of the government; and the regeneration of the commercial system was next to be accomplished, by a successful resistance to the selfish restrictions imposed upon trade by the landed proprietors.  In such a cause, John Bright embarked in his twenty-seventh year; and his subsequent career has been a consistent adherence to the same views which marked his entrance into public notice.  He espoused with ardor the principles avowed by the League, and leaving the management of his private interests in the hands of the junior members of the firm, began to discuss them publicly, with great force and effect.  The League soon perceived the valuable acquisition they had made in the young Quaker, and not only encouraged him to exertion but gave him opportunities to appear before many important assemblages.  On the list of orators whom the League commissioned to go into the agricultural districts to advocate their cause, Mr. Bright’s name soon became prominent.  By the irresistible cogency and energetic expression which characterized his speech before many thousands in Drury Lane Theatre, his reputation became national, and printed copies being distributed throughout England, a desire to hear him on the important question of the day became every where manifest.  He went about among the farmers and gentry, instilling with ability the principles of free trade, developing arguments with telling effect, and rapidly organizing branches of the League throughout the kingdom.  The distrust of the lower classes, which was awakened in some degree against the nobles and nabobs who sustained the League, did not operate against him, who, as a man directly from the people, educated in the stern school of labor, and as the daily witness of and sympathizer with the suffering of the poor, at once elicited their confidence in his honesty and their respect for his intellectual power.  Political advantage, which might be sought by life-long politicians and hereditary nobles, could, they well knew, offer no inducement to nor corrupt the ingenuous principles of one who showed so little respect to party distinction, and who was entirely independent of great connections.

The statesmen with whom he acted, in favor of free trade, were unwilling to be without so valuable an ally on the floor of the House of Commons; and, in April, 1843, he was placed in nomination by his numerous friends at Durham, for the seat to which that city was entitled.

On the first trial, he was defeated; but a new election for the same city becoming necessary in the following July, he was returned, by a gratifying majority, to represent a place noted for its conservative proclivities.  He continued the member for Durham until 1847.