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THE LIFE OF JOHN BRIGHT

B Y THE SAME A UTHOR

ENGLAND IN THE AGE OF WYCLIFFE.

ENGLAND UNDER THE STUARTS.

GARIBALDI AND THE DEFENCE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC.

GARIBALDI AND THE THOUSAND.

THE POETRY AND PHILOSOPHY OF GEORGE MEREDITH.

THE LIFE OF

JOHN BRIGHT

BY

GEORGE MACAULAY TREVELYAN

LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

ILLUSTRATED

LONDON CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD

1913

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

I. ORIGIN AND SCHOOLDAYS, 1811-27 . . . 5

II. HOME LIFE, BUSINESS, AND POLITICS AT ROCHDALE, UP

TO THE DEATH OF HIS FIRST WIFE, 1827-41 . 15

III. 'THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION' . . 45

IV. THE BATTLE OF THE CORN LAWS. I. BRIGHT'S ACTIVITY

BEFORE HIS ENTRY INTO PARLIAMENT, 1842-43 . 64

V. THE BATTLE OF THE CORN LAWS— (continued). II. THE OLD SPIRIT AND THE NEW IN THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. BRIGHT IN PARLIAMENT, 1843-45 . 100

VI. THE BATTLE OF THE CORN LAWS. III. THE END, 1845-46 124

VII. FACTORY ACTS. IRELAND. INDIA. SECOND MARRIAGE ;

PRIVATE LIFE AND CONVERSATION . . .154

VIII. THE 'MANCHESTER SCHOOL' AND FRANCHISE REFORM.

THE WHIG GOVERNMENT, 1846-52 . . ,176

IX. THE DISRAELI INTERLUDE AND THE OBSEQUIES OF PRO- TECTION. THE WHIG-PEELITE COALITION AND THE 'MANCHESTER SCHOOL,' 1852-54 . . . 200

X. THE CRIMEAN WAR . . . . .215

XL the CRIMEAN WAR — (concluded), 1855 . . . 240

XII. FIRST ILLNESS, 1856-58. DEFEAT AT MANCHESTER AND ELECTION FOR BIRMINGHAM. INDIA. THE BIRMING- HAM SPEECHES AND REOPENING OF THE FRANCHISE AGITATION ...... 254

XIII. PALMERSTON, GLADSTONE, AND THE 'MANCHESTER

SCHOOL.' THE 'INEVITABLE WAR' AVERTED. THE FRENCH TREATY AND THE PAPER DUTY, 1859-61 . 279

XIV. THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR .... 296

viii LIFE OF JOHN BRIGHT

CHAP. PAGE

XV. ENGLISH AFFAIRS CONTEMPORARY WITH THE AMERICAN WAR. THE APPROACH OF GREAT CHANGES. THE DEATH OF COBDEN . . . . .328

XVI DEATH OF PALMERSTON. THE NEW ERA. IRELAND AGAIN. GLADSTONE'S REFORM BILL DESTROYED BY THE 'CAVE OF ADULLAM.' 1865 — JUNE 1866 . 342

XVII. BRIGHT'S CAMPAIGN IN THE COUNTRY, 1866. THE CON- SERVATIVE SURRENDER. DISRAELI'S REFORM BILL,

1867 . . . . . . .359

XVIII. BRIGHT'S ORATORY. THE LIBERAL HARVESTING. IRISH CHURCH. GLADSTONE'S REFORM MINISTRY. BRIGHT IN OFFICE. SECOND ILLNESS AND EDUCATION BILL,

1868-70 ...... 383

XIX. IN AND OUT OF OFFICE. THE EASTERN QUESTION.

DEATH OF MRS. BRIGHT. 1870-78 . . .411

XX. THE LIBERAL VICTORY AND DISILLUSIONMENT. EGYPT AND BRIGHT'S RESIGNATION. FRANCHISE AND THE LORDS ....... 426

XXI. HOME RULE . , . . , .443

XXII. THE DEATH OF JOHN BRIGHT . , . .462

INDEX ....... 467

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

JOHN BRIGHT SPEAKING ....

JACOB AND MAETHA WOOD BRIGHT .

Father and mother of John Bright.

GREENBANK, JOHN BRIGHT'S BIRTHPLACE .

{From an old vjater colour).

THACKERAY'S FREE TRADE CARTOON .

(From the Anti-Corn Law Circular, July 23 1839).

