John Bright, son of Jacob Bright, a Quaker cotton-spinner at Rochdale, was born there November 16, 1811, and educated at a Friends’ school at Ackworth, and afterwards at York and Newton. While in his father’s factory he took a great interest in public questions; and after a foreign tour (1835), which took in Palestine, he lectured at Rochdale on his travels, as well as on commerce and political economy. When the Anti-Corn-Law League was formed in 1839 he was a leading member, and, with Cobden, engaged in Free-trade agitation throughout the kingdom. In 1843 he became M.P. for Durham, and strongly opposed the Corn Laws until they were repealed. In 1845 he obtained the appointment of select committees on the Game Laws, and on cotton cultivation in India. In 1847 he was elected a member for Manchester; in 1852 aided in the temporary reorganisation of the Corn Law League. Like Cobden a member of the Peace Society, he energetically denounced the Crimean war (1854). In his absence on the Continent through illness, he was rejected by Manchester. Elected in 1857 for Birmingham, he seconded the motion (against the Conspiracy Bill) which led to the overthrow of Palmerston’s government; and he advocated the transference of India to the direct government of the crown. During the civil war in America he warmly supported the cause of the North. His name was closely associated with the Reform Act of 1867. In 1868 he accepted office as President of the Board of Trade, but in 1870 retired through illness. He supported the disestablishing of the Irish Church (1869), and the Irish Land Act of 1870. He took office in 1873, and again in 1881, as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, but retired from the Gladstone ministry in 1882, being unable to support the government in its Egyptian policy. In 1886–88 he strenuously opposed the Home Rule policy of Mr. Gladstone, and was a great power in the Unionist party, being then as always recognised as one of the most eloquent public speakers of his time. He was Lord Rector of Glasgow University in 1883. He died March 27, 1889. See his “Speeches” (1868) and “Letters” (with memoir, by Leech, 1885; new ed. 1895), and Lives by Robertson (1877) and Barnett Smith (1881).

Personal

  I will tell you about Bright and Brightdom, and the Rochdale Bright mill some other day. Jacob Bright, the younger man, and actual manager at Rochdale, rather pleased me—a kind of delicacy in his features when you saw them by daylight—at all events, a decided element of “hero-worship,” which of course went for much. But John Bright, the Anti-Cornlaw member, who had come across to meet me, with his cock nose and pugnacious eyes and Barclay-Fox-Quaker collar—John and I discorded in our views not a little. And, in fact, the result was that I got to talking occasionally in the Annandale accent, and communicated large masses of my views to the Brights and Brightesses, and shook peaceable Brightdom as with a passing earthquake; and, I doubt, left a very questionable impression of myself there!

  Bright has certainly a magnificent face, square-jawed, resolute, commanding, with a short straight nose, a broad forehead, and a grey eye which kindles and glows, and a stern but well-cut mouth. I had forgotten how fine his head really was.

  John Bright looks a hale fifty-five years. In stature he is about the height of Henry Ward Beecher, though considerably stouter. He has a face of the finest English type, full and open, with gray side-whisker, and a healthy, ruddy complexion. The mouth, chin and lower jaw, express great firmness and vigor. The nose is full, nostrils broad, while the space is broad between the clear, full, gray eyes, which appear capable of great expression. In repose they are mild and kindly. Both brow and head are broad, full and arched high in the coronal region. The whole figure is cast in a massive mould. He looks the orator and leader of men, even when silent; and there is in his presence itself a pervading sense of power. His manner is pleasant, grave and cordial, yet not unmixed with a dash of hauteur and brusqueness that one can readily trace to his business and public life.

  There was nothing rugged about him, nothing coarse. Occasionally, indeed, he was brusque and peremptory in his conversation, as well as in his speeches; and, if he was provoked to political discussion, he was strenuous and sometimes stern. But he did not care to be always fighting, and when he had taken off his armour he could be as playful as a child and as charming as a woman. On the platform the volcano might have been fiercely active; an hour after he had done speaking, the mountain which had poured forth streams of angry fire was covered to the very crater with vines and flowers…. He had a robust conscience. He cared for plain and homely virtues. He had an intellectual and moral scorn for the subtleties of casuistry. For him the line between right and wrong was strongly and firmly marked; on one side there was light, and on the other darkness.

