John Bright (review)

60QUAKER HISTORY John Bright. By Keith Robbins. London, Boston and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979. 288 pages. $18.50. In a review of Selling Lives: The Biographer's Art, one of the contributors is quoted as saying that his object is to "portray 'the whole sense of the person,' the relationship between the public ideal of himself . . . and the inner fears, longings, and spirited aspirations" of the subject. This Robbins, an accomplished British historian, has succeeded in doing in his life of John Bright, controversial English Quaker politician, orator, reformer and the first Dissenter to hold Cabinet rank, who became one of the most widely known public men in the nineteenth century English speaking world. During nearly fifty years of public life, he progressed from a demagogue, feared by a large group, to a position of accepted elder statesman whose "portrait and busts in the days of his glory were clamored for by corporations and councils." The study, published ninety years after Blight's death, gives us a more complete account of his life than any other we have. It may not read as well as Trevelyan's but it gives a more rounded picture of not only the public but the private man, his weaknesses and his strengths. The author has drawn not only on the usual sources but much more heavily on family papers than anyone else has done. The public papers in the British Museum were supplemented by letters, held back at that time, written to his second wife, his son Albert, C. P. Villiers, and others, later deposited at University College. He has also used those to his first wife's family and his daughter, Helen, which are held by her descendants in the archives of D. and J. Clark, Street, Somerset. Some diirty other collections were tapped in England, Ireland and the United States. Bright's life is divided into five periods: The Rochdale Years, 1811-1841 (28 pages); The Free Trade Agitator, 1841-1847 (31 pages); Manchester and the Middle Class Spirit, 1847-1857 (61 pages); The Birmingham Backbencher , 1858-1867 (66 pages); and the Established Dissenter, 1868-1889 (64 pages). Such a division results in a balanced treatment of Bright's career and gives adequate space for an ample discussion of each. The meat, of course, lies in the three middle sections, though the final section covers the longest period. It has to deal with a man who has passed his prime, is "being used" by Gladstone, is saddened by disappointments in developments in England and Ireland, but still a man to be wary of arousing, almost to the end. In the overall account of his life, there is much "sound and fury," but what did he accomplish? Probably his greatest contributions were his campaign in the country against the Corn Laws opening the way for free trade, his two campaigns for Parliamentary Reform, achieved by Disraeli's Act of 1867, his influence on relations with the United States during and after the Civil War and Gladstone's Irish legislation, though he was alienated during his last ten years by Irish actions in Parliament and Ireland and followed Chamberlain in rejecting Home Rule. Bright's life was, as Robbins concludes, "strange, paradoxical and inconclusive ." Brashly thrusting his way into "the alien aristocratic world of politics" and "treating opinions and conventions which did not accord with his own . . . with blistering contempt," he was still attractive. Supremely self-confident, he attacked "men and institutions without fear or favor." However, carried into Parliament by his oratory, he could not adapt to that BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES61 new world, and he was always a lonely man in it. Never a team player, he remained a man of the platform rather than the council. He could attack, he could not lead. He always remained independent, resigning office when he disagreed. Walter Bagehot is quoted as saying that Bright, while claiming to be a Liberal, did not possess the essential 'Liberal turn of mind,' that is, the "willingness to admit new ideas and an impartiality in considering them." Thus Robbins concludes: "The tradition of his family, religious society, and early years remained present in their essentials until the...