sir Robert Peel, who already accepted 
 the theory of free imports, though excepting corn on the 
 ground of the danger of dependence upon a foreign 
 food-supply. These concessions in argument, though 
 barren of practical result, filled the county members 
 with suspicion and dismay, and a band of mutineers, 
 with Disraeli at their head, threatened open revolt. 
 The refusal of Peel to take further measures to satisfy 
 the claims of agriculture, then as now insatiable, elicited, 
 on March 17, 1845, Disraeli's celebrated declaration that 
 a Conservative government was an organized hypocrisy. 
 
 During the summer of 1845 the price of corn rose 
 rapidly; and in October it was known that both the 
 wheat harvest in England and the potato crop in Ireland 
 had failed. The scarcity in Ireland was such that the 
 peasantry began to perish of starvation, and urgent 
 demands were made on public and private charity. The 
 practical reduction of the Corn Laws to an absurdity 
 had come at last, if Parliament should be asked at the 
 same time to vote money to feed a starving people, and 
 
The Anti-Corn-Law Lea^iue. 
 
 23 
 
 to maintain the laws that ensured famine prices. 
 *' Famine", said Bright afterwards, *'was the terrible 
 agent that compelled our boasted constitution to permit 
 the people of this country to purchase their bread freely 
 at the world's market price." Lord Ashley warned the 
 farmers of Dorset that the destiny of the Corn Laws 
 was fixed. The Cabinet met on October 31, and the 
 TiTnes, anticipating its inevitable decision, declared that 
 the ports were to be opened. '* Henceforth the League 
 may cease to exist. Its spirit has already been trans- 
 ferred to its antagonists." Three weeks later than this 
 revelation, though anticipating by a week the publica- 
 tion of Peel's conversion, Lord John Russell in his 
 Edinburgh letter announced that he abandoned his pro- 
 posal of a moderate fixed duty. The meaning of this 
 tardy repentance was too obviously this: '' I have taken 
 no part in the hunt, but I mean to be in at the death, 
 and to claim the brush ". 
 
 The victory of the League was won ; and the Liberal 
 party and its leaders had no share in it. The League 
 had been constituted and directed by men who had had 
 no previous experience of political life. They had been 
 compelled to renounce allegiance to their party. They 
 had found their speakers in the counting-houses of 
 Manchester and Rochdale and in the pulpits of dissent- 
 ing chapels. They had organized their agitation, in- 
 vented their own methods, collected their own funds, 
 without an atom of assistance from the Liberal states- 
 men. Amateur politicians had accomplished what pro- 
 fessed statesmen had not dared, or had not chosen, to 
 attempt. Not a single member of the Liberal Cabinet 
 which shortly afterwards entered into the harvest of 
 their labours had ever stood on the platform of a League 
 meeting. Even Macaulay, who had voted with Mr. 
 Villiers, had curtly refused to welcome the League to 
 Edinburgh. 
 
24 John Bright. 
 
 Russell's letter doubtless served to strengthen Peel's 
 hand in dealing with recalcitrant colleagues; but the 
 divisions in the Cabinet were such as to necessitate his 
 resignation. Lord John failed to form a ministry; and 
 before the end of the year Peel again accepted office and 
 formed the short-lived *' Potato-Peel Ministry", with 
 the support of all his old colleagues except Lord Stanley. 
 He proposed large immediate reductions of the import 
 duties on all food-stuflfs. The duty on wheat was to be 
 4J'., rising a shilling with each shilling of fall in price 
 below 53i"., till it reached a maximum of los. Colonial 
 corn was to be admitted immediately, and foreign corn 
 at the end of three years, at a nominal duty of one 
 shilling. The Free-traders divided the House for the 
 last time on their motion for total and immediate repeal; 
 but they were well satisfied with Peel's measure, and 
 loud in their gratitude to him. ** When the right hon. 
 baronet resigned ", said Bright, turning to the Protec- 
 tionist benches, *'he was no longer your minister. He 
 came back as the minister of the sovereign, as the 
 minister of the people, and no longer as the minister of 
 a class which made him such for their own selfish 
 objects." The second reading of the Bill was carried 
 by a majority of 97, 112 Conservatives supporting Peel, 
 and 231, with 11 Liberals, opposing him. The House 
 of Lords ^ passed the Bill b}'' large majorities. 
 
 The success of the Anti-Corn-Law League was the 
 
 1 " Preferring their coronets to their convictions," says Froude, ill- 
 naturedly. But Peel could not rend the coronets from their brows; and 
 many obstinate convictions had been honestly changed. The obvious fact 
 is, that the argument from the famine was quite irresistible to a House that 
 could not turn ministers out. Something had to be done without delay to 
 cope with the famine. It was one thing for the Protectionists in the Com- 
 mons to beat the Ministry, if they could, and then try their own plan what- 
 ever it might be. It was a different thing for the Lords to reject the method 
 proposed by the responsible Government of dealing with a present calamity. 
 A deadlock at such a time would have been, from every point of view, a 
 frightful disaster. 
 
The Anti-Corn-Law League. 25 
 
 most remarkable achievement of the art of persuasion 
 in the history of any people. The League were attack- 
 ing- the privileges of a still powerful aristocracy; they 
 were confronted by the active hostility of one, and by 
 the inertia of the other, of the two great parties in the 
 State; they had to persuade the farmers to separate 
 their sympathy from the landlords, and to compete with 
 political reformers for the support of the urban working 
 classes. By common consent the chief credit of this 
 achievement belongs of right to Richard Cobden. The 
 second honours are with almost equal unanimity awarded 
 to Bright.^ There was a recognized distribution of 
 functions between the two agitators. Cobden's mastery 
 of convincing argument can rarely have been equalled. 
 The part of Bright — though his oratory also was not 
 wanting in lucidity and pertinence of reasoning — was to 
 excite the emotions when Cobden had convinced the 
 understanding. He always spoke after his colleague. 
 Cobden made others think as he thought; Bright made 
 them feel as he felt. Cobden taught the people that 
 they were suffering under a foolish economic error; 
 Bright told them that they were the victims of *'a 
 crime of the deepest dye against the rights of industry 
 and against the well-being of the British people ". 
 **The freedom for which you struggle", he said, '*is 
 the freedom to live; it is the right to eat your bread 
 in the sweat of your brow. It is the freedom that 
 was given to you even in the primeval curse; and shall 
 man make that curse more bitter to his fellow-man?" 
 
 Referring to the struggle a few years later, Bright 
 said: **The agitation of the Anti-Corn-Law League was 
 
 1 The Leaguers themselves were disposed to give the palm of eloquence 
 to W. J. Fox, an orator who had at his command all the resources of 
 rhetoric, and who abounded in surprising turns and fehcitous illustrations, 
 but whose style was awkward and turgid. Bright's eloquence did not 
 reach its maturity till some years later ; and from the first it stood the test 
 of the House of Commons better than Fox's. 
 
26 John Bright. 
 
 not an ag^itation of force, it was an ag-itation of convic- 
 tion. It was an agitation which not so much conquered 
 our opponents as converted them." Still less was it an 
 agitation of violence. It is a noteworthy feature of this 
 movement, that, despite the excesses of denunciation 
 which Bright and others permitted themselves to use, 
 the peace of no town was ever imperilled by their opera- 
 tions. At a time when all the conditions that commonly 
 provoke popular violence were present, the League was 
 really a strong force on the side of order. It organized 
 and established the strength of a great body of public 
 opinion outside Parliament, and inadequately represented 
 in Parliament^ Hitherto such a body of opinion had 
 made itself eifective only by dangerous methods. Before 
 the Reform Act, for example, there were tumults and 
 the fear of insurrection. "Do they wait", exclaimed 
 Macaulay, **for that last and most dreadful paroxysm 
 of popular rage, for that last and most cruel test of 
 military fidelity?" After the Reform Act the Chartist 
 agitation was dishonoured by destructive riots and a 
 grievous severity of retribution. No man's windows 
 were ever endangered by Bright's philippics. Both 
 then and again and again in his later life he was 
 charg^ed with appealing" to popular passion. It must 
 not be forgotten that, at almost any time before he 
 became the idol of mass meetings, that phrase had had 
 a sinister significance in which no one can justly use it 
 of him. 
 
 Mr. Kinglake, in a well-known passage, commends 
 the skill, patience, and courage with which Bright and 
 Cobden ** carried a g^reat scientific truth through the 
 storms of politics". Undoubtedly at the foundation of 
 their main argument lay the free-trade doctrine of the 
 political economists — the doctrine that a nation must 
 acquire a greater amount of wealth at the expense of 
 the same amount of labour, or as much wealth for less 
 
The Anti-Corn-Law League. 27 
 
 labour, when imports are free than when industries are 
 protected by tariffs. But men who did not comprehend 
 the demonstrations of economic science, and who failed 
 to accept, or accepted only on authority, the fulness of 
 the universal dog^ma, could yet receive with intelligence 
 as well as enthusiasm the reasoning- proper to the 
 special case of imported food-stuff. The appeal was to 
 visible distress and to easily demonstrable causes. 
 
 The term protection is an abbreviation of "protection 
 of native industry ". In the view of the League, this 
 name was delusive. The whole advantage of the tariff 
 was reaped by the land-owners. Bright often quoted 
 the short speech of a Wiltshire labourer: ** I be pro- 
 tected, and I be starving ". The wage of this man was 
 'js. a week. In Dorset the protected labourer starved 
 on a shilling less. *'We have always maintained", 
 said Bright, **that the landlord has a right to labour at 
 the market price of labour; but we have denied the 
 right of the landlord to screen himself from competition, 
 while he exposes his labourers to it in the severest 
 form." On another occasion, after depicting the penury 
 of the agricultural labourer, he said: ''I tell you what 
 your boasted protection is. It is a protection of native 
 idleness at the expense of the impoverishment of native 
 industry." The farmers were told that whatever benefit 
 they received from protection was less than the advan- 
 tage they would get from the general revival of com- 
 mercial prosperity which would follow free trade. The 
 system of duties rising and falling as prices fell and 
 rose was intended to promote stability of prices. It 
 actually increased the frequency and the swing of 
 fluctuations. Importers, by temporarily forcing prices 
 up, could secure, under the sliding-scale, a reduction of 
 duty, which might cover their loss when the ensuing 
 fall brought prices to a level lower than the average on 
 which the farmers' rents were based. Violent oscilla- 
 
28 John Bright. 
 
 tions tend in the long- run to the advantage neither of 
 the consumer nor the producer, but of the factor, who 
 can more readily forecast and may even manipulate 
 them. The sliding-scale made many farmers bankrupt. 
 
 The battle of the Corn Law was a contention between 
 the middle-class and the landed aristocracy. It is 
 necessary to dwell upon this aspect of the conflict, in 
 order to understand the reproach of setting- class against 
 class, by which Bright was beset throughout his public 
 career. 
 
 Bright and Cobden, and with them nearly all the men 
 who made the fortune of the League by munificent sub- 
 scriptions, belonged to a new order. The wealthy 
 middle class which both Whigs and Tories had long 
 been habituated to treat with respect, were the great 
 merchants, especially those of the city of London, 
 whose financial assistance had often saved the State 
 from disaster. But the pride and the power of the 
 manufacturers of Lancashire and the West Riding, 
 luxuriating in wealth newly acquired, and controlling- 
 the livelihood of many thousands of working men, were 
 a new portent regarded by the aristocracy with a mix- 
 ture of apprehension and disdain. That power had been 
 called into existence by the application of machinery 
 and steam-power to industries before practised by inde- 
 pendent handicraftsmen, and by the consequent appear- 
 ance of the Factory System. Spinners and weavers 
 had been massed in crowded towns and huge manu- 
 factories. The capitalists who built the mills and pro- 
 vided the machinery claimed a large share of the profits 
 of the industry. Each workman's labour produced a 
 result enormously larger than when Silas Marner threw 
 his shuttle in his village home, and wove the homespun 
 yarn of the housewives of Raveloe; and multitudes must 
 starve unless new outlets could be found for the cloth of 
 Leeds and the calico of Manchester. This was doubt- 
 
The Anti-Corn-Law League. 29 
 
 less inevitable; but there was honest pity as well as 
 envy in the dislike of aristocratic politicians and Tory 
 essayists to the factory system. 
 
 The bitterness of party spirit to-day is not to be com- 
 pared with the mutual hatred and jealousy of the squires 
 and the cotton-spinners that are revealed in the debates 
 of fifty years ag-o on the Corn Law and the Factory 
 Bills. In the mouth of a county member cotton-spinner 
 was a name of contempt, like epicier^ bag-man, or 
 philistine. These two classes have since been drawn 
 tog^ether by the approximation of their social and poli- 
 tical aims, and even by those intermarriag-es which 
 Thackeray thoug"ht so ridiculous, but which have helped 
 to conciliate the feuds of classes. Each class accused 
 the other of grinding the faces of the poor. The Leaguers 
 told their workmen that the distress could only be 
 remedied by a reform which would at once cheapen their 
 food and provide new markets for their fabrics. The 
 land-owners retorted by attributing the sufferings of the 
 working cotton-spinner to the cupidity of his employer, 
 and demanding that he should be protected by Factory 
 Acts and Truck Acts. The League charged the land- 
 owners with enacting the Corn Law to raise their rents. 
 The land-owners in retaliation accused the manufacturers 
 of desiring to repeal the Corn Law in order that they 
 might lower the wages of their workmen and enlarge 
 their own profits.^ This suspicion was shared and en- 
 couraged by the Chartists. 
 
 1 As a matter of interest to students of mythology, it may be mentioned 
 that this unfulfilled prediction hardened in process of time into the legend 
 that ' ' immediately after the repeal of the Corn Law the firm of John Bright 
 & Brothers reduced the wages of all their hands". 
 
 This failure of prophecy may remind the reader of the disappointment of 
 Cobden's confident expectation that the civilized world would soon follow 
 the example of England in the matter of Free-trade. It would be easy to 
 set against this a hundred examples of his astonishing sagacity in foretelling 
 results. Those who are interested in falsified predictions will find an inex- 
 haustible mine of such things in the protectionist speeches against Villiers' 
 annual motion. 
 
30 John Bright. 
 
 The view of English poUtics which Bright held at the 
 time when his indignation drew him from his mill to the 
 platform of the League and to the benches of Parliament, 
 is simple and may be briefly stated. It is a view which 
 never ceased to control his public words and acts. Since 
 the Revolution England had been governed alternately 
 by two aristocratic coteries, each of which had treated 
 the opinions and the interests of the middle-class with a 
 degree of deference and sympathy determined by the 
 vicissitudes of their conflicts with one another. The 
 aristocracy were the land-owners; possession of land 
 rather than noble birth being the test of the caste. The 
 predominance of the land-owners in the House of Lords 
 was in accordance with the intention of the Constitution, 
 and did not form a grievance. But, partly as a natural 
 result of the migration of population from old boroughs 
 to new towns, and partly by an immoral use of the 
 power of landlord over tenant, the land-owners had also 
 acquired an unconstitutional predominance in the Com- 
 mons, and had so cheated the other classes of their share 
 in the Constitution. The reform of 1832 had failed, and 
 indeed had not been sincerely intended, to destroy the 
 aristocratical control of the Commons. Lord John 
 Russell, a leader of that reform, had acknowledged that 
 the redistribution had been so manipulated as to secure 
 a permanent majority for the agricultural interest; and 
 the agricultural interest was still at the disposal of the 
 land-owners. 
 
 The land-owning oligarchy had used this power, ac- 
 quired in defiance of the spirit of the Constitution, for 
 unpatriotic and selfish ends. The administration of the 
 military and civil services had been conducted by them, 
 not to secure for the tax-payer the best service in return 
 for his expense, but to provide careers at the public cost 
 for their younger sons. But the crowning example and 
 the most cruel result of the selfishness of the ruling class 
 
The Anti-Corn-Law League. 31 
 
 were to be found in the Corn Laws. **This House", 
 said Bright, *'is a club of land-owners legislating- for 
 land-owners." **The corn law you cherish is a law to 
 make a scarcity of food in the country that your own 
 rents may be increased." '^The quarrel is between the 
 bread-eating millions and the few who monopolize the 
 soil." Whether justly or unjustly Bright firmly believed 
 that the land-owners were guilty not of an error but of a 
 sin against the light; and throughout his career he was 
 never able to regard without suspicion and prejudice the 
 acts and the aims of a class against which he had in all 
 sincerity sustained such an indictment. 
 
 Bright's disposition was in many respects eminently 
 conservative. He was zealous for the Constitution, an 
 enemy of disorder, and thoroughly disinclined to violent 
 changes. "I like political changes," he said, *'when 
 such changes are made as the result not of passion, but 
 of deliberation and reason." He had no theory of the 
 rights of man to vindicate ; the most conservative poli- 
 tician in England was not less infected with Jacobinism. 
 He became a leader of democracy, and the protagonist 
 of a democratic reform, because he was first an enemy 
 of oligarchy; and he was an enemy of oligarchy, not 
 so much because the rule of the few appeared to him 
 theoretically vicious, as because the particular aristo- 
 cracy with which he came into conflict, the aristocracy 
 which made and maintained the Corn Law, had proved 
 itself, in his view, to be selfish, tyrannical, and incom- 
 petent. ** We are rapidly approaching a time", he said 
 in 1843, **when the middle and working classes will be 
 found in a firm confederacy against the domination of a 
 class." 
 
32 John Bright. 
 
 Chapter II. 
 The Radical Reformers. 
 
 Almost simultaneously with the great triumph of the 
 free-trade doctrine of Bright and his friends another of 
 their principles sustained a not less remarkable defeat. 
 In accepting the first and rejecting the second of the 
 Manchester doctrines, the Parliament of 1846 appears to 
 be supported by the judgment of posterity, for neither 
 the victory nor the defeat has since been reversed. 
 
 While the Corn-law Bill was passing through the 
 House of Lords, the House of Commons was considering 
 a proposal of John Fielden, member for Oldham, the 
 patron of William Cobbett, to amend the Factory Act. 
 Lord Ashley's Act of 1833 ^^^^ restricted the labour of 
 children under fourteen to eight hours a day, and that 
 of young persons under eighteen to sixty-nine hours a 
 week. Fielden's Bill, known as the Ten Hours Bill, 
 proposed to limit the labour of all women and girls, 
 and of boys under eighteen, to ten hours a day or 
 fifty-eight a week. This Bill was opposed by Peel, 
 Cobden, Bright, and Mr, Villiers, and rejected by a 
 small majority. In the following session, however, it 
 passed both Houses, despite a vigorous protest by 
 Brougham in the Lords. 
 
 Bright had already resisted a similar proposal made 
 by Lord Ashley two years earlier. His speech on that 
 occasion had been of necessity acrimonious. No one 
 can now doubt that the motives of Lord Ashley — who is 
 better known by his later title as the Earl of Shaftesbury, 
 — were purely philanthropic. But at that time Bright 
 could not forget that he was a Protectionist, an enemy 
 of Reform, and a defender of the hated monopolies. 
 His Bill had been made by Ferrand and other Protec- 
 
The Radical Reformers. 33 
 
 tlonists the occasion for a furious onslaught on the fac- 
 tory system, and on the inhumanity of manufacturers. 
 The cotton -spinners were put on their defence; and 
 Bright was constrained to reply at length and with 
 much warmth to imputations, grievously exaggerated 
 by the jealousies of the hour, upon himself, his neigh- 
 bours, and his friends. He was justified in imputing to 
 many of the supporters of the new legislation a desire 
 rather to injure the masters than to benefit the workmen. 
 It was neither his fault nor Ashley's that a measure 
 designed by its author for the protection of the poor had 
 been made a field for ill-tempered recrimination, and for 
 invidious comparisons between the degrees of misery 
 suffered under the protective system by the labourers of 
 Dorset and the weavers of Lancashire. The proposal 
 presented itself to his mind as an attempt to divert the 
 blame of the misery of the operatives from the Corn Law 
 to the factory system. '* Let not the House suppose 
 that if they pass the clause now before them they will do 
 more than plaister over the sore which their own unjust 
 legislation has created, instead of endeavouring to 
 renovate the constitution and go to the root of the dis- 
 ease." 
 
 This had been said in 1844. On the occasion we are 
 considering Bright reasserted his objection to legislative 
 interference with the working hours of adults, replying 
 to a speech which may be read in the published collection 
 of Macaulay's speeches. The Bill pretended to aim only 
 at a reduction of the working hours of women and young 
 persons; but, so far at least as the textile industries 
 were concerned, its effect would be to reduce also the 
 working hours of men, for the machinery could not run 
 profitably when the women and children were withdrawn. 
 That this was the intention as well as the effect of the 
 Bill was proved by the refusal to accept an amendment 
 of Brig-ht's to allow the women to work in relays. He 
 
 (M433) 
 
34 John Bright. 
 
 declared that, if the Bill passed, the factories then work- 
 ing- without profit must close their doors. The workmen 
 had always refused a reduction of hours with a corre- 
 sponding- reduction of wages; and they would consider 
 that Parliament their enemy which should tie their hands 
 for two hours and take two hours' wages from them. It 
 appeared axiomatic to Bright that '' ten hours' work can 
 never yield twelve hours' wages". *'Ten hours' labour 
 is better than twelve hours; but the ten hours can best 
 be broug-ht about by voluntary arrangement." A deceit 
 had been practised on the working- men, who had been 
 induced to think that leg-islation could compel an increase 
 in the wag-es earned by a g-iven amount of work. The 
 Bill was '^ contrary to all the principles of sound legisla- 
 tion", and ''advocated by those who had no knowledge 
 of the economy of manufacture". 
 
 Bright's opposition to this and similar bills was in 
 later years often used against him at elections; but he 
 never apologized for it, or confessed that he had ceased 
 to regard the Factory Acts, so far as they limited the 
 hours of adult labour, as mistaken legislation. ''Most 
 of our evils", he said, "arise from legislative interfer- 
 ence"; and this maxim, eminently characteristic of the 
 Manchester School, continued to approve itself to him 
 to the end of his career. He was, in short, a faithful 
 adherent of the old radical doctrine of laisser faire — a 
 doctrine held by more modern Radicals, if at all, with so 
 much laxity in admitting exceptions that it has ceased to 
 be a guiding principle, and has become merely an occa- 
 sional weapon of debate. Many years afterwards, when 
 he was President of the Board of Trade, his interferences 
 with the discretion of the permanent officials were rare; 
 but it was observed that, when he did interpose his 
 authority, he used it nearly always not to order but to 
 countermand the exercise of the powers of his Board. 
 
 The conflict between Bright and his opponents was 
 
The Radical Reformers. 35 
 
 one scene of the perennial controversy between those 
 who treat economic laws as immutable by human voli- 
 tion, — insomuch that to legislate in defiance of them is as 
 though we should pass a resolution repealing the law 
 of gravitation in the hope of jumping safely from the 
 top of the Monument, — and those who think more hope- 
 fully that, whether by legislation, or combination, or 
 mere clamour, the more painful inferences of economic 
 theory may in practice be somehow circumvented. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of Bright's reasoning, — 
 which has at no time commanded the assent of the 
 working-classes, and may therefore be safely neglected 
 by practical politicians, — it is certainly not refuted by the 
 consideration that under the Act hours of work have in 
 fact been reduced, yet wages have in fact risen. The 
 reply is obvious. The repeal of the protective duties, 
 and the free exchange of English fabrics for foreign 
 food-stuffs, increased the demand to such an extent^ that, 
 by the natural and automatic law to which Bright 
 trusted, the value of a man's labour rose till he earned 
 more in ten hours than he had earned in twelve under 
 protection. Bright could fairly contend that, if the Ten 
 Hours Act had preceded instead of following the repeal 
 of the Corn Law, it would have aggravated the distress 
 of the manufacturing towns. 
 
 The same principle led Bright, a few years later, to 
 throw cold water over Sir C. Forster's Bill to strengthen 
 the Truck Act, which was said to be evaded in the Mid- 
 lands, although in Lancashire, as Bright said, the truck 
 system did not exist. '' Under the present conditions 
 of labour in the country, there can be no permanent, 
 continuous, and irritating tyranny such as has been 
 described by the promoters of the Bill, which the work- 
 ing classes are not perfectly well able to correct without 
 
 ^ The exportation of cotton goods quadrupled itself within thirty years of 
 the Repeal. 
 
36 John Bright. 
 
 coming" to the House of Commons for a new measure." 
 Finally, in 1855, he successfully resisted an attempt of 
 J. M. Cobbett to improve the Factory Act. ''Whenever I 
 meet my constituents, I have always said that I disapprove 
 of such legislation as extremely perilous, whatever good 
 it may do; but that, since the question has been settled 
 by a judicious compromise, I will not abet in any way 
 any motion to disturb the settlement of 1850;^ and I 
 have always found that answer satisfactory in Lanca- 
 shire. If I thought the elements of discord were again 
 to be stirred up, I should myself be glad to leave the 
 country, and to go somewhere else, where labour and 
 capital are allowed to fight their own battle on their own 
 ground without legislative interference." 
 
 We now return to the memorable session of 1846. In 
 destroying the unity of his party for the common good. 
 Peel had also made sacrifice of his own career. He did 
 not fail to understand that he could no longer remain, 
 and could never again become, Prime Minister. He 
 would not accept Cobden's friendly suggestion that he 
 should appeal to the country as the leader of a Free- 
 trade party, conceiving that he could not properly use 
 tlie prerogative of dissolution to decide a personal ques- 
 tion between himself and the Protectionists. It is pos- 
 sible that the other Radicals, like Cobden, would have 
 preferred his leadership to that of Russell. But it is 
 difficult to believe that, if so bold an attempt to ignore 
 the Whigs and reconstruct parties had been made, it 
 would not have been easily defeated by Russell and 
 Palmerston. Anyhow the opportunity, such as it was, 
 was missed. On the day that the Corn-law Bill passed 
 the Lords, the Ministry was defeated on an Irish bill. 
 Peel resigned, and Russell became Prime Minister, with 
 Palmerston as Foreign Secretary. 
 
 1 Ashley's Act of 1850 settled some ambiguities, but made no substantial 
 addition to Fielden's Act. 
 
The Radical Reformers. 37 
 
 The opportunities of private members of the House 
 of Commons were more abundant in those days of scanty 
 legislation than now; and the speeches made by Bright 
 in Parliament in the eight years between the repeal of 
 the Corn Law and the Crimean war cover the whole 
 field of his political aims. He cannot at this time be 
 regarded as the leader, or even as a member, of any 
 organized party or group. Many of the old Free- 
 traders immediately took their place in the Liberal 
 phalanx, and gave no countenance to the Radicalism of 
 Bright and Cobden. Amongst those who commonly 
 voted with them were Joseph Hume, member for Mont- 
 rose, a Radical of long parliamentary experience, the 
 champion of retrenchment and economy, and the most 
 formidable and useful of parliamentary bores ; Ricardo, 
 member for Stoke, a nephew of the great economist, and 
 himself known as the reformer who applied free-trade 
 principles to the Navigation Laws; Sir William Moles- 
 worth, member for Southwark, a chief advocate of colo- 
 nial Home Rule; and, after 1852, Edward Mlall, member 
 for Rochdale, the general of the militant Nonconfor- 
 mists. 
 
 Molesworth may be taken as the connecting link be- 
 tween the Manchester School and the old Philosophical 
 Radicals of the school of Bentham, Grote, and James 
 Mill. There is an obvious gap in the sympathy between 
 Bright — the old-fashioned Puritan, the emotional orator, 
 full of a strong faith in his own intuitions, and appealing 
 to sentiment, compassion, and the New Testament — 
 and the Utilitarians, with their arid philosophy, their odd 
 presumption of a quantitative measure of happiness, 
 their supercilious disdain of national habit, their ungodly 
 hardness, and their dusty logic. But he and they were 
 united in the pursuit of many political ends; and Bright, 
 with his incomparable gift of popular advocacy and his 
 contagious sensibility to injustice, accomplished feats of 
 
38 John Bright. 
 
 persuasion to achieve which essays had been written and 
 syllogisms constructed in vain. 
 
 Brig-ht derived from the philosophers his belief in the 
 immutability of political economy, and his very wide 
 faith in the doctrine of laisser /aire et laisser passer. 
 Indeed his devotion to these articles of faith was more 
 rigidly orthodox than that of one who stood nearer than 
 he to the true apostolical succession of the Benthamites, 
 John Stuart Mill. Mill deliberately excepted the regula- 
 tion of the hours of labour and the provision of education 
 by the State from the general doctrine of laisser faired- 
 Bright, as we have seen, set up the principle of non- 
 interference against the Ten Hours Bill ; and he was 
 also an enemy of any possible scheme of national educa- 
 tion. 
 
 In April, 1847, Russell proposed an increase in the 
 grant for elementary education. The prevalent opinion 
 of Nonconformists was then entirely opposed to all 
 grants from the Treasury to the schools, which were 
 mostly under clerical control. It has already been re- 
 marked that Bright was above all things an enthusiast 
 of religious equality. ** I am a Nonconformist," he said, 
 ** being by birth, education, observation, and conviction 
 fully established in the opinion I hold." His hostility to 
 the establishment of religion was associated in his mind 
 with his repugnance to other sorts of privilege. The 
 clergy were in his view a privileged class; and therefore, 
 by reason of the natural tendency of persons so favoured 
 to support not only their own but one another's privi- 
 leges, the Church, as he thought, had been "uniformly 
 hostile to the progress of public liberty", and "opposed 
 to those opinions and those changes which most men 
 believed to be necessary". To this topic he frequently 
 recurred. He never forgot that when the people were 
 starving, when children were fighting for crusts of bread 
 
 1 Political Economy, book v. chap. xi. 
 
The Radical Reformers. 39 
 
 picked out of the gutter, when women were pawning 
 their wedding-rings to buy food, and when the dissenting 
 ministers of England turned out wherever the trumpet 
 of the League was blown, the clergy of the privileged 
 church were either indifferent or had joined the defenders 
 of the pitiless monopoly. 
 
 Bright admitted that many Nonconformists had been 
 in favour of the interference of the government in 1839. 
 ** At that time the Dissenters regarded the institution of 
 a Committee of the Privy Council as a step leading away 
 from that power which the Church of England wished 
 to usurp, of educating the whole people. But from 1839 
 to this year we have found no step taken by the govern- 
 ment which has not had for its tendency the aggrandise- 
 ment of the Established Church." ^ 
 
 Bright's speech, again delivered in reply to Macaulay, 
 defended the old system, described by his antagonist as 
 an experiment tried without success ever since the Hept- 
 archy, by which elementary education had been left to 
 voluntary enterprise and voluntary benevolence, without 
 recourse to the funds or submission to the control of the 
 State. Many years have elapsed since this view became 
 obsolete; but Bright's speeches in its favour are still in 
 a high degree interesting, for his opinion was not isolated 
 or wilful, but intimately connected with the general prin- 
 ciples of policy which he never abandoned. The follow- 
 ing passage, for example, is of the first importance: 
 *' If there is any principle more certain than another, I 
 suppose it is that what a people is able to do for itself 
 the Government should not attempt to do for it. For 
 nothing tends so much to strengthen a people, to make 
 them powerful, great, and good, as the constant exercise 
 
 1 It must be remembered that there was then no Conscience Clause. 
 Bright was one of a very small minority that supported in 1847 an amend- 
 ment to admit children to all state-aided schools without compelling them 
 to share in the religious instruction. 
 
40 John Bright. 
 
 of all their faculties on public objects, and the carrying 
 out of public works and objects by voluntary contribu- 
 tions among themselves." 
 
 We seem to have travelled a vast distance from this 
 position now; and the classes for which Bright won a 
 commanding share in the determination of national 
 policy, have been encouraged to larger and larger expec- 
 tations of what the State can do and ought to do for 
 them. We may still hear the echoes of Bright's robust 
 individualism in the candour of private conversation, but 
 from political platforms it is banished for ever. 
 
 At the general election of 1847 Bright was appro- 
 priately rewarded for his services to Free-trade by an 
 unopposed return for Manchester, the headquarters of 
 the League. His colleague, Milner Gibson, was a man 
 of Radical sympathies, though a member of the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Immediately after the election he turned his attention 
 to the second great enterprise of his career, parliamen- 
 tary reform. That enterprise was destined to occupy 
 twenty years of his life. For ten years he and his friends 
 called for reform in the House of Commons, and from 
 time to time exacted futile promises from Ministers. 
 For ten years more, reviving the methods of the League, 
 he conducted the agitation in the country which at last 
 produced the Reform Act of 1867. Although the Leaguers 
 had resisted the desire of the Chartists to give priority 
 to parliamentary reform over Free -trade, their work 
 and its difficulties had made them sensible of the imper- 
 fection of the representative system. They believed 
 that public opinion had always preponderated against 
 the Corn Law, and that it could not have survived the 
 first reformed parliament, if the Reform of 1832 had been 
 sufficient to restore to the people that control over the 
 Lower House of which the aristocracy had deprived 
 them. No one could tell how long the House of Com- 
 
The Radical Reformers. 41 
 
 mons might have resisted public opinion if the reasoning- 
 of the platforms had not been reinforced by the irresis- 
 tible argument of the famine, or if that crisis had not 
 found at the head of the Conservative party a statesman 
 who had hereditary sympathies with the manufacturers 
 as well as the squires. 
 
 On April 27, 1848, the movement was inaugurated at 
 Newall's Buildings, Manchester, the office of the League, 
 by Bright and Cobden. Two months later Hume moved 
 a resolution in the House in favour of household suffrage, 
 the ballot, triennial parliaments, and a more equal 
 apportionment of voters to seats. This scheme went a 
 long way in the direction of the People's Charter, and 
 considerably further than the Reform of 1867. In this 
 debate Hume once more enunciated the famous Radical 
 watchword that ** taxation and representation should go 
 together"; and DisTaeli declared that *'the franchise 
 was not a right, nor a trust, but a privilege, created by 
 law, and conferred, not as an odious exception, but as 
 a general reward ". Bright, who had made an earlier 
 opportunity of declaring his belief that ''the constitu- 
 tion would be strengthened by admitting a large number 
 of people to participate in its privileges ", took no part 
 in this debate, but voted, with Villiers, Molesworth, 
 Cobden, and Gibson, in the minority of 84. Next year, 
 in speaking to Hume's motion, he propounded his con- 
 stitutional theory of reform. " My hon. friend merely 
 proposes that you should adopt in practice that which 
 no one will deny is recognized by the theory of the con- 
 stitution. We have monarchical institutions, in which 
 we have found no fault. We have a House of Peers, 
 which is another recognized portion of our constitutional 
 system. That also has its privileges and prerogatives, 
 and we find no fault in them. But we maintain that the 
 constitution recognizes another element, — a popular, or, 
 if you choose, a democratic element ; and we who stand 
 
42 Jonn Bright. 
 
 here, and those we represent, the common people of 
 Engfland, have as great and undoubted a right to be sole 
 and absolute in this House as the monarch on the throne, 
 or the peers in the other chamber of the legislature. But 
 the system under which we sit in this House is by no 
 means in accord with the theory of the constitution." 
 The system, he said, excluded five-sixths of the grown 
 men of the nation; while the representation of the 
 middle-classes was a mere pretence so long as so many 
 boroughs were in the gift of the great land-owners. He 
 warned the House that the natural result of the disap- 
 pointment of the working-classes had been *' that fright- 
 ful thing which men call Chartism, — frightful not in its 
 demand, but because in its discussions passions had been 
 stirred up, false principles enunciated, and mischievous 
 animosities engendered ". Bright was an enemy of tur- 
 bulence; but he had learned the first lesson of political 
 wisdom, — to seek for the remediable causes of popular 
 discontents, not in the vice of the inultitude, but in the 
 errors of the government. 
 
 The demand for parliamentary reform was associated 
 in the minds of the reformers, and on the banners 
 exhibited at popular demonstrations, with the cry for 
 retrenchment. Cobden believed that expense, and in 
 particular military expense, could be curtailed only by 
 "giving the people a voice in the government". In 
 1849 he proposed, with the support of Bright and Hume, 
 to reduce the national expenditure ''to the sum which 
 within the last fourteen years has been found to be 
 sufficient ", that is to say, from fifty-four to forty-four 
 and a half millions. The people have since obtained 
 their voice in the government; and the expenditure has 
 grown to more than double the maximum proposed by 
 Cobden. 
 
 Bright's speeches on finance are comparatively unim- 
 portant. They were indeed merely auxiliary to those of 
 
The Radical Reformers. 43 
 
 Cobden and Hume, who could handle statistics and 
 calculations with greater dexterity. He called for an 
 extension of the death duties to real as well as personal 
 property. The Conservative county members retorted 
 by asking" that real property should be relieved of its 
 excessive share in local taxation. Bright could not 
 tolerate the clamour of the land-owners for relief to the 
 agricultural interest, and compared them to the strolling* 
 players who announced a performance for the benefit of 
 the poor, being* themselves, as it afterwards appeared, 
 the poor intended by the advertisement. The Radical 
 plan for the relief of the farmers was to repeal the duty 
 on malt and hops, and to meet the deficiency by a corre- 
 sponding* reduction of expense. The Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer was obliged to refuse all these appeals. 
 
 Both at this time and for many years afterwards 
 Bright protested frequently and with insistence agfainst 
 what seemed to him extravagant expenditure on national 
 defence. These protests were inspired partly by his 
 hatred of war, partly by his general belief that the 
 commercial prosperity of the country suffered by exces- 
 sive taxation, and, not least, by his distrust of an aristo- 
 cratic service. He was not convinced by the proverb 
 that bids us make ready for war if we desire peace ; and 
 indeed those who dispute that time-honoured saw need 
 not be at a loss for apt historical instances. He happily 
 illustrated the fallacy which lurks in the popular belief 
 that large expenditure, on muniments of war for in- 
 stance, is good for trade, by the parable of the dog fed 
 on its own tail. As for the third reason, he said now, 
 **the cry raised with respect to the defenceless state of 
 the country has its origin entirely in the wishes of a 
 party connected with the military department to increase 
 our expenditure ". Ten years later he embodied this 
 suspicion in the most brilliant and memorable of his 
 sayings. *'The more you examine the matter, the more 
 
44 John Bright. 
 
 you will come to the conclusion that this foreigfn policy, 
 this regard for the liberties of Europe, this care for the 
 Protestant interest, this excessive love for the balance 
 of power, is neither more nor less than a gfig-antic 
 system of outdoor relief for the aristocracy of Great 
 Britain." 
 
 During the session of 1848 Bright made his first 
 attempt at legislation. The severity of the Game-laws 
 had occupied the attention of eminent Whigs, when that 
 party was in opposition and had a keen eye for griev- 
 ances. Fox had denounced the Game -law as a law 
 that engendered crime, and Sydney Smith had ridiculed 
 and condemned it in the early numbers of the Edinhurgh 
 Review. In 1845 Bright had obtained a committee of 
 the House to inquire into the grievance. He had col- 
 lected information at considerable expense to himself, 
 had called twenty-one tenant farmers to lay their com- 
 plaints before the committee, and had published the 
 evidence with a preface of his own. The Bill he now 
 introduced, relying rather upon the evidence, and upon 
 his own conclusions therefrom, than upon the cautious 
 and moderate report of the committee, was simple and 
 complete. He called it a Bill for Repealing the Laws 
 with respect to Game, and scheduled all the Acts with- 
 out exception. The committee had reported that the 
 common law of England had always distinctly recognized 
 a qualified right of property in game ; and the efi'ect of 
 Bright's Bill would have been to leave game protected 
 only by the common -law rights of the land-owner in 
 respect of the game on his land.^ 
 
 Bright stated the case against the law under three 
 
 ^ The following example of the common-law rights may serve to amuse 
 the non-legal mind: — " If A starts a hare in the ground of B, and hunts it 
 and kills it there, the property continues all the while in B. But if A starts 
 a hare in the ground of B, and hunts it into the ground of C, and kills it 
 there, the property is in A, the hunter; but A is liable to an action of tres- 
 pass for hunting in the grounds of B and of C. " 
 
The Radical Reformers. 45 
 
 heads of argument. In the first place, he urged that the 
 preservation of game prevented agricultural improve- 
 ment and that increase of the production of the land 
 which was required by the increase of the consuming 
 population. Fifty or sixty years earlier the tenant had 
 been contented with the spontaneous produce of the 
 land; now he spent money to increase the produce, and 
 really paid two rents, — one, the rent paid to the land- 
 lord, by which he purchased the natural produce; the 
 other, the interest on his capital, in return for which he 
 was entitled to the artificial increase. The land-owner 
 still reserved the right of stocking the land with game, 
 and of thus destroying not only a part of the unassisted 
 produce of the land, but of the increase obtained by the 
 expenditure of the tenant's capital. In the second place, 
 confidence in the law was weakened by the harsh ad- 
 ministration of the Game-laws by magistrates personally 
 interested in preservation. The Home Office had found 
 it necessary to order all convictions for poaching to be 
 reported, and had released many persons illegally con- 
 victed, and commuted many illegally severe sentences. 
 Thirdly, the law encouraged crime. Graham, the 
 Peelite Home Secretary, had said: *'The most frightful 
 source of crime in my neighbourhood is the preservation 
 of game; poaching is the cause rather than the con- 
 sequence of criminal habits ". All these evils, said 
 Bright, were entailed on the country for the sake of the 
 35,000 sportsmen who held game licenses. 
 
 The Bill was received with derision, and did not reach 
 the second stage. Bright retained his opinion, and 
 nearly twenty years later wrote to a farmer that he saw 
 no good in any changes in the law. '' What you want 
 is the repeal of all laws which are made with the object 
 of favouring preservation of game." But he was not 
 satisfied with the support he received from farmers, and 
 he knew by experience that an annual motion in Parlia- 
 
46 John Bright. 
 
 ment was useless unless supported by strong pressure 
 from the country. The question slept for many years; 
 and nothing- was done by the legislature until Sir William 
 Harcourt's Ground Game Act of 1880. The influence 
 which public opinion has gradually obtained over the 
 conduct of county magistrates has mitigated what 
 Bright treated with reason as a grievance crying for 
 redress. 
 
 At this period of his life Bright spoke almost every 
 year in support of an annual motion for the repeal of 
 capital punishment. He said, "I feel more strongly 
 upon this question than upon any other that can come 
 before the House". The sentiment that prompted this 
 avowal was no doubt religious; but he discussed the 
 question, as he afterwards discussed the question of 
 peace and war, without making any assumption repug- 
 nant to those who did not share his solemn regard for 
 the inviolable sanctity of human life. This question 
 seems, now that the institution of annual motions has 
 perished, to have passed from the House of Commons 
 into the keeping of debating societies. In regard to 
 another reform, which he advocated from the first, and 
 which was doubtless connected in his mind with this, — 
 the prohibition of flogging in the army, — his views in 
 process of time have prevailed. 
 
 The session of 1851 was remarkable for one of the 
 least creditable performances of the House of Commons. 
 The appointment of Roman Catholic bishops with terri- 
 torial titles had excited the Protestantism of the country, 
 already rendered irritable by the suspicion of romanizing 
 influences in the Oxford Tractarians. Russell, who in- 
 herited from his Whig ancestors the strong anti-roman 
 sentiments that originally created the Whig party, and 
 who possibly mistook a passing ebullition of temper for 
 a great national movement likely to bring credit to any 
 man who should put himself at the head of it, thundered 
 
The Radical Reformers. 47 
 
 against the Pope and the Tractarians in his famous 
 Durham letter, and introduced the futile Ecclesiastical 
 Titles Assumption Bill. Bright was one of the small 
 and enviable minority that opposed the introduction of 
 this "little, paltry, miserable measure", and predicted 
 a rapid subsidence of the indignation that made it for 
 the moment popular. " I shall not be surprised if the 
 noble Lord finds himself devoured by his own hounds." 
 The Bill suggested topics irresistible to a Liberationist. 
 " This is not a subject for a parliament to discuss at all; 
 and we are discussing it in consequence of the errors of 
 our forefathers." No sentence could be quoted more 
 characteristic of Bright, — of his clear vision for what 
 was near, and his inadequate perception of the per- 
 spective of history. If Russell, with his historical con- 
 sciousness of the spirit of the Exclusionists, failed to 
 understand that the time had passed when any effective 
 demonstration of the national Protestantism could be 
 made by Parliament, Bright, with a finer sense of the 
 modern spirit, saw only an error of our forefathers in 
 the parliamentary Protestantism that was once as neces- 
 sary to the salvation of England as the tolerance and 
 equality of to-day. 
 
 It required less than his dexterity In debate to turn 
 Russell's complaint of the "danger within the gates 
 from the unworthy sons of the Church of England " 
 against the Establishment. "The noble Lord has dis- 
 covered that the great institution that was supposed to 
 be the bulwark of Protestantism turns out to be a 
 huge manufactory of a national and home-made Popery." 
 More worthy of record than this effective taunt is the 
 admirable observation: "It is a common saying that 
 truth is indestructible; but let the House remember that 
 there is another thing that is indestructible, and that is 
 a persecuted error". 
 
 Between the first and second reading of the Bill the 
 
48 John Bright. 
 
 Radicals defeated the Government in a small House on 
 a motion to equalize the county with the borough fran- 
 chise. Russell, who had other reasons to complain of 
 the listlessness of his supporters, and who was perhaps 
 not sorry to escape from his Bill, made this defeat an 
 excuse for resignation, and was ridiculed in Punch as 
 the little boy who chalked up No Poper)^ and ran away. 
 The Conservatives declined to relieve him of his diffi- 
 culties, and his Ministry returned to office. But his 
 Cabinet was not very loyal, and his following was still 
 far from enthusiastic. The life of a Liberal Government 
 without a progressive policy, and supported by little 
 more than the fear of protection, could not be very 
 vigorous. Within twelve months there was another 
 crisis. 
 
 At the end of 185 1 Palmerston was summarily dis- 
 missed as a punishment for committing the country to 
 approval of Louis Napoleon's execrable coup d'etat of 
 December 2, without the knowledge of the Queen and 
 the Prime Minister. In taking, or in assenting to, 
 this course, Russell was aware that **his Government 
 was so much weakened that it was not likely to retain 
 power for any long time ". Palmerston's ostentatious 
 foreign policy, however distasteful to Bright, had been 
 the only part of the conduct of the Government that 
 had touched the popular sympathy. In a few weeks 
 Palmerston was able to say, ** I have had my tit-for-tat 
 with John Russell ". That no circumstance of ignominy 
 should be wanting, the weapon with which he defeated 
 his late friends was an amendment to omit the word 
 Local in the title of the Local Militia Bill. Lord Derby 
 became Prime Minister, and Disraeli Leader of the 
 House of Commons. 
 
 The Free-traders could not see without dismay the 
 statesman who had led the outcry of the exasperated 
 Protectionists against Peel six years before, sitting as 
 
The Radical Reformers. 49 
 
 the Leader of the House. Preparations were made to 
 revive the activities of the League. Bright joined in 
 the demand for an appeal to the country, at which the 
 question of Protection should be submitted straightfor- 
 wardly to the electorate. Disraeli's position was indeed 
 awkward, for not only was his party in a minority, but 
 many of the Conservatives who sat for boroughs had by 
 this time declared for free trade in corn. *' Your diffi- 
 culties", said Bright, **are not of our making. They 
 are the difficulties of an impossible policy; and that, I 
 tell you, is a difficulty that we will not allow you to 
 escape from. Either you shall recant your protectionist 
 principles, or you shall go to the constituencies, and let 
 them decide the question once for all and for all of us. 
 You said once you would break up an organized hypoc- 
 risy. I say to you, we will try if we cannot break up 
 a confederated imposture." 
 
 In the summer of 1852 the appeal was made. Bright 
 stood again for Manchester as a supporter of ''com- 
 mercial freedom, parliamentary reform, and religious 
 liberty ", and was re-elected by a satisfactory majority. 
 The response of the country showed that the Conserva- 
 tives could remain in office, if at all, only by renouncing 
 protection. Accepting the popular verdict, Disraeli 
 finally bade farewell to protectionist principles, which 
 thenceforward were reduced to the rank of a pious 
 opinion tolerated in private members of his party. His 
 palinode did not save him from defeat. In December 
 he was beaten in committee of Ways and Means. The 
 new Ministry was formed by a coalition of the two 
 sections of the Free-trade party. Of the Peelites, Lord 
 Aberdeen became Prime Minister and Mr. Gladstone 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer. Of the old Liberals, 
 Russell became Foreign Secretary and led the House 
 of Commons, and Palmerston was made Home Secre- 
 tary. 
 
 (M433) D 
 
50 John Bright. 
 
 In the early years of this Parliament, Bright had 
 occasion to speak on three questions which to his mind 
 were settled by simple deductions from the general pro- 
 position that the State ought to treat all religions alike. 
 The Commons passed a measure, which was more than 
 once rejected by the Lords, to remove the disabilities 
 that prevented Jews from sitting in Parliament. The 
 opposition to this act of toleration. Bright said, had 
 been based on a sentiment which had gradually sunk 
 down to a mere phrase, — that the Bill would ''unchris- 
 tianize the House of Commons". '' What can be more 
 marvellous than that any sane man should propose that 
 doctrinal differences in religion should be made the test 
 of citizenship and political rights? Doctrinal differences 
 in religion in all human probability will last for many 
 generations to come, and may possibly last so long as 
 man shall inhabit the globe; but if you permit these 
 differences to be the test of citizenship, what is it but to 
 admit to your system the fatal conclusion that social 
 and political differences in all nations can never be 
 eradicated but must be eternal?" 
 
