NOTE BRIGHT'S USUAL SEAT IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS The present chamber was first occupied in May 1850 (see pp. 118, 187 above), and Bright first sat on the Treasury Bench in 1869. His 'great period' as a House of Commons speaker lies mostly between those two dates. When the Whigs or Liberals were in office, as they usually were during that period, he sat on the second bench below the gangway, Ministerial side, nearest to the Ministerial benches,' in the place now (1912) occupied by the leader of the Labour party. The following letter of Mr. Gladstone's is not without 'House of Commons' interest. It is dated Downing Street, Feb. 22, 1855, midnight,' and was written by Gladstone when he and the other Peelites resigned from Palmerston's Ministry, owing to the submission of the new Premier to Roebuck's Crimean Committee of Inquiry which he and the Peelites had resisted when recently in office under Aberdeen: 'My dear Sir,' writes Gladstone to Bright, it has been, I believe, the understood usage of the House of Commons, though it was departed from in the case of Lord John Russell, that ex-Ministers, quitting the Government for some special cause, should make their explanations from the upper end of the second Bench (on the Ministerial side) below the gangway: and there is much convenience in a fixed position, as it cuts off at least one source of gratuitous and idle speculation. 'I hope you will not think I am taking too great a liberty if at the request of Sir J. Graham and Mr. Herbert I make the request of you and your friends, Mr. Cobden and Mr. Gibson, that we may be allowed without any discourtesy towards you to occupy that spot at least for to-morrow evening? I address myself to you as (I think) the most constant attendant of the House, in the hope that you will kindly make our apologies to them. 'I remain, my dear Sir, On the 23rd, Graham, rising from Bright's usual place, explained the cause of his own and his friends' resignations; then Bright rose from further down the same bench and made his 'Angel of Death' speech. FIRST ILLNESS, CHAPTER XII 1856-58. DEFEAT AT MANCHESTER AND ELECTION FOR BIRMINGHAM. INDIA. THE BIRMINGHAM 'For thou hast been As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing, A man that fortune's buffets and rewards Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those JOHN BRIGHT's first illness, which kept him out of the public arena during the whole of the years of 1856 and 1857, marks not merely an interval, but a natural division and fresh startingpoint in his life. During his absence from the House his connection with Manchester ended and his connection with Birmingham began. And when he returned to his full activities, he at once gave to the agitation for enfranchising the working man an importance in the public mind that it never before had. It was at his first Birmingham meetings, in October 1858, that he brought to close grips the tussle of the British democracy with the aristocracy in possession. In the ten years' contest that followed, the chief incident was the relation of the two parties over here to the kindred struggle then being fought out with fiercer weapons in America. John Bright won through to victory, and saw the harvesting of his life's work in the Franchise Act of 1867 and Gladstone's first Ministry of the great reforms. Bright used to attribute his illness to the misery which he had endured during the Crimean War. And indeed no reason can be assigned for it, other than overwork and public cares. The doctors gave it no specific name, but in our day it would 1856] ILLNESS 255 popularly be called a 'nervous break-down.' Great physical weakness, frequent severe headaches and inability to do mental work, were its chief symptoms, though his brain was in no sense or degree deranged. During the first twelve months, hope and fear were evenly balanced with regard to his ultimate recovery. Much of the first period of his enforced leisure he spent in the Highlands of Scotland with his daughter Helen, now a most companionable girl of fifteen. As a boy at school he had fished in the streams of the Pennine moorland, and now, after a long interval of years, he again began to practise the gentle art destined to be his chief recreation during the latter half of his life. His letters, over a long period of years, prove that he often caught a fair number of trout and of salmon. But it was not so much his own skill and success as the calm and beauty of the secret places of nature that drew him year after year to the Highland rivers. Shooting, or any pursuit of larger and more sensitive creatures, was repugnant to his feelings and even to his principles.2 In November 1856 the doctors ordered him off to Algiers. He did not like the place and was in low spirits there, partly because none of his family were with him, his wife being kept at home by their numerous family of small children. But at Christmas he returned to the South of France to meet Helen. 