QUAKERS IN PARLIAMENT.

Western Star, Issue 1077, 30 October 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

QUAKERS IN PARLIAMENT.

In the present : House of Commons there are eleven or twelve members of the Society ,of Friends., In the Parliament of 1880 there were fifteen 1 or six- 1 teen. * The society then, as now, numbered just 15,000, so that representation in the councils of the nation,; .lias fallen from ope for each 1000 to one for each 1250. This is still a much larger proportion than that of any other religious denomination. Amongst the members of Parliament who wore also members of the Society of Friends are the Right Hon. John Bright, his son Mr. W. L. Bright, Mr. James Ellis (Leicestershire, West), Mr. J. E. Ellis

(.Notts, Rushcliffe), Mr. Lewis Fry (Bristol, North), Mr. Theodore Fry (Darlington), Sir J. W. Pease, his son Mr. A. ; E. Pease, Mr. H, F. Pease (Yorkshire, Cleveland), Mr. Joshua Rpwntree (Scarborough), and Mr. Isaac Wilson ( Middlesbrough. These are all Liberals. There are 'two staunch Conservatives in the House of Commons, Sir Edward Birkbeck and Aiderman Sir E. N. Fowler, and two Liber-als-Mr. Jacob Bright and Mr. William Bathbone- I —who formerly belonged to' the Society, but have left it. Mr. Sydney Buxton and Mr. Miles MTnnes (Northumberland, Hexam), Liberals and Mr. Samuel Hoare (Norwich) and Mr. H. S. King (Hull, Central), Conservatives, although not members of the society, are of Quaker parentage. Only one member of the Society of Friends, Mr. Bright, has been a Cabin; et Minister. The late Mr. Forster had left the Society before he took office. Sir J. W. Pease is the only “ Friend” who, whilst in the society, has been made a baronet. There is one Quaker-knight-—Lord Justice Sir Edward Fry. No peerage has yet been conferred on any member of the Society of Friends. Mr. Bright would not take one if it were offered him, but time may find Sir Joseph Pease, with his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Fowler, in the House of Lords. There has been no Quaker “ labour candidate.” The society, in these days, numbers few of the hornyhanded sons of toil. The sons of the great ironmaster of the north toil indeed for a time amongst the labourers in their works to gain insight of the trade, but not long enough to make their hands horny. The “ Friends” are now essentially a well-to-do upper middle-class people. They do not seek to make converts. If such come, they must come guided by the “ innerlight,” and as the society maintains its own poor, never suffering them to take parish relief, a convert is closely questioned and has to pass a time of probation, The 20 Quaker and ex Quaker members of the House of Commons thus will represent the very respectable society to which they belong or belonged. All of them are prosperous men of business, half of them in , the nothern iron trade and in banking. Hitherto “ Friends ” have spoken little in. the House. Speech-making and debating are not encouraged by the society, although moat of its members can speak well and to the point on occasion. Mr. Bright remains, and is likely to remain, their great orator, although Mr. Firth is an effective speaker at a public meeting and ready in debate. But in Mr. Bright’s own way wo shall, perhaps, not hear his like again. The modern “ Friend ’’ has had a university education, and quotes Greek after dinner at the Mansion House —when Mr. Gladstone is there. In Mr. Bright’s boyhood no Greek was taught, and but little Latin, in the great Quaker school at Ackworth to which he went, but the boys knew their Bible, in English, by heart. To road it aloud carefully and to recite a whole chapter of it from memory without mistake of a word was a daily prac*

tice. If they road any poetry it was from Milton, with perhaps a little of Cowpor. The effect of this training is in all Mr. Bright’s speeches. Their language is simple as that of the Bible. “ Methinks that I hear the beating of the wings of the Angel of Death ” was a passage in perhaps the finest speech which Mr. Bright ever made, when he lifted up his voice against the Crimean war. With exactly the same number of words, and more than twice the number of syllables, Lord Brougham closes perhapshis grandest speech in the sentence—“ Hewalks abroad redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation,” And the tendency of modprn oratory is rather like that of Lord Brougham, to multiply eyllables.-JDafZy News, ,