PRISCILLA, SISTER OF JOHN BRIGHT .

(From an early portrait in possession of her son, Lord Aberconway)

JOHN BRIGHT .,..,,

(From a daguerreotype).

'THE CHILDREN OF THE LEAGUE'

Helen Priestman Bright. Richard Brooks Cobden, died 1856.

PUNCH CARTOONS, SUMMER 1845

1. Papa Cobden takes Master Robert a Free Trade Walk.

2. The Premier's fix.

JOHN BRIGHT

(Portrait by Duval for the Anti-Corn Law Series).

MARGARET ELIZABETH BRIGHT, ob. 1878

PUNCH CARTOONS, 1852 AND 1854

1. { Not quite sicch a fine child as the last I '

2. The Pet of the Manchester School.

PUNCH CARTOONS, 1858-59

1. Mr. Bright offers to give satisfaction to the Liberal party.

2. Who will rouse him %

. Frontispiece facing page 6

» >> 8

» » 56

,•> ,, 86

„ 98

„ 106-7

„ 131

„ 142

„ 172 „ 225

„ 276

BRIGHT AND COBDEN IN PARIS, 1860 .

288

x LIFE OF JOHN BRIGHT

PUNCH CARTOONS, 1860 AND 1866 . . facing page 290

1. Bright the peace-maker.

2. The officious passenger.

AUTOGRAPH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN . „ 303

Draft of resolution for public meetings in England.

SPECIMEN OF BRIGHT'S NOTES FOR A SPEECH „ „ 385

JOHN BRIGHT „ 396

JOHN BRIGHT „ 428

(From a photograph by Mr. Rupert Potter, 1881).

THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH OF JOHN BRIGHT . „ „ 462

With his grandchild, Hester Elizabeth Bright, 1888.

THE FRIENDS' MEETING-HOUSE, ROCHDALE . „ „ 465

A

SOME BOOKS ON JOHN BRIGHT

C. A. Vince. John Bright in 'The Victorian Era Series.' 1898.

For aids to a conception of Bright's place in our political evolution, and of the character of his oratory, I am much indebted to Mr. Vince.

G. Barnett Smith. The Life and Speeches of John Bright, M. P. 1882.

Barry O'Brien. John Bright, a Monograph. 1910.

William Robertson. Life and Times of Rt. Hon. John Bright.

Rochdale, local : republished by Mr. Fisher Unwin.

J. T. Mills. John Bright. 1893.

A small monograph based on some personal knowledge.

The Speeches of the Btt Hon. John Bright, Thorold Rogers. 2 vols., 1869.

Public Addresses of John Bright, Thorold Rogers. 1879.

The Public Letters of Rt. Hon. John Bright, H. J. Leech. 1885.

I have benefited much from five volumes of cuttings of Bright's speeches, etc., from 1860 onwards, made by Mr. William Wright, who kindly placed them at my disposal.

' We feel that Mr. Bright is entitled to a higher eulogy than any that could be due to intellect or any that could be due to success. Of mere success he was indeed a conspicuous example ; in intellect he may lay claim to a most distinguished place ; but the character of the man lay deeper than his intellect, deeper than his eloquence, deeper than anything that can be described or seen on the surface, and the supreme eulogy which is his due I apprehend to be this, that he elevated political life to a higher elevation, and to a loftier standard, and that he has thereby bequeathed to his country the character of a statesman which can be made the subject not only of admiration, and not only of gratitude, but of reverential contemplation.'

Me. Gladstone in the House of Commons, March 29, 1889.

INTRODUCTION

How clear-cut is the sturdy image evoked by those two blunt Saxon syllables, ' John Bright ! ' Once the rallying -cry of the masses seeking enfranchisement — the trump of doom to Whig and Tory in possession — the name in memory has since become the symbol of an honest man in politics, of a strong, kind face framed in venerable white hair. But to no one have the words ' John Bright ' ever suggested change or hesitation, sophistry or self-interest. His views of peace and war, of Church and State, of trade and freedom, the same throughout the half -century of his public life, are as limpid and resistant as a block of crystal. If the language in which he set them forth to his countrymen often surpassed the more elaborate orations of his great compeers, it was by reason of a strong simplicity, learnt neither in academies nor senates, but springing direct from man's common experience on earth, and reaching thence straight upwards into the sphere of faultless and noble literature. His voice had a bell-like clearness ; in the largest hall he never strained, and scarcely seemed to raise it. The sound of it was music and poetry. He was singular among orators for his absence of gesture : there he stood foursquare, and sometimes half raised his arm. His oncoming was as the surge of the full swollen tide, not of the sea in storm ; he awed his listeners by the calm of his passion, a terrible steed restrained by a yet stronger hand. Thus he uttered his plain man's prophecy to his fellow-citizens, bidding them keep the paths of peace and freedom, righteousness and good sense, when statesmen and diplomats led them, as ever, astray.

