XXX VIL]

TO MR. BRIGHT,

027

There must have been a much larger proportion of the whole 1865.
population voting then than is polled now. "Er. 60,
“J was talking with Durrant Cooper, one of the leading
members of our Sussex Archaeological Society, and told him
if instead of devoting a volume a year to the remains of
old castles and monasteries, they would give us some facts
throwing light upon the social and political condition of
the inhabitants in former ages, it would be a much more
useful employment of their talents. It is astonishing what
a mass of facts of old date are in existence. The secretary
of our County Society once said that an itinerary of King
John’s reign, giving his whereabouts every day of his life,
could be given if worth the trouble, with as much accuracy
as that of William the Fourth.
“1 have no recent letters from America. Goldwin Smith
says he has come back a confirmed radical and free churchman,
 and less impatient because more assured of liberal
progress. . . His pen is a power in the State.”
“Jan. 22. ( , )—I hope you have returned safely home,
and if you are well after your double effort at Birmingham,
I congratulate you on your bronchial organization. I was
satisfied and pleased with your speech in the Town Hall.
I think you took a very wise course in using the language
of warning to those ruling factions who are alone responsible
for the present state of the Reform question. Not that it
will have the desired effect in that quarter, where nothing
but fear of something worse happening ever leads to the
concession of any reform. Unfortunately, in the case of the
proposed change in the representation, involving, as our
privileged classes believe, the destruction of their privileges,
nothing worse than this spectre can be presented to their
imagination ; and they will contend against a measure which
would make the people the depository of political power in
this country, as they would against a revolution of the old