John Bright.
The late misunderstanding between this country and Great Britain, relative to Mason and Slidell, elicited a free expression of opinion from the statesmen of the mother country, as to the contest now proceeding in this country; and while we regretted to witness so many proofs of the prejudice and jealousy which seem to hold possession of the minds of our transatlantic cousins, we were gratified by the heroic and brilliant defense of our cause by one so eminent in intellectual and moral qualities as JOHN BRIGHT. The boldness and vigor of his efforts to dispel the hostility of his compatriots toward America, and the masterly ability with which he disarmed the weapons of our opponents, elicited the respect of our people and have made his name one of veneration among them. His position in our favor, amid the many discouragements which beset him, justifies an attempt to lay before our readers an account of his career and character, which, we doubt not, they will be interested to hear.
John Bright, Member of Parliament for the great city of Birmingham, is the son of respectable Quaker parents, and was born at Greenbank, near Rochdale, in the year 1811. His family being largely interested in the cotton manufacture, he was bred to a participation in this employment, and is now the senior member of an extensive and enterprising firm, in company with his brothers. It is hardly to be expected that one whose early youth had been devoted to the restricted sphere of a counting-room, would be remarkable for an extensive knowledge of men and events, liberal opinions, freshness of intellect, and vigorous brilliancy of declamation; and yet Mr. Bright has always manifested superiority in these qualities. Known, while occupied exclusively in the details of his proper avocation, for skill, promptness, and enterprise, he has also been distinguished, since his sphere of usefulness has been extended to the national councils, for the scope and accuracy of his general information, the comprehensiveness of his mind, the richness of his imagination, and the effective energy of his eloquence. He early manifested an interest in politics, which was intensified by the agitation of questions nearly affecting his own business interests. The celebrated Anti-Corn-Law League, which was instituted in the time of Lord Melbourne's ministry, by some eminent Whigs, for the purpose of opposing the tariff erected by the corn-laws, excited his enthusiastic coöperation, and afforded him an early opportunity of entering political life. The enlightened ideas of the Reformers had already effected a glorious renovation in the machinery of the government; and the regeneration of the commercial system was next to be accomplished, by a successful resistance to the selfish restrictions imposed upon trade by the landed proprietors. In such a cause, John Bright embarked in his twenty-seventh year; and his subsequent career has been a consistent adherence to the same views which marked his entrance into public notice. He espoused with ardor the principles avowed by the League, and leaving the management of his private interests in the hands of the junior members of the firm, began to discuss them publicly, with great force and effect. The League soon perceived the valuable acquisition they had made in the young Quaker, and not only encouraged him to exertion but gave him opportunities to appear before many important assemblages. On the list of orators whom the League commissioned to go into the agricultural districts to advocate their cause, Mr. Bright's name soon became prominent. By the irresistible cogency and energetic expression which characterized his speech before many thousands in Drury Lane Theatre, his reputation became national, and printed copies being distributed throughout England, a desire to hear him on the important question of the day became every where manifest. He went about among the farmers and gentry, instilling with ability the principles of free trade, developing arguments with telling effect, and rapidly organizing branches of the League throughout the kingdom. The distrust of the lower classes, which was awakened in some degree against the nobles and nabobs who sustained the League, did not operate against him, who, as a man directly from the people, educated in the stern school of labor, and as the daily witness of and sympathizer with the suffering of the poor, at once elicited their confidence in his honesty and their respect for his intellectual power. Political advantage, which might be sought by life-long politicians and hereditary nobles, could, they well knew, offer no inducement to nor corrupt the ingenuous principles of one who showed so little respect to party distinction, and who was entirely independent of great connections.
The statesmen with whom he acted, in favor of free trade, were unwilling to be without so valuable an ally on the floor of the House of Commons; and, in April, 1843, he was placed in nomination by his numerous friends at Durham, for the seat to which that city was entitled.
On the first trial, he was defeated; but a new election for the same city becoming necessary in the following July, he was returned, by a gratifying majority, to represent a place noted for its conservative proclivities. He continued the member for Durham until 1847.
His first efforts, after entering Parliament, were directed to the repeal of the Corn-Laws, in which beneficent measure he coöperated with such men as Charles P. Villiers, brother of Lord Clarendon, Lord Morpeth, now Earl of Carlisle, Lord John Russell, and his friend, Mr. Richard Cobden. Sir Robert Peel, who was at that time Prime Minister, had always adhered to the protective doctrines of Pitt and Wellington; and it was mainly due to the clear and cogent reasoning of Bright and his associates, that the illustrious statesman at the head of the Treasury finally yielded, with a magnanimity never surpassed in the annals of ministerial history, to the enlightened policy of free trade in respect to corn. The distress which had for years resulted from the stringent enactments of Lord Liverpool's government to the lower class, was, by this patriotic sacrifice of the first minister, done away with; and not least among those who contributed to the accomplishment of so auspicious a result, we must reckon the subject of this sketch. The Tory party, headed by such chiefs as Wellington and Lyndhurst, in the Lords, and Stanley and Disraeli, in the Commons, made a stern and pertinacious resistance to the repeal; and no one was more feared by the intellectual giants of that party than was Bright. His severe wit, his plain, blunt manner of exposing the defects of his opponents, and his impulsive and overwhelming declamation, were hardly exceeded by the fluent exuberance of Stanley and the keen sarcasm of the Hebrew novelist, Disraeli.
