was no marked separation as at Manchester between rich and poor. Master
and men lived side by side, knew one another's family history and
fortunes, and fraternized over their joys and sorrows. Even in those
days of backward education 'Old Jacob' made himself responsible for the
schooling of his workmen's children; his son, too, made personal friends
among those working under him and kept them throughout his life. Outside
the mill Rochdale offered opportunities which he readily took. In 1833
he became one of the founders and first president of a debating society,
and he began early to address Bible meetings and to lecture on
temperance in his native town, moved by no conscious idea of learning to
speak in public, but by the simple desire to be useful in good work. In
such holidays as he took he was eager to travel abroad and to learn more
of the outside world, and before he started at the age of twenty-four on
his longest travels (a nine months' journey to Palestine and the eastern
Mediterranean) he had, by individual effort, fitted himself to hold his
own with the best students of the universities in width of outlook and
capacity for mastering a subject. Like them, he had his limitations and
his prejudices; but however we may admire wide toleration in itself,
depth and intensity of feeling are often of more value to a man in
enabling him to influence his fellows.
The year of Queen Victoria's accession may be counted a landmark in the
life of this great Victorian. Then for the first time he met Richard
Cobden, who was destined to extend his labours and to share his glory;
and in the following year he began to co-operate actively in the Free
Trade cause, attending meetings in the Rochdale district and gradually
developing his power of speaking. It was about this time that he came to
know his first wife, Elizabeth Priestman, of the Society of Friends, in
Newcastle-on-Tyne, a woman of refined nature and rare gifts, whom he was
to marry in 1839 and to lose in 1841. Then it was that he built the
house 'One Ash', facing the same common as the house in which he was
born. Here he lived many years, and here he died in the fullness of
time, a Lancashire man, content to dwell among his own people, in his
native town, and to forgo the grandeur of a country house. It was from
here that he was called in the decisive hour of his life to take part in
a national work with which his name will ever be associated. At the
moment when Bright was prostrated with grief at his wife's death Cobden
appeared on the scene and made his historic appeal. He urged his friend
to put aside his private grief, to remember the miseries of so many
other homes, miseries due directly to the Corn Laws, to put his shoulder
to the wheel, and never to rest till they were repealed.
Cobden had been less happy than Bright in his schooling. His father's
misfortune led to his spending five years at a Yorkshire school of the
worst type, and seven more as clerk in the warehouse of an unsympathetic
uncle. Like Bright, he had early to take the lead in his own family;
also, like Bright, he had to educate himself; but he had a far harder
struggle, and the enterprise which he showed in commerce in early
manhood would have left him the possessor of a vast fortune, had he not
preferred to devote his energies to public causes. The two men were by
nature well suited to complement one another. If Cobden was the more
ingenious in explaining an argument, Bright was more forcible in
asserting a principle. If Cobden could, above all other men, convince
the intellects of his hearers, Bright could, as few other speakers,
kindle their spirits for a fray. His figure on a platform was striking.
His manly expressive face, with broad brow, straight nose, and square
chin, was essentially English in type. Though in the course of his
political career he discarded the distinctive Quaker dress, he never
discarded the Quaker simplicity. His costume was plain, his style of
speaking severe, his bearing dignified and restrained. Only when his
indignation was kindled at injustice was he swept far away from the
calmness of Quaker tradition.
The Corn Laws were a sequel to the Napoleonic wars and to the insecurity
of foreign trade which these caused. While war lasted it had inflated
prices, and brought to English growers of corn a period of extraordinary
prosperity. When peace came, to escape from a sudden fall in prices, the
landed proprietors, who formed a majority of the House of Commons, had
fixed by Act of Parliament the conditions under which corn might be
imported from abroad. This measure was to perpetuate by law, in time of
peace, the artificial conditions from which the people had unavoidably
suffered by the accident of war. The legislators paid no heed to the
growth of population, which was enormous, or to the distress of the
working classes, who needed time to adjust themselves to the rapid
changes in industry. Even the middle classes suffered, and the poor
could only meet such trouble by 'clemming' or self-starvation. A noble
duke, speaking in all good faith, advised them to 'try a pinch of curry
powder in hot water', as making the pangs of hunger less intolerable.
He met with little thanks for his advice from the sufferers, who
demanded a radical cure. Parliament as a whole showed few signs of
wishing to probe the question more deeply, and shut its eyes to the
evidence of distress, whether shown in peaceful petitions or in
disorderly riots. Many of the members were personally humane men and
good landlords; but there were no powerful newspapers to enlighten them,
and they knew little of the state of the manufacturing districts.
