What is a great love of books? It is something like a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past times. Books, it is true, are silent as you see them on their shelves; but, silent as they are, when I enter a library I feel as if almost the dead were present, and I know if I put questions to these books they will answer me with all the faithfulness and fulness which has been left in them by the great men who have left the books with us.

Bright was re-elected by his Birmingham constituents and it turned out to be his last Parliament. Bright replied that if Cobden retired the mainspring of the League was gone. Why not go to the help of other interests in Belfast and Dublin? As to Dublin Parliament I argued that he was making a surrender all along the line—a Dublin Parliament would work with constant friction and would press against any barrier he might create to keep up the unity of the three Kingdoms.

He sat in the House of Commons from 1843 to 1889. He was one of the greatest orators of his generation and a strong critic of British foreign policy.