hat bold spirit which he has ever manifested, exciting his great
talents in the advocacy of repugnant theories, would not have feared the
restraints which a ruder age encouraged despotic kings to put upon
freedom of political action. Luckily, he has been living in an age which
respects independent thought and proscribes the conscience of no man.
While he is certainly premature in his theories of equality, the
tendency of popular feeling is toward him rather than from him. Tory
policy to-day was Whig policy a century ago. Walpole would have
sustained the younger Pitt, and Derby and Lyndhurst will hardly dispute
the benefits of the reform of 1832.

Mr. Bright was returned to Parliament for Manchester, in 1847, and again
in 1852. This great town, which is the market for Rochdale, and
consequently in which he was well known, sent him to the Commons by a
handsome majority of eleven hundred. In the early session of 1857, Mr.
Cobden introduced a motion condemning the war into which the
administration had entered with China, on which the government was
defeated. Mr. Bright, though absent on account of ill-health, used his
influence in favor of the motion, by reason of which, on the appeal of
Lord Palmerston to the country, during the summer of that year, he was
defeated in his constituency by over five thousand votes; his successful
opponent, though agreeing with him in general, being a supporter of the
Chinese war.

In 1859, he was reinstated in Parliament, by the electors of Birmingham,
of whose manufacturing interests he had always shown himself a
consistent and ardent friend. For this constituency he is now member. He
has been twice married; first, to the daughter of Jonathan Priestley,
Esq., of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who died in 1841; and secondly, to his
present wife, the eldest daughter of W. Leatham, Esq., of Wakefield,
York.

His career of nineteen years in the House of Commons has been a series
of successful efforts, not only contributing to his lasting fame as an
orator and legislator, but achieving many important modifications in the
commercial system and in public sentiment. He has been the life of the
radical party, leading them on in their crusades against existing abuses
with fearless audacity, encouraging them to renewed contests, animating
them by the hopefulness and enthusiasm of his own soul, and by his lucid
logic attracting new converts to his views with every year. The Radicals
who, when he entered Parliam