The cause had now found its appropriate champions. We in this day are
familiar with appeals to the great mass of the people: we know the story
of Midlothian campaigns and Belfast reviews; we hear the distant thunder
from Liverpool, Manchester, or Birmingham, when the great men of
Parliament go down from London to thrill vast audiences in the
provincial towns. But the agitation of the Anti-Corn-Law League was a
new thing. It was initiated by men unknown outside the Manchester
district; few of the thousands to whom it was directed possessed the
vote; and yet it wrought one of the greatest changes of the nineteenth
century, a change of which the influence is perhaps not yet spent. In
this campaign, Cobden and Bright were, without doubt, the leading
spirits.
The movement filled five years of Bright's life. His hopes and fears
might alternate--at one moment he was stirred to exultation over
success, at another to regrets at the break-up of his home life, at
another to bitter complaints and hatred of the landed interest--but his
exertions never relaxed. As he was so often absent, the business at
Rochdale had to be entrusted to his brother. Whenever he could be there,
Bright was at his home with his little motherless daughter; but his
efforts on the platform were more and more appreciated each year, and
the campaign made heavy demands upon him.
At the opening of the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, on the site of the
'Peterloo' riots, he won a signal triumph. The vast audience was
enthusiastic: several of them also were discriminating in their praise.
One lady said that the chief charm of Mr. Bright was in the simplicity
of his manner, the total absence of anything like showing off; another
that she should never attend another meeting if he were announced to
speak, as she could not bear the excitement. Simplicity and profound
emotion were the secrets of his influence. The London Opera House saw
similar scenes once a month, from 1843 till the end of the struggle.
Villages and towns, and all classes of society, were instructed in the
principles of the League and induced to help forward the cause. Not only
did the wealthy factory owner, conscious as he was of the loss which the
high price of food inflicted on the manufacturing interest, contribute
his thousands; the factory hand too contributed his mite to further the
welfare of his class. Even farmers were led to take a new view of the
needs of agriculture, and the country labourer was made to see that his
advantage lay in the success of the League. It was a farm-hand who put
the matter in a nutshell at one of the meetings: 'I be protected,' he
said, 'and I be starving.'
In 1843 Bright joined his leader in Parliament as member for Durham
city, though his Quaker relatives disapproved of the idea that one of
their society should so far enter the world and take part in its
conflicts. In the House of Commons he met with scant popularity but with
general respect. He was no mob orator of the conventional type. The
simplicity and good taste of his speeches satisfied the best judges. He
expressed sentiments hateful to his hearers in such a way that they
might dislike the speech, but could not despise the speaker. Even when
he boldly attacked the Game Laws in an assembly of landowners, the House
listened to him respectfully, and the spokesman of the Government
thanked him for the tone and temper of his speech, admitting that he had
made out a strong case. But it was in the country and on the platform
that the chief efforts of Cobden and Bright were made, and their chief
successes won.
In 1845 they had an unexpected but most influential ally. Nature herself
took a hand in the game. From 1842 to 1844 the bad effects of the Corn
Laws were mitigated by good harvests and by the wise measures of Peel in
freeing trade from various restrictions. But in 1845 first the corn, and
then the potato crop, failed calamitously. Peel's conscience had been
uneasy for years: he had been studying economics, and his conclusions
did not square with the orthodox Tory creed. So when the Whig leader,
Lord John Russell, ventured to express himself openly for Free Trade in
his famous Edinburgh letter of November 28, Peel at last saw some chance
of converting his party. It has already been told in this book how at
length he succeeded in his aims, how he broke up his party but saved the
country, and how in the hour of mingled triumph and defeat he generously
gave to Cobden the chief credit for success. Whigs and Tories might
taunt one another with desertion of principles, or might claim that
their respective leaders collaborated at the end; certainly the question
would never have been put before the Cabinet or the House of Commons as
a Government measure but for the untiring efforts of the two Tribunes.
History can show few greater triumphs of Government by moral suasion and
the art of speech. Throughout, violence had been eschewed, even though
men were starving, and appeals had been made solely to the justice and
expediency of their case. Nothing illustrates better the sincerity and
disinterestedness of John Bright than his conduct in these last decisive
months. The tide was flowing with him; the opposition was reduced to a
shadow. He might have enjoyed the luxury of applause from Radicals,
Whigs, and the more advanced Tories, and won easy victories over a
hostile minority. But the cause was now in the safe hands of Peel, whose
honesty they respected and whose generalship they trusted; so Cobden and
Bright were content to stand aside and watch. Instead of carping at his
tardy conversion, Bright wrote in generous praise of Peel's speech: 'I
never listened', he said, 'to any human being speaking in public with so
much delight.' His heart was in the cause and not in his own
advancement. When he did rise to speak, it was to vindicate Peel's
honour and his statesmanship.
A few months later this honourable alliance came to an abrupt end.
