And I have no hesitation in saying that you stand just now in a very critical position. There is a wide-spread suspicion that you have been tampering with the best feelings and with the honest confidence of your constituents in this cause. Everywhere you are doubted and suspected. Read your own organs, and you will see that this is the case. Well, then, this is the time to show that you are not the mere party politicians which you are said to be. I have said that we shall be opposed in this measure by politicians; they do not want inquiry. But I ask you to go into this committee with me. I will give you a majority of county members. You shall have a majority of the Central Society in that committee. I ask you only to go into a fair inquiry as to the causes of the distress of your own population. I only ask that this matter may be fairly examined. Whether you establish my principle or yours, good will come out of the inquiry; and I do, therefore, beg and entreat the honorable independent country gentlemen of this House that they will not refuse, on this occasion, to go into a fair, a full, and an impartial inquiry.
JOHN BRIGHT.
The most eloquent of the orators of the Liberal party in England was born at Greenbank, a village now forming a part of Rochedale, in 1811. His father was a manufacturer of some prominence, and the son at the age of fifteen left school and became identified with the business interests of the firm. The education of John Bright was neither comprehensive nor thorough. He early showed an unusual fondness for English literature, and he acquired a large knowledge of English history; but in other respects his education was simply of that fragmentary nature which comes from quick intelligence and large opportunities of observation. His teachers have left no record of any remarkable promise in his early days. About the time of attaining his majority he travelled extensively on the continent; and the first evidence of great oratorical promise was given in a course of lectures embodying his recollections of a tour in Europe and the Holy Land in 1835.
Though Bright had taken an active part in the local agitation for reform in 1832, it was not till he became identified with the Anti-Corn-Law League in 1839 that he became prominent as a public speaker. In the course of the agitation that followed he was closely identified with Cobden in the work of the league. Bright’s oratory, while less persuasive than that of Cobden, was of a loftier tone, and was better adapted to arouse the attention of the people to the importance of the subject. Throughout the whole of the Anti-Corn-Law movement the names of Cobden and Bright were closely associated, and the intimate and beautiful friendship then begun continued without interruption till Cobden’s death. It was the popular influence they acquired by their speeches in behalf of free trade that brought them both into Parliament. Bright took his seat in 1843, and delivered his maiden speech in August of the same year in behalf of extending the principles of free trade. Though defeated in 1857 by the city of Manchester, on account of his energetic opposition to the course of the government in the Crimean War, he was immediately taken up by the electors of Birmingham and returned by a triumphant majority. His career in the House of Commons, therefore, has been uninterrupted for more than thirty years.
During the whole of this period Mr. Bright’s powers have been consistently exerted in behalf of certain definite lines of political policy. From first to last he has been the uncompromising advocate and champion of the principles of free trade. He has been a thorough student of American affairs; and at the time of the American civil war, it was his eloquence more than any other one thing that restrained England from following the lead of France into the policy of acknowledging the independence of the seceding States. In domestic affairs he has advocated the general policy of retrenchment, a more equitable distribution of the seats with reference to population, and a wide extension of the rights of suffrage. In 1857 his strenuous and eloquent opposition to the methods of Palmerston cost him his seat in the House; and in 1882 he resigned his place in the cabinet, because he was unwilling to share the policy of Mr. Gladstone which led to the bombardment of Alexandria. On each of these subjects he has left a group of speeches that are likely to retain an honorable and permanent place in the history of British eloquence. It has been his lot to be more frequently opposed to the government than in sympathy with it; and although he can hardly be said to have originated any great lines of policy, his influence has always been felt in behalf of peace and of an extension of popular freedom.
JOHN BRIGHT.
ON THE FOREIGN POLICY OF ENGLAND; DELIVERED
AT A BANQUET GIVEN IN HONOR OF MR. BRIGHT,
AT BIRMINGHAM, OCTOBER 29, 1858.
[The foreign policy of Lord Palmerston in the Crimean War had been severely criticized by Cobden and Bright, and in consequence of this criticism, Bright had lost his seat for Manchester. He was at once, however, elected by Birmingham; and the speech here given was delivered in the Town-Hall on the occasion of his first visit to his constituents.]
The frequent and far too complimentary manner in which my name has been mentioned to-night, and the most kind way in which you have received me, have placed me in a position somewhat humiliating, and really painful; for to receive laudation which one feels one cannot possibly have merited, is much more painful than to be passed by in a distribution of commendation to which possibly one might lay some claim.