1843]

"THE CHILDREN OF THE LEAGUE'

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no distinction was drawn between 'Sunday books' and books that were fit to read on any day of the week.

John and Priscilla encouraged the intimacy of Helen with Cobden's little boy Richard, who already promised noblysi quâ fata aspera rumpas! They were known in Free Trade circles as the Children of the League.' When some one, in the exclusive spirit of the older Friends, reminded the Brights that Helen and Richard would probably see less of each other when they grew up because they were of different religions, Priscilla replies:

'In answer to thy remark about the impossibility of their intimacy being maintained in after life, my opinion is that all the difficulties which appear at present will have vanished away in eighteen years' time. Friends cannot stand still in this day and the days which are approaching of general enlightenment. Christian charity is gaining ground fast; if our society will stand still, it will be lost sight of. Priscilla and John were even outgrowing, to some degree, the objections to music that had been so carefully instilled into them. Priscilla writes from One Ash:

The factory people all went yesterday to the Free Trade Bazaar, my brother paying for a cheap train to conduct them to Manchester. There were 700 of them, and Geo. Wilson 1 let them go in free. They assembled on the moor just below these gates; the women and girls went first in twos and threes, then followed a band of music, and the men and boys brought up the rear. It was really a beautiful sight. They were all so welldressed and in such high spirits. I wished Lord Ashley and his followers could have seen them. I cannot help thinking music may be useful in bringing about a moral and intellectual regeneration of the working classes; but I did not quite like the band yesterday, it felt to me like doing a good action with a great noise.'

Strictness in dress-the plain dress'—was still common among the older members of the Society, and in order not to offend them, John Bright wore the 'plain collar' during the first part of his public career.2

1 The famous Chairman of the Council of the Anti-Corn Law League. See portrait, p. 142. After he had adopted the more ordinary coat and collar of the day, Punch continued to represent him in the Quaker coat he had once worn, in the broad-brimmed hat he had never worn, and also, for some unknown reason, in an eye-glass that he never wore and never would have dreamt of wearing.

Howsoever he dressed, he was a true Friend within: for to him religion was connected with freedom of growth for the individual, and with the spiritual equality of the sexes. On the subject of the clergy, he writes in his usual downright way to his sister-in-law, Margaret, who had made friends with a reverend gentleman named Browne :

'I hope thou wilt control thy admiration of thy friend Browne. He may be to be admired, but the system of which he is a part is the most fatal to the interests of this country and of true religion. Clergymen rarely excite my love or veneration. Their influence over the female mind of this country is destructive of truth and freedom of thought and strength of mind.'

Though widowed and stricken low, Bright was not altogether solitary of heart. His sister-in-law, Margaret Priestman, who had nursed his wife in her last illness, and his sister Priscilla, who until her marriage kept house for him at One Ash, were both very dear to him. Besides his correspondence with Mrs. Priestman, he wrote severally to Margaret and Priscilla three times a week or more when on his Corn Law tours. Both real affection and a sense of duty were required to induce a man, who in later years loved leisure sometimes almost to laziness, to keep up this double correspondence in the midst of such stress of work as fell to the lot of John Bright between 1842 and 1846. He sometimes describes to Margaret the conditions under which he is writing to her, from some hotel parlour in the south: a dozen letters on business and politics to finish for the post, an article to dash off for a newspaper,1 his last night's speech to correct for the press, his midday or evening speech to prepare, and the journey that he must take to deliver it. Even at this period of his life, when he was speaking four or five times a week, the art in which he excelled was painfully difficult to him, in proportion to his standard of excellence. No faithful workman finds his task a pastime.' In the rush and hurry of the Corn Law campaign there was no time for the moody and preoccupied days that later in his life marked the gestation of his greatest orations. Yet even in 1844 Priscilla writes: John has been very nervous about his

1 Bright's journalistic activities on behalf of the League were considerable. He wrote much for the League newspaper, and also for Miall's Nonconformist and many other Liberal papers. He also wrote for his little Rochdale paper The Vicar's Lantern, where the quarrel with the vicar over Church-rates went forward to the bitter end.

