Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/342

 the session Bright supported by speech Sir W. Clay's amendment to Dr. Phillimore's bill amending the law as to church rates, and advocated their extinction (26 May). He spoke in favour of Milner-Gibson's three resolutions, carried against the government, for repealing the existing taxes on newspapers (14 April). On 1 July he successfully opposed Gladstone's resolution, as chancellor of the exchequer, reducing the advertisement duty to sixpence, and carried its abolition. But his greatest effort this session was devoted to India. In a masterly speech (3 June), exhibiting minute knowledge, he reviewed the condition of the natives, the state of the communications, the expenditure on public works, the provision for education, and the financial history of India. He concluded with the recommendation that the company should be displaced and the government of India made 'a department of the government, with a council and a minister of state.'

Towards the close of 1853 the uneasiness which marked England's relations with Russia was fanned into a flame of popular passion. Bright, who had so often been styled a demagogue by the tory press, did what he could to allay the excitement. He refused (6 Oct.) to attend a meeting at the Manchester Athenæum to denounce the conduct of Russia. A. week later (13 Oct.) he appeared at a peace meeting at Edinburgh, where he was confronted on the platform by Admiral Sir [q. v.] with the text of 'soldiers as the best peacemakers.' Bright's eloquence carried the audience with him. On 13 March 1854, the eve of the declaration of war with Russia, he called the attention of the House of Commons to the reckless levity of the language used by Lord Palmerston and other ministers at a banquet given at the Reform Club to Admiral Napier on his departure for the Baltic. Palmerston was not the man to submit to Bright's censures, and sarcastically spoke of him as 'the hon. and reverend gentleman,' for which he was rebuked by Cobden. In Macaulay's judgment Bright had the best of the encounter. But in the country Bright and Cobden had fallen into an abyss of unpopularity. They failed to command meetings. Bright was burnt in effigy. 'The British nation,' wrote Palmerston, 'is unanimous in this matter; I say unanimous, for I cannot reckon Cobden, Bright, and Co. for anything.' Throughout the year 1854 Bright fought his battle with courage and temper. Upon the day when the message from the crown announcing the declaration of war was brought down to the house (31 March) he uttered a long and eloquent protest, reviewing the recent negotiations, denouncing the doctrine of the balance of power as applicable to Turkey—a proposition which he sustained by citations from the debates of the previous century—and predicting the eventual rupture by Russia of any convention imposed on her by a successful campaign. During this session he delivered two important speeches in parliament against the principle of appropriating public funds to denominationalism. Of these the first (27 April) was in opposition to Lord John Russell's Oxford University reform bill, which, as maintaining the exclusion of dissenters, he described as 'insulting to one half of the population.' His consistency was shown in his speech on 6 July against the ministerial proposal of a grant of 38,745l. to dissenting ministers in Ireland. But his unswerving adhesion to principle failed to allay the restiveness of his constituents at his attitude towards the war. To the invitation by one of the most influential of his supporters, Absalom Watkin, to attend a meeting in Manchester on behalf of the patriotic fund, he replied in a long letter dated 29 Oct., entering into a detailed justification of his position. Its trenchant expressions, 'I will have no part in this terrible crime,' &c., inflamed the agitation against him, and its republication by Russian and other newspapers demonstrated, in the eyes of the war party, its writer's want of patriotism. A requisition, signed by over six hundred names, of whom 550 were afterwards proved to be tories, called upon the mayor of Manchester to summon a meeting to discuss the letter. Bright attended, but was unable to secure a hearing. The show of hands was, however, indeterminate, and a complimentary vote acknowledged the consistency of his conduct. Unpopularity did not daunt him. On 22 Dec. he delivered in the House of Commons a philippic against the war, so powerful in its effect that it was said to have been unparalleled 'since the great affair between Canning and Brougham.' During the recess he boldly faced his constituents at the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. When the abortive negotiations for peace were undertaken by Lord John Russell at Vienna, he offered (23 Feb. 1855) to support Lord Palmerston in his pacific disposition in a speech containing the passage generally regarded as his oratorical masterpiece: 'The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings,' &c. Upon the failure of the conference at Vienna he delivered one of his longest speeches (7 June), occupying nearly thirty columns of