Members  of  Parliament,  themselves  Liberals,  thought  the
question  of  the  sufi^rage  hopeless  for  years  to  oome,  and  aaid  to
me,  "Why  does  Bright  go  about  flogging  a  dead  hone?"
Tories  expressed  contemptuous  scorn  tot  his  enthusiasm.  Had
be  been  silent  or  supine,  working  men  would  be  without  sub-
stantial enfranchisement  now.  What  Ebenezer  Elliott  wrote
of  Cobbett  they  may,  with  a  change  of  name,  say  of  Bright : —

••Our  friend  when  other  friend  we'd  none*
Our  champion  when  we  had  bat  one ;
Cursed  by  all  knaves,  beneath  this  sod
Brave  John  Bright  lies — a  man  by  God.**

Tet  he  had  limits  in  his  mind  beyond  which  he  would  not,
and  did  not,  go.  In  1870,  he  deprecated  the  admission  of
working  men  in  Parliament  as  likely  to  increase  the  evils  of
class  legislation,  yet  all  the  while  the  House  of  Conmions  is,
and  always  has  been,  full  of  class  interests.  Mr.  Bright  and  his
friend  Cobden  were  the  great  representatives  of  the  middle
class,  yet  he  did  not  propose  that  middle-class  representation
should  cease  so  that  the  evib  of  class  representation
might  cease  or  diminish.  If  any  class  at  all  ought  to  be
represented  in  the  House  of  Commons,  surely  it  is  the  working
class,  who  exceed  all  other  classes  in  numbers  and  usefulness
in  the  State.  But  the  idea  of  democracy  was  not  in  his  mind,
and  women,  as  part  of  the  human  race,  having  political
interests  was  simply  abhorrent  to  him.  He  was  always  for  the
Crown,  the  Bible,  and  the  Constitution  as  much  as  any  Conserva-
tive. He  was  against  the  Tories — when  they  put  passion  in
the  place  of  principle  and  their  interests  in  the  place  of  dut^ —
but  not  otherwise.
