On Thursday the members of the Liberal and Conservative Societies
held their annual banquets at Bristol, and said various things, none of them much worth reporting. The Liberals were out of heart with Mr. Gladstone's speech, and the Marquis of Lansdowne, who made the best speech, was mainly apologetic. He asked, sensibly enough, whether it was not immoral to hand over the Government of the country to men in whom they had not a particle of confidence; but beyond a defence of the Ashantee -war, not so good as Mr. Knatchbull..Hugessen's, he had little to say, except that the physique of the British Army had not deteriorated, and that the time had arrived when the diffi- culties in the way of the transfer of land must be ameliorated. He was in favour of a reform of local taxation and of the extension of the franchise to the labourer. Mr. James
made some rather broad fun both of his lady opponents at Taunton —one of them, Miss Rhoda Garrett, we may remark, in correction of ourselves, is a cousin, not .a sisterof Mrs. Garrett Anderson— and of the Tory flirtations with all manner of interests, which would all end in so many breaches of,proraise of marriage.
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