Mr. Bright made a second speech at Birmingham on Thursday
at a conversazione given by the " Central and Ward Committees of the Liberal Association," but though he described the audience as in an unusual degree representative of the borough, he did not say anything important. He attributed the defeat of the late Government mainly to the anger of the publicans; to the obstinacy of men possessed not of ideas, but by them ; to the over-confidence of the Liberals, who forgot that they had against them the land- lords, the Church, that " centre of political darkness," and the timid poor ; and to the " enormous lying" indulged in by the Tories, both in their meetings and through the Press. He utterly disapproved the idea of sending working-men to Parliament merely as such, as a course opposed to the truer policy of moulding all classes into a nation. The men who had for the last generation served the working-men, himself included, were not working-men in the class sense. He denied that he intended to divide the Liberal party by pointing to Disestablishment, but said the discus- sion could not be evaded, and was most actively promoted by those who had most interest in letting it alone.
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