A graceful and deserved compliment was paid to Lord Iddes-
leigh on Monday. He was entertained at Willis's Rooms by 150 gentlemen from both parties, most of them Peers or Members, who presented him with a splendid testimonial of the esteem in which he has been held. The subscriptions for this purpose, though limited in individnal amount, ran up, the Times says—but is the Times right ?—to the sum of £12,000 (?