After this we give up Queen's Speeches. It is vain
even to hope that they will ever be decent productions, as good, say, as an average, bulletin from France. Mr. Gladstone is such an orator that his enemies talk of the " tyranny " of his eloquence ; Mr. Bright talks English exquisite in its strength and cadence ; Mr. Lowe's letters are cruel in their pungency ; the Duke of Argyll has published a volume of most masculine prose ; Lord Granville has a curiosa felicitas in epigram ; Mr. Goschen has made foreign exchanges interesting by his treatment; Lord Dufferin writes Most amusing travels, and the lot of them put together have con- cocted one of the worst Royal speeches of the century,—dull, un- grammatical, and bombastic. Her Majesty is advised to tell her Parliament that "her confidence in the preservation of peace has been continued during the present year ;" that negotiations with the United States have been suspended, and she " hopes the delay may tend to maintain relations on a durable basis of friendship ;" that she firmly trusts the Irish " Act may promote the work of peace in Ireland, and mayhelp to unite all classes of its people in that fraternal concord with their English and Scottish fellow-subjects which must ever form the chief source of strength to her extended Empire ;" that she has observed with pleasure the Assessed Rates' Act, the Bankruptcy Act, the Endowed Schools, and the Contagious Diseases' (Animals) Act; that the repeal of the duty on corn will " enlarge to the uttermost those supplies of food which our insular position, in a peculiar degree, requires,"—but for the Channel, you see, we should have no stomachs,—and that the purchase of the telegraphs will facilitate communication. The Commons are thanked for the Abyssinian penny ; and, finally, both Houses are informed that "during the recess you will continue to gather that practical knowledge and experience which form the solid basis of legislative aptitude." " Gathered " bases usually crumble into the sands they must be made of, and the gathered base of an aptitude must be something valuable, the reverse, we suppose, of the pediment of a faculty, though what that is nobody knows. The words of a Queen's Speech do not matter much, but the reputation of a Ministry does, and it is layered all over the world by such turgid rubbish.