'I am glad to be again on this side of the sea,' he writes on landing at Marseilles, and the expectation of seeing dear Helen so soon makes my heart light, and my journeying a pleasure.' They went together to Rome, and thenceforward, whenever he could forget politics, he enjoyed life as every Englishman must do who travels in Italy with a loved companion. In his journal he writes that on the night when he reached Rome, January 26, 1857, ‘I dreamt I was at the opening of 1 On January 17, 1859, John Bright delighted the people of Bradford by saying in his speech: One Scotch Lord told a great audience that I have been afflicted by a visitation of Providence and that I am suffering from disease of the brain. His friends can tell whether that is a complaint with which he is ever likely to be afflicted.' Note in John Bright's handwriting, 1881: Mr. Bright has always preferred Scotland to those portions of the Continent most frequented by English travellers. That the salmon river has charms for him need not be denied. It was in 1856 during his long illness that, at the urgent recommendation of the late Dr. M'Leod of Ben Rhydding, he began to cast a fly on the pools and streams of the Scottish rivers. From this exercise, from spending many hours almost daily on the river's bank, he recovered the health he had lost in the long nights in the House of Commons, and in the fierce political conflicts of the time. It was not the instinct of the sportsman, but the search for health which connected Mr. Bright with so many of the rivers of Scotland.' the session, and heard Roebuck speak. My old labors sometimes seem to haunt me, and I am very sad at being excluded from the field where so much is to be done or attempted. On January 28 he writes, for no eye but his own : 'It is a year to-day since my last speech in Manchester. I was ill then, and should not have undertaken the labor which the meeting in the Corn Exchange threw upon me.1 I dare not, however, regret what was done; it was the pouring forth, if I may so speak, of what was in my heart, and of what filled my very soul at the time; and if it prove the last speech, and I am no more able to tell the truth to my countrymen from the platform, I will not regret the effort there made, terrible as is the price it has cost me. I have worked in earnest in the political field, and if any meaner motive has ever stimulated or guided me, if ambition, or any love of display or of popularity has at any time led me on, of which I am little conscious, I think I can honestly say that a love of what I have believed to be the truth, a strong desire for the good and true greatness of my country, and an unchangeable hostility to the selfishness and fraud which distinguish the government of the English oligarchy, have been the main-spring of my public and political conduct. I have not sought that which is to be gained by submission to the ruling parties, and I have endeavored to act uninfluenced by the clamor or the momentary and impulsive applause of the people. I look with gloomy forebodings on the consequences which may and which probably must result from the follies and the crimes into which ignorance and passion so frequently lead or impel my countrymen. I write this surrounded by the ruins of the once mistress of the world, and from her history, and indeed from all history, I learn that loud boasting, great wealth, great power, extended dominion, successive conquests, mighty fleets and armies, are not immoveable foundations of national greatness. I would rather rely on an educated and moral people, and on a system of government, free at home, and scrupulously moral and just in its dealings with every other government and people.' He saw with keen interest the sights of Rome, ancient and modern. He witnessed the antique and modish gaieties of a 1 See p. 251 above. 1857] VISIT TO ROME 257 carnival. He detected and approved the mutiny smouldering in the hearts of the people against their priest rulers. He heard, with quiet distaste, 'Dr. Manning, not long ago of the English State Church,' preach Mariolatry to a fashionable English audience, and came away with the conviction that 'he was a very good speaker, if you don't listen to what he says.' He felt the melancholy of Rome and its ruins with all the depth of his nature; but he did not embrace the true antiquarian spirit, as we gather from a letter to his wife written after more than a month's residence in the world of statues and excavations: 'I cannot look back with the delight which some men seem to feel. The view is a sad and gloomy one, full of crimes and of the sufferings of humanity. Ancient Rome was great, even pre-eminent in crime. She conquered and plundered the world, and she lies now, visited with a just retribution, a ruin. And may not another space of centuries, or even a shorter period, make as complete an overthrow of the Empire of Modern Rome as the past 1500 years have worked in the aspect of the Ancient Capital of the world? And the lesson of what has befallen Rome should not be lost, tho' doubtless it will be wholly lost on our own country, for men will not look back that they may the better look forward, and they flatter themselves that tho' all before them have died, yet that immortality of power and fame and prosperity is for them! It is pleasanter for me to dwell upon the future of nations than the past, if I see an opening for what may be called the wiser life of nations. I prefer therefore to dwell on the growing greatness of the populations in America and Australia. I would rather spend three months in the United States of America than in the States of the Church.' Yet he never went to America. In his graver utterances during this winter, he seems to express something more like despair with regard to the future of England than at any other period of his life, before or after. The folly and waste of the Crimean War still lay heavy on his spirit, and he knew not how soon England might again break the peace of Europe; he doubted whether he would ever be well enough to take part in politics again; and the apparent failure of the cause of Franchise Reform, after so many futile endeavours to get itself under weigh, augured ill for the prospects of democracy in the Old World. It is often darkest R |