He flattered no one, great or small, man or woman, in politics or in private life, but always spoke his thought. ' Thou must • not mind all the fault John finds with thee/ wrote his sister, ' as he makes no scruple to say the very worst he can to our ' faces. But in justice to his character, I must say he says ' very little if anything against his friends, or enemies either, ' behind their backs ; unless it be touching the aristocracy and ' the clergy, and to these he would be glad to make known his

A

2 LIFE OF JOHN BRIGHT

1 opinions concerning them any way opportunity may offer/ So wrote his sister Priscilla to his sister-in-law, Margaret Priest- man, in the early 'forties, in the middle of the Corn Law struggle. The words remained true of him till his dying day. Only a deep and tender humanity of disposition could make so strict a truth- teller a tolerable member of society ; and John Bright was not only tolerated but loved. Any defect in subtlety or want of understanding of the idiosyncrasies of others was far out- weighed by his sympathy with the broad human joys and sorrows, the common weal and woe, the great homely things of love and death, which drew men and women to this most formidable giant of their time with a personal affection, quite alien from mere political gratitude. Though he appeared the simplest man who ever played a part in the annals of our island, the union in him of two rival simplicities renders him, in one sense, a strange, almost mysterious being : for the hard- hitting and implacable champion of truth and right was also a most compassionate lover of his kind. In him were blended the Old Testament and the New, the two indispensable con- tradictories, that man must learn to reconcile in his breast, or else remain till doomsday the thing he is. By careful search some rudiments of these two opposites can be found in each of us, but in none did they come to such double perfection as in John Bright.

Be the lake waters never so clear, if they are deep enough the eye is lost at length in their darkness. Deep in Bright 's heart there lies always something unseen, something reserved and solitary. Although he was a popular hero, and a man so sociable that he never travelled by train but he drew into conversation his chance carriage-companions, though he was always happy and tender and talkative when wife or child or friend were near, and was formidable, not through his silence but through his sayings — yet the presence of an inner life of deep feeling and meditation could be felt as the moving power in all he did. He never tired of the sight of mountain and stream, or of the sound of Milton and the Bible passages. Some, from the heights of a superior culture, have condemned Bright as middle-class in mind and soul, a Philistine interested in cotton and the ballot, in whom the sight of Oxford spires would evoke only some surly comment on the laws excluding dissenters from the privileges of the University. It was, indeed, his one boast, when at length he was drawn an unwilling captive into the Cabinet, that he still ' dwelt among his own people.' But middle-class is not always second-rate : Bright was a

INTRODUCTION 3

Lancashire man, and he was also a Friend, and the Friends are a spiritual aristocracy. He practised the silence of his sect, and drew thence the strength of his soul, the purity of his heart, and the quality of his speech.

Such a man could not have ruled the country from Down- ing Street, or led the House of Commons from the Treasury bench. He could not have consented to the compro- mises demanded of those who wield the power of State. In December 1868, at the age of fifty-seven, he first took office. But it is the previous thirty years of his life, from his first connection with the Anti-Corn Law League to the passing of the second Reform Bill, that constitute the real life of Bright. Save for his friend Cobden, he would afford the unique instance in our history of a member of Parliament in no connection with any official party, exercising an immense influence on the thoughts and hearts of his fellow-countrymen. That personal influence covered the whole range of political action and touched on all the main topics of the day ; but the chief incidents of his story are the Corn Law agitation, the Crimean War, the American Civil War, and the winning of the franchise for the working men. In the first of these controversies Bright served under Cobden as his chief lieutenant ; during the Crimea he fought at his side as an equal ; but the American and the franchise questions were Bright's own, in which Cobden in the one case followed the initiative of his friend, and in the other remained for all practical purposes neutral. Bright won the working classes the vote, by long years of single-handed agita- tion which concentrated on his head the hatred and scorn of the upper class and of the official world, and the devoted loyalty of the artisans, who for a while regarded him as their sole political champion. At length, after Palmerston's death in 1865, Gladstone in three eventful years reconstituted the Liberal party, no longer as a Whig party but as a party of progress and democracy, sworn to carry Bright's principles into effect, and in the first instance to enfranchise the working classes. Then there followed in rapid succession the Franchise Act of 1867, which Disraeli indeed introduced, but which Bright and Gladstone compelled him to make effective ; the disestablish- ment of the Irish Church ; the Irish Land Act ; the Ballot Act ; and a host of other reforms in that great period of Liberal fruition, which Bright had prepared by thirty years of guerilla warfare carried on from the public platform and the benches below the gangway, in defiance alike of Whigs and of Tories.