 In 1854 the Dissenters were disappointed by the 
 absence of any provision to abolish tests in the Bills for 
 reforming the ancient Universities. Bright vehemently 
 reproached the Government for their treatment of the 
 just claims of Nonconformists, whose support indeed 
 the Whig party had long been accustomed to purchase 
 or to reward by the stingiest minimum of concessions. 
 '* Dissenters are always expected to manifest very much 
 of the qualities which are spoken of in the Epistle to the 
 Corinthians, — ' to hope all things, to believe all things, 
 and to endure all things'." He had before called 
 Palmerston the ''political Mrs. Jellaby " by reason of 
 the contrast between his sympathy, often indiscreetly 
 exhibited, with the Liberal movement abroad, and his 
 neglect of Liberal reforms at home. In the same strain, 
 
The Radical Reformers. 51 
 
 he now taunted Russell with leaving- the religious in- 
 equaUties of his own country untouched, whilst ** under- 
 taking- in the most zealous manner possible the estab- 
 lishment of religious equality in Turkey, and asking- 
 the Sultan to do what would be very revolutionary and 
 horrible if broached in this country ". 
 
 The third and most important of these questions was 
 that of the imposition of church-rates on Dissenters. 
 Bright's speeches on this subject were frequent and 
 passionate, so passionate indeed that they were perhaps 
 more likely to provoke obstinacy than to carry convic- 
 tion. They are full of incidents of oppression, the record 
 of which it would be cruel to revive. Nor is it necessary 
 to attempt here any history of that prolong-ed resistance, 
 so fruitful in acrimony, which has probably very few 
 defenders now. The following- passage, irresistibly 
 sug-gestive of Noodle's Oration, is quoted from Lord 
 John Russell's speech against the Church Rates Aboli- 
 tion Bill of 1854, as in itself sufficient to explain Bright's 
 refusal to recognize him as a leader of Liberalism, and 
 as furnishing- a measure of the change that came over the 
 spirit of the party when the lump was at last leavened 
 by Bright's inspiriting ideas. "We have a national 
 church, we have a national aristocracy, we have a 
 hereditary monarchy, and all these things stand to- 
 gether. My opinion is that they would decay and fall 
 together. I see no reason why we should prefer to 
 these institutions those of the United States of America; 
 and I must therefore oppose this Bill as in my opinion 
 tending to subvert one of the great institutions of the 
 State." 
 
 Another reform to which the Radicals applied them- 
 selves with great energy during the life of the Coalition 
 Government was the repeal of what they called taxes on 
 knowledge — the taxes that made newspapers dear. The 
 cost of the stamp affixed to every copy of a newspaper 
 
52 John Bright. 
 
 had been reduced in 1836 from 46?. to id. There were 
 also a tax on advertisements and an excise duty on 
 paper. The effect of these imposts was, in brief, that 
 while the New York Herald vj^ls sold for id., and the 
 Melbourne Argtis for i}^</., a paper of the same size in 
 England cost 5^. ; that even the largest provincial towns 
 had only weekly papers; that in seventy-five parliamen- 
 tary boroug-hs no newspaper whatever was published; 
 and that attempts were constantly made to evade the 
 law. 
 
 Some of the old Chartists had formed a committee for 
 promoting the repeal of these duties. In the House of 
 Commons Milner Gibson took the lead in pressing for 
 this reform, and Bright gave effective support to his 
 colleague. ''Here", he exclaimed, holding up a copy 
 of the Potteries Free Press, *'is an unfortunate pape 
 which was strangled out of its little innocent life in th 
 most remorseless manner." The expectation already 
 entertained, though destined to a long procrastination, 
 that the working-classes would soon be admitted to the 
 franchise, supplied the strongest argument for cheapen- 
 ing the means of popular information on current events. 
 There were many w^ho feared that cheap papers would 
 pander to this or that evil passion of the multitude. 
 But in Mr. Gladstone, who, thoug-h not yet accepting 
 the name of Liberal, was already in many respects more 
 sympathetic with the reformers than the Liberal leaders, 
 Gibson and Bright found a Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 easily convinced of the value of this reform. The revenue 
 stamp disappeared from newspapers in 1855; and many 
 of the great daily newspapers of the provinces date from 
 that era. It was not till six years later, and until after 
 a struggle between the Commons and the Lords, that 
 Mr. Gladstone was able to abolish the paper duty, and 
 so to call into existence a multitude of penny papers. 
 There was none of the many reforms in which he had 
 
The V/ar with Russia. 53 
 
 had a hand to which Bright referred more frequently 
 and with more satisfaction than to this, in the historical 
 reminiscences which formed the substance of his speeches 
 in his old age. 
 
 Chapter III. 
 The War with Russia. 
 
 We have now reached a period in Bright's career 
 which furnishes the most crucial tests of his public 
 character. A politician acting with a party shares with 
 others, in a degree varying inversely with his eminence, 
 the credit or discredit of his acts and words. When he 
 stands alone, he invites an absolute verdict for or against 
 himself. 
 
 Bright's five great speeches on the war with Russia 
 are the summit of his achievements as a parliamentary 
 orator. On the ultimate acceptance of the principles 
 of public action, which he advocated without success 
 at that crisis, he staked and saved his reputation for 
 political sagacity. Long before it was possible to dis- 
 cern the symptoms of that change in the habit of public 
 opinion which he predicted so confidently, as early, 
 indeed, as the first subsidence of the popular passion 
 which had overwhelmed him, he already began to enjoy 
 the reward of his courage and fidelity. He could no 
 longer be classed among the demagogues the breath of 
 whose nostrils is the applause of the populace. Cleon 
 had exhibited the virtues of Cato. From this time for- 
 ward, though his opinions were often distasteful, and 
 his advocacy of them irritating, to great sections of his 
 countrymen, he was exempt from the reproach of insin- 
 cerity and time-serving. 
 
 With the Russian speeches should be read the lumin- 
 
54 John Bright. 
 
 ous and energ-etic letter to Absalom Watkin.^ The 
 following outline of the transactions which led to the 
 war is intended merely to supply what is necessary to 
 make the letter and the speeches intellig-ible. 
 
 Three men stand at the bar of history charged with 
 the g"uilt of this g^reat crime against humanity. His- 
 torians will doubtless never ag^ree upon the distribution 
 of blame between the fanatical zeal of Nicholas, the 
 ambition of Louis Napoleon, and the obstinacy of Lord 
 Stratford de Redcliife. Those who acquit the great 
 ambassador, who is at least entitled to the praise of a 
 definite purpose and an unbroken consistency, must join 
 in Bright's condemnation of the ''incapable and g^uilty 
 administration " — the ministers who weakly surrendered 
 the reins, at one time to their servant, at another to 
 their ally. 
 
 In the year 1851 the French Government made certain 
 claims upon the Sublime Porte in respect of the localities 
 in the Holy Land which have been for many centuries 
 the resort of Christian pilg-rims. This demand was 
 based upon a treaty of 1740, in which the Porte had 
 recog"nized France as the gfuardian of the right of the 
 Western Church to access to the holy places. The claim 
 of France was reluctantly conceded by the Sultan, and 
 in December, 1852, the key of the Church of the Nativity 
 at Bethlehem was entrusted to Latin monks, and a silver 
 star bearing the French arms was solemnly installed in 
 the sanctuary. The success of this pious enterprise of 
 the disciples of Voltaire aroused the jealousy of the 
 Tsar; it was a diplomatic victory of the Latin over the 
 Greek Church, and of the Greek Church the Tsar was 
 the acknowledged head and protector. Russian troops 
 
 ^ One of the minor results of the democratic reform of 1867 is that the 
 art of pohtical pamphleteering has lost much of its importance. To be suc- 
 cessful, political literature must now be brief, and may be shallow. It is 
 possible that the letter to Watkin will take rank as the last classical speci- 
 men of the lost art of Halifax and Burke. 
 
The War with Russia. 55 
 
 were ordered to the south-western frontier. The French 
 retorted by sending a fleet into the Levant. A still more 
 threatening development of the quarrel now occurred. 
 The Tsar despatched Prince Menschikoff to Constanti- 
 nople to require a recognition of the protectorate of the 
 Tsar over the Greek Christians in Turkey. 
 
 The mission of Menschikoff aroused in Britain the 
 ever-present fear of Russian aggression. In February, 
 1853, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, formerly Sir Stratford 
 Canning, an old antagonist of the Tsar in the diplomacy 
 of the Eastern Question, was sent as ambassador to 
 Constantinople, with instructions to watch for any inter- 
 ference with the integrity and independence of the Otto- 
 man empire. The British envoy inspired the Turk to 
 a strenuous resistance to the Russian claims. After a 
 struggle of nearly three months between the two diplo- 
 matists, Menschikoff finally invited the signature of the 
 Sultan to an instrument formally acknowledging the 
 Russian protectorate. This document, which became 
 famous as Menschikoff s Note, was presented on May 20 
 as an ultimatum. It was rejected, and Menschikoff 
 immediately quitted Constantinople. Lord Stratford 
 had advised the rejection of the note with the full con- 
 currence of the ambassadors of France, Austria, and 
 Prussia. The Porte being admittedly unable to resist 
 Russia unaided, it is certain that by instigating the 
 refusal of the Russian demand, the British ambassador 
 committed his country to the duty of supporting the 
 Turk against Russian coercion. 
 
 On May 31 a formal demand for the acceptance of 
 the note was sent by the Tsar's minister, Count Nessel- 
 rode, to Constantinople, with a threat that the Russian 
 troops — which were already massed in great force on the 
 frontier — would, if the Turk failed to comply, occupy 
 the Danubian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, that is, 
 the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which now 
 
56 John Bright. 
 
 form the Kingdom of Roumania. At the time when this 
 menace was sent, the Tsar had reason to believe from 
 the tone of the messages he received from the British 
 Foreign Office that Lord Aberdeen's ministry was not 
 minded to support with vigour the firm attitude assumed 
 by Lord Stratford at Constantinople. On July 2 the 
 Russian army crossed the Pruth, and the Tsar issued a 
 proclamation disclaiming the intention of conquest, and 
 promising that warlike operations should cease as soon 
 as the Porte should bring itself to observe the inviola- 
 bility of the Orthodox Church. 
 
 The concert of the four Powers was still unbroken. 
 On Augu^-t 12 Lord Aberdeen, the prime minister, and 
 Lord Clarendon, the foreign minister, assured the House 
 of Lords that Austria, Britain, Prussia, and France 
 were ''acting cordially together in order to check designs 
 which they considered inconsistent with the balance of 
 power". But at this juncture the British Government en- 
 tered into what the historian of the war calls "the fatal 
 transaction which substituted a cruel war for the peace- 
 ful but irresistible pressure which was exerted by the 
 four Powers ". A compact was made with the French 
 emperor by which, as the event proved, Britain and 
 France were mutually pledged to execute the common 
 judgment of the Powers without waiting for the co-opera- 
 tion of Austria and Prussia, although it was Austria 
 rather than France or Britain that had occasion to 
 resent the invasion of the Danubian provinces, and that 
 was best able to offer protection to the Turk in this 
 portion of his dominions. The Queen's Speech at the 
 close of the session of 1853 contained the significant 
 announcement that she had united her endeavours in the 
 cause of peace with those of the Emperor of the French. 
 
 Notwithstanding this division of the concert, a confer- 
 ence of representatives of the four Powers had already 
 assembled at Vienna. The result of this conference was 
 
The W^ar with Russia. 57 
 
 the celebrated Vienna Note. This note was in the form 
 of an undertaking to be addressed by the Sultan to the 
 Tsar, and was unanimously recommended to the two 
 disputants by the four Powers. The Tsar at once 
 accepted it as satisfactory. Unhappily it did not recom- 
 mend itself to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. He was 
 instructed to urge the Sultan to accept it; but, whilst 
 obeying- his instructions, he indicated his disapproval by 
 a demeanour and an expression of countenance that 
 were more eloquent than the language in which he deliv- 
 ered the message of his Queen. The Sultan refused to 
 sign the note without certain specified modifications. 
 These amendments were rejected by the Tsar, who also 
 withdrew a consent that was naturally conditional on the 
 acquiescence of the Sultan. Immediately on this refusal 
 the Sultan declared war, although he was still unfortified 
 by assurances of support from any of the Powers, and 
 even without such reason to expect that support as he 
 would have had if his rejection of Menschikoff's ultima- 
 tum had been treated by Russia as a casus belli. 
 
 The defence offered by the supporters of the policy of 
 war for this fatal obstinacy of the Turk, and for the 
 support given to that obstinacy by Britain and France, 
 is that Russia, when accepting the note, and the Turk, 
 when rejecting it, agreed in putting a construction upon 
 it which had not been in the minds of the representatives 
 of the Powers when they composed it. It was alleged 
 that, according to the interpretation of Russia and the 
 Porte, the Vienna Note, which the Powers invited the 
 Turk to accept, was virtually identical with Menschi- 
 koff's Note, which they had advised him to reject, but 
 that the Conference had intended to save the honour 
 of the Sultan by a substantial modification of Menschi- 
 koff"'s terms. The justification of the policy of war rests 
 with its full weight upon this allegation. If it is true, 
 the Ministry finds its excuse at the expense of attributing 
 
58 John Bright. 
 
 to the chosen diplomatists of four great nations in- 
 competence to compose a state paper in unambiguous 
 language. But it is not true; and by triumphantly 
 proving it to be false Bright shattered the formal justifi- 
 cation of the war. The formal justification, however, of 
 this war, as of others, had but a very remote relation to 
 the real causes. These diplomatic inconsistencies en- 
 abled Bright to score a point in debate against his enemy 
 Palmerston, but such a victory provided no remedy for 
 the suspicious jealousy and fidgety sensitiveness which 
 Palmerston had educated the nation to regard as ele- 
 ments of patriotism. 
 
 On October 22 the British and French fleets entered 
 the Dardanelles, and a few days later, taking advantage 
 of the declaration of war, cast anchor in the Bosporus, 
 from which in time of peace they were excluded by treaty. 
 The Tsar was not slow to retaliate, and unhappily struck 
 his blow in such a way as to aggravate the enmity of 
 Britain. On November 30 a Turkish flotilla lying in 
 the harbour of Sinope was annihilated by six Russian 
 warships. The news of this disaster raised the war 
 fever of the British to a degree that called for the eftusion 
 of blood. The destruction of ships of our ally at a place 
 barely three hundred miles distant from the anchorage 
 of the British fleet was regarded as a provocation to 
 Britain, and an insolent defiance of the naval supremacy 
 in which every patriotic Briton takes pride. The 
 popular indignation expelled whatever disposition to 
 conciliation still remained in the mind of the Cabinet. 
 They were, however, at first content with ordering the 
 fleet to enter the Euxine. Lord Palmerston thought 
 that the crisis required more strenuous action, and re- 
 signed office. 
 
 This was the first of that long series of resigna- 
 tions which demonstrated so painfully the defects of the 
 British parliamentary system in the presence of dangers 
 
The War with Russia. 59 
 
 such as the Roman repubhc used to meet by the appoint- 
 ment of a dictator. The chosen policy demanded a 
 statesman who should possess the commanding authority 
 and the moral intrepidity of Pitt. But instead of Pitt 
 we had Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell; instead 
 of Nelson, Sir Charles Napier; and instead of Wellington, 
 Lord Raglan; and over all of them the embarrassing 
 control of the House of Commons. 
 
 Once more the Emperor of the French was allowed 
 to dictate the policy of the British Cabinet. The plan 
 proposed by him and accepted by Lord Aberdeen was 
 that the occupation of the Black Sea by the two fleets 
 should be followed by a message requiring that the 
 Russian fleet should retire within the harbour of Sevas- 
 topol. This spirited action satisfied Palmerston, who 
 rejoined the Cabinet. The fleets entered the Euxine on 
 January 4, 1854, and the demand of France and Britain 
 reached Nicholas on January 12. 
 
 Meanwhile the envoys of the four Powers at Constan- 
 tinople were still pursuing the task of pacification, and 
 drafting new proposals to be submitted to the bellige- 
 rents. But the demand of January 12 baffled the eff'orts 
 of the peacemakers, broke up the concert of the Powers, 
 and provoked Russia to defiance. The Russian ambas- 
 sadors were recalled from Paris and London, and the 
 French and British ambassadors from St. Petersburg. 
 A British fleet was ordered to sail into the Baltic under 
 the command of Sir Charles Napier; but there was still 
 no formal declaration of war. 
 
 Such was the posture of aff"airs when Parliament 
 assembled for the session of 1854. 
 
 Bright did not take any part in the two nights' 
 debate on February ig and 20. The views of the small 
 remnant that still believed an honourable peace to be 
 possible were expounded at length by Cobden. He 
 declared himself opposed to a war ''which hangs upon 
 
6o John Bright. 
 
 so fine a thread as whether the Suhan shall sign a note 
 declaring- to the Emperor Nicholas that he will preserve 
 the rights of the Christian subjects, or whether he shall 
 give that declaration to all the European Powers. Let 
 us fall back", he added, *'on the Vienna Note." This 
 suggestion was received with cries of ridicule; but 
 Cobden protested that, though the terms of the Vienna 
 Note might be substantially the same as those of 
 Menschikoff's Note, the honour of the Sultan could not 
 suffer by accepting terms which came to him as the 
 proposals of the four Powers, and therefore not as the 
 proposals of Russia. 
 
 Three weeks later. Bright moved the adjournment of 
 the House in order to call attention to the proceedings 
 of a banquet by which the Reform Club had celebrated 
 the appointment of two of its members to the command 
 of the Baltic and Black Sea expeditions, and at which 
 Lord Palmerston had presided, and two other ministers 
 had made speeches. There had been a good deal of 
 boasting of the sort that does not become him that 
 putteth on his armour, — boasting to be remembered with 
 mortification when Napier returned without laurels from 
 his luckless cruise — and a good deal of what Bright 
 described as buffoonery and reckless levity. It was 
 inevitable that two such men as Palmerston and Bright, 
 the cheery pagan and the grave apostle, the man to 
 whom politics were a career and the man to whom they 
 were a mission, should misappreciate one another. 
 Palmerston's boyish i?isouciance served a useful end by 
 helping to clear the public mind of cant, but it could 
 not be anything but disgusting to Bright. To Palmer- 
 ston the earnestness of Bright (*'the honourable aad 
 reverend gentleman " as he called him on this occasion) 
 savoured of the professional gravity of the pulpit. 
 Bright spoke with passionate indignation, and was 
 answered by Palmerston, Graham, and his old ally 
 
The War with Russia. 6i 
 
 Molesworth, with an angry affectation of contempt. 
 Macaulay, whose sympathy with Palmerston was as 
 cordial as Bright's antipathy, wrote in his diary: '* I 
 went to the House on Monday; but for any pleasure I 
 g"ot I mig-ht as well have stayed away. I heard Bright 
 say everything" I thought ; and I heard Palmerston and 
 Graham expose themselves lamentably. Palmerston's 
 want of temper, judgment, and good breeding" was 
 almost incredible." Disraeli contributed some g"Ood 
 jokes to the entertainment; he did not mind the two 
 fleets being" commanded by two sound Reformers, for 
 '*it must be recollected that a sound Reformer is a 
 g"entleman who does not reform". Such was the temper 
 of our statesmen at the beginning- of that period of 
 confusion, mismanag"ement, and recrimination. Mr. 
 Spooner, a county member whose sturdy conservatism 
 had often been ridiculed by Bright, manfully declared 
 his sympathy with the protest. But the country eagerly 
 caught the tone of Palmerston, and thenceforward 
 Bright's testimony against the war was addressed to 
 deaf ears. 
 
 On March 27 a Queen's message announced to Parlia- 
 ment that the negotiations with the Tsar had ter- 
 minated, and that she felt bound to offer assistance to 
 her ally the Sultan against unprovoked aggression, and 
 to protect the dominions of the Sultan from the en- 
 croachments of Russia. Four days later the reply of the 
 Commons was moved by Lord John Russell, and gave 
 occasion for the first of Bright's speeches on the war. 
 
 The tone of this speech is, by comparison with the 
 emotion and indignation of those which followed, studi- 
 ously restrained and unimpassioned. Bright declared, 
 in contradiction to Palmerston, that the Ottoman em- 
 pire "was gradually falling into decay, and that to 
 pledge ourselves to effect its recovery and sustentation 
 was to undertake what no human power would be able 
 
62 John Bright. 
 
 to accomplish. There is no calamity," he declared, 
 appealing- to the consular reports, ** which can be 
 described as affecting- any country, which is not there 
 proved to be present, and actively at work, in almost 
 every province of the Turkish empire." He g^ave a 
 version of the negotiations, which may now be fully 
 verified by the elaborate narrative of Kinglake. He 
 skilfully directed his attack upon the least defensible 
 point of the case for the war — the rejection of the 
 Vienna Note. ** What are we to think of these arbitra- 
 tors or mediators, the four ambassadors at Vienna and 
 the Governments of F'rance and Britain, who, after dis- 
 cussing- the matter in three different cities and at three 
 distinct and different periods, and after agreeing- that 
 the proposition was one which Turkey could assent to 
 without detriment to her honour and independence, 
 immediately afterwards turned round, and declared that 
 the note was one which Turkey could not be asked to 
 accede to, and repudiated in the most formal and ex- 
 press manner that which they had themselves drawn up, 
 and which, only a few days before, they had approved 
 of as a combination of wisdom and diplomatic dexterity 
 which had never been excelled?" 
 
 Brig-ht attacked the very foundation of the Palmer- 
 stonian theory of national obligations by asserting- that 
 "the whole notion of the balance of power is a mis- 
 chievous delusion ", and by reiterating his doctrine of 
 '' non-intervention in every case where the interests of 
 the country are not directly and obviously assailed ". 
 He devoted a few sentences to the injury the war would 
 inflict on the national trade, and turned the favourite 
 phrase of the Palmerstonians against them by asking 
 what would be the effect of an exhausting war upon 
 the balance of power between Britain and the United 
 States, her chief rival in industry and at sea. **Our 
 people, suffering and discontented, as in all former 
 
The War with Russia. 63 
 
 periods of war, will emigrate in increasing" numbers to 
 a country whose wise policy is to keep itself free from 
 the entanglement of European politics." Such a con- 
 tention provoked the retort that Bright cared more to 
 ask whether a policy was cheap than whether it was 
 demanded by honour and justice. But by Bright him- 
 self it was never placed in the forefront of his argument. 
 
 Another passage has special significance, as uttered 
 by a man in whose mind the ethical aspect of any ques- 
 tion of deliberation always held the first place. If we 
 admit the common assumption that the duties of nations 
 are exactly analogous to the duties of persons, the 
 policy of non-intervention must often be comparable 
 with the abnegation of the duty a man owes to an 
 oppressed neighbour. It was characteristic of Bright 
 that he never shrank from any legitimate conclusion of 
 his accepted maxims. ** It is not on a question of sym- 
 pathy that I dare involve this country, or any country, 
 in a war which must cost an incalculable amount of 
 treasure and of blood. It is not my duty to make this 
 country the knight-errant of the human race, and to 
 take upon herself the protection of the thousand mil- 
 lions of human beings who have been permitted by the 
 Creator of all things to people this planet." 
 
 No one who reads this memorable speech with a 
 recollection of subsequent history will hesitate to admit 
 that the theory of foreign policy there proclaimed, 
 though condemned at the time by most Englishmen as 
 destructive of the true conception of national honour, 
 has steadily gained ground during the past forty years. ^ 
 No one will deny that in the earlier part of the speech 
 
 ^ "They (Cobden and Bright) were routed on the question of the Crimean 
 war, but it was the rapid spread of their principles which within the next 
 twenty years made intervention impossible in the Franco-Austrian war, in 
 the American war, in the Danish war, in the Franco-German war, and 
 above all in the war between Russia and Turkey."— Morley, Life of Cob den t 
 ii. 159- 
 
64 John Bright. 
 
 Bright's reasoning- was at least so far pertinent as to 
 deserve a serious and detailed reply from those who 
 were responsible for the declaration of the war. It is 
 scarcely too much to say that no reply was attempted. 
 Lord Palmerston took up Bright's challenge to ** explain 
 what is meant by the balance of power ", and supplied 
 a gloss of that term which may fairly rank with Mr. 
 Curdle's definition of the Unities of the Drama. Lord 
 John Russell had nothing to add. They justly relied on 
 the popular prejudice against Quakerism to annul the 
 effect of the speech on public opinion. 
 
 Bright did not again address the House on the war 
 until December 22. The intervening period had been 
 crowded with great events. The hardly won victory of 
 the Alma had proved that the long peace had not im- 
 paired the fighting qualities of the British army; the first 
 assault upon Sevastopol had been made and repelled; 
 the British cavalry at Balaklava had performed an 
 achievement to be commemorated in song or story as 
 long as courage and discipline hold their place in the 
 estimation of Englishmen ; and at Inkermann the same 
 obstinate valour that won Waterloo had just prevailed 
 to avert defeat in spite of the failure of leadership. It 
 had become apparent that the war into which the nation 
 had plunged, or drifted, with a light heart, would end, if 
 in victory, in a victory purchased at an enormous cost 
 of life and treasure. The spirit of the people had changed 
 from exultation to anxiety, but it was not less resolute. 
 Even those who had believed that the war might have 
 been avoided without detriment to the national honour 
 could not venture to ask a proud nation to sue for peace 
 while the fortune of war still hung in the balance. 
 
 By this time, too, the grievous Crimean winter had 
 begun; and already a great cry of indignation against 
 administrative incompetence had been raised, and was 
 daily gathering volume and intensity. A people distin- 
 
The War with Russia. 65 
 
 gulshed among- all the nations of the world by the success 
 of its middle-class in the org-anization and direction of 
 those great undertaking's which prosper by patient fore- 
 sight and the diligent care of details, had entrusted the 
 business of the State to patrician officials, and now, as 
 soon as the stress became severe, found that business 
 hopelessly mismanaged. The Crimean winter was the 
 crowning opprobrium of Tite Barnacle and the Circum- 
 locution Office. Thousands of men died that winter the 
 victims of the system of aristocratic patronage, against 
 which Bright and his friends had testified in vain. 
 
 The measure, to pass which Parliament was convened 
 on the brink of Christmas, was a Bill to authorize the 
 enlistment of foreigners. This Bill, which involved a 
 breach of international courtesy for which Palmerston 
 had to apologize to the United States, was resisted by 
 the Conservative opposition, and when Bright rose at 
 midnight on the second evening of the debate on the 
 third reading, he was secure of an attentive and not 
 wholly unsympathetic audience. He spoke briefly, but 
 with an intensity of indignation that carried his invective 
 to the extreme limits permitted by the courtesy of par- 
 Hamentary debate. Again and again his mistrust of 
 Russell and his antipathy to Palmerston were declared 
 in language bordering on ferocity. Once more he fixed 
 on the rejection of the Vienna Note as the capital error 
 of the Government.^ *' You are making war against a 
 Government which accepted your own terms of peace." 
 He reinforced his former argument by quoting from a 
 despatch of which the public had not been in possession 
 at the time of the first speech. The defence of the rejec- 
 tion of the Vienna Note had been that Russia had, con- 
 trary to the intention of the Powers, construed that note 
 
 1 Twenty years later Russell admitted this. " Had I been prime minister 
 I should have insisted on the acceptanceof the Austrian '^o\&." —Recollections 
 and Suggestions, p. 271. 
 
 (M433) E 
 
66 John Bright. 
 
 as equivalent to Menschikoff's Note. The despatch 
 quoted by Brig-ht, and suppressed in the blue-books, 
 was one in which the French Government urg-ed Russia 
 to accede to the Vienna Note, for the express reason 
 that 'Mts general sense differed in nothings from the 
 sense of the proposition presented by Prince Menschi- 
 koff".i 
 
 The peroration of this fine speech was most impas- 
 sioned. '* Let it not be said that I am alone in my 
 condemnation of this war, and of this incapable and 
 g-uilty Administration. And even if I were alone, if 
 mine were a solitary voice, raised amid the din of arms 
 and the clamours of a venal press, I should have the 
 consolation I have to-night, and which I trust will be 
 mine to the last moment of my existence, — the priceless 
 consolation that no word of mine has tended to promote 
 the squandering of my country's treasure or the spilling 
 of one single drop of my country's blood." 
 
 This speech, delivered with unusual vehemence of 
 manner to an audience strongly disaffected towards the 
 Government, penetrated the mind of the House far more 
 deeply than the more elaborate reasoning of the first 
 speech. It was felt that the credit of the Ministry 
 demanded some reply; and, when Bright sat down, 
 there were loud cries for Mr. Gladstone, the only leading 
 minister v/ho had not yet spoken. But neither Mr. 
 Gladstone nor any other minister rose ; the division was 
 taken at once ; and one of the most spirited and incisive 
 attacks ever made on an English ministry remained for 
 ever unanswered. Charles Greville wrote in his journal: 
 ** The third reading of the Enlistment Bill carried by 38, 
 after a very fine speech from Bright, consisting of part 
 
 1 The importance of this discovery is curiously indicated by the insertion 
 of the original French in the reports of Bright's speech both in the Times 
 and in Hansard. Rogers's edition wrongly makes it appear that Bright 
 himself cited the original as well as a translation. 
 
The War with Russia. 67 
 
 of his letter/ with its illustrations. In my opinion this 
 speech was unanswerable, and no attempt was made to 
 answer it. He was very severe on both Lord John and 
 Palmerston. It is impossible that such reasonings as 
 Bright's should not make some impression on the country; 
 but I do not think any reasoning, however powerful, or 
 any display of facts, however striking, can stem the tor- 
 rent of public opinion, which still clamours for war, and 
 is so burning with hatred against Russia, that no peace 
 could be deemed satisfactory, or even tolerable, that did 
 not humble Russia to the dust, and strip her of some 
 considerable territory." 
 
 Bright voted with the Conservatives in this division. 
 Within five weeks the Aberdeen Ministry had fallen. 
 Mr. Roebuck brought forward a resolution for a com- 
 mittee to inquire into the maladministration. Lord 
 John resigned without waiting for the debate. ^'The 
 hon. member for Sheffield", said Bright, '' came forward 
 as a little David with a sling and a stone, — weapons 
 which he did not even use, but at the sight of which the 
 Whig Goliath went howling and vanquished to the back 
 benches." The resolution was carried; but the Con- 
 servatives were unable to form a Cabinet, and the Coali- 
 tion Ministry was reconstructed, Russell, Aberdeen, and 
 the Duke of Newcastle being thrown overboard, and 
 Palmerston becoming Prime Minister. In a few weeks, 
 however, Mr. Gladstone and two other Peelites resigned, 
 disagreeing with their new chief on the appointment of 
 Roebuck's committee; Lord John returned to office, and 
 the Ministry became purely Liberal. 
 
 Early in the new year negotiations for peace were 
 opened at Vienna, Russell attending as the represen- 
 tative of the Queen. At this crisis (Feb. 2^, 185^) 
 
 1 The letter to Watkin had appeared in the Times of Nov. 3. "This 
 letter", Greville had written, "as nearly as possible expresses my own 
 opinion on the subject." 
 
68 John Bright. 
 
 Bright delivered a speech, a masterpiece of rhetorical 
 pathos, and notably different in tone from the two that 
 preceded. He did not now deal in invective. The 
 Government had shown a disposition to conclude the 
 war which he strove earnestly to encouragfe. Not a 
 word sugg^estive of his animosity to Palmerston was 
 allowed to escape his lips. Even when repeatingf a 
 description given just twelve months before of Russia 
 as '' impreg^nable within her own boundaries, but nearly 
 powerless for any purposes of offence ", he forebore to 
 remind the House that it was Palmerston who had said 
 this,^ — Palmerston, who was now invading- that im- 
 preg"nable empire in order to prevent those impossible 
 ag-gressions. He did not even plead for any modifica- 
 tion of the terms offered to Russia. ^' You have offered 
 terms of peace, which, as I understand them, I do not 
 say are not moderate." But he still feared the influence 
 of the extreme war party in the House and the country. 
 He besought the Government to neglect those who 
 ''have entertained dreams, — impracticable theories, — 
 expectations of vast European and Asiatic changes, of 
 revived nationalities, and of a new map of Europe, if 
 not of the world, as a result of the war", and to hold 
 in good faith to the terms they had proposed. 
 
 Bright's reputation as the greatest English master of 
 the oratory of sentiment may confidently be staked upon 
 the last few sentences of this speech, — sentences pure 
 and unlaboured in diction, majestic in rhythm, and 
 reflecting even in the irregularity of their construction 
 the tumult of noble emotion. 
 
 *' I cannot but notice that an uneasy feeling exists as 
 to the news which may arrive by the very next mail 
 from the East. I do not suppose that your troops are 
 to be beaten in actual conflict with the foe, or that they 
 will be driven into the sea; but I am certain that many 
 1 Feb. 20, 1854. Bright slightly exaggerates Palmerston's words. 
 
The War with Russia. 69 
 
 homes in Engfland in which there now exists a fond hope 
 that the distant one may return — many such homes may 
 be rendered desolate when the next mail shall arrive. 
 The angel of death has been abroad throughout the 
 land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. 
 There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, 
 to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two side-posts 
 of our doors, that he may spare and pass on; he takes 
 his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of 
 the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and the lowly, 
 and it is on behalf of all these classes that I make this 
 solemn appeal. I tell the noble lord that, if he be ready 
 honestly and frankly to endeavour, by the negotiations 
 about to be opened at Vienna, to put an end to this war, 
 no word of mine, no vote of mine, will be given to shake 
 his power for one single moment, or to change his posi- 
 tion in this House. I am sure that the noble lord is not 
 inaccessible to appeals made to him from honest motives 
 and with no unfriendly feeling. The noble lord has 
 been for more than forty years a member of this House. 
 Before I was born he sat upon the Treasury bench, and 
 he has spent his life in the service of his country. He is 
 no longer young, and his life has extended almost to the 
 term allotted to man. I would ask, I would entreat the 
 noble lord to take a course which, when he looks back 
 upon his whole political career, whatever he may therein 
 find to be pleased with, whatever to regret, cannot but 
 be a source of gratification to him. By adopting that 
 course he would have the satisfaction of reflecting that, 
 having obtained the object of his laudable ambition, 
 having become the foremost subject of the Crown, the 
 director of, it may be, the destinies of his country, and 
 the presiding genius in her councils, he had achieved a 
 still higher and nobler ambition, — that he had returned 
 the sword to the scabbard — that at his word torrents of 
 blood had ceased to flow — that he had restored tran- 
 
70 John Bright. 
 
 quillity to Europe, and saved this country from the inde- 
 scribable calamities of war." 
 
 At Vienna the Allies claimed four main concessions 
 from Russia, of which three were not resisted. These 
 were the withdrawal of Russian troops and influence 
 from the Danubian provinces, and the relinquishment of 
 the claims of Russia to the exclusive protectorate of the 
 Christian subjects of the Porte, and to the control of the 
 mouths of the Danube. The Allies also stipulated that 
 the predominance hitherto secured by treaty to Russia 
 in the Black Sea should cease. Upon this demand, the 
 third of the famous four points, the negotiations broke 
 down. This failure compelled Bright, in June, to resume 
 his former attitude of bitter hostility to the Government. 
 His expectation that they would conduct the negotiations 
 in a pacific spirit had been disappointed. The solution 
 proposed of the Black Sea difficulty had been that Russia 
 and Turkey should be allowed eight ships each, and 
 France and Britain four ships each, on the Sea. An 
 alternative to this proposal was that the Sea should be 
 declared inaccessible to war-ships of all nations. Russia 
 had refused to "give herself up disarmed at the good 
 pleasure of the Napoleons and the Palmerstons, who 
 would themselves be able to have armed forces in the 
 Mediterranean". *'If any diplomatist from this country," 
 said Bright, '' under the same circumstances that Russia 
 is placed in, had consented to terms such as the noble 
 lord has endeavoured to force upon Russia, when he 
 entered this House, he Vv^ould be met by one universal 
 shout of execration, and, as a public man, would be 
 ruined for ever." Bright's salutary practice of trying to 
 see the enemy's side also of such a question has since 
 been improved by some of his followers, who too often 
 refuse to see any other. 
 
 Bright's invective was now more than ever personal 
 to the two ''authors of the war", Russell and Palmer- 
 
The War with Russia. 71 
 
 ston. He taunted them with failure: ^*they have not 
 yet crippled Russia, although it is admitted that they 
 have almost destroyed Turkey". The country had been 
 *'the sport of their ancient rivalry", and was in peril of 
 becoming- ''the victim of their policy". He told Rus- 
 sell, who three years before had rudely dismissed Pal- 
 merston from his Cabinet for insubordination, that he 
 was now ''going to sea with no chart on a most dan- 
 gerous and interminable voyage with the very reckless 
 captain whom he would not trust as mate". He accused 
 him of "that description of moral cowardice which in 
 every man is the death of all true statesmanship". He 
 spoke of Palmerston as " a man who had experience, 
 but with experience had not gained wisdom; who had 
 age, but who with age had not the gravity of age ". 
 " You, who now fancy that you are fulfilling the behests 
 of the national will, will find yourselves pointed to as 
 the men who ought to have taught the nation better." 
 
 He assailed Palmerston still more injuriously six 
 weeks later, when Russell, who had admitted at Vienna 
 that he himself approved terms of peace which his in- 
 structions obliged him to reject, had been compelled to 
 expiate this indiscretion by yet another resignation. 
 Bright suspected that the Cabinet had had no intention 
 of making peace, and had sent Russell, whose aim was 
 really pacific, to Vienna on a fool's errand ; and saw in 
 his resignation the triumph of " a disreputable and con- 
 temptible cabal ". He charged the younger members of 
 the Cabinet with ingratitude to their old chief, and Pal- 
 merston with the motive of a jealous desire to get rid of 
 his competitor, and with indiff'erence to the desolation 
 and sorrow caused by his policy. "The Queen", he 
 said, "may make a minister or a prime minister, but 
 it is not in royalty to make a statesman." 
 
 The war lasted a few months longer. In September 
 Sevastopol fell, and the negotiations were resumed. In 
 
72 John Bright. 
 
 the end Russia accepted terms which opened the Black 
 Sea to commerce, and closed it to the navies of all 
 nations alike. This stipulation Russell calls ''very 
 harsh and unusual ". In his first speech on the war 
 Bright had said: ''What do you propose to do? How 
 is Turkey to be secured? Will you make a treaty with 
 Russia, and force conditions upon her? What security 
 have you that one treaty will be more binding- than 
 another? It is easy to find or make a reason for break- 
 ing a treaty, when it is the interest of a country to break 
 it." This prediction has been exactly fulfilled. In 1870 
 the Tsar declared the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of 
 Paris null and void, and no attempt was made to enforce 
 them. 
 
 There are three great epochs in Bright's career, each 
 marked by an act of revolt from the Liberal party. In 
 1843 he took the lead of the Free-traders who rejected 
 Russell's compromise on the question of the Corn Law, 
 and pursued an agitation in defiance of party discipline. 
 In 1854 he refused to accept the guidance of Russell and 
 Palmerston on a memorable question of foreign policy. 
 In 1886 he rebelled against the only leader whom he had 
 ever followed with the loyalty of respect. 
 
 No political orator appealed more frequently or with 
 so much confidence to the verdict of history. Upon the 
 secessions of 1843 and 1854 that verdict may be said to 
 be already recorded and to be recorded in favour of the 
 appellant. The first revolt was justified by immediate 
 success; the second has been justified by the gradual 
 acceptance by statesmen of all parties of principles of 
 action approximating to those which Bright stood almost 
 alone in defending. The time has not yet come when 
 any writer can affect impartiality in giving his judgment 
 on the third. 
 
India. 73 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 India. 
 
 In January, 1856, at a time when the prospect of 
 peace had become certain, Bright's health began to 
 break down, and for more than two years he was unable 
 to take any active part in public affairs. *' From appa- 
 rent health", he said after his recovery, " I was brought 
 down to a condition of weakness exceeding the weak- 
 ness of a little child, in which I could neither read nor 
 write, nor converse for more than a few minutes without 
 distress and without peril." His physicians feared serious 
 injury to his mental powers,^ and before the end of the 
 year, which was spent by him in travel, the reports of 
 his condition filled his friends w^ith grave anxiety. Cob- 
 den wrote in November: ''Bright's loss, if permanent, 
 is a public calamity. If you could take the opinion of 
 the whole House, he would be pronounced by a large 
 majority to combine more earnestness, courage, honesty, 
 and eloquence than any other man. But we will not 
 speak of him as of the past. God grant that he may 
 recover!" 
 
 Early in the following year his offer to resign his 
 seat for Manchester was rejected with a unanimity and 
 generosity which w^ould seem scarcely consistent with 
 the catastrophe of a few months later, did we not remem- 
 ber that elections are determined by the votes of persons 
 the great majority of whom pay little attention to public 
 affairs between one election and the next. 
 
 ^ Some of his opponents saw in the disease of the brain a proof that his 
 illness was a Divine judgment on his unchristian love of peace. ' ' One 
 Scotch lord told a great audience that I was afflicted by a visitation of 
 Providence, and that I was suffering from a disease of the brain. His 
 friends can tell whether that is a complaint with which he is ever likely to 
 be afflicted." 
 
74 John Bright. 
 
 During his absence from Parliament Palmerston pur- 
 sued the now popular policy of quarrelling and warfare. 
 In 1857 we were at war with Persia and with China. 
 The dispute with China turned on the question whether 
 the coasting schooner Arrow, on board of which the 
 Chinese police had arrested certain Chinamen suspected 
 of piracy, was or was not a vessel entitled to the pro- 
 tection of the British flag. The evidence showed clearly 
 that she was not so entitled, and that the violent mea- 
 sures of the Government had no justification. A vote 
 of censure moved by Cobden was supported not only by 
 the small party that still habitually voted with him, but 
 by the Peelites who had helped to make the Crimean 
 war, and by the Conservatives who had at least con- 
 doned it, Disraeli, Cobden, and Mr. Gladstone voting 
 in the same lobby. By this '^ fortuitous concourse of 
 atoms ", as Palmerston called it, the Government was 
 defeated. Bright wrote to his friend from Rome: '* I 
 need not tell you how greatly pleased I was with the 
 news, and especially ^that the blow was given by your 
 hand ". 
 
 Palmerston took a course then more unusual than it 
 has since become. Instead of resigning he appealed 
 from the Commons to the country, with a confidence, 
 fully justified by the result, that the popularity he enjoyed 
 as a strong minister, and that distrust of a coalition of 
 factions which is characteristic of the British electorate, 
 would carry him triumphantly through a general election. 
 He had recently visited Manchester, where he was re- 
 ceived by Bright's constituents with ominous enthusiasm. 
 It was not to be expected that his friends in that borough 
 would spare the man who had assailed their leader with 
 a vehemence exceeding the customary bounds of political 
 enmity. Two local Liberals of Palmerston's school, 
 whose undistinguished names may be found In the poll- 
 books, were nominated against Bright and Milner Gib- 
 
India. 75 
 
 son. Nothing" could be more complete than the victory. 
 In 1852 Bright and his colleag-ue had had a majority in 
 every ward except one; in 1857 they were in a minority 
 in every ward. Brig-ht was at the bottom of the poll, 
 nearly 3000 votes below his leading" antagonist. Man- 
 chester appeared to have renounced the Manchester 
 School. Doubtless many causes contributed to this 
 disaster; but the testimony of the time agrees in attri- 
 buting" it mainly to the unpopularity of Bright's opposi- 
 tion to the war. The inexpiable offence had been the 
 letter to Watkin, which, unhappily for its author, had 
 been translated and circulated in Russia by order of the 
 Tsar. At the same time Cobden suffered defeat at 
 Huddersfield. 
 
 It would be idle to repeat here the charge of ingrati- 
 tude with which the Manchester Liberals were assailed. 
 By revolting" from the party to which his constituents 
 were attached, Bright had accepted the risk of losing" 
 their support. His claims on their gratitude were no 
 doubt exceptional, for they were the master cotton- 
 spinners, who had most eagerly desired the repeal of 
 the Corn Law, and who owed to the victory won by the 
 extraordinary exertions of Bright and Cobden the aug- 
 mentation both of their wealth and their political and 
 social dignity. But it was not unreasonable to argue 
 that the intention of representative institutions would 
 be frustrated if men were deterred by gratitude for past 
 services, however eminent, from casting a sincere vote 
 on a question of present importance submitted to the 
 suffrages of the country. The outstanding question at 
 that crisis was, not whether Bright had served the 
 country and his order well fifteen years before, but 
 whether his enemy Palmerston was still to be prime 
 minister of England. Palmerston was the only possible 
 prime minister of the Liberal party — indeed, he was the 
 only possible prime minister of any party, if the proba- 
 
76 John Bright. 
 
 bility that the supporters of Disraeli would outnumber 
 any combination of Liberals, Radicals, and Peelites was 
 small enoug-h to be neglected ; for no stable Government 
 could possibly be formed by the temporary coalition that 
 had driven him to appeal to the country. 
 
 Bright took leave of Manchester in an admirable letter, 
 in which his characteristic self-confidence is expressed 
 with sing-ular dignity. Neither then nor afterwards did 
 he condescend to complaint or reproach, unless in a 
 single sentence of his first speech at Birmingham. " If 
 there be those in the defence of whose interests the 
 priane years of my life have been spent, who, when I was 
 stricken down and enduring a tedious exile, subjected 
 me to passionate and ungenerous treatment, I have the 
 consolation of knowing that their act was not approved 
 by the country." 
 
 This boast was fully justified. If the burgesses of 
 Manchester expected the applause of the nation for 
 postponing gratitude to patriotism, they were entirely 
 disappointed. The Times, which had strongly resented 
 Bright's protest against the war, and which was at that 
 time supporting Palmerston's claims, had before the 
 election supported Bright's candidature with a gener- 
 osity rarely permitted by the exigence of party warfare. 
 After the defeat. Conservative journals joined with the 
 independent Liberal press of the provinces in such ex- 
 pressions of regret at his disappearance from Parliament, 
 as prove that Cobden had scarcely exaggerated the 
 general esteem in which his friend was held.^ 
 
 On the loth of August, 1857, whilst still abroad and 
 ill. Bright was returned without opposition by Birming- 
 ham, a constituency which he continued to represent 
 
 ^The Saturday Review, for example, said: "Rarely have politicians 
 retired from the parliamentary stage attended by so general an expression 
 of respect and esteem as that which Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright have 
 received from those who were most opposed to the ideas and principles by 
 which their careers were guided ". 
 
India. 77 
 
 without interruption until his death thirty-two years 
 later. Manchester had enjoyed the distinction of g-iving* 
 its name to the advanced school of Liberal politicians. 
 Almost simultaneously with Bright's change of constitu- 
 ency, Birmingham became, and for many years remained, 
 the recognized head-quarters of Radicalism. The share 
 taken by this town in the anti-corn-law agitation had 
 been comparatively insignificant; but it had played a 
 more conspicuous part in the movement that preceded 
 the Reform Bill of 1832, and at Bright's first visit to his 
 new constituents he invited them to take the lead with 
 him in a new agitation for parliamentary reform. The 
 history of this enterprise will form the subject of the 
 next chapter. Another subject, in which Bright inter- 
 ested himself with scarcely less ardour, claims attention 
 first. 
 
 The first question of importance with which Parlia- 
 ment had to deal after Bright's return was that of the 
 government of India. The Mutiny, which befell at the 
 time of the general election, had forced upon all parties 
 the necessity for such constitutional reforms in the 
 administration of that part of our Empire as Bright had 
 already advocated. For fifteen years he had been the 
 foremost assailant of the East India Company, and of 
 the system, established in 1784, and from time to time 
 renewed with modifications, by which India was g"ov- 
 erned by the Directors of the Company, checked by a 
 Board of Control responsible through its president to 
 the sovereign and to Parliament. In 1858 that system 
 was suddenly abandoned and the Company abolished. 
 "That was exactly what we had asked them to do in 
 1853," said Bright later; '*but nothing is done until there 
 comes an overwhelming calamity, when the most obtuse 
 and perverse is driven from his position." It has ap- 
 peared convenient to defer to this point the history of 
 Bright's earlier dealings with the Indian question. 
 
7^ John Bright. 
 