  In physical appearance so different from Mr. Gladstone, John Bright possessed striking characteristics of his own. A somewhat broad-shouldered figure of middle height; a large head with thick white hair and a powerful brow; the beard limited, in the older English manner, to a fringe; well-cut features; the face of roseate hue, and of true John Bullish type, but with delicately-shaped nose; a clear and open glance; the mouth finely curved, with downward lines seemingly indicating the inward pride of a man of masterful temper, who had gone through contests which cannot but leave traces of bitterness: such was the aspect of the Tribune of the People.

  Bright was essentially what has been styled a theopathic man; conversing, when in his graver moods, as though he was in the presence of the Deity, the undercurrent of his thoughts was fundamentally religious; and though there were many who denied the wisdom and the justice of his methods, there were few, indeed, who questioned his honesty of purpose.

  I have heard some of his finest speeches, and to my mind, he was far the grandest orator of our time. The power of his oratory lay not in eloquence or splendour of diction, in the vulgar sense, but in the touching simplicity with which he went home to the right sense and generous sympathy of true men…. I was at times associated with him in committees, meetings, and social and political movements, where his sterling judgment and his manly spirit guided many a cause. And I had frequent opportunities of talking to him at clubs and social gatherings, where he was conspicuous for genial humour and keen insight. John Bright was hardly surpassed as a causeur in his time. He retained to the last the tone and manner of the simple provincial Quaker.

  Of the duumvirate which he formed with Cobden, Cobden was the inspiring spirit. He first directed Bright’s concentration upon the corn law, and so long as he lived struck the keynote of Bright’s political action. Himself a master of luminous exposition, he utilised Bright’s power of trenchant analysis. When the two spoke on the same platform the order of proceeding was for Cobden to state the case and for Bright to pulverise opponents. Like Cobden, Bright was largely a self-taught man, and the circumstance no doubt contributed to form his bias to individualism. But in his address to the students of Glasgow, upon his installation as lord rector (21 March 1883), he expressed his regret at his want of a university training. He was a constant reader, especially of poetry, history, biography, economics, and the Bible. Upon the Bible and Milton, whose “Paradise Lost” he frequently carried in his pocket, his English was fashioned. Its directness and force saved him from the Johnsonian declamation which had long done duty for oratory. He was steeped in poetry; scarcely a speech was delivered by him without a felicitous quotation. Dante (in English), Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Shenstone, Gray, “Rejected Addresses,” Byron, Lewis Morris, Lowell, and many others, find place there. The Bible, read aloud by him to his family every morning and evening, was drawn upon by him both for illustration and argument.

Oratory

  Mr. Bright is very attractive as an orator. When it is known that he is to speak, the galleries are insufficient to hold the multitude which gathers to hear him. His delivery is prompt and easy. He has none of that hesitation and apparent timidity which mark the address of many English orators; but neither, on the other hand, does he possess that rich and fascinating intonation which forces us to concede the forensic palm to Mr. Gladstone of all contemporary Englishmen. He expresses himself with boldness, sometimes almost with rudeness. His declamation is fresh, vigorous, and almost always even. At times he is unable to preserve the moderation of language and manner which retains the mastery over impulse; his indignation carries him away; his denunciation becomes overwhelming; his full voice rings out, trembling with agitation, as he exposes some wrongful or defends some good measure: then his vigorous nature appears, unadorned by cultivated graces, but admirable for its manliness and strength.

