John Bright

British Quaker politician and radical orator — Cobden's partner in the Anti-Corn Law League and one of the greatest parliamentary speakers of the Victorian era.

Victorian radical oratory: Bright combined the moral conviction of Quaker pacifism with devastating parliamentary rhetoric. His speeches against the Crimean War ('the angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings') and for parliamentary reform were among the most powerful of the era. With Cobden, he represented the working-class radical liberal tradition that eventually became the progressive wing of the Liberal Party.