The life -task of the great agitator was now fulfilled. He

4 LIFE OF JOHN BRIGHT

never took up another cause as his own ; he never again went forth to rouse the land. His personal popularity even with those who had most reviled him when he was in active service, showed that he had in effect retired. He entered the Cabinet and disappeared from the forefront of political life. Seldom, indeed, has any public man, after labouring long years in the wilderness, seen so many of the reforms which he has urged placed upon the Statute Book. Only in the matter of Foreign Policy did he feel, as he showed when he resigned over the bombardment of Alexandria (1882), that his countrymen were still opposed to his views. In his later years he found no great objects to pursue ; and his second illness (1870), nearly coinciding as it did with the commencement of his official career, took away much of his vital force, so that those who heard him in Parlia- ment only during the 'seventies and 'eighties could not realise his former greatness. But never was veteran more loved and honoured : the esteem in which he was held by Liberals made the mere fact of his opposition to the Home Rule Bill a severe blow to the chances of that measure. The last three years of a singularly fortunate political life were saddened for him by the breach with many of his old political friends.

It will, perhaps, be remarked by some readers that this work contains more numerous quotations from speeches than is usual in a political biography. If so, there is reason enough. Not only were Bright's speeches his one form of perfect achieve- ment, but they were his one great political weapon. Not by administration or legislation, not by arguing in the Cabinet or sharing in the counsels of a party, but by his public orations as a private citizen he profoundly modified English politics and the relations and balance of English classes. He himself, when consulted as to a biography, used to put the question aside by saying ' My life is in my speeches.' But after two genera- tions have gone by, not even the greatest speeches can be widely read or completely understood, except with the help of historical comment, and of such reproduction of a great personality as the biographer, by aid of private letters and recollections, can all too feebly accomplish.

LIFE OF JOHN BRIGHT

CHAPTER I

ORIGIN AND SCHOOLDAYS, 1811-27

1 Lo, Strength is of the plain root-Virtues born : Strength shall ye gain by service, prove in scorn, Train by endurance, by devotion shape. Strength is not won by miracle or rape. It is the offspring of the modest years, The gift of sire to son.'

Geokge Meredith, France, 1870.

During the revolution that drove James n. from the throne, and legally secured to the Society of Friends, scornfully called ' Quakers,' the toleration with which Penn's royal patron had precariously endowed them, the family of Bright was cultivat- ing a farm two miles to the east of Lyneham in north Wilt- shire. How much these country folk heard, and what they thought of the turmoil and treason around them, the riding of horsemen, and the going to and fro of armies not far south of their village, when James's officers deserted at Warminster, and he himself turned back at Salisbury, and William of Orange passed on invincible, this we shall never know. Did the Brights by their farmhouse fire on those November evenings pray for the maintenance of the liberties of England, which their descendants were destined so greatly to enjoy, and in no small measure to enlarge ? Whatever they may have thought of the Prince of Orange, he rode on to London about his busi- ness and left them to theirs beside the plough.

But the long, quiet, rustic centuries were drawing at length to a close. The impulse of the English folk- wandering, which has, with rapidity ever increasing up to our own day, every- where uprooted the peasant families from their ancestral lands, early laid hold of the Brights. In the reigns of William and Anne, various households of Brights near Lyneham are found to be Quakers and connected with the wool industry ; and perhaps in consequence of these connections they soon

6 LIFE OF JOHN BRIGHT •

begin to move north to more industrial regions. About the time of the accession of the House of Hanover, Abraham Bright and his wife Martha,1 Quakers, deserted Lyneham for Foleshill, near Coventry in Warwickshire. The rest of the Brights ere long disappeared from Lyneham, but the site of two of their old homesteads continued to be known in the countryside as ' Bright's Farm ' and ' Bright's Orchard.'

