On Friday week Mr. Balfour was a guest at a
dinner given at the Mansion House to the Masters of the City Companies, and in reply to a toast made an excellent speech on the House of Commons. He confessed himself an optimist on the subject. There had always been, and there always would be, eminent critics, laudatores temporis acti, to say that the House of Commons was deteriorating. He thought hini- self that while great orators came and went, the general level of speaking had been raised, while the manners of the House had improved, since " scenes " were never so rare as now. He admitted that his experience of the new House had been short, but while he regarded it as deplorable from the point of view of his party, he thought that it showed no decline in that purity of motives, good manners, and tolerance which had characterised it in the past and would continue to characterise it in the future.
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