Sir Stafford Northcote attended, on Tuesday, a banquet given to
the Annual Committee of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, at Newport, and responded to the toast of "Her Majesty's Ministers." After chaffing a certain Colonel Lyne, who had entreated him to find the means, whatever the cost, of get- ting the Navy of England into that state of efficiency which would satisfy him (Colonel Lyne), he protested that "it was not because they (the Cabinet) were Ministers of any denomination that they should be called upon to do what is impossible." He was plaintive about the comparison made between the position of the various Government Bills and a crowd of donkey-carts attempting to get through a turnpike, a simile which he resented ; and he then went on to speak of the great and difficult expedition, —which he compared to the work of the Arctic Expedition,— before himself in relation to the Friendly Societies Bill. The more he studied the Bill, and the subject of the Bill, the more profoundly aware he became of the difficulties he had to en- counter. Still he hoped to succeed in passing his Bill, and we hope so, too, if it really does move a step onward towards teach- ing the poor what Societies they may trust, and what they cannot trust. But we greatly fear that the indecision of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's own mind is reflected in his Bill. It is a Bill which pleases the rotten Societies by what it does not do, almost as much as it pleases the sound Societies by what it does.
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