While he generally acted with the party of which Lord Russell and Lord Landsdowne were the chiefs, he did not place himself supinely under the dictation of the caucus-room. Professing to be bound by the precepts of no faction, acting frequently with the conservatives, although oftener with the liberals, independent of ministerial control, and disdaining to attain power by the sacrifice of any principle, he was excluded from a participation in the government, when those with whom he in general sympathized succeeded to the administration in 1846. He early adopted ultra-liberal views, and has always been known as the advocate of universal suffrage, the separation of Church and State, and the diminution of the influence of hereditary nobles; and although he could not but be aware that many of his doctrines were repugnant to those of his auditors, and a majority of his countrymen, he has not hesitated to uphold and express them with great perseverance and ingenuousness.
Had he lived in the days of Russell and Sidney, he had perhaps shared their fate, and paid the penalty of unpopular politics on the scaffold. That bold spirit which he has ever manifested, exciting his great talents in the advocacy of repugnant theories, would not have feared the restraints which a ruder age encouraged despotic kings to put upon freedom of political action. Luckily, he has been living in an age which respects independent thought and proscribes the conscience of no man. While he is certainly premature in his theories of equality, the tendency of popular feeling is toward him rather than from him. Tory policy to-day was Whig policy a century ago. Walpole would have sustained the younger Pitt, and Derby and Lyndhurst will hardly dispute the benefits of the reform of 1832.
Mr. Bright was returned to Parliament for Manchester, in 1847, and again in 1852. This great town, which is the market for Rochdale, and consequently in which he was well known, sent him to the Commons by a handsome majority of eleven hundred. In the early session of 1857, Mr. Cobden introduced a motion condemning the war into which the administration had entered with China, on which the government was defeated. Mr. Bright, though absent on account of ill-health, used his influence in favor of the motion, by reason of which, on the appeal of Lord Palmerston to the country, during the summer of that year, he was defeated in his constituency by over five thousand votes; his successful opponent, though agreeing with him in general, being a supporter of the Chinese war.
In 1859, he was reinstated in Parliament, by the electors of Birmingham, of whose manufacturing interests he had always shown himself a consistent and ardent friend. For this constituency he is now member. He has been twice married; first, to the daughter of Jonathan Priestley, Esq., of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who died in 1841; and secondly, to his present wife, the eldest daughter of W. Leatham, Esq., of Wakefield, York.
His career of nineteen years in the House of Commons has been a series of successful efforts, not only contributing to his lasting fame as an orator and legislator, but achieving many important modifications in the commercial system and in public sentiment. He has been the life of the radical party, leading them on in their crusades against existing abuses with fearless audacity, encouraging them to renewed contests, animating them by the hopefulness and enthusiasm of his own soul, and by his lucid logic attracting new converts to his views with every year. The Radicals who, when he entered Parliament, were a mere handful, are already assuming, under the vigorous lead of Bright, Cobden, and Villiers, the proportions of a systematic and powerful element in the lower house. Caring little for the impotent sneers of an aristocracy in its dotage, and mindful only to advance systems of popular improvement and alleviation, he has become a nucleus around which has gathered the extreme wing of the liberal party. The last century beheld the profligate Wilkes and the shallow Burdett at the head of the ultraists; our own time is more fortunate in superseding vicious and unprincipled radical leaders by men more virtuous and ingenuous. The great manufacturing towns and districts, composed mainly of the lower orders of society, and devoted to the interests of commerce, as opposed to the narrow demands of the agricultural interest, have, owing in a great degree to Mr. Bright's exertions, become pillars of his party. Lord Palmerston, than whom a more sagacious politician does not or has not existed, testified his knowledge of the influence of the Bright party, by offering Mr. Cobden a seat in the Cabinet, and afterward by sending him as special agent of England to negotiate a commercial treaty with France.
John Bright has always shown himself a staunch friend to the prosperity of the United States. Whenever an opportunity offered in which to propose this country as an example worthy of the imitation of his own countrymen, he has never failed to urge the superiority of our system. His political ideas, approaching to republicanism, and abhorring the dominance of hereditary aristocrats, and a political Church, have found their theories realized in the admirable machinery of our own government. Untainted with that jealous prejudice which appears to animate many of his fellow-citizens, he can discern, and is ready to acknowledge, the superior efficacy of the principles which underlie our Constitution. No one has, of late, been more earnest in denunciation of the irritating policy of Great Britain toward America, than Mr. Bright.
