As regards other topics, Mr. Bright, after remarking justly and
eloquently on the great example which Birmin& ham had set during his illness of the generosity and for- bearance with which a great popular constituency can treat its representative, —on the proof which the Ministry has given that an Established Church can be removed; and yet the Church itself continue to live: in perfect health, and eveg find itself in a better position to get rid of what it deems super- stitious, from which it had previously imagined that it was set free three hundred years ago,—.and on the abolition of the monopoly of the rich in Army Commissions, from which Mr. Bright glanced aside at the purchase of English-Church livings, which he branded as a great scandal, — turned to the future, and spoke of the extension of the household frauchiee to the counties, of the emancipation of the land from the legal fetters which render it impossible to sell it in small parcels, of the amendment of the Masters and Servants' Act, the Molestation Act, and the Law of Conspiracy, as the immediate work of the future. Mr. Bright anticipated from the Liberals a budget in which taxation would be reduced,—especially referring to the Income-tax and the taxes on tea, coffee, and sugar,—and then pointed out that but for a most unfortunate- epistolary out- burst, which showed in what a desperate state of mind Mr. Disraeli is, we should have not only no conception of his policy, —for the letter does not give us any,—bUt no 'conception that he is fretting against the Liberal policy. • The Conservative policy- of the moment resembled a speculative scheme Mr. Bright once knew, in which you were to subscribe the capital in faith, without knowing how it was to be applied,—that was too great a secret,— till the money was all paid up. Evidently, we were right in supposing last week that Mr. Bright's nervous alarm at the prospect of his speech was evidence not of failing strength, but only of shaken confidence in his own strength. He has never been more lucid, humorous, and strong.
