all other
magistracies. The holder had no outward signs of office, no satellites
to execute his commands, no definite department to administer like the
consul or the praetor. It was his first function to protest on behalf of
the poorer citizens against the violent exercise of authority, and, on
certain occasions, to thwart the action of other magistrates. He was to
be the champion of the weak and helpless against the privileged orders;
and his power depended on his courage, his eloquence, and the
prestige of his office. England has no office of the sort in her
constitutional armoury; but the word 'tribune' expresses, better than
any other title, the position occupied in our political life by many of
the men who have been the conspicuous champions of liberty, and few
would contest the claim of John Bright to a foremost place among them.
He, too, stood forth to vindicate the rights of the _plebs_; he, too,
resisted the will of governments; and in no common measure did he give
evidence, through forty years of public life, of the possession of the
highest eloquence and the highest courage.

[Illustration: JOHN BRIGHT

From the painting by W. W. Ouless in the National Portrait Gallery]

His early life gave little promise of a great career. He was born in
1811, the son of Jacob Bright, of Rochdale, who had risen by his own
efforts to the ownership of a small cotton-mill in Lancashire, a man of
simple benevolence and genuine piety, and a member of the Society of
Friends--a society more familiar to us under the name of Quakers, though
this name is not employed by them in speaking of themselves.

The boy left home early, and between the ages of eight and fifteen he
was successively a pupil at five Quaker schools in the north of England.
Here he enjoyed little comfort, and none of the aristocratic seclusion
in which most statesmen have been reared at Eton and Harrow. He rubbed
shoulders with boys of various degrees of rank and wealth, and learnt to
be simple, true, and serious-minded; but he was in no way remarkable at
this age. We hear little of his recreations, and still less of his
reading; the school which pleased him most and did him most good was the
one which he attended last, lying among the moors on the borders of
Lancashire and Yorkshire. In the river Hodder he learnt to swim; still
more he learnt to fish, and it was fishing which remained his favourite
outdoor pastime throughout his life.

When school-days were o