 Before his opinions are recorded we have to confront 
 the view that he was disquaUfied by ignorance and pre- 
 judice from holding" any respectable opinions on India at 
 all. He had, we are often told, no trustworthy know- 
 ledge of India, and his religious antipathy to war and 
 conquest predisposed him to disparage the conduct 
 of an authority acquired and held by force of arms. 
 This view is presented with some severity in Mr. Leslie 
 Stephen's account of an attack made on Bright by Sir 
 James Fitzjames Stephen in 1877. The immediate ques- 
 tion at issue was whether the British Government had 
 done what it was reasonable to expect for the improve- 
 ment of Indian irrigation. Stephen accused Bright of 
 gross ignorance of the facts. Thirty years before Bright 
 had been chairman of a committee of the House of 
 Commons appointed to consider this very subject; and 
 it may be remarked that the imputations of ignorance, 
 so easily made by persons who have served in India 
 whenever a member of Parliament offers an opinion on 
 Indian affairs, bring us perilously near the conclusion, — 
 surely anti-imperialistic, — that Parliament, that is, that 
 Britain, is not well qualified to govern India at all. 
 ** His wrath, however," says the biographer of Stephen, 
 ** was really aroused by the moral assumptions involved. 
 Bright, he thought, represented the view of the common- 
 place shopkeeper, intensified by the prejudices of the 
 Quaker. To him ambition and conquest naturally 
 represented simple crimes. Ambition, retorts Fitzjames, 
 is the incentive to all manly virtues ; and conquest is an 
 essential factor in the building up of all nations. We 
 should be proud, not ashamed, to be the successors of 
 Clive and Warren Hastings and their like", and so 
 forth. 
 
 In point of fact, it would be difficult to collect from 
 Bright's speeches any certain evidence that he was 
 proud, or that he was ashamed, of the performances of 
 
India. 79 
 
 Clive and Hasting-s. Probably he was indifferent. He 
 was little interested in historical problems, even in those 
 that raise ethical discussion, such as the still vexed 
 question of the morality of the conquest of India. *'I 
 accept", he said, "our possession of India as a fact. 
 There we are; we do not know how to leave it; and 
 therefore let us see if we know how to govern it." But 
 it is not to be denied that he was insensible of the glory 
 of conquest, that he had no share whatever in the pride 
 that rejoices in the mere vastness of the Empire, and 
 that, in estimating" its value, he was contented with the 
 standards of measurement that are supplied by the 
 returns of the Board of Trade. Further, it is certain 
 that the wars by which, even during his own lifetime, 
 the Indian Empire was extended and consolidated filled 
 him with mere horror; for the enthusiasts of peace at 
 any price are not easily persuaded that peace must 
 sometimes be purchased at the price of war. '' It may 
 be our unhappy fate", he said, '*to demonstrate the 
 truth of the saying, * There is no sure foundation set in 
 blood'." 
 
 Bright was, in short, an early and not a highly- 
 developed example of the order of politicians who are 
 called, in the most recent political slang, Little- 
 Englanders. This admission, which will be made with 
 equal readiness by those of his admirers who share, and 
 by those who dispute, the preconceptions with which he 
 approached all questions of imperial policy, must of 
 necessity modify, in the minds of those who are not 
 ashamed of the pride which Bright renounced, the 
 respect to be paid to his deliverances on such matters 
 as the government of India. On the other hand, the 
 questions at issue in the deliberations in which he took 
 part were largely practical questions of administrative 
 aims and methods, which it was, perhaps, an actual 
 advantage to regard with eyes undazzled by the glamour 
 
8o John Bright. 
 
 of imperial vainglory. After all, the insensibility which 
 allowed Bright to mention India without feeling his 
 bosom swell at the remembrance of Plassey, did not alto- 
 gether disqualify him from sound views on the condition 
 of the ryots and the economic demerits of the Indian 
 land system ; and his dissatisfaction with the Jos Sedleys 
 of his own time was not in itself inconsistent with the 
 most favourable opinion of the virtues of Hastings. 
 
 Like other British statesmen, Bright could not help 
 occasionally falling into errors such as could be avoided 
 only by actual experience of Indian affairs. It is quite 
 possible that he sometimes fathered the complaints of 
 the native population without due allowance for oriental 
 duplicity and hyperbole. It is possible that, being versed 
 in the politics of a country where the first condition of 
 good order is that the government should be popular, 
 and the second that it should be strong, he did not 
 adequately recognize in his criticisms that in India it is 
 more important that the government should be strong 
 than that it should be popular. Accustomed as he was 
 to declaim against the failings of a decadent aristocracy, 
 and habitually incurious of the lessons of past history, 
 he may not have acknowledged to himself that nearly 
 every nation that has become great has owed its great- 
 ness in the first instance to the great qualities of its 
 aristocracy, and that it is in India, if anywhere, that 
 what remains of the ancient virtues of the English 
 oligarchy may still be rendering service to humanity. 
 His hatred of oligarchy predisposed him to criticise with 
 severity the conduct of a government which was not 
 only oligarchical, but foreign. But, if he was eager to 
 discern the faults of a system of arbitrary rule, he, at 
 least, did not proceed to the absurdity of applying to 
 India without discrimination the commonplaces of 
 British democratic sentiment. Nor is there anything 
 in his speeches which would justify us in imputing to 
 
India. 8i 
 
 him the extreme opinion which, as Mr. Morley tells us, 
 was held by his friend Cobden; who, it is said, '* had 
 always taken his place among- those who cannot see 
 any advantage either to the natives or their foreig-n 
 masters in this vast possession ". 
 
 Whatever weight may be assig'ned to these admis- 
 sions, the service that Bright rendered to g^ood govern- 
 ment in India cannot fairly be denied; and nothing 
 could be more unjust than to dismiss him as a visionary 
 or as a mere grumbler. In the first place, although 
 hostile criticism must often be unjust criticism, it is 
 infinitely more wholesome than mere acquiescence. 
 Bright set his face against that indolent or insincere 
 optimism of officials, which easily becomes inveterate if 
 nobody takes the trouble to disturb it. In the second 
 place, he asserted the right and the duty of the Imperial 
 Parliament to make independent investigations ; and he 
 prepared himself for discussion by a study, laborious if 
 incomplete, of all accessible facts. Herein he set a 
 useful example to his colleagues, upon whose shoulders 
 the burden of imperial responsibility sat too lightl}^ 
 **No one out of office ", he declared in 1853, ^'has paid 
 so much attention to this question as I have done." In 
 the third place, he insisted with salutary iteration that 
 in India, as elsewhere, **the test that indicates the true 
 character of the Government is to be found in the condi- 
 tion of the people that are governed ". 
 
 Bright's attention had been first directed to India by 
 the requirements of his own occupation. In 1847 he 
 had asked for a committee of the House to inquire into 
 the culture of cotton in India. The Company had spent 
 ;^ioo,ooo in experiments, without improving either the 
 quality or the quantity of the cotton received by Lanca- 
 shire from India. Bright already foresaw the cotton 
 famine that nearly ruined his county and his industry in 
 1862. '' We ought not to forget that the whole of the 
 
 (M433) F 
 
$2 John Bright. 
 
 cotton grown in America is produced by slave labour; 
 and, no matter how long slavery may have existed, 
 abolished it will ultimately be, either by peaceable or 
 violent means." The committee he asked was granted 
 the following j^ear, and, under his own chairmanship, 
 collected such evidence as was accessible to a committee 
 sitting in Westminster. It reported that the natural 
 conditions of soil and climate were favourable to the 
 cultivation of cotton, and the people accustomed to the 
 work. But there were four conditions unfavourable to 
 the success of the industry, which, in Bright's opinion, 
 could at least be mitigated by good government. These 
 were, bad roads; insufficient irrigation; the condition 
 of the industrial population, who were so poor that they 
 resorted to the money-lender to buy seed, and mort- 
 gaged growing crops; and bad fiscal arrangements, 
 especially the land assessment, which was regarded as 
 rent paid to the State, but differed from rent in not 
 being determined by the free competition of landlords 
 for tenants and of tenants for land. He attributed the 
 first two conditions to the niggardliness of the Company, 
 whose expenditure on roads, bridges, canals, and tanks 
 was only one -half per cent of their revenue. The 
 condition of the people, he declared, could not be 
 amended without the interference of Parliament. For 
 these reasons Bright proceeded, in 1850, to ask for a 
 Royal Commission. This request, though supported 
 both by Peel and by Lord George Bentinck, the pro- 
 tectionist leader, was refused by the President of the 
 Board of Control, Sir J. C. Hobhouse (Lord Broughton), 
 *' one of the most contented and somnolent of statesmen 
 that ever filled that or any other office ". Twelve years 
 later, when the disaster against which he had tried to 
 provide had befallen. Bright reproached Broughton 
 bitterly as ** having neglected in regard to India every 
 great duty that appertained to his high office ". 
 
India. 83 
 
 In the session of 1853, Bright laid his views on 
 Indian gfovernment at length before the House in three 
 speeches before and during- the debates on Sir C. 
 Wood's India Bill. This Bill made no substantial 
 change in the relations of the Board of Control and the 
 Directors; and the reforms proposed, though elaborate, 
 and intended to increase the power of the Imperial 
 Government and to diminish the privileges of the Com- 
 pany, were, with one exception, unimportant in com- 
 parison with the heroic measures for which Bright had 
 called. This exception was the partial abolition of 
 patronage and favour in the civil service of the Com- 
 pany, and the institution of open competition by 
 examination for admission to Haileybury, the training 
 school of Indian civil officers. ''Some of Bright's objec- 
 tions ", wrote Macaulay, after the first reading, "are 
 groundless, and others exaggerated; but the vigour 
 of his speech will do harm. I will try whether I cannot 
 deal with the Manchester champion." Macaulay's 
 speech was chiefly occupied with an animated defence 
 of the proposed system of competitive examination; 
 and it is certain that Bright strangely under-estimated 
 the value of this reform, which struck, not ineffectively, 
 at the root of many of the evils he had denounced. 
 
 His indictment was certainly sweeping. He pro- 
 tested that the Indian Government as represented in 
 the House was fluctuating, uncertain, and incompetent; 
 that the presidents of the Board of Control were so 
 frequently changed (four persons had filled this office 
 within ten months) that there was no continuity of 
 policy and no disposition to grapple with difficulties; 
 that responsibility was divided and concealed; that the 
 division of authority was fruitful in procrastination; 
 that there was a constant underground wrangling 
 between the two authorities; that Indian opinion was 
 unanimous in calling for a constitutional change, and in 
 
84 John Bright. 
 
 complaining- of the delay and expense of the law-courts, 
 the inefficiency and low character of the police, and the 
 neg-lect of road-making- and irrig-ation ; that the destitu- 
 tion of the people was such as to demonstrate of itself 
 a fundamental error in the system of government ; that 
 the well-meant statute authorizing the employment of 
 natives in offices of trust was a dead letter; that taxa- 
 tion was clumsy and unscientific, and its burden intoler- 
 able to a people destitute of mechanical appliances ; 
 that the salt-tax was cruel, and the revenue from opium 
 precarious; that the revenue was squandered on un- 
 necessary wars, while the Company had spent less on 
 public works in the whole dominion than the city of 
 Manchester had spent on its water-supply; that the 
 civil service was overpaid; that there was no security 
 for the competence and character of the collectors, , 
 whose power was such that each man could make or 
 mar a whole district ; that the best men were kept out 
 of the Directorate by ignominious canvassing;^ that ^ ^ 
 Parliament was unable to grapple fairly with any ques- J 
 tion of India, or to deal with any grievance there as • 
 they could deal with grievances at home or in the 
 colonies ; finally, that India was ruled by a government 
 in a mask, and that the people and Parliament of Britain 
 were shut out from all consideration in regard to it. 
 
 Such was Bright's indictment against British rule in 
 India. Even after the reconstruction of the Govern- 
 ment, he reasserted many of its counts from time to 
 time on such occasions as the annual debates on the 
 Indian Budget. There is always something ungracious 
 in the criticism of the doer by the talker — in the task of 
 one who points out faults to be amended, if at all, by 
 the wisdom and the skill of others. But it is a task 
 
 1 Bright succeeded in carrying a clause prohibiting canvassing. He failed 
 in another amendment designed to bring the offices of the two authorities 
 under the same roof. 
 
 4 
 
India. 85 
 
 rendered necessary by the natural indolence of humanity 
 and the natural conservatism of office; it is a task im- 
 posed by the spirit of our constitution upon the Opposi- 
 tion, and, in a sense. Bright was always, until he 
 became a minister himself, in opposition. 
 
 When he took his new seat in Parliament early in 
 1858, he found his colleag-ues engaged on the first of the 
 three India Bills of the session, that of the Liberal Gov- 
 ernment. But on February 19 Palmerston's Ministry 
 fell, the Manchester School again striking the fatal blow. 
 The attempted assassination of the Emperor of the French 
 by conspirators who had concocted their plot in England, 
 produced one of those crises at which the admirable 
 patriotism of the French nation commonly breaks out in 
 the silly fashion which recalls Chauvin and Bar^re. 
 Before the gasconading had subsided, the British Gov- 
 ernment hastily brought in the Conspiracy to Murder 
 Bill. The Opposition thought, or affected to think, that 
 it was undignified to legislate in a hurry to oblige the 
 Frenchman. Whether this view was right or wrong, 
 poetical justice was satisfied when Palmerston became 
 the victim of that touchy national dignity which he had 
 loved to encourage. He was roasted in his own brazen 
 bull. A resolution condemning hasty legislation on the 
 criminal law, and reprimanding the Government for 
 leaving the French remonstrance unanswered, was moved 
 by Bright's old colleague, Milner Gibson, who now sat 
 for Ashton, and seconded by Bright himself. Palmerston 
 did not fail to congratulate them on appearing for the 
 first time as the champions of the honour of their country. 
 But they were supported not only by the Conservatives 
 but by the Peelites and by Russell. The Government 
 was defeated, and Lord Derby became Prime Minister 
 and Disraeli leader of the Commons. The Peelites de- 
 clined, and the Radicals were not asked, to join the new 
 Ministry. 
 
86 John Bright. 
 
 The task of reforming- the constitution of India there- 
 fore passed unexpectedly to DisraeH. His first attempt 
 failed; and before introducing the third India Bill, he 
 took the sense of the House on a series of resolutions 
 laying down principles on which legislation was to pro- 
 ceed. The first of these resolutions transferred the gov- 
 ernment from the Company to the Crown. The feeling 
 against the Company was so strong that Mangles, its 
 mouthpiece in the House, did not venture to call for a 
 division. The subsequent resolutions directed the ap- 
 pointment of a Secretary of State, or other responsible 
 minister, through whom the Queen should exercise her 
 authority; an Indian Council, over which he should 
 preside, and which would take the place of the old Board 
 of Control; and the transference of the proprietary rights 
 of the Company to the Crown. The Bill as passed also 
 established a Viceroy to exercise in India the imperial 
 authority over all the provinces alike. 
 
 The debate on the resolutions was interrupted by an 
 incident which curiously illustrated the demoralization of 
 the Liberal party. Lord Canning, the Governor whose 
 intrepidity and prudence had saved the Indian Empire at 
 the terrible crisis of the Mutiny, had proceeded to mea- 
 sures of retribution, which, although they so far disap- 
 pointed the natural vindictiveness of the British in India 
 that he was nicknamed Clemency Canning, exceeded 
 the limits which appeared just and prudent to the Home 
 Government. He issued a proclamation confiscating the 
 lands of the Kingdom of Oude, with the exception of 
 the estates of nobles whose loyalty to the British rule 
 was inviolate. Lord Ellenborough, the new President 
 of the Board of Control, at once sent a despatch ordering 
 the withdrawal of the proclamation, and was so anxious 
 to dissociate himself from a vindictive policy that he 
 communicated his despatch to Bright, who was in a 
 manner recognized as the champion of the native Indians 
 
India. 87 
 
 in Parliament. When an outcry at the premature pub- 
 lication of the despatch was raised, Ellenboroug-h tried 
 to save his colleag"ues by resigning office. But an 
 attempt was made, with great confidence of success, to 
 reunite the Liberal majority on a resolution which, with- 
 out approving Canning's proclamation, condemned the 
 peremptory tone of the despatch. The disunion of the 
 Opposition had been such that the appearance of Russell's 
 and Palmerston's names together on the list of guests 
 at a dinner-party was hailed as a momentous political 
 event. Bright on this occasion performed the function, 
 not unfamiliar to him, of the candid friend of his party. 
 He not only told his friends that they would be disin- 
 genuous if they blamed the Government for condemning 
 a measure which they themselves disapproved,^ but 
 declared that he was better satisfied with the Conserva- 
 tive Government than with the administration it had 
 superseded, or than he was likely to be with any that 
 the Liberals could form until the affairs of the party 
 were in better trim. After this speech the Opposition 
 collapsed with a suddenness which Disraeli, who was 
 provokingly cheerful for a minister with a minority, 
 compared to the instantaneous ruin of an earthquake. 
 The resolution was withdrawn; and for the rest of the 
 session the Government was as secure as if supported 
 by a loyal majority. 
 
 The Bill, under which India has since been governed 
 without any necessity for further constitutional change, 
 did not entirely satisfy Bright's zeal for reform. He ob- 
 jected to the Council, which, he predicted, would within 
 five years be abolished as either obstructive or as having 
 fallen into contempt. The constitution of the Home 
 Government should be simple, to correspond with the 
 
 ^ Bright, however, paid a tribute to the humanity and justice of Canning. 
 The intention and effect of the proclamation seem to have been misunder- 
 stood by all parties. 
 
88 John Bright. 
 
 simplicity of its function of control rather than legislation. 
 He was not satisfied that the new constitution, which still 
 involved perpetual reference from Calcutta to Westmin- 
 ster, would be free from the "circumlocution, delay, and 
 neglect" which had distinguished the old dual system. 
 Procrastination, he said a few years later, was the very 
 nature of the Calcutta Government. But his most serious 
 objection was taken to the office of Viceroy, and to the 
 expectation which such an institution implied, that the 
 provinces of India could be " bound up and consolidated 
 into one compact and enduring empire". "You lay 
 duties on the Governor-general which are utterly beyond 
 the mental and bodily strength of any man who ever 
 existed." How could one man grasp the govern- 
 ment of " a country of. twenty nations speaking twenty 
 languages"? We could not expect a succession of 
 Alexanders. " No doubt there have been men strong in 
 arm and in head and of stern resolution who have kept 
 great empires together during their lives ; but as soon as 
 they went the way of all flesh, and descended like the 
 meanest of their subjects to the tomb, the provinces they 
 had ruled were divided Into several states, and their 
 great empires vanished." Bright was in favour of 
 further decentralization. His own plan was that "the 
 country should be divided into five or six separate, and, 
 as regards each other, independent, presidencies of equal 
 rank, with a governor and council in each, and each 
 government corresponding with, and dependent upon, 
 and responsible to, a secretary of state in this country ". 
 Ten years later Bright declined Mr. Gladstone's off"er 
 to him of the Indian Secretaryship of State. Probably he 
 refused this opportunity, not so much because he had 
 lost his sense of the deficiencies of Indian administration 
 or his faith in his methods of reform, — for he very rarely 
 admitted any change of opinion, — as because he had not 
 enough confidence in his own ability to execute his 
 
 -V 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 89 
 
 designs. He was at that time fifty-seven years of age, 
 and wearied by the long struggle for Reform; his second 
 illness was imminent; and in him the energy of youth 
 was abated somewhat early in life. During his last 
 twenty years he was perforce a comparatively idle man. 
 It is probable that Bright's vigorous and prolonged 
 animadversions on Indian government helped to inspire 
 the internal reforms by which the viceroyalty of Lord 
 Ripon ( 1 880-1 884) was distinguished. Bright at any 
 rate regarded those reforms with satisfaction. He wrote 
 to an Indian correspondent: "The principles which have 
 distinguished the administration of Lord Ripon seem to 
 me to be those which promise to be beneficial to you and 
 creditable to us". Intelligent and liberal opinion is still 
 far from unanimous in approval of the policy of popular 
 concession initiated by Lord Ripon. If it should be 
 finally condemned, much of Bright's fault-finding, and 
 some of his suggestions, will share the condemnation. 
 But he will always deserve applause as the first private 
 member of Parliament since the days of Burke who set 
 himself with diligence and ardour to investigate and 
 redress the wrongs of the voiceless millions of India. 
 
 Chapter V. 
 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 In October, 1858, at the first meeting at which he 
 addressed his Birmingham constituents, Bright set afoot 
 the popular movement for Reform. Ten years had 
 elapsed since he and Hume first propounded their 
 scheme to the House of Commons; and he was now 
 able to say that already four ministries — those of Rus- 
 sell, Aberdeen, Palmerston, and Derby — had pledged 
 themselves to Reform. The first steps taken by the 
 
go John Bright. 
 
 Radicals in the House of Commons have already been 
 recounted. It is now necessary to resume the history 
 of the movement from that point to the autumn of 1858. 
 
 The scheme of the Chartists had included five heads 
 of Parliamentary Reform — universal suffrage, the ballot, 
 annual parliaments, the abolition of the property qualifi- 
 cation for membership, and the payment of members. 
 In 1848 most Radicals had declared for four of these 
 five points, though they substituted household for man- 
 hood suffrage, and triennial for annual parliaments. 
 The payment of members was at no time admitted by 
 Bright into his scheme. He rarely or never alluded to 
 that proposal in his Reform speeches. His judgment 
 upon it is given in the following passage of a much 
 later speech. ** I am satisfied that the results of pay- 
 ment of members, in some countries at least, are highly 
 unsatisfactory. The condition of things in the United 
 States is deplorable. I think that in any country it 
 introduces into the list of candidates men who are 
 willing to make the occupation of party life a trade 
 from which they may get a comfortable income." 
 
 Bright had advocated triennial parliaments for two 
 reasons. He thought it desirable to counterbalance by 
 a more immediate fear of the constituencies the influ- 
 ence which the Treasury could exercise over members 
 of Parliament by means of its patronage. In the second 
 place, it appeared to him mischievous that legislators 
 should be fettered in judgment by those specific pledges 
 which constituencies were tempted to exact from repre- 
 sentatives elected for so long a period as seven years. 
 But on this point his opinion suffered some change; 
 and by 1858 it had disappeared from his scheme of 
 Reform. 
 
 Faith in the Ballot was part of Bright's inheritance 
 from the older school of Radicals. Long before he 
 entered political life Grote and others had called for this 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 91 
 
 method of protecting the independence of voters, and 
 had convinced even so sound a partisan of Whig" finaUty 
 as Macaulay. It may appear surprising- that a man so 
 eminently outspoken and veracious as Bright should 
 have been enamoured of a device which must either be 
 inefficient or succeed only by the aid of habitual false- 
 hood. The example of America as well as the precepts 
 of the philosophical Radicals may have weighed with 
 him. For whatever reason, he was uniformly and un- 
 doubtingly persistent in asking that the voter should 
 ''give his vote by a machinery which should protect 
 him against the influence of his landlord, his creditor, 
 and his customers ". He declared that, if the workmen 
 of the towns were admitted to the franchise, they too 
 must be protected against the influence of their em- 
 ployers. His reply to Palmerston, who had argued 
 that a man's morality would be injured if he were taught 
 to violate an open promise by a secret vote, gives his 
 judgment on the ethical question. ' ' The noble Lord 
 appears not to be aware of the fact that if a man is 
 made to promise contrary to his conscience he by that 
 promise is equally guilty of immorality; and if he votes 
 in accordance with his promise he doubly violates the 
 rule which the noble Lord professes to support." 
 
 Bright was also at all times consistent in declaring 
 that he was not afraid of the widest possible extension 
 of the suffrage, though it is certain that he would have 
 been content, and probable that he would have been 
 better pleased, to give first a fair trial to a suffrage less 
 wide than household suffrage. But his speeches show 
 that in 1858 he assigned the greater importance to re- 
 distribution; and that his main purpose was to secure 
 for the large manufacturing and commercial towns, in 
 which the principles of public action to which he was 
 devoted had found widest acceptance, a preponderant 
 influence in the control of the national policy. It must 
 
92 John Bright. 
 
 be added that' at this period he never spoke on Reform 
 without indicating his confidence that that influence 
 when acquired would be used in favour of a peaceful 
 and unenterprising foreign policy, and of a great reduc- 
 tion in the national expenditure. No self-governed 
 people, he declared, had ever wasted, or would ever 
 waste, so much of the national wealth as had been 
 squandered by the class that since the Revolution had 
 governed England, and had made unnecessary wars, 
 created unnecessary offices, and contracted the national 
 debt. 
 
 As early as 1848 Russell had cautiously admitted that 
 '*it would soon be advisable to consider the extension 
 of the franchise". In 1849 he raised the question of 
 introducing a new Reform Bill in the Cabinets. In 
 1851 he promised a Bill. *'But," said Bright, ''looking 
 at the speeches of the noble Lord on this question, and 
 leaving out of view his antecedents twenty years ago, 
 there is no reason for believing that he is about to sub- 
 mit such a Reform Bill as would excite the enthusiasm 
 of the country." 
 
 In the session of 1852 the first of many abortive 
 Reform Bills was introduced by Russell. The Act of 
 1832, while preserving- some of the ancient franchises 
 conferred on different boroughs according to varying 
 qualifications, established in general a ;£^io occupation 
 franchise in boroughs, and in counties a ;^5o occupa- 
 tion, and a forty-shilling freehold, franchise. Russell's 
 Bill proposed to reduce the rated value qualifying an 
 occupier for a vote from ;^5o to ;^20 in counties, and 
 from ;^io to £^ in boroughs. The new qualification 
 in the boroughs would have admitted working men 
 paying as low a rent as half a crown a week, and 
 was therefore by no means an illiberal concession. The 
 Bill also off'ered the franchise to all persons both in 
 boroughs and counties paying forty shillings in direct 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 93 
 
 taxation. This qualification would have admitted a 
 larg^e number of persons resident in counties, who were 
 neglected in the Act of 1867, and waited for their 
 citizenship until 1884. Russell also proposed to extend 
 the boundaries of sixty-seven small boroughs for the 
 purpose of parliamentary elections. Before this Bill 
 came up for a second reading the Ministry had fallen. 
 Bright had given it the coldest of welcomes. He 
 thought that the county franchise should be further 
 reduced, and that, without some further measure of 
 redistribution, the House would still continue to mis- 
 represent the balance of opinion in the country. 
 
 In the session of 1854 Russell brought in the Reform 
 Bill of the Coalition Ministry. This Bill proposed an 
 occupation franchise of ;^io in counties and boroughs 
 alike, with a ;^6 qualification for dwelling-houses in 
 boroughs only. It repeated the taxation franchise of 
 the former Bill, and further proposed to give votes to 
 graduates, to every man who had an income of £100 
 not paid weekly, or who enjoyed an income of ;£'io 
 from Bank Stock or East India Stock, or possessed 
 £S^ deposited for three years in a savings-bank. The 
 redistribution clauses took sixty-two seats away from 
 fifty-two small boroughs ; and bestowed some of these 
 upon the large boroughs, but most of them upon the 
 more populous county divisions. The Bill was also 
 remarkable for the first appearance of the minority vote. 
 In the constituencies which received three members each 
 under the redistribution each elector was to vote for two 
 candidates only. 
 
 The Bill was not popular; and little regret was ex- 
 hibited when it was withdrawn in consequence of the 
 Crimean war. Bright explained why it had been re- 
 ceived without enthusiasm. **The noble Lord seems 
 to have forgotten how he carried his Reform Bill in 
 1832. That measure was carried by the heartfelt re- 
 
94 John Bright. 
 
 sponse from all the towns of the United Kingdom. But 
 in the present Bill I am unable to discover what should 
 induce the towns of England to support it. The great 
 towns are not likely to be enthusiastic in favour of a 
 measure which gives members to counties already over- 
 represented, and overlooks the claims of the borough 
 constituencies." 
 
 During the recess between the sessions of 1858 and 
 1859, Bright addressed great popular meetings at Man- 
 chester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bradford, and other towns, 
 as well as at Birmingham. These meetings constituted 
 an event the importance of which could not be gainsaid. 
 It was impossible that they should not recall to the minds 
 of men the old days of the League, the appeal of the 
 Leaguers from the politicians to the population, and 
 their triumph over the moderation of the compromising 
 Whigs. Bright himself informed the House of Com- 
 mons next session that the meetings had "exceeded in 
 numbers and in influence almost every meeting that was 
 held by the Anti-Corn-Law League ". The statesmen 
 of the Liberal party were still scarcely less disinclined 
 to reform than their Conservative competitors. Both 
 parties regarded reform as an inevitable event of the 
 future; both were anxious not to anticipate the neces- 
 sity, and angry with Bright for opening the throttle- 
 valve while they were trying to screw down the break; 
 yet both were eager to intercept the credit of being the 
 first to yield to the popular will as soon as it should 
 become obviously irresistible. The Bills of 1859 and 
 i860, which will shortly be considered, are to be regarded 
 merely as finessing moves in the party game, or, at the 
 best, as mere hallons d'essai. But the Liberals of the 
 great towns, tired of the tame domestic policy of the 
 past ten years, as well as the unenfranchised working 
 men, eagerly responded to Bright's spirited appeals. 
 Among those who joined him at this time were J. A. 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 95 
 
 Roebuck of Sheffield, Duncan Maclaren of Edinburgh, 
 Samuel Morley of Nottingham, W. E. Forster of Brad- 
 ford, and many other leaders of the Liberal opinion of 
 the great provincial cities. ** Bright's agitation will 
 bear fruit", wrote Clough, in January, 1859. ''He is 
 scoffed at in the metropolitan papers and at all clubs; 
 but his hold on the country is such as no M.P. whatever, 
 except himself, possesses." 
 
 Bright's popular oratory still retained all the fire and 
 indignation of his speeches against the Corn Law, while 
 it had improved vastly in the higher qualities of elo- 
 quence. He was now the greatest living master of 
 demagogic rhetoric, if not indeed the greatest that 
 England had ever known. If the end of such oratory 
 is popular enthusiasm and determination, what could 
 be more effective than the closing sentences of his Bir- 
 mingham speech? " Shall we then, I ask you, even for 
 a moment, be hopeless of our great cause? I feel almost 
 ashamed even to argue it to such a meeting as this. 
 I call to mind where I am, and who are those I see 
 before me. Am I not in the town of Birmingham, 
 England's central capital, and do not these eyes look 
 upon the sons of those who not thirty years ago shook 
 the fabric of privilege to its base? Not a few of the 
 strong men of that time are now white with age. They 
 approach the confines of their mortal day. Its evening 
 is cheered with the remembrance of that great contest, 
 and they rejoice in the freedom they have won. Shall 
 their sons be less noble than they? Shall the fire which 
 they kindled be extinguished with you? I see your 
 answer in every face. You are resolved that the legacy 
 which they bequeathed to you you will hand down in 
 an accumulated wealth of freedom to your children. 
 As for me, my voice is feeble. I feel now sensibly and 
 painfully that I am not what I was. I speak with 
 diminished fire, I act with a lessened force; but as I 
 
96 John Bright. 
 
 am, my countrymen and my constituents, I will, if you 
 will let me, be found in your ranks in the impending* 
 struggle." 
 
 During the first three or four years of the agitation 
 Bright's chief topic was the conservatism and wasteful- 
 ness of the class which controlled through the unreformed 
 House of Commons the policy of the country. ''A 
 House of Commons so formed becomes for the most 
 part an organ of the great territorial interests of the 
 country. It hates changes with an animosity that 
 nothing can assuage. It hates economy. It hates 
 equality of taxation." ** All we have done of late years 
 has been to vote with a listless apathy millions of money 
 for which you have toiled." ''The House of Commons 
 presents itself to us as a body caring, I fear, very little 
 for the great internal interests of the country, and reck- 
 less — I will not hesitate to say profligate — in the expen- 
 diture of public money." Against the fears of those 
 who dreaded the evil possibilities of democracy he con- 
 stantly appealed to the example of the United States. 
 " In America there is a franchise as wide as that I have 
 proposed. Yet in America we find law, order, and pro- 
 perty secure. Are we less educated, are we less indus- 
 trious, are we less moral, are we less subject to the law, 
 are we less disposed to submit to all the just require- 
 ments of the Government?" 
 
 At a conference of reformers held in the Guildhall in 
 November, 1858, Bright was entrusted with a commission 
 to prepare a Bill. His scheme was a £^ rental or ;^3 
 rating qualification in the boroughs, a ;£"io franchise in 
 the counties, the ballot, and a redistribution by which 
 130 seats were to be taken from the small towns. Of 
 these seats eighteen only were given to counties, and 
 the rest to the large towns, forty of which were to return 
 three, four, or six members each. 
 
 Early in the session of 1859 Disraeli introduced the 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 97 
 
 promised Reform Bill of the Conservative Government. 
 He clearly disting-uished his purpose from that of Brig-ht. 
 He declared himself one of those reformers whose aim 
 was to " adapt the settlement of 1832 to the England 
 of 1859 " ; and repudiated sympathy with the new school, 
 which thought that " the; chief, if not the sole object of 
 representation was to realize the opinion of the numerical 
 majority of the country". Bright had anticipated that 
 the Bill would be like a Spanish feast — ''a very little 
 meat and a great deal of tablecloth " ; and, whatever its 
 merits, it proposed no satisfaction to the hope of enfran- 
 chisement with which Bright had inspired the working- 
 classes. The county franchise was to be assimilated to 
 that of the boroughs, but no reduction of the qualifying* 
 value in boroughs was offered. The people, said Bright, 
 who were most eager for enfranchisement were to be 
 disappointed. ** Every one of these men, working, toil- 
 ing, serving, paying taxes, and fulfilling all the duties 
 of citizenship, will see that, as he was left an outcast 
 by the Bill of 1832, he must remain an outcast by the 
 Bill of 1859." 
 
 In place of a general enfranchisement of the workmen, 
 Disraeli proposed to bestow the vote as a special reward 
 for thrift or education. He offered it to clergymen and 
 ministers of religion, to certificated schoolmasters, to 
 solicitors, barristers, and proctors, to qualified medical 
 men, to pensioners, to persons possessed of £10 a year 
 from funded property, and to every man who had ;^6o 
 in the savings-bank. Some of these qualifications were 
 borrowed from Russell's Bill. But, so far as the Reform 
 party in the country was concerned. Bright damned them 
 for ever by a single contemptuous epithet. He called 
 them the fancy franchises. No nickname was ever more 
 successful. Disraeli, who was himself our greatest artist 
 of such phrases, was naturally irritated by its success. 
 
 ''Alliteration", he said, "tickles the ear, and is a very 
 ( M 433 ) G 
 
gS John Bright. 
 
 popular form of language among savages. It is, I 
 believe, the characteristic of rude and barbarous poetry. 
 But it is not an argument in legislation." Whatever the 
 value of the argument, it sufficed to convince the savages. 
 
 Disraeli's plan of redistribution was equally cautious. 
 He condemned ''those rattling schemes of disenfran- 
 chisement with which we have been favoured during 
 the autumn ". He took one seat from each of fifteen 
 towns returning two members, and allotted eight of these 
 seats to counties and seven to new boroughs. 
 
 The part of Disraeli's scheme selected for the first 
 combat by the Opposition was rather oddly chosen. 
 During the free-trade agitation many Free-traders had, 
 on Cobden's advice, obtained county votes by the pur- 
 chase of small freeholds in towns. Disraeli now pro- 
 posed that a man who held a freehold in the town in 
 which he lived should vote in respect of that property 
 for the borough instead of the county. The irony of 
 destiny has since decreed that the Liberal party should 
 have the greater cause to complain of that swamping of 
 rural opinion by urban freeholders which Cobden encour- 
 aged, and for which Disraeli tried to find a remedy. 
 But at the moment the proposal meant a transference 
 of Liberal votes from the counties, where they might 
 turn the scale, to the towns, where they were not 
 needed. Russell protested successfully against the 
 change. The Government was defeated on this issue, 
 and appealed to the country. The dissolution deprived 
 Bright of the opportunity of bringing in his own Bill. 
 
 As soon as Parliament reassembled Lord Hartington 
 moved a resolution of no confidence in the Conservative 
 Government. Bright spoke and voted for this resolu- 
 tion; but he was careful to withhold any unqualified 
 promise of support to the coming Liberal Ministry. '* I 
 wish to pursue the same course that I have pursued in 
 the past — a course of vigilance in regard to the Govern- 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 99 
 
 ment." He gave two reasons for his desire to see a 
 change of Government. The war between France and 
 Austria had led the Government to strengthen the na- 
 tional defences; and Bright, always jealous of such 
 expenditure, interpreted it now as conveying a menace 
 to France. His second reason was that he had more 
 confidence in the reforming intentions of Russell than in 
 those of Disraeli. Disraeli had ^* pretended to pay a 
 portion of the debt that had been long due to the people, 
 but he had offered them notes of the Bank of Elegance". 
 Russell had during the election given assurances which, 
 though they proved to be worthless, were for the moment 
 accepted as honest and satisfactory by the Radicals. 
 'Mt will be the duty of the new Government", said 
 Bright, ^*to bring in at an early period a measure of 
 reform very different from the measure of the Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer." 
 
 The Derby Government being defeated by a narrow 
 majority, Palmerston became Prime Minister and Russell 
 Foreign Secretary. Mr. Gladstone, although he had 
 voted with the Conservative Ministry in both the fatal 
 divisions, took office as Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 and from this date may be regarded as a member of the 
 Liberal party. The Peelite group had disappeared by 
 absorption. Palmerston was known to be disinclined to 
 reform, but Russell's pledges had been so precise that 
 the reformers looked forward with a good hope to the 
 coming session. 
 
 During the recess, and in the temporary suspense of 
 the agitation for reform. Bright turned his attention to 
 finance. The brilliant series of budgets by which Mr. 
 Gladstone carried to its conclusion the work begun by 
 Peel, and satisfied the free-trade theory of the Man- 
 chester School, was still incomplete; and Financial 
 Reform Associations were calling for the removal of the 
 duties on between three and four hundred articles of im- 
 
loo John Bright. 
 
 port. Brlght's zeal was not satisfied even by this hope. 
 He secured the approval of the financial reformers of 
 Liverpool for a remarkable scheme, the audacious sim- 
 plicity of which is so characteristic of his mind that, 
 thoug-h it might claim no place in the history of the 
 financial policy of the country, it cannot be omitted 
 from any record of the opinions of its author. He pro- 
 posed in brief to dispense altogether with indirect taxa- 
 tion.^ He asserted the "simple principle of justice that 
 taxes should be levied from the people in proportion to 
 the property which every man possessed by reason of 
 the security which Government gave him". The estab- 
 lished methods of taxation he regarded as "essentially 
 mean and singularly cruel ". All taxation ought to be 
 direct. He proposed also to abolish the existing income- 
 tax. The deficiency of twenty-seven millions incurred 
 by these remissions he proposed to meet partly by 
 retrenchment, but chiefly by a tax of eight shillings per 
 cent on all property, except that of persons whose pos- 
 sessions were worth less than ;^ioo. This was equiva- 
 lent, if the annual yield of the property taxed were taken 
 as five per cent, to a tax of eight per cent on all incomes 
 derived from property, the earnings of work of any sort 
 being left untaxed. 
 
 The poor man's luxuries still continue to yield revenue 
 to the State; but within a few months of this speech, 
 after the great budget of i860. Bright was able to say 
 with exultation that " four hundred obstacles to the free 
 development of our industry have been struck out of the 
 pages of our statute-book". Some years later his own 
 suggestion made a partial reappearance in the form of a 
 proposal for "a free breakfast-table", which supplied an 
 attractive motto for the decoration of political assembly 
 rooms. 
 
 1 This proposal had already been made by the Chartists notably by 
 Lovett in 1848. 
 
Parliamentary Reform. loi 
 
 The Reform Bill which Russell introduced in i86o in 
 fulfilment of his election pledges proposed a £10 quali- 
 fication for the counties, a £,6 qualification for the 
 boroughs, and a meagre scheme of redistribution, by 
 which twenty-five seats taken from the smaller boroughs 
 were allotted, fifteen to counties, nine to boroughs, and 
 one to the University of London. Four boroughs were 
 to have three members each, but one of the three was 
 to represent the minority. 
 
 Bright was willing to accept the compromise so far as 
 the voting qualification was concerned; but, "with the 
 candid audacity", said Disraeli, ''which in his case 
 greatly neutralizes the pernicious opinions he expresses, 
 and the dangerous courses he pursues ", he announced 
 that he would continue the agitation for the ballot, and 
 for a more generous measure of redistribution. Disraeli 
 did not divide the House on the second reading, but he 
 probably did no violence to the prevalent opinion when 
 he described the measure as ''unnecessary, uncalled-for, 
 and mischievous". Greville, who knew all the Whigs, 
 wrote: "It is impossible to meet with any man who ap- 
 proves of this Bill, and who does not abhor the idea of 
 any reform ". Such, no doubt, was the view of the 
 clubs. 
 
 The first important division showed so small a majo- 
 rity for the Bill that Russell withdrew it before the first 
 clause had passed committee. To ask the House of 
 Commons to reform its own constitution is at any time 
 to invite some of its members to commit political suicide; 
 and, notwithstanding the success of Bright's agitation 
 in the great provincial towns, there was as yet no such 
 popular outcry as had forced the reform of 1832 upon 
 Parliament. Yet Bright was justified in warning his 
 colleagues that they were misreading the signs of the 
 times. "There is no turbulence", he said. "The pas- 
 sion of 1832 is past. There is no howling wind and 
 
 X 
 
I02 John Bright. 
 
 no imminent convulsion, but there is the steady, the 
 ever-g^rowing-, the irresistible tide of public opinion. 
 There is the consciousness among millions of your 
 countrymen that Parliament does not adequately repre- 
 sent them and is not just to them." Six years later he 
 elaborated this simile with singularly fine effect. " You 
 have stood on the sea-shore in an hour of quiet and of 
 calm, when no tempest drives the waves, and the wind 
 passes as it were but with a whisper; and yet you see 
 the tide coming- on, urged as it were by some latent and 
 mysterious power. You see the loiterers on the beach 
 driven from point to point by the advancing waves, and 
 by and by and finally the whole vast basin of the ocean 
 seems filled to the very brim. There is no violence; 
 there is not even menace of force; but we all feel that 
 opinion is g-rowing and that the tide is coming- on. We 
 feel that those who oppose — ignorant some of them may 
 be, insolent others may be — are being- gradually driven 
 back, and by and by barriers will be thrown down, 
 and privilege and monopoly will be swept away. The 
 people will be enfranchised, and the measure of their 
 freedom will be full." 
 
 For the moment, however, public attention was occu- 
 pied by other matters. The Free-traders were watching 
 with interest Cobden's great enterprise of the French 
 Commercial Treaty. The credit of this achievement is 
 to be divided between Cobden and Mr. Gladstone. But 
 the germ of the project was a suggestion derived by 
 Michel Chevalier from, a speech of Bright's. Politicians 
 were also interested less in reform than in the great 
 Free-trade Budget of the year, and in those ambitious 
 projects of Louis Napoleon which caused the deplorable 
 Invasion Panic. 
 
 This disquietude gave occasion for another assertion 
 by Bright of his principle of non-intervention. On 
 March 4, i860. Lord Malmesbury wrote in his diary 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 103 
 
 that he had heard Bright deliver ** the most un-English 
 speech he had ever heard in his life ". It is well known 
 that Bright's sentiments were very often reproached as 
 un-English. The reader may perhaps be assisted in 
 assigning a meaning to this indeterminate epithet as 
 applied to Bright, by a citation of those passages of this 
 speech which gave gravest offence. The speech pro- 
 voked an immediate and vivacious rebuke from the 
 present Duke of Rutland. Sir Robert Peel, the son 
 of the statesman, had interrogated ministers on the 
 annexation of Savoy by the Frenchman, and, according 
 to a custom then permitted, had introduced his question 
 with remarks of his own intended for the guidance of 
 the Government. Before the question was answered 
 Bright interposed a protest against discussing such a 
 question in Parliament at aU. *'What does the hon. 
 baronet propose to do? We are not the Parliament of 
 France — we are not the Parliament of Savoy — we are 
 not the Parliament of Europe — but we are the Parlia- 
 ment of England. Unless it can be shown that there is 
 any direct and obvious interest which this country has 
 in any of the foreign questions which are constantly 
 brought before us, what an absurd spectacle do we offer 
 to Europe with all these repeated discussions!" He 
 believed that France would not gain, nor Savoy suffer, 
 by the annexation; but he added: ''Perish Savoy, 
 rather than that we the representatives of the people 
 of England should involve the Government of the coun- 
 try with the people and Government of France in a 
 matter in which we have really no interest whatever. 
 Have we not for generations past endeavoured to settle 
 the map of Europe? Have we not, as if it were not 
 worth a thought, spent blood and treasure for the pur- 
 pose of fixing certain boundaries, and declaring that 
 certain provinces and kingdoms should belong to certain 
 families; and have we not utterly and ignominiously 
 
I04 John Bright. 
 
 failed in every attempt that we have made?" There 
 were many hectoring protests against the annexation as 
 a flagrant breach of European law, but nothing par- 
 ticular was done. The ''English" policy to which 
 Bright took exception proved to be a policy of loud 
 barking, and no biting at all. 
 
 Bright had accepted the great Budget as a reasonable 
 excuse for the withdrawal of the Reform Bill of i860. 
 '' I know you cannot get twenty wagons at once 
 through Temple Bar", he said; and the phrase passed 
 into a proverb. But his indignation broke out when 
 early in the session of 1861 Russell announced, ''with 
 a jocularity that was absolutely contemptuous to those 
 who placed him on that very seat that he might advo- 
 cate that very measure ", that the Ministry did not 
 intend to waste time by introducing another Reform 
 Bill. The country, he said, did not seem to care about 
 the question. "What do you want?" cried Bright. 
 " You want six-sevenths of the people to make a demon- 
 stration which you have put it out of their power to 
 make in a peaceable fashion." Five years later he had 
 to make a similar reply to a similar argument. "There 
 is nothing more marvellously obtuse than the expression 
 of these men at head-quarters, that we need not give the 
 extension of the suffrage because the working people 
 are quiet." " The foundation of revolution ", he said in 
 1866, "has in every country been laid by those who 
 pretended to be especially conservative." 
 
 To wait for the perilous argument from disaffection 
 has always, as Macaulay so often remarked, been a 
 common error of English statesmanship. Bright's in- 
 dignation was not without reason; but Russell and the 
 Government had good grounds for apprehending that no 
 Reform Bill could pass the Parliament with which they 
 had to deal. A struggle for parliamentary reform is 
 inevitably of the nature of a struggle not only between 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 105 
 
 parties in Parliament, but between Parliament itself and 
 the country; and further demonstrations, whether peace- 
 ful or turbulent, were necessary before Parliament would 
 yield. Further, as matters then stood, the death or 
 incapacitation of Palmerston was a necessary condition 
 preliminary to such a reform as would satisfy Brig-ht. 
 Even after the death of their chief the Palmerstonians 
 succeeded once in scuttling- the ship. 
 
 It is possible that a renewal of the popular agitation 
 would have proved without delay the accuracy of Bright's 
 estimate of public opinion, but for the momentous event 
 abroad which diverted attention from reform, and im- 
 posed upon Bright a new duty. The march to reform 
 had been arrested by the Crimean war; it was now 
 delayed by the civil war in America. No foreign event 
 since the French Revolution has produced in this country 
 so much animosity of divergent opinion. It made a 
 schism among the reformers. Roebuck, for example, 
 and Scholefield, Bright's colleague in the representation 
 of Birmingham, were strong partisans of the South. 
 
 The secession of the Southern States, and the appeal 
 to arms made by Lincoln, brought into conflict two of 
 Bright's strongest antipathies — -his hatred of war, and 
 his hatred of slavery. Yet he had less hesitation in 
 declaring his adherence to the cause of the Federals 
 than his friend Cobden, who w^as at first disposed to 
 sympathize with the seceders, as free-traders throwing 
 off the yoke of a protectionist government. Bright per- 
 ceived at once through the cloud of pretexts that the 
 one issue at stake was that of slavery or emancipation. 
 That this was so is now a matter of history. At the 
 time it was a matter of opinion ; and it is certain that 
 many Englishmen, like Dickens, who had been most 
 vehement in using the slavery of the South as a reproach 
 against the whole American nation, sympathized with 
 the South, and even regarded the proclamation of liberty 
 
io6 John Bright. 
 
 made by the Federals as disingenuously intended to 
 enlist philanthropy on their side, and to distract atten- 
 tion from an oppressive attempt to subvert the inde- 
 pendence of the disaffected states. Bright found plenty 
 of evidence that English sympathy with the secession 
 was due in part to jealousy of the growing strength of 
 the Republic, and that opinion was perverted by the 
 apprehension, so distasteful to him, of a disturbance of 
 the Balance of Power. 
 
 **The object of the South", he said, **is this — to 
 escape from the majority who wish to limit the area of 
 slavery; to found a slave state free from the influence 
 and opinions of freedom, a state whose corner-stone is 
 the perpetual bondage of millions of men; to maintain 
 in bondage four millions of human beings; to perpetuate 
 for ever the bondage of all the posterity of those four 
 millions of slaves." *' If the American Republic should 
 be overthrown, there will be a wild shriek of freedom to 
 startle all mankind." 
 
 Bright at all times cherished for the institutions of 
 the United States a singular admiration, which inspired 
 some of the most ambitious flights of his eloquence. He 
 was ready to believe everything that was good of a 
 country where the will of the majority was law, and 
 where there was no territorial aristocracy, no remnants 
 of feudalism, no establishment of religion, and no class, 
 except the slaves of the South, condemned to such hope- 
 less penury and dependence as the agricultural labourers 
 of England. He was silently tolerant of American pro- 
 tection, and of what Mr. Morley calls ''the political 
 corruption which for the moment obscures the great 
 democratic experiment " he showed no consciousness 
 during his period of activity. 
 
