There was an out-door Reform meeting on Primrose Hill on
Monday, of which the principal features were the east wind and a letter from Mr. Bright, both of them violent, and only one of them favourable to the meeting. Mr. Bright repeated that the object of the Tories is to put the working men of England exactly in the same position in relation to the Constitution in which the Southern planters wish to put the negroes of the Southern States,- to admit their civil rights and ignore their political rights. This is true, but misleading. Mr. Lowe no doubt speaks and feels towards the working class very much as the planters speak and feel towards the freedmen,—with real dislike and contempt. But the Conservatives in general do not feel so, and dread—not the class, but the special electoral arrangements which make the numbers of the class so formidable. We hold as strongly as Mr. Bright that to raise the borough franchise from 71. to 81. will stultify the Bill, but we do not hold that all who wish to do so wish to treat the working man as the Southern planter wishes to treat the freed- man. Mr. Bright may sometimes find it necessary for special reasons to refuse a friend a loan, as he would a beggar, because he has not enough for himself, and that is so far treating him no doubt as he would treat a beggar. But if Mr. Bright were therefore charged with wishing to treat him as a beggar, he would see the injustice of his own rhetorical illustration.