  When the name of Mr. Bright is mentioned, one of our first reflections is occupied with his oratory. And in this respect, as regards its power and influence, there is but one other public man comparable with him, namely, Mr. Gladstone…. Robust in figure, and with a fine, genial, Saxon face, his very glance has been sufficient to fix his audience. Like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, “he holds us with his glittering eye;” and that eye, which is of a deep blue, can now flash with indignation, and now beam with the soft light of sympathy. His broad face, high, full forehead, and mobile mouth are all in keeping with the oratory which is so characteristic of him. His voice is—or was in its meridian strength—remarkably clear and of great compass, reaching a mass of fifteen thousand persons almost as easily as it could address itself to a hundred and fifty. The speech itself is always singularly clear and vivid, now rippling with humour, now impregnated with earnestness and pathos. As one critic has observed, “his diction is drawn exclusively from the pure wells of English undefiled.” Milton and the Bible are his unceasing study. There was a time when it was rare to find him without “Paradise Lost” in his hand or in his pocket. The use of Scriptural imagery is a marked feature of his orations, and no imagery can be more appropriately employed to illustrate his views; for Mr. Bright, in all his grand efforts rises far above the loaded, unwholesome atmosphere of party politics into the purer air and brighter skies of patriotism, of philanthropy.

  “There came up a lion out of Judah,” was Charlotte Brontë’s exclamation when she was present at one of Thackeray’s lectures. The same remark will have suggested itself to many persons who have witnessed John Bright on the occasion of one of his great oratorical efforts. The massive, well-set head, the lofty brow, the white hair, the clear blue eye, as Saxon in its expression as the language of the speaker, have immediately arrested the attention of all spectators. Yet, in the House of Commons, the visitor may have failed to recognize immediately the voice and the presence of its greatest orator…. His eloquence may be compared to the glow of a clear fire steadily burning almost at a white heat. There is nothing fitful or spasmodic about it. The solemn and the sportive are interwoven as naturally as the serious and comic scenes in one of Shakespeare’s masterpieces. Mr. Bright has probably coined as many concise and adhesive phrases as Disraeli himself. It is he who invented the words “fancy franchise,” who first employed “the cave of Adullam” as a metaphor for the refuge of the disaffected, and who compared the Adullamites themselves to the Scotch terrier of which it was difficult to say what portion formed the head and what the tail. His humour has always been of the quiet, cutting, and sarcastic style.

  Bright was a man of less catholic temper, less comprehensive gifts [than Cobden]. But his singleness of air, his combative spirit—it was wittily said of him that if he had not been a Quaker he must have been a prize-fighter—his superb eloquence—unsurpassed for purity and nobility of language, for spontaneous grace of gesture and native majesty of intonation, for pathos, for humour, and for a command of imagery at once simple and direct, and withal profoundly appropriate and impressive,—his sympathetic insight into the sober, serious, righteous gravity of the English character, his noble scorn of wrong and his inflexible love of right, made him an irresistible advocate and an indispensable ally.

  John Bright seldom made an unsuccessful speech. Like other artists, however, he was nervous, anxious and irritable until his work was done. When his speech was over, he was as happy and sympathetic as a child. If it was a speech in the House of Commons he would retire to the members’ smoking room, or stand with his back to the fire in the division lobby, and, surrounded by a group of parliamentary friends run over the debate with trenchant humour. If it was a public meeting, he would fall into his host’s easy chair with a cigar, and talk far into the night on a thousand trivial topics to which his language lent a thousand charms.

  It is as an orator rather than as a statesman that Bright takes highest rank. Lord Salisbury has said of him, “He was the greatest master of English oratory that this generation has produced, or I may perhaps say several generations back. 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.” Unlike the other great orators of the queen’s reign, notably Gladstone, Bright did not have a classical education. His style was formed largely upon the English Bible, and his language was the language native to the soil. His speeches are characterized by a homely simplicity which appeals especially to the popular heart and which was the secret of much of his power.