 There were always persons to whom Bright's constant 
 admeasurement of Britain with America appeared to 
 be un-English and unpatriotic; and his use of this topic 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 107 
 
 supplied his opponents with the rather nauseous retort 
 that he was trying- to Americanize our institutions. 
 But it is apparent that his affection for America was 
 based on consciousness of the ties of a common blood 
 and a common language ; and that he felt the same sort 
 of satisfaction in contemplating- the g-rowth and fore- 
 casting- the g-reatness of the g-reat English-speaking- 
 nation of the new world that other Englishmen feel in 
 watching the expansion of our own empire. When Mr. 
 Gladstone had declared his belief that the cause of the 
 North could not succeed, Bright replied in words that 
 will never be forgotten in America. " I cannot believe 
 that such a fate will befall that fair land, stricken 
 though it now is with the ravages of war. I cannot 
 believe that civilization in its journey with the sun will 
 sink into endless night in order to gratify the ambition 
 of these men, who seek to ' wade through slaughter to 
 a throne, and shut the gates of mercy on mankind '. I 
 have another and a far brighter vision before my eyes. 
 It may be but a vision, but I will cherish it. I see one 
 vast confederation, stretching from the frozen north to 
 the glowing south, and from the wild billows of the 
 Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific 
 main; and I see one people, and one language, and one 
 law, and one faith, and over all that wide continent the 
 home of freedom and a refuge for the oppressed of 
 every race and of every clime." 
 
 There is surely nothing unpatriotic, nothing that is 
 not entirely admirable, in these great hopes for humanity. 
 Yet it is one who reveres Bright's memory who com- 
 ments thus on this famous peroration. *' Would that it 
 were possible to set beside this noble vision some 
 passage, conceived in the same strain, but inspired by 
 an equal faith in the high destiny of his own country ! 
 If only I could read that majestic sentence without 
 thinking of the scorn and derision with which Bright 
 
io8 John Bright. 
 
 would have visited any man who had used the same 
 magniloquence in predicting" the future of the empire of 
 Britain!" 
 
 It was necessary from Bright's point of view to 
 make a demonstration of sympathy with the North, in 
 order to prevent the Confederate party in Britain from 
 actually involving us in hostility with the American 
 Unionists, especially after the arrest of two Southern 
 emissaries when sailing under the protection of the 
 British flag, and when the North resented the piracies 
 of the Alahavia. He made the advocacy of the Northern 
 cause his mission; and despite his love of peace did 
 not allow his zeal to be dismayed even by the horrors 
 of Sherman's march. For a short time he seemed to be 
 in almost as small a minority as at the time of the 
 Crimean war. But he had now the British hatred of 
 slavery to appeal to, and he carried with him, not indeed 
 all England or all Liberals, but the two sections of the 
 community that accepted his oracles — the Noncon- 
 formists and the working men. It cannot be doubted 
 that he did good service to his country by speaking, as 
 he said, "for that policy which gives hope to the 
 bondsmen of the South, and which tends to generous 
 thoughts, and generous words, and generous deeds, 
 between the two great nations which speak the English 
 language and from their origin are alike entitled to the 
 English name ". The sympathy of England could not 
 avert the defeat of the Confederates; and that sym- 
 pathy, if it had been unbroken, might have engendered 
 a dangerous international animosity. 
 
 The war brought some misfortune to Bright himself. 
 The blockade of the Southern ports cut off the supply 
 of cotton, and paralysed the industry of Lancashire. 
 Bright's private fortune was impaired by the generosity 
 of his firm to their workmen for whom they could not 
 find employment. 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 109 
 
 The American war, the Schleswig--Holstein question, 
 and the cotton famine had combined to prevent the 
 agitation for reform from proceeding with the vigour 
 with which it had been begun in 1858. In 1865 the 
 general election gave the Reformers another oppor- 
 tunity. The Liberal leaders had promised reform six 
 years before, and, with whatever excuse, had failed to 
 redeem that promise. Except for the Gladstone Bud- 
 gets they had done little to encourage the loyalty of 
 the Radicals ; and the sluggishness of the Government 
 and the House gave Bright a new reason for pressing 
 for a change without which he could not pursue hope- 
 fully his crusade against privilege. 
 
 The feeling of the outgoing Parliament towards 
 reform had been tested by a Bill introduced in the last 
 session by Edward Baines, member for Leeds, to reduce 
 the voting qualification in the boroughs. In the debate 
 the coming schism had been foreshadowed by a remark- 
 able speech made by Robert Lowe, a Liberal placeman, 
 in which the case against the enfranchisement of the 
 masses was presented with admirable skill and force. 
 He warned his party that by espousing reform they 
 would ruin the party, if they failed, and the country, if 
 they succeeded. Lowe's Australian experiences had led 
 him to take an unfavourable view — or, as Bright said, 
 a '* Botany Bay view " — of the competence of the work- 
 ing-classes for politics. But the speech was portentous, 
 because Lowe had sat for thirteen years as a member of 
 what was ostensibly a Reform party, had held office in 
 two ministries pledged to reform, and had voted for 
 the earlier Reform Bills. **The Reform question", 
 cried Bernal Osborne, the chief jester of the Liberals, 
 ''has fallen from its high estate. It is 'deserted in its 
 utmost need by those its former bounty fed '. It is 
 reserved for an independent member at a morning 
 sitting to present a fragmentary stump of the Bill, the 
 
no John Bright. 
 
 whole Bill, and nothing* but the Bill, to contemplative 
 Reformers on the eve of an expiring- Parliament." The 
 division g^ave point to this irony. Fifteen years after 
 the leader of the Liberal party had declared for an 
 extension of the suffrage, in the seventh year of a 
 ministry that had come into power on the cry of 
 reform, and in a House in which the Liberals com- 
 manded a substantial majority, the Bill was defeated by 
 a majority of seventy-four. 
 
 Before Bright entered on a campaig-n which was to 
 end in his greatest victory, he had sustained the heaviest 
 blow that fortune could deal at his happiness. In 
 March, 1865, three months before the election, Cobden 
 died. The memorable friendship between Bright and 
 Cobden was based on an identity almost absolute of 
 political aims, — for, except on the Maynooth grant, they 
 never differed on any public question, — and on the 
 recognition by each in the other of powers of mind 
 denied to himself. The inner history of that friendship 
 has not yet been written, and perhaps will never be 
 written, for Bright refused to Cobden's biographer the 
 use of the correspondence in which he and Cobden had 
 interchanged their most intimate thoughts. For many 
 years after the death of his friend Bright scarcely ever 
 dared to mention his name in public, lest he should be 
 overpowered by a rush of emotion. In his old age he 
 once told a friend that nearly every night he was visited 
 and consoled in his dreams by the spirits, or by the 
 memory, of two of the departed. One was his father, 
 the other Richard Cobden. 
 
 Bright was returned without opposition. But for the 
 Reformers the most auspicious event of the election was 
 the rejection of Mr. Gladstone by Oxford University, 
 and his return for an industrial constituency. 
 
 A comparison of Bright's reform speeches in 1858 and 
 1859 with those delivered in 1865 and the two years fol- 
 
Parliamentary Reform. in 
 
 lowing" reveals two striking- differences of topic. In the 
 former period he devoted the greater part of his addresses 
 to the necessity of checking by popular representation 
 the extravagant expenditure of the governing- classes. 
 In the latter, the topic of retrenchment is almost forgot- 
 ten. He now spoke as one desiring- democracy for its 
 own sake. He had said, for instance, at Glasgow in 
 1858: "I hope that an improved representation will 
 change all this ; that that great portion of our expendi- 
 ture which is incurred in carrying out the secret and 
 irresponsible doings of the Foreign Office will be placed 
 directly under the free control of a Parliament elected by 
 the great body of the United Kingdom. Then, and not 
 till then, will your industry be secured from that gigantic 
 taxation to which it has been subjected during the last 
 hundred and fifty years." When he spoke in the same 
 city in 1866 he said: ''The class which has hitherto 
 ruled in this country has failed miserably. It revels in 
 power and wealth, whilst at its feet, a terrible peril for 
 the future, lies the multitude that it has neglected. If a 
 class has failed, let us try the nation ! That is our faith, 
 that is our purpose, that is our cry: Let us try the 
 nation!" 
 
 The second difference is this. In the earlier agitation 
 he had laid most stress on his proposal of a redistribution 
 of seats in favour of the large towns. In the speeches 
 of the second period he made the extension of the suffrage 
 to the working-classes the first and indispensable element 
 of reform. He still spoke of the county representation 
 as ''a dead body tied to the living body of the borough 
 representation". But he was chiefly indignant at the 
 attempt to "erect the middle-class into a sort of olig- 
 archy" by treating the settlement of 1832 as final. An 
 extended suffrage must come first; for the ballot and 
 redistribution he was content, if necessary, to wait, pro- 
 vided the artisan got his vote. Both in the towns and 
 
112 John Bright. 
 
 in the House he gave three reasons for advising the 
 Reformers to be content for the moment with this instal- 
 ment of reform. In the first place, the small boroughs 
 constituted a general grievance, not a class grievance; 
 the grievance that cried aloud for redress was that of 
 the excluded class. Secondly, he believed that opinion 
 was more ripe upon the question of the suffrage; and 
 thirdly, he saw that it would be more difficult to carry a 
 scheme of disfranchisement through the House in face of 
 the natural hostility of the representatives of the threat- 
 ened boroughs. Any possible scheme of disfranchise- 
 ment, he said, must needs be trifling and unsatisfactory. 
 
 These speeches are also distinguished from the former 
 by the ferocity of his attack on the Conservative party 
 and its leaders. He accused the Tories of permanent 
 and virulent hostility to commerce, and of a sustained 
 and persistent hatred of popular institutions. The course 
 of the Tories was factious to the very last degree ; they 
 were a decaying faction, a supercilious and Insolent 
 party, and so forth. Conservatism was the great enemy 
 of order; its principles would have led to anarchy. At 
 the general election many Conservatives declared for a 
 well-considered measure of reform. Bright interpreted 
 this provoking qualification in the light of the fancy 
 franchises of 1859, and of a phrase newly invented by 
 Disraeli, — who was, said Bright, the "mystery-man" of 
 the party, and '' did the conjuring business for them", — 
 the phrase of *'the lateral extension of the franchise". 
 He meant, said Bright, *Mt Is true you are shut out; the 
 Reform Bill was not satisfactory; the representation 
 must be amended; and therefore we will admit somebody 
 else". 
 
 Hitherto Bright's invective had hardly discriminated 
 between the two great parties. He had castigated 
 Palmerston more frequently and with greater gust than 
 Disraeli. His speeches were now strongly Impregnated 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 113 
 
 with the party spirit which he had formerly disowned. 
 The fact is that he had now good reason to be hopeful 
 of the Liberal party of the future. Russell had by 
 private overtures convinced Bright of his sincere desire 
 of reform ; Palmerston died shortly after the election ; 
 and Mr. Gladstone was already secure of the reversion 
 of the leadership. It was already apparent that under 
 Mr. Gladstone's leadership the policy of the Liberals 
 would be more democratic. As early as i860 his col- 
 league, Lord Clarendon, had remarked to Greville that 
 Bright and Mr. Gladstone were converging from differ- 
 ent points to the same end; and again, that Mr. Glad- 
 stone was moving towards a democratic union with 
 Bright. Palmerston, too, had uttered the famous pre- 
 diction: ''Gladstone will soon have it all his own way; 
 whenever he gets my place, we shall have strange 
 doings". The more Mr. Gladstone came to the front the 
 better disposed Bright became to act loyally with the 
 party. He had at last found his leader. He was more 
 versed in reprehension than in encomium; but by his 
 animated and unstinted eulogy at this time he associated 
 Mr. Gladstone with himself in the popularity he had 
 won, and contributed not a little to the establishment of 
 his ascendency in the hearts of the common people. 
 Even so self-reliant a man as Bright is happier if he can 
 lean on another; and it is noteworthy that his devotion 
 to Mr. Gladstone ripened rapidly from the date of the 
 loss of Cobden. 
 
 On March 13 the Reform Bill of 1866, the fourth and 
 last of Russell's failures, was introduced by Mr. Glad- 
 stone. The Bill was a moderate one as compared with 
 the measure which Bright had for so many years advo- 
 cated, or even with Russell's earlier efforts. It reduced 
 the county qualification from ;^5o to ;^i4, provided the 
 occupation included a dwelling-house of ;^7 value, and 
 
 the borough qualification frcyai ;^io to J^'^. The fancy 
 ( M 433 ) F 
 
114 John Bright. 
 
 franchises made no reappearance, except that ;^5o in 
 a bank was to quaHfy for a vote. Bright recog-nized 
 at once the essential virtue of this Bill, — that, though 
 studiously moderate and redolent of compromise, it was 
 at least a Bill intended to pass and not merely for show. 
 *'It is not a Bill", he said, *' which if I had been consulted 
 by its framers I should have recommended." He cal- 
 culated that out of five or six millions of men in the 
 United Kingdom who were not yet enfranchised, the 
 whole number of the working-classes to be admitted in 
 the boroughs of England and Wales was only two hun- 
 dred thousand. *' I found, when Mr. Gladstone brought 
 forward the Bill, that it differed in almost every particu- 
 lar from the Bill I had urged him and his colleagues to 
 prepare." But he welcomed it as an honest Bill, and as 
 offering *'a very sensible advance toward fair represen- 
 tation"; and he persuaded the Reformers in the country 
 to adopt this opinion. 
 
 It was soon discovered that the enemy the Reformers 
 had to fear was the Palmerstonian section of the inde- 
 pendent Liberals. Lowe, who sat for one of the rotten 
 boroughs threatened by the Radicals, took from the first 
 the lead of the opposition to the Bill, and was joined by 
 Horsman, member for Stroud. Bright, who always 
 picked out for attack the strongest man in the adverse 
 host, fell upon Lowe with all his energy both in the 
 House and in the country. The real fighting in the 
 debates, says Lowe's biographer, was between Lowe and 
 Bright. "The right hon. gentleman", said Bright in 
 his speech on the first reading, referring to Horsman, 
 ** is the first of the new party who has retired into what 
 may be called his political Cave of Adullam; and he has 
 called about him every one that was in distress and every 
 one that was discontented. He has long been anxious 
 to form a party in the House. At last he has succeeded 
 in hooking the right hon. gentleman the member for 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 115 
 
 Calne. There was an opinion expressed many years 
 ago by a member of the Cabinet that two men would 
 make a party. When a party is formed of two men so 
 amiable and so discreet as the two right hon. gentlemen, 
 we may hope to see for the first time in Parliament a 
 party perfectly harmonious, and distinguished by mutual 
 and unbroken trust. But there is one difficulty that it 
 is impossible to remove. This party of two reminds me 
 of the Scotch terrier which was so covered with hair 
 that you could not tell which was the head and which 
 was the tail of it." 
 
 The simile of the Cave of Adullam has become a 
 permanent addition to our political slang; and that of 
 the Scotch terrier was enjoyed at the time with a relish 
 which posterity can never taste in a personal joke. But 
 the Cave contained before long many more than two 
 malcontents. 
 
 At the outset Lowe gave a terrible advantage to his 
 antagonist. With that engaging aptitude for saying 
 and doing unpopular things, which will long keep his 
 memory green, and which perhaps was itself a cause of 
 his distrust of a populace which he could never hope to 
 please, Lowe remarked: '* Let any gentleman consider 
 the constituencies he has had the honour to be concerned 
 with. If you want venality, if you want ignorance, if 
 you want drunkenness and facility for being intimidated, 
 or if, on the other hand, you want impulsive, unreflect- 
 ing, and violent people, where do you look for them in 
 the constituencies? Do you go to the top, or to the 
 bottom?" 
 
 This passage (which is here given as cited in Lowe's 
 biography from a revised issue of the speech, rather than 
 according to the report quoted by Bright) was construed 
 by the Reformers as a general description of the working- 
 classes of England. If this was a mistaken interpreta- 
 tion, it was an inevitable one, inasmuch as the sentence 
 
ii6 John Bright. 
 
 formed part of an arg-ument against the enfranchisement 
 of a select few of the most skilful and thrifty of the 
 industrial class. Nothing could illustrate better the 
 difference between different conceptions of patriotism 
 than the applause with which this imputation upon a class 
 that formed the majority of Englishmen was greeted by 
 the very men to whom Bright's sentiments so often 
 appeared un-English and unpatriotic. No one ever says 
 this sort of thing without meaning it ; and Lowe there- 
 fore deserves the praise which should always be given 
 to a politician when he is sincere. But no statesman 
 ever said a thing less likely to serve his own purpose. 
 Bright took full advantage of his adversary's indiscre- 
 tion. ''I would recommend", he said, "that these 
 passages from that celebrated and unhappy speech 
 should be printed on cards, and should be hung up in 
 every room in every factory, workshop, and clubhouse, 
 and in every place where working men are accustomed 
 to assemble." He repeated the quotation at every 
 meeting. Lowe had raised himself, with some assistance 
 from Bright, to the eminence of the most unpopular 
 man in the country. At the reform meetings pictures 
 of the Scotch Terrier were exhibited amidst shouts of 
 ridicule and execration which recalled the time a century 
 before when the Jack Boot was the symbol of the object 
 of popular hatred. Those who regard the reform of 
 1867 as excessively democratic must lay the blame upon 
 the indiscretion of Lowe as well as on the zeal of Bright. 
 '* It is Mr. Lowe's speeches", said Forster, ''that have 
 aroused the working- classes from their apathy, and 
 enlisted them one and all in the cause of reform." 
 
 The danger from the Adullamites was pressing; and 
 Bright, instead of waiting till the autumn, roused the 
 country in the short Easter recess. It was not till the 
 end of April that the long debate on the second reading 
 ended in a victory for the Bill by a majority of five only. 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 117 
 
 A separate Bill for redistribution was then broug-ht in, 
 and the two Bills were committed tog'ether. This Bill 
 ag^ain fell far short of Brig-ht's Bill of 1858; it dealt with 
 forty-nine seats only instead of the 130 scheduled by 
 Brig-ht. The defeat of the Government was now cer- 
 tain; and on June 18 they were beaten by the Cave and 
 the regular Opposition on a vital clause by a majority of 
 eleven. The second Derby-Disraeli Cabinet succeeded. 
 The Adullamites refused to join the Ministry, and by 
 this refusal, as it turned out, sacrificed whatever the 
 cause of oligfarchy had g-ained by their disloyalty. 
 
 The ang-er of the provincial towns blazed fiercely 
 throug^hout the autumn. The working- men were now 
 thoroughly aroused, and flocked to the banner of Bright 
 and his lieutenants with a unanimous enthusiasm that 
 at last startled Pall Mall and Downing Street. Bright 
 was able to tell the House next session that a thousand 
 meetings had been held, that at every one the doors 
 were open for any man to enter, and that at every one 
 an all but unanimous vote for reform had been taken. 
 No public hall was large enough for the demonstrations 
 of the great towns. At Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, 
 and Edinburgh the local Reformers, recruited from the 
 surrounding country, marched in procession to large 
 open spaces, and there assembled in numbers which in 
 each case exceeded the adult male population of the 
 town itself. B right's command of the popular mind 
 had now reached its zenith; he was the Mirabeau of the 
 moment; and it is hardly too much to say that had he 
 chosen he could have ordered and guided a revolution. 
 He spoke at Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, and Glas- 
 gow; then he crossed the channel and inflamed the zeal 
 of the men of Dublin; and finally addressed a great 
 meeting of the trades-unions in London. 
 
 *'The accession to office of Lord Derby", he said, 
 *Ms a declaration of war against the working-classes." 
 
ii8 John Bright. 
 
 ''Justice is impossible from a class; it is certain and easy 
 from a nation." ''If the Clerk of the House of Com- 
 mons were placed at Temple Bar, and if he had orders to 
 tap upon the shoulder every well-dressed and apparently 
 cleanly-washed man who passed throug-h that ancient 
 bar until he had numbered six hundred and fifty-eig^ht, 
 and if the Crown summoned those 658 to be the Parlia- 
 ment of the United Kingdom, my honest conviction is 
 that you would have a better Parliament than now 
 exists. It would be a Parliament that would act as a 
 jury that would take some heed of the facts and argu- 
 ments laid before it. It would be free at any rate from 
 the class prejudices which weigh upon the present House 
 of Commons. It would be free from the overshadowing- 
 presence of what are called noble families. It would 
 owe no allegiance to the great land-owners." 
 
 The statistical case for reform was put by Bright 
 thus: out of every hundred gfrown men in the United 
 Kingdom, eighty-four had no votes; and the votes of 
 the enfranchised sixteen were so distributed that half of 
 the House of Commons represented one-seventh of the 
 electors, so that less than three per cent of the popula- 
 tion could command a majority of votes in the House. 
 
 One incident of these meetings deserves special notice. 
 Bright was by nature a constitutionalist and therefore a 
 loyalist; and his loyalty to the Throne, like that of all 
 Englishmen of his time, was associated with a g^reat 
 veneration for the character of the Queen. In the early 
 years of her reign, when she was for a short time unpopu- 
 lar with the Tory party, he had taken occasion in one of 
 his first recorded speeches to rebuke one of his opponents 
 in the church-rate dispute at Rochdale for some act of 
 disrespect to the sovereign. There was now in London 
 a certain amount of dissatisfaction because the Queen, 
 after the death of the Prince Consort, had declined those 
 public appearances which appear to metropolitan loyalty 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 119 
 
 to form a large part of the duty of a limited monarch. 
 At the reform meeting in St. James's Hall, a Liberal 
 statesman, whether speaking seriously or essaying a 
 tasteless jest at the expense of the audience, tried to 
 involve the meeting in the absurdity of complaining 
 because the Queen had not shown herself to a procession 
 of Reformers which had passed her windows on its way 
 to the Park. Bright treated as an insult to the Queen 
 what was perhaps intended only as an insult to the 
 audience. He rose in great indignation. ** I could not 
 sit here", he said, "and hear that observation without 
 a sensation of wonder and of pain. I think there has 
 been by many persons a great injustice done to the 
 Queen in reference to her desolate and widowed position. 
 And I venture to say this, that a woman, be she the 
 queen of a great realm or the wife of one of your 
 labouring men, who can keep alive in her heart a great 
 sorrow for the lost object of her life and her affections, 
 is not likely to be wanting in a great and generous sym- 
 pathy with you." By making this use of an unexpected 
 opportunity Bright had the satisfaction of doing real 
 service to the Queen. The working men who filled the 
 hall — the same men of whom Carlyle spoke as " Beales 
 and his roughs" — responded with the utmost warmth; 
 and the classes that were really responsible for the 
 grumbling were shamed into silence. 
 
 When Parliament met for the ever-memorable session 
 of 1867, the recalcitrant Liberals and probably the 
 greater part of the Conservatives still meditated resist- 
 ance to the popular clamour. But the great statesman 
 who led the House of Commons knew that the hour of 
 democracy had struck, and was resolved to turn the 
 inevitable concession into a personal triumph for himself, 
 and if possible to the advantage of his party. To sup- 
 pose that Disraeli did not foresee the end of the session 
 from the beginning, that he was unaware whither the 
 
I20 John Bright. 
 
 course he had marked out would lead him, that he had 
 not desig-ned the policy of yielding- bit by bit after flat- 
 tering his followers with a show of conservative caution, 
 is to refuse justice to his extraordinary shrewdness. 
 Probably he never shared the distrust of democracy 
 prevalent in his party. Mr. C. A. Cooper reports Bright 
 as saying of him: " He is what you will hear more of 
 in the future — a Tory democrat. He has no love for 
 those who now lean upon him. He has ability above 
 most men of the time ; and he will use his ability to lead 
 his friends into ways they have abhorred." The history 
 of the century must be misread by a man who cherishes 
 the preconception that the Liberal was essentially a 
 democratic, and the Conservative essentially an aristo- 
 cratic, party. The Liberal party, as we have seen, 
 threw off their aristocratic fetters with not a little re- 
 luctance; and Disraeli's feat of democratizing' the Con- 
 servative party was scarcely more arduous than B right's 
 feat of democratizing- the Liberal party. But it was 
 more astonishing- because it had the appearance at least 
 of being- the unaided achievement of one man, and of 
 being performed with the rapidity of a stroke of leger- 
 demain. 
 
 There must always be room for divergent conjecture 
 as to Disraeli's motives, for no one will reproach him 
 with that indiscreet candour on which he ironically feli- 
 citated Bright. But the real and permanent difference 
 between his political theory and Bright's related, not to 
 the democratic, but rather to the imperial, idea. If we 
 may credit him with the expectation that the new demo- 
 cracy might be educated into his conception of political 
 or imperial purposes as readily as into that of Bright, 
 such a hope finds some justification in subsequent his- 
 tory. 
 
 The Queen's speech promised a measure which should 
 freely extend the elective franchise without unduly dis- 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 121 
 
 turbing the balance of political power. On February 1 1 
 Disraeli declared that parliamentary reform should no 
 longer be a question to decide the fate of ministries. 
 Judging by the repeated failures of the past, it was 
 evident that reform might be indefinitely postponed if 
 each successive ministry staked its existence on the 
 details of its own measure. In 1859, he said, the 
 Liberals had turned him out on a captious point of 
 detail, and then, having incurred the responsibility, had 
 shrunk from fulfilling their duty by passing their own 
 measure. This was fair enough. Disraeli seemed to 
 be inviting the House of Commons to reform itself; he 
 was really inviting it to help himself in forcing upon his 
 party a gradual but swift reversal of its traditional 
 policy. If any trick was intended, it was a trick in 
 favour of reform; but the Reformers not unnaturally 
 misconstrued the intention. 
 
 Disraeli next laid on the table thirteen resolutions, by 
 accepting or modifying which the House was to instruct 
 the Government what sort of Bill to bring in. The re- 
 solutions vaguely prefigured a measure whose salient 
 feature should be an apparatus of checks to prevent the 
 predominance in the electorate of the working-classes. 
 But in moving the House into committee on the resolu- 
 tions he gave the details of the Bill which was in the 
 mind of the Government. It was to include a revival 
 of the fancy franchises of 1859, a general qualification of 
 ;^2o rating in counties and ^6 in boroughs, an enlarge- 
 ment of the areas of boroughs, and a redistribution of 
 thirty seats. Lowe and Bright agreed in suggesting 
 that the resolutions should be omitted and the Bill at 
 once printed. This course was adopted; but there was 
 a short delay due to the withdrawal of Lord Cranborne 
 (now Marquis of Salisbury) and two other members of 
 the Cabinet, who had agreed to the resolutions, but who 
 refused to support the measure sketched by Disraeli. 
 
122 John Bright. 
 
 On March 13 the actual Bill was at last introduced. 
 Already a startling- concession had been made. What 
 was now proposed was a £1^ rating- qualification in 
 counties, and a household qualification irrespective of 
 value in towns. There were four collateral franchises — 
 an educational franchise, admitting members of certain 
 professions and men who had passed certain examina- 
 tions, a savings-bank franchise, a property franchise, 
 and a direct-taxation franchise. As for redistribution, 
 seven seats were at the disposal of the Government 
 owing to the disfranchisement of four corrupt boroughs; 
 twenty-three boroughs of less than 7000 inhabitants, 
 and returning two members, were to spare one member 
 each; and of these thirty seats, fourteen were allotted 
 to new boroughs, fifteen to counties, and one to the 
 University of London. A new proposal was that electors 
 were to be permitted to vote by paper without personal 
 attendance at the poll. 
 
 If the Conservatives were taken aback at finding 
 household suffrage, the dream of the impracticable 
 Radicals, thrust into the Bill of a Conservative Govern- 
 ment, the attention of the Reformers was fixed on the 
 checks by which the Bill proposed to preserve the pre- 
 dominance of the educated classes. The first was a 
 provision requiring two years' residence, instead of the 
 twelve months fixed by the Act of 1832, as a condition 
 of registration, and so excluding the migratory class 
 of which the lowest stratum of the population is largely 
 composed. The second was the dual vote. A man who 
 was qualified as a ratepaying householder and also as 
 paying twenty shillings in direct taxation was to exercise 
 his suff'rage under both qualifications. The third and 
 most important was the requirement of personal payment 
 of rates as a condition of the franchise. This provision 
 excluded not only householders exempted from poor- 
 rates on the plea of poverty — a class which Bright called 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 123 
 
 the residuum, and which he also was willing- to exclude — 
 but the compound householders, whose rates, according 
 to a method established by local habits and local Acts 
 of Parliament, were paid by the landlord and counted 
 in the rent. The effect of this restriction would have 
 varied in different towns. In Sheffield, for example, 
 the clause would have admitted 16,000 householders; 
 in Birmingham, according to Bright, it would have 
 admitted 2400 and excluded 36,000. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone formulated ten objections to the Bill 
 as it stood; and Bright declared it very unsatisfactory 
 and very bad. ''I think", he said, 'Mt has marks of 
 being a production not of the friends but of the enemies 
 of reform." Nevertheless the Reformers of the Liberal 
 party, confident in their majority, addressed themselves 
 to accept Disraeli's invitation and amend the Bill, Bright's 
 desire that they should rather upset the Government by 
 rejecting the Bill and produce a measure of their own 
 being overborne by the general sense of the party. But 
 once more their counsels were divided by a new schism. 
 A group, known from the place in which they laid their 
 conspiracy as the tea-room party, revolted from Mr. 
 Gladstone's lead, and defeated his amendment to admit 
 the compound householder. Immediately after this 
 division the House adjourned for the Easter holidays. 
 
 Then came, with dramatic suddenness and complete- 
 ness, the catastrophe of the play. The indignation of 
 the towns broke out again, and the demonstrations of 
 the previous autumn were repeated. Bright went to 
 his constituency, and told them the Conservatives were 
 bewildered. *'The whole Tor}^ party has been dragged 
 from its anchorage. They find no longer any holding- 
 ground, and in their confusion they offer they know not 
 what." But he directed all the force of his invective 
 against the tea-room party — the forty Reformers, who, 
 in the phrase he borrowed from Bernal Osborne, **had 
 
124 John Bright. 
 
 had salt put on their tails ". For the first time he ap- 
 peared as an enthusiast of party loyalty. "What can 
 a party do in Parliament if every man is to play his own 
 little game? Why, a costermonger's donkey-cart, that 
 would not travel from here to London In a week, yet, 
 by running athwart the North-Western Line, might stop 
 and bring to destruction a great express train. And so 
 twenty very small men, who during their whole political 
 lives have not advanced the question of reform by one 
 hair's-breadth or by one moment of time, can at a critical 
 moment like this throw themselves athwart the objects 
 of a great party, and mar a great measure that ought 
 to affect the interests of the country beneficially for all 
 time." The cry of the mass meetings was that Disraeli 
 should be turned out, and the cause of reform entrusted 
 to Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 The donkey-cart proved as successful an argument as 
 the Scotch terrier. The revolting Liberals, astonished 
 at the storm they had raised, were persuaded or intimi- 
 dated into loyalty. Disraeli made at first a mere show, 
 and then not even a show, of resistance. Within three 
 weeks of the day when Parliament reassembled all the 
 three safeguards had disappeared. The dual vote was 
 abandoned; the two years' residence was reduced to one; 
 and finally Disraeli completed the consternation of the 
 Cave by promising to devise a plan for the admission of 
 the compound householder. Lowe uttered his solemn 
 protest against "3. clause which com.prises in itself a 
 whole revolution". ''Your repentance," he said, ''bitter 
 as I know it will be, will come too late." But on this 
 occasion he went beyond the safe generalities of a 
 cautious prophet, and injured the eff"ect of his prognosti- 
 cations by condescending upon particulars. The new 
 electorate would repudiate the National Debt and insti- 
 tute an inconvertible paper currency. 
 
 Further concessions to the Reformers followed. The 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 125 
 
 vote was granted to lodgers in towns; the collateral 
 or fancy franchises were abandoned; the qualifying 
 value in the counties was reduced to £12. The redis- 
 tribution of seats was also extended, the limit of popula- 
 tion under which a town should not return two members 
 being raised to 10,000. Finally, the Government at 
 first refused, and then consented, to allot a third seat to 
 the four largest provincial towns; and the proposed 
 system of voting-papers was abandoned. 
 
 Lord Cranborne gave voice to the grief of the uncon- 
 vinced Conservatives, and Lowe to that of the disaffected 
 Whigs; but Disraeli's triumph was complete; and the 
 Bill was read a third time without a division. It was 
 left for the melancholy Jaques of Chelsea to shake his 
 head over the triumph of "John of Bromwicham" and 
 of ''the superlative Hebrew conjuror, spell-binding all the 
 great lords, great parties, great interests of England to 
 his hand, and leading them by the nose like helpless, mes- 
 merized, somnambulant cattle to such issue". But the 
 general feeling in the country was one of satisfaction that, 
 for good or for evil, the long-vexed question was settled ; 
 that the settlement was broad enough to last a genera- 
 tion; and that the cccupation of the agitator was gone. 
 
 Bright had been one of a small minority that voted 
 for John Stuart Mill's amendment admitting women to 
 the franchise. In regard to this vote he afterwards 
 made an admission very uncommon with him — that he 
 had voted with hesitation and misgiving, and in defer- 
 ence to Mill, whose services to the cause of reform had 
 latterly been very valuable. On this question his opinion 
 always wavered. Peradventure his reason was con- 
 vinced, but the old Adam of sentiment resisted. 
 
 In the form in which it ultimately passed into law, 
 the Bill entirely satisfied the conditions which Bright 
 had for so many years laid down, except in three par- 
 ticulars, in regard to all of which he lived to see his 
 
126 John Bright. 
 
 views adopted. The readjustment of seats fell short of 
 his scheme of 1858; the ballot was not conceded; and 
 the Lords had been allowed to enact a provision taken 
 from Russell's old Bills, by which the minority were 
 to have a chance of returning one member in each of 
 the three-member constituencies. This device, carried 
 ag-ainst a strong- protest by Bright, disappeared without 
 a word of regret in 1885. 
 
 The passing of the second Reform Bill was the crown- 
 ing triumph of Bright's career. *Mt is discovered in the 
 year 1867", he said with pardonable exultation, **that 
 my principles all along have been entirely constitutional, 
 and my course perfectly patriotic. The invective and 
 vituperation that have been poured upon me have now 
 been proved to be entirely a mistake." He had been 
 for many years the unquestioned leader of the Reformers; 
 he had borne the brunt of many battles, and had out- 
 lived many defeats. It was he who had forced the 
 question upon Parliament, as Cobden had forced free- 
 trade, in despite of the indisposition of Whigs and 
 statesmen. There are elements in the eulogy of his 
 first enterprise that must of necessity be omitted from 
 any commendation of the second. Free trade in corn, 
 if a good thing, was a good thing in itself; its benefits 
 were immediate and direct; the hungry were fed, the 
 idle found employment, and wealth flowed into the 
 country through the open ports. Parliamentary reform 
 is to be judged by remoter results ; its benefits are indi- 
 rect and relative, and will always be diversely estimated. 
 The people who were starved by protection knew that 
 they were hungry, and only needed to be told why. 
 The discontent of the unenfranchised working man was 
 created in part by Bright and his helpers. In the 
 motives of the Reformers there was necessarily a partisan 
 as well as a patriotic element; the new votes were 
 wanted for party purposes. But we may confidently 
 
Parliamentary Reform. 127 
 
 claim that Brig-ht's zeal for democracy was as little 
 tainted as any man's could be with the spirit of faction 
 or ambition; and those who hold his purpose to have 
 been mistaken may be safely challeng-ed to admit that 
 his intention was patriotic. 
 
 It is impossible to suppose, in the lig-ht of his earlier 
 speeches, that Bright can ever have been entirely satis- 
 fied with the results of his success. The speeches of 
 the enthusiastic leaders of any victorious movement will 
 always provide congenial food for the cynic. It would 
 be easy to treat ironically the contrast between the 
 bygone ardour of the unenfranchised shouting for votes 
 and the present apathy that requires the mechanism of 
 associations and the importunity of canvassers to push 
 and pull the voter to the poll. The reflection that is 
 borne in upon the reader of Hansard is that, if no reform 
 has ever done a tithe of the harm apprehended by its 
 adversaries, neither has it accomplished a quarter of the 
 good predicted by its advocates. This is perhaps part 
 of a still more general truth — that politics do not count 
 for so much as politicians suppose. But there remains 
 one consideration more, that we must reckon not only 
 the good that such a measure has done, but also the evil 
 it may have averted. The apathetic policy of Palmer- 
 ston, scornful of the multitude, looking for public opinion 
 very little further than the lobby and the metropolitan 
 clubs and newspapers, and setting more store by the 
 chatter of a Whig lady's salon than by the clamour of a 
 mass meeting in Manchester or Glasgow, might, if it 
 had long- survived his death, have been disagreeably 
 interrupted by disorder or by something like revolution. 
 One may reject one-half of what Bright said of the 
 delinquencies of the unreformed Parliament, and yet 
 recognize that there was no guarantee in its constitution 
 that it would not sooner or later commit some disastrous 
 error of the sort that breeds anarchy. 
 
128 John Bright. 
 
 Bright always maintained that he was a sounder Con- 
 stitutionalist than the oligarchs; and the ground of this 
 claim at least deserves examination. He did not, accor- 
 ding to the common idea of demagogy, call upon his 
 clients, whom his eloquence could have moved as easily 
 one way as another, to overthrow or destroy anything 
 whatever; he showed them that there was a place for 
 them in the Constitution, and made them content to ask 
 for admission, not as men storming a hostile citadel, but 
 as entermg into an inheritance. If he helped to create 
 the excitement, his authority made for restraint and 
 order when it was at its height. He called out an army 
 of a million indignant men; and when the storm had 
 passed, a few overthrow^n palings in Hyde Park repre- 
 sented all the material damage of the turmoil. It is 
 admitted that democracy was inevitable, and could not 
 without peril have been long delayed; and even those 
 who regret it ought to be grateful that at the critical 
 time the leader of the victorious masses was a man so 
 singularly free from the common vices and common 
 ambitions of the demagogue. 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 Ireland. 
 
 The Reform Bill of 1867 had dealt only with England. 
 The session of 1868 was partly occupied with the passage 
 of similar Bills for Ireland and Scotland, Disraeli, who 
 early in this year succeeded Lord Derby as Prime Min- 
 ister, refusing, in spite of several defeats, to resign or 
 dissolve until he had completed his task of reconstructing 
 the representative system. An appeal to the new con- 
 stituencies was imminent; and it was proper that the 
 
Ireland. 129 
 
 Liberal leaders should propound some leg-islative enter- 
 prise that should attract the support of the new and 
 untried electors. It was not yet thought necessary to 
 ask the working-classes, who now formed a majority in 
 nearly every urban constituency, to use their votes to 
 get something for themselves; and a generous tribute 
 was offered to their disinterestedness when Mr. Glad- 
 stone proposed that the new power should be used first 
 of all to redress an Irish grievance. 
 
 The perennial problems of Irish discontent had recently 
 been forced on the attention of politicians by a series of 
 unhappy events. In 1865 had occurred the disclosure 
 of the plots of the Irish Republican Brotherhood of 
 Fenians; in 1866 the Fenian invasion of Canada; in 
 1867 Davitt's attack on Chester Castle, the rescue of 
 Fenian prisoners in Manchester, and the Irish demon- 
 stration of sympathy with three of the rescuing party 
 who were hanged for the murder of a policeman; finally, 
 in December of the same year came the attempt of Irish 
 conspirators to blow up Clerkenwell Prison. 
 
 In January, 1868, Bright wrote to an Irish correspon- 
 dent: **For twenty years I have always said that the 
 only way to remedy the evils of Ireland is by legislation 
 on the Church and Land". But he added: ''To strike 
 down an established church and to abandon the theory 
 of our territorial system by one Act of Parliament would 
 be too much for Parliament, and would destroy any 
 Government that suggested it. Our rulers, though un- 
 comfortable, are not sufficiently alarmed to yield. The 
 Whigs are almost as much afraid as the Tories are of 
 questions aff'ecting the Church and the Land, and they 
 seem to have almost no courage. The English people 
 are in complete ignorance of Irish wrongs, and know 
 little or nothing of the real condition of your country." 
 *'Mr. Gladstone", he said in the same letter, "hesitates, 
 and hardly knows how far to go. He does not feel 
 
 ( M 433 ) I 
 
130 John Bright. 
 
 himself very secure as leader of a powerful and compact 
 party." 
 
 This letter proves that, despite the warmth with which 
 Brig-ht had welcomed Mr. Gladstone's leadership, he had 
 not yet adequately recognized his capacity for command 
 or his zeal for reform. It also suggests that Bright did 
 not at first realize how much nearer he himself stood to 
 the centre of gravity of the party since the extension of 
 th electorate. But he was not deterred by these fore- 
 bodings from the experiment of engaging the interest of 
 the new voters in the Irish question. A few days later 
 he devoted a long speech at Birmingham to the exposi- 
 tion of his views on the Irish Church and the Irish Land 
 Law. This speech differed from his earlier exhortations 
 to his constituents in exhibiting more of the thorough- 
 ness of the practical statesman, and less of the vehemence 
 of the agitator; the shadow of coming official responsi- 
 bility seemed already to have fallen on the orator. But 
 it fully achieved its purpose ; and we may fairly suppose 
 — unless indeed Bright had been entirely mistaken in 
 his opinion of the hesitation of his leader — that the 
 success of this speech was a determining cause of the 
 bold and well-omened stroke by which Mr. Gladstone, 
 three months later, committed his party to a strenuous 
 Irish policy. 
 
 Hitherto we have omitted any account of Bright's 
 earlier dealings with the Irish question. It will be 
 convenient at this point to justify the assertion quoted 
 above, of his twenty years' advocacy of the policy that 
 was embodied in the legislation of 1869 and 1870. 
 
 Bright had always shown a facility of sympathy with 
 the Irish people such as, at least in the earlier half of 
 his career, was not common among English politicians. 
 He was curiously successful in forging graphic phrases 
 that were eagerly accepted by Irish patriots as reflecting 
 the national sentiments of the dolorous island. ** I 
 
Ireland. 131 
 
 believe that, if the majority of the people of Ireland 
 counted fairly out had their will, and if they had the 
 power, they would unmoor the island from its fastenings 
 in the deep, and move it at least 2000 miles to the west." 
 ''When the ancient Hebrew prophet prayed in his 
 captivity, he prayed with his window open towards 
 Jerusalem. The followers of Mahomet when they pray 
 turn their faces towards Mecca. When the Irish peasant 
 asks for food and freedom and blessing-, his eye follows 
 the setting- sun, the aspirations of his heart reach beyond 
 the wide Atlantic, and in spirit he grasps hands with 
 the g-reat Republic of the West." Nothing- could sug-- 
 gest more felicitously than these images the incongruity 
 that is, it may be, destined still to baffle the wisdom of 
 many generations of statesmen, — the incongruity be- 
 tween the political union inexorably ordained by the 
 disposition of territory and the irrevocable course of 
 history, and the disunion of sentiment that has been 
 engendered by racial antipathies and by ancient crimes. 
 Bright had from the first associated himself with that 
 section of the Liberals that was disposed to trace Irish 
 disaffection to the establishment of a Protestant Church 
 in the midst of a Catholic population. Two methods of 
 redress were already under discussion when he entered 
 public life — the disestablishment of the Protestant 
 Church, and the concurrent establishment and endow- 
 ment of the Catholic Church. A small beginning of the 
 second scheme had actually been made by a vote of 
 public money to support the Catholic College at May- 
 nooth. This grant was regarded as an equivalent to 
 the regium dommi, the grant made to the Irish Presby- 
 terian ministry by William III. as a reward for the 
 support he had received from the Irish dissenting Pro- 
 testants in the civil war that followed the Revolution. 
 To the Maynooth Grant, which enabled peasants destined 
 to the priesthood to learn their Latin in Ireland without 
 
132 John Bright. 
 
 g-oingf abroad, many observers have attributed the trans- 
 formation of the kindly and genial priest who laughs 
 and prays in the pages of Lever into the sullen and 
 underbred tyrant of the Meath Elections. 
 
 Bright always declared for disestablishment and dis- 
 endowment, and missed no opportunity of enforcing his 
 opinion. His first speech on any Irish question was 
 made when Peel proposed a large increase of the May- 
 nooth Grant. Bright joined Disraeli in opposing this 
 increase. By his speech and vote on this occasion he 
 separated himself, for the only time in his parliamentary 
 life, from Cobden, who was a Churchman, and regarded 
 the question from another point of view. The surprise 
 that has been expressed at this vote is surely unneces- 
 sary. Bright was a Nonconformist; the English Non- 
 conformists, who also possessed colleges, had never 
 asked for a subsidy, and, if they had done so, would 
 certainly have been rebuked both by those who sup- 
 ported and those who opposed the grant to Maynooth. 
 The reasons he gave are quite intelligible. He disap- 
 proved of any expenditure of public money on any 
 ecclesiastical institution. He saw in the grant the 
 beginning of a policy of endowing the priesthood; and 
 that policy was certainly in the mind of some statesmen. 
 He believed that the endowment of the Catholic priests 
 in Ireland would have the same effect which he attri- 
 buted to the endowment of the clergy of the English 
 Church; that it would make them allies of privilege, and 
 indifferent to the wrongs of the people among whom 
 they lived. He was also of opinion that the grant 
 diverted attention from the real causes of disaffection. 
 Peel's policy in short missed the mark at which it aimed; 
 and the grant would provide a new and shabby excuse 
 for the continuance of the Protestant establishment, 
 which was the real root of the evil, so far as that evil 
 grew out of ecclesiastical jealousy. 
 
Ireland. 133 
 
 In 1852 Bright put before the public a scheme of dis- 
 establishment in an elaborate letter addressed to Dr. 
 Gray of Dublin. He proposed a Church Property Com- 
 mission, which should gradually, as benefices became 
 vacant, possess itself of the whole property of the Irish 
 Church. The Commissioners were to be directed to 
 appropriate certain portions of the fund as a free gift to 
 the Protestant Episcopal Church, to the Presbyterian 
 Church, and to the Roman Catholic Church. These 
 gifts were to be absolute and irrevocable. The gift to 
 the Catholic Church was to consist of a house and a plot 
 of land for the priest in every parish; the cost to be, at 
 a rough estimate, a thousand pounds for each of a 
 thousand parishes, or ;^i,ooo,ooo in all. The gifts to 
 the other two churches were to be of about the same 
 value. In consideration of these endowments the May- 
 nooth Grant of ;^26,ooo and the regium donum of 
 ;^40,ooo were to be withdrawn. Three millions being 
 thus spent in endowing the churches, the remainder was 
 to be a fund for education and for providing free libraries. 
 
 This scheme was sharply criticised by the Liberation 
 Society; it was indeed hardly consistent with those rigid 
 principles of political nonconformity of which Bright 
 was in general an adherent, or with his own argument 
 against the Maynooth Grant. Despite this opposition 
 he repeated his proposals sixteen years later at the Bir- 
 mingham meeting already mentioned. He expected and 
 deprecated Nonconformist opposition. '* I hope", he 
 said, '* that some of my Nonconformist friends who have 
 a very strong opinion on this question, and perhaps have 
 not looked at it in the same light as I have, will have a 
 little charity for me when I say that it would not be just 
 to take the ;£"i 3,000,000 into the hands of the Govern- 
 ment and throw the whole of the present Church bare 
 and naked upon the country." In the same temperate 
 spirit he said in the House of Commons a few weeks 
 
134 John Bright. 
 
 later: '* When you are about to make a change which is 
 inevitable, and which shocks some, disturbs more, and 
 makes hesitating- people hesitate still more, it is a great 
 thing if you can make the past slide into the future with- 
 out any great jar, and without any great shock to the 
 feelings of the people. In doing these things the Gov- 
 ernment can always afford to be gracious to those whom 
 they are obliged to disturb." 
 
 Bright's proposals were so often in advance of public 
 opinion that they could not but appear to his critics 
 violent and revolutionary. But the sentences just quoted, 
 with their strong tincture of that reasonableness in which 
 Matthew Arnold found Nonconformists so lamentably 
 deficient, illustrate a quality of his mind less frequently 
 displayed than the thoroughness which was so exasper- 
 ating to less resolute politicians. The rigidity of his 
 principles of action seriously narrowed the field of com- 
 promise for him; but within that field he was not always 
 disposed to obstinacy. 
 
 In his speeches on the disestablishment of the Irish 
 Church Bright could do little more than repeat reasons 
 that had been perceived and enforced before his time, 
 though he is entitled to a share of his own in whatever 
 credit any man may be disposed to give to the feat of 
 1869, inasmuch as it was he who enlisted the sympathy 
 of the new voters in the project at a time when he spoke 
 to them with an authority possessed by no other poli- 
 tician. But his share in the deliberations that led 
 directly to the Irish Land Act of 1870, and indirectly to 
 many later enactments, was of far greater importance; 
 here, at any rate, he is entitled to the credit of initiative. 
 ''From first to last", said his colleague, Mr. Chamber- 
 lain, many years later, "Mr. Bright laid it down that 
 there could be no satisfactory solution of the Irish Land 
 difficulty which did not give facility to the tenant to 
 become the absolute owner of the land he cultivates. 
 
