CHAPTER VII.
MR. BRIGHTS RETURN TO PARLIAMENT.
During these movements on the agricultural districts, an election committee had unseated Lord Dungannon, one of the members for Durham, for bribery. Mr. Bright was invited to offer himself as a candidate, and accepted the invitation. His opponent was Mr. Purvis, a conservative who had much influence in the city and its neighbourhood, but at the close of the poll (July 25th), the free trader had a majority of seventy-eight. "The Quaker Bright has many friends in Durham," said the Morning Herald, preparing the monopolists for a defeat in that Cathedral City. So it proved; but of the friends who carried his election triumphantly, there was not one who knew him personally before the previous April. At that time he went into the city a perfect stranger, and, without preparation, almost without a canvas; his honest, straightforward advocacy of free-trade principles—"the principles of common-sense," as one said who admitted a truth but dared not act upon it-balanced the strong aristocratic influence that previously had been all-powerful, and would have secured his return but for the wholesale bribery that was resorted to. Before three short months had elapsed the aristocratic member who represented bought votes was unseated; and, in spite of every attempt to intimidate, it having become dangerous to bribe the electors, the free-trade candidate, without any other influence in the city than the influence of principle
