John Bright

“ John Bright very early in life was delegated by his father to go and bid on the chattels levied upon, and this was his first introduction into business. For a time he himself paid church-tithes, but never without the protest, "I hereby pay this tax because I am obliged to; but entering my protest because I believe that this money is not to be used for either the glory of God or the benefit of man." Later, he went back to his father's plan and let the State levy.
His religion was one of friendship for humanity, and to him man was the highest expression of divinity. ”

“ John Bright was a rich man, and his life proves what riches can do when rightly used. That his example of absolute honesty and adherence to principle sets him apart as a character luminous and unique is and indictment of the times in which we live. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No yielding, equivocating, South-by-North politician could ever have brought a lifelong antagonist to stand by his grave and say,—"I believe, that, when the verdict of posterity is recorded on his life and conduct, it will be said of him, that, looking to all he said and did, he was without doubt the greatest political character the pure middle class of this country has yet produced,—an ornament to the House of Commons, and an honor to England." Then arose, as if trying to lift a great burden, noble John Bright. ”

“ No man has less need to quote the brilliant utterances of others than John Bright; for he possesses himself the power to speak in epigrams, and to make sentences which remain long in the memory. Once in his life he found himself in opposition to the workingmen of his district, and during the excitement of an election he was greeted with hoots and hisses. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I spent a very pleasant hour with sturdy John Bright, and he told me that he had more relatives living in America than in England. His reason for declining the invitation of our government to visit the United States was that he knew too well what our enthusiastic countrymen had in store for him. The separation of Bright and Gladstone on the question of Irish Home Rule had a certain tragic element of sadness. ”

“ 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 [119] luxury of applause from Radicals, Whigs, and the more advanced Tories, and won easy victories over a hostile minority. ”

“ In the same way the long Victorian peace produced a race of public men who, like John Bright, made of principle an idol, and were constantly dodging in and out of office, like the figures in an old-fashioned weather-glass, according as their love of influence or their dislike of certain things happened to be uppermost. They gained a great fame as specially honest men ”

“ 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. ”

“ Men supremely gifted with this great practical quality are commonly set down as men of one idea. In this sense, undoubtedly, John Bright is a man of one idea; but the phrase does not justly describe him, or men like him, who are peculiar merely in having an accurate appreciation of what I may call political perspective, and thus knowing what proportion of public consideration certain objects ought, under certain circumstances, to obtain. ”

“ Bright, under the following dedication: 'To John Bright, British Commoner and Christian Statesman, the Friend of my Country, because the Friend of Mankind, this Record of a Nation's Struggle up from Darkness and Bondage to Light and Liberty, is regardfully, gratefully inscribed by the Author.'
Mr. Greeley says in his preface: 'No one can realize more fully than I do that the History through whose pages our great-grandchildren will contemplate the momentous struggle whereof this country has recently been and still is the arena, will not and cannot now be written ”

“ Transmute grief for the dead into love for the living. Let us never rest until the Corn Laws are abolished— Come!" To dedicate himself to humanity now seemed easy for John Bright. This he did, and life took on a great, quiet sanctity, purified and refined by death.
The baby girl grew into beautiful womanhood. She is now a grandmother with children grown, and true to tradition, as became the daughter of her father, she made herself notorious for the many and famous for the few, by heading an appeal to Parliament in favor of woman suffrage. For the same cause comes Mrs. ”

“ I may say now what I should probably have been laughed at for saying two or three years ago, that there is a good deal of the conservative about John Bright; that he is by nature disposed to shrink from innovation; that change for the mere sake of change is quite abhorrent to him; and that he is about the last man in England who would care to make political war for an idea. He seems to me to be the only one Englishman I have lately spoken with who retains any genuine feeling of personal [Pg 112] loyalty toward the sovereign of England. But for his eloquence and his power, I fancy Mr. ”

“ In his early days he belonged to a debating society, spoke at temperance meetings, was an ardent [Pg 215] politician, and, in short, had about the sort of training which an American young man of similar cast of mind would have enjoyed. John Bright, in fact, is one of that numerous class of Americans whom the accident of birth and the circumstances of their lot have prevented from treading the soil of America. In his debating society he had good practice in public speaking, and on all questions took what we may justly call the Quaker side, i. ”

“ Bright, like his father before him, declines to blow a trumpet when he does a good deed. He acts on the principle of not letting his right hand know what his left hand doeth in such matters; and, as a consequence, his benefactions are better known to the beneficiaries than to the public. ”

