Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/37

 and unsparing critic; but even now his perorations are written out with the greatest care. Like most young men in easy circumstances, he had a desire for travel, which was gratified by a visit to Jerusalem. On coming within sight of the Holy City, he was melted to tears.

In the month of October, 1838, the Anti-Corn Law League had its insignificant and unpromising beginning. Five Scotsmen,—W. A. Cunningham, Andrew Dalzell, James Leslie, Archibald Prentis, and Philip Thomson, residents in Manchester,—along with William Rawson, a native of the town, met like the apostles of old, in an "upper room," and decreed the origin of the mammoth association. In the printed list of the members of the provisional committee Mr. Bright's name stands second. He had found his vocation; and, in the course of the memorable campaign that followed, he and the late Mr. Cobden contracted a friendship which has justly become historic. In speaking in the House of Mr. Cobden's decease, the strong man, bowed down with the weight of his sorrow, was barely able to utter, "After twenty years of most intimate and almost brotherly friendship with him, I little knew how much I loved him until I found that I had lost him." Siste, viator!

In 1843 Mr. Bright first took his seat in Parliament for Durham, and in 1847 he was returned for Manchester without opposition. In 1852 he was re-elected after a contest; but at the subsequent general election of 1857 he lost his seat on account of his unbending opposition to the Crimean war, and to the swagger of Palmerston in China. In the autumn of the same year, however, he was returned by Birmingham at a byelection, and has continued to represent the great Radical Mecca in Parliament ever since.