clared himself 'entirely against anything in any shape which shall be called a parliament in Dublin,' and described the concomitant land purchase scheme as one for making the English chancellor of the exchequer 'the universal absentee landlord over the whole of Ireland.' To these criticisms Gladstone, with some irritation, wrote a reply (2 July). Bright retorted (4 July), but the controversy was painful to him. He 'could not bear,' he afterwards (7 Dec.) wrote, 'to attack his old friend and leader.' Yet a year later (6 June 1887) he wrote of Gladstone's speeches in a tone which provoked a fresh remonstrance (Letter from Gladstone, 8 June). 'If I have,' he answered, 'said a word that seems harsh or unfriendly, I will ask you to forgive it.' His last political speech was an attack on the home rule bill of 1886, at a dinner given at Greenwich to Lord Hartington (5 Aug. 1887). The honorary D.C.L. had been conferred upon him by Oxford University at the encænia in June 1886.
The cause of his death, which took place on Wednesday, 27 March 1889, was diabetes and Bright's disease, following upon an attack of congestion of the lungs in the summer of the previous year. He passed peacefully away at One Ash, and was buried, according to his own wish, in the burial-ground of the Friends' Meeting House in George Street, Rochdale, the queen and royal family being represented at his funeral, together with deputations from leading political bodies. A cast of his head was taken after death by Bruce Joy the sculptor.
Bright and Cobden were the two leading representatives of the emergence of the manufacturing class as a force in English politics after the Reform Act of 1832. Both believed in the middle class as more valuable to a civilised community than an aristocracy bred in martial traditions. This belief was based rather upon economical considerations than upon personal antipathy. Bright, for example, advocated for the pacification of Ireland the substitution of a resident middle-class proprietary for the existing absentee landowners. Recent progress, he said, was due 'to the manly contest of the industrial and commercial against the aristocratic and privileged classes of the country.' With the instinct of a popular orator to select concrete examples, he denounced the bench of bishops or the House of Lords as obstructive and useless. But though in the heat of political struggle he occasionally used strong language, the scientific basis of his politics rescued him from the tradition of virulent personal attack which had been characteristic of the previous generation of reformers. Of the duumvirate which he formed with Cobden, Cobden was the inspiring spirit. He first directed Bright's concentration upon the corn law, and so long as he lived struck the keynote of Bright's political action. Himself a master of luminous exposition, he utilised Bright's power of trenchant analysis. When the two spoke on the same platform the order of proceedings was for Cobden to state the case and for Bright to pulverise opponents. Like Cobden, Bright was largely a self-taught man, and the circumstance no doubt contributed to form his bias to individualism. But in his address to the students of Glasgow, upon his installation as lord rector (21 March 1883), he expressed his regret at his want of a university training. He was a constant reader, especially of poetry, history, biography, economics, and the Bible. Upon the Bible and Milton, whose 'Paradise Lost' he frequently carried in his pocket, his English was fashioned. Its directness and force saved him from the Johnsonian declamation which had long done duty for oratory. He was steeped in poetry; scarcely a speech was delivered by him without a felicitous quotation. Dante (in English), Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Shenstone, Gray, 'Rejected Addresses,' Byron, Lewis Morris, Lowell, and many others find place there. The Bible, read aloud by him to his family every morning and evening, was drawn upon by him both for illustration and argument. The struggle against the corn laws taught him the use of statistics, with which his earlier speeches, especially those on India, abound. His historical reading was extensive. At the opening of the Manchester Free Library in 1852 he advised young men to read biography. He constantly cited instances from the history of England, He especially recommended its study since the accession of George III (Letter of April 1881). He was familiar with that of Ireland and of the United States. He was expert in parliamentary precedents. His biographical and historical studies assisted an exceptional capacity for political prevision. In his first speech in the House of Commons (7 Aug. 1843) he remarked that Peel was at issue with his party upon principles, and on 25 June 1844 predicted that he would repeal the corn law at the first bad harvest. From the outset of his career (24 July 1843) he denounced the Irish Church establishment. He foresaw the danger of restriction to one source for the supply of cotton, the probability of a cotton famine upon the break-up of slavery, and the consequent disorganisation of the southern states (18 Dec.