Bright was forced, by the same incorruptible sense of right and by the
absence of all respect of persons, to oppose Peel in the crisis of his
fate. The Government brought in an Irish Coercion Bill, which was
naturally opposed by the Whigs. The Protectionist Tories saw their
chance of taking revenge on Peel for repealing the Corn Laws and made
common cause with their enemies; and from very different motives, Bright
went into the same lobby. His conscience forbade him to support any
coercive measure. No Prime Minister could please him as much as Peel;
but no surrender, no mere evasion of responsibilities was possible in
the case of a measure of which he disapproved. So firm was the bed-rock
of principle on which Bright's political conduct was based; and it was
to this uncompromising sincerity above all that he owed the triumphs of
his oratory.
His method as an orator is full of interest.[20] In his youth he had
begun by writing out and learning his speeches in full; but, before he
quitted Rochdale for a wider theatre, he had discarded this rather
mechanical method, and trusted more freely to his growing powers. He
still made careful preparation for his speeches. He tells us how he
often composed them in bed, as Carlyle's 'rugged Brindley' wrestled in
bed with the difficulties of his canal-schemes, the silence and the dim
light favouring the birth of ideas. He prepared words as well as ideas;
but he only committed to memory enough to be a guide to him in marking
the order and development of his thoughts, and filled up the original
outline according to the inspiration of the moment. A few sentences,
where the balance of words was carefully studied; a few figures of
speech, where his imagination had taken flight into the realm of poetry;
a few notable illustrations from history or contemporary politics, with
details of names and figures,--these would be found among the notes
which he wrote on detached slips of paper and dropped successively into
his hat as each milestone was attained. As compared with his illustrious
rival Gladstone, he was very sparing of gesture, depending partly on
facial expression, still more on the modulations of his voice, to give
life to the words which he uttered. His reading had formed his diction,
his constant speaking had taught him readiness, and his study of great
questions at close quarters and his meditation on them supplied him with
the facts and the conclusions which he wished to put forward; but the
fire which kindled this material to white heat was the passion for great
principles which glowed in his heart. He himself in 1868, in returning
thanks for the gift of the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh, quoted with
obvious sincerity a sentence from his favourite Milton: 'True eloquence
I find to be none but the serious and hearty love of Truth.'
[Note 20: See G. M. Trevelyan, _Life of John Bright_, pp. 384-5.]
Bright's public life was in the main a tale of devotion to two great
causes, the Repeal of the Corn Laws, consummated in 1846, and the
extension of the Franchise, which was not realized till twenty years
later. But he found time to examine other questions and to utter shrewd
opinions on the government of India and of Ireland, and to influence
English sentiment on the Crimean War and the War of Secession in the
United States. In advance of his time, he wished to develop
cotton-growing in India and so to prevent the great industry of his own
district being dependent on America alone. He attacked the existing
board of directors and preferred immediate control by the Crown; and,
while wishing to preserve the Viceroy's supremacy over the whole, he
spoke in favour of admitting Indians to a larger share in the government
of the various provinces. Many of the best judges of to-day are now
working towards the same end, but at the time he met with little
support. It is interesting to find that both on India and on Ireland
similar views were put forward by men so different as John Bright and
Benjamin Disraeli. Mr. Trevelyan has preserved the memory of several
episodes in which they were connected with one another and of attempts
which Disraeli made to win Bright's support and co-operation. Bright
could cultivate friendships with politicians of very different schools
without being induced to deviate by a hair's breadth from the cause
which his principles dictated, and he could treat his friends, at times,
with refreshing frankness. When Disraeli warmly admired one of his
greatest speeches and expressed the wish that he himself could emulate
it, the outspoken Quaker replied: 'Well, you might have made it, if you
had been honest.'
It was the young Disraeli who, as early as 1846, had attributed the
Irish troubles to 'a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and
an alien church'. It was Bright who never hesitated, when opportunity
arose, to work for the Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland and for
the security of Irish tenants in their holdings. A succession of
measures, carried by Liberals and Conservatives from Gladstone to
George Wyndham, have made us familiar with the idea of land purchase in
Ireland; but Bright had been there as early as 1849 and had learnt for
himself. Though at the end of his life he was a stubborn opponent of
Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, he had long ago won the gratitude of Ireland
as no other Englishman of his day, and his name has been preserved there
in affectionate remembrance.
In 1854, the year of the Crimean War, Bright reached the zenith of his
oratorical power, and at the same time touched the nadir of his
popularity. Public opinion was setting strongly against Russia. In
stemming the tide of war the so-called 'Manchester school' had a
difficult task, and was severely criticized. The idea of the 'balance of
power' made little appeal to Bright; and as a Quaker he was reluctant to
see England interfering in a quarrel which did not seem to concern her.
