John Bright: the Voice of Victorian Liberalism; N. Elliott

Born in Rochdale (a town north of Man chester) in 1811, Bright was raised in the indi vidualistic tradition of the Society of Friends. From the faith of his family, he learned that there is a natural equality of mankind, and that any individual can communicate with God. He later recognized this connection between his re ligion and his politics: We have no creed which monarchs and statesmen and high priests have written out for us. Our creed, so far as we comprehend it, comes pure and direct from the New Tes tament. We have no thirty-seven articles to declare that it is lawful for Christian men,·at the command of the civil magistrate, to wear weapons and to serve in wars.1 For many years Nonconformists-those who did not conform to the established Church of England-had been persecuted and forced to finance the state church. Because of this,"they also tended toward political individualism.

John's father, Jacob Bright, was liberal in his Mr. Elliott resides in England. A graduate of the University of York, he is a regular contributor to the Journal of Eco nomic Affairs, published by the Institute of Economic Af fairs. politics, and a supporter of the radical Member of Parliament Joseph Hume. He was also one of the many Nonconformists who refused to pay the church rate-a local tax to finance the state religion - and as a result had silver spoons taken from his house by church offi cials. As a young man, John worked in his father's cotton mill. He kept a collection of books in a room above the counting house, and in spare moments went there to expand his knowledge. His favorite writer was the poet and liberal scholar John Milton. At the same time, John was tutored in politics by his fellow workers, supporters of the Chartist movement, which called for universal male suffrage and the elim ination of property qualifications for members of Parliament.

Bright established his reputation in an 1840 debate over church rates, an issue close to his heart. In his hometown of Rochdale, he led a rebellion against the local vicar. A large gath ering was held in the local churchyard, at which John mounted a tombstone to denounce the "foul connection" of church and state. The Campaign Against the Corn Laws ' Bright is most famous for his part in the suc cessful campaign for the repeal of the corn laws. During the Napoleonic War, English landowners had enjoyed a monopoly in the pro duction of food. At the end of the war, they instituted the corn laws-a form of import control-to protect their domestic monopoly from competition. The laws kept the price of grain high, and since bread was the primary sustenance for most families, the laws created particular hardship for the poor. The issue had been brewing for some time. Charles Villiers had proposed corn law repeal in Parliament every year, and the Anti-Com Law League was formed in Manchester in 1839. Richard Cobden and John Bright were instrumental in its founding.

The campaign gathered impetus in the "hungry forties" with a succession of poor harvests. The poverty was very real-ob servers reported seeing people with "withered limbs" in Manchester. Cobden was elected to Parliament from Stockport, and Bright was elected in 1843 to represent Durham., The League developed into a highly efficient polit ical machine with mass support. They ~istrib uted millions of leaflets, held gatherings up and down the country, and published their own newspaper, The League. In addition, they gained the support of the fledgling Economist. In 1845, when Ireland was struck by a potato blight, pressure for repeal grew even stronger. Bright and Cobden embarked upon a hectic speaking tour. The climax was a meeting in the Covent Garden Theatre, where Bright railed against the protectors of upper class privilege: "The law is, in fact a law of the most inge niously malignant character. ... The most de moniacal ingenuity could not have invented a scheme more calculated to bring millions of the working classes of this country to a state of pauperism, suffering, discontent, and insubor dination.... "2 Leading Whigs and Tories were convinced of the need for repeal, and on June 25, 1846, a bill for repeal was carried. The elimination of other import duties followed, and a 70-year era of British free trade began; in the popular mind, free trade now signified cheap bread.

