mitted to be it would follow that education must be compulsory, a consequence startling to public opinion in 1847. The interest of the Bright family in education upon voluntary lines had already been shown in 1840 by the building of a school by Jacob Bright, senior, for his workpeople's children and the provision of a news-room and reading-room for the parents. Parliament was dissolved on 23 July 1847, and the election at Manchester took place on 29 July. The other side had failed to secure a candidate, and Milner-Gibson and Bright were returned. There was an undercurrent of opposition on the part of some old-fashioned whigs, who disliked to see the House of Commons recruited from an aggressive champion of the middle classes. At the hustings a disturbance was raised by operatives who resented Bright's opposition to the recent Factory Act.
The first question which pressed upon the attention of the new parliament was the condition of Ireland, where famine had been followed by social disorganisation. Sir George Grey [q. v.], the home secretary, introduced a bill for giving the executive exceptional powers for the suppression of crime and outrage. Bright had presented a petition bearing twenty thousand signatures from Manchester and its neighbourhood against the bill. He admitted, however, that in his own opinion the action of the government was justified, and voted for the measure. But in a luminous speech delivered in the House of Commons on 13 Dec. he expounded his consistent conception of Irish policy—that Irish unrest should be attacked in its causes rather than in its effects. He advocated a measure facilitating the sale of encumbered estates, and providing occupation for the peasantry by an increased partition of landed property. But when, in the session of 1848, Sir George Grey brought in a 'crown and government security bill,' directed not against crime but against the elastic offence called sedition, Bright spoke against it (10 April) and voted in the minority of 36 to 452 on the second reading. Pie carried his opposition even to the third reading, and on 18 April was one of the tellers for the minority of 40 against which the bill was passed by 295 votes. His views on Ireland were further set forth in a speech (25 Aug.) upon Poulett Scrope's resolution for insuring the expenditure of the Irish relief funds upon reproductive employment. In this speech he added religious equality, to be effected by disestablishment, to the agrarian reforms he had previously indicated. It was in connection with Ireland that his reputation as a parliamentary orator was established by a speech delivered on 2 April 1849 in support of the grant of a sum of 50,000l. to certain Irish unions. In this speech he anticipated many reforms of the land laws which have since been carried into effect—facilitation of conveyance, enlarged powers to life owners, and land registry. His claim upon the attention of the House of Commons was founded as well upon his previous speeches as upon the fact that he was at the time sitting upon a select committee to inquire into the working of the Irish poor law. The speech was received with applause from both sides of the house, and was specially eulogised by Disraeli. Bright now resolved to study the Irish question on the spot. At the end of the session of 1849 he spent a month in Ireland, accompanied by a commissioner of the board of works. His investigations disclosed to him that absence of security for tenants' improvements was a more fruitful source of misery and discord than entail and primogeniture. His speeches in the house secured him the attention of Irish progressists, in concert with whom he proposed, in certain contingencies, to introduce a bill providing a general tenant right. These labours were recognised by the presentation of an address from the Irish inhabitants of Manchester and Salford at the Manchester Corn Exchange on 4 Jan. 1850.
His attention was not wholly absorbed by Ireland. Since 1845 he had, in partnership with his brothers, managed two of the three mills belonging to his father, the style of the firm being 'John Bright & Brothers.' His knowledge of the Lancashire trade directed him to the question of the supply of cotton, the insufficiency of which had caused acute distress in that county. He perceived the danger of dependence upon a single source, and on 6 May 1847 moved in the House of Commons for a select committee to inquire into the obstacles to the cultivation of cotton in India. The house was counted out, but in 1848 he obtained a committee, of which he was chosen chairman. No action having been taken on its report, on 18 June 1850 he moved for a commission to visit India and conduct an inquiry on the spot. In this proposal he had the support of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, which he addressed on the subject on 18 Jan. 1850. It was opposed by the East India Company and the government and refused. Bright and his friends in Manchester thereupon raised a fund for a private commission of inquiry. In consequence of what he learnt from this inquiry as to the maladministra-
