Mr. Forsyth, Q.C., was entertained at the Agricultural Hall, Islington,
on Wednesday, by the Marylebone Conservative Registration Union, to celebrate his return for Marylebone, Lord John Manners being in the chair, and seven hundred banqueters lending their festive countenance to the occasion. Mr. Forsyth made himself merry, of course, over the absence of unity in the Liberal camp, thought that if Sir William Harcourt were to be King, it would be like the bramble ruling the forest,— " the Liberals would find themselves considerably scratched," —and so forth. (Mr. Forsyth is a very excellent person, but his liveliness is not lively.) Then the Chancellor of the Exchequer made the crack speech of the dinner, declaring his loyalty to Marylebone, where he was born, where he was married, where he had two sons settled, and where he had lived more than half his life, notwithstanding all which powerful reasons for attachment, a feeling of loyalty to Marylebone sounds almost as eccentric as a feeling of loyalty to Tottenham Court Road. Sir Stafford Northcote ascribed the defeat of the Liberals to their failure to watch the signs of the popular feeling. "The late elections reminded him of a French caricature on the summoning of the States-General, in which a farmer called his chickens together to know with what sauce they wished to be eaten, whereupon they replied that they did not wish to be eaten at alL" The application to the States-General is obvious, but hardly to the late elections, where the sauce suggested was a very substantial bread- sauce for the chickens to eat, the reply being apparently that the chickens did not want to be fed at all ;—which is a story with a difference, for a want of appetite for eating is much less common in such chickens than a want of appetite for being eaten.
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