The event was also a momentous one for the landscape of British politics. Division in the Tories was irreconcilable. The landowning in terests had stubbornly resisted repeal, and Prime Minister Robert Peel, who had supported repeal, was forced to resign. The division ex cluded the conservatives from government for the next twenty years. 305 In his activity in support of free trade, Bright was motivated above all by a concern for the plight of ordinary people. From the same mo tive, he opposed all the legislation which regu lated working conditions in factories. The Fac tory Act of 1847 was in part a retaliation by the landowners for the com law repeal: regulation of factories was a means of penalizing manu facturers. Bright was certain that it would make people worse off by reducing the number of hours in which they could earn money. Opposition to the Crimean War In their campaign against the corn laws, Bright and Cobden rode a wave of public ado ration. But in their opposition to the Crimean War, the contrast could not have been greater, for they had to endure derision from a jingoistic public. Despite this, they produced some of the most lucid statements of non-interventionist foreign policy ever made, and Bright contrib uted some of his most memorable oratory.

For Bright, Cobden, and other leaders of the "Manchester School," free trade was insepa rable from a pacific foreign policy. Trade is based on mutual cooperation, and evokes goodwill among nations. They rejected the ar gument that foreign alliances were needed to enforce a "balance of power" in Europe, and warned that such alliances would drag Britain into future conflicts. The only people who would benefit from war were the "tax-eating" class - government bureaucrats. Common people would suffer from the burden of taxes to fund foreign adventures. Bright and Cobden re served no cordiality for Liberal Party Prime Minister Palmerston, a notorious interventionist whose policies attracted the description of ,'gun-boat diplomacy. " As the war continued, Bright became deeply distressed by the loss of life: 22,000 British soldiers died, but only 4000 in action; the rest died from malnutrition, exposure, and disease.

His passionate speeches left a lasting impres sion on the House of Commons. His most famous words were these: The Angel of Death has been abroad through out the land; you may almost hear the 306 THE FREEMAN. AUGUST 1988 beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two sideposts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on; he takes his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and lowly.3 India and the American Civil War At the end of the Crimean War, Bright suf fered a nervous collapse, and was unseated in the general election. However, it was not long before he was returned as member for Bir mingham, and with renewed energy he sought better government for India. Bright argued that the mutiny of 1857 was caused by the inepti tude of colonial government. Capable Indians were excluded from the administration of their own country, positions being allocated instead by personal favor. Bright assailed the economic management which imposed onerous taxes on the Indian peasantry, stunting development to maintain a vast, inefficient Indian civil service.

He was ahead of his time in recognizing that Britain would not rule India forever. He also saw the potential for conflict in a country of "twenty nations, speaking twenty different lan guages, " and argued for a confederacy of smaller states. For many years, Bright had been an admirer of the United States----::-hewas sometimes known in the House of Commons as the Hon ourable Member· for the United States. He thought that the free and democratic style of government in America should be a model for Britain. When civil war erupted, Bright was concerned for the future of the republic, but al lied himself with the cause of the North. English liberals weren't unanimous in sup porting the North. Cobden initially inclined to ward the South, and The Economist sympa thized with the South throughout. A humani tarian always, Bright supported the North be cause of the issue of slavery, which appalled him. In the early part of the war, when military intervention on the side of the South seemed likely, Bright urged neutrality. He also main tained a correspondence with the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Charles Sumner. He encouraged caution and diplomacy; some of the letters he wrote to Sumner were read to President Lincoln.

It was always a matter of regret for Bright that he never visited North America. He main tained his admiration for the United States, and saw in it the potential of a great world power. Parliamentary Reform Before 1867, only 16 per cent of British adult males had the right to vote. In the 1860s, Bright led a vigorous campaign for full man hood suffrage, secret ballots, and equal repre sentation for industrial cities like Birmingham and Manchester. He rested his case upon two principles. First, since working people must pay taxes and bear the impact of legislation, they should also have a voice in government. Second, he expressed faith in the decision-making ability of ordinary people. A frequent claim of reactionary conser vatives was that common people are incapable of making important decisions. Bright reversed this and argued that progress had been achieved only by enforcing working class opinion. He was somewhat naive in supposing that a mass franchise would lead to low taxes, free trade, and a non-interventionist foreign policy.