General

  The speeches which have been selected for publication in this volume possess a value, as examples of the art of public speaking, which no person will be likely to underrate. Those who may differ from Mr. Bright’s theory of the public good will have no difficulty in acknowledging 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 convictions…. This is not the occasion on which to point out the causes which confer so great an artistic value on these compositions; which give them now, and will give them hereafter, so high a place in English literature. At the present time nearly a hundred millions of the earth’s inhabitants speak the English tongue. A century hence, and it will probably be the speech of nearly half the inhabitants of the globe. I think that no master of that language will occupy a loftier position than Mr. Bright; that no speaker will teach with greater exactness the noblest and rarest of the social arts, the art of clear and persuasive exposition. But before this art can be attained (so said the greatest critic that the world has known), it is necessary that the speaker should secure the sympathies of his audience, should convince them of his statesmanship, should know that he is free from any taint of self-interest or dissimulation. These conditions of public trust still form, as heretofore, in every country of free thought and free speech, the foundation of a good reputation and of personal influence. It is with the fact that such are the characteristics of my friend’s eloquence, that I have been strongly impressed in collecting and editing the materials of this volume.

  He is gifted beyond any Englishman now living with rare and admirable faculty of seeing right into the heart of a subject, and discerning what it means and what it is worth. Nor is this ever a lucky jump at a conclusion. Bright never gives an opinion at random or offhand.

  Respected, admired, trusted, believed in as he is by thousands, I shall be astonished if a close and careful study of these beautiful speeches in the light that I have indicated does not convince other thousands that, whether for power of pathos, foresight of feeling, simplicity or sincerity, earnestness, truth, or eloquence, these volumes are hard to match in the English language.

  It is impossible to study his speeches, or to listen to any one of them, without perceiving that the speaker is a well-read man, able to illustrate any and every topic from the stores of his memory. In English poetry, especially, his quotations are frequently recondite and curious, and very much to the point. The book from which he quotes most constantly is the Bible; but he rarely makes use of a verse of Scripture unless it has a close and manifest application to the subject in hand.

  Mr. Bright’s teaching has its weak side, which it were mere flattery for any admirer to keep out of sight. But it were the grossest injustice toward a great teacher to deny that he has, by his acts no less than by his words, produced a most beneficial effect on the tone of English politics…. If Mr. Bright has raised the tone of politics by separating democratic agitation from the vices generally displayed by demagogues, this is not the only service, great though it be, which he has rendered to his country. His life-long labors have increased, if they have not created, a new sense of responsibility not only as regards peace and war, but as regards every matter connected with the treatment of foreign nations or the government of countries which are, in any sense whatever, dependencies.

  He is as unacademical a personage as a really eminent and cultivated man can be, for his cultivation is entirely of the modern and domestic English type. He never was at a university, and at school learned little of Latin and of Greek—mere scraps, which have long since perished. He has not given evidence of having studied the literature of any Continental country, while for physical science he seems to have no interest or knowledge beyond what every intelligent man who lives in an age of inventions must have. What he does care for and has diligently and lovingly studied is modern English literature, and especially Milton and the poets who have followed him down to our own time. They are no mean instrument of training, and their influence is often felt in the correct and finished diction of his speeches…. His opposition to the Crimean war in 1854 made him very unpopular. His opposition to Lord Palmerston’s Chinese war in 1857 cost him his seat for Manchester. He was denounced as a man thoroughly unpatriotic, devoid of a sense of the honour and dignity of England; a manufacturer, who, to sell his goods, would have the country submit to any humiliation. He was also represented as the enemy of property and education; the man who sought to hand over all political power to the ignorant masses. In fact, he had become the typical demagogue, against whose designs the Saturday Review, then rather a Liberal than Conservative organ, and by no means the organ of Toryism which it has now become, used every week to warn its readers.

  The advantages Mr. Bright possessed for engaging in public life were at once discernible, and especially in the cause that had been launched just as he was ready to enter upon a public career. He had not occupied himself much with the economical mischiefs connected with this question, but he saw in it one of injustice, of disturbance of trade, and of periodical suffering on the part of those who earned their bread by labour, and, as he thought, one redounding to the exclusive advantage of the class he viewed with no favour. It was, therefore, precisely the question in which his energy, his fearlessness, and his most telling style of speech were sure to be available, and one in which his thorough belief in his own convictions induced him to give full play to his grand oratorical and combative powers.

  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 Parliament, 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.