Ireland. 135 
 
 Every provision of legislation which has been based on 
 this principle of Mr. Bright's has been a success." This 
 is the claim we have now to substantiate. 
 
 It had been Bright's practice to turn to account the 
 opportunities afforded by the Bills suspending- Habeas 
 Corpus in Ireland, or permitting extraordinary methods 
 of enforcing the law, by descanting upon the causes, as 
 he understood them, of the disaffection which made such 
 disagreeable precautions necessary. It was never his 
 custom to vote against measures of coercion when re- 
 quired by the responsible Government. When there- 
 fore he uttered, after long experience, his famous dictum, 
 ** Force is no remedy", he had already defined, by the 
 action he had consistently taken, the exact meaning of 
 that excellent maxim. Lawlessness was as abhorrent to 
 him as to any man; he was willing to use any necessary 
 force rather than that the law should be broken with 
 impunity; but he always held that it was the second 
 duty of legislators confronted by an outbreak of lawless- 
 ness to look elsewhere than to coercion for the remedy 
 of disloyalty, as he looked elsewhere than to the native 
 wickedness of the law-breaker for its remediable causes. 
 
 Bright's sympathy with the people of Ireland was at 
 one period of his career warmly reciprocated, and he 
 received at Dublin a welcome rarely accorded there to 
 an English statesman. But with the Irish members his 
 relations were often by no means cordial. Both they 
 and he represented sections of the community that con- 
 sidered themselves unjustly treated by the legislature. 
 Bright and the English Radicals were always ready to 
 define their complaints by bills or resolutions. The Irish 
 members appeared to him to be active in complaint but 
 indolent in devising measures of relief. **The Irish 
 members", he said in 1847, ** complain very justly of the 
 past legislation of this House. But when we call to 
 mind that there are 105 of them here, of whom 60 or 
 
136 John Bright. 
 
 70 are of Liberal opinions, and that above 30 of them 
 are repealers and hold very strong- views in regard to 
 the mismanagfement of Irish affairs by the Imperial Par- 
 liament, I think we have a right to complain that they 
 have not laid on the table of the House any one measure 
 which they believe to be necessary to the prosperity of 
 their country." Two years later he spoke of the inca- 
 pacity and disagreement of the Irish members as one of 
 the greatest misfortunes under which Ireland laboured; 
 and was angrily rebuked by Barron, member for Water- 
 ford, who declared that Ireland had been brought to 
 ruin and misery by the policy of the Manchester School. 
 
 In the failure of helpful advice from his Irish col- 
 leagues. Bright, as one of those English politicians that 
 thought some other remedy than force to be wanted, 
 was obliged to seek a remedy himself. The peculiar 
 service that Bright rendered to Ireland was that, if he 
 was not the first to look for the remedy of discontent in 
 a modification of the Land Law, he was most persistent 
 in thrusting upon the view of the country and of Parlia- 
 ment that part of the Irish difiiculty which has now for 
 many years been recognized by common consent as the 
 most important, and as aff"ording the largest hope that 
 it will not be found insoluble. Further, he was for 
 years foremost, if not alone, in putting forward that 
 solution of the agrarian problem which for thirty years 
 after the Reform Act has been actually adopted in a 
 series of legislative experiments by both the great par- 
 ties in the State. 
 
 **The great cause of Ireland's calamities is that Ire- 
 land is idle. Ireland is idle and therefore she starves; 
 Ireland starves and therefore she rebels. We must 
 choose between industry and anarchy. I defy the 
 House to give peace and prosperity to that country 
 until they set agoing her industry, create and diffuse 
 capital, and thus establish those gradations of rank and 
 
Ireland. 137 
 
 condition by which alone the whole social fabric can be 
 held together." The last sentence of this extract from 
 a speech delivered in 1847 deserves remark. The object 
 of Bright's Irish policy was to bring the land into the 
 possession of the occupier, and so to promote the wealth 
 of a country dependent on agriculture by attracting 
 capital and increasing the agricultural production. But 
 he foresaw social as well as economical advantage in 
 the creation of a middle -class of independent farmers 
 corresponding to the manufacturing middle -class to 
 which he himself belonged. He wished to see inter- 
 mediate between the idle aristocracy and the labouring 
 classes a body of yeomen, industrious, well-to-do, 
 giving employment to labour, with a stake of their own 
 in the prosperity of the country, and with a strong 
 motive for the encouragement of order. ''What you 
 want", he said in Dublin in 1866, ''is to restore to Ire- 
 land a middle-class proprietary of the soil." " I be- 
 lieve ", he told the House of Commons in 1867, **that 
 you can establish a class of moderate proprietors who 
 will form a body intermediate between the great owners 
 of land and those who are absolutely landless, which 
 will be of immense service in giving steadiness, loyalty, 
 and peace to the whole population of the island." A 
 great gulf had been created by the circumstances of the 
 conquest between the owner and the occupier; the pro- 
 blem was to build a bridge over that gulf. The solution 
 of the social and of the economical problem seemed to 
 him to be the same ; but it is noteworthy that the social 
 problem was always present to his mind even when the 
 attention of England had been directed to Ireland by 
 economic disasters. 
 
 When Bright first interested himself in the Irish 
 question, Ireland was still labouring under the evils 
 which the Encumbered Estates Act of 1848 was in- 
 tended to alleviate. "There were", as he said, "vast 
 
138 John Bright. 
 
 tracts of land which, if left in the hands of nominal or 
 bankrupt owners, would never to the end of time support 
 the population which oug-ht to live on them." ''It is 
 the absence of all demand for labour that constitutes the 
 real evil of Ireland. The land there enjoys a perpetual 
 Sabbath. There is the land; and there is labour enough 
 to bringf it into cultivation. But such is the state in 
 which the land is placed that capital cannot be employed 
 upon it. You have created such a monopoly of land by 
 your laws and your mode of dealing with it as to render 
 it alike a curse to the people and to the owners of it. 
 Why should land be tied up any more than any other 
 raw material?" All these things were said by Bright 
 twelve years or more before the first serious attempt to 
 grapple with the problem. 
 
 In 1847 and for some years after, Bright was content 
 to ask that every obstacle that legislation could remove 
 from the distribution of land should be removed. He 
 desired a simplification of conveyance and titles, a 
 parliamentary title for the purchaser, a restriction of the 
 power to make settlements in favour of unborn heirs, 
 a remission of all stamp duties on transfer of land, the 
 abolition of entails, and a repeal of the rights of primo- 
 geniture in the administration of intestate estates. 
 
 In 1850 he prepared a draft of a short Bill, after an 
 independent study of the evidence and report of the 
 Devon Commission, which had sat from 1843 to 1845. 
 This Bill was shown to the Irish members, and was 
 regarded favourably by a few of them on either side of 
 the House; but the majority refused any support. 
 Russell also saw the draft, and submitted it to Irish 
 officials with a Bill of his own. Russell's Bill was 
 regarded as establishing a machinery too complex to 
 work smoothly; and that suggested by Bright also failed 
 to get any official favour. Politicians in general were 
 indisposed to touch the question at all. Bright attri- 
 
Ireland. 139 
 
 buted the reluctance of the governing- classes to grasp 
 the nettle firmly to the presence in every Government of 
 persons who were themselves land-owners in Ireland. 
 Although the measures proposed would do no injury to 
 the fortunes of Irish land-owners, they might diminish 
 the political power which landed property conferred 
 even upon those who were being dragged by their 
 unlucky inheritance to financial disaster. ** The ques- 
 tion is," he said in 1852, ''can the cats wisely and 
 judiciously legislate for the mice?" 
 
 The Bill which Bright had in mind was never sub- 
 mitted to the judgment of Parliament. He thought it 
 better, he said, when challenged to take it out of his 
 pocket, that a man who was not connected with Ireland 
 should not bring forward a measure which did not meet 
 with the approval of the Irish members. But when in 
 1852 W. S. Crawford, member for Rochdale, intro- 
 duced a Bill which, anticipating an important provision 
 of Mr. Gladstone's Bill of 1870, proposed to give legal 
 sanction to the Ulster Custom, Bright put in an urgent 
 plea for doing something in the face of the agrarian 
 crimes. "It is in the eternal decrees of Providence that 
 so long as the population of a country is prevented from 
 the possibility of possessing any portion of their native 
 soil by legal enactments and legal chicanery, these out- 
 rages should be committed, were it but as beacons and 
 warnings to call the legislature to a sense of the duty it 
 owes to the country which it governs." Such a reading 
 of the moral of agrarian outrage, if not of its final cause, 
 is now the merest commonplace ; but forty-five years ago 
 it required all the courage of a man hardened against 
 vituperation to utter such a sentiment. 
 
 The lasting feud between Bright and the landed 
 aristocracy of England made it natural that he should 
 look to the landlords and the land system for the causes 
 of Irish discontent, and natural also that his testimony 
 
140 John Bright. 
 
 should be treated as prejudiced, and his motives sus- 
 pected. It is curious to observe that he had to defend 
 himself agfainst the charge of designing- confiscation, 
 robbery, and what not, when he was only propounding 
 schemes which have since been not only accepted but 
 developed by the emulation of statesmen of all parties. 
 In point of fact he was conservative of the rights of 
 property, and in his land-purchase scheme always postu- 
 lated the consent of the land-owner. *' If it is intended 
 by a Bill with this title ", he said of a Bill promised by 
 an Irish member, **to vest the ownership of land in the 
 present occupier, I believe that this House will never 
 pass it ; and if it did, it would prove most fatal to the 
 best interests of the country." 
 
 His own scheme of land-purchase was explained in 
 detail to the people of Dublin in 1866, and to the House 
 of Commons in a speech delivered early in 1868, on the 
 occasion of a motion for a committee of the whole House 
 to consider the state of Ireland. He proposed to entrust 
 five millions of public money to Commissioners, who 
 should purchase by agreement the Irish estates of Eng- 
 lish or absentee landlords. The sale was not to be 
 forced, except in the case of lands belonging to the City 
 Companies ; and he did not propose any purchase of the 
 land of owners who resided on their estates. He assumed 
 that the land could be bought at twenty-five years' pur- 
 chase ; that the tenants could pay five per cent annually 
 on the purchase-money ; and that the Government might 
 without loss be content with three and a half per cent 
 interest. The accumulation of the balance of one and 
 a half per cent would make the tenant the absolute 
 owner in thirty-five years. These were exactly the terms 
 adopted in the land-purchase clauses of the Act of 1870. 
 He believed that there was in Ireland a great amount 
 of saved money, which the tenants, for lack of security, 
 would not invest in their farms. This saved money 
 
Ireland. 141 
 
 would at once be used as capital for the improvement 
 of the land. *' I would negotiate with land-owners who 
 are willing to sell, and with tenants who are willing to 
 buy. I would make the land the great savings-bank 
 for the future tenantry of Ireland." 
 
 Such was the germ of the legislation for the creation 
 of a class of small proprietors in Ireland which has since 
 been developed in a long succession of enactments with 
 results the value of which must still be left to the judg- 
 ment of posterity. 
 
 The speech that has just been quoted included a 
 renewal of the plea for disestablishment. It contained 
 also another of those happy comparisons which have 
 passed into political proverbs. Lord Stanley had sug- 
 gested, as a sort of alternative for disestablishment, the 
 endowment of a Roman Catholic University in Ireland. 
 Bright thought this proposal ''grotesque and imbecile", 
 and added that Stanley reminded him of the man men- 
 tioned by Addison "who was not a Cabinet Minister, 
 but only a mountebank", and who '''set up a stall, and 
 sold pills that were very good against the earthquake ". 
 It was a rather dangerous jest in the mouth of a man 
 who had a prescription of his own for Irish discontent. 
 The pill of disestablishment was administered ; but the 
 Irish earthquakes have continued. 
 
 A fortnight after this debate Mr. Gladstone moved 
 three resolutions committing the House to the disestab- 
 lishment and disendowment of the Irish Church. The 
 debate and division proved that the fear Bright had 
 expressed a few weeks before, that there was no man 
 strong enough to unite the party on so great a question, 
 had been too timid. The Cave was deserted, and the 
 Adullamites joined the hosts of Israel against the Philis- 
 tines. ''The people of three kingdoms", said Bright, 
 " are waiting with anxious suspense for the solution of 
 this question. Ireland waits and longs for a great act 
 
142 John Bright. 
 
 of reconciliation. England and Scotland are eager to 
 make atonement for past crimes or past errors." He 
 made effective use of a species of argument very familiar 
 to readers of his later speeches. He set up against the 
 predictions of evil v^hich the opponents of disestablish- 
 ment had uttered, the failure of former vaticinations of 
 the same oracles. ** You have always lions in the path. 
 But when you have seen and handled them, these things 
 are found after all to be only hobgoblins. You have 
 learned that they are perfectly harmless ; and when you 
 thought we were doing you harm and upsetting the 
 Constitution, you have found that after all we were doing 
 you good, and that the Constitution was rather stronger 
 than it was before." The colonies were more easily 
 governed and more loyal since the changes in the colo- 
 nial system brought about by Molesworth and Hume. 
 The revenue was larger since the tariff was simplified. 
 Free-trade had been a frightful monster; but the land, 
 which, it was predicted, would become valueless and go 
 out of cultivation, was selling at a higher rate in the 
 market than it had ever touched before. The Balance 
 of Power, once the beginning and end of our foreign 
 policy, was forgotten; yet England was as much re- 
 spected as when she was ready to meddle with every 
 stupid quarrel on the Continent. Only the year before, 
 the Conservatives had boldly faced another hobgoblin; 
 and Disraeli would agree that there was nothing to be 
 afraid of, and that Parliament would henceforth be more 
 strong and more venerated by the people than it had 
 ever been before. The argument is, of course, merely 
 rhetorical; it dissolves at the first touch of the com- 
 monest logical tests, and it is evident that it is equally 
 available in the defence of any proposal whatsoever. 
 But it was always effective ; and Bright, as a successful 
 slayer of hobgoblins, had a better right than most men 
 to use such a plea. 
 
Ireland. 143 
 
 The division on the first of Mr. Gladstone's resolu- 
 tions gave a majority of sixty-five in his favour and 
 against the Government. The conduct of the Govern- 
 ment after this defeat raised a grave constitutional 
 question, which was discussed with much heat. Dis- 
 raeli had, when defeated in committee on the Reform 
 Bill, escaped the usual consequences of defeat by accept- 
 ing the amendments ; but when the Irish Church resolu- 
 tion was carried against him, he was put in a position 
 in which the unwritten law gave him only the alternative 
 of resigning in favour of the victor, or of submitting the 
 question at issue to the country by a dissolution. But 
 to dissolve Parliament at once would have been to appeal 
 to the unreformed constituencies to the exclusion of the 
 new voters; and Disraeli did not conceive that, when 
 precluded by so rare an accident from dissolution, he 
 was restricted to the alternative of resignation. He 
 therefore resolved to postpone the dissolution till the 
 Reform Bills of the year were carried, and the new 
 electorate properly constituted. His refusal to resign 
 was sharply criticised by the Opposition. The constitu- 
 tional mode of government, said Bouverie, member for 
 Kilmarnock, a Liberal authority on such points, was 
 that ''the House of Commons gave its support to 
 the Government, and the Government represented the 
 Crown " ; but if Disraeli's views were carried out there 
 would be " a renewal of those differences between the 
 Crown and the House of Commons which all who take 
 an interest in good government must have hoped had 
 ceased for ever ". 
 
 In these difficult circumstances Disraeli thought proper 
 to give an unusually detailed account of his discussion 
 with the Queen, using language in which Bright dis- 
 covered *'a mixture of pompousness and servility". 
 His narrative appeared to the Opposition to imply that 
 he had left it to the Queen's personal discretion to decide 
 
144 John Bright. 
 
 whether he should resigri, and so to throw upon her the 
 responsibiUty which the Constitution imposed on himself, 
 and to put her in the position of seeming to keep in 
 office by her own will a Government opposed to the 
 policy which the Commons had decreed. If this inter- 
 pretation, which was disputed by the supporters of the 
 Government, was correct, a grave error had been com- 
 mitted. Bright, who seems to have suspected that some 
 manoeuvre was contemplated by which Disraeli would 
 take the settlement of the Irish Church question, as he 
 had taken Reform, out of the hands of the Liberal party, 
 gave voice to the indignation of the Liberals at the use 
 Disraeli had made of the name of the Queen. He *' feared 
 that Disraeli had not stated all that it was his duty to 
 state in the interview he had had with his sovereign ". 
 '*The minister who deceives his sovereign is as guilty 
 as the conspirator who would dethrone her." He added, 
 amidst a hurricane of cheers from the Opposition : *' Let 
 me tell hon. gentlemen opposite, and the right hon. 
 gentleman in particular, that any man in this country 
 who puts his sovereign in the front of a great struggle 
 like this, who points to the Irish people and says from 
 the floor of this House, ' Your Queen holds the flag 
 under which we, the enemies of religious equality and 
 justice to Ireland, are marshalled ', is guilty of a high 
 crime and misdemeanour against the sovereign and 
 against his country; and there is no honour, there is 
 no reputation, there is no glory, there is no future name 
 that any minister can gain by conduct like this which 
 will acquit him to posterity of one of the most grievous 
 off'ences against the country that a prime minister can 
 possibly commit". Whether or not the occasion justified 
 language of this degree of vehemence, a strong protest 
 was necessary, lest a highly dangerous precedent should 
 be set up. 
 
 Parliament was dissolved in November, and Bright 
 
Ireland. 
 
 145 
 
 went to Birmingham to figrht for his seat under condi- 
 tions of some doubt. Birmingham was one of the few 
 constituencies the soHdity of whose representation was 
 endangered by the minority clause in the new Act. 
 That clause had been accepted by the Commons against 
 his protest, and it may be suspected that it was passed 
 partly for the purpose of giving annoyance to him. 
 Two local Conservatives of repute were nominated 
 against the three Liberal candidates; but the provision 
 that was to give him a Conservative colleague was easily 
 defeated, the Liberals securing nearly three-fourths of 
 the recorded votes. Birmingham is distinguished by the 
 fidelity of its political attachments ; for during the whole 
 of its parliamentary history it has happened only twice 
 that a member nominated for re-election has been out- 
 voted at the poll. 
 
 Bright's constituency was as yet only slightly affected 
 by the process, dating from the settlement of the Corn- 
 law question, that may perhaps be called the torification 
 of the middle -classes — a process that at this election 
 produced some surprising results in his own county of 
 Lancashire. The working-classes in general were dis- 
 posed to vote for the Liberal candidates. ** For thirty 
 years", said a Birmingham working man to a Conserva- 
 tive canvasser, ' I have been trying to get this vote. 
 For thirty years you have been trying for me not to get 
 it. I shall not give it to you the first time." The small 
 loaf and the big loaf were still the most persuasive of 
 emblematical arguments. Bright himself had established 
 a hold on the affections of the artisans of Birmingham 
 which was never weakened. He did not live among 
 them; he took no interest in their local concerns; his 
 visits were not frequent, and not many of his constituents 
 made personal acquaintance with him. But when he 
 came, he always gave them the best of his wisdom and 
 eloquence. No one who heard it will ever forget the great 
 
 (M433) K 
 
146 John Bright. 
 
 roar of cheers that went up year by year when the white 
 head of the people's tribune appeared on the platform of 
 the Town Hall. His annual speech was to many a 
 hard-wroug-ht man one of the great events and chief 
 enjoyments of the year. Each man was proud of his 
 share in so distinguished a representation ; they listened 
 to him with the unquestioning reverence of discipleship; 
 and they were never wearied of the punning motto, 
 '* Honour Bright". 
 
 The November returns decided at once the fate of the 
 Irish Church and of the Conservative Government. 
 Disraeli immediately resigned, and Mr. Gladstone be- 
 came for the first time Prime Minister. In accordance 
 with general expectation Bright was invited to join the 
 Ministry. He accepted after hesitation and with reluc- 
 tance. His work had not been such as to satisfy him- 
 self that he was well fitted for official life; he already 
 suffered from a constitutional indisposition for steady 
 industry which yielded only to the pressure of a loud 
 call of duty; after saying exactly what he thought for a 
 quarter of a century, it is probable that he did not relish 
 the necessary reticence of office; his habits of life were 
 domestic, and he was easily wearied by the turmoil of 
 London life. He declined the arduous responsibility of 
 the Indian Secretaryship, and accepted office as Presi- 
 dent of the Board of Trade only when the urgency of his 
 chief was reinforced by the strong persuasion of his 
 private friends. The reunion of his party, of which he 
 had almost despaired after the experience of the Cave 
 and the Tea-room, was made ostentatiously complete 
 when Bright and Lowe, the duellists of 1866, sat more 
 or less lovingly together in the same Cabinet. 
 
 Bright performed the functions of his office with 
 punctuality and acceptance, but without distinction. 
 His value to the Government lay in the confidence which 
 his presence inspired among the large section of the 
 
Ireland. 147 
 
 party in the country whose political creed was contained 
 in his speeches. Those who expected that his counsels 
 in the deliberations of the Cabinet would tend to disunion 
 were entirely disappointed. The passionate orator of 
 the mass meeting-s proved himself the most reasonable 
 and conciliatory of disputants in the council -chamber. 
 ''It is remarkable," said his colleague, Lord Granville, 
 after his death, "considering his vigour and the enthu- 
 siasm of his character, how great was the moderation 
 of the advice he gave his colleagues. I never knew a 
 member of the Cabinet who acted more as a peacemaker 
 among" his colleagues." 
 
 The session of 1869 was occupied in discussing the 
 details of the Irish Church Bill, Those details varied 
 considerably from those which had been twice — in 1852 
 and again in 1868 — sketched by Bright himself. The 
 liberal terms offered, for the sake of a speedy settlement, 
 for the commutation of vested interests, with other pay- 
 ments which Bright had overlooked, made the cost of 
 compensation to the evicted church far larger than he 
 had anticipated. But except that the Maynooth Grant 
 and the regiiim donum were commuted, there were no 
 grants to the other churches. Bright, however, was 
 content with disestablishment on any terms; and the 
 conduct of the Bill was left, as it may fairly be assumed 
 that its preparation was left, to the Prime Minister, 
 whose skill in grasping and expounding a complex 
 scheme was unequalled. 
 
 The main question having confessedly been already 
 referred to and decided by the country, the debate on 
 the second reading was not so much deliberative as an 
 occasion for the display of epideictic oratory. Bright 
 contributed a speech which was regarded at the time as 
 one of his most successful efforts. It is carefully elabor- 
 ated, and abounds in all the skill of a resourceful rhe- 
 torician; but modern readers will probably agree that 
 
148 John Bright. 
 
 Bright's eloquence is more impressive when he is defend- 
 ing- an unpopular cause against an adverse audience, 
 than when he was, as now, defending a foregone con- 
 clusion, and embellishing a case that had longf ago — by 
 Macaulay, for example, in 1845 — been exhaustively 
 stated. In a speech made on such an occasion there 
 must needs be an air as of conscious art, which is alto- 
 gether absent from the eloquence, spontaneous and as 
 it were inevitable, of the speeches on the Russian war. 
 
 He showed that dexterity which the House of Com- 
 mons encourages more than any other school of oratory, 
 of turning against his antagonists their own phrases and 
 sentiments. The Irish Church had been called a light 
 of the Reformation. *'This light of the Reformation," 
 said Bright, '' sustained by privilege and fanned by the 
 hot breath of faction, has not been so much a helpful 
 light as a scorching fire which has burned up almost 
 everything g-ood and noble in the country. Industry and 
 charity and peace and loyalty have perished in the 
 flames." One of the supporters of the establishment 
 had remarked that ministers of voluntary churches were 
 rather a low class. *' I think", retorted Bright, ''that 
 many prophets of old were graziers. The apostles were 
 fishermen, and theirs was a religion to which not many 
 mighty, not many noble, were called." But the passage 
 of his speech that has most permanent interest was his 
 reply to the stricture, elicited by an often-quoted admis- 
 sion of Mr. Gladstone's, that the new Irish policy was 
 due to the Fenian outragfes. If this were so, said 
 Bright, it was only another proof that it was difficult to 
 make great reforms unless under circumstances that 
 absolutely forced them upon the attention of Parliament. 
 ** You know very well that the Catholic Association led 
 to Catholic Emancipation ; that the dethronement of the 
 Bourbons brought about the Reform Bill of 1832; that 
 the desperate condition of affairs in the West Indies 
 
Ireland. 149 
 
 freed the slaves in the English colonies ; that the famine 
 in Ireland was an Irresistible argument to bring about 
 the repeal of the Corn Law; that the mutiny in India 
 drove the House immediately and without consideration 
 to abolish the East India Company; and, sir, if I were 
 to come down to a later time, I might, speaking of what 
 took place in 1867, ask the right hon. gentleman and his 
 colleagues what were the cries that induced them to be en- 
 thusiastic in support of a measure of household suffrage." 
 Bright took very little part in the discussions of the 
 Committee. But on the question of the provision of 
 glebe lands for the disestablished clergy, an amendment 
 being moved that seemed to agree better than the pro- 
 visions of the Bill with the plan he had proposed, he 
 was obliged to explain the disappearance of his own 
 scheme. That scheme had been of the nature of a com- 
 promise between the devotion of the Church property 
 to secular purposes adopted by Mr. Gladstone, and the 
 plan, still favoured by Russell, of endowing the Pres- 
 byterian Church in Ulster, and the Roman Church in 
 Leinster, Munster, and Connaught. Bright said that 
 the terms of the Resolutions of the preceding session 
 had precluded the Cabinet from considering his scheme 
 when the Bill was drafting; and that he had not sub- 
 mitted it to the House when the Resolutions were under 
 discussion because he had already found that ''the basis 
 he had proposed was not acceptable to the House ", 
 that it 'Svas regarded by many as unreasonable and 
 unjust", and was "distasteful to many people in the 
 Church and in general to Nonconformists ". It may be 
 said that the scheme was a compromise designed to 
 make the feat of disestablishment easier at a time when 
 it appeared to be difficult, and therefore not wanted 
 when the difficulty disappeared. But the speeches 
 already quoted seem to prove, if due respect be paid to 
 Bright's acknowledged candour, that, had he not failed 
 
150 John Bright. 
 
 to win support, he would have preferred his own plan 
 to that of Mr. Gladstone. Matthew Arnold (whose 
 father is cited by Russell as an early advocate of con- 
 current endowment) wrote at this time that *'the Non- 
 conformists were actuated by antipathy to endowments 
 and not by antipathy to the injustice and irrationality 
 of the present appropriation of Church property in Ire- 
 land ", and that *'the moving- power by which the 
 Liberal party were now operating- the overthrow of the 
 Irish establishment was this antipathy and not the sense 
 of reason and justice ". He ought to have excepted 
 Bright from this taunt. But the history of the Educa- 
 tion Bill of the next year proves that Arnold exaggerated 
 the weight of Nonconformist counsels in the delibera- 
 tions of the Ministry. 
 
 There was a general expectation that Bright would 
 sooner or later break through the decorous reserve, and 
 say somethings inconsistent with the moderation, which 
 were at that period of our history supposed to be incum- 
 b(mt on Cabinet Ministers. The expected opportunity 
 came in the month of June, when he was provoked, by 
 the indiscretion of those who predicted that the House 
 of Lords would try to reverse the verdict of the elec- 
 torate and the Commons, into writing a letter threaten- 
 ing- constitutional changes to the disadvantage of the 
 Peers if they should obstruct the Bill. They would, 
 he said, stimulate discussion on important questions 
 which, but for their infatuation, might have slumbered 
 for many years. By throwing themselves athwart the 
 course of the nation, they might m.eet with accidents 
 not pleasant for them to think of. The Liberal leaders 
 in both Houses were challenged to repudiate the letter; 
 but Lord Granville and Mr. Gladstone found no difficulty 
 in steering a middle course between embracing and 
 disavowing the sentiments of their colleague. 
 
 Many years later, in somewhat similar circumstances^ 
 
Ireland. 151 
 
 Bright repeated this menace. '' The veto of the House 
 of Lords", he wrote in 1884, after the rejection of the 
 County Franchise Bill, **is a constant insult to the 
 House of Commons; and if the freedom of our people 
 is not a pretence and a sham, some limit must be placed 
 upon a power which is chiefly manifested in or by its 
 hostility to the true interests of the nation. A Parlia- 
 ment controlled by hereditary Peers is no better, perhaps 
 it is worse, than a Parliament influenced by and con- 
 trolled by a despotic monarch." 
 
 If we consider the strong antipathy to privilege and 
 to aristocracy which was inbred in Bright's nature by 
 his religious creed of equality, and fostered by that long 
 struggle against the land-owners which gave a lasting 
 bias to all his political career, these momentary out- 
 breaks of indignation are really less remarkable than 
 his habitual reticence in regard to the privileges of the 
 hereditary chamber. He was for years the one man who 
 could, had he chosen, have put himself at the head of a 
 crusade against the authority of the Lords. Like other 
 democratic Liberals, he often used language which 
 seemed to lead him to the very verge of such an enter- 
 prise. That he did not go further than an occasional 
 and a conditional menace is another proof of the sin- 
 cerity of his frequent professions of aversion from violent 
 constitutional change, just as the tolerance of the Eng- 
 lish masses for that institution is the most impressive 
 example of the conservatism that distinguishes English 
 from continental democracy. Bright had no zeal for 
 artistic perfection in politics; he attacked unsparingly 
 anything, however venerable, that appeared to him evil 
 in practice, but of mere anomalies he was curiously 
 tolerant, so long as he found them practically tolerable. 
 On this occasion he was rude to the Peers, not because 
 they were Peers, but because he supposed them to be 
 meditating unconstitutional behaviour, 
 
152 John Bright. 
 
 In spite of this provocation a majority of the Lords 
 accepted the verdict of the country, the influence of the 
 Court being- used to avert a crisis. A dispute between 
 the two Houses over certain details was, after some 
 days of anxiety, adjusted. The Peers, said Bright, in 
 his review of the session, had taught some other people 
 a lesson by showing that they had learned it themselves. 
 The act of conciliation was passed. It did not conciliate 
 the Irish people, who had still grievances enough to 
 satisfy their appetite for complaint. On the other hand, 
 it did not destroy the Protestant religion. 
 
 Early in 1870 Bright's health again broke down. The 
 symptoms of his second illness resembled those of the 
 first, and it was of about equal duration. He was 
 present at the Cabinet meeting-s at which the Irish Land 
 Bill of that year was prepared, and, for reasons already 
 noted, certain clauses of it have always been known by 
 his name ; but he was unable to take any part in the 
 discussion of the measure in Parliament. 
 
 Twenty-five years had passed since the Devon Com- 
 mission had reported in favour of g-iving- legal sanction 
 and extension to the equitable custom of Ulster, by 
 which tenants, on quitting their holding-s, were entitled 
 to compensation for improvements made at their ex- 
 pense. The Parliament of the middle - classes per- 
 sistently neg-lected this recommendation. The first 
 Parliament in the election of which the working- men 
 of England took part carried it into effect. This fact 
 may fairly be pleaded in justification of the opinion which 
 Bright had maintained ag-ainst Lowe. The Bill also 
 provided for compensation for disturbance when tenants 
 were evicted for any cause other than default of rent. 
 But we are here chiefly concerned with the Bright 
 clauses. It must not be assumed that in a Cabinet in 
 which Bright alone represented the extreme left of the 
 party he had it all his own way in the drafting of this 
 
Ireland. 153 
 
 part of the Bill; and it is not certain that he is to be 
 blamed for defects that have since been corrected in the 
 maturity of experience by fresh legislation. 
 
 A beginning of the new land -purchase system had 
 already been made in those clauses of the Irish Church 
 Bill which empowered the Church Commissioners to 
 advance on mortgage at four per cent three-fourths of 
 the purchase-money to a tenant of Church lands desiring 
 to buy his farm. These clauses are sometimes associated 
 with the name of Bright. The Bright clauses of the 
 Land Act of 1870 provided that any tenant agreeing 
 with his landlord for the purchase of his farm could 
 borrow from the Imperial Government two-thirds of the 
 price, repaying the interest and principal in thirty-five 
 annual payments of j^c^ for every ;^ioo advanced. 
 
 The Bright clauses are sometimes said to have failed 
 in practice. In fact they initiated a successful experi- 
 ment. The transactions that took place under them, 
 though small in comparison with those under the Ash- 
 bourne Act of fifteen years later, amounted to nearly 
 two millions under the Church Act, and more than half 
 a million under the Land Act. A beginning at any rate 
 was made towards realizing Bright's hope of making the 
 land the savings-bank of the thrifty Irish husbandman. 
 
 The experience of the working of the clauses was so 
 satisfactory, especially in respect of the trifling propor- 
 tion of bad debts, as to encourage Parliament to continue 
 the work by further advances of public money on easier 
 terms. The Land Act of 1881 increased the proportion 
 of the purchase-money lent to three-fourths, the rate of 
 repayment remaining the same. The Acts of 1885 and 
 1 891 authorized the advance of the whole of the price, 
 and reduced the annuity to four per cent, with an exten- 
 sion of the term to forty-nine years. All these Acts are 
 to be traced to Bright's original discernment of this 
 method of dealing with the agrarian difiiculty, and to 
 
154 John Bright. 
 
 the use he elected to make of the vast influence he had 
 g-ained over the new voters. 
 
 The causes of Irish discontent were too deeply rooted 
 to be eradicated by such legislation, and those who have 
 laboured for the welfare of Ireland have long- ceased to 
 look to Ireland for gratitude. But Bright's name may 
 yet be honoured in Ireland if ever the fulness of time 
 should bring the accomplishment of the prediction with 
 which he closed his great speech in 1849: ''God has 
 blessed Ireland, and does still bless her in position, in 
 soil, in climate. He has not withdrawn his promises, 
 nor are they unfulfilled. There is still the sunshine and 
 the shower, still the seed-time and the harvest, and the 
 affluent bosom of the earth yet offers sustenance for 
 man. But man must do his part. We must do our 
 part; we must retrace our steps; we must shun the 
 blunders, and, I would even say, the crimes, of our past 
 legislation. We must free the land ; and then we shall 
 discover, and not till then, that industry, hopeful and 
 remunerative, industry, free and inviolate, is the only sure 
 foundation on which can be reared the enduring edifice 
 of union and peace." 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 Education; the Conservative Reaction; and the 
 
 Eastern Question. 
 
 The session of 1870 is memorable not only for the first 
 Irish Land Bill, but for Forster's Bill establishing for 
 the first time a national system of elementary education. 
 Bright was still well enough to do business when the first 
 draft of this measure was submitted to the Cabinet, but his 
 attendance had ceased before it came under discussion. 
 For a great part of the session he was unable even to 
 
Education. 155 
 
 read in the papers of what was going- on in Parliament. 
 His illness therefore befell just at a time to prevent him 
 from doing a service to his party for which no other man 
 was competent — the service of mediating between his 
 colleagues and the Nonconformists, who were provoked 
 to revolt by the educational policy of the Government. 
 
 The education question as raised and discussed in 
 1870 is the only political controversy of his time upon 
 which we cannot collect with certainty a complete account 
 of Bright's views from his speeches and public letters. 
 All his leading supporters in Birmingham were warmly 
 engaged in the opposition offered by the National Edu- 
 cation League to some of the provisions of Forster's Bill. 
 Bright's own sympathies were divided, in a ratio that 
 cannot easily be determined, between the League and 
 his colleagues. When he addressed his constituents for 
 the first time after his recovery, he said what he could 
 honestly say on the side of the controversy which they 
 had espoused, and in regard to the rest held his peace. 
 
 It has already been related that in his early parlia- 
 mentary life, as a zealot both of religious equality and of 
 laisser-fairey Bright adopted without reserve the views 
 of the Nonconformists who advocated the voluntary 
 principle in education. These views must be carefully 
 distinguished from those of the supporters of what is 
 perversely called the voluntary school system of to-day. 
 The so-called *'voluntarists" of 1843, an extinct species, 
 held that all schools should be maintained as well as 
 managed by voluntary effort. Between the time when 
 Bright strenuously resisted all national assistance what- 
 ever to elementary education and the discovery by the 
 friends of religious equality of a more excellent way of 
 satisfying their scruples, nearly a quarter of a century 
 elapsed. During that period the education of some mil- 
 lions of unlucky children was sacrificed as a burnt-offering 
 to the religious diflficulty, that man-devouring sphinx, 
 
156 John Bright. 
 
 The steps by which Bright gradually changed his 
 views on this question cannot be traced in his public 
 utterances. But in 1866, towards the end of the agita- 
 tion for reform, he declared in general terms for a 
 national system of elementary education. He then de- 
 scribed with admiration the common school system 
 anciently established in New England and already preva- 
 lent in all the other Northern States. He used the superi- 
 ority of American over English education as an argument 
 for democracy, and even seemed to add the meagreness 
 of the national provision for education to his catalogue of 
 the delinquencies of the governing classes. He declared 
 that he would stake everything he had upon the predic- 
 tion that, if the agitation resulted in a substantial and 
 real representation of the whole people, there would not 
 pass over three sessions of Parliament before there would 
 be the fullest provision for the thorough instruction of 
 every working man's child in the kingdom. 
 
 In order to secure this result without further offence 
 to the principle of religious equality the National Educa- 
 tion League was established. Its head -quarters were 
 at Birmingham; its president and chief spokesman in 
 Parliament was Bright's colleague, Mr. George Dixon, 
 and its other officers were mostly constituents of his; 
 and the working-classes of the town displayed immense 
 interest in the question. The agitation was conducted 
 with great vigour, and before 1870 the League was 
 invested with authority to speak, not indeed for all, but 
 for a majority, of the Nonconformists. Its policy was in 
 brief. Free, Compulsory, and Unsectarian Education, 
 and after much debate the word unsectarian was inter- 
 preted to exclude all religious teaching from schools 
 supported by the State. It was not indeed proposed to 
 withdraw from the voluntary or denominational schools 
 the subsidy they already received from the Treasury; 
 but it was anticipated with confidence that they would 
 
Education. 157 
 
 painlessly disappear after the establishment of such a 
 system of municipal schools as the League desired. 
 
 The solution of the religious difficulty which the 
 League proposed has never yet commended itself to 
 more than a respectable minority of the community. 
 It was rejected by nearly all Churchmen, and by many, 
 perhaps most, of the Scotch Presbyterians and of the 
 Wesleyans. It was proposed that the State should 
 entirely relieve the Churches of the care of secular 
 education, but should leave to the Churches the whole 
 charge of religious education. There was to be a 
 thoroughly national system of secular instruction, and 
 a purely voluntary system of religious instruction. It 
 was held that the qualifications which command success 
 in religious instruction were notably different from those 
 of a good teacher of reading, writing, and arithmetic, 
 and that the same differences between secular and 
 spiritual instruction in respect of time, place, person, 
 and manner, which are commonly recognized by those 
 of riper years who seek edification for themselves, should 
 also be accepted in providing education for children. 
 
 Whatever may be justly said against the rejected pro- 
 posal, it will not be denied that it was simple, complete, 
 and logical, and that it provided at least a real and a 
 final solution of the religious difficulty. It is also ap- 
 parent that it was, of its own nature and not merely by 
 the obstinacy of its adherents, rigid and unyielding-, for 
 the completeness and finality by which it was chiefly 
 recommended vanish at the first touch of compromise. 
 The League principle was not formulated by Bright, nor 
 did he ever declare his entire acceptance of it. But 
 it proceeded from the understanding of men who had 
 learned politics at his feet, and, in its simplicity, 
 audacity, and thoroughness, it bears the manifest im- 
 press of his mind. As a work of art it is to be cata- 
 logued as of the school, if not from the hand, of Bright. 
 
158 John Bright. 
 
 In his absence it was rejected, in despite of entreaty and 
 menace, by Forster and Mr. Gladstone, who threw 
 education back into that turmoil of the sects from which 
 they had an opportunity, not easily to be recaptured by 
 any other statesmen, of g^iving* it deliverance. ''When 
 a contest comes for a School Board ", said Bright in 
 1873, ''the question of real education seems hardly ever 
 thought of, but there are squabbles between Church and 
 Chapel and secularists, and I do not know how many 
 other thing's. And when the School Board meets, there 
 is priest and parson and minister, and they are partisans, 
 and there is no free breeze of public opinion passing- over 
 the proceedings, but rather an unwholesome atmosphere 
 of what I may call sectarian exclusiveness from which 
 nothing good may come." 
 
 Bright had described the plan of education which he 
 favoured during the election of 1868. He proposed a 
 school committee elected by the ratepayers in every 
 Poor-law Union, rejecting the alternatives of parish or 
 county committees. The committee was to determine 
 whether there was a deficiency of schools in its district, 
 and where new schools were wanted ; they were to have 
 powers to borrow money to build schools, and '*to levy 
 from all the property in the district a sufficient amount 
 of rate to repay in time the debt, and at the same time 
 to support the schools from year to year ". As for the 
 existing voluntary schools he said, *' I would leave them 
 at present just as they are. They would work on, doing 
 their meritorious work, and I hope " (alas for the vanity 
 of hope) *' without any jealousy of the new schools which 
 would be created." He expected that the new schools 
 '* would be in all points so good that gradually all dis- 
 inclination to this system on the part of the friends of 
 the present schools would vanish ", and he added that 
 he "looked to the time when all the existing schools 
 would be given up to the new and general system, until 
 
Education. 159 
 
 at last — and it would not be long before that would 
 happen — the whole common school education of the 
 country would be placed under a general broad system 
 of district and municipal management ". He did not, 
 however, indicate his opinion whether the common 
 schools should be open entirely without fee, and whether 
 attendance should be compulsory. Compulsion was in 
 general distasteful to him, as he showed for example by 
 his dislike of compulsory vaccination. When it came, 
 he did not actively resist it, but he described himself as 
 "not a fanatical supporter of any strict or rigid com- 
 pulsion ". 
 
 Of the religious difficulty Bright took a view which 
 has, unhappily for education, proved far too sanguine. 
 '* It is a difficulty which is every day lessening. It has 
 never been great in the minds of the great body of the 
 people. It is a difficulty which has mainly been created 
 by the ministers of religion, not with any wrong inten- 
 tion, but because their eyes were directed so much to 
 one question, and to one great object of human endeavour, 
 that they seemed to feel it necessary to tie it up with 
 everything else." Bright, it must be remembered, be- 
 longed to a religious community which does without a 
 professional ministry. He looked to the Sunday-schools 
 to ** supplement the general education of the people in 
 ordinary instruction by giving them that religious in- 
 struction which may be of value to them ". Two years 
 later, just before his illness, he repeated this opinion. 
 He thought '' one day in seven a reasonable time for 
 religious instruction ", and that the religious organiza- 
 tion was "sufficient for teaching religion in the sense 
 that is meant by those who say that education is of no 
 value unless it be taught alongside and mixed up with 
 distinct religious teaching". In the day-schools he 
 thought that it would suffice to teach "what every right- 
 minded teacher would undertake — to teach every child 
 
i6o John Bright. 
 
 love of truth, the love of virtue, the love of God and the 
 fear of offending^ him ". 
 
 Such was the basis on which Bright would have tried 
 to induce his colleagues to frame the Education Bill, had 
 he not been removed from their counsels by illness. Of 
 Forster's Act he expressed his opinion after his return 
 in 1873. ''The Education Bill was supposed to be 
 needed because the system that up to 1870 had existed 
 was held to be insufficient and bad ; and the fault of the 
 Bill is to my mind that it extended and confirmed the 
 system which it ought to have superseded. It was a 
 Bill to encourage denominational education and, where 
 that was impossible, to establish Board Schools. It ought 
 to have been a Bill, in my opinion, to establish Board 
 Schools, and to oifer inducements to those who were 
 connected with denominational schools to bring them 
 under the control of the School Boards."^ This was also 
 the opinion of the Birmingham Liberals; but, even with 
 Bright's assistance, they failed to convince the leaders 
 of their party. It must be remembered that Forster had 
 asserted that the school -rate would not exceed three- 
 pence, except in a few very poor districts, where it 
 might touch fourpence ; and that this statement, offered 
 without a word of proof, was accepted without a single 
 question by the House of Commons. The rapid rise of 
 the rate to three, four, or five times this amount drove 
 the Birmingham plan out of the region of practical 
 politics. Having secured compulsion, the League party 
 concentrated their efforts, with ultimate success, upon 
 the abolition of school fees. 
 
 In order to complete and dismiss this question, it 
 must be added that in 1876 Bright supported Mr. 
 Dixon's Bill for extending the School-board system. 
 
 ^Rogers (Public Addresses of John Bright, p. 202) reads "under the 
 control of the Privy Council". I cannot believe that this is what Bright 
 meant ; anyhow it is not what he said. 
 
Education. i6i 
 
 He was not, he said, wedded to School Boards if they 
 were not the best plan; but he called on the Govern- 
 ment to produce a better plan if they would not accept 
 School Boards. He declared himself satisfied with the 
 success of the Boards ; and, after describing- a visit to a 
 Board School in the East-End, he said, with some for- 
 g-etfulness of the part he had taken in 1847, "When I 
 left that school I confess I did not know whether most 
 to rejoice or to weep. I could rejoice at seeing- what I 
 had seen of what is now being done : I could have wept 
 at the thought that for so many generations the children 
 of that class in this country and in this city have been 
 almost absolutely and entirely neglected." He opposed 
 the clauses in the Conservative Bill of the same session 
 which seemed to be prejudicial to the School Boards. 
 But in 1880, after further experience of School Boards, 
 he said that he was sorry that Forster had not adhered 
 to his original proposal of entrusting the education of 
 municipal boroughs to the Town Councils instead of to 
 specially elected bodies. 
 
 Bright made one or two appearances in the House of 
 Commons in 1872. In September of the following year, 
 when, after the failure of the attempt made by the 
 Government to establish a new University in Ireland, 
 Mr. Gladstone reconstructed his Cabinet, he rejoined it 
 as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. But he did 
 not speak in Parliament during the session of 1873, ^^^ 
 the speech already quoted, delivered to his constituents 
 in October of that year, marks his return to the activity 
 of public life. His illness had condemned him to four 
 years' silence in Parliament. 
 
 Some of the most important victories of his political 
 principles were completed during his absence. The 
 third of his three heads of Reform was accepted by the 
 passing of the Ballot Act. He had peculiar reason to 
 rejoice in the submission to arbitration of the American 
 
 (M433^ L 
 
162 John Bright. 
 
 claims in respect of the depredations of the Alabama. 
 '*When the pen of history", he said, ''narrates what 
 has been done in regard to this question, it will say that 
 that treaty and that arbitration, conducted by Lord 
 Granville and Mr. Gladstone, added a nobler pag-e to 
 the history of Eng-land than if they had filled it with the 
 records of bloody battles." Another question in which 
 he had all his life taken the most lively interest, and on 
 which he had made his first speeches even before he 
 joined the Anti-Corn-Law League, had been settled in 
 1868 by the abolition of compulsory Church Rates. 
 
 By this Act the third of the three great purposes which 
 he had pursued with hope and energy that prevailed 
 over the doubt and weariness of disappointment was at 
 last accomplished; and he was disposed to the opinion 
 that the work of his life was finished. This feeling, 
 with the permanent lassitude left by the physical and 
 mental sufferings of his two long illnesses, caused him 
 from this time forward to hint frequently at retirement 
 from public life. But, though his work could never 
 again be as important as it had been to his party and 
 to the country, his political friends were always unwilling 
 to allow him to relinquish the position he had attained. 
 He had laid down the axe of the pioneer; he remained 
 the Nestor of his party, advising its more active leaders, 
 and sometimes composing its strife. 
 
 In the Birmingham speech he suggested five more 
 reforms to which the Liberals should devote their energy. 
 These were: the assimilation of the county to the 
 borough franchise, a further redistribution of seats, the 
 repeal of the Game Laws, a Free Breakfast-table, and 
 what was now called Free Land. 
 
 He had popularized the term, a Free Breakfast-table, 
 in 1868, in a speech at Edinburgh, after receiving the 
 freedom of the burgh. '*I once advised the Financial 
 Reform Association of Liverpool, who are against all 
 
The Land Laws. 163 
 
 indirect taxation, to hoist a flag- with the motto * a Free 
 Breakfast-table' — that, as the bread was no longer taxed, 
 some effort should be made to untax the tea and the 
 coffee and the sugar." But it soon appeared that the 
 new voters preferred rather to spend what could be 
 spared of the national income on education and other 
 objects beneficial to themselves than to save their own 
 contributions. The cry of economy has not been so 
 attractive to the working as to the middle classes. 
 
