Omaha daily bee., 1888-03-18
A SKETCH OF JOHN BRIGHT.
How He Lives in His Native Lanca-
shire Home.
ATRuE BRlToN IN APPEARANCE.
A Man of the People-His Carpet Fac
tory-Secret OF John Bright's
Oratory-The Popularity of
the Noted Parsonage.

LONDON, March 3.-[Correspondence
of the BEE. -"What Lancashire thinks
to-daylEngland thinks tomorrow" This
remarkable tribute to the strong COM
nonsense of Lancashire lads'' and
Manchester men,"I heard Lord Sails
bury pay TO the assembled merchants in
the Manchester for a generation in
spired the progress of the English peo-
pie. 1t need not be retold how he, with
Golden, created, c~hampioned, and o
cluded in triumph the crusade against
the corn laws that starved the poor,
o how he stood almost alone in his
grandeur of principle and %eloquence as
the protester against the popular Grim
can war, nor how he led the battle OF
reform that was won in 1867. He was
the pride of his native Lancashire,
Manchester honored itself by electing
him to parliament, his voice was the
clarion call that could rouse the coun-
try to action or soothe it by exquisite
melody. Yet Manchester rejected
John Bright IN a fit of bad
temper in 1867, since when
Birmingham has priced the distinction
of calling him her M P. And, Lanca-
shire-like, Bright paid unfaithful
Manchester back by keeping out of her
way for nine long years. 1t was only
when the great "a of agitation for
reform arose in 1865 that he relented
for the good of the cause, and agreed to
make q speech, The memorable scene
is never to be obliterated. More than a
hundred thousand had held open-air
meetings that afternoon. AT night the
Free Trade hall held two or three
thousand more han its seating capacity
five thousand-and when Bright's
noble figure was seen the pent up en-
thusiasm of those nine cold years burst
out in torrents of cheering, found a vent
in the singing over and over again of
Saudi Lang Syne," while hard-visaged
men were moved to tears. 1t was odd
that his title of "Right Hon." was
gained by his acceptance of a seat in
Gladstone's cabinet, which made him,
the opponent Of the state church, a
patron of forty-one church livings. He
soon gave it up.
His home has always been in his own
country, near his mills and among his
friends, the working people. He is a
typical Lancashire lad" himself, plus a
Quaker training and taste, which has
smoothed down much of the rugged UNI
couthness characteristic of the species.
Rochdale is a typical Lancashire town
irregular, up and down, more dirty than
clean, its air penetrated with as rank a
dialect as now remains in England.
Near by, just across the wild moor that
begins back of John Bright's house, is
Todmorden, whose people explain Its
queer design, as the "Rachda fowk''
might say of their town, "God made tn
earth, but forgot Tordmudden cos it he'd
gotten under lis thoomb." The Rocn-
dale cooperative pioneers are the
largest trading concern on that system
in the world. Through one of its long
snalte-like streets, out toward the moor,
past a large family of huge factories, we
come to a plain, old-fashioned but state.
ly red brick house, standing or
a well-kept lawn, edged with flower
beds and shrubs, This is some ASH
the home of John Bright, Quaker and