on to the discussion was a suggestion that the Irish members
should form a grand committee to which every Irish bill should go after
first reading. The break-up of the Liberal party filled him with gloom. His
last speech at Birmingham was on 29th March 1888, at a banquet to celebrate
Mr Chamberlain's return from his peace mission to the United States. He
spoke of imperial federation as a "dream and an absurdity." In May his
illness returned, he took to his bed in October, and died on the 27th of
March 1889. He was buried in the graveyard of the meeting-house of the
Society of Friends in Rochdale.

Bright had much literary and social recognition in his later years. In 1882
he was elected lord rector of the university of Glasgow, and Dr Dale wrote
of his rectorial address: "It was not the old Bright." "I am weary of
public speaking," he had told Dr Dale; "my mind is almost a blank." He was
given an honorary degree of the university of Oxford in 1886, and in 1888 a
statue of him was erected at Birmingham. The 3rd marquess of Salisbury said
of him, and it sums up his character as a public man: "He was the greatest
master of English oratory that this generation--I may say several
generations--has seen.... At a time when much speaking has depressed, has
almost exterminated eloquence, he maintained that robust, powerful and
vigorous style in which he gave fitting expression to the burning and noble
thoughts he desired to utter."

See _The Life and Speeches of the Right Hon. John Bright, M.P_., by George
Barnett Smith, 2 vols. 8vo (1881); _The Life of John Bright, M.P._, by John
M^cGilchrist, in Cassell's Representative Biographies (1868); _John
Bright_, by C.A. Vince (1898); _Speeches on Parliamentary Reform by John
Bright, M.P., revised by Himself_ (1866); _Speeches on Questions of Public
Policy_, by John Bright, M.P., edited by J.E. Thorold Rogers, 2 vols. 8vo
(1868); _Public Addresses_, edited by J.E. Thorold Rogers, 8vo (1879);
_Public Letters of the Right Hon. John Bright, M.P._, collected by H.J.
Leech (1885).

(P. W. C.)

BRIGHTLINGSEA (pronounced BRITTLESEA), a port and fishing station in the
Harwich parliamentary division of Essex, England, on a creek opening from
the east shore of the Colne estuary, the terminus of a branch from
Colchester of the Great Eastern railway, 621/2 m. E.N.E. of London. Pop. of
urban district (1901) 4501. The Colchester oyster beds are mainly in this
part of the Colne, and the oyster fish