 The term Free Land, unfortunately suggestive of 
 schemes, abhorrent to Bright, which had not yet crossed 
 the Atlantic, owed its acceptance in part to the attrac- 
 tive jingle it made with Free Church, Free Schools, Free 
 Trade. Bright intended by it the removal of all obstacles 
 created by law in the way of the distribution of land 
 among many owners. Although he had held that such 
 reforms of the Land Laws were not so urgently needed 
 in England as in Ireland, because in England the manu- 
 facturing industries supplied the gradations of rank and 
 position which it was the chief purpose of his Irish policy 
 to create in Ireland, he had from the first made it clear 
 that he desired those reforms in England also. "What 
 the agricultural class of this country requires is that the 
 land should be made absolutely free; that there should 
 be steps by which the best, the cleverest, the most in- 
 dustrious, the most frugal of the agricultural labourers 
 could gradually make their way to a higher and better 
 social life. They can never do that with land laws 
 such as we have — land laws which tend everywhere 
 to great estates and great farms altogether beyond the 
 reach of the expectation or dreams of the agricultural 
 labourers." "There are natural forces at work", he 
 said in 1876, "which cause or promote the accumulation 
 of land, and natural forces which as certainly cause and 
 promote the dispersion of land. What we are arguing 
 for is that these forces should be allowed to work natu- 
 
164 John Bright. 
 
 rally and freely, and that the law should not in any way 
 interfere with them, but that land should change just 
 as easily, and go into the possession of other persons 
 by that change, as any other kind of property which 
 men possess. The result of such a change in the law 
 would be that land as a whole would find itself always 
 in the possession of that class of the population which 
 will do the best for the land and for the people who 
 dwell upon it." The latifundia, which he disliked as 
 being both the symbol and the mechanism of aristocratic 
 supremacy, still exist ; they would probably, being main- 
 tained rather by traditionary habit than by law, survive 
 any legislation stopping short of such interference with 
 the liberty of ownership as he at least would not tole- 
 rate; but by other methods something has been done 
 to open a more hopeful career to agricultural industry 
 and thrift. 
 
 Bright's proposals were offered on the presumption 
 that the next Parliament also would occupy itself with 
 measures devised by a Liberal Government. That ex- 
 pectation was to be disappointed. In January, 1874, 
 Mr. Gladstone surprised the country by a dissolution. 
 Bright and his two colleagues were returned for Bir- 
 mingham without opposition. But elsewhere the Liberals 
 lost many seats; the Conservative reaction proved to 
 be a reality; and Mr. Disraeli found himself not only 
 Prime Minister, but for the first time in command of a 
 majority of the House of Commons. 
 
 Disraeli had touched with a needle one cause of the 
 waning of the popularity of the Liberal Government in 
 his description of their measures as ''harassing legisla- 
 tion ". Bright retorted that if the Conservatives had 
 been in the wilderness they would have condemned the 
 Ten Commandments as harassing legislation. It was 
 hard for a man who had said that most of our evils are 
 caused by the interference of the State to confess that 
 
The Conservative Reaction. 165 
 
 the Government of which he was a member had inter- 
 fered overmuch. 
 
 Bright himself selected for special remark three of 
 the causes that had contributed to this memorable de- 
 feat. The first was the disunion caused by the mativais 
 coucheurs of the party, whom he described as ''men 
 possessed not of an idea, but by an idea ". The second 
 cause was the permanent and solid power of the Land 
 and the Church; and the third the wrath of the pub- 
 licans, whose interest had been harassed by Bruce's 
 early-closing Act, and was threatened by the Temper- 
 ance party with further interference. In the early years 
 of democracy the influence of the publicans was a force 
 not to be despised. The old-fashioned publican was in 
 the position of the chairman of a workmen's club. He 
 was often the oldest inhabitant of the street, a man of 
 substance as compared with his neighbours, and fre- 
 quently generous in disposition ; he was commonly the 
 best informed of the group that met in his parlour in 
 the evening, and, if not the only reader, the only man 
 who had had time to study the politics of the day in the 
 daily paper. He was, in short, the interpreter of politics 
 to a small coterie of voters, and when the election came 
 he could often take his company with him to the poll. 
 His political power has since been weakened by the 
 Education Act, the halfpenny evening paper, and the 
 tied-house system. But in 1875 Bright was justified in 
 respecting him as a formidable antagonist. 
 
 No one, however, could at that time discern that the 
 change in the balance of parties was due to a quality 
 of the new democracy that has since proved itself to be 
 of the most serious importance. Every general election 
 since the Reform of 1867 has resulted in a transference 
 of power from one party to the other, if we except the 
 doubtful case of 1885, when a new arm)^ of voters was 
 called out. No political wisdom, no legislative success, 
 
i66 John Bright. 
 
 no eloquence of advocacy, no art of organization, has 
 prevailed ag^ainst the imperious force of the swing- of the 
 political pendulum. It is now manifest that the victory 
 of the Conservatives in 1874 was the first example of 
 the operation of a force that works, as it were, with the 
 inexorable precision of a law of nature. 
 
 Two causes of this discomposing- phenomenon may 
 be sug-g-ested. Under modern democratic conditions 
 each party is so sensitive of the general trend of public 
 opinion that it can always save itself by timely concession 
 from falling into a hopeless minority. In the freedom of 
 private conversation we can always discover divergences 
 of opinion such as would, unless something checked, 
 split the electorate into many groups. The check is 
 supplied by the instinct of party, so strong in the Eng- 
 lish race. That instinct encourages the surrender of 
 sectional purposes against which the balance of public 
 opinion has decided. The result is that, in whatever 
 direction the country is carried by the hidden laws that 
 guide the broad current of national opinion, the division 
 between the two parties will, at any moment, approxi- 
 mately bisect the electorate. When the balance of 
 parties is even, what is called the verdict of the country 
 is the verdict of a body of voters, respectable neither in 
 number, nor in intelligence, nor in public spirit — the 
 grumblers, who are always in opposition. 
 
 The second cause may be found in the large expecta- 
 tion which the populace is encouraged to entertain of 
 what Government can do, ought to do, and will do for 
 them. This expectation, necessarily disappointed by 
 each successive ministry, turns the tongue of the even 
 balance in favour of the Opposition. The promises 
 that win success for a party at one election ensure its 
 defeat at the next. 
 
 These reasons are independent of the theory of re- 
 action, — a very disputable part of the philosophy of 
 
The Conservative Reaction. 167 
 
 history, — the theory that, to take the example most 
 frequently cited, accounts for the Indecency of the 
 Restoration by the prudery of the Puritans ; as though 
 Dryden would have been less obscene If Milton had 
 permitted himself an occasional indelicacy! So far 
 from offering examples of alternating reaction from one 
 extreme to Its opposite, the history of England since 
 1868 exhibits the policy of each party — Disraeli's im- 
 perialism for example — exercising a positive and attrac- 
 tive rather than a negative and repellent influence upon 
 that of its rival, and upon the general tendency of 
 national opinion. 
 
 Hitherto the movement of opinion in the Liberal party 
 had been uniformly in Bright's direction. From this 
 time forward It Is possible to discern changes which, so 
 far as they went, tended to draw the party away from 
 his Ideals. The ear of the democracy was being caught 
 by a new school of Radicals, who did not reject, but 
 who were not content with, the Manchester doctrine. 
 Their outlook was wider, their democratic sympathies 
 broader, their principles less rigid, than those of the 
 school in which Bright was reared. It might be mis- 
 leading to apply to this group of politicians in any 
 absolute sense the terms Imperialist, Socialist, Oppor- 
 tunist; but, used relatively, these names may serve to 
 indicate the most striking differences between the radi- 
 calism of the eighth decade and that of Cobden and 
 Hume. 
 
 Bright had seen with exultation the adoption of his 
 principle of non-intervention In European quarrels, and 
 the decaying worship of the hated fetish of the Balance 
 of Power. But the relinquishment of the risky and 
 fidgety behaviour of the Palmerstonlan period had left 
 the foreign policy of the party, in the opinion of its 
 younger members, nerveless and Indistinct. Bright had 
 not only rejoiced in the policy, for which he gave chief 
 
i68 John Bright. 
 
 credit to Molesworth, that acquiesced without demur in 
 the demand of the growing- colonies for self-government, 
 but he seemed to regard the tie that bound the settle- 
 ments to England as one that might be broken without 
 regret; every extension of the area and responsibility 
 of the Empire made him uneasy; and he lived to treat 
 with disdain the idea of Imperial Federation. One of 
 the leaders of the new Radicals was the first man to 
 popularize the term Greater Britain, which contains in 
 itself the germ of the modern imperialist idea. 
 
 Bright again, as we have so often had occasion to 
 remark, was disinclined to any legislative interference 
 with freedom of action and liberty of contract. The 
 new Radicals were disposed to emulate the Conserva- 
 tives in social legislation; nor did they share Bright's 
 distrust of trades-unionism. Bright remembered Joseph 
 Hume, the terror of Supply, with affectionate regret; 
 the new Radicals were liberal in their demands on the 
 public purse. They were interested in expanding the 
 progressive policy of the party; he retorted that the 
 party had already " too much policy ". He did not like 
 the word programme, which about this time was intro- 
 duced into the political vocabulary. 
 
 These differences, however, were not yet to be detected 
 by the ordinary observer. There was at no time any 
 quarrel or even debate between Bright and the younger 
 men who represented the newer conception of progress. 
 His tenacity of opinion forbids us to impute to him 
 without direct evidence any change of view. In the 
 weariness and the prudence of old age he became more 
 and more disposed to prefer silence to speech and 
 acquiescence to disputation. Whatever fear he may 
 have had of the socialistic tendencies of younger Liberals, 
 and whatever disappointment at the failure of his hope 
 that the new power would be used for retrenchment, were 
 eclipsed by one great apprehension that beset him in 
 
The Conservative Reaction. 169 
 
 his old age. He became subject to depression, due no 
 doubt in part to physical causes, and disposed to take 
 a gloomy view of public affairs. The fear that then 
 haunted him was that the working-classes, enfranchised 
 by his efforts, might, as time went on and their inde- 
 pendence of thought and action grew, renounce the 
 doctrine of Free Trade. 
 
 This fear was never publicly expressed; for no event 
 befell that could justify the discussion of such a possi- 
 bility. But often when men were assembled to hear 
 him, he passed by the burning questions of the moment, 
 and told again the story of what free trade and the 
 free-traders had done for the country. Hostile critics 
 discovered self-complacency in these speeches. But 
 they were delivered for the practical purpose of keeping 
 steadily before the mind of the younger generation of 
 voters the lessons of the history which the speaker him- 
 self had helped to make. He saw that the working- 
 classes were setting at nought in their unions what 
 appeared to him to be the orthodox and irrefragable 
 teachings of political economy. Where, then, was the 
 security that they would not be persuaded by blind 
 guides to despise the doctrine that forbade protection? 
 If that doctrine was mathematically demonstrable, not 
 less so was the doctrine they already disdained. " I 
 believe", he said in 1875, ''that all combinations which 
 are intended to affect the rate of wages are acting upon 
 a principle of protection, which in their case is just as 
 evil as it was in the case of landed proprietors and the 
 various manufacturers who at different times have had 
 protective duties in their favour. There appears to be 
 a general opinion among many of them, that, if people 
 could do less and produce less, by some necromancy 
 every one would have rather more. It appears to me 
 from what I know of the gospel of industry, that it is 
 as likely by combination to make men immortal as it is 
 
170 John Bright. 
 
 by combination to fight against the laws upon which 
 profits and wages are based." 
 
 Not many men dependent for their seats on the votes 
 of artisans would have ventured to say so much. Fifteen 
 years earlier, when there was a strong indignation 
 against the trades-unions and the practice of striking, 
 Bright had declared that, though nine strikes out of ten 
 had better be avoided, the unions were justified in hold- 
 ing strikes as a reserved force to be used in the last 
 emergency. He was no flatterer of the populace. He 
 defended the trades-unions when they commanded no 
 voting power; after he had won them their votes, he 
 gave them unwelcome advice. 
 
 When before the session of 1875 Mr. Gladstone re- 
 signed the leadership of the Liberal party, Bright's 
 position in its ranks was indicated by his call to the 
 chair of the meeting at which the new leader was chosen. 
 Despite the divergence caused by the innovations of the 
 new Radicals, Lord Hartington was chosen with a 
 unanimity that was in part due to confidence in Bright's 
 mediation. But events were imminent that recalled Mr. 
 Gladstone from his brief retirement, and that aroused 
 Bright to the last outburst of his old energy. Though 
 he was becoming more and more inclined to leave the 
 political battle to other combatants, and though he was 
 incapable of repeating the labours of the Free-trade 
 campaign and the popular agitation for Reform, he 
 could not sit quiet when the Eastern Question was re- 
 opened, and when the ghost of the Crimean policy began 
 to walk. 
 
 Early in 1875 the revolt of Herzegovina and Bosnia 
 against Turkish misrule excited hopes and fears of the 
 disruption of the Ottoman Empire, unless Britain or 
 Europe should once more intervene to save its integrity. 
 In October of the same year the Porte made what was 
 equivalent to a declaration of bankruptcy. Later in the 
 
The Eastern Question. 171 
 
 same year its rejection of the Andrassy Note, a diplo- 
 matic instrument by which the Powers essayed to impose 
 reforms on the Sultan, marked the first signal failure of 
 the European concert as the machinery for protecting 
 the Christian subjects of the Porte. In the following 
 May Bulgaria revolted, and the Powers again inter- 
 vened. But now the European concert was broken, 
 and broken by Britain : for the Berlin Note, demanding 
 favourable terms for the insurgents, and effective guar- 
 antees for the reforms, which was prepared by Germany, 
 Russia, and Austria, and accepted by France and Italy, 
 was rejected by Disraeli's Government. 
 
 To the Opposition the Government appeared by this 
 action to be sacrificing to their jealousy of Russia a rare 
 opportunity of doing something really effective for 
 humanity and civilization in European Turkey, and 
 their wrath rose to a white heat when the news came 
 to hand of the unparalleled cruelty that had attended 
 the suppression of the Bulgarian revolt. No oratory 
 less copious or less ardent than Mr. Gladstone's could 
 serve to give voice to the popular indignation. He left 
 his books, and led with tremendous effect the cry of 
 outraged humanity. At this point the great majority of 
 Britons appeared to join in the demand that Britain, 
 notwithstanding any engagements of treaty, should at 
 once and for ever dissociate herself from complicity with 
 Turkish misrule. Disraeli however declared firmly that 
 he would never consent to any step that might imperil 
 the Empire of Britain. 
 
 In the autumn Servia and Montenegro made war upon 
 the Turk, with the connivance of Russia. They were 
 soon crying quarter; and the intervention of Europe 
 again became necessary. At the end of the year there 
 was a conference of the Powers at Constantinople, Lord 
 Salisbury representing- Britain. The European Concert 
 appeared to be restored, but the Turk refused to sacrifice 
 
172 John Bright. 
 
 the fruits of victory at the dictation of the Powers. The 
 situation now resembled that which followed the rejec- 
 tion of the Vienna Note in 1854. But the British 
 distrust of Russia had now to contend with the more 
 powerful sentiment of disgust at Turkish misrule. If 
 the crisis was similar, the issue was different. Bright 
 attributed the obstinacy of the Turk to his expectation 
 that, as in 1854, Britain would still support him against 
 Russia though he should neglect her advice. Lord Sal- 
 isbury's voice, he said, was overpowered by the ** rowdy 
 war party" in England, who "were speaking in another 
 voice and stimulating and encouraging the Turk to 
 resist". '* There is always a war party", he said later. 
 " It is found in the press constantly. Unfortunately for 
 the public interest, there is hardly anything that tends 
 so much to enhance the profits of the proprietors of 
 newspapers as a stirring and exciting conflict." 
 
 In April, 1877, Russia declared war on Turkey. It 
 took the Russians all the rest of the year to bring the 
 Turks to their knees. On December 10 their victory 
 was assured by the unconditional surrender of the 
 Turkish forces beleaguered at Plevna. By this time 
 British opinion, which had been so strongly hostile to 
 the Turks at the time of the Bulgarian atrocities, ap- 
 peared to be evenly divided between the belligerents. 
 The war fever of 1854 reappeared, and rose higher as 
 the Russian army approached Constantinople. Parlia- 
 ment met early in 1878, and the Government took a vote 
 of credit for six millions, as a warning to Russia not to 
 pursue the rights of conquest so far as to threaten British 
 interests. A notable addition was made at this time to 
 our political mythology. That part of the population 
 which is least distinguished by intelligence and sobriety, 
 in calling upon the Ministry to fight rather than allow 
 Constantinople to become a Russian port, invoked the 
 aid of Jingo, the tutelar divinity of those ambitions 
 
The Eastern Question. 173 
 
 which were afterwards oddly associated with the modest 
 primrose. 
 
 Brig-ht addressed many public meetings during- these 
 events. His views on the question, simplified as they 
 were by his life-long disdain of the traditions of the 
 Foreign Office, admit of a brief summary. 
 
 So far from resenting he welcomed the intervention of 
 Russia. After the Crimean war Russia had been com- 
 pelled to renounce the protectorate of the Christian sub- 
 jects of Turkey; but the European Powers which had 
 undertaken the duty had proved incompetent to perform 
 it. '*The Russian protectorate was a reality; the pro- 
 tection of the conjoint Powers is only a sham. There 
 has been no protection." He admitted that it was im- 
 possible to tear up without negotiation the treaty of 
 1856; but he urged the Government to "negotiate on 
 new terms, with better principles and a better policy ". 
 *' Let us dissolve partnership", he exclaimed, "with a 
 Power which curses every land that is subject to it." 
 When Russia declared war. Bright justified that action. 
 The verdict of Europe had been given against the Turk; 
 Russia had only undertaken to enforce the verdict; and 
 "if the verdict of the Conference was a righteous ver- 
 dict, it seemed only in accordance with reason and with 
 logflc that someone should enforce it ". 
 
 He refused to believe either that any British interest 
 was endangered by the action of Russia, or even that 
 Russia had any designs hostile to Britain. " No nation 
 has been in disposition more friendly to this nation than 
 Russia." "There is no nation on the Continent that is 
 less able to do harm to England." The only Interest 
 England had in the Levant was "the constant free 
 maintenance of the passage through the Suez Canal ", 
 and that freedom would not be more endangered by the 
 presence of a Russian fleet in the Mediterranean than by 
 the presence there of the fleets of other Powers. Even 
 
174 John Bright. 
 
 if Russia held Constantinople, why should Constan- 
 tinople imperil our route to India any more than Toulon 
 and Spezzia? We could always rely on the help of 
 Europe to keep the Canal open. It was written in the 
 book of fate, he said, that the Bosporus would ulti- 
 mately, and not remotely, be open to all the nations of 
 the world; and why should not the Bosporus be as open 
 as the Canal? 
 
 As for the Central Asian aggressions by which Russia 
 was believed to be preparing* for an attack on India, 
 Brig-ht was content to say that *'the interest of this 
 country with regard to Russia in connection with India 
 is an unbroken amity". The Government seemed to 
 hold the doctrine of 1854, but the opinion of half the 
 country had swung" round. ** Now a man may have an 
 opinion in favour of peace, and the dog's of war will 
 scarcely bark at him." 
 
 On March 3, 1878, the Treaty of San Stefano was 
 sigfned by Russia and Turkey, and it was found that 
 Russia did not intend to occupy Constantinople. Never- 
 theless the British Government felt it their duty to inter- 
 vene with the other Powers for a revision of the terms 
 of peace, which indeed they loudly condemned. Bright 
 taunted them with *' going to a conference with shotted 
 cannon and loaded revolvers ", and with professing to 
 defend ''what they called European law", although 
 "Europe repudiates our European law". He charged 
 them with "constant deception practised on the House 
 of Commons and the country by professing a wish for 
 peace whilst engaged in acts distinctly provocative of 
 war"; and with "interposing obstacles in the way of any 
 arrangement for the settlement of the Eastern Question 
 on any basis favourable to the freedom of the oppressed 
 Christian population of the Turkish provinces ". 
 
 Before the Conference at Berlin was held the Ministry 
 was weakened by the secession of Lord Carnarvon and 
 
The Eastern Question. 175 
 
 Lord Derby. Lord Derby was on friendly terms with 
 Brig-ht, and it had long- been suspected that Bright exer- 
 cised a strong influence over his mind. Beaconsfield 
 and Lord Salisbury went to Berlin, and brought back 
 ** peace with honour". The Prime Minister of Britain 
 had approved himself, in the opinion of European diplo- 
 matists, one of the great statesmen of Europe; and 
 Britain had recovered the prestige that had seemed to 
 die with Palmerston. It was not to be expected that 
 Bright would join in congratulating the ministers on 
 their feat. He had never believed in any danger from 
 Russia; Britain, he thought^ was afflicted only with a 
 *' chronic fear based on ignorance of the facts"; and 
 therefore he had no thanks to give to those who had 
 averted a peril created by a diseased imagination. 
 Moreover, although many provinces were happily deli- 
 vered from the Turkish yoke by the arms of Russia and 
 the Berlin negotiations, part of Bulgaria was disappointed 
 of its independence. Bright and the Liberals, whom he 
 had at last persuaded to regard the dismemberment of 
 the Turkish Empire as an object of hope rather than 
 fear, believed that the power of Britain had been used 
 **to hand back to the Turkish Government a population 
 which Russia, left to herself, had delivered ". If there 
 had been no war, there had been "the menace of need- 
 less war". Also the six millions were spent. The 
 Government, said Bright in 1879, had been " imbecile 
 at home, and turbulent and wicked abroad ". At the 
 election of 1880 he reiterated his contention that war 
 had been averted not by the prudence and skill of minis- 
 ters but by the pacific determination of the people. 
 
 The sober verdict of history will never agree exactly 
 with the hot recrimination of partisans. But the differ- 
 ence between the conduct of this country in 1854 and 
 1878 is a phenomenon that historians will have to ex- 
 plain; and no explanation will be complete that omits 
 
176 John Bright. 
 
 the gradual influence of Bright's persistent appeals from 
 ambition and jealousy to reason and moderation. 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 Last Years. 
 
 When Bright attacked Disraeli's foreign policy as 
 turbulent and wicked, he was thinking not only of the 
 risk the Government had run of war with Russia, but of 
 their expedition to Afghanistan in pursuit of a scientific 
 frontier, of the fighting in South Africa that followed 
 the attempt to annex the Transvaal, and of the respon- 
 sibility they had undertaken in conjunction with France 
 for the good government of Egypt. All these transac- 
 tions were grievous to Bright. He had so little sym- 
 pathy with the national sentiment that is flattered by 
 such enterprises that he was hardly able to understand 
 it, and was in the habit of imputing motives which the 
 statesmen attacked could have disavowed with entire 
 sincerity. Yet he was equally sincere in making the 
 imputations. He was not betrayed into them by the 
 spirit of party, for he would hold the same language 
 when his own political friends committed the same 
 off"ence. The latest example occurred when in 1885 all 
 parties called for an expedition against Theebaw, the 
 bloodthirsty tyrant of Burmah. Bright, who had justi- 
 fied for humanity's sake the American civil war and the 
 Russian war against Turkey, accused the newspapers 
 that were exciting British sentiment by reports of 
 Theebaw's transgressions of ** acting in the interests of 
 the civilians and the officers, all hungry for more terri- 
 tory, for more patronage, for more salaries, for more 
 pensions, for more honours and promotions when the 
 war was over ". The view that he uniformly adopted 
 
Last Years. 177 
 
 of such adventures having been sufficiently illustrated, 
 it is unnecessary to quote his opinions on the details of 
 Beaconsfield's imperial policy. Between 1870 and 1880, 
 even after his recovery, he spoke very rarely in Parlia- 
 ment; and his condemnation w^as expressed briefly and 
 in g-eneral terms. 
 
 At the general election of April, 1880, the Liberals 
 regained a majorit5^ Bright retained his seat without 
 difficulty, one of his opponents being Burnaby, the 
 famous soldier and traveller. The election was imme- 
 diately followed by the resignation of Beaconsfield ; and 
 Bright accepted office under Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor 
 of the Duchy of Lancaster. The policy of the Conserva- 
 tive Government in India was reversed; but in South 
 Africa it was maintained until after the defeat of our 
 forces by the Boers of the Transvaal at Majuba Hill, 
 nor did the new Government retire from the respon- 
 sibility contracted by their predecessors in Egypt. 
 
 Bright spoke with more frequency in this than in the 
 two previous Parliaments. But, though his reputation 
 always ensured a respectful hearing, and though he 
 never spoke without some traces of the old fire and 
 force, it was evident that the weariness of forty years' 
 contention had fallen upon him. Except his defence 
 of the Irish policy of the Government, to which events 
 not then foreseen have given a special significance, there 
 is not much to record in this, the penultimate period of 
 his career. 
 
 He took some part in the discussions raised by the 
 claim of Mr. Bradlaugh, member for Northampton, first 
 to make a simple affirmation of allegiance, in the form 
 permitted to Quakers, in place of the customary oath, 
 and afterwards, when It was proved that he was not 
 included in the general permission, to take the oath in 
 spite of his recorded objection. Bradlaugh was widely 
 known as a public assailant of Christianity, and many 
 
 ( M 433 ) M 
 
178 John Bright. 
 
 members were incensed by his attempt to use the forms 
 of the House as an opportunity for the ostentation of 
 his opinions on rehg-ion. But if his object was to adver- 
 tise himself and his views, the course which the House, 
 rejecting the guidance of the Government, adopted, was 
 exactly such as to serve such a purpose. The dignity 
 of the Commons was staked, as in the case of Wilkes, 
 upon a struggle not only with Bradlaugh, but with 
 the constitutional rights of his constituents. They 
 allowed themselves to make an unconstitutional use 
 of the oath itself, which had certainly been intended 
 not as a test of religious orthodoxy, but merely as a 
 guarantee of loyalty. Bright refused to be a judge of 
 any man's religious opinions. ** I have myself passed 
 through many doubts, and have learned not to condemn 
 without sympathy, or not to condemn at all, those who 
 are unable to adopt the same views that I entertain." 
 Still more characteristic was the boldness with which he 
 struck at the root of the contention. '* Do you suppose 
 that the Founder of Christianity requires an oath in this 
 House to defend the religion which He founded? Do 
 you suppose that the Supreme Ruler of worlds can be 
 interested in the fact of a man coming to this House 
 and taking His name in vain, or in a man being permitted 
 to make an affirmation reverently and honestly in which 
 His name is not included?" 
 
 He supported a Bill brought In by Sir W. Harcourt, 
 the Home Secretary, to protect tenant-farmers against 
 the depredations of ground game. He was still in favour 
 of the entire abolition of the Game Laws, and while 
 supporting the Bill as one introduced with *'the honest 
 object of relieving farmers", he said plainly that it did 
 not meet his views on the question. His old antipathy 
 to the landed aristocracy reappeared in this discussion, 
 and Sir W. Harcourt was rather insolently warned from 
 the Opposition bench that if he wanted to carry his Bill 
 
Last Years. 179 
 
 he would do well to '* muzzle his right hon. colleag-ue". 
 This incident may be regarded as the last scene of the 
 historic feud of cotton-spinner and squire. The Bill was 
 passed, and the Game Law question has since rested. 
 
 In the first session of this Parliament another con- 
 troversy in which he was interested was decided. The 
 Burials Bill, which gave to Nonconformists the right, 
 under certain restrictions, of burying their dead with 
 their own rites in graveyards attached to parish churches, 
 was passed by large majorities. This proposal had at 
 one time encountered strong opposition from the Church. 
 The subject was one peculiarly adapted to Bright's elo- 
 quence, for no other orator of his time could touch with 
 such felicity the springs of pathos and sentiment. *' I 
 would say to Churchmen," he had said in 1875, '*If you 
 were to deal with the Nonconformists of this country 
 with more consideration and with more condescension, 
 with more of what I call Christian kindness and liberality, 
 in matters of this sort, you would find that the strength 
 of the Church would not be lessened but increased, that 
 the hostility with which in many parts of the country 
 she is regarded would diminish, and that there would be 
 a general subsidence of some of the animosity which 
 must, I fear, to some extent prevail where there is a 
 favoured and established church." There is evidence 
 that Bright's appeals exercised a considerable effect on 
 the minds of leading churchmen. Many of them were now 
 disposed to make the inevitable concession graciously. 
 Bright could not resist the temptation to rally the Oppo- 
 sition on the change in their demeanour. " I have 
 always noticed that hon. gentlemen opposite, when they 
 feel that their cause is nearly at an end, that a great 
 question over which they have been fighting is given up, 
 pluck up their courage and go to perdition in a very 
 happy frame of mind." 
 
 In the third year of the ministry Bright withdrew from 
 
i8o John Bright. 
 
 the Treasury Bench. The establishment of British con- 
 trol in Egypt, which is now recognized as having proved 
 the inost beneficent of Disraeli's perilous enterprises, 
 had been accepted by Mr. Gladstone's Ministry. But it 
 became necessary that Britain should either recede from 
 this engagement or maintain her authority by force. 
 Arabi, the War Minister of the Khedive, a man strong 
 in the affection of the army, put himself at the head of a 
 military revolt, the objects of which were suspected to 
 be the dethronement of the Khedive, the expulsion of the 
 Europeans, and the establishment of a military despotism. 
 He overawed the Khedive, and became possessed of the 
 fortress of Alexandria. The French refused to join in 
 enforcing the authority which they shared with Britain, 
 but the British Government proceeded to extremities. 
 On July II, 1882, Alexandria was severely bombarded 
 by the British fleet. Four days later Bright's resig- 
 nation was announced. It gave no cause for surprise, 
 and he was content to give a brief and indefinite expla- 
 nation of his reasons. " For forty years", he said, '^1 
 have endeavoured to teach my countrymen an opinion 
 and doctrine which I hold, that the moral law is intended 
 not only for individual life, but for the life and practice 
 of states in their dealings with one another. I think 
 that in the present case there has been a manifest viola- 
 tion both of the international law and of the moral law." 
 Bright was subject to some criticism both for staying 
 in the Cabinet while measures were taken which involved, 
 in the event of resistance, either stultification or an appeal 
 to arms, and again for not following his resignation and 
 his assertion of the moral law by a further attack on the 
 policy he condemned. But his conduct is readily ex- 
 plained by the supposition that he w^as guided through- 
 out by a sentiment of strong personal attachment to 
 Mr. Gladstone. He would not desert his leader in spite 
 of his disapproval so long as a peaceful issue was 
 
Last Years. i8i 
 
 possible. Having" satisfied his conscience by resigna- 
 tion, he would not embarrass his friend by criticisms 
 that could serve no practical purpose. It is evident 
 that according* to his principle of non-intervention the 
 British had no business to go to Egypt at all. But 
 when they were once there, Bright was not bound by 
 any general principle of action to which he had ever 
 committed himself to call for withdrawal. He had never 
 suggested that we should retire from India. When the 
 Government of which he was a member was confronted 
 by the alternative of either engfaging* in warfare or sub- 
 mitting-, for the sake of peace, to a disturber of peace, 
 he was in a dilemma of which the pacific principles that 
 he cherished do not appear to offer any solution. He at 
 least did not disclose the solution. He held his peace ; 
 and we are left in ignorance of the method of dealing- 
 with the Eg-yptian difficulty which he may have suggested 
 to his colleagues. During- the rest of his life he often 
 recurred in his popular addresses, with an added touch 
 of melancholy, to the old topics of the waste of the blood 
 and treasure of nations on unworthy ambitions. But he 
 treated the question still in g-eneral terms. In the year 
 following- his resignation he delivered an address as 
 Lord Rector of the University of Glasg-ow, an office for 
 which his competitor had been Mr. Ruskin. Here again 
 he poured out a flood of inspiring- eloquence upon the 
 wickedness of a warlike and turbulent foreigfn policy. 
 The democracy had disappointed his hopes; and he 
 may be said to have spent his old age '* ing-eminating- 
 ' Peace, peace'." 
 
 His release from the restrictions of office enabled 
 him to break silence on the question of disestablish- 
 ment. He had taken many earlier opportunities of de- 
 claring his sympathy with the purposes of the Liberation 
 Society. In 1875 he had devoted a very vivacious speech 
 at Birmingham to the Public Worship Bill. This Bill, 
 
i82 John Bright. 
 
 designed for the repression of ritualistic extravagances, 
 had been introduced in the House of Lords by the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, and effusively welcomed by poli- 
 ticians of both parties in the Commons. It had been 
 passed with approximate unanimity. "I never knew 
 the House of Commons unanimous and enthusiastic 
 about a thing," said Bright, ** except when it did not 
 know what it was doing and where it was going." The 
 clergy of the Church of England "are set over us by 
 the State as instructors of morals and religion, and yet 
 their own friends declare that their conduct is so lawless 
 that it is necessary to have special legislation to keep 
 them in order ", He conducted his audience to the con- 
 clusion that "the Church, whether we consider it as a 
 political institution or a religious institution, is greatly 
 out of harmony with the time". But he added, " I am 
 not asking you or any party or section of a party to 
 plunge into a violent agitation for the overthrow of the 
 Established Church of England. I think it would be 
 a great calamity indeed that a change like that should 
 come through violent hatred and angry discussion — that 
 it should be accomplished by a tempest which would be 
 nothing but the turmoil of a great revolution." In 1883, 
 hov/ever, he gave countenance to the crusade against 
 the establishment by taking the chair at a meeting of 
 the Liberation Society in Spurgeon's Tabernacle. He 
 said that he had been forced early in life by his study of 
 the persecution to which his own sect had been subject 
 after the Restoration to ask himself the question: "Is 
 the State the better for its union with the Church, or 
 the Church the better for its union with the State?" 
 When it was replied that "the Church tends to make 
 the State more Christian, that is, more just and gentle, 
 more merciful and peaceful ", he tested this contention 
 by the behaviour of the Bishops in the House of Lords; 
 and finding that they had resisted the abolition of slavery 
 
Lrast Years. 183 
 
 and the repeal of capital punishment for larceny, and 
 had neglected other opportunities of Christianizing- the 
 policy of the State, he concluded that the union had had 
 rather the opposite effect. He did not touch on the 
 question of disendowment, though it is proper to infer 
 from his profession of *^ perfect accord " with the Libera- 
 tion Society that to him also disestablishment meant 
 disendowment. 
 
 Brig-ht's seventieth birthday was celebrated by public 
 demonstrations of the respect and affection of the work- 
 men in the employ of his firm and of his Rochdale 
 townsmen. Two years later, in June, 1883, the com- 
 pletion of his twenty-fifth year of parliamentary service 
 to the borough of Birmingham was celebrated in a 
 fashion to which it would be hard to find a parallel in 
 the history of parliamentary representation. He was 
 received by his constituents with such honours as are 
 rarely paid except to royal personages. An imposing 
 procession carried him through the town in the midst 
 of vast crowds of cheering citizens. In the presence of 
 a throng of twenty thousand persons he received and 
 acknowledged the gifts of his constituents and addresses 
 from nearly two hundred political associations and clubs. 
 Nothing could surpass the enthusiasm of these festivi- 
 ties; and no more memorable example has ever been 
 exhibited of the spirit of gratitude of which it is some- 
 times cynically said that our political life is destitute. 
 The secret of this extraordinary popularity is not far 
 to seek. His eloquence no doubt contributed to it. 
 Yet if there were but few orators of his time worthy to 
 be classed with him, English public life produces many 
 popular speakers of the second rank, and the crowning 
 grace of style that raises him, in the estimation of critics, 
 into the order of the few whose speeches are an abiding 
 possession, was not a quality that would captivate the 
 affection of a multitude of plain working men. A tran§- 
 
184 John Bright. 
 
 parent sincerity that never condescends to dexterous 
 evasion or plausible excuse is the quality which the 
 people of this country chiefly delight to honour. Of all 
 the public men of the century, Bright had won the highest 
 reputation for saying exactly what he meant and for 
 doing exactly what approved itself to his conscience as 
 righteous. 
 
 It was generally recognized that the household suff- 
 rage established in the boroughs must be followed by 
 household suffrage in the counties. Bright had sup- 
 ported the motion regularly introduced by Mr. Trevelyan 
 for an equal franchise, and saw with satisfaction the 
 Liberal Government addressing itself to the necessary 
 completion of the scheme of Reform. It was not to be 
 expected that this measure should be heralded by such 
 popular agitation as had preceded the Reforms of 1832 
 and 1866. The villagers who were desirous, or who 
 were assumed to be desirous, of admission to citizen- 
 ship, a scattered population and slow of movement, 
 could not be gathered together in processions or mass 
 meetings; nor was any popular clamour necessary to 
 stimulate the Ministry. Meetings were indeed held; 
 but they were rather the rallies of a party anxious to 
 carry its principles to a conclusion, and also to recruit 
 its strength by a new enlistment, than demonstrations 
 of unenfranchised men knocking at the gates of the con- 
 stitution. Bright took some share in these proceedings. 
 He attended a Reform Conference at Leeds, at which 
 there was no lack of enthusiasm ; but it was an organ- 
 ized enthusiasm, and the creak of the machinery was 
 audible.^ 
 
 In the year 1884 the Government proposed to deal 
 with this question in two Bills, extending the suffrage 
 
 1 For a fuller account of the course of events preceding and accompanying 
 the third Reform Act, see the first volume of this series, The Rise of Demo- 
 cracy, ch. xiii., by J. H. Rose. 
 
Last Years. 185 
 
 In the first, and making- the redistribution of seats 
 necessitated by the enlargement of the rural constitu- 
 encies In a second Bill, which was to occupy the session 
 of 1885. The Opposition met the Bill with an amend- 
 ment declining to consider the extension of the franchise 
 unless a measure of redistribution were at the same time 
 submitted. Bright was put in the forefront of the battle, 
 as though to revive the recollection of the days when 
 he was the leader of an impassioned popular movement, 
 and brought to the House the inspiration of the great 
 meetings. He spoke immediately after Lord John 
 Manners, who moved the Conservative amendment. 
 But though he spoke, as always, with conviction, the 
 fire of 1865 was not easily to be rekindled; and he had 
 the unusual experience of seeing the audience that had 
 crowded the House to hear the old orator on the old 
 theme diminish as he spoke. 
 
 The Bill passed the Commons ; but the Lords, encou- 
 raged to resistance by the apparent failure of popular 
 enthusiasm, while recording their assent to the principle 
 of equal franchise, postponed their acceptance of the 
 Bill until the production of the scheme of redistribution. 
 If the Liberals of the boroughs had called for the enfran- 
 chisement of the rural labourers with little more than 
 a drilled and factitious earnestness, they were cordially 
 indignant when the decision of their representatives on 
 such a question was overruled by the hereditary chamber. 
 Bright led the attack on the Lords with all his old im- 
 petuosity. " It was once said in ages past that the 
 path to the Temple of Honour lay through the Temple 
 of Virtue. The law-making peer goes into the Temple 
 of Honour through the sepulchre of a dead ancestor." 
 He quoted against the peers, who were arrogant because 
 undisturbed by any fear of a coming election, some 
 verses of the 73rd Psalm. ''They are not in trouble 
 as other men, neither are they plagued like other men ; 
 
i86 John Bright. 
 
 therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; they 
 speak wickedly concerning oppression, they speak loftily." 
 In the same speech he exhorted his constituents to **curb 
 the nobles as their fathers had curbed the kings". Many 
 proposals for facilitating this feat were produced in the 
 excitement of the hour. Bright selected for his approval 
 the suggestion that the veto of the Upper House should 
 be disallowed in the case of a Bill sent up from the 
 Commons a second time after its first rejection by the 
 Lords. 
 
 Other Liberal leaders however showed a strong indis- 
 position to raise so grave a question of constitutional 
 reform, and preferred to avail themselves of the door 
 which the Lords had left open for accommodation. 
 Parliament was convened for an autumn session; and 
 the dispute between the two Houses was soon con- 
 ciliated. The scheme of redistribution proposed by the 
 Government was shown to the Conservative leaders, 
 and declared by them satisfactory. Having carried 
 their point that the extension of the franchise should be 
 accompanied by a measure giving adequate representa- 
 tion to the counties, the Lords accepted the Franchise 
 Bill. The Redistribution Bill passed without difficulty 
 early in the session of 1885. This measure approxi- 
 mated to the Chartist ideal of equal electoral districts 
 as nearly as was possible without entire disregard of 
 ancient boundaries. The few small constituencies that 
 still remained were mostly in Ireland. Bright had been 
 prominent in supporting, against those who asked for 
 a more exact distribution of seats according to the 
 number of electors, the claim of Ireland to retain, not- 
 withstanding the decrease of her proportionate popu- 
 lation, the representation apportioned by the Act of 
 Union. His influence also contributed to the final 
 relinquishment of all plans designed to secure the repre- 
 sentation of minorities. He had always regarded these 
 
Last Years. 187 
 
 devices with peculiar aversion ; and their disappearance 
 must count as a victory of popular over philosophical 
 radicalism. 
 
 The Parliament elected in 1880 will be remembered in 
 history, not so much for its completion of the work of 
 democratizing- the constitution, or for its other efforts in 
 legislation, as for the developments it witnessed of the 
 perplexed Irish problem. It is not necessary here to 
 attempt more than the briefest summary of the series of 
 events that led to the momentous change of the Irish 
 policy of the Liberal party in 1886, and to Brig-ht's rup- 
 ture with the colleagues with whom he had associated 
 himself for so many years. The course of events was 
 such as to bring into relief a side of Bright's public 
 character and of his political creed which had indeed 
 always been discernible, but had never had occasion to 
 display itself so prominently. 
 
 The term Home Rule had long been familiar to the 
 House of Commons when the Parliament of 1880 
 assembled; and for ten years the case of the Irish 
 Home -rulers had been presented to the House with 
 ability and moderation, but without much effect. As 
 early as the beginning of 1872 Bright had had occasion 
 to contradict a report circulated at an Irish election that 
 he was **an advocate of what is called Home Rule in 
 Ireland". He wrote; "To have two representative 
 legislative assemblies or parliaments in the United 
 Kingdom would, in my opinion, be an intolerable mis- 
 chief; and I think no sensible man can wish for two 
 within the limits of the present United Kingdom, who 
 does not wish the United Kingdom to become two or 
 more nations, entirely separated from one another ". 
 
 In 1879 Isaac Butt, the first leader of the Home Rule 
 party, had died, and had been succeeded by Mr. Shaw. 
 In the same year the Land League had been formed by 
 the efforts of Mr. Michael Davitt and others, and was 
 
i88 John Bright. 
 
 conducting, both by the methods of the English leagues, 
 and by other methods which those leagues had sedu- 
 lously avoided, an agitation for Home Rule and for 
 further reforms in the Irish land-system. When the 
 Parliament met, Mr. Parnell, who had been elected for 
 Meath in 1875, sat as the leader of an advanced section 
 of Home-rulers, apart from those who under Shaw's 
 leadership still offered a qualified support to the Liberal 
 Government. This section of the Irish party had already 
 in the former Parliament initiated the Irish method of 
 enlisting the interest of the House in Irish grievances 
 by obstructing its ordinary business. 
 
 The first Irish measure of Mr. Gladstone's Ministry 
 was conciliatory. A Bill was passed by the Commons 
 providing for compensation for disturbance to evicted 
 tenants, even when the eviction was for omission to pay 
 rent, provided that omission was due to the failure of 
 crops. This Bill was rejected by the Lords in August. 
 Its rejection was followed by agrarian crimes in Ire- 
 land; and the organized persecution of Captain Boycott 
 furnished agitators with a striking example of a new 
 method, and added a new word to every European lan- 
 guage. In the same autumn Parnell and other Irish 
 leaders were prosecuted for seditious conspiracy; but 
 the jury disagreed. In 1881 a Bill authorizing the Lord- 
 lieutenant to imprison without trial persons suspected 
 of treasonable practices or intimidation was passed. It 
 was followed by a Land Bill designed to establish Fair 
 Rent, Fixity of Tenure, and Free Sale; the first of the 
 three F's being secured by the appointment of a Land 
 Court, with power to fix judicial rents. On October 13 
 Mr. Gladstone's announcement of the arrest of Mr. Par- 
 nell was received with great enthusiasm in England, 
 and with unmeasured indignation in Ireland. Parnell 
 retaliated by issuing the famous No-rent manifesto. 
 Towards the close of the year reports of a convention 
 
Last Years. 189 
 
 of American Irishmen and Irish politicians, and of 
 speeches there uttered that burned with implacable and 
 unscrupulous enmity to the Crown and people of Eng- 
 land, filled Englishmen of all conditions and opinions 
 with strong indignation, and seemed for the moment to 
 separate the Parnellites more widely than ever from the 
 sympathies of all the English parties alike. 
 
 In the spring of 1882 the Government decided to re- 
 lease Parnell. This release was sharply criticised by 
 the Opposition, and was displeasing to Forster, the 
 Irish Secretary, who had made himself grievously un- 
 popular in Ireland by his rigour in using the powers 
 given to him by the Coercion Bill. He resigned, and was 
 succeeded by Lord Frederick Cavendish. On May 6, 
 the day of his arrival in Dublin, Cavendish and Burke, 
 one of the permanent officials of the Irish Government, 
 were assassinated by a secret society in Phcenix Park. 
 A new Coercion Act was immediately carried. The 
 Irish juries having habitually failed to convict in cases 
 where the evidence was clear, provision was made to 
 substitute a special commission for the jury. The 
 remedial measure of the year was a Bill providing for 
 the payment of arrears of rent out of the Irish Church 
 fund. In the same session a new weapon was forged 
 to be used against Parnell's obstruction, the House of 
 Commons assuming the power to limit the duration of 
 its debates. 
 
 Throughout this troubled period Bright gave a cordial 
 support to the policy of Mr. Gladstone's Government. 
 To the Irish Nationalists his speeches were often highly 
 offensive. He was frequently selected by them as the 
 object of their most animated invective, and the disap- 
 pointment they professed at finding him among their 
 most vehement antagonists was not necessarily insincere, 
 however unreasonable it may seem to the candid stu- 
 dent of his career. He was almost the only English 
 
igo John Bright. 
 
 statesman of eminence who had attained a high degree 
 of popularity with the Irish people; and the opposition, 
 always resolute and sometimes acrid, which he offered 
 to the demands of the party led by Parnell, was an 
 obstacle to be broken down, as such obstacles are 
 broken down in politics, by the battery of vituperation. 
 A just examination of all his speeches and letters on the 
 Irish question will discover nothing to support any 
 charge of inconsistency, or to justify the surprise which 
 the Parnellites expressed when he denounced their 
 methods and rejected their proposals as dishonest. 
 
 Bright was above all things a lover of order. He had 
 striven with surprising success to restrain within the 
 limits of order a hungry populace calling for bread, and 
 a voteless populace clamouring for citizenship. No man 
 was more strongly disposed to abhor the disorderly, not 
 to say criminal, methods of agitation practised in Ire- 
 land — the systematic breaches of contract, the refusal of 
 rent, the boycotting, the hamstringing, the moonlight 
 outrages, the threatening letters, the secret assassina- 
 tions. He was a democrat; and for democracy's sake 
 he was troubled at heart by an infection of the Irish 
 populace that seemed in danger of bringing democracy 
 itself into contempt. His dislike to intimidation is 
 measured by the earnestness with which he had cried 
 for the Ballot; and the intimidation of the Land League 
 and the priests, whatever may be pleaded in its excuse, 
 was in itself vastly more cruel than any intimidation 
 charged against the English squires. He always strove, 
 even against the weight of evidence, to relieve the Irish 
 populace from the burden of opprobrium by throwing it 
 wholly upon their leaders. If he judged the Irish mem- 
 bers too harshly, — and no man judged them more severely, 
 ■ — it was because his judgment was prejudiced by his 
 desire to save the credit of the Irish people. 
 
 He had devoted himself to reforms intended to purge 
 
Last Years. 191 
 
 the House of Commons of the excessive influence of a 
 dominant class. He had succeeded; and the House 
 was at last, to his mind, a leg-islature capable of large 
 and popular achievements. When therefore the Irish 
 members tried to impair by obstruction the legislative 
 activity of the Commons, Bright regarded their action 
 with the indignation of an artificer who should see a 
 machine that had been repaired and improved by his 
 own skill and patience thrown out of gear by the malice 
 of mischievous enemies ; and when they adopted a course 
 of action avowedly based on disbelief in the capacity 
 and inclination of the Imperial Parliament to redress the 
 grievances of their constituents, Bright could not admit 
 that distrust without admitting also the failure of his 
 own labours. He could not bear to hear the reproach 
 of neglect of popular interests and contempt of popular 
 appeals, which he himself had urged against the olig- 
 archy, repeated against the perfected organ of the 
 English democracy. Parliament had, indeed, actually 
 adopted measures of justice and conciliation that had 
 been devised by his sagacity or approved by his advo- 
 cacy; the Church had been disestablished, the Land 
 Law reconstructed, the franchise extended ; and the out- 
 cry of the Parnellites sounded in his ears like a declara- 
 tion of the incompetence of himself and his party. 
 
 Finally, Bright was an Englishman. His love of 
 England was not the less fervid though he disdained 
 the national vainglory and imperial ambition that feed 
 the same passion in other men. All the prejudices and 
 limitations that can be with any reason attributed to him 
 are of the sort commonly called insular. Hence his 
 indignation admitted no excuse for the vindictiveness of 
 the Chicago Convention. Hence, too, he was not pre- 
 disposed to assign any weight to the contention that 
 Ireland must be governed by Irish and not by English 
 ideas. The ideas of English Liberalism seemed to him 
 
192 John Bright. 
 
 good enoug^h not only for Ireland but for the whole 
 human race. They were as sacred and universal, he 
 often said, as **the laws that were g-iven amidst the 
 thunders of Sinai ". Thus his principles, his prejudices, 
 his achievements, his experience, all combined to set 
 him in an attitude of resolute defiance to the leaders of 
 the national movement in Ireland. 
 