“ She is capable of stifling her powers of perception. Then David Bright died and left her in poverty. His will was a scandal, and the horror did not only smirch his good name, it reached to hers. I can't and won't try to tell you what I suffered, or how I determined to fight this hideous wrong. I went to Florence; I tried to see Madame Danterre; I engaged the detective—all before I knew of your existence. I came back to London and discovered that your father, John Dexter, had divorced his wife on account of David Bright. ”

“ In the House of Commons he can hardly command an audience. The Liberal whippers-in say that a speech of his is equivalent to a dozen votes added to the Opposition minority, and they never see him crossing the threshold without quaking with terror lest he should take it into his head to commence a harangue. Bright's eloquence is usually smothered by cries of "Oh, oh," and derisive cheering. He is a sturdy chap in his way, but woefully injudicious; and he has been so exceedingly rude to Lord John Russell, that the Whigs will have nothing to say to him. Old Joe is rapidly becoming imbecile. ”

“ If we are the friends of freedom, personal and political,—and we all profess to be so, and most of us, more or less, are striving after it more completely for our own country,—how can we withhold our sympathy from a Government and a people amongst whom white men have always been free, and who are now offering an equal freedom to the black? I advise you not to believe in the 'destruction' of the American nation. If facts should happen by any chance to force you to believe it, do not commit the crime of wishing it. ”

“ If you darken the lives and destroy the hopes of the humble dwellers of the country, you also darken the prospects of those children the offspring of your Queen, in whom are bound up so much of the interests and so much of the hopes of the people of this country. If I defend, therefore, the interests of the people on this point, I do not the less defend the permanence of the dignity of the Crown. ”

“ I see one vast confederation stretching from the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main,—and I see one people, and one language, and one law, and one faith, and, over all that wide continent, the home of freedom, and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and of every clime. ”

“ I will not point out by name any of the men, in this conspiracy, whom history will designate by titles they would not like to hear; but I say that slavery has sought to break up the most free government in the world, and to found a new State, in the nineteenth century, whose corner-stone is the perpetual bondage of millions of men. ”

“ The labourer is made a chattel. He is no more his own than the horse that drags a carriage through the next street; nor is his wife, nor is his child, nor is anything that is his, his own. And if you have not heard the astounding statement, it may be as well for a moment to refer to it,— that it is not black men only who should be slaves. ”

“ But I should like to ask this House in a most serious mood, what is the reason that any man in this country has now more anxiety with regard to the preservation of peace with the United States than he had a few years ago? Is there not a consciousness in our heart of hearts that we have not during the last five years behaved generously to our neighbours? Do not we feel in some sort a pricking of conscience, and are we not sensible that conscience tends to make us cowards at this particular juncture? ”

“ I ask any man whether, under such circumstances, the feeling throughout the whole of Great Britain, and in the mind of every man anxious to preserve the unity of Great Britain and Ireland, would not necessarily be one of irritation and exasperation against the United States? ”

“ Are you, because you can cavil at certain things which the North, the United States Government, has done or has not done, are you eagerly to throw the influence of your opinion into a movement which is to dismember the great Republic?
Is there a man here that doubts for a moment that the object of the war on the part of the South—they began the war—that the object of the war on the part of the South is to maintain in bondage four millions of human beings? ”

“ With regard to the United States, you know how much we hate slavery,— that is, some years ago we thought we knew; that we have given twenty millions sterling,—a million a year, or nearly so, of taxes for ever,— to free eight hundred thousand slaves in the English colonies. We knew, or thought we knew, how much we were in love with free government everywhere, although it might not take precisely the same form as our own government. ”

“ I blame men who are eager to admit into the family of nations a State which offers itself to us, based upon a principle, I will undertake to say, more odious and more blasphemous than was ever heretofore dreamed of in Christian or Pagan, in civilized or in savage times. The leaders of this revolt propose this monstrous thing—that over a territory forty times as large as England, the blight and curse of slavery shall be for ever perpetuated. ”

“ Gentlemen turn with triumph to neighbouring countries, and speak in glowing terms of our glorious Constitution. It is true, that abroad thrones and dynasties have been overturned, whilst in England peace has reigned undisturbed. But take all the lives that have been lost in the last twelve months in Europe amidst the convulsions that have occurred— take all the cessation of trade, the destruction of industry, all the crushing of hopes and hearts, and they will not compare for an instant with the agonies which have been endured by the population of Ireland under your glorious Constitution. ”