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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] John Bright Biography BRIGHT, JOHN (1811-89) An English statesman and orator. He was the son of Jacob Bright, a Quaker cotton spinner and manufacturer at Rochdale, Lancashire, and was born at Greenbank, near that town, Nov. 16, 1811. Young Bright's education was of a fitful and elementary character, and the magnificent attainments which he displayed in later life must be ascribed entirely to native talent and to indefatigable industry. At the age of 15 he entered his fathers business, but devoted himself at the same time to the study of public oratory, which seems to have attracted him at a very early period. In 1835 he made a foreign tour, which included a journey to Palestine. On his return he delivered a number of lectures on the subject of his travels and on topics connected with commerce and political economy before the Literary Society of Rochdale, of which he was one of the founders. As a manufacturer, and as a believer in the orthodox political economy of his day, Bright opposed determinedly the humanitarian efforts of the Tory Socialists to stamp out the evils of child labor. His remedy for the horrible conditions within the English factory was to repeal the corn laws and to inaugurate free trade-a remedy which, be it noted, the manufacturers embraced with the more enthusiasm inasmuch as it entailed hardships upon the landowners alone, while at the same time it exempted themselves from all responsibility. In 1839 he was one of the founders of the first Anti-Corn Law Association at Manchester, at which time he made the acquaintance of Richard Cobden, with whom he lived in close friendship till the latter's death. Bright, however, did not actively enter into the Anti-Corn Law agitation until 1841; but from that time until the repeal of the laws in 1846, he and Cobden were the most prominent leaders of the movement; and Bright continued, by the side of Cobden, to be one of the chief pillars of the general system of free trade, which obtained such complete ascendency in England. Bright's power consisted in his talent for forceful presentation, which made him an excellent popular exponent of the principles formulated by finer thinkers, like Cobden. In 1843 Bright was elected to Parliament from Durham, and four years later from the factory town of Manchester, for by this time he had come to be regarded as one of the leaders of English workingmen. After 1857 he sat for Birmingham. In Parliament Bright, though initiating no important measures of legislation himself, exercised a very powerful influence on the most important features of Imperial policy. He showed himself an ardent champion of the rights of the people of India; in their defense he antagonized the East India Company, and he was largely instrumental in bringing India under the direct control of the crown. He also lent much attention to the Irish question. He was a warm advocate of the disestablishment of the Irish church and to the end of his life was interested in the various Irish land measures. He remained a leader of the Liberal party throughout his life, playing a great part in the movement which led to the Reform Bill of 1867, and, in a somewhat less degree, in the agitation preceding the County Franchise Bill of 1884. He held office under Gladstone as President of the Board of Trade from 1868 to 1870, and as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster from 1873 to 1874 and from 1880 to 1882. In 1883 he was made Lord Rector of Glasgow University. He died March 27, 1889. The enormous influence which Bright exercised on English politics and public opinion during the greater part of his life was due in less measure to his intellectual attainments than to his power as an orator. Aside from the gift of oratory, which, according to competent critics, he possessed to a degree unequaled by any other English statesman of the nineteenth century, Bright impressed himself upon Parliament, and more than that, upon the people at large, by the intense earnestness, the hatred of injustice, and the disinterested sympathy for the oppressed which he displayed at all times. He has been characterized as having had in him something of the austerity of the ancient Hebrew prophets, and he certainly spoke like one who brings his religion into his politics. Though called the Tribune of the People, he never feared to antagonize public opinion whenever that opinion was out of conformity with his rigid standards of duty and right. Thus, being in general opposed to all war (as a result no doubt of his Quaker origin), he dared to advocate peace with Russia in 1854 at a time when the war fever was at its height; and again, in 1877-78, he stood opposed to British intervention in Russo-Turkish affairs. To America, especially, Bright rendered services of inestimable value during the period of the Civil War, in that he was undoubtedly the most prominent among the very few notable men, in Parliament or out, who advocated the cause of the North against the South; and that, too, in spite of the fact that the continuance of the war was disastrous to his own interests as a cotton spinner and to the entire Lancashire cotton trade. But his moral power was most clearly shown in the period after the conversion of the Liberal party to Home Rule in 1885. Mr. Bright, regarding such a policy as vicious, refused to follow his old leader, Gladstone, and did not hesitate to denounce openly the unholy alliance, as he considered it, of the old Liberal party with the Parnellites, although to him this meant the breaking up of ancient personal and political ties which effectually saddened the last years of his life. A collection of Bright's speeches was published at London in 1868 and his Public Letters in 1885. Consult: Barnett-Smith, Life. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. III (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 765-766. |