Year: 1867

10 Oe SAken throughout England, py
show of hands, upon the question of be-
ing for or against John Bright, nearly all
the hands that would go up against him
would be encased in kid gloves, and near
ly all the hands that would go up for him
would be without gloves of kid or of any
other material still John Bright would
win the day.


BY one infallible test we are forced to
decide that Mr.. Bright is the foremost
man now extant in England. When DR..
Johnson was congratulated on the sue
cess of one of his terrific pamphlets
against the American colonists, he re-
piled with a growl, that the pamphlet
had not succeeded; that it had not been
sufficiently abused, and that for his own
part he always estimated the force of the
blow by the rebound The intellectual,
the emotional rebound against Mr.. Bright
in this country is something superb; it
constitutes his crown, it leaves him, be-
yond all rivalry, the supreme English
man alive. Throughout these islands
every number of every tory paper and
of every demi-tory paper, as surely, as
Systematically filings its little stone or
it's little dust, or its little mud, at John
Bright, as it prints its heading in big
letters and its leaders in small ones. 1t
was said of certain Frenchman that he
held his place in Paris society on the
tacit understanding that he should al
ways be witty. Fortunately for the
tory papers, no such necessity is laid
upon them; but they do hold their
places in the conservative party on the
tacit understanding that they shall be
always abusive of John Bright. In the
House of Commons, too, the case is the
same You would be amazed on looking
over Hansard, to find what an enormous
majority of the parliamentary speeches
there embalmed during the last fifteen
years contain thrusts at this one man,
and you could not sit through debate
on any conceivable subject without being
nauseated with these incessant and
spiteful illusions to the honorable
member from Birmingham" Indeed,
these five words constitute the one ex-
preston most thoroughly stereotyped
in the vernacular of that assemblage.
Its use in tone of dislike is now more
than party shiboleth it has blossom
ed into cant. Meanwhile, John Bright
sits there at the head of the second
bench below the gangway, the most un-
disturbed and the most impregnable
looking man that can be imagined OF
stout, square, and solid frame. with a
broad, open, English face, his massive
brow shadowed by the wide brim of his
hat, with lips firmly compressed by
thoughtfulness and determination, and
carved of that peculiar shape that de-
notes them the fiery steeds of elo4 uence,
he seems no more concerned in the
knightly patter about ''the honorable
member from Birmingham" than if that
celebrated member was person in
whom he had not the most distant in
terest. Indeed, l imagine that these
references to himself are positively no
longer heard by him, on the principle
that sounds oft-recurring and despised
come to have no more effect upon the
sensorium than sounds not made at all
las the sleepy Frenchman at last snores
majestically through the diabolical ciat-
ter of his alarm-clock and the sacred
twang of the prayer bell.


The spectacle of John Bright in the
House of Commons is one of the grand
est in Europe. For myself, | should not
have regretted my voyage over the At
lantic, had it conferred no other happi-
ness than good long look from the
Speakers gallery at John Bright sitting
in the Parliament of Great Britain-the
great champion of popular rights, hon
ored, though feared among the elegant,
scornful and fippant contemners of pop
ular rights, the kingliness of his tower
lhitlICCbs Vic HpltHhOI VI u4o hOA-
like eloquence, the earnestness of his
big, warm, indomitable heart, all person
ated in that noble presence, and all con-
trasted by the unreality, the chatter, the
school boy sing-song, the petty, nibbling
arguments, the vapid, frivolous, unmean-
ing, unending flow of foppish politics
and of aristocratic impertinence, which
make up the most of an evenings dis
cussion in that celebrated Legislature
which Bishop Coke very justly described
as " the Senate of Lilliput."


But, while he is thus politically hated
while he is the mark for every verbal
brick-bat that any tory arm can fling
across the broad isle-he is said to be
personally a great tavorite. am told
that in the coffee-room no other member
is so soon surrounded by group OF
| friendly takers. Indeed, it seems that
the conversational destinations of John
Bright are even greater than the fascin-
ations of his public oratory and that
the grandest speeches that ever came
out of his lips came out as he sat in the
coffee-room, with a cigar in one hand, a
glass of sherry in the other, and crowd
of delighted and enthralled political en-
emies swarming about him.


| When, a few years ago, his health
gave way, and the greatest fears were
excited, grief and alarm pervaded all
England-not alone the Liberal party.
Every post came to him laden with let
yters of sympathy and regret from the
chiefs of that old nobility against whose
policicial pretentions his whole life has
been a battle. Every palace and castle,
and baronial hall in England would
have opened its portals to receive and
give repose to the man whom all En-
glishmen know to be one of the greatest
masters of the English language, one of
the noblest apostles of Christian states