Tue death of John Bright will take no one by surprise as he has been lying in a critical condition of health for some mouths past. He was born of Quaker parents in 1811 at Greenbank, near Rochdale, and after receiving a good English education became a member of John Bright and Brothers, cotton spinners and manufacturers of that town. The spirit of the orator led him at a comparatively early aye to address meetings in his native place on political subjects, but it was not until he joined Mr. Cobden in their crusade against the Corn Laws that he became generally known. This was about 1839, and in 1843 he was returned to the House of Commons for the City of Durham. During the struggle for the ie of the Corn Laws in which the "unadorned eloquence" of Mr. Cobden placed the economical side of the question before his hearers, the strenuous language of his more impassioned friend exercised at Jeast as much influence on the public mind. In the year after the repeal of these laws, 1847, Mr. Bright was returned for Manchester, and became recognised as one of the leaders of the ' Manchester school ' whose watchwords were the old cry of Peace, Retrenchment and Reform. Mr. Bright's religious principles made him opposed to all war, or at least to war except in the last extremity, and when the nation drifted into the Crimean war he used all his eloquence to avert what he believed would be a calamity for England. He continued to plead in the interests of peace, while that war was continued, and by doing so alienated a large number of his supporters. Although he took no part in the debate on affairs at Canton, which placed Lord Palmerston in a minority in 1857—being absent at the time in Italy—he expressed his approval of the vote and for this he lost his seat for Manchester. A few months afterwards Birmingham returned him to Parliament, and he has continued to sit for that borough and since 1885 for a division of it.
Mr. Bright has taken a leading part in every one of what are called popular movements since he advocated the first Reform Bill in 1831. Thirty years ago he delivered many fiery Speer in many parts of England and Scotland in favour of a wide extension of the suffrage, but he supported the feeble, halfhearted measure which Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone introduced in 1866. It is doubtful if he approved the long step in advance which Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli made by their Reform measure of 1867. Becoming a member of Mr. Gladstone's first government, he was compelled by the state of his health to resign his office—the Presidentship of the Board of Trade—in 1870, but he returned to the Cabinet in 1873, as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancashire and resigned with his colleagues in the following year. He was not a success in these offices, nor in the ministry of 1880, in which he filled the same position he had last held; and he retired when the mistakes of his colleagues led to the bombardment of Alexandria, in 1882.
For a long time Mr. Bright was known as the Tribune of the People, but in recent years his opinions fad become more moderate. Many of the political objets he had struggled for had been obtained, and he Was in a measure contented. It was understood, also, that he had become too nervous to care about speaking in public, and hence he had seldom addressed the House in recent years. Possibly also his severance from Mr. Gladstone on the Irish question kept him silent; for he was aman of a very kindly nature and he had long regarded his political leader with the deepest affection and respect. Good judges, who had opportunities of hearing the famous orators of the last half century, have placed Mr. Bright at the head of them, some excepting the late Earl of Derby, when he was at his best. Mr. Bright's lan-Sion by the soul of Hengist;" fine age was as a critic said, "genuine
strong English, delivered in a style that was more convincing than persuasive. In one great debate in the House of Commons, during the Crimean war he spoke of the sorrow which it was spreading all over the country. "The angel of death is abroad throughout the land," he said, " you may almost hear the beating of his wings;" and an assembly that was always ready -to laugh at anything that looked sentimental, sate hushed into silence by the force of the orator's image. It was said that Mr. Bright was a constant reader of the Bible, and that to his study of its language and of Paradise Lost, which rumour said he knew by heart, he owed much of his success as a speaker. It is probably by his oratory and the part he played in obtaining the repeal the Com Laws that. he will be remembered, for he has no very strong claims as a statesman, He was perhaps too indolent to be very successful in life; his brothers relieved him from all share in the management of the business in which they were engaged, and thus allowed him to remain in' Parliament.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.