31 JANUARY 1835, Page 4

SCOTLAND.

A dinner was given at Inchture lust week to the Honourable Arthur Kinnaird (the brother of Lord Kinnaird, and a fine young Reformer of great promise), by a number of gentlemen connected with Perthshire, who wished to express their sense of the benefit the good cause had received in the late contest with Sir George Murray, from Mr. Kin. naird's spirited and untiring exertions. Among those present, were Lord Camperdown, Lord Duncan, Lord Kinnaird, Captain Gardner, and the Provosts of Dundee and Perth. Mr. Kinnaird made an in- teresting and modest speech, pledging himself as a Reformer. Lord Camperdown uttered some bold truths and honest sentiments. On the Perthshire election he said- " I have received a letter to-day, and I believe my honourable friend has bad several, from London, and we are assured that the greatest blow which has yet been received by the present Government is the return of Fox Maule for Perth- shire. It is certainly a great triumph for England, but it is still a greater one fur Scotland. I think it is a triumph of the religion of Scotland—I think a lesson has been read by it which will show that the claims of the Dissenters ust be complied with. All of us in Scotland are Dissenters; we ale Dis- senters from the Church of England ; and therefore the stigma laid on the Dis- senters of England attaches to us. I certainly was astonished to read the speech of the gallant ex-Member for Perthshire ; and, although I alai sure that that gallant gentleman did not think he was violating a pledge in voting as he did, still he is too good a tactician not to know that, by voting against the se- cond reading of Mr. Wood's bill, be voted against the principle of the bill itself. To this point he was so completely nailed by Mr. insole on the hustings, that he did not attempt to answer him.

On the present crisis-

" We are told that the country is in a crisis, and there is a little insinuation that we have been the cause of it. Let us look at the facts. In August last, you know that, owing to certain circumstances, Earl Grey resigned, and Lord Melbourne succeeded. With ad the respect I feel for Earl Grey, and although some people think that I am apt in sonic things to go a little too far, I certainly will say that I had greater confidence in Lord Melbourne's Ministry—for this reason, that many individuals were taken into it wile had long been the zealous supporters of the people's rights, and were determined, amongst other things, to introduce measures calculated to remove the abuses of the Church of Ireland. I had in consequence great confidence in them ; the late Parliament, too, bad equal confidence; and even the great Dictator himself, for he stated in one of his speeches—and I am not sure but I heard him—that he believed no Govern. meat had the same confidence reposed in it as Eari Grey's had, with the ex- ception of Lord Melbourne's. Upon the pretence of Earl Spencer's death (for nothing else was it but a pretence, I will not mince the expression), did the King exercise his prerogative of dissolving Parliament. God forbid that I should deny the right of the King to exercise his prerogative, but I assert at the same time the equal right of the people's prerogative."

Lord Kinnaird, Lord Duncan, and other gentlemen, addressed the company in speeches all of the same decidedly Anti-Tory cast.