5 SEPTEMBER 1868, Page 3

Mr. Reverdy Johnson, the new American Minister, made his first

speech in England on Thursday at the annual Cutlers' Feast. It was a good though not a striking speech, full of good-will and -cordial profes,ions of international amity. Mr. Johnson held that whoever was elected President would be a friend to Great Britain, and believed that Americans would stand by Englishmen if they were ever in serious trouble. He complimented the Cutlers -on their razors, which, "if I may say so in the presence of ladies," are the best in the world, but trusted they would never forge a -steel so sharp as to sever the cord of amity between the two countries. That allusion to the ladies is very funny. Is it improper to speak of beards in America, or was Mr. Johnson . afraid that the ladies would repine because they are not obliged to cut their chins every morning ? Of course Mr. Roebuck took -occasion to say that a wide suffrage would work better here than in America, because America was the feculent refuge of the "wild Irishman, the fiery Frenchman, the assassinating Italian, and the dumb-foundered Spaniard," a sentence which proves that age is not depriving him of his curious felicity in national insult ; but everybody else was decorously vapid, and the dinner will, doubtless, like the electric cable, "help to bind together two nations," which, &c., &e.