John Bright.
In directing the attention of the masses to this all-important
question he sought the aid of men who
had sprung from the people and had been trained
to commerce; and he found many able and truly
earnest colleagues, but none more so than John Bright,
a man of greater, though perhaps not more convincing
eloquence than his own, who like himself
had no object in view, as the whole experience of his
life has proved, than the good of his country. While
Cobden and Bright proclaimed, with overwhelming
force, the policy of Charles James Fox, which
Huskisson and Canning had first practically put
in operation, and which Lord John Russell was now
zealously pursuing in Parliament,[1] an Association,
under their leadership, was being formed out of doors
destined to give the fullest freedom to commerce.
The first object of the Anti-Corn-Law League was to
lower the price of bread, which with every deficient
harvest approached a famine price, and thus enable
the working classes of every grade to compete with
greater prospects of success and to the best advantage,
in the production of those articles most in
demand in their own and other countries, and, at the
same time, to secure them more steady employment
and a higher rate of wages. With this object, its
members set themselves heartily to work, proclaiming
their views at public meetings in almost every
city and town in Great Britain, and, in the course of
their labours, making many converts to their policy
among the higher classes, among whom Charles
- ↑ Though not within the province of this work, it should be remembered that Fox stoutly opposed Pitt's great Free-trade Treaty with France, in 1756, and that Lord John Russell did not come out as a thorough and earnest Free-trader until 1840-41.
