The Conservative Associations gave a grand banquet at Syden- ham
on Monday, attended by about a thousand members, of all degrees and classes. They were addressed by Mr. Disraeli in a speech which will hereafter be remarkable among his speeches for its want of epigram, humour, and play of fancy. It is as dull as if spoken by Mr. Gathorne Hardy. Its grand point was an asser- tion that the Liberal party was " cosmopolitan " and the Tory party "national,"—that is to say, devoted to the Monarchy, the House of Lords, the Established Church, our Colonial Empire, and a good system of Sewage, all of which things the Liberal party had attacked, undermined, or neglected. Mr. Disraeli affirmed that the Liberals—who through Sir W. Molesworth saved the Empire—had secretly resolved to shake off the Colonies, and even India, and had only been defeated by the devotion of the Colonies to the Mother country. Mr. Disraeli ridiculed with some justice the " idiotic " Jacobins of London, who, he said, had worried Pitt eighty years ago, and maintained that working-men were well aware that it was social and not political reform that was now required. He did not indicate the nature of his social reform, but said that to poor people whose children were stricken down with fever, the "policy of sewage" was a matter of life and death,—which is true enough, but does not prove that Tories are sound on drain-pipes and Liberals heretical. The speech, on which we have commented elsewhere, was exceedingly well received, the applause being greatly intensified by the thunder which burst over the Crystal Palace as Mr. Disraeli was speaking, and was repeatedly, says an eye-witness, taken by the audience as an invitation to cheer.
