completed his education. He learned, he himself said, but little Latin and
Greek, but acquired a great love of English literature, which his mother
fostered, and a love of outdoor pursuits. In his sixteenth year he entered
his father's mill, and in due time became a partner in the business. Two
agitations were then going on in Rochdale--the first (in which Jacob Bright
was a leader) in opposition to a local [v.04 p.0567] church-rate, and the
second for parliamentary reform, by which Rochdale successfully claimed to
have a member allotted to it under the Reform Bill. In both these movements
John Bright took part. He was an ardent Nonconformist, proud to number
among his ancestors John Gratton, a friend of George Fox, and one of the
persecuted and imprisoned preachers of the Society of Friends. His
political interest was probably first kindled by the Preston election in
1830, in which Lord Stanley, after a long struggle, was defeated by
"Orator" Hunt. But it was as a member of the Rochdale Juvenile Temperance
Band that he first learned public speaking. These young men went out into
the villages, borrowed a chair of a cottager, and spoke from it at open-air
meetings. In Mrs John Mills's life of her husband is an account of John
Bright's first extempore speech. It was at a temperance meeting. Bright got
his notes muddled, and broke down. The chairman gave out a temperance song,
and during the singing told Bright to put his notes aside and say what came
into his mind. Bright obeyed, began with much hesitancy, but found his
tongue and made an excellent address. On some early occasions, however, he
committed his speech to memory. In 1832 he called on the Rev. John Aldis,
an eminent Baptist minister, to accompany him to a local Bible meeting. Mr
Aldis described him as a slender, modest young gentleman, who surprised him
by his intelligence and thoughtfulness, but who seemed nervous as they
walked to the meeting together. At the meeting he made a stimulating
speech, and on the way home asked for advice. Mr Aldis counselled him not
to learn his speeches, but to write out and commit to memory certain
passages and the peroration. Bright took the advice, and acted on it all
his life.

This "first lesson in public speaking," as Bright called it, was given in
his twenty-first year, but he had not then contemplated entering on a
public career. He was a fairly prosperous man of business, very happy in
his home, and always ready to take pa