1843]

THE AGITATOR' AT HOME

109

speech all day and has made me almost as bad as himself. However, he managed very well, only his remarks were some of them rather personal.'

Sometimes he wearied of the Herculean load he was carrying, sometimes he rejoiced in the sense of power well used. In July 1842 he writes to Margaret :

'We have too few workers and I am over-tasked. Going about writing, speaking, etc., with little help is very disagreeable. I long to leave this busy, turbulent scene and to join you at Tynemouth, but I see no prospect of it. Poor little Helen, I wonder if she has forgotten me?'

But in March 1843 he writes from Bristol :

'The weather is superb and is finely calculated for making agitating a more pleasant and healthful occupation. We have a good Anti-Corn Law feeling wheresoever we go, and the old rotten hulk of monopoly floats heavily on the waters and will before long go down.'

6

Whenever he came home to One Ash the presence of his little daughter did much to console him and to renew his zest for life. Helen is indeed a treasure,' he writes in September 1842. 'My house is changed. Each meal-time has a new charm. It seems a step up towards what it was ever before Helen was born.' And again-more than a year later'Helen is a sweet darling. She learns a verse with only once or twice hearing it and repeats it with great simplicity. I cannot tell thee how I am delighted to come home and enjoy her company. Her endearing manners have more and more influence over me.'

And once in 1843 he writes to the same good friend :

'Don't give thyself trouble about me, my dear Margaret. It grieves me to hear of tears coming into thy eyes on my account. I have lost much, more than this world can ever restore, but I have much left to enjoy. To know that you care for me and think me not unworthy to have been your relative is something, and my darling Helen is something, and to be able to advance a great public good is something, and thus I think and feel that ingratitude or continued unreasonable sorrow would be wrong.' But though he was serene, he was often very sad. A year later he writes from One Ash :

'I am alone here to-night. Darling Helen is in bed,

and it is in these quiet hours that all the past most vividly reappears and the heart fills with sympathies which may meet with no response."

The instincts driving John Bright to serve his generation in the forefront of political life proved stronger than the opposing influence of some of his relations, and the contrary tradition prevailing among his co-religionists. The recovery of his brother Thomas from the dangerous illness from which he had suffered in February 1843, enabled John to leave the mill to his most capable management, and to fall in with the wishes of Cobden and the other Free Trade leaders, that he himself should have a stirring League election,' and join his friend in the House of Commons.1 Once he had decided that such a course was right, he had no coy reluctances. His candidature for Durham was not forced upon him, but resulted from his own prompt action in going to the spot at the critical time. The appointment of the sitting member as Governor of New Zealand had come as a surprise, and the Tories hoped to get their man, Lord Dungannon, elected, before either the Whigs or the League could put up a candidate. On April 1 Bright writes to Cobden from Lancashire :

'Wilson has had letters from Durham and writes the Colonel [Thompson] to go down. Now I fear the Colonel being at Norwich will be too late, so Rawson and I have resolved to go to Durham and are now on our way, expecting to arrive at nine to-night. We will see how the wind is blowing. If it would blow the Colonel in, well and good. If it would carry me with tolerable certainty and the Colonel do not arrive, or the people prefer me to him, possibly I may stand. I can promise nothing, and can only conclude after seeing how things are there. It would be a great thing to turn out Dungannon, a Lord, in the Cathedral City.'

The next day, April 2, he was selected as candidate, and writes to his sister Priscilla in the evening: Thou wilt wonder to hear that I am to be put in nomination to-morrow. The Colonel has not come, and there are so many good men here, anxious and earnest and with some confidence of success that we could not run away. Forgive me if I win. For if I lose

1 See letters, p. 100 above. John was always very grateful to his brother Thomas for enabling him to remain in public life. In his letters occur such expressions as 'Thomas is very kind and generous in his conduct to me' (1847).