During the greater part of the eighteenth century successive generations of Brights, descendants of Abraham and Martha, sojourned near Coventry, engaging in the woollen trade, and intermarrying, as was then the rule of their sect, with other families of Friends.2

The first coming of the Brights to Rochdale in Lancashire took place during the Napoleonic wars, as the outcome of the first connection of the family with cotton. It forms a humble but characteristic incident in the metamorphosis of our society from rural to industrial, of which the economic bases were laid with relentless haste in that hard era of foreign war and domestic oppression, and of which the political consequences appeared in a later age, under the leadership of John Bright. The story of his father's coming to Rochdale has been told in a fragment of Autobiography which John Bright wrote in 1879 for the benefit of his children :

' My dear father ' [Jacob Bright] ' was born in Coventry in the year 1775. His father and mother were Jacob and Martha Bright. My grandfather was in his later days in bad health and in humble circumstances. My father was sent to Ackworth School ' [a Friends' school in Yorkshire] ' when about nine years of age, and remained there about five years.3 From Ackworth he came to Low Leighton near New Mills in Derbyshire, where he was apprenticed to a Friend, William Holme, who had a small farm, and had a few looms employed in weaving fustians. Here he

1 Her maiden name was Jacobs. For this reason some have conjectured that a strain of Hebrew blood was introduced by her into the orator's family- tree. But there is no evidence or tradition to this effect. Jacobs was a common name among Quaker gentiles, particularly in Ireland.

2 Whenever in this book 'Friend' is spelt with a capital F it means 'Quaker.' The word 'Quaker' is said to have been first given by Justice Bennett, when George Fox warned him to 'quake at the word of the Lord.' John Bright never used the word ' Quaker,' and disliked it.

3 He ' remained there ' in the most literal sense. His parents were too poor, and journeys too difficult to permit of his returning to Coventry for holidays. When he first saw his parents again after five years' absence he did not at once recognise them, nor they him. This he told his son John.

JOHN BRIGHT'S FATHER 7

learnt to weave, and afterwards became familiar with cotton-spinning, being employed at a small place called The Tor, at New Mills, where the business was carried on by John and WiUiam Holme, the sons of the master. In the year 1802 these sons removed to Rochdale and built a good mill called then and now the Hanging Road Mill.5 [It is said to have been the second cotton mill established in the neighbourhood of Rochdale.] ' My father,' continues John Bright, ' was with them and assisted them in start- ing the machinery in the mill, and he also afterwards attended the market at Manchester, delivering the produce of the mill with invoices to the different customers.'

In 1809 two Manchester Friends, Roger Merrick and Joseph Flintoff, impressed by Jacob Bright's ability, offered to provide the capital of £6000 in order to set him up in the cotton busi- ness. He thereupon left the employment of the Holme brothers, and set up the Bright Mils at Rochdale, on the hill overhanging the town on the north. On the edge of this hill, by the side of a large piece of common land known as Cronkey- shaw, stood a small red-brick house called Greenbank, which he now first rented and occupied. Divided from this dwelling- house only by a courtyard was a derelict worsted mill, with an old-fashioned engine, which he converted into the first cotton mill of the new firm, Jacob Bright & Co.1 ' It was on Christmas Day in the year 1809 that their steam engine began to work. It was an engine made by Boulton and Watt of Birmingham, its beam was of wood and its arrangements altogether were of a very primitive character.' Jacob Bright's business was cotton-spinning. He received bales of raw cotton by canal or from carriers, span it in his mill, and gave out the warp and weft thus manufactured to handloom weavers, whom he paid by the piece to weave it in the weaving chambers at the top of their own houses. He then sold the fully manu- factured article in Manchester or elsewhere. He prospered, and in fourteen years was able to sever the connection of the business with Friends Merrick and Flintoff, after treating them with the generosity which their early kindness to him had deserved.

Jacob Bright's first wife had been the sister of the Holme brothers, but she had died almost at once without children. In July 1809, the year of his setting up the business and

1 On the site where the school now stands (1913).

8 LIFE OF JOHN BRIGHT [1811-20

moving into Greenbank, he married Martha Wood, a Friend from Bolton. ' My dear mother/ writes John Bright, ' was a delicate woman, but she had an excellent natural capacity, a logical mind, and qualities of head and heart rarely excelled.' There is no exact science of heredity, and nothing is more conjectural than the derivation of a great man's qualities of mind and heart. But it is the tradition of the Bright family that John inherited much from his mother. It is certain that he owed her much for the manner of his upbringing.

