The new Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster made a
neat speech in the City on Monday, at a dinner given to him, some of the Judges, and other guests, by the Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor congratulated Mr. Goschen on his marvellous political :success, and proposed the toast of the House of Commons, and .called on. Mr. Goschen to reply, who remarked on his delicate position in having to reply for a body to which he does not now belong, but only hopes to belong. "There are many drawbacks," he said, "as there were many pleasures, in the life of a member of the House of Commons. He had had to make a decision which he could not make without some perplexity ; for speaking thus in the Mansion House, and in the company of the Chief Magistrate of the City of London, it was no slight thing to say of himself that he had elected to give up the occupation in which he had been engaged for many years, to leave the fruit on the boughs for others to gather, and to surrender an interest in a firm which it had taken half a century to build up. He had been called on to make his election, and he had preferred the prospects of political life. As a merchant he had committed suicide, he hoped under .extenuating circumstances." No doubt even the City will admit that he has chosen the better part. The fruit he has left on the boughs is but golden fruit after all, which is as inferior to the fruit he is seeking in its place, as is the power wielded by a firm of fifty _years' standing to the power wielded by the rulers of Great Britain.
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