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John Bright

John Bright, a statesman, was said to be the most belligerent of pacifists, and one of the greatest orators of the 19th century. John Bright was the son of Jacob Bright, a cotton spinner and manufacturer at Rochdale, Lancashire, England. Bright was born at Greenbank, near that town, Nov. 16, 1811. The family were members of the Society of Friends, and Bright was educated at a Friend’s school at Ackworlh, and afterward at York and at Newton. While in his father’s factory he took a great interest in public questions, and before he had attained his majority made speeches upon such subjects as capital punishment, church rates, temperance and parliamentary reform.

In 1835 Bright made a foreign tour, and on his return delivered lectures on the subject of his travels, and on topics connected with commerce and political economy. When the Anti-Corn-Law League was formed in 1839, he was one of its leading members, and with Cobden engaged in an extensive free trade agitation.

In 1843 he became member of Parliament for Durham, and, until their repeal, at public meetings and in Parliament was incessant in his opposition to the Corn Laws. In 1847, elected one of the members for Manchester, he worked with Cobden in the movement in favor of financial reform. He was reelected for Manchester.

Gladstone and Bright became strong friends. The two men were curiously unlike in general ways and in bringing up. Bright was not, in the higher sense, a man of education — he certainly was not a man of culture. He had been quietly brought up, with what might be called a plain commercial education. He knew little of Latin, and next to nothing of Greek. He could read French, and could speak it fairly well.

Bright's style as an orator in the House of Commons was pure, simple, strong, and thrilling. He had a voice which was perhaps, on the whole, superior even to that of Gladstone himself. As an orator, he now and then in his greatest speeches soared to a height which Gladstone never reached. But as a debater he was not to be compared with Gladstone. Bright did, probably, his greatest work outside the House of Commons, and Gladstone certainly his greatest work inside it. Bright had a gift of rich AngloSaxon humor which Gladstone could not rival. It used to be noticed that Disraeli, great master of sarcastic phrases as he was, never would go in for a passage of arms with Bright. The hand of Bright had a terribly good-humored strength in its knock-down blow.

Mr. Bright converted Mr. Gladstone. It was a mutual necessity. Neither of them without the other could have swayed the commercial classes and "the lower middles." Mr. Gladstone was Don Quixote ; Mr. Bright, Sancho Panza. Mr. Gladstone appealed to the nation; Mr. Bright, with sincere power and definite ideals, to a class. Mr. Gladstone appealed to the customs and institutions which he heroically assailed; Mr. Bright attacked more directly and without even the show of sympathy. Here Mr. Gladstone was Girondin ; Mr. Bright, Jacobin. Mr. Gladstone's conviction of being "the legate of the skies," his electric temperament, devout genius, practical fervour and "connection," both idealised and popularised the doggedness and the narrowness of Mr. Bright's democratic doctrine. But Mr. Bright was consistent. He was against any fight for united nationality. He would never have embarked on war at all, and so could never have withdrawn from struggle at the wrong moment. He never deluded himself or others.

Bright had little or no sympathy with Gladstone's enthusiasm about the cause of this or that foreign people. He never indulged in expressions of rapture about the national cause of Italy. This came in great measure from his not unreasonable conviction that the welfare of England herself and of her colonies ought to be the first consideration of English statesmanship. He was utterly opposed to most of England's interventions in foreign affairs.

Bright strongly opposed the policy of the Crimean war in 1854. Bright condemned the policy of the Crimean War from the very beginning, and he was denounced and abused for his utterances, which latter represented the opinion of all rational Englishmen.

A severe illness compelled him to withdraw for a time to the continent, and in his absence he was rejected by his constituency. Bright used to attribute his illness to the misery which he had endured during the Crimean War. And indeed no reason can be assigned for it, other than overwork and public cares. The doctors gave it no specific name, but one biographyer in 1913 wrote that "in our day it would popularly be called a 'nervous break-down.' Great physical weakness, frequent severe headaches and inability to do mental work, were its chief symptoms."

Elected in 1857 for Birmingham, he seconded the motion against the second reading of the Conslpiracy bill, which led to the overthrow of Lord almerston’s government. When the civil war in America broke out, he warmly supported the cause of the North, although his own business and the whole of the Lancashire cotton trade suffered severely in consequence. He showed that his was not a merely insular mind when the Civil War in the United States broke out and when the sympathy of the vast majority of those who considered themselves "society" in Great Britain was ostentatiously given to the Southern side.

As the war went on the relations between England and the United States grew less and less friendly. In England the ruling and influential classes were all in favour of the South. Only a small minority of Englishmen were in sympathy with the North. At the head of this minority stood John Bright. To him the war was a question of slavery. The victory of the South meant the maintenance of that foul institution; the victory of the North its destruction. But apart from the question of slavery, Bright was warmly attached to the American Republic, for he thought that its government rested, more perhaps than the government of any country in the world, on the free choice of a free people.

He stood up for the welfare of the people of India as opposed to the interests of those who went out there to push trade, to make money, or to earn distinction.

In 1868 he accepted office as president of the Board of Trade, but in 1870 was again obliged to retire in consequence of severe illness. His health having been restored, he took office in 1873, and again in 1881, as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; he was elected lord rector of Glasgow University in 1880. Mr. Bright retired from the Gladstone ministry in 1882, being unable to support the government in its Egyptian policy. His subsequent appearances in pubic were infrequent; but in 1883 he defended himself in the House of Commons from a charge of breach of privilege in connection with speeches delivered at Birmingham. In 1886-88 he opposed the home rule policy of Mr. Gladstone; and died in March, 1889.