Lord Granville presided at the banquet of Thursday in the
Birmingham Town Hall, and proposed Mr. Bright's health. He mentioned that he had suggested to Lord Aberdeen, when forming the Cabinet of 1853,—the Cabinet of all the Talents, —that the Government would be all the stronger for including Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, and that Lord Aberdeen had personally agreed with him, though he did not think it possible to get over the difficulties which others would have made. Lord Granville remarked on Mr. Bright's success in making changes possible which had been thought previously impossible, illustrat- ing what he said by the late Sir George Grey's remark that the Irish Protestant Establishment was "absolutely indefensible in itself, and also impossible to remove." He remarked on the fidelity of Birmingham to Mr. Bright, and on Mr. Bright's love for Birmingham, though that was certainly not the love described in King Lear, which makes " breath poor and speech unable," as Mr. Bright remained "one of the greatest orators ever found on an English platform, or perfected in an English Parliament."
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