The Tory Ministry dined on Wednesday with the Liberal Lord
Mayor, and doubtless liked their dinner, Mr. Phillips keeping up the repute of the City for hospitality in a style which ought to procure him the costly honour of a second term. The speeches had little political interest, but the Lord Mayor made a good point by describing Lord Derby from his own translation of Homer as "the smooth-tongued chief, from whose persuasive lips, sweeter than honey flowed the stream of speech," and a very bad one by hoping that Mr. Disraeli might "be as successful with facts as he had hitherto been with fiction," a "taunt," as he called it, to which Mr. Disraeli retorted that "candour and frankness were evidently not without charms in that hall." Lord Derby, in a somewhat lengthy and carefully weighed speech, regretted that he was compelled to take °Wee with money at 10 per cent. and the cholera in our midot ; rejoiced in the coining- harvest, and in peace ; declared that recent events in Germany "affected neither our interest nor honour ;" boasted of the new "link" between Eng- land and America ; promised a new and etriugent Health bill this session ; and affirmed that no cause, however good, could be furthered by intimidation and violence, a "proper" remark, at which, remembering 1831, he must have internally smiled. Mr. Disraeli denied that Parliament had wasted the session, the die- cussions on the Reform Bill having enlightened public opinion ; and Sir John Pakington, for the fifth or sixth time this month, promised to be guided at once by science and economy.
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