Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 / "Brescia" to "Bulgaria"

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supported Cobden's motion for the reduction of public expenditure, and in and out of parliament pleaded for peace. In the election of 1852 he was again returned for Manchester on the principles of free trade, electoral reform and religious freedom. But war was in the air, and the most impassioned speeches he ever delivered were addressed to this parliament in fruitless opposition to the Crimean War. Neither the House nor the country would listen. "I went to the House on Monday," wrote Macaulay in March 1854, "and heard Bright say everything I thought." His most memorable speech, the greatest he ever made, was delivered on the 23rd of February 1855. "The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land. You may almost hear the beating of his wings," he said, and concluded with an appeal to the prime minister that moved the House as it had never been moved within living memory. There was a tremor in Bright's voice in the touching parts of his great speeches which stirred the feelings even of hostile listeners. It was noted for the first time in this February speech, but the most striking instance was in a speech on Mr Osborne Morgan's Burials Bill in April 1875, in which he described a Quaker funeral, and protested against the "miserable superstition of the phrase 'buried like a dog.'" "In that sense," he said, "I shall be buried like a dog, and all those with whom I am best acquainted, whom I best love and esteem, will be 'buried like a dog.' Nay more, my own ancestors, who in past time suffered persecution for what is now held to be a righteous cause, have all been buried like dogs, if that phrase is true." The tender, half-broken tones in which these words were said, the inexpressible pathos of his voice and manner, were never forgotten by those who heard that Wednesday morning speech.

Bright was disqualified by illness during the whole of 1856 and 1857. In Palmerston's penal dissolution in the latter year, Bright was rejected by Manchester, but in August, while ill and absent, Birmingham elected him without a contest. He returned to parliament in 1858, and in February seconded the motion which threw out Lord Palmerston's government. Lord Derby thereupon came into office for the second time, and Bright had the satisfaction of assisting in the passing of two measures which he had long advocated?the admission of Jews to parliament and the transfer of the government of India from the East India Company to the crown. He was now restored to full political activity, and in October addressed his new constituents, and started a movement for parliamentary reform. He spoke at great gatherings at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bradford and Manchester, and his speeches filled the papers. For the next nine years he was the protagonist of Reform. Towards the close of the struggle he told the House of Commons that a thousand meetings had been held, that at every one the doors were open for any man to enter, yet that an almost unanimous vote for reform had been taken. In the debates on the Reform Bills submitted to the House of Commons from 1859. to 1867, Bright's was the most influential voice. He rebuked Lowe's "Botany Bay view," and described Horsman as retiring to his "cave of Adullam," and hooking in Lowe. "The party of two," he said, "reminds me of the Scotch terrier, which was so covered with hair that you could not tell which was the head and which was the tail." These and similar phrases, such as the excuse for withdrawing the Reform Bill in the year of the great budget of 1860?"you cannot get twenty wagons at once through Temple Bar"?were in all men's mouths. It was one of the triumphs of Bright's oratory that it constantly produced these popular cries. The phrase "a free breakfast table" was his; and on the rejection of Forster's Compensation for Disturbance Bill he used the phrase as to Irish discontent, "Force is not a remedy."

During his great reform agitation Bright had vigorously supported Cobden in the negotiations for the treaty of commerce with France, and had taken, with his usual vehemence, the side of the North in the discussions in England on the American Civil War. In March 1865 Cobden died, and Bright told the House of Commons he dared not even attempt to express the feelings which oppressed him, and sat down overwhelmed with grief. Their friendship was one of the most characteristic features of the public life of their time. "After twenty years of intimate and almost brotherly friendship with him," said Bright, "I little knew how much I loved him till I had lost him." In June 1865 parliament was dissolved, and Bright was returned for Birmingham without opposition. Palmerston's death in the early autumn brought Lord John Russell into power, and for the first time Bright gave his support to the government. Russell's fourth Reform Bill was introduced, was defeated by the Adullamites, and the Derby-Disraeli ministry was