The Prime Minister, who supported Major Astor's toast of the
A'peetator, said that in these days it was unusual for a newspaper to preserve a separate identity for a hundred years.
" I think that the reason why we have such an intellectual gathering this evening is that the Spectator has become a national institution. There are a great many homes in England which would feel that some great landmark had been removed if the Spectator ceased to be published. The mere fact that it has survived for a century, and survived through such a century as this last one has been, is a remarkable tribute to some inherent characteristic in that paper, and I think the characteristic is, perhaps one may aunt it up in a word, that innate British stability and outlook."
Sir James Barrie had just told him that when lie had offered his services to the Spectator Hutton and Townsend had said, " Thank you very much, but we can do very well without you." And evidently they did. " The criticism has always been weighty, it has always been fair, and it has always been responsible." Mr. Baldwin went on to say that he had always been impressed by the value of the letters in the .Spectator, and as a matter of fact it was the only paper in which a letter from him had ever been published—though it was true that it was the only paper to which lie bad ever sent one.
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