e management of his private interests in the hands of the
junior members of the firm, began to discuss them publicly, with great
force and effect. The League soon perceived the valuable acquisition
they had made in the young Quaker, and not only encouraged him to
exertion but gave him opportunities to appear before many important
assemblages. On the list of orators whom the League commissioned to go
into the agricultural districts to advocate their cause, Mr. Bright's
name soon became prominent. By the irresistible cogency and energetic
expression which characterized his speech before many thousands in Drury
Lane Theatre, his reputation became national, and printed copies being
distributed throughout England, a desire to hear him on the important
question of the day became every where manifest. He went about among the
farmers and gentry, instilling with ability the principles of free
trade, developing arguments with telling effect, and rapidly organizing
branches of the League throughout the kingdom. The distrust of the lower
classes, which was awakened in some degree against the nobles and nabobs
who sustained the League, did not operate against him, who, as a man
directly from the people, educated in the stern school of labor, and as
the daily witness of and sympathizer with the suffering of the poor, at
once elicited their confidence in his honesty and their respect for his
intellectual power. Political advantage, which might be sought by
life-long politicians and hereditary nobles, could, they well knew,
offer no inducement to nor corrupt the ingenuous principles of one who
showed so little respect to party distinction, and who was entirely
independent of great connections.

The statesmen with whom he acted, in favor of free trade, were unwilling
to be without so valuable an ally on the floor of the House of Commons;
and, in April, 1843, he was placed in nomination by his numerous friends
at Durham, for the seat to which that city was entitled.

On the first trial, he was defeated; but a new election for the same
city becoming necessary in the following July, he was returned, by a
gratifying majority, to represent a place noted for its conservative
proclivities. He continued the member for Durham until 1847.

His first efforts, after entering Parliament, were directed to the
repeal of the Corn-Laws, in which beneficent measure he cooeperated with
such men as Charles P. Villiers, brother of Lord Clarendon, Lord
Mor