Henry Bright

Henry Bright (18 January 1784 – 26 March 1869) was a British Whig politician, MP for Bristol 1820–1830. Bright was born in Queen's Square, Bristol on 18 January 1784. He was the oldest son of Richard Bright (1754–1840), a merchant and banker in Bristol, and Sarah , and the older brother of the physician Richard Bright, who described Bright's disease. His grandfather was Henry Bright (1715–1777), a Bristol merchant active in the Jamaican slave trade, Mayor of Bristol in 1771–72. He was educated at Reading School and Peterhouse, Cambridge (admitted 1801, graduated B.A. 1807, M.A. 1810) and elected to a fellowship at Peterhouse in 1810. Admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1804, he was called to the bar in 1810, practising as a barrister on the western circuit. Elected MP for Bristol in 1820 as a Whig in the West India Interest, Bright generally opposed the Tory government of Lord Liverpool. However, he was mindful of constituency considerations, and in May 1820 supported the Western Union Canal bill as "eminently advantageous".