' She was only about twenty years of age,' he continues, ' when she married my father, who was then thirty -four. They had eleven children, seven sons and four daughters. The eldest boy was named William. He died when he was only four years old. I was the second child, then about three years old, and became then the eldest of the family.'

John Bright was born at Greenbank ' unto Jacob Bright, cotton spinner, and Martha his wife,' ' on the sixteenth day of the eleventh month, one thousand eight hundred and eleven,' as his ' birth-note ' tells us. On the back of the birth -note his mother has written the words, ' John was born about 8 o'clock on 7th day evening.1 May he indeed love his Creator in the days of his youth, and continue steadfast unto the end.' He was a seven months' child, and for long so delicate that he was wrapt in cotton wool, and his father afterwards told him that he had often carried him about not knowing if he were alive or dead. But he escaped his elder brother's fate, and grew up eventually with a robust and powerful frame.

We are most of us inclined to believe that children in the nursery show the ultimate bent of their life's character ; if this is usually so, it is not so always, as the following words prove. They come from a note-book kept by John Bright's mother in the year 1819, when he was already seven or eight years old :

' John is a volatile child. He possesses a temper quite opposite to his [deceased] brother William. It is more pliable ; he is rather of a timid spirit, which perhaps is in part occasioned by his constitution being rather delicate. . . . I have no wish at all to see my children great or noted characters, neither have I any right to expect that they will be distinguished for any extraordinary talents. But that they may be found filling up their station, however

1 In Quaker language first month = January, eleventh month = November ; first day = Sunday, seventh day = Saturday, and so forth.

1 si

O "3

2*5

iSii-20] THE FRIENDS' MEETING-HOUSE 9

humble it may be, with uprightness and integrity, is both at this time and often my humble prayer.5

' I remember little of my younger years,' writes John Bright, ' beyond the unceasing care and tenderness of my parents. With so many young children our house was well filled. Those of us who were old enough to learn were sent to a cottage near the house, where a nursery governess had charge of us and taught us. From the cottage we could see the kitchen window, and when the blind was let down, at noon, we knew that dinner was ready and we were expected to run across the field to join the rest of the family at home.'

Next after this home, in every respect so healthy and so happy, mention must be made of another influence in the formation of his childish ideas, and of that secret bent of character which, more than the ideas of childhood, remains unalterable by subsequent impressions. This was the Friends' Meeting - House in Rochdale. Every First Day, the family trooped down from Greenbank, and sat, an ever-lengthening row of sober little people, on the bare wooden benches opposite the platform, which modest elevation, the nearest likeness per- mitted among the Friends to chancel or pulpit, was reserved for the ' elders ' chosen from the leading members of the congrega- tion. Here the boy joined in the priestless worship, where piety neither was decked in robes and symbols, nor grew clamorous in its Protestantism, but where silence spoke in the heart. Here he grew accustomed to men and women uttering their thoughts under the stress of real emotion, but without gesticula- tion, without shouting, and without violence of language. The Friends were never numerous in Rochdale, and the build- ing was humble as a village Meeting-House. Outside, but hid by a high brick wall from the view of the street, lay the tiny green with a few stone tablets let flat into the grass, to which after more than seventy years was to be added one like the rest, bearing the name of John Bright.1

Early in 1820, when he was eight years old, he began as a day-boy to attend Townhead School at the top of Yorkshire Street, close to the Friends' Meeting-House. The boy was kindly treated at this Rochdale school by the master, William Littlewood, for whom he always retained an affectionate regard ; but he was there only for a few months.

1 See below, last illustration in the book.

10 LIFE OF JOHN BRIGHT [1811-2

The remaining period of his school education, between th ages of ten and fifteen, was spent, except for the holidays, a a distance from home, in a series of Friends' schools in Lanca shire and Yorkshire. The first of these was at Penketh, nea Warrington, which he began to attend in the summer of 182C boarding, together with some of his fellow scholars, boys ant girls, in the hospitable farm of some Quakers named Da vies ' Behind the house,' he writes, ' was a good garden and orchard and a vinery where grapes were abundant, and beyond th garden were cornfields, through which we walked daily to th school. We had scripture reading in the family, and I re member how I found a place for some of the New Testamerj narratives. The vineyard mentioned in the 13th chapter c Luke, I pictured as just like our vineyard ; and I fancied could see the discontented brother of the Prodigal Son returnin from the field down the short lane which led from the house t the neighbouring cornfield. These imaginings of my boyhoo have remained with me ever since. Our schoolmaster wa not well qualified for his office. His temper was not good, an the school was much less pleasant than our home with the kin and generous farmer.'

