The necessity for Parliamentary and constitutional reform was acknowledged by Pitt, Earl of Chatham, so far back as 1782; and “radical reform”—_i.e._ reform going to the root of things—was demanded by the country in 1797-8; but it was left to agitators to bring the question of reform so greatly into disrepute that, in common speech, we hear always of a thing being “radically wrong”; never, by any chance, “radically right,” although the alliterative ease of either form is equal to the other. The “Manchester School” of politics, founded in 1838 by Cobden and Bright, was a very virulent type of Radicalism, and, in some of its tenets, a singular creed for a commercial community of manufacturers and exporters to profess. It was nurtured on an agitation for the repeal of the Corn Law, and on a passion for Free Trade; it advocated peace-at-any-price, and regarded the Colonies with hatred. “It will be a happy day,” said Cobden, “when England has not an acre of territory in Continental Asia.” In these extraordinary aspirations John Bright shared to the full. [Sidenote: _THE LITTLE ENGLANDERS_] To reconcile the political creed of John Bright with his practice as a manufacturer is one of those tasks whose difficulties approach the impossible. He was an Apostle of Little Englandism: the passionate author of the phrase “Perish India!”; the ardent visionary of a day when “England” should cease to mean anything but this isle. What an ideal on which to dwell! Said he: “It may be a vision, yet I will cherish it.” He had what he termed the “noble vision” of Canada surrendered to the United States: “From the frozen north to the glowing south, from the stormy waves of the Atlantic to the calmer waters of the Pacific main, I see one people, speaking one language, owning one law and holding one religion, and over all the flag of freedom, a refuge for the oppressed of every nation and of every clime.” The “flag of freedom” was, if you please, the Stars and Stripes, and that “refuge for the oppressed” the land whose people are smarting under the tyrannies of the Trusts, and of the municipal disciples of the gospel of graft, as severely as any people ever suffered in the “oppressed” nations of Europe. At any rate, these are articles of belief to which few are now found to subscribe. That, with such aspirations as these, Bright could not endure the idea of Home Rule for Ireland, and so in 1886 broke with Gladstone and joined the Unionist party, is one of those extraordinary and illogical changes of front to which the careers of modern politicians of all shades of thought have so accustomed us that there are no surprises left. [Sidenote: _A “MANCHESTER MAN”_]