 Nothing moved Bright's indignation more strongly 
 than the comparison between the behaviour of the Land 
 League and that of the Anti-Corn-Law League. '* From 
 1839 to 1846", he said, *'no man ever heard any of the 
 recognized leaders, or lecturers, or speakers of the 
 League say anything that was calculated to bring the 
 people to disobey the law, and to the violence we have 
 seen in Ireland. There was strong language used. I 
 am not a bit ashamed of strong language. But it did 
 not stimulate any man to violence. We directed the 
 people to political efforts and to the ultimate justice of 
 Parliament for the remedy of their grievance. What is 
 it that these gentlemen have done? They have to a 
 large extent demoralized the people whom they professed 
 to befriend." 
 
 In a speech made in November, 1880, during the dis- 
 quietude that followed the rejection of the Compensation 
 for Disturbance Bill, Bright said: ** Is there a remedy 
 for this state of things ? Force is not a remedy. There 
 are times when it may be necessary, and when its em- 
 ployment may be absolutely unavoidable. But for my 
 part I would rather discuss measures of relief as mea- 
 sures of remedy than measures of force, whose influence 
 is only temporary, and in the long run, I believe, disas- 
 trous." A few months later he was supporting a strin- 
 gent measure of force. But this Bill satisfied his condi- 
 tion, because it was accompanied by a remedial measure 
 —the Irish Land Bill of 1881. 
 
 His contributions to the discussion of the Land Bill 
 
Last Years. 193 
 
 were not important. There were five or six hundred 
 thousand tenants, he said, who made public opinion for 
 good or evil agfainst fourteen thousand proprietors, who 
 could by no means stand up against it. **The opinion 
 of property is always in favour of property. The opinion 
 of people who have no property is not any very great 
 safeguard to people who have property. If land is to be 
 made secure in Ireland, it must be by a system which 
 by dividing the property in land will furnish it with a 
 multitude of defences." With such terse and sagacious 
 sayings as this he illustrated the general purpose of the 
 Bill; but in accordance with a custom imposed on him 
 by his consciousness of the limits of his powers, he left 
 to others the defence of the methods proposed. 
 
 When he addressed his constituents in January, 1882, 
 he defended the policy of coercion. ''What I am in 
 favour of is as much freedom as will give security to 
 freedom. But I am not in favour of that freedom that 
 would destroy it." There were English Liberals to 
 whom the suspension of habeas corpus and like measures 
 seemed a more grievous evil than the organized persecu- 
 tion of the Irish societies. '' I am driven to the belief", 
 said Bright, "that some of our friends are to some 
 extent ignorant of principles on which alone democracy 
 can be made tolerable in any country. What would 
 these gentlemen do on board ship? In a storm they 
 might protest if the captain took in canvas or closed 
 down the hatches. Or if there happened to be any 
 attempt at mutiny or piracy, they might object to the 
 captain exerting his powers and putting the troublesome 
 men in irons. They might prefer the loss of the ship to 
 the infringement of their democratic ideas of freedom." 
 
 Bright eagerly supported the measure by which the 
 House of Commons sought to free itself from the 
 obstruction of the Irish members. '*I believe", he had 
 said at the Mansion House in 1881, ''that the debates 
 
 ( M 433 ) N 
 
194 John Bright. 
 
 might be shortened ; that is, when a man has said what 
 the House evidently considers enougfh, there should be 
 some mode of reducing" him to silence." When the 
 Closure was proposed he addressed himself to the fallacy 
 that the rig-ht assumed by a deliberative assembly of 
 limiting its own debates was at variance with freedom 
 of speech. "What I have always understood by free- 
 dom of speech was not so much the quantity of the 
 speech as the quality. It is freedom of speech when 
 you can say whatever you think right, and when neither 
 the power of the Crown on the one hand nor the law 
 of libel on the other can interfere with you." The Irish 
 members, he said, were ''at liberty to hold their 
 opinions — at liberty to conspire and rebel; but they 
 were not at liberty to make it impossible for the 
 imperial Parliament to transact the business of the 
 nation ". 
 
 The Conservative Opposition joined the Nationalists 
 in resisting this proposal. Bright's indignation at this 
 coalescence inspired a remark that was submitted to the 
 censure of the House of Commons. Speaking of the 
 Conservatives at his silver celebration at Birmingham 
 he said: ''They are found in alliance with an Irish 
 rebel party, the main portion of whose funds for the 
 purpose of agitation comes directly from the avowed 
 enemies of England, and whose oath of allegiance is 
 broken by their association with those enemies. The 
 reform that is coming and must come cannot long be 
 delayed, for it must suppress the power and close the 
 era of the men who now afflict the House of Commons 
 and from night to night insult the majesty of the British 
 people." A week later Sir Stafford Northcote, the 
 leader of the Opposition, moved that this language 
 constituted a breach of the privileges of the House of 
 Commons. Bright withdrew the word alliance, by 
 which he said he had intended to imply no more than 
 
Last Years. 195 
 
 that the Conservatives and the Nationalists were acting' 
 together. But he refused to withdraw or modify his 
 description of the Irish members. He repeated his 
 charges; and the Liberals, not yet prescient of 1886, 
 applauded him with enthusiasm. Although his with- 
 drawal of the word alliance seemed to remove the 
 immediate cause of offence so far as the Conservatives 
 were concerned, many of them supported the protest 
 of the Nationalists against Bright's imputation of dis- 
 loyalty by voting" in favour of Northcote's resolution. 
 
 Two years later this incident was repeated in circum- 
 stances that made it still more ominous. In June, 1885, 
 the Liberal Government, weakened in public estimation 
 by the Egyptian disasters, was unexpectedly defeated 
 in a division on the Budget by the Nationalists and 
 Conservatives; and a Conservative Government suc- 
 ceeded. Lord Spencer, who as Lord-lieutenant, with 
 Mr. Trevelyan as Secretary, had administered the law 
 in Ireland with courage and stringency, had been as- 
 sailed by the Nationalist leaders with an acrimony that 
 far exceeded the rather wide limits permitted by the 
 custom of our party warfare. Accusations were brought 
 against him which are now admitted to be absurd, and 
 which were at the time regarded by his friends as 
 insincere. Some of the younger Conservatives had 
 permitted themselves to join in the less offensive of the 
 attacks on Lord Spencer; and there were other indica- 
 tions which suggested the fear that, if the young Con- 
 servatives had their way, a bid would be made by their 
 party for the Parnellite vote. Such was the suspicion 
 of the Liberals; such too the expectation of the fol- 
 lowers of Parnell, who ordered the Irish vote in the 
 English constituencies to be given to supporters of the 
 new Government. 
 
 Lord Spencer was entertained at a banquet by his 
 political friends. There was much plain speaking, and 
 
196 John Bright. 
 
 Brlght's was, according^ to his habit, the plainest. 
 "Who", he asked, ''are Lord Spencer's assailants? 
 They are to be found in some conductors of the Irish 
 press, and in some of those who profess to be repre- 
 sentatives of Ireland. These men are disloyal to the 
 Crown, and directly hostile to Great Britain. They 
 have obstructed all legislation which was intended to 
 discover or to prevent or to punish crime. They have 
 insulted and denounced every man in Ireland concerned 
 with the just administration of the law. They have 
 attacked indiscriminately every magistrate by whom 
 any guilty man has been convicted. They have ex- 
 hibited a boundless sympathy for criminals and mur- 
 derers. There has been no word of pity for their 
 victims." 
 
 When these words were read on the motion of an 
 Irish member to the House of Commons, the whole 
 Liberal party loyally associated themselves with Bright 
 by their applause. Again he refused to apologize. 
 '' Every word of my speech was accurate and true. 
 Two hundred of the first men of England accepted it as 
 such." He put the supposition that he had said the 
 contradictory of these remarks, and asked whether the 
 Irish members would not have taken such a speech as 
 insultingly ironical. Northcote refused to support the 
 motion that Bright had committed a breach of privilege; 
 however, he ''much regretted" Bright's speech, and 
 sympathetically advised the Irish members that "hav- 
 ing repudiated these remarks with indignation they could 
 afford to leave them unnoticed ". Lord Hartington 
 retorted by declaring that nine-tenths of the people of 
 England would admit the truth of what Bright had 
 said. For this indiscretion he was in his turn rebuked 
 by Lord Randolph Churchill, the leader of the younger 
 Conservatives, who was designated as Bright's antago- 
 nist at the coming election. 
 
Last Years. 197 
 
 Birming-ham had been divided by the Redistribution 
 Act into seven parliamentary divisions. Bright was 
 nominated for the Central Division, in which the chief 
 strength of the local Conservative party lay. In Lord 
 Randolph Churchill he met with the strongest opponent 
 the Conservative party could place in the field against 
 him. Churchill had seen more clearly than older Con- 
 servatives the changes of policy, of manner, and of 
 organization, that were necessary to adapt the aristo- 
 cratic party to a democratic environment. His popu- 
 larity was then at its zenith, and he was the political 
 hero of the younger generation. By his opposition to 
 coercion, and by joining in the Parnellite attacks on 
 Lord Spencer and Bright, he had secured the Irish vote. 
 Although Bright was, for the first time in his career, 
 meeting an opponent whose personal qualifications were 
 formidable, he did not relinquish his dignified custom of 
 taking no share in the personalities of the contest. In 
 his election speeches he dealt chiefly with a recent and 
 temporary revival of protectionist doctrine under the 
 specious name of Fair Trade. The contest was sharp, 
 and the issue at first doubtful. In the end Bright was 
 returned by a large majority. 
 
 At this general election the Liberal party throughout 
 the country had made effective use of the suspicion of a 
 possible alliance between the Nationalists and the Con- 
 servatives. They based their appeal to the country 
 upon their resistance to the Parnellite claims, and upon 
 the sense of the danger that would ensue if the Liberal 
 majority were insufficient to maintain a Government 
 against a combination of Conservatives and Home 
 Rulers. The eff"ect of this appeal was weakened partly 
 by the disasters in the Soudan, and partly by the fear of 
 disestablishment. They lost many seats in urban con- 
 stituencies; but when the counties were polled, these 
 defeats were in part counterbalanced by the attractive- 
 
igS John Bright. 
 
 ness of the Liberal promises to the agricultural labourer. 
 The majority of Liberals over Conservatives was slightly- 
 smaller than the whole streng-th of the Irish Nationalists. 
 With such a Parliament no Government could be stable, 
 unless indeed it should be founded on some hitherto 
 unheard of coalition. 
 
 At first the Liberals scarcely recog^nized the possibility 
 that their own leaders mig^ht yield to the very temptation 
 to which they had beg-ged the country not to expose 
 their Conservative rivals ; and a rumour, circulated just 
 before the New Year, that Mr. Gladstone meditated an 
 alliance with the Nationalists was received at first with 
 incredulity and afterwards with consternation. His as- 
 surances, however, were sufficient to secure the temporary 
 support of the Parnellites, and with their assistance the 
 Conservative Government was defeated early in the 
 session of 1886. Mr. Gladstone formed an administra- 
 tion; but Bright and other leading Liberals withheld 
 their support until they should be better informed of 
 the new Irish policy which their leader had conceived. 
 When the new Government produced a Bill for estab- 
 lishing a separate Legislature in Ireland, and another 
 Bill under which the State was to purchase at a vast 
 outlay the estates of Irish landlords, the party was rent 
 by a formidable secession. It soon became evident that 
 what was to be feared was not merely the temporary 
 withdrawal of malcontents into a Cave of Adullam, but 
 the formation of a new party in the State, started upon 
 its orbit with an impulse strong enough to counteract 
 the gravitation of the parent mass. There had been for 
 some years reason to prognosticate a division of the 
 Liberal host, for the political aims of the new Radicals 
 were becoming more and more incompatible with those 
 of the less enterprising section. But the most remark- 
 able feature of the Unionist secession was that the new 
 fissure was transverse to the threatened line of cleavage, 
 
Last Years. 
 
 199 
 
 the Radical wing of the old party contributing- about 
 one-half of the Liberal Unionist strength. Bright used 
 his influence effectively to promote this revolt. He did 
 not address the House in debate, but when the dis- 
 satisfied Radicals met to consult whether they should 
 abstain from voting, or by voting against the Bill ensure 
 the downfall of the Government, a letter from Bright 
 announcing his own determination to vote was read, 
 and encouraged his friends to take the bolder course. 
 
 On June 8 the division on the second reading of the 
 Home Rule Bill was taken. It was defeated by a 
 majority of thirty, ninety-three Liberals voting against 
 it. Mr. Gladstone appealed to the country. Many of 
 the Liberals who had forsaken the Government lost 
 their seats; but the Conservatives, supported by the 
 Liberal Unionists in the constituencies, won many vic- 
 tories, in spite of the transference of the Irish vote. The 
 verdict was decisive; and the first Home Rule Ministry 
 fell after a distracted existence of less than six months. 
 
 Birmingham returned six Liberal Unionists and one 
 Conservative to the new Parliament. Bright himself 
 was returned without opposition. He made one speech 
 to his constituents justifying his desertion of the leader 
 whom he had followed for so many years. This was 
 the only speech he made upon the new issue, except one 
 delivered a year later as chairman of a dinner at which 
 the Liberal Unionist members entertained their leader, 
 Lord Hartington. But in the confusion attending the 
 rupture of the party many perplexed Liberals wrote to 
 him for advice, and published his letters. 
 
 These letters, about forty in number, written hastily, 
 but with great vigour and terseness, may be regarded 
 as his last contribution to the guidance of his country- 
 men. They are distinguished even among Bright's 
 utterances by the vehemence of their invective. He 
 stood at the parting of the ways like a Hebrew prophet 
 
200 John Bright. 
 
 testifying- against backsliders. The controversy raised 
 by Mr. Gladstone's policy included a very large number 
 of points of dispute. Bright however, whose habit was 
 always to simplify discussion by concentration upon a 
 few salient points, confined himself mainly to three 
 topics. *' I have not been moved", he wrote to Bishop 
 Magee, *'by fears as to the breaking up of the Empire, 
 or as to the effect the proposed measure would have 
 upon Great Britain." 
 
 In the first place, he reiterated his refusal to believe 
 in the sincerity of the Liberals who had followed Mr. 
 Gladstone's lead on the Irish question. He was habitu- 
 ally severe, not to say uncharitable, in his moral judg- 
 ments; and having once, with whatever justification, 
 formed the opinion that the newly-converted Home- 
 rulers had enslaved their conscience to that of their 
 chief, it was inevitable that he should condemn, with a 
 severity that no other Unionist ventured to assume, 
 their infidelity to the inward light. He took up the 
 position of a political Protestant asserting the right of 
 private judgment. ''There are men in the House of 
 Commons", he said in his speech at Birmingham, "who 
 have no notion of anything but following. They have 
 no trouble in considering great questions. There is 
 their leader, and where he leads they follow. They 
 remind me very much of those gentlemen who go out 
 as tourists with Mr. Cook. They enjoy great security, 
 because they are personally conducted." His indigna- 
 tion did not often permit him to treat the subject in this 
 vein of good-humoured satire. ''Surely", he wrote to 
 Mr. Gladstone, "when you urged the constituencies to 
 send you a Liberal majority large enough to make you 
 independent of Mr. Parnell and his party, the Liberal 
 party and the country understood you to ask for a 
 majority to enable you to resist Mr. Parnell, not to 
 make a complete surrender to him." "If Mr. Glad- 
 
Last Years. 201 
 
 stone's great authority were withdrawn from these Bills, 
 I doubt if twenty members outside the Irish party in 
 the House of Commons would support them." "It is 
 notorious that scores of members of the House of Com- 
 mons have voted with the Government who in private 
 have condemned the Irish Bills." " I have not been 
 able to march with the clubs and associations which 
 shout for measures which little more than a year ago 
 they would have condemned. We have not yet had 
 an infallible leader, and till he appears on the scene, I 
 must preserve my own liberty of judgment." 
 
 In the second place, Bright repeated again and again 
 in the new circumstances the unfavourable opinion that 
 he had formed long ago of those Irish politicians to 
 whom, in his view, Mr. Gladstone was making" a capitu- 
 lation. ** I am asked why I cannot trust those leaders. 
 I do trust them most entirely. I have seen their course 
 for seven years past, and have heard and read their 
 speeches, and see in them only hatred to England and 
 disloyalty to the Crown." ''The great Eng-lish Liberal 
 party is called on to abandon its past policy and pros- 
 trate itself before an odious, illegal, and immoral 
 conspiracy." His patriotic sentiment was grievously 
 shocked by the suspicion that the Irish members sub- 
 sisted on ** contributions from America, from men whose 
 avowed object is to separate Ireland from Great Britain, 
 and permanently to break up the union of the three 
 kingdoms". He spoke of ''the disloyal and rebel 
 party", of "a conspiracy whose main object was to 
 plunder the landlords and excite bitter hatred of Eng- 
 land ", and of "men who had wholly ignored truthful- 
 ness and wisdom and justice for the last seven years ". 
 The reasons which appear to have led the great English 
 democrat to adopt so detrimental an opinion of the 
 leaders of the Celtic democracy in Ireland have already 
 been noticed. What was new was his astonishment at 
 
202 John Bright. 
 
 the new sympathies of those who had seemed to share 
 that opinion with him. ''I believe", he said, ''that 
 history has no example of a monarchy or a republic 
 submitting to a capitulation so unnecessary and so 
 humiliating'." 
 
 The third topic on which Bright laid stress was the in- 
 justice which Home Rule would, in his opinion, inflict on 
 the Englishry in Ireland, and especially in Ulster. "You 
 are asked", he said in his speech at Birmingham, "to 
 thrust out from the shelter and the justice of the United 
 Parliament the two millions who would remain with us, 
 who cling to us, who passionately resent the attempt 
 to drive them from the protection of the Parliament of 
 their ancestors." In his letter to Magee he wrote: 
 " Nothing seems to me more shocking than the scheme 
 of handing over the loyal portion of the five millions of 
 the Irish population, being in number, I believe, at least 
 two millions, to the government of men who have dis- 
 turbed and demoralized Ireland during the last seven 
 years." 
 
 In the early days of the disruption many schemes of 
 compromise were suggested. Bright made the sugges- 
 tion that every Irish Bill should after its first reading be 
 submitted to a committee consisting of 103 Irish mem- 
 bers, who should treat it as Bills are treated in committee 
 of the whole House. The second reading was to be 
 omitted, and the decisions of the Irish Committee were 
 to be reviewed by the House only in the stage of report. 
 
 In the midst of the gloom that fell on his spirit at the 
 snapping of old ties and the failure of the great engine 
 of progress from which he had hoped so much. Bright 
 slowly and sadly descended to his grave. "The moral 
 sense of the Liberal party ", he wrote in December, 
 1887, "seems to have become depraved, and all that 
 we boasted of in its former character has for the time 
 forsaken it. I suppose the cloud will lift some day, but 
 
Last Years. 
 
 203 
 
 just now we are in great darkness. Our duty Is to go 
 on, honestly acting up to our convictions of what is true. 
 I am sorry I am not able to do more, but years creep 
 on, and their warning must not be disregarded." 
 
 In 1886 he was admitted to an honorary degree by the 
 University of Oxford. His last speech at Birmingham 
 was delivered on March 29, 1888, on the occasion of a 
 banquet celebrating the return of his colleague, Mr. 
 Chamberlain, from a mission of peace to America. He 
 spoke chiefly of projects already in the air for Imperial 
 Federation. He rejected Federation as a ''dream and 
 an absurdity ", relying for the support of this opinion on 
 "the question of the tariffs, which divide the colonies 
 among themselves and divide them from us, and on the 
 question of our foreign policy, which tends to place 
 the colonies all over the world in a situation of peril 
 because of the uncertainty of the peace we are able to 
 maintain ". 
 
 A few days later a statue of Bright was unveiled at 
 Birmingham. His effigy now stands in a place of honour 
 in each of the three towns with which his name is im- 
 perishably associated — Rochdale, Manchester, and Bir- 
 mingham. 
 
 When he made the speech just quoted the hand of 
 death was already upon him. He had been ill in the 
 previous winter, and in May his trouble returned. He 
 rallied again in the late summer, but in October he took 
 to his bed, and was never afterwards strong enough to 
 come downstairs. In December his death was daily 
 expected, but the enemy was kept at bay for a few 
 months longer. His daughter has recorded some simple 
 incidents of his last days. He was weary and silent, 
 but patient and grateful to those who tended him. He 
 called for Addison's versification of the 107th Psalm to 
 be read over to him till he had learned it by heart. 
 " His love for animals was amply repaid by the devotion 
 
204 John Bright. 
 
 of his little dog* Fly, who was always by his side, never 
 willing-ly leaving the room from the time he was taken 
 ill in May till the end came. She was a constant source 
 of pleasure to him during- those long- months, and her 
 head received the last caresses of the dying hand when 
 all other power of expression was gone. The end came 
 at last, quietly and without suffering, after many hours 
 of unconsciousness, early in the morning- of March 27, 
 1889." 
 
 He was buried with the studiously simple rites of his 
 community in the g-raveyard attached to the Friends' 
 Meeting-house at Rochdale. Many men whose names 
 will be forgotten before his have been buried in the 
 enviable sepulchres of our national temples. But to all 
 who loved Bright it seemed most fitting that his g-rave 
 should be encircled by the tombstones of those homespun 
 worthies of his sect and kindred, from whose quiet lives 
 he had inherited the creed, made famous and potent by 
 his genius, of peace and amity and the equal dig-nity of 
 manhood. 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 Bright's Oratory. 
 
 Lord Salisbury, speaking immediately after Bright's 
 death, said of him: *' He was the greatest master of 
 English oratory that this generation — I may say several 
 g-enerations — has seen. I have met men who have 
 heard Pitt and Fox, and in whose judgment their 
 eloquence at its best was inferior to the finest efforts 
 of John Bright. At a time when much speaking has 
 depressed, has almost exterminated, eloquence, he main- 
 tained that robust, powerful, and vigorous style in which 
 he gave fitting expression to the burning and noble 
 thoughts he desired to utter." This judgment might 
 
Bright's Oratory. 205 
 
 be supported by the testimony of many other competent 
 critics; it is indeed so generally accepted that it re- 
 quires illustration rather than defence. Lord Salisbury's 
 epithets do not, however, do justice to the most dis- 
 tinctive and admirable feature of Brigfht's oratory. If 
 it was robust and vig"orous, it was also emotional, 
 sympathetic, sentimental. It was by virtue of a well- 
 tempered combination of what may be called the mascu- 
 line and the feminine elements of rhetorical persuasion 
 that Brig;ht claims the first place among/ the British 
 orators of the century. It is impossible to give an 
 adequate critical account of eloquence worthy of such 
 high commendation. In the best oratory, as in poetry, 
 there is a quality, the rarest of all, that eludes critical 
 analysis and can only be referred vaguely to genius. A 
 critic, applying one after the other the accepted critical 
 tests of the art, might defend the judgment that Macaulay 
 was a greater orator than Bright. The sense by which 
 we revolt against such a judgment is the sense by which 
 we perceive the last inimitable grace that lies beyond 
 the reach of study and cleverness. 
 
 Although Bright owed his supremacy to an incom- 
 municable gift of nature, it must not be supposed either 
 that he achieved his oratorical triumphs without sedulous 
 endeavour, or that his art reached the full perfection of 
 accomplishment otherwise than by degrees. That his 
 speeches in the days of the Anti-Corn-Law League were 
 full of inspiration and conviction is proved by the rapidity 
 with which his fame spread through the country, and by 
 the popular association of his name with that of Cobden, 
 the undoubted protagonist of the great struggle. But 
 those who heard him during this period of his career 
 describe his speeches as animated, impetuous, and ex- 
 hilarating, but as consisting of mere passionate declam- 
 ation, disorderly in arrangement and amorphous in 
 style, and anticipating but rarely the majestic manner 
 
2o6 John Bright. 
 
 of his later orations. Many extracts from his speeches 
 at Covent Garden and Free-trade Hall may be read in 
 Prentice's History of the League. It is only here and 
 there that the reader lights on some phrase that in 
 humour or vividness or ingenuity or elevation gives pro- 
 mise of something better than the ordinary fluency of a 
 demagogue content with emphasizing commonplaces. 
 Perhaps the first speech in which Bright displayed his 
 full power was a speech on Ireland delivered in the 
 House of Commons on April 2, 1849. This speech was 
 evidently carefully prepared ; it was based upon genuine 
 study of certain aspects of the Irish question. The 
 peroration is not merely powerfully composed, but, 
 unlike many of Bright's perorations, it really completes 
 and summarizes the argument of the whole speech. 
 The speech elicited a very high encomium from Disraeli. 
 Nor can there be any doubt that he took great pains 
 in the preparation of his speeches. It was not his habit 
 to write them out. He told a correspondent that his 
 written notes contained only the heads of the leading 
 arguments and facts, and that he *Meft the words to 
 come at call while he was speaking ". He added that 
 he almost invariably wrote out the concluding words 
 and sentences. The evidence of those who were in his 
 society before he spoke proves that it was his custom 
 to revolve his speech in his mind for some days. He 
 must have chosen and rejected this or that turn until 
 his forethought, perhaps unconsciously, had extended 
 to the phrasing as well as the substance of his sentences. 
 If he had to make a speech in the evening, his nervous- 
 ness and preoccupation made him almost unapproachable 
 for the whole of the day. When the speech was oif his 
 mind he became again genial and disposed for conversa- 
 tion. He once said, with humorous exaggeration no 
 doubt, '* I am always ill for a week before speaking". 
 One of his hosts at Birmingham made the curious ob- 
 
Bright's Oratory. 207 
 
 servation that he always complained of the cold when 
 he came down to breakfast on the morning of a meeting. 
 This preoccupation cannot have been caused merely or 
 chiefly by his sense of the moral responsibility laid upon 
 one who assumes the office of advising his countrymen 
 on affairs of state; for it is difficult to conceive that 
 Bright ever suffered misgivings as to the soundness of 
 the counsel that he had to offer. It was rather the 
 nervousness of the artistic temperament. He had a 
 cultivated respect for his art, for his audience, and for 
 his reputation. He was afraid, not that he might not 
 say the right thing, but that he might not say it well. 
 The notes that he took with him were merely a few 
 heads and catchwords. Those that he used in his 
 speech of July i, 1886, have been preserved. They 
 cover nine pages of note-paper; they are neatly written, 
 and, being without erasure or interlineation, must have 
 been copied from a first rough draft. A familiar quota- 
 tion from Scripture is written in full, as though Bright 
 distrusted his memory. 
 
 Mr. S. H. Butcher, discussing the art of the greatest 
 orator of antiquity, finds none of the moderns worthy 
 to take rank with Demosthenes, save only Edmund 
 Burke. "John Bright", he says, ''has almost every 
 Demosthenic gift except that of strong and persistent 
 reasoning. He is easily led away into emotional digres- 
 sion ; some of his noblest passages are loosely connected 
 with the subject, they are not wrought into the texture 
 of the thought. The two most perfect types in which 
 the eloquence of impassioned reason has hitherto ex- 
 pressed itself are found in Demosthenes and Burke." 
 
 The comparison here suggested between Bright and 
 Burke is one from which those may shrink who wish 
 to praise Bright without disparagement. Burke's under- 
 standing was far more ample and profound, his know- 
 ledge greater, his imagination more vigorous; his 
 
2o8 John Bright. 
 
 eloquence had a strong^er wing* and a loftier flight; he 
 had at call the full opulence of the Engflish tongue. 
 One might prefer to measure Bright against a less 
 august figure. Burke left a message for posterity; it 
 may be found that Bright served only his own genera- 
 tion. If, however, the comparison is to be made, we 
 may claim some compensating- superiority for Bright. 
 He possessed, whether by nature or art, a far greater 
 power of adapting his eloquence to his audience. If the 
 end of oratory is to convince the judgment and to guide 
 the passions of those who hear, rather than to accumu- 
 late treasures of wisdom for the student^ Brig-ht's elo- 
 quence was far more successful. He also possessed the 
 saving grace of humour, in which the great Irishman, 
 like the great Athenian, was almost painfully wanting". 
 This is surely no small matter. To men who take so 
 gfrave a view of political responsibility as these two 
 statesmen, who strove, as they strove, to teach political 
 morality and a political religion to an untoward genera- 
 tion, the burden of affairs is intolerable if it cannot be 
 lightened by laughter. Bright's humour was not pene- 
 trating like that of Carlyle ; it only played on the surface 
 of his earnestness; but it helped to save him from the 
 gloom of Burke and the Prophets. 
 
 The oratory of Brig^ht is distinguished from that of 
 f the great orators of an earlier generation chiefly by the 
 quality of simplicity both of matter and diction. This 
 simplicity reflects the most striking quality of his mind. 
 He was for the most part content to deduce his political 
 conclusions from a few very broad principles. He did 
 not lead his hearers throug^h any long processes of 
 argumentation, because his own mental processes were 
 simplified by his indiff'erence to so many considerations 
 that count with more patient observers. He did not 
 weigh reason against reason and strike the balance, 
 because the conclusions he propounded commended 
 
Bright's Oratory. 209 
 
 themselves to him, not as resulting- from a calculation 
 of comparative expedienc}^, but as following- directly 
 from comprehensive premisses to which his hearers were 
 assumed to have already assented. He did not weary 
 them by marshalling- tacts, because his own methods of 
 thought were intuitive rather than inductive. There is 
 a sort of insincerity which is almost inseparable from 
 political rhetoric. Most speakers are constrained to 
 adapt their words to their hearers by choosing- for 
 rhetorical purposes reasons more popular but less 
 weig-hty than those by which they were themselves con- 
 vinced. For simplicity's sake they present as absolute 
 and universal a conclusion which is really conditional 
 and dependent on circumstances. Hence comes, when 
 conditions chang-e, the scandal of inconsistency. Brig-ht 
 spoke as he thoug-ht; he revealed his true reasons and 
 his real motives ; and because his reasons were naive 
 and easy, the very candour with which he disclosed them 
 led him into a method that might have been commended 
 to him by the tact of a rhetorician g-auging- the recep- 
 tive power of his audience. "" "* 
 A discussion was once proceeding in his presence on 
 the difference between his speaking and that of Mr. 
 Gladstone. At last he struck in himself. "I think", 
 he said, ' ' that the difference between my speaking and 
 Mr. Gladstone's is something like this. When I speak, 
 I strike across tiom headland to headland. Mr. Glad- 
 stone follows the coast-line; and when he comes to a 
 navigable river he is unable to resist the temptation of 
 tracing it to its source." Those who by more painful 
 processes had reached a different conclusion were irri- 
 tated to hear Bright pass over as mere irrelevancies 
 arguments that appeared to them pertinent and weighty. 
 It seemed to them that his conclusions were easy be- 
 cause his grasp of the science and of the facts was 
 wilfully incomplete. They had followed the coast-line, 
 
 (M433) 
 
2IO John Bright. 
 
 and had discovered on the journey many things, ignored 
 by Bright, to be counted and measured. Philosophers 
 may prefer the completer survey, but to a mass meeting 
 there can be no doubt that the shorter voyage from cape 
 to cape is more agreeable; and even the House of Com- 
 mons is not yet an assemblage of philosophers. 
 / The simplicity of his diction corresponds to that of 
 ^^ his thought, j His vocabulary was stinted by comparison, 
 not indeed with that of the common run of speakers, 
 but with that of most of the great masters of his art. 
 The comparative scantiness of Bright's copia verborum 
 may be attributed in part to his neglect of subtleties of 
 thought and the finer distinctions that require the rarer 
 sort of words; in part to the instinct of the popular 
 orator discarding words unfamiliar to his audience; in 
 part to the frankness that avoids the trick of making 
 common ideas seem impressive by pretentious phrasing. 
 No speaker made less use of what Bentley called *' com- 
 mon and obvious thoughts dressed and curled in the 
 beauish way"- 
 
 Much has been said about Bright's ''homespun phrase", 
 "vigorous Saxon", and the like. It is true that he did 
 not elevate his ordinary style so far above the level of 
 conversation as the classical orators of former genera- 
 tions. But there is always some elevation ; he did not 
 commit the disrespect of talking to people who had 
 come to hear him speak. If his speeches are fairly 
 examined, no justification whatsoever will be found for 
 the suggestion that his rejection of words employed by 
 Burke or Fox or Mr. Gladstone was due to any pre- 
 ference for the Saxon to the classical element of the 
 language. He would often use a Latin word even though 
 an English equivalent was at hand, for the sake of sound 
 or of rhythm, or from mere indifference of choice. Such 
 words as potent^ dominant, turbulent, enormous, multi- 
 tudinous, disastrous, comme7isurate, interminable, incal- 
 
Bright's Oratory. 211 
 
 culable, are quite characteristic of his style. He would 
 say constantly, inculcate, trepidation, profligate, decorous, 
 penurious, eradicate, assembly, when he might, except 
 for sound or dignity, have said, always, teach, fear, 
 wicked, seemly, stingy, uproot, meeting. 
 
 If his vocabulary was limited, his choice of words 
 within those limits was singularly just and delicate. In 
 his popular addresses, — the conditions of which admitted - 
 a more accurate preparation than his speeches in Parlia- 
 ment, where any speaker is partly at the mercy of the 
 course of debate, — there are few sentences in which the 
 boldest critic would venture to suggest the replacement 
 of a single word. He had a most delicate sense of 
 rhythm. In this respect not one of our most admired 
 orators has excelled him. To one who has caught the 
 suavity of Bright's cadences the accent of Macaulay 
 sounds like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer, the 
 sentences of Burke strike the ear like the tramp of a 
 regiment, and the periods of Fox or Mr. Gladstone like 
 the tumult of a hurrying crowd. To make rules for 
 rhythmical prose is the despair of criticism. Probably 
 there is no rule that will work except that which pro- 
 hibits rhythms that suggest any familiar form of verse. 
 But if the reader will refer to the peroration quoted 
 on p. 66, and will substitute the word Ministry for 
 Administration, and read the last phrase thus: *'the 
 squandering of the treasure of my country or the shed- 
 ding of a single drop of her blood"; or if in the famous 
 passage on the future of America, quoted on p. 107, he 
 will try the effect of any of the following substitutions : 
 confederacy, ocea^i, liberty, asylutn, nation, climate, for 
 confederation, main, freedo?n, refuge, race, clime ; he will 
 realize how much of the beauty of these fine passages is 
 due to the artful disposition of the accents and of the 
 long vowel sounds. 
 
 Another phase of Bright's characteristic simplicity \ 
 
212 John Bright. 
 
 remains to be noticed more particularly. He differed 
 from those orators who have hitherto taken classical 
 rank in nothing- more strikingly than in this — that he 
 was content with a plain and unadorned phrase for the 
 statement of a simple fact. He did not think it due to 
 himself or to his art to trick out a plain narrative with 
 oriental embellishments. He g"ained far more than he 
 lost by this Wordsworthian reversion to natural sim- 
 plicity. It is usual to ascribe Burke's failure to keep 
 the ear of the House of Commons to some defect of that 
 body — its stupidity or its prejudice. But many admirers 
 of Burke will admit, if they are pressed, that it is not easy 
 to read one of his speeches through at a sitting-. We 
 read a few pages with immense admiration; but soon 
 the ear and the mind are surfeited of his grand manner, 
 and we can understand how those magnificent sentences 
 failed of their due effect because they fell on ears wearied 
 by the strain of so much highly -coloured eloquence. 
 Bright is always interesting and never wearisome. Some 
 of the finest effects of his eloquence were produced by 
 the sudden transition from some simple statement or 
 some plain argument presented in plain terms to a 
 stroke of passion or imagination. . There is ample con- 
 temporary testimony of the extraordinary effect produced 
 by his reference to the death of Colonel Boyle. He is 
 speaking of the loss of life in the Crimean war. " We 
 all know what we have lost in this House. Here, sitting 
 near me, very often sat the member for Frome. I met 
 him a short time before he went out, at Mr. Westerton's, 
 the bookseller's, near Hyde Park Corner. I asked him 
 whether he was going out. He answered, he was afraid 
 he was — not afraid in the sense of personal fear; he 
 knew not that — but he said, with a look and a tone I 
 shall never forget, * It is no light matter for a man who 
 has a wife and five little children'. The stormy Euxine 
 is his grave; his wife is a widow, his children fatherless." 
 
Bright's Oratory. 213 
 
 The subdued tone of the introductory narrative, and the 
 odd triviality, as of a conscientious vv^itness, in the details 
 of the place where the speaker met Boyle, add vastly to 
 the irresistible force of the stroke of pathos. When the 
 effective sentence comes, it needs only the slightest 
 touches of art — the substitution of Euxine for the com- 
 moner Black Sea, and the addition of a single ornamental 
 epithet — to give it elevation. The eloquence comes 
 like a flash of lightning, and fixes itself for ever in the 
 memory; but it has obeyed the primary rule of pathetic 
 utterance, that it should be unlaboured and simple. 
 Such an effect is beyond the reach of the gorgeous style. 
 This little touch of pity probably moved men nearer to 
 tears than all the woes of Sheridan's Begums. 
 
 The foregoing remarks may be illustrated and other 
 criticisms suggested by the following specimen of Bright's 
 ordinary parliamentary style. The passage is chosen, 
 not as having any special excellence, but because it 
 treats of topics by which the great Whig orators of the 
 last century frequently displayed their method of arous- 
 ing compassion and indignation. 
 
 "I beg the Committee to consider this matter, not- 
 withstanding that the right hon. gentleman is not 
 disposed to take a gloomy view of the state of India. 
 Look at your responsibilities. India is ruled by English- 
 men; but remember that in that unfortunate country 
 you have destroyed every form of government but your 
 own, that you have cast the thrones of the natives to 
 the ground. Princely families, once the rulers of India, 
 are now either houseless wanderers in the land they once 
 called their own, or are pensioners on the bounty of the 
 strangers by whom their fortunes have been overthrown. 
 They who were noble and gentle for ages are now merged 
 in the common mass of the people. All over these vast 
 regions there are countless millions, helpless and defence- 
 less, deprived of their natural leaders and their ancient 
 
214 John Bright. 
 
 chiefs, looking- with only some small ray of hope to the 
 omnipresent and irresistible power to which they have 
 been subjected. I appeal to you on behalf of that people. 
 I have besoug-ht your mercy and your justice for many 
 a year past, and if I speak to you earnestly now, it is 
 because the object for which I plead is dear to my heart. 
 Is it not possible to touch a chord in the hearts of Eng^- 
 lishmen, to raise them to a sense of the miseries inflicted 
 on that unhappy country by the crimes and the blunders of 
 our rulers here? If you have steeled your hearts agfainst 
 the natives, if nothing* can stir you to sympathy with 
 their miseries, at least have pity upon your own fellow- 
 countrymen. Rely upon it, the state of thing's which now 
 exists in India must before long- become more serious. 
 I hope you will not show to the world that, although 
 your fathers conquered that country, you have not the 
 ability to gfovern it. You had better disencumber your- 
 selves of the fatal g"ift of empire than that the present 
 g-eneration should be punished for the sins of the past. 
 I speak in condemnatory language because I believe it 
 to be deserved. I hope that no future historian will have 
 to say that the arms of England in India were irresistible 
 and that an ancient empire fell before their victorious 
 progress, yet that finally India was avenged because the 
 power of her conqueror was broken by the intolerable 
 burdens and evils which she cast upon her victim, and 
 that this wrong was accomplished by a waste of human 
 life and a waste of wealth which England with all her 
 power was unable to bear." 
 
 Certainly Bright is not at his best here. Some of the 
 language is not only plain but almost too common. A 
 more fastidious speaker might have tried to avoid such 
 worn-out locutions as ray of hope, steel your hearts, 
 touch a chord. In one sentence the style seems to sink 
 suddenly; probably in speaking some art of delivery 
 rescued it from the sense of bathos. The word con- 
 
Bright's Oratory. 215 
 
 demnatory sounds oddly, though it has g^ood authority. 
 Bright seems to have substituted '•'condemnatory 
 language" for the usual ''language of condemnation" 
 because he had just used the word generation. His 
 ear was very sensitive to this jingle, which most 
 speakers find it impossible to avoid. He could never 
 have spoken, as Disraeli did in the eulogy already re- 
 ferred to, of "a speech to which I listened with pleasure 
 and gratification, as I must to every demonstration that 
 sustains the reputation of this assembly ". 
 
 These things are mere trifles, and are only worth 
 noting for the sake of the remark that Bright would 
 have been more careful of his language if he had been 
 speaking in the Birmingham Town Hall. What is 
 really noteworthy in the style of the passage is this — 
 -A-u(- that just because the ground tone is pitched rather low, 
 the vivid and touching phrases require no elaborate 
 -workmanship to make them eff'ective. Burke would 
 have laboured the picture of the dispossessed potentates 
 until he had forced us to resist his pathos by reminding 
 ourselves that they were after all rather worthless 
 persons paying the penalty of selfishness and incompet- 
 ence. He might have introduced some of the oriental 
 scenery of the tragedy; we should have heard of Rannies 
 and Zamindars, of diamonds and palanquins. Bright's 
 appeal to the sentiment of compassion for fallen great- 
 ness, and to our sense of the perplexity that follows the 
 uprooting of institutions, is sufficient, and it does not 
 overshoot the mark. The whole passage satisfies the 
 three proverbial aims of rhetoric — ut doceat, tnoveqt, 
 delectet. It is good oratory, because the sound is"^ 
 grateful to the ear, because it stimulates the imagina- 
 tion, and because it touches the sensibility. The mind 
 is powerfully impressed with the sense that it is easier 
 to conquer than to govern, to destroy than to recon- 
 struct. The hearer may have learned nothing new of 
 
 I 
 
2i6 John Bright. 
 
 the resources of the languag^e or of the power of the 
 orator, but he is left with a quickened perception of the 
 gravity of imperial responsibility. That is the effect 
 intended; and it could not have been achieved more 
 skilfully by the use of more recondite diction or more 
 sonorous periods. 
 
 Mr. Thorold Rogers, in his preface to a selection of 
 Bright's speeches, — excellently chosen, but edited with 
 reprehensible carelessness, — commends '*the clearness 
 of his diction, the skill with which he arranges his 
 arguments, the vigour of his style, the persuasiveness 
 of his reasoning, and above all the perfect candour and 
 sincerity with which he expresses his political convic- 
 tions ". Certainly Bright was lucid, persuasive, and 
 eminently candid. If there is one of these heads of 
 commendation to which exception may be taken, it is 
 that which touches the arrangement of his arguments. 
 f Bright does not seem to have paid any attention to the 
 architectonics of oratory. In reading his speeches we 
 are rarely conscious of that effect of the gradual 
 accumulation of the force of reasoning which has often 
 . been attained by the skill of inferior orators. It must 
 \ be recorded, not as a fault, but as a fact, that some of 
 his finest speeches have really no _slmcture at all. No 
 critic of to-day will wish to revive the importance which 
 ancient writers on rhetoric attached to this part of the 
 art. To an audience coming to the hall of meeting or 
 to the House of Commons with their minds already 
 occupied by the burning question of the hour the order 
 in which topics are taken may be immaterial. Each 
 sentence will carry its full weight of meaning to the 
 mind without the aid of anv artifice of arranofement. 
 The reader, who is not prepared, as the hearers were 
 prepared, for the reception of the speech, will some- 
 times feel that the orator might have helped him by a 
 more orderly disposition of the argument. In par- 
 
Bright's Oratory. 217 
 
 ticular, the transition to the main course of the argu- 
 ment after a digression, perhaps unrehearsed, will 
 sometimes appear to be awkwardly managed. 
 
 Bright rarely made any show of being severely log- 
 ical. But the affectation of logical precision in a popular 
 or even a parliamentary orator is rarely more than a 
 delusive pretence. It must be added that, like other 
 orators, he was not altogether exempt from logical 
 fallacies. If the arguments implied in the extracts 
 quoted on p. 100 and p. 91 of this book be treated in 
 the Socratic manner, the former will be found to owe 
 its plausibility to the ambiguity of the term property^ 
 and the latter to the ambiguity of the term conscience. 
 Such things do not make much difference. The part of 
 a popular orator is to make people see things imme- 
 diatdy by^ommon sense ; if he cannot do this, he will 
 not make much way by a train of reasoning. 
 
 The opinion has already been expressed that Bright's 
 reputation would be secure and lasting if it depended 
 entirely on the speeches on the Russian war. Future 
 compilers of a florilegium of British oratory will pro- 
 bably resort to these speeches for their specimens of his 
 eloquence. The strength of resistance against him 
 brought out the full force of his powers. He had to 
 contend against the belief in the minds of nearly all his 
 hearers that his opinions were not only unwise and 
 quixotic but informed by a defective sense of national 
 honour. Nothing short of the very finest tact could 
 have saved him from ridicule. The admiration which 
 these speeches won at the time was the more valuable 
 because it was given grudgingly and of necessity. 
 
 Although he won so many triumphs in the House of 
 Commons, it was as a popular rather than as a parlia- 
 mentary orator that Bright attained the very first place 
 among his contemporaries. By comparison with other 
 speakers of the first flight, he was in a manner dis- 
 
2i8 John Bright. 
 
 qualified for the highest success in debate by certain 
 quahties of his mental habit. A great debater is a man 
 who is not afraid to allow his opponents the advantage 
 of choosing the field of combat. He will either essay- 
 to prove that the premisses of his antagonists are mis- 
 taken, or that their conclusions do not follow their 
 premisses. Bright's method was to go on reasoning 
 from premisses of his own choosing. His opponents 
 did not think that he came fairly to close quarters with 
 them. In his numerous republished speeches on parlia- 
 mentary reform the reader will find the reasons for 
 Vreform enforced with the highest rhetorical skill. The 
 appeal to emotion is irresistible; the indignation is in- 
 fectious and virile, it is free from feminine shrillness of 
 (jomplaint ; the hot air of controversy is cooled just at 
 the right moment by a whiff of humour or ridicule. 
 What the reader will not find there is any adequate 
 Ireply to the reasons against democratic reform urged 
 ^by Lowe and others. Again, in the controversy of 1886 
 Bright, as we have seen, seized on three reasons of 
 weight against Home Rule. No other man then living 
 could enforce those topics with more authority; and 
 when the controversy has reached its final issue and its 
 history is written, the narrator will not fail to allot to 
 Bright a large share of praise or blame for the defeat 
 in 1886 of the new policy. But it must be conceded 
 that in his speeches and letters he ignored the reasons 
 which the majority of his party accepted as sufficient to 
 justify their change of purpose. To recur to his own 
 metaphor, he left to others the task of following Mr. 
 Gladstone up the navigable rivers. 
 P Bright, therefore, does not take quite the highest 
 ; place among the athletes of debate. But all his mental 
 powers combined to equip him for the work of a popular 
 orator. Those who assemble at public meetings love 
 the note of certainty; and Bright was always confident, 
 
Bright's Oratory. 219 
 
 unhesitating-, resolute. They are disposed to accept on 
 authority an opinion laid before them distinctly by a 
 man of whose sincerity they are already convinced ; and 
 Bright's sincerity was guaranteed by every possible test^ 
 Theyare eager'for generalities, and the form of reason- 
 ing that affects them most favourably is that which 
 refers the special case to some general maxim. The 
 Radicals wisely supplied them with a little treasury of 
 such maxims — a bunch of keys to fit many locks. Of 
 such maxims those which are, or which affect to be, 
 rules of morality rather than of prudence are the most 
 valuable to an orator; for ethical maxims are accepted :::i^. 
 as absolute, while it is known that there are two sides 
 to a. question of expediency. In taking his stand on 
 morality. Bright was simply obeying his own conscience; 
 but he was also occupying the position most advan- 
 tageous for the control of public opinion. The popular 
 orator will do well to say, if he can. It is wicked not to 
 do this, rather than, It is expedient to do it. He will 
 refer the errors imputed to his opponents to their moral 
 delinquency rather than to mere infirmity of judgment ; 
 and this he may safely do, provided that he has first 
 satisfied his audience that he is himself in earnest. The 
 appeal to reason is ineffective unless it is followed by an 
 appeal to emotion; and of the emotions indignation is 
 that which is most readily excited. A public meeting 
 never enjoys itself more thoroughly than when it is 
 crying Shame ! 
 
 It is unnecessary to add to the examples already 
 given that show how exactly Bright's manner fulfilled 
 all these conditions of success. The reader of his 
 speeches, if he is a man anxious to think as well as 
 possible of everyone, may have a feeling of revolt when 
 one group of ministers, some of whom have now been 
 honoured by statues and Lives in two volumes, is de- 
 scribed as '* incompetent and guilty", another as *'tur- 
 
220 John Bright. 
 
 bulent and wicked", or when a statesman of good repute 
 is accused of " haughty unwisdom ". But the populace 
 rejoices to be told that it does well to be angry. No- 
 thing, it may be said, is easier than scolding. Every 
 man has at hand a suflficient supply of offensive epithets. 
 But Bright did not scold; he had the art of speaking as 
 one having authority to condemn, and he said these 
 things in such a way that they sounded like the judg- 
 ments of Rhadamanthus. 
 
