John Bright

John Bright (born Nov. 16, 1811, Rochdale, Lancashire, Eng.—died March 27, 1889, Rochdale) was a British reform politician and orator active in the early Victorian campaigns for free trade and lower grain prices. He was a co-founder of the Anti-Corn Law League, as well as campaigns for parliamentary reform.

Bright was the eldest surviving son of Jacob Bright, a self-made cotton-mill owner. John Bright inherited bluntness of manner from his father, imaginative sensitivity from his mother. The Brights were Quakers, and John was educated at a succession of Quaker schools in the north of England, where, instead of receiving a classical education, he developed a lifelong love of the Bible and of the 17th-century English Puritan poets (especially Milton), a love often revealed in his speeches. Quaker beliefs shaped his politics, which consisted mainly of demands for an end to inequalities (social, political, or religious) between individuals and between peoples. While still in his 20s he had led a successful campaign in his native borough against the payment of compulsory taxes for the Anglican church.

In the same spirit he became a founder-member of the Anti-Corn Law League, which fought for lower grain prices, and by 1841 he had emerged as the chief supporting speaker to Richard Cobden, the leader of the league. For five years, until repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, Cobden and Bright spoke frequently together from platforms throughout the country. Cobden’s speeches provided persuasive arguments; Bright concentrated upon denouncing the privileged political position of the agricultural landlords, which had enabled them to use Parliament to pass the Corn Laws. Although Cobden had taught Bright the high moral and economic case for free trade, Bright tended to speak in narrower terms on behalf of the manufacturers and mill hands, who (he insisted to the latter) shared a common interest in overturning the Corn Laws.

Bright became a member of Parliament for Durham in 1843 and for Manchester in 1847. In 1839 he had married a fellow Quaker, Elizabeth Priestman; but she died of consumption in September 1841, leaving Bright with one daughter. In later life he liked to tell an emotional story of how Cobden visited him after his bereavement and how the two friends made a compact together to crusade against the Corn Laws. Bright’s old-age recollections, however, tended to be unconsciously self-inflating, sacrificing accuracy for effect. In reality, he had begun to work closely with Cobden well before his wife’s death. He also deeply disliked being opposed, even by Cobden. This was an unfortunate product of his sensitive nature, and he often expressed his disappointment with a brusqueness that hurt the feelings of others.

In 1847 Bright married again; his second wife was Margaret Elizabeth Leatham, another Quaker, two of whose brothers later became Liberal members of Parliament. She, too, took an interest in politics, though Bright did little to encourage this. Certainly, he strongly disapproved discussion of “women’s rights” by the females of his family. Four sons and three daughters were born to the Brights, their father adopting a typical Victorian patriarchal attitude, affectionate but dominating. As he grew older, Bright even came to look like an Old Testament patriarch, his striking appearance adding to the effect of his oratory.

During his prime in the 1850s and 1860s, Bright’s speeches came to be widely reported, winning admiration even from opponents. He regarded his speaking powers as a gift from God, comparing himself on the platform to a clergyman in his pulpit. In this spirit the greatest of all his oratorical series was delivered against British involvement in the Crimean War. He variously denounced the war as un-Christian, contrary to the principles of international free trade, and harmful to British interests. “The Angel of Death,” he said, “has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings.” He blamed Lord Palmerston and the aristocracy for deluding the British people; British foreign policy and the expensive network of diplomatic appointments constituted “a gigantic system of outdoor relief for the aristocracy.”

Frustration at his failure to stop the war plunged Bright into a severe nervous breakdown (1856–58). His anti-war views also helped to lose him his Manchester seat in 1857, but within a few months he was elected member of Parliament for Birmingham, which he was to represent for the rest of his life. A speech-making campaign for parliamentary reform launched from Birmingham by Bright at the end of 1858 faded out within a few months, but it marked the beginning of the movement toward the great reform agitation of the mid-1860s.

During the second half of 1866 Bright suddenly found himself the hero and chief mouthpiece of the reformers, accepted alike by those who demanded universal suffrage and those who wanted more limited reform. In terms of immediate influence this was the high point of his career. Paradoxically, his position was strengthened by the uncertainty of his own precise preference—he had always left details and close logic to Cobden, who died in 1865. But Bright was well-satisfied with the household franchise introduced by the 1867 Reform Act, which extended the vote to skilled urban artisans but still excluded the town and country labourers. He was impressed by the artisans’ intelligence and independence, and he recommended every man who wanted the vote to acquire these qualities. The Brights were benevolent employers, but this same faith in self-help and independence placed Bright at the head of those manufacturers who opposed factory legislation, trade unions, and social reform. This was the negative side of his belief in equality. Its positive side led him strongly to support the North against the slave-owning South during the American Civil War (1861–65) and to press both before and after the Indian Mutiny (1857) for less-authoritarian British rule in India.

He entered William Gladstone’s Cabinet as president of the Board of Trade in 1868, but another breakdown forced his resignation in 1870. Although he served twice more in Gladstone cabinets (1873–74, 1880–82), the rest of his career was but an epilogue. His radicalism no longer seemed dangerous, allowing him during the last 20 years of his life to be widely accepted (as the economist and journalist Walter Bagehot remarked) as “a great institution.” He helped to shape Gladstone’s Irish land reforms of 1870 and 1881, but his pugnacious streak (always strong, even in the cause of peace) led him in 1886 to reject Gladstone’s lead in proposing Irish Home Rule. Bright announced that he was not prepared to see power given to Irish nationalists who had made a mockery of parliamentary government. Bright was greatly admired and venerated in old age, but historians subsequently tended toward a more critical view of his personality and achievement.