Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/343

, in which he reviewed the negotiations; and he vigorously attacked Lord Palmerston (19 July) for sacrificing Lord John Russell to the war party. Though he found it difficult to obtain a hearing out of doors, he was always listened to with attention in the House of Commons.

A man of Bright's sensitive nature could not bear unruffled the strain of public obloquy. His nervous system showed signs of giving way. In January 1856, as he told the public at Birmingham two years and a half later (24 June 1858), he 'could neither read, write, nor converse for more than a few minutes.' Unequal to the resumption of his parliamentary work, he sought rest in Yorkshire and in Scotland, where he amused himself by salmon-fishing. Part of the autumn he spent at Llandudno in daily intercourse with the Cobden family, who were staying in the neighbourhood. In November he went to Algiers, thence to Italy and the south of France. In January 1857 he had an interview at Nice with the Empress of Russia, From Nice he went by way of Geneva to Civita Vecchia and Rome, where he spent two months. On his homeward journey he visited Count Cavour at Turin, and reached England in July. An offer made by him to his constituents in January 1857 to resign his seat on the ground of ill-health was not accepted by them. On 8 March, a general election being imminent, he wrote from Rome stating that his health was improving, and leaving the question of his candidature to his friends. Cobden was strenuous in promoting his return, and on 18 March he addressed the Manchester electors at the Free Trade Hall, telling them that he 'heard one of the oldest and most sagacious men in the House of Commons say that he did not believe there was any man in the house, with the exception of Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone, who ever changed votes by their eloquence.' At the election on 30 March Bright was at the bottom of the poll, nearly three thousand votes below Sir John Potter [see under, Suppl.], the leading candidate. The result was no doubt partly due to his absence, partly to the feeling left by the Russian war. But it was contributed to by the desertion of men traditionally liberal, who resented the independence of party ties which he and Cobden had displayed. On 31 March Bright, writing from Florence, took a farewell both of the electors of Manchester and of public life. In May he was at Geneva, and on 16 June he arrived in London. A vacancy having occurred in the representation of Birmingham, he was elected in his absence without opposition on 10 Aug., with the understanding that a six months' interval was to be allowed prior to his taking his seat. After two years' absence he returned to the House of Commons amid general applause on 9 Feb. 1858. On 19 Feb. Lord Palmerston introduced the conspiracy to murder bill, the outcome of the attempt of Orsini to assassinate the Emperor Napoleon. The government was defeated by an amendment moved by Milner-Gibson, and seconded by Bright without a speech. In a letter to Joseph Cowen, Bright described it as 'the very worst ministry' that he had known (1 March 1858). Its defeat at the hands of Milner-Gibson and Bright, whose party Palmerston had apparently extinguished but eleven months before, was characterised by Cobden as 'retributive justice.'

Indian affairs chiefly occupied the session of 1858. Bright's study of Indian questions led him to contribute two powerful speeches towards their solution. Of these the first (20 May) was in support of the conservative government upon a motion by the opposition censuring a despatch of Lord Ellenborough, president of the board of control, to Lord Canning, the governor-general of India. The second was on 24 June, upon the government of India bill. In it Bright propounded his own scheme of reform for India, of which the principal features were the abolition of the viceroyalty and a system of provincial governments. His first great meeting with his new constituents took place at the Birmingham Town Hall on 27 Oct. 1858, after nearly three years' absence from public platforms. His speech resumed the campaign for parliamentary reform, and contained a vigorous attack on the House of Lords. Two days after, at a banquet in the same place, he delivered a speech in defence of his views on foreign affairs, containing an epigram of which the consequences were afterwards disclosed. English foreign policy, he declared, was 'neither more nor less than a gigantic system of outdoor relief for the aristocracy.' This attack he renewed in another reform speech addressed to his former constituents at Manchester on 10 Dec. He repeated his proposals for reform at Edinburgh (15 Dec.) and Glasgow (21 Dec.) A hint dropped by him in his speech of 27 Oct. 1858, that 'the reformers &hellip; should have their own reform bill,' fructified at a meeting on 5 Nov. at the Guildhall coffee-house, London, at which a resolution was passed on the motion of [q. v.], requesting Bright to prepare one.