Mr. Gladstone was presented last Saturday with the free- dom
of the City of Liverpool in St. George's Hall, and made one of his most lively and popular speeches in acknowledging the honour, which he did with all the force and charm which have made him personally known to a larger number of English- men than any other living Englishman. He recalled the fact that the first of the long series of burgess-ships which had been presented to him was conferred (we believe by Dingwall) eighty-one years ago, when he was but two years old. He touched on the early history of Liverpool, and amused his audience by recalling the fact that at the close of the reign of Elizabeth, the burgesses, who then numbered 138, complained that they were declining in number, having numbered earlier some 200 or 250. He recalled the Liverpool of his own early days in a passage extracted elsewhere, and praised it for its liberality to Canning and Huskisson, its former representa- tives, whose election expenses never cost them a shilling. He predicted that Liverpool would yet build herself a noble cathedral, in language that will probably stimulate the desire to achieve that purpose. But we doubt whether Bishop Ryle is precisely the diocesan under whose auspices it is likely to be achieved.
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