Mr. Bright's subject at Birmingham on Tuesday was the im-
penitent character of the Conservative party. Time after time they had opposed the popular cause,—on Reform, on Free- trade, on the commercial treaty with France, on the paper duty, on Reform again,—and every time it was hoped that they would learn by experience, and not repeat their blunder. But now, again, they were about to repeat their blunder. "When," he said, "in our Courts of Justice, a man is convicted unhappily of some offence, a policeman represents to the Magistrate that he has been convicted before. Sometimes he has been convicted more than once or twice, and then the Magistrate inflicts a severer sentence, sometimes, I have thought, needlessly severe." Mr. Bright thought that the Conservative party had had in 1880 a very severe sentence passed upon it for its repeated misdeeds, but apparently he did not think it "needlessly severe," for he more than suggested that at the next trial, the sentence should be indefinitely extended, and not reversed.