The satirists indeed scoffed unfairly at the doctrine of 'Peace at any
price'; for Bright was content to put aside the principle and to argue
the case on pure political expediency. But his attacks on the wars of
the last century were too often couched in an offensive tone with
personal references to the peerages won in them, and he spoke at times
too bitterly of the diplomatic profession and especially of our
ambassador at Constantinople. Nothing shows so clearly the danger of the
imperfect education which was forced on Bright by necessity, and which
he had done so much to remedy, as his attitude to foreign and imperial
politics. In his home he had too readily imbibed the crude notion that
our Empire existed to provide careers for the needy cadets of
aristocratic families, and that our foreign policy was inspired by
self-seeking officials who cared little for moral principles or for the
lives of their fellow countrymen. A few months spent with Lord Canning
at Calcutta, or with the Lawrences at Lahore, frequent intercourse with
men of the calibre of Lord Lyons or Lord Cromer, would have enlightened
him on the subject and prevented him from uttering the unwarranted
imputations which he did. Yet in his great parliamentary speeches of
1854 he rose high above all pettiness and made a deep impression on a
hostile house. Damaging though his speech of December 22 was to the
Government, no minister attempted to reply. Palmerston, Russell, and
Gladstone, with all their power, were unequal to the task. Disraeli told
Bright that a few more such speeches 'would break up the Government';
and Delane, the famous editor of _The Times_, wrote that 'Cobden and
Bright would be our ministers but for their principle of peace at any
price'.
But Bright was not thinking of office or of breaking up Governments: he
was thinking of the practical end in view. His next great speech was on
February 23, 1855, when a faint hope of peace appeared. It was most
conciliatory in tone, and was a solemn appeal to Palmerston to use his
influence in ending the war. This was known as 'the Angel of Death'
speech, from a famous passage which occurs in it. At the end he was
'overloaded with compliments', but the minister, who was hampered by
Russian intrigues with Napoleon, seemed deaf to all appeals, and Bright
again returned to the attack. Till the last days of the war, he
continued to raise his voice on behalf of peace; but his exertions had
told on his strength, and for the greater part of two years he had to
abandon public life and devote himself to recovering his health.
Six years later he was to prove that 'peace at any price' was no fair
description of his attitude. The Southern States of America seceded on
the question of State rights and the institution of slavery, and the
Federal Government declared war on them as rebels. This time it was not
a war for the balance of power, but one fought to vindicate a moral
principle, and Bright was strongly in favour of fighting it to a
finish. For different reasons most of our countrymen favoured the South,
but he appealed for British sympathy for the other side, on the ground
that no true Briton could abet slavery. He was the most prominent
supporter of the North, for long the only prominent one, but he
gradually made converts and did much to wipe away the reproach which
attached to the name of Englishmen in America, when the North triumphed
in the end. The war ended in 1865 with the surrender of General Lee at
Appomattox, and Bright wrote in his journal, 'This great triumph of the
Republic is the event of our age'.
But long before 1865 the question of Reform and of the extension of the
franchise had been revived. Gladstone might speak in favour of the
principle in 1864; Russell might introduce a Reform Bill in 1866; a year
later Disraeli might 'dish the Whigs'; and Whig and Tory might wrangle
over the question who were the friends of the 'working man', but Bright
had made his position clear to his friends in 1846. He began a popular
movement in 1849 and for the next fifteen years of his life it was the
object dearest to his heart. He was not afraid to walk alone. When his
old fellow worker, Cobden, refused his aid, on the ground that he was
not convinced of the need for extending the franchise, Bright himself
assumed the lead and bore the brunt of the battle. Till 1865 his main
obstacle was Palmerston, who since he took the helm in the worst days of
the Crimean War and conducted the ship of State into harbour, occupied
an impregnable position. Palmerston was dear to 'the man in the street',
shared his prejudices and understood his humours; and nothing could make
him into a serious Democrat or reformer. Even after Palmerston's death,
Bright's chief opponent was to be found in the Whig ranks, in Robert
Lowe, who was a master of parliamentary eloquence and who managed, in
1866, to wreck Lord John Russell's Reform Bill in the House. But Bright
had his revenge in the country. Such meetings as ensued in the great
provincial towns had not been seen for twenty years: the middle class
and the artisans were fused as in the great Repeal struggle of 1846. At
Glasgow as many as 150,000 men paraded outside the town, and no hall
could contain the thousands who wished to hear the great Tribune. He
claimed that eighty-four per cent. of his countrymen were still excluded
from the vote, and he bluntly asserted that the existing House of
Commons did not represent 'the intelligence and the justice of the
nation, but the prejudices, the privileges, and the selfishness, of a
class'.