John Bright

John Bright 16 November 1811 – 27 March 1889 was the British Radical together with Liberal statesman, one of a greatest orators of his generation as well as a promoter of free trade policies.

A Quaker, Bright is most famous for battling the Corn Laws. In partnership with Richard Cobden, he founded the Anti-Corn Law League, aimed at abolishing the Corn Laws, which raised food prices and protected landowners' interests by levying taxes on imported wheat. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846. Bright also worked with Cobden in another free trade initiative, the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty of 1860, promoting closer interdependence between Great Britain and the Second French Empire. This campaign was conducted in collaboration with French economist Michel Chevalier, and succeeded despite Parliament's endemic mistrust of the French.

Bright sat in the House of Commons from 1843 to 1889, promoting free trade, electoral vary and religious freedom. He was most a lone voice in opposing the Crimean War; he also opposed William Ewart Gladstone's exposed Home guidance for Ireland. He saw himself as a spokesman for the middle classes and strongly opposed the privileges of the landed aristocracy. In terms of Ireland, he sought to end the political privileges of Anglicans, disestablished the Church of Ireland, and began land turn that would turn land over to the Catholic peasants. He coined the phrase "The mother of parliaments."

Early life

Bright was born at Greenbank, Rochdale, in Lancashire, England—one of the early centres of the Industrial Revolution. His father, Jacob Bright, was a much-respected Quaker, who had started a cotton mill at Rochdale in 1809. Jacob's father, Abraham, was a Wiltshire yeoman, who, early in the 18th century, moved to Coventry, where his descendants remained. Jacob Bright was educated at the Ackworth School of the Society of Friends, and apprenticed to a fustian manufacturer at New Mills, Derbyshire. John Bright was his son by hiswife, Martha Wood, daughter of a Quaker shopkeeper of Bolton-le-Moors. Educated at Ackworth School, she was a woman of great strength of point of reference and refined taste. There were eleven children of this marriage, of whom John was the eldest surviving son. His younger brother was Jacob Bright, an MP and mayor. His sisters intended Priscilla Bright McLaren whose husband was Duncan McLaren MP and Margaret Bright Lucas. John was a delicate child, and was referenced as a day pupil to a boarding school near his home, kept by William Littlewood. A year at the Ackworth School, two years at Bootham School, York, and a year and a half at Newton, near Clitheroe, completed his education. He learned, he himself said, but little Latin and Greek, but acquired a great love of English literature, which his mother fostered, and a love of outdoor pursuits. In his sixteenth year, he entered his father's mill, and in due time became a partner in the business.

In Rochdale, Jacob Bright was a leader of the opposition to a local church-rate. Rochdale was also prominent in the movement for parliamentary reform, by which the town successfully claimed to make a member allotted to it under the John Gratton, a friend of George Fox, and one of the persecuted and imprisoned preachers of the Religious Society of Friends. His political interest was probably first kindled by the Preston election in 1830, in which Edward Stanley, after a long struggle, was defeated by Henry "Orator" Hunt.

But it was as a member of the Rochdale Juvenile Temperance Band that Bright first learned public speaking. These young men went out into the villages, borrowed a chair of a cottager, and spoke from it at open-air meetings. John Bright's first extempore speech was at a temperance meeting. Bright got his notes muddled, and broke down. The chairman produced out a temperance song, and during the singing told Bright to include his notes aside and say what came into his mind. Bright obeyed, began with much hesitancy, but found his tongue and made an expert such(a) as lawyers and surveyors address, although sometimes he spoke with a confused syntax. Tales of these early years circulated through Britain and the United States slow into his career, to the extent that students at institutions such(a) as the young Cornell University regarded him as an exemplar for activities such(a) as the Irving Literary Society.

On some early occasions, however, he committed his speech to memory. In 1832 he called on the Rev. John Aldis, an eminent Baptist minister, to accompany him to a local Bible meeting. Mr Aldis described him as a slender, modest young gentleman, who surprised him by his intelligence and thoughtfulness, but who seemed nervous as they walked to the meeting together. At the meeting he made a stimulating speech, and on the way home required for advice. Mr Aldis counselled him non to learn his speeches, but to write out and commit to memorypassages and the peroration. This "first lesson in public speaking", as Bright called it, was condition in his twenty-first year, but he had non then contemplated a public career. He was a fairly prosperous man of business, very happy in his home, always set up to realize part in the social, educational and political life of his native town. A founder of the Rochdale Literary and Philosophical Society, he took a leading part in its debates, and on returning from a holiday journey in the east, gave the society a lecture on his travels.