Mr. Bright at the Reform dinner at the Manchester Free
Trade Hall on Tuesday, at w 'ich 900 persons dined, told an admirable story of a typical Conk 'valve. There was an old gentleman, he said, near Rochdale, ye wealthy, but exceedingly penurious, who always objected to a tak_ r, on the fundamental ground that he had found out that " a hole would last longer than a patch." Con- servatism cannot go much deeper than that, except perhaps to the still higher generalization that nothing will usually last longer than something. " Pure Being," as Hegel says, " is pure Nothing," and as Conservatism takes its stand on pure being, it naturally prefers an actual hole to a potential patch, especially that hole in the Constitution where the working classes ought to be, and are not, to the patch that would put them there.
