ABSTRACT
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 upon the minds of the constituency, headed the poll from the first, continued to head it to the last, and was returned by a majority of seventy-eight, having recorded 488 votes, whilst the Peel candidate, with all his weight of local influence, could command no more than 410. The enemies of free trade and reform endeavoured to lessen the value of the victory by saying that had the Marquis of Londonderry exerted his power the result would have been different; that is, if a peer had illegally interfered in the election, the monopolist candidate might have been elected. With equal propriety they might have attributed the defeat to the fear of using their usual auxiliary, the corruption of the voters. The talk was that of the wrestler, who would say: “You could not have thrown me if I had chosen to stab you with my knife.” My comment on this victory at the time was: “Greater than the accession to the House of Commons of an additional advocate of freedom of trade, freedom of conscience, freedom of representation, and universal peace, able, vigorous, and eloquent though he be, must be the results of John Bright’s election. It has proved that a principle is much more influential than a name. He has achieved a victory which could not have been attained by any one even of the very élite of the whig aristocracy. Lord John Russell, Lord Morpeth, Lord Howick, would have failed where the Rochdale cotton-spinner has been successful. They would have found that the party-name was no longer one to conjure with. The electors who rallied round Mr. Bright, listening with breathless attention to his exposition of the real causes of national distress, despising every allurement and every threat, and struggling for his success as if their very existence were involved in the contest, would have remained unmoved as the stones in the market-place to speeches upon the comparative merits of whig and tory administrations. The lesson will not be thrown away. The Walsall election, by showing how powerless were the aristocratic influences of the neighbourhood, drove the whigs in office to their retiring declaration in favour of partially free trade; the Durham election will show them that they must go much further if they would acquire the confidence of the country; it will show them the value of Lord Sydenham’s advice, to offer the people something worth struggling for, if they would have their aid; and, much more than the benefit of any whig conversion, it will show honest men, really desirous to benefit their distressed country, that a bold reliance on a principle, regardless of party names, and of local influences whose sole strength is in the belief of their strength, is, even with seemingly indifferent, or suspectedly corrupt constituencies, the best recommendation of a candidate.”