His personal appearance is that of a hearty, good-natured, and yet determined Englishman, and both his form and face betoken the John Bull as much as any member of the House. His morals are of a high order, his honesty proverbial, his courage undoubted, his social character amiable, and calculated to make him welcome to every circle. It is said, that although opposed in the extreme to the political doctrines of Lord Derby, his personal relations with that aristocratic nobleman are not only friendly, but intimate; and that, after abusing one another lustily at Westminster, they retire together arm in arm, chatting and laughing as familiarly as if there never had been the least difference of opinion between them. Like Fox, in this particular, he never allows his partisan views to interfere with his social relations; and although he is a fierce and bitter antagonist on the benches of Parliament, no one is a more constant or a more zealous friend in private life. His efforts have always been enlisted in behalf of the education of the masses; conceiving that this is the foundation of a thoroughly popular political system, such as he is desirous to introduce into the British Constitution. Bred among a timid and peaceful sect, his opposition to wars has been determined and earnest; and he was one of those who, in 1854, sent a deputation to the Emperor Nicholas to urge an abandonment of his war policy, and the maintenance of peace, as the duty of a Christian race. He is, however, rather fitted to be a reformer and agitator than a statesman. He has all that enthusiasm, all that energy, all that courage, all that stubborn perseverance in the pursuit of his purpose, which distinguish the characters of those men who have conducted the great revolutions of society to a successful issue. Perhaps he would be found deficient in judging how far to proceed in innovation; but this, though an important, is not an essential element in the composition of the mere reformer. It is for him to lead on the people to great and startling changes, to overturn tyrannies, to break down old forms, to inculcate novel precepts, to regenerate public sentiment. These rather require an impetuous spirit, a bold heart, an active and restless mind, than calmness, judgment, and deliberation. It is when a new polity is to be erected, when revolution has passed away, and the crisis reached and left, when a constitution is to be framed, and new principles are to be brought to their test, that the steady process of a sound judgment is called into requisition. Then it is that the reformer yields to the statesman; that impulse retires before reason; that passion and confusion become subordinated to the elements of order and the authority of intellect. Many have been both the reformers producing and the statesmen correcting, revolutions; minds which, with the fire of enthusiasm, and the hot impulse of indignation at wrongs done, have united a judicious discrimination, a cool faculty of reflection, and the power of separating the benefits from the evils of revolution.
It is certain that Mr. Bright would be a fearless and zealous reformer; it is doubtful whether he would not give place to others in the after-work. Well qualified to lead an enthusiastic faction to a crusade against precedent and authority, he has thus far failed to show himself capable of conducting an administration. Among the statesmen of modern times, honesty and enthusiasm are not qualities which control the policy of the state. Compare the crafty demeanor, the dubious expressions, the cautious statements of Earl Russell, with the plain, rude, blunt harangues of Mr. Bright, and we perceive the qualities which have elevated the former, and those which have kept the latter in the background. Lord Russell thinks what is for his interest to think; Mr. Bright thinks what that homely monitor, his conscience, urges on him. Lord Russell might adopt all the consequences of universal suffrage, and the principles of free trade, if he could still sit at the council-board, and dictate dispatches with a double meaning to foreign governments; but he fears to go beyond, though he nearly approaches, the line which separates the popular from the unpopular reformer. Expediency, on the contrary, forms no part of Mr. Bright's creed; and, not being a scion of a noble and illustrious house, nor having attained a position in the state which might have made him a conservative, he has no hesitation in announcing his opinions in favor of universal suffrage and free trade, in opposition of a dominant aristocracy, and in defiance of a religious establishment, and dares with provoking coolness the retaliation of the great and powerful of the land.
Mr. Bright's oratory is of a fresh, vigorous, and versatile character, and never fails to draw a multitude to the House when it is announced that he is to speak. Unlike the hesitating and timid delivery of Russell, the rapid jargon of Palmerston, the rich and graceful intonation of Gladstone, or the splendid sarcasm of Disraeli, his eloquence is bold, masculine, and ringing, and gives a better idea of intellectual and physical strength than any other speaker in the House. Although blunt, and careless of the feelings of others, there is a certain elegance in every sentence, which softens the rude sentiment into a vigorous anathema. Accurate in fact, naturally easy in delivery, bitter in irony, and ingenuous in argument, few are ready to meet him on the floor of the Commons. He is a fair specimen of what we hear called 'the fine old English gentleman,' without the ignorance, the bigotry, the awkwardness, and the peevishness, which go to make up the characters of a large proportion of the country baronets and gentry; that is, he is hearty, cordial, and merry, entering with enthusiasm into whatever he proposes to do, and determined to leave no stone unturned to accomplish it. If he should live to see the day when his countrymen shall adopt the views of which he is the foremost champion, no honor of the state will be denied him, and his name will rank with those of William of Orange, and Lord Grey, as the regenerators of the British Constitution; and if he does not, he can not but be respected, as Milton and Sidney are, by future generations, for his honesty, his patriotism under difficulty, and his fearless spirit.