On Colston Day at Bristol,—yesterday week,—Lord Granville presided at the
Liberal or Anchor banquet, at which he made an amusing speech. Referring to the Conservative dinner going on at a little distance,—at which Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was presiding,—he remarked that he had once been aecustomed to give dinners in which he employed a number of small tables, thinking that by that means the weeds would arrange themselves more as they wished ; and he had asked a friend how he liked the plan. The reply was, "Detestable; at whichever table I am, I think the other must be more agreeable." However, in this case, Lord Granville thought that the •Colston arrangement was the best, in spite of following his own unlucky plan. He had no wish to be at the Conservative table, which certainly could not be pleasanter than their own. Nevertheless, he thought there must be some subtle affinity between the two presidents,—the one the leader of a small minority in the House of Lords, and the other the leader of a small minority in the House of Commons, both of them minorities which were likely to become "small by degrees and beautifully less." He referred to Mr. Nixon's candidature for West Bristol, speaking with great cordiality of his personal qualifications and claims, and then proceeded to describe an imaginary conversation between himself and the Conservative leader, in which it would be his duty to correct Sir Michael's many and grave inaccuracies, especially inaccuracies about the Irish Administration of the late Government, and also in- accuracies about its finance of the most momentous kind. Lord Granville, in referring to the Tory contention thatthe Tory Govern- ment is a lamb persecuted by Liberal wolves, told an excellent story of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who, when walking up and down in great irritation with the Porte, heard the Turkish Foreign Minister uttering little endearing epithets, and when he asked what he was saying, was told that he was calling his Excellency "My friend and lamb, my beloved." Lord Salis- bury, Lord Granville hinted, was just such another lamb as- Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.
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