At the dinner given by the Chairman of the London
County Council at the Hotel Metropole on Monday the lambs and lions of the municipal arena sat down together in great numbers, and Lord Rosebery made a most entertaining speech in proposing the toast of the evening. Contrasting the attitude of the public towards the London County Council in the present with that of the past, he said there had been a time when they could hardly have met in any public place in London without a hostile demonstration outside. The deliberations of the Council itself had also changed in character. In its first years, "in our more turbulent scenes, we sometimes resembled, very faintly resembled, a meeting of the National Liberal Federation when engaged on a peace resolution." But now in the decorum of its deliberations the Council left nothing to be desired, while its popularity was sufficiently attested by the character of the gathering he addressed. The County Council, indeed, were to be compared favour- ably with Parliament in being able to deal more directly t –.– and immediately with any evil that came within their province. The whole speech was an excellent example of Lord Rosebery's method of blending persiflage with serious, ness, the reference to the National Liberal Federation fairly bringing down the house.
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