The Westminster Working-Men's Constitutional Association 'held a banquet yesterday week,
at which Colonel Hogg, Lord .John Manners, Lord Dartmouth, Mr. Cecil Raikes, Mr. W. IL Smith, and other Conservative Members, fired off Constitutional speeches of no great weight or spirit. Mr. Raikes (141.P. for 'Chester) appeared to be rather the favourite among the speakers, —we suppose for borrowing from Charles II. a sharp saying in reference to Sir C. Dillas speech on the Queen, namely, that though it was in the power of the Queen to make a gentleman a baronet, it was not in her power to make a baronet's son a gentle- anan. Mr. W. H. Smith, who was sober, simple, and a little dull, went in for heavy moral condemnation of the Government for their delays in relation to the Miners' Bill, and demanded a night 'in every week for questions exclusively social. Lord John Man- ners thirsted for a dissolution, and predicted that the country had had enough of quack medicines,—" of Baxter's mixture, prerogative powder, and medicines of that kind,"—a flight which we should be disposed, but for our awe of two of the judges of the Queen's Bench, to call "silly and slangy," in a much more accurate sense than that in which our late lamented contemporary the 7'omahawk, used these words of "the bag of bags." The banquet was, we suppose, a success. That is, there was a great deal of tall talk, a great deal of laughter, a great deal of cheering, and no real eloquence.
Previous page
