26 MARCH 1892, Page 2

Mr. Chamberlain made a very entertaining speech this day week,

in attending the annual dinner of the Birmingham Jewellers' and Silversmiths' Association, where he seconded the toast to the Houses of Parliament, reproaching the pro- poser for having passed in silence over the House of Lords, and accounting for his omission by supposing that his feelings would have been too much for him if he had attempted to describe his reverence for so august an assembly. Mr. Chamberlain concluded, however, what he had to say on the House of Peers in a less satirical vein. It is a good deal threatened nowadays, he remarked, but "in all probability it will outlive most of us, and will remain for several generations to come a picturesque and a stately, if not a supremely important, part of the British Constitution." We should not feel, indeed, any great surprise if Mr. Chamberlain himself passed to that House before the close of his political career, and ended it as Prime Minister of a Conservative-Liberal Administration.