ent of India from the East India Company to the crown. He was now
restored to full political activity, and in October addressed his new
constituents, and started a movement for parliamentary reform. He spoke at
great gatherings at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bradford and Manchester, and his
speeches filled the papers. For the next nine years he was the protagonist
of Reform. Towards the close of the struggle he told the House of Commons
that a thousand meetings had been held, that at every one the doors were
open for any man to enter, yet that an almost unanimous vote for reform had
been taken. In the debates on the Reform Bills submitted to the House of
Commons from 1859. to 1867, Bright's was the most influential voice. He
rebuked Lowe's "Botany Bay view," and described Horsman as retiring to his
"cave of Adullam," and hooking in Lowe. "The party of two," he said,
"reminds me of the Scotch terrier, which was so covered with hair that you
could not tell which was the head and which was the tail." These and
similar phrases, such as the excuse for withdrawing the Reform Bill in the
year of the great budget of 1860--"you cannot get twenty wagons at once
through Temple Bar"--were in all men's mouths. It was one of the triumphs
of Bright's oratory that it constantly produced these popular cries. The
phrase "a free breakfast table" was his; and on the rejection of Forster's
Compensation for Disturbance Bill he used the phrase as to Irish
discontent, "Force is not a remedy."

During his great reform agitation Bright had vigorously supported Cobden in
the negotiations for the treaty of commerce with France, and had taken,
with his usual vehemence, the side of the North in the discussions in
England on the American Civil War. In March 1865 Cobden died, and Bright
told the House of Commons he dared not even attempt to express the feelings
which oppressed him, and sat down overwhelmed with grief. Their friendship
was one of the most characteristic features of the public life of their
time. "After twenty years of intimate and almost brotherly friendship with
him," said Bright, "I little knew how much I loved him till I had lost
him." In June 1865 parliament was dissolved, and Bright was returned for
Birmingham without opposition. Palmerston's death in the early autumn
brought Lord John Russell into power, and for the first time Bright gave
his support to the government. Russell's fourth Reform Bill was introduced,
was defeated by the Adulla