 This prophetic sternness of denunciation was relieved 
 by the faculties of humour and wit. Without the gift 
 of humour no speaker could have sustained so constant 
 a habit of earnestness, or have made so many bold 
 incursions into the region of pathos, without sometimes 
 incurring ridicule. Bright was grave and sentimental, 
 yet his audience never laughed at him. His mental 
 refinement saved him from the easy flippancy that 
 besets many popular speakers. His wit was displayed 
 in the invention of those happy and effective com- 
 parisons, of which the best-remembered is the pro- 
 verbial Cave of Adullam. In one of the earliest of these 
 sallies he likened Russell's Government, whose financial 
 measures seemed to him exactly adapted to make them 
 unpopular with the electorate, to ''the religious order 
 of La Trappe, who are said to have employed them- 
 selves diligently in digging their own graves". The 
 last, contained in the same speech with the parable 
 of the Cook's tourists, was his description of the result 
 of a proposal that the Irish members should speak and 
 vote on Irish questions only as ''a sort of intermittent 
 Irish fever in the House of Commons". He compared 
 Disraeli to Voltaire, ''who wrote history far better with- 
 out facts than with them ". He revenged himself on 
 the eminent writer who had attacked him and Cobden 
 under the protection of anonymous journalism by com- 
 paring him to the i\merican of whom it was said that 
 
Bright's Oratory. 221 
 
 '*he was a just and rigfhteous man, and he walked up- 
 rightly before the world; but when he was not before 
 the world his walk was slantindicular". The reluctance 
 of the Conservatives to mend grievances reminded him 
 of a Lancashire miser, who would not have his clothes 
 repaired ''because he found that a hole lasted longer 
 than a patch". He suggested as a motto for the Whigs, 
 ''A place for every one, and every one in his place". 
 When a high-church baronet, who sat for Oxford Uni- 
 versity, opposed the admission of a Jew into the House 
 of Commons, Bright gave an unexpectedly humorous 
 turn to a really pertinent argument. "Take, for in- 
 stance, what may be called the morality of politics. 
 You will find that the hon. baronet draws nearly all his 
 opinions from the very same source as Baron Rothschild. 
 We have discussed in this House the question of capital 
 punishment. I find the hon. baronet quoting against 
 me, with his accustomed bland dignity, the ninth chapter 
 of the book of Genesis. I have a strong suspicion that 
 he takes his notions of the priesthood from the times of 
 the book of Exodus. When the question of marriage 
 with a deceased wife's sister was under discussion the 
 hon. baronet referred the House with perfect confidence 
 to the book of Leviticus." 
 
 Bright had a strong and beautiful voice, clear rather 
 than loud, rich and sympathetic in tone, and so admir- 
 ably controlled that he could produce a fine eff"ect by a 
 very slight increase in the volume of sound or force of 
 utterance in passages of denunciation, or by a very 
 slight fall of pitch for humour or irony. In his old age 
 some weakness of the throat often made his voice husky; 
 but when it was at its best he could make himself heard 
 without painful eff"ort by an audience of twenty thousand 
 people. He relied for colour and emphasis almost 
 entirely on choice of words and modulation of voice, 
 making little use of gesture and action. He would call 
 
222 John Bright. 
 
 attention to a strong" point by leaning* forward and rais- 
 ing his right arm. He had also a trick of putting his 
 finger between collar and neck under the ear and moving 
 it round to the chin when he was about to say something 
 playful. The flashing eye and curling lip sometimes 
 attributed to him when scornful are figments of imagina- 
 tive reporters; and indeed such grimaces belong- rather 
 to the mock oratory of the stage. His bodily attitude 
 in speaking was dignified; and his manner was as far 
 removed as possible from the shouting and gesticulating" 
 style of the ideal demagogue of fiction and the satirists 
 — a style which, it must be added, is the least likely to 
 make a favourable impression upon such audiences as 
 Bright was accustomed to address. 
 
 His quotations, which were generally felicitous, were 
 taken chiefly from the Bible and from the English and 
 American poets. Some of them were used repeatedly. 
 His occasional use of the words of Scripture with a 
 humorous intention may be traced to his fondness for 
 American literature, which is itself to be associated with 
 his admiration for American institutions. No political 
 orator has ever used citations from the Scriptures with 
 more fortunate results. They harmonized admirably 
 with that "undercurrent of religious emotion" by which 
 his speeches were distinguished. No literary quotations 
 can be so eff'ective in addresses to a popular audience 
 as those taken from the Bible. The essential value of a 
 quotation is that to those versed in literature it suggests 
 by association ideas not directly expressed. To the 
 majority of any popular audience a passage from Milton 
 or Pope means what it says and nothing more. But 
 when Bright, for instance, quotes from the Psalms, 
 **The needy shall not alway be forgotten: the expecta- 
 tion of the poor shall not perish for ever", he achieves an 
 eff"ect not otherwise to be attained. The thoughts of 
 the most ignorant are carried back to antiquity, and the 
 
Bright's Oratory. 223 
 
 needs and hopes of the moment are linked with the im- 
 memorial needs and undying* hopes of humanity. So 
 again, when he replied in debate, to an orator who had 
 spoken sadly of ''the dark cloud that hangs over Ire- 
 land" by citing the words, *' Unto the upright there 
 ariseth light in the darkness ", he gave dignity to his 
 appeal by claiming, as it were, the alliance of the eternal 
 forces of justice, and seemed to invest the trite exhorta- 
 tion to do justly and hope for the best with the lustre of 
 a universal faith. 
 
 He, therefore, not only owed to his study of the Bible 
 the elevated and half-religious tone of thought that per- 
 meated his utterances, but used it directly in some of 
 the most impressive strokes of his eloquence. Many 
 critics have suggested that his style also was indebted 
 for some of its fine qualities to his familiarity with the 
 English of the Bible. The present writer, having given 
 a different account of Bright's simplicity of style, and 
 having discarded the suggestion that Bright shared that 
 preference for Saxon words which is one of the charac- 
 teristics of Tyndale's version that in part survived the 
 pedantry of King James's revisers, finds himself, after 
 due consideration, unable to concur in this view. Pro- 
 bably no man's style ever owed less to conscious or 
 unconscious imitation. The books with which, after 
 the Bible, Bright was most familiar were Byron and 
 Milton. Milton, it is said, has contributed more to the 
 equipment of English orators than to that of English 
 poets; but Bright does not seem to have been under any 
 special obligation to him for words and phrases. Nor 
 is there any evidence in his speeches that he had paid 
 any great attention to the earlier English orators. 
 
 Though plain, direct, and economical of embellish- 
 ment, his style is never without distinction. Even at its 
 plainest it is rarely bald. It will not perhaps be thought 
 fanciful to compare the difference between the manner of 
 
224 John Bright. 
 
 Brig^ht on the one hand, and that of orators like Burke 
 and Fox, Pitt and Canning-, on the other, to the differ- 
 ence between Demosthenes and Cicero. The influence 
 of the Roman in forming- what may be called the classical 
 manner of English oratory is not to be g-ainsaid. Bright 
 renounced many of the qualities of that manner — its 
 studied sonority, its balance of clauses and epithets, its 
 antithetic emphasis, its well-knit structure of sentences. 
 Without considering- whether it is long-er or shorter 
 than the sentence that preceded it, and with no care to 
 g-ive it equipoise upon its own centre of gravity, he 
 brings a sentence to a conclusion because he has said 
 what he meant to say in it, or carries it on with a new 
 subordinate construction because he has something- to 
 add. This ag-ain was a reversion to nature in defiance of 
 the traditions of his art. His manner, if we may coin 
 a word in imitation of preraphaelite, was preciceronian. 
 Unconsciously, it was also a reversion to the manner of 
 Demosthenes. 
 
 A word must be added on what may be called the 
 educational value of these speeches. Mr. Challemel- 
 Lacour, speaking- in particular of the speeches on Re- 
 form, declares that, in spite of the ag-gressive tone of 
 some of the speeches, and though he recognizes here 
 and there the impassioned accent of the Tribune, the 
 quality that strikes him most forcibly is their modera- 
 tion. "When I read those orations delivered at the 
 great popular meetings at Birmingham, Manchester, 
 Glasgow, and London, before easily inflammable mobs, 
 whose applause is so strong a temptation to the orator, 
 I am amazed by their didactic character and by the 
 sobriety of their manner. Are these really the speeches 
 of an agitator or of a professor of politics? It seems 
 incredible that such disquisitions, with their apparatus 
 of statistics and details and searching analysis, were 
 addressed, not to an assembly of professed politicians, 
 
Bright's Oratory. 225 
 
 but to immense audiences almost entirely composed of 
 men who were not even voters." It suited the exigences 
 of controversy to represent Bright as inflammatory, pas- 
 sionate, a sower of disaffection. But let his speeches 
 be compared with the incoherent diatribes of the eloquent 
 Chartists, or the perverse contentiousness of Cobbett, 
 or with the demagogic eloquence of Ireland or America 
 to-day. We are dealing now with the manner rather 
 than the substance of his harangues to the masses — 
 with the fashion of popular exhortation which he adopted 
 and established as an example. The number of his 
 countrymen who listened to him in the course of his 
 career was larger probably than any other orator could 
 count. What did they learn? They heard the English 
 language used with all the lucidity and force of Cobbett, 
 but also with a graciousness and dignity that cannot 
 have failed of a refining influence on the minds of unlet- 
 tered men. They heard a man who in every word he 
 uttered showed that he treated politics as a subject 
 worthy of the fullest tension of his intellectual powers. 
 They heard appeals to morality in which the most sen- 
 sitive ear could not detect a suspicion of hypocrisy. 
 They were moved to laughter; but by jests that diff"ered 
 as widely as possible from the buffoonery of the smoking- 
 carriage or the commercial- room. Their indignation 
 was aroused, but not their envy; they were armed with 
 resolution, not stimulated to sedition. They learned 
 self-respect, earnestness, loyalty, patriotism. 
 
 We can expect no unanimity in approval of the sub- 
 stance of his teaching. He attacked institutions that 
 still command the aff'ection of many of his fellow- 
 countrymen ; he tried to undermine sentiments that still 
 hold their place in the prevalent conception of patriotism. 
 But even those who see in his doctrine the exaltation of 
 the narrowness and prejudice of a commercial middle- 
 class, will, if they turn from the substance to the manner 
 
 (M433) P 
 
226 John Bright. 
 
 of his speeches, agree that it is by such oratory as this 
 that the victorious populace can best be educated to the 
 duties of citizenship. 
 
 Chapter X. 
 Characteristics. 
 
 Bright was a man of middle height and stoutly built. 
 In his youth he was lean and spare, but his fig^ure soon 
 thickened to the comfortable proportions that suggest a 
 prosperous and not too active life. A head and face of 
 the leonine cast, mild blue eyes, clear-cut and handsome 
 features, the forehead both broad and high, the mouth 
 large and firm, an abundance of white hair and a fringe 
 of white whisker, the lip and chin shaven, an expression 
 indicating firmness, digfnity, benevolence, and a thought- 
 ful habit of mind, but giving* little promise of eagerness 
 and vivacity — such was the outward aspect of the man 
 who for so many years stood first in the affections of 
 English democrats. 
 
 He was entirely devoted to politics, and published his 
 opinions on any other subject only under some sort of 
 compulsion, with diffidence and embarrassment, and for 
 the most part ineffectively. His mind was eupeptic, 
 contented, conservative; even in politics he was not 
 gfreedy of novelty; and in the mental disquietude that in 
 other domains of intellectual activity calls itself modern 
 thought, or claims to represent this or that phase of the 
 Revolution, he remained, so far as any public utterance 
 reveals his state of m^ind, happily uninterested. It is 
 not very often that we can collect any opinion outside 
 politics and political ethics from his speeches. An ex- 
 ception may be cited for the sake of supplying a neces- 
 sary note to one of his best-known speeches. In 1854, 
 
Characteristics. 227 
 
 accusingjministers of neg-lect of their duties, he remarked 
 that Palmerston had "undertaken a labour left unaccom- 
 plished by Voltaire, and when he addressed the Hamp- 
 shire peasantry, had in one short sentence overturned 
 the New Testament and destroyed the foundation of the 
 Christian religion ". What Palmerston had said was 
 something- to the effect that children are born good, and 
 become bad only by bad training. This amiable doc- 
 trine — which is to be found in Diderot if not in Voltaire, 
 and may therefore claim the dignity of an idea of 
 the Revolution — would, if announced to-day, encounter 
 severer criticism from the scientific than from the theo- 
 logical side. 
 
 Few men from an obscure origin can ever have at- 
 tained so great an eminence of fame with so small an 
 expenditure of industry. From the time when he ac- 
 cepted Cobden's invitation until the Corn Law was 
 repealed, he did not spare himself. The record of his 
 League speeches implies a large amount of labour. It 
 must, however, be remembered that the admirable or- 
 ganization of the League employed a vast number of 
 zealous volunteers, who worked together under an 
 excellent system of division of labour. One set of men 
 took charge of the finances; another worked at the 
 production of handbills and pamphlets for popular dis- 
 tribution; another arranged statistics, and collected facts 
 and illustrations for the use of the speakers and lecturers. 
 Bright and the others to whom the propagation of the 
 faith on the platform was allotted, were supplied with 
 matter for their speeches from Newall's Buildings, and 
 were in the position of advocates speaking from a well- 
 prepared brief. 
 
 At more than one crisis in his later life the old activity 
 was resumed for a time. But the indications are too 
 numerous and too precise to be misread, that he was, 
 not morally, but physically and constitutionally, disposed 
 
228 John Bright. 
 
 to indolence, and was only saved by a dominant sense 
 of duty from living- an idle life. Hard mental labour 
 was actually perilous to him; in both his long- illnesses 
 it was necessary to protect him with the utmost care 
 from any mental exertion. Except when roused to 
 energ-y by some crisis, he accepted invitations to speak 
 with reluctance; and it is apparent that he was an ex- 
 ception to the rule that a man finds enjoyment in doing- 
 what he can do extremely well. If the whole of the 
 work he got throug-h during the forty-six years of his 
 parliamentary life be summed up, it does not amount to 
 much more than the average of unofficial members ; and 
 he was exempted from the petits soins which most con- 
 stituencies exact from their representatives. Many men 
 have given as much time to public work who have also 
 satisfied the claims of an arduous occupation. 
 
 Like most men of this habit of life he was fond of 
 miscellaneous reading. His services to the League were 
 recognized by a handsome present of books; and he 
 gradually accumulated a large library. He had acquired 
 in youth a great love for English poetry. He was once, 
 when passing an idle afternoon in a drawing-room, asked 
 by the ladies to read to them the last new volume of 
 poems. The book did not please him. He laid it down, 
 and repeated by heart with spirit and enjoyment a sur- 
 prisingly large quantity of Byron. It has been remarked 
 that his love of Byron is evidence of early independence, 
 for it is improbable that in the early years of the century 
 such a taste should have been encouraged by Quaker 
 parents. Milton he read constantly; he preferred Para- 
 dise Regained, and made a point of reading it once a 
 year. Notwithstanding these laudable tastes and his 
 genuine love of books, his faculty of literary criticism 
 was not highly developed. It was matter of surprise 
 that an orator whose own productions were marked by 
 so fine a sense of language that they seem secure of an 
 
Characteristics. 229 
 
 honourable place in the history of English prose, should 
 have given such recommendations of books as seemed 
 to show that he was scarcely sensible of the difference 
 between good writing and bad. It must, however, be 
 recorded to his credit, that he was one of the first Eng- 
 lishmen to recognize the merits of the incomparable 
 Biglow Papers. While the reading of books was a 
 favourite recreation, he always regarded the newspapers 
 of the day as having the first claim on his time. Con- 
 temporary politics were, in fact, the one subject of which 
 he made a serious study ; and with all his reading his 
 mental equipment remained inferior to that of most 
 Englishmen who have been eminent in politics. After 
 reading, his favourite recreation indoors was billiards. 
 
 He had a taste for travel, and saw a good deal of 
 Europe and something of the East. He declined invita- 
 tions to visit the United States, pleading that he was 
 a bad sailor. If there was any admixture of generous 
 illusion in his estimate of the American polity, he did 
 not incur the risk of losing it by personal observation. 
 
 He loved the fresh air and wild open scenery, and 
 had a keen relish for the diversion of salmon-fishing, 
 especially in Scotch waters. When reproached with the 
 cruelty of his favourite amusement, he would answer 
 the objector according to his folly. Fox-hunting, he 
 remarked, might be called cruel, because you routed 
 out the fox and hunted him willy-nilly; but the salmon- 
 fisher merely laid his fly before the fish, who had always 
 the option of not taking it. His attachment to Llan- 
 dudno was well known, and helped to make the fortune 
 of the place; it was associated with the memory of a 
 little boy who died there, and whose grave in the little 
 churchyard on the cliff he visited annually. 
 
 But his chief happiness, as befitted a man who stands 
 as the representative of the best type of the English 
 middle-class, was found in family affection. He had a 
 
230 John Bright. 
 
 larg-e family of sons and daughters, and, except for the 
 early bereavement that condemned him to a six years' 
 widowhood,^ his domestic life was fortunate. One of 
 his boldest appeals to pathetic sentiment illustrates this 
 side of his character. During- the American war the 
 feeling in favour of the South was so strong that Roe- 
 buck ventured to move the House in favour of the 
 recognition of the Southern Confederacy. There were 
 Englishmen to whom the Southern cotton-planters ap- 
 peared to represent the virtues of a landed aristocracy 
 and the loyalists the abominations of commerce; to them 
 the South was the home of gentlemen and chivalry, the 
 North of bagmen and vulgarity. Bright resisted Roe- 
 buck's astonishing proposal, and treated his palliation 
 of negro slavery with fierce indignation. ** I want to 
 know whether you feel as I feel upon this question. 
 When I can get down to my home from this House, I 
 find half a dozen little children playing upon my hearth. 
 How many members are there who can say with me 
 that the most innocent, the most pure, the most holy 
 joy which in their past years they have felt, or in their 
 future years they have hoped for, has arisen from con- 
 tact and association with our little children ! If that be 
 so, if, when the hand of death takes one of these flowers 
 from our dwelling, our heart is overwhelmed with sor- 
 row, and our household is covered with gloom, what 
 would it be if our children were brought up to this 
 infernal system — a hundred and fifty thousand of them 
 every year brought into the world in the slave states, 
 among these ' gentlemen', among this * chivalry', among 
 these men that we can make our friends!" 
 
 Although he was probably never so happy as in the 
 seclusion of his own circle in the pleasant home that he 
 had built for himself at Rochdale, he was not disinclined 
 
 ^In 1847 he married Margaret Elizabeth Leatham, the daughter of a 
 Wakefield banker. She died in 1878. 
 
Characteristics. 231 
 
 to society. Those who met him on social occasions are 
 agreed in their testimony to the singular charm of his 
 conversation. It had many of the fine qualities of his 
 eloquence, and impressed those who heard it with the 
 same sense that they were listening to a man of remark- 
 able mental endowments. The " undercurrent of religi- 
 ous emotion " could be discerned in his talk as well as 
 in his speeches. ** In his graver conversation", remarks 
 one who often heard him talk, "he always spoke as if 
 living continually in the presence of the Deity." But 
 he was well disposed also for conversation of the lighter 
 sort. He abounded in entertaining reminiscences of the 
 shrewd homely wit of Lancashire characters. He was 
 an admirable narrator of humorous stories. His son, 
 who succeeded him in the representation of Central 
 Birmingham, once incurred the reprobation of Mr. Peck- 
 sniff and Mr. Podsnap by repeating in public a story 
 incautiously selected from his father's table-talk. 
 
 He accepted as though expecting it the deference 
 that was commonly paid to him in any large company. 
 Though habitually courteous, he was not effusive or 
 disposed to indiscriminate affability. But he readily 
 recognized the claim of other members of the Society 
 of Friends to treat him with the brotherly familiarity 
 encouraged by the customs of the society. 
 
 He asserted his opinions in private conversation in the 
 same decisive and uncompromising manner that char- 
 acterized his public utterances. This assertiveness, 
 whether on the platform or at the table, implied self- 
 confidence but not self-conceit. He was by no means 
 intolerant of contradiction. When he first visited Bir- 
 mingham in 1858 some of the younger Liberals of the 
 town met him at dinner. The question of Gibraltar 
 turned up in conversation, and Bright expressed with 
 his usual emphasis his opinion that Gibraltar ought to 
 be restored to Spain. The young men, thoug^h listening' 
 
232 John Bright. 
 
 to Brig-ht with becoming- reverence, had courag-e enough 
 to controvert this opinion. So far from taking offence, 
 Bright afterwards told his host that he was much pleased 
 by what he had heard. He had not expected, he said, 
 to find men of such intellig-ence in Birmingham. The 
 experience of the Leag^ue had led him to rank his new 
 constituency much lower than Manchester in the scale 
 of political intelligence and energy. Manchester seems 
 always to have occupied the first place in his affection. 
 His Birmingham constituents observed that to the last 
 he always spoke of ''your city ", never of *' our city ". 
 
 His habitual use of terms of moral censure in speaking 
 of differences of policy or opinion laid him open to the 
 charge of deficient charity. But the hardest things he 
 said about his opponents will be found, if fairly ex- 
 amined, to be entirely free from the element of personal 
 rancour. His conversation showed no want of reason- 
 able allowance in his judgments of men. The respect 
 with which he and Disraeli, both hard hitters, and 
 differing so widely, treated one another, in spite of a 
 few passages of hostility, often excited remark. It has 
 been suggested that they were drawn together by their 
 common antipathy to Palmerston. Lord George Ben- 
 tinck's remark that "if Bright had not been a Quaker he 
 would have been a prize-fighter " has often been quoted. 
 A jest that had so much vogue cannot have been point- 
 less. Yet it need not be supposed that Bright's invective 
 seemed improperly severe to a generation that had seen 
 Disraeli make himself at last acceptable by his famous 
 assaults upon Peel. The point was that some people's 
 sense of humour was touched by the incongruity of 
 Bright's vigour with the current conception of Quakerly 
 meekness. He neither cherished personal animosity, 
 nor excited it except in minds of the smaller sort. 
 
 Bright was a moderate smoker, and is said to have 
 been fastidious in his choice of cigars, exhibiting em- 
 
Characteristics. 233 
 
 barrassment when any man of whose good taste he 
 was not assured proffered a cig-ar-case. He practised 
 teetotalism habitually, though not rigidly. It was his 
 custom when proposing a toast at a public dinner to 
 announce his own intention of drinking it in water. In 
 early life he was active in the Temperance movement; 
 but he ceased to attend Temperance meetings because 
 he could not tolerate the uncharitable language which at 
 that time, as he tells us, the orators of the Temperance 
 cause permitted themselves to use. He did not support 
 the attempts at legislation made by the friends of Tem- 
 perance, except that he was willing to empower localities 
 that desired it to close public-houses on Sunday. In 
 1864 he spoke against the measure that was then called 
 the Permissive Bill, and that has since reappeared under 
 other insincere names; and he never receded from the 
 opinion that he expressed in that debate. He was 
 always suspicious of legislative interference with free- 
 dom of action ; and he took many opportunities of 
 reiterating his view that ''Parliament was not justified 
 in inflicting unnecessary difficulties and unnecessary 
 irritations upon the trade of the licensed victualler". 
 He looked to education rather than legislation for the 
 remedy of intemperance; this, he used to say, must be 
 the sheet-anchor of the reformer. 
 
 He had, however, a modest proposal of licensing 
 reform of his own. He suggested that a clause of the 
 Municipal Corporations Bill of 1835 should be revived. 
 By this clause, which passed the Commons but was 
 taken out by the Lords, the power of licensing was to be 
 transferred from the magistrates to the Council in every 
 municipal borough. If the experiment proved success- 
 ful, a similar reform might be devised for rural districts. 
 The Councils were to be forbidden to increase the num- 
 ber of houses, except in proportion to the growth of 
 population. They were to be empowered to reduce the 
 
234 John Bright. 
 
 number of licensed houses by not more than one-half. 
 The taxes paid on licensed property were to be trans- 
 ferred from the Treasury to the corporations, who were 
 to have the power of levying* further taxes on such pro- 
 perty in consideration of the monopoly. Out of this fund 
 compensation was to be paid to dislicensed publicans. 
 The essence of his counsel on this difficult question was 
 g-iven in these words: **The temperance opinion in this 
 country, if you can combine, is very powerful. But it 
 is only powerful, and will only be successful, when 
 brought to bear in favour of practicable and moderate 
 measures." This was said in 1883. 
 
 It remains to estimate the historical and permanent 
 importance of Bright's work. Speaking- to his con- 
 stituents in October, 1873, Bright said: **The history 
 of the last forty years of this country, judged fairly, 
 — I speak of its legislation, — is mainly a history of the 
 conquests of freedom. It will be a g-rand volume that 
 tells the story; and your name and mine, if I mistake 
 not, will be found in some of its pages." No one will 
 be disposed to disallow so modest a claim as this. 
 
 There are seven leading political ideas of which Bright 
 was a conspicuous advocate, and with which he at- 
 tempted, with more or less success, to indoctrinate the 
 British electorate. These were : Free Trade, Free Land, 
 Democracy, Religious Equality, Retrenchment, Peace 
 or non-interference abroad, Laisser-faire or non-inter- 
 ference at home. 
 
 After the account that has already been given of 
 Bright's opinions and purposes, it is not necessary to 
 attempt any further definition of these terms. Of these 
 principles four made enormous advancement in popular 
 favour and in their influence on actual legislation during 
 his lifetime. No other politician ever had the satisfac- 
 tion, in respect of so many subjects of deliberation, of 
 seeing" a small minority under his guidance grow into a 
 
Characteristics. 235 
 
 majority of the popular House. There is hardly a single 
 prominent publicist of his time who did not at some time 
 come to give his support to a measure which he had 
 formerly opposed and which Bright had consistently 
 supported. So striking a record can scarcely fail to 
 attract the attention of any careful historian of our era. 
 The question remains, how far we are to attribute this 
 good fortune to Bright's faculty for guiding public 
 opinion, and how far to his sagacity in forecasting its 
 direction; and in what proportion the credit is to be 
 distributed between Bright, his coadjutors, and the im- 
 personal forces of political development. 
 
 Bright's share in the victory of Free Trade seems 
 more likely to be over-estimated than unduly disparaged. 
 The public memory naturally retains four eminent names 
 — Cobden and Bright, the agitators; Villiers, the par- 
 liamentary leader; and Peel, the man who actually 
 repealed the law at the cost of political martyrdom, — 
 whilst the pioneers of the movement, and the army of 
 essayists, pamphleteers, and organizers, are forgotten. 
 Work which, like Bright's, was performed in the open 
 and in the midst of applause, is secure of recognition. 
 The practical triumph of the Free-traders was the con- 
 version of Peel ; and it seems improbable, if we consider 
 how much less effect popular oratory and popular re- 
 sponse were likely to have upon the mind of a statesman 
 then than now, that Bright's share in this feat was 
 considerable. Bright outlived Cobden by many years, 
 and he displayed vastly greater aptitude for politics in 
 general than others of his companions ; we may mislead 
 ourselves if we judge the Bright of 1845 by the Bright 
 of 1854 or 1865. The French critic whose admirable 
 essay on Bright has already been quoted, remarks: 
 " For a long time he was regarded as one who merely 
 followed the inspiration of Cobden. He did not allow 
 his self-esteem to take offence at this. Rejoicing to 
 
236 John Bright. 
 
 fig"ht side by side with such a man, he did not dream of 
 claiming' originaHty for his ideas, or of making any 
 display of independence. So long as Cobden lived John 
 Bright was content, in spite of the indubitable superiority 
 of his talents, to take the second place among the repre- 
 sentatives of the Manchester School." These remarks 
 do no more than justice to the absence of jealousy be- 
 tween the Dioscuri of Free Trade; but they do much 
 less than justice to the commanding ability of Cobden. 
 If we look at Free Trade only, Cobden's name deserves 
 to be mentioned, as Peel mentioned it, alone. 
 
 On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that sub- 
 sequent history compels us to form a higher estimate 
 than seemed necessary fifty years ago of the power of 
 the men who carried the policy of Free Trade in the 
 United Kingdom. If it is fair to urge the failure of 
 Free-trade principles to win acceptance in America and 
 the Colonies as a reason for disparaging the confidence 
 with which Bright and Cobden asserted their doctrine, 
 it is fair also to use it as a measure of the resisting 
 forces over which they won their famous victory. The 
 modesty that ascribed their success to the inherent 
 strength of the cause rather than to the prowess of its 
 champions, must yield to the consideration that the cause 
 has elsewhere been a losing cause. It is now apparent 
 that this success was one of the most remarkable of its 
 kind in all history; and even though we assign to Bright 
 only a secondary share of the credit of the achievement, 
 the honour to be distributed is large enough to bear sub- 
 division. 
 
 Bright's devotion to the principles of the Free Churches, v 
 which was not less ardent than his faith in Free Trade, 
 was rewarded by the abolition of church-rates, the ad- 
 mission of Jews to Parliament, the removal of religious 
 tests in the Universities, in part by Mr. Gladstone and 
 completely by Lord Salisbury's Commission, and by the 
 
Characteristics. 237 
 
 passing of the Burials Bill. The disestablishment of the 
 Irish Church ought perhaps not to be counted among 
 the triumphs of the principle of Religious Equality. 
 
 In appraising Bright's contribution to the work of 
 winning for Dissenters equality of treatment by the 
 State, we ought to count, not only the persuasive value 
 of his speeches in themselves, but also the fact that he 
 was the first son of the free churches who attained a 
 high position in political life. He was the first Protes- 
 tant Nonconformist since the Restoration to become a 
 minister of the Crown. He was, indeed, the first, since 
 Defoe and Penn, to attain eminence of any sort likely to 
 command the respect of politicians. The Dissenters 
 had long been the humble followers of the Liberal party. 
 They had been content to accept the patronage of such 
 men as Fox and the Russells. The condescension of 
 one of the great parties was hardly less contemptuous 
 than the enmity of the other. They had been neither 
 loved by the Whigs nor feared by the Tories. This 
 contempt, the unfortunate eff'ects of which are not yet 
 exhausted, was due chiefly, no doubt, to the narrowness 
 of the aristocratic regime, but partly also to the failure 
 of the free churches to produce men of commanding 
 ability. In Bright for the first time they found a cham- 
 pion of their own whose advocacy was made eff"ective 
 not only by the inherent force of his case, but by the 
 authority of his acknowledged position in the first rank 
 of orators and politicians. 
 
 It is more difficult to ask assent to any estimate of 
 Bright's success in winning approval for a peaceful or 
 *' un-English" course of foreign policy. It is indisput- 
 able that his opinion that the war with Russia was on 
 the further side of the lines that limit political prudence 
 and political morality, gained ground immensely after 
 the event. That may have been so in part because, 
 when the fever had subsided, when the war was ended 
 
238 John Bright. 
 
 and the remnant of the ill-used soldiery were home agfain, 
 and when, in Bright's phrase, "all was over except the 
 tax-gatherer and the sorrows of those who had lost 
 their friends in the war", it was scarcely possible to 
 deny that the results of the war were not commensurate 
 with the sacrifices it had cost. It is conceivable that if 
 the issue had been more flattering- to national pride, if 
 another Trafalgar had been fought in the Baltic, and if 
 Sevastopol had become a name of pride like Blenheim or 
 Waterloo, those who condemned Bright at first would 
 have condemned him still. The fact remains that there 
 has been a strong current of opinion in Bright's direc- 
 tion, and that, if he was not the author of the change, 
 there is no other man to dispute the credit with him. 
 Tennyson, whose satire generally missed fire, had put at 
 this time into the mouth of the cross-grained hero of 
 Maud the well-known description of Bright as 
 
 " The broad-brimmed hawker of holy things. 
 Whose ear is stuffed with his cotton, and rings 
 Even in dreams to the chink of his pence". 
 
 It would be fair to retort that Bright took less trouble 
 about the profits of his cotton-spinning than his assailant 
 is credited with taking to get the best market price for 
 his verses. But this gibe really represented at the time 
 the average estimate of educated Englishmen ; and yet 
 Bright, without any apology, and whilst reiterating the 
 despised opinion in and out of season, lived it down 
 very completely. 
 
 We have already quoted from Mr. Morley instances, 
 sufficiently striking when every allowance has been 
 made, of foreign crises in which England did not inter- 
 fere, although interference was prescribed by the Pal- 
 merstonian tradition. On the other hand, it has to be 
 admitted that the year after Mr. Morley published this 
 remark Bright was driven from office by the warlike 
 
Characteristics. 239 
 
 behaviour of his colleagfues ; and that since his death we 
 have seen a Liberal Opposition calUng' for interference, 
 and trying- to revive the conception, condemned by 
 Bright, of Eng-land's vocation to be *'the knight-errant 
 of the human race". It is also to be admitted that even 
 now it is hardly conceivable that any party would invite 
 a statesman holding" the fulness of Bright's views to 
 become Foreign Secretary, and that still the majority of 
 Englishmen would regard such an appointment as an 
 invitation to the wolves. But all this is no more than 
 to say that Bright represented an extreme of opinion 
 that is not, or that is not yet, accepted as practicable. 
 It remains true that he led, at first almost unaided, a 
 revolt against the opposite extreme; and that, if he did 
 not carry conviction as far as he desired, he did promote 
 a change in the national spirit comparable to the revolu- 
 tion of sentiment by which it is recognized that a man 
 may preserve his personal honour without fighting duels. 
 It may, however, be anticipated that those who write 
 the history of the reign of Victoria with knowledge of 
 the fuller and remoter issues of our controversies and 
 our legislation, will pay attention to Bright's career 
 chiefly as the leader of the Reform movement of the 
 sixties. It is true that the results of the Leap in the 
 Dark have hitherto been much less momentous than 
 they were foreshadowed to be by the hopes and fears of 
 the crisis. The hero of Water Babies, on arriving after 
 much tribulation at the Other End of Nowhere, ''found 
 it much more like This End of Somewhere than he had 
 been in the habit of expecting ". This is a true parable 
 of political as of other enthusiasm. Nevertheless, those 
 who will have the advantage of comparing the politics 
 of the twentieth and the eighteenth centuries may find 
 reason to treat both 1832 and 1867 as memorable epochs. 
 The more closely the history of the period is studied, the 
 more disposed will the student become to treat as impor- 
 
240 John Bright. 
 
 tant the propulsion and the direction that Bright g^ave 
 to democratic opinion. We do not yet know whether 
 the Reform of 1867 was a great event; but, if it was a 
 great event, Bright is a great character in history. It 
 is of course certain that the wage-earners would have 
 been enfranchised sooner or later though Bright had 
 died with Cobden, or though he had spent his life in his 
 cotton-mill at Rochdale, mute and inglorious. But very 
 few names would be left in our histories if we included 
 only persons who did something that would not have 
 been done without them. 
 
 Let us try to estimate again the service that Bright 
 rendered. He found a great mass of discontent, often 
 inarticulate, produced in part by the necessary inequali- 
 ties of a civilized community, but in part also by the 
 artificial privileges against which he waged a lifelong 
 warfare, by unsympathetic government, and by the dis- 
 sociation of what he called the governing classes from 
 the populace. Since the collapse of the Chartist agita- 
 tion — of the perils of which Bright was fully aware — 
 the aristocratic Liberals were content to ignore a malady 
 which had certainly not disappeared because one par- 
 ticular manifestation of it had failed through unwise 
 guidance. To Carlyle at this time Bright appeared 
 one of the foolishest creatures he had ever heard of — 
 ''clamouring about America and universal suffrage, as if 
 there was any sensible man anywhere in the world who 
 put the smallest confidence in that sort of thing nowa- 
 days!" Certainly Bright's performances did not resemble 
 those of Mirabeau, Governor Eyre, and the rest of the 
 heroes. On the other hand, he was doing something to 
 prevent one of those crises at which the Carlylean hero 
 makes his distinguished appearance — generally too late 
 to do much good without doing also a great deal of 
 harm. Bright did not create this discontent ; he guided 
 it towards a definite purpose, which was not a revolu- 
 
Characteristics. 241 
 
 tionary purpose. He dug" a channel for waters that 
 were already flowing, and that might have become a 
 torrent. He exhibited a constitutional remedy for com- 
 plaints that were likely to tempt the sufferers to accept 
 the panaceas of empirics. The accession of Bright to 
 the leadership of English democracy put a stop to a 
 good deal of crying for the moon, and marked the end 
 of a period of riots and rick-burnings, of Peterloo mas- 
 sacres and indictments for sedition. 
 
 He was, in short, the chief educator of the wage-earn- 
 ing" classes at a time when they were acquiring, and when 
 they had newly acquired, a power perilous to the nation, 
 if it should be used without sobriety. They have turned 
 to other masters, and have already unlearned some of 
 the lessons that he tried to teach them. He would have 
 regarded their aberrations with no great discomposure 
 if he were satisfied that they had not lost their hold of 
 the central article of his political faith. ** May I ask 
 you", he said, *'to believe, as I do most devoutly 
 believe, that the moral law was not written for men 
 alone in their individual character, but that it was written 
 as well for nations, and for nations great as this of which 
 we are citizens. If we reject and deride that moral law, 
 there is a penalty which will inevitably follow." This 
 sentiment has been the commonplace of innumerable 
 orators; to Bright it was a real inspiration. 
 
 (M4S8) Q 
 
Index. 
 
 Aberdeen, Lord, 49, 56, CiT. 
 AduUam, Cave of, 114. 
 America, 96, 105-108, 156, 222, 230. 
 Arabi, 180. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 150. 
 Ashley, Lord (Earl of Shaftesbury), 
 23, 32, 36. 
 
 Baines, Edward, 109. 
 
 Balance of Power, 62, 64. 
 
 Ballot, 41, 90-1, 161. 
 
 Barron, Sir H. W., 136. 
 
 Benthamites, 37. 
 
 Bentinck, Lord G., 82; quoted, 232. 
 
 Birmingham, 76-7, 95, 145-6, 156, 
 
 183, 197, 199, 232. 
 Bouverie, E. P., 143. 
 Bradlaugh, C, 177. 
 Bright Clauses, 153. 
 Brougham, Lord, 32. 
 Burials Bill, 179. 
 Burke, 207-8, 212. 
 Butcher, S. H., quoted, 207. 
 
 Canning, Lord, 86-7. 
 
 Capital punishment, 46. 
 
 Carlyle, quoted, 21, 119, 125, 240. 
 
 Challemel-Lacour, P., quoted, 12, 
 
 224, 235. 
 Chamberlain, J., 203; quoted, 134. 
 Chartists, Chartism, 19, 26, 29, 41, 
 
 42, 52, 90, 100. 
 Church of England, 11, 38-9, 47, 
 
 179, 182-3. 
 Church Rates, 9, 11, 51, 162. 
 Churchill, Lord R., 196, 197. 
 
 Clarendon, Lord, 56, 113. 
 
 Closure of Debates, 189, 193-4. 
 
 Clough, A. H., quoted, 95. 
 
 Cobbett, J. M., 36. 
 
 Cobden, Richard, 14-15, 18, 19, 20, 
 25, 29, 36, 42, 59, 73-5, 98, 102, 
 105, no, 235-6. 
 
 Coercion in Ireland, 135, 193. 
 
 Compound householder, 123-4. 
 
 Concert, European, 56, 59, 171, 173. 
 
 Cooper, C. A., quoted, 120. 
 
 Corn Law, 15; Peel's, 19; repeal of, 
 24. 
 
 Cotton Famine, 81, 108. 
 
 Cranborne, Lord (Marquis of Salis- 
 bury), T2I, 125, 171-2; quoted, 
 204. 
 
 Crawford, W. Sharman, 139. 
 
 Demosthenes, 207, 224. 
 
 Derby, fourteenth Earl of, 48, 85, 
 117. 
 
 Derby, fifteenth Earl of. See Stan- 
 ley, 
 
 Disaffection, argument from, 104, 
 148-9. 
 
 Disraeli, B. (Earl of Beaconsfield), 
 22, 41, 48-9, 61, 85-7, 96-7, lOI, 
 112, 117, 119-125, 128, 143-4, i6<^, 
 171, 175, 206, 220, 232. 
 
 Dixon, George, 156, 160. 
 
 Dublin, 117, 135. 
 
 Durham, 20, 
 
 Eastern Question, 170-175. 
 Education, National, 38-9. 154-161. 
 
244 
 
 John Bright. 
 
 Egyptian Question, 176-7, 180-1. 
 EUenborough, Lord, 86. 
 
 Factory Acts, 29, 32-35. 
 Factory system, 28, 33. 
 Fancy Franchises, 97, 122. 
 Federation, Imperial, 168, 203. 
 Ferrand, W. B., 32. 
 Fielden, John, 32. 
 Financial Reform, 42, 99-100. 
 Force no remedy, 135, 192. 
 Foreign policy, 53-72, 167, 173-5, 
 
 176, 180, 237-9, 
 Forster, Sir C. , 35. 
 Forster, W. E., 95, 116, 158, 189. 
 Fox, W. J., 25. 
 
 Free Breakfast-table, 100, 162-3. 
 Free Land, 138, 163-4. 
 Free Trade, 14-28, 102, 169, 235-6. 
 French Treaty, 102. 
 Friends, Society of, 11, 204, 231. 
 Froude, J. A., quoted, 24. 
 
 Game Laws, 44-6, 162, 178 
 Gibraltar, 231. 
 
 Gibson, T. Milner, 40, 52, 85. 
 Gladstone, W. E., 17, 22, 49, 52, 67, 
 
 74. 99. 107. no, 113, 123, 130, 141, 
 
 146, 164, 170, 171, 180, 188, 198, 
 
 200, 209. 
 Glasgow, III, i8i. 
 Graham, Sir J., 45, 60. 
 Granville, Earl, 150, 162; quoted, 
 
 147. 
 Gray, Dr. , letter to, 133. 
 Greville, C, quoted, 66, 67, 101, 113. 
 Grote, G., 90. 
 
 Harcourt, Sir W. , 178. 
 
 Hartington, Lord (Duke of Devon- 
 shire), 98, 170, 196, 199. 
 
 Hobhouse, Sir J. C. (Lord Brough- 
 ton), 82. 
 
 Home Rule, 187, 198-202. 
 
 Horsman, E., 114. 
 
 Hume, Joseph, 16, 37, 41, 42, 43. 
 
 Imperialism, 79, 167. 
 India, 77-89. 
 
 Ireland, 128-154, 187-202. 
 Irish Church, 131-4, 141, 147-152. 
 Irish Land, 134-141, 152-3, 188, 193. 
 Irish Members, 135-6, 189-191, 192, 
 196. 
 
 Jewish Disabilities, 50. 
 Jingo, 172. 
 
 Kinglake, quoted, 26. 
 Kingsley, quoted, 239. 
 Knowledge, Taxes on, 51-3. 
 
 Laisser-faire, 34, 38, 155. 
 Land-owning aristocracy, 28, 30,139. 
 Liberal Unionist party, 198-9. 
 Liberation Society, 133, 181-3. 
 Lords, House of, 24, 41, 150-2, 185-6. 
 Lowe, Robert (Viscount Sher- 
 brooke), 109, 114-6, 124, 125, 146. 
 
 Macaulay, T. B. (Lord Macaulay), 
 12, 23, 33, 39, 83, 91, 104, 148, 
 205; quoted 26, 61, 83. 
 
 Magee, Archbishop, 200, 202. 
 
 Malmesbury, Lord, quoted, 102. 
 
 Manchester, 14, 40, 49, 73, 74-6, 
 232. 
 
 Manchester School, 20, 32, 34, 37. 
 
 Mangles, R. D., 86. 
 
 Manners, Lord J. (Duke of Rutland), 
 103, 185. 
 
 Maynooth Grant, 131-2. 
 
 Melbourne, Lord, 17. 
 
 Menschikoff Note, 55. 
 
 Miall, Edward, 37. 
 
 Mill, J. S., 38, 125. 
 
 Ministry, changes of, (1841) 17, 
 (1846) 36, (March, 1852) 48, (Dec, 
 1852) 49, (1855) 67, (1858) 85, 
 (1859) 99, (1866) 117. (1868) 146, 
 (1873) 161, (1874) 164, (1880) 177, 
 (1885) 195, (Jan., 1886) 198, (July, 
 1886) 199. 
 
Index. 
 
 245 
 
 Minority vote, 93, loi, 126, 145, 186, 
 Molesworth, Sir W, , 37, 61. 
 Morley, John, quoted, 21, 63, 81, 
 106, 238. 
 
 Napier, Sir C, 59-60. 
 Napoleon III., 48, 54, 59, 85, 102. 
 Nonconformists, Nonconformity, 
 II. 38, 50-1, 108, 132, 133, 149- 
 
 150. 155-6, 179. 237- 
 Non-intervention, 62-3, 103, 176, 
 
 181, 237-9. 
 
 Northcote, Sir Stafford, 194, 196. 
 
 O'Connor, Feargus, 19. 
 Osborne, Bernal, 109, 123. 
 
 Palmerston, Viscount, 20, 36, 48-9, 
 50, 58, 60, 64, 65, 68, 71. 85, 91, 
 99, 113. 127, 227. 
 
 Papal Aggression, 46-8. 
 
 ParneU, C. S., 188. 
 
 Pathos, 213, 215. 
 
 Payment of members, 90. 
 
 Peace, 79, 181, 237-9. 
 
 Peel, Sir R., 17, 22, 24, 36, 132. 
 
 Peel, Sir R. (the younger), 103. 
 
 Pendulum, the political, 165-7. 
 
 Perorations, examples of, 66, 68-70, 
 95-6, 107, 154, 214-5. 
 
 Protection, 27, 49, 197. 
 
 Queen, Her Majesty the, 118-9. 
 Quintilian, quoted, 215, 
 Quotations, 222-3. 
 
 Radicalism, old and new, 167-8. 
 
 Reform, Parliamentary, 40-1, 89- 
 128, 184-6, 239-40. 
 
 Reform Bills, (1852) 92, (1854) 93, 
 (1859) 96-7, (i860) loi, (1866) 
 113-7, (1867) 120-6, (1868) 128, 
 (1884) 184-6, (1885) 186, Bright's, 
 96. 
 
 Religious Difficulty, 157, 159. 
 
 Religious Equality, 182-3, 236-7. 
 
 Retrenchment, 42, 92, in, 168. 
 
 Rhythm in oratory, 211. 
 
 Ricardo, J. L., 37. 
 
 Ripen, Marquis of, 89. 
 
 Rochdale, 9, 183. 
 
 Roebuck, J. A., 6t, 95, 105, 230. 
 
 Rogers, Thorold, quoted and cor- 
 rected, 66, 160, 216. 
 
 Russell, Lord John (Earl Russell), 
 17-18, 20, 23-4, 30, 36, 38, 46-8, 
 49, 61, 67, 71, 92-3, 98, 99, lOI, 
 104, 113, 138, 149; quoted, 18, 
 
 Si> 65. 
 Rutland, Duke of. See Manners. 
 
 Salisbury, Marquis of. See Cran- 
 
 BORNE. 
 
 Saturday Review, quoted, 'jS, 
 
 Savoy, annexation of, 103. 
 
 Scholefield, W., 105. 
 
 School Boards, 158, 161. 
 
 Shaftesbury, Earl of. See Ash- 
 ley. 
 
 Sherbrooke, Viscount. See Lowe. 
 
 Sliding-scale, 16, 17; Peel's, 19, 27. 
 
 Spencer, Earl, 195-6. 
 
 Spooner, R., 61. 
 
 Stanley, Lord (Earl of Derby), 141, 
 
 175- 
 
 Stephen, Leslie, quoted, 78. 
 
 Stratford de Redcliffe, Lord, 54-5, 
 
 57. 
 Sugar duties, 17. 
 
 Tea-room party, 123. 
 Temperance, 233-4. 
 Ten Hours Bill, 32. 
 Tennyson, quoted, 238. 
 Theebaw, 176. 
 
 Thomson, Poulett (Lord Syden- 
 ham), 16. 
 Times, quoted, 21, 23, 'jS. 
 Trades-unions, 20, 169-170. 
 Trevelyan, Sir G. O., 184, 195. 
 Triennial Parliaments, 90. 
 Truck Act, 35. 
 
246 
 
 John Bright. 
 
 Ulster Custom, 139, 152. 
 Ulster loyalists, 202. 
 "Un-English", epithet applied to 
 
 Bright, 103, 106, 116. 
 Utihtarians, 37. 
 
 Vienna Note, 57, 62, 65. 
 
 Villiers, C. P., 16. 
 
 Watkin, A., letter to, 54, 67, 75. 
 Wit and humour, 43-4, 50, 73, 114, 
 
 141, 185, 200, 220-1. 
 Woman Suffrage, 125. 
 Wood, Sir C, 83. 
 
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