Next year he was moved to Ackworth, near Pontefract, th large Quaker establishment at which his father had bee educated. It was an age of ill-treatment in schools ; alas ! i all probability no worse in that respect than all previous ages but rather the first in which reformers were beginning to notic and resent the miseries inflicted on children. Bright did nc indeed suffer the ' cruel and disgusting mockery of an educe tion ' which little Dick Cobden had just lived through, as hi biographer tells us, in a Yorkshire Dotheboys Hall. But eve in Quakerdom there was then room for educational amendmem According to Bright's own account the head master at Ackwort was kind and even lovable, but incompetent ; the four unde masters were kind ; but the ' apprentices ' (ushers) were rav inexperienced youths, knowing not what they did, from whoi the ' timid and docile boy,' as he still was, according to his ow account, ' suffered much annoyance and injustice which seeme almost like persecution.'

' On one occasion as I was clinging to the side of the bat and about to come out, shuddering with the intense cole one of the apprentices, a man for whom in after years have had much respect, supposing I had not been overhea in the water, thrust me backwards into the bath by pushin

1821-24] SCHOOLDAYS 11

me with a common besom so that my face was miserably- scratched and disfigured.

1 In those days, now nearly sixty years ago, schools were very different from what they are now. Even this great school, maintained by a religious society in many things in advance of public opinion in gentleness and kindness and justice, was in many respects grievously mismanaged. In the matter of food, it was insufficient in quantity and in quality. In the matter of punishments, it was harsh if not barbarous, and the comforts and health of the children were very inadequately attended to. What I suffered induced my father to make enquiries, and he placed before the committee of management facts to prove that a thorough reform was needed, and from the part he took in regard to this may be dated the commencement of improvements which have been made from that time to the year in which I am now writing (1879). Now the school is good so far as I know in all respects. The masters are better paid. The children are better fed, and their education is more complete.'

Comparing the schools of our day to those of the boyhood of Dickens, Cobden, and Bright, we may boast that the masters and the food are certainly better. If the breed of scholars had proportionately improved we should be doing well. It is not cruel masters or short rations that crush originality of mind and character under our modern system of education, materially so perfect. It is the constant pressure of a stupid public opinion among the boys, moulding them all to one conventional standard. But Bright nowhere in his account of his numerous schools makes any complaint against his Quaker schoolfellows, of whom at Ackworth there were 180 boys and 120 girls.1

' I left Ackworth,' he continues, ' at the time of the General Meeting in the summer of 1823, and soon after this I was sent to a school at York kept by William

1 There is a charming account of a boy's life at Ackworth School by another of its distinguished scholars, William Howitt, in his Boy's Country - Book, referring to a period twenty years before John Bright was there. Howitt tells us that the school was ' for all, or any in the [Friends'] society ; for rich and poor — all were treated alike there ; and the nonsense about rank and money, that got only too soon thrust into children's heads, was never heard there.' He tells a delightful story about an old Quaker, 'an honest worthy man, though exceedingly poor,' who, when the Society paid for his son's schooling at Ackworth, walked seventy miles there with the lad, in order to save the coach-fare which the Society would otherwise have had to pay.

12 LIFE OF JOHN BRIGHT [1821-24

Simpson. It was the first house on the left side as we passed out of Walmgate Bar. The ancient city interested me and we had more of reasonable freedom than at Ackworth. The Meeting at York too was attractive. During the two years I spent at York, I learned more than in any other two years of my school life.'

This school has since moved into new quarters, and is now famous as ' Bootham.' Its only fault, so far as Bright was concerned, was that York lay too low for the health of one who had been from birth rather a weakly child, and had got no good from the semi -starvation of Ackworth. So after two years he was in a fortunate hour sent to yet another Friends' school at Newton-in-Bowland, a village on the upper reaches of the Hodder, deep among moorland hills on the borders of north Lancashire and Yorkshire. There the bracing winds of the Pennines, and the conditions of his life in this secluded valley of the old world, wrought a lasting improvement in his bodily and spiritual equipment for grappling with the new. At Newton-in-Bowland he ceased to be the ' timid and docile boy ' and became the heart of oak we know.

