Mr. Bright made an address to his constituents on Monday,
not, perhaps, in his happiest vein. He said, indeed, that "power was not necessarily happiness, or a vote necessarily wisdom," and his peroration, in which he called on the newly enfranchised to regard their power as a trust to be used in the sight alike of their countrymen and of Heaven, was very fine ; but the bulk of the speech was somewhat wearisome to men who know history. Mr. Bright went over the improvements for the last forty years, and showed that the Liberals had defended and the Tories resisted them all, though Tories had sometimes carried them at last. It is all true,—if we except the Factory Act,—but after all, has the paddle any right to abuse the water for getting in its way ? There must be a resisting medium, and if it is a little dense, we have only to sharpen the vessel's lines. The Tories' destiny is not all guano.
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