With his ability to rouse passions, Bright's efforts in the campaign for electoral reform made him a formidable adversary of the Con servative government. Previous campaigns had often suffered from having the support of only one class, whereas Bright rallied the middle and working classes into unity. Ironically, in the same way as com law repeal, reform was introduced by a Conservative prime minister. Benjamin Disraeli presided over the 1867 Re form Act, which enfranchised two million ad ditional men, and cleared the way for later re forms. Later Years: Cabinet and Ireland As a parliamentary back-bencher, Bright had been enormously influential. Nearing the end of his campaigning career, he entered William Gladstone's cabinet in 1868. He never was happy in assuming collective responsibility, and soon had cause to disagree with his govern ment colleagues. The Forster Act of 1870 laid the foundations of state education, and it incor porated the teaching of state religion which was anathema to Bright. He wrote to Gladstone that it had done a "tremendous mischief" to the party. 4 After the 1880 election, Bright was again invited into government. Soon after, Britain initiated a war with Egypt, and Bright's objection was so great that he felt compelled to resign.

Ireland was another longstanding interest. Bright had been a personal friend of Irish re former Daniel O'Connell, who had supported the Anti-Com Law League. Bright took up the grievances of the Irish and, after O'Connell's death in 1847, was often their most persistent representative in Parliament. He rejected all at tempts to impose the Church of England upon the native Catholics; instead he called for the withdrawal of this "symbol of conquest." The other issue was land policy: Irish agriculture had always been weak because large-scale En glish owners maintained idle lands, and be cause tenants scratched a precarious existence with no legal right of tenancy. Bright offered three solutions: an end to the law of primogeni ture which ensured the continuation of concen trated ownership; compensation for evicted tenants and loans for those who wanted to buy land; and land purchase from English owners, to be sold at a discount to Irish buyers.

Some of these proposals were implemented, as Gladstone had been taking note of Bright's suggestions. But in Parliament the Irish Nation alist representatives became increasingly mili tant. They used disruptive techniques which led, in response, to the rules of procedure which still are with us today. Bright deplored all this, and it significantly changed his atti tude. In 1886, Gladstone introduced a land pur chase scheme to buyout the English landlords, along with a proposal for Irish home rule~ By this time, Bright was so disgusted with the ac tivitiesof the Nationalistsin Parliamentthat he opposed the land purchase scheme, and he re garded home rule as a policy which would en danger the "Protestant and loyal people of the north. "5 JOHN BRIGHT 307 As a figure of importance among the Lib erals, Bright's opposition was very damaging to Gladstone. Home rule was defeated, and the Liberals were hopelessly divided on the issue.

It pained Bright to speak out against Gladstone because they had been good friends. In an essay of this length, it isn't possible to describe all of Bright's arguments. He was also a committed opponent of capital punishment, spoke on many aspects of colonial government, and addressed a variety of issues involving reli gious freedom. His speeches are apleasure to read, and one can imagine the impact they made upon listeners. Bright lived from 1811 to 1889, and when looking at the political events during those years, the advance of liberal principles is quite momentous. In 1819, when demonstrators pro tested against the com laws and the lack of par liamentary representation, they were cut down by a cavalry charge. As late as 1859, Queen Victoria expressed her concern to Lord Palmer ston that John Bright was attempting to under mine British institutions. Yet by 1868, when Bright became the first Nonconformist to hold a cabinet post, he was respected, as were the principles he enunciated. In the campaign against the com laws, he helped to establish free trade as a popular principle which no poli tician would dare to interfere with for years to come. His stand with Cobden against the Cri mean War inspired a later generation of liberals to follow the idea of non-intervention. Opening up Parliament to the scrutiny of ordinary people marked an end to the high-handed government of earlier times. In these, as in many other issues, John Bright, as a consistent and princi pled defender of individual liberty, imparted a widespread and lasting acceptance of liberal politics. D 1. William Robertson, The Life & Times of John Bright (London: Fisher Unwin, 1912), p. 203.

2. Speech at Covent Garden Theatre, December 19, 1845, in J. E. Thorold Rogers (ed.), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy (London: Macmillan, 1878), pp. 419-420. 3. Speech to the House of Commons, February 23, 1855, in Rogers, p. 251. 4. Quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life ofJohn Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 409. 5. Quoted in Keith Robbins, John Bright (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 256.