Page "John Bright" Paragraph 36

During the subsequent general election campaign, Bright delivered only one speech, to his constituents on 1 July, in which he opposed Irish Home Rule.

He exhorted his countrymen to put the Union above the Liberal Party.

This speech was generally viewed by the Gladstonian Liberals as having a decisive effect on their defeat.

John Morley wrote that " The heaviest and most telling attack came from Mr. Bright, who had up to now in public been studiously silent.

Every word, as they said of Daniel Webster, seemed to weigh a pound.

His arguments were mainly those of his letter already given, but they were delivered with a gravity and force that told powerfully upon the large phalanx of doubters all over the kingdom ".

The chairman of the National Liberal Federation, Sir B. Walter Foster, complained that Bright " probably did more harm in this election to his own party than any other single individual ".

The Liberal journalist P. W. Clayden was a candidate for Islington North and when canvassing leading dissident Liberals, he would take with him a copy of the Home Rule Bill: