The Fishmongers' Company entertained Sir Evelyn Wood at dinner on
Tuesday, and Sir Evelyn made a speech which must have a little shocked the modesty of one or two of the guests, whose feats were described as if they had just been gazetted to. the Victoria Cross. We have said enough of the speech, which was most spirited and interesting and greatly delighted the audience, elsewhere, and need only add here that Sir Evelyn Wood described Sir Bartle Frere as " the greatest High Com- missioner South Africa has yet possessed," affirmed that the Cape colonists were excellent persons, who treated the blacks with as much consideration as Englishmen treat their domestic servants, and declared that in Lord Chelms- ford there was nothing selfish, self in him being entirely subordinate to zeal for the public service. All those state- ments may be true, and the last certainly is so; but they do not exactly meet the charges preferred by the public. Sir Bartle Frere may be a great man, and yet have plunged with insufficient forces into a forbidden war ; the colonists may be very kindly men, like the Maryland planters, and yet prefer a system of managing natives indistinguishable from slavery ; and Lord Chelmsford may be the least selfish of mankind, and yet a vacillating and incompetent Gene- ral. As far as we know, in the bitterest moments of the discussion both parties fully recognised in Lord Chelmsford a singularly fine personal character; but one does not choose a St. Thomas to lead armies. The best defence for Lord Chelmsford is the one made by Sir Evelyn himself— that he supported him—the only instance in which the speaker, even by implication, praised himself. It was an eloquent and a modest, but we fear an injudicious speech.
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