' Our master was Francis Wills, an Irishman and a Friend. He was a little man, well informed, of a lively disposition and somewhat hot temper, but kind and generous and anxious to make the boys comfortable. There were about thirty boys in the school, besides six who lived in the village, the sons of villagers. There was a small garden and a humble meeting-house, and near it a little brook ran merrily down towards the river. A short distance above the school was an ancient burial- ground belonging to the Friends, in which were graves, but without tombstones or anything to mark who of past generations had been buried there. Our school studies and tasks were not hard upon us, and we had plenty of liberty for play and amusement. The Hodder afforded us as much fishing as we liked to have, and in it we bathed during the summer, and here I learned to swim as did many others of the boys. We took long walks up the hills among the remains of lead mines that had once been worked, and occasionally we made excursions to Clitheroe and to Whitewell, where we wandered among the woods and visited some small caves in the hillsides which were called Fairy-holes. We had a good deal of birds' nesting.

1825-26] SCHOOLDAYS 13

The year and a half I spent there seemed to make a com- plete change in me.'

The earliest extant letter of Bright 's, in a beautiful round handwriting, almost perfect in its symmetry, is written from this moorland school to his sisters at their school at York. Among other items of news he says :

' We got another little brother on the 14th of this month, Father intends to call him Samuel, which I think is a very pretty name. I have got a hawk here, I don't know whether you have ever seen one or not, it is about the size of a crow, has a crooked bill, is savage, and will scarcely eat anything, but birds, mice and raw flesh. I mean to keep it till I go home, and then I shall lodge it in the Parrot cage. I suppose you have been for a long time expecting a letter from me, but I have waited for an opportunity to have one conveyed to you without cost, which I think can be done now, as one of the boys is going home to Bradford and his father going very often to Leeds can take it there and get it forwarded by some one going to York.'

Such were the thrifty thoughts of love before the penny postage removed the tax on family affection.

From the valley of the Hodder he came out at the age of fifteen into the world of men and affairs, with a strong body, and a constitution which was to serve him without any serious catastrophe to his health for another thirty years, carrying him safe through the strain of five years' daily and nightly work in the forefront of the Corn Law agitation, and to break down for the first time only after the misery he suffered during the Crimean War. He had also acquired at Newton-in-Bowland a gift destined to be of yet longer endurance than his health, the love of northern hill scenery, and of its running streams. To wander by these, rod in hand, was till the end of his fife an insatiable desire and a constant refuge from worldly cares.

' I left Newton,' he writes, ' on the 16th of February 1827, and at the age of fifteen years and three months my school education terminated. I came home and soon began to be employed in my father's mill, and to take an interest in the business. I had learned some Latin and a little French, with the common branches then taught in such schools as I had been placed in. Reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar and geography

14 LIFE OF JOHN BRIGHT [1827

— no mathematics and no science.' A scanty stock ! But as we shall see, his real education in literature, history, economics, and politics, was about to begin with himself as master. The schools of his sect had done well for him, for they had preserved the influences of his home. His boyhood had been passed in the atmosphere of the Society of Friends, that intangible but pervading spirit which instils rather than teaches the doctrine of the equality and brotherhood of men and women, of rich and poor ; the nothingness of worldly distinctions ; and the supreme duty of humane conduct. He had not, like so many pupils of more fashionable places of education, unlearned the lessons of his home, and of his own nature — the independence of opinion, the quick response to the whisper of conscience, the aspirations after a higher life. He may have suffered more than he learnt from some of his masters, but at least he had not been taught, like most young Englishmen, to quail before the public opinion of his schoolfellows, or to put on the air of being ashamed of the things of the mind and heart. Like Wordsworth, he emerged from these simple old country schools not moulded down to the pattern of gentility or of bourgeoisie, and he had therefore still the chance of growing into a great man.

1827] MANCHESTER AND ROCHDALE 15

CHAPTER II

HOME LIFE, BUSINESS, AND POLITICS AT ROCHDALE, UP TO THE DEATH OF HIS FIRST WIFE, 1827-41.

'There is no class of people in England more determined and more unconquerable, whichever side they take, than are the people of the county from which I come.' — John Bright in the House of Commons.

The life of John Bright, from the end of his schooldays until his death, falls into two periods of unequal length, of which the exact point of division is marked by the death of his first wife. The first part consists of those years (1827 to 1841) when he took an active share in the business of his father's firm, and did no political