1862). He insisted that India should be brought under the authority of the crown (24 June 1858). While Palmerston was asserting the revival of Turkey, Bright as constantly insisted that it was a decaying power. Sir James Graham afterwards made him the admission, 'You were entirely right about that (the Crimean) war; we were entirely wrong' (14 Feb. 1855). He predicted that a successful defence of Turkey would lead to fresh demands upon her as soon as Russia had recovered from her exhaustion (31 March 1854). He foretold that the cession of Savoy would bring about Italy's independence of French control (26 March 1860). He anticipated (21 July 1859) some such proposal for the preservation of a general peace as that made in 1898-9 by Russia at the Hague. He supported Russia's proposals for protecting the Christian population of Turkey (25 Nov. 1876). 'An Irish party hostile to the liberal party of Great Britain insures the perpetual reign of the tories' (4 April 1878). Like all reformers he was over-sanguine as to the effects of the reform advocated: whether the repeal of the corn law, Irish disestablishment, which would prove a sovereign remedy for Irish discontent (18 March 1869), or the extension of the franchise in Ireland,which would kill home rule (28 March 1876). He had a happy knack of hitting off his opponents and their policy in catch phrases. He compared the coalition of Horsman and Lowe to a 'Scotch terrier, so covered with hair that you could not tell which was the head and which was the tail of it' (13 March 1866). Their followers had gathered in the 'political cave of Adullam' (ib.), and Lowe and his ally Marsh, another returned Australian, 'took a Botany Bay view of the character of the great bulk of their countrymen.' Disraeli was the 'mystery man' of the ministry (12 July 1865) The tory policy of 1874-80 was the outcome of a 'love for gunpowder and glory' (19 March 1880). He was a master of sarcasm. His retort to a peer who had publicly declared that Providence had inflicted on him a disease of the brain for his misuse of his talents was—'The disease is one which even Providence could not inflict on him.' When it was said of some one that his ancestors came over with the Conqueror, Bright observed: 'I never heard that they did anything else.' Of his apophthegms the most frequently quoted is 'Force is not a remedy' (16 Nov. 1880) and 'Force is no remedy for a just discontent' (Letter to A. Elliott, October 1867). His combination of rhetorical gifts made him, in Lord John Russell's opinion, in 1854 the most powerful speaker in the House of Commons.' His consistent opposition to Lord Palmerston's foreign policy rendered him very independent of party ties. He repudiated the theory that membership of parliament is a delegacy (16 May 1851), and declined to give subscriptions in the constituencies he represented (Letter of August 1857). He described himself, with perfect justice, as 'not very democratic' and 'in intention as conservative as 'the conservative party itself (24 March 1859). With this conviction he was able to say, 'I feel myself above the level of party' when advocating extension of the franchise (13 Dec. 1865). His defence of the queen at St. James's Hall (4 Dec. 1866) made his nomination as minister acceptable at court, and the queen suggested the omission of the ceremony of kneeling and kissing hands at his taking office, a concession of which he did not avail himself. In foreign affairs he adhered steadily to the principle of non-intervention, and repeatedly denounced the dogma of the balance of power which was the foundation of Palmerston's foreign policy. He deprecated foreign alliances and condemned the armaments which necessarily accompanied them. He was apparently indifferent to the supremacy of the seas (13 March 1865), and this was consistent with his hostility to projects for tightening the bonds between the colonies and the mother country. He preferred an Anglo-American free-trade confederation (18 Dec. 1879). He refused to condemn war in the abstract, but judged each occasion on its merits (Letters of 16 Aug. 1879 and 25 Sept. 1882). He approved the action of the federal states in resisting secession, and declared that in such cases arbitration was inapplicable. Throughout life he maintained his rigorous individualism. He was opposed, in opinion as well as in the interest of his Birmingham constituency, to the competition of the state in gun-making (10 Nov. 1868), and even to state aid to technical education (5 Feb. 1868) and emigration (1 Sept. 1858). Challenged upon his action against factory legislation, he continued to maintain that 'to limit by law the time during which adults may work is unwise and in many cases oppressive' (Letter of 1 Jan. 1884) He approved of the legalisation of marriages with deceased wives' sisters (Letter of 7 May 1883).
Almost the only subject upon which his once formed judgment altered was the political enfranchisement of women, which he voted for in 1867, under the influence of J. S. Mill, but opposed in a speech in the House of Commons in 1876 (26 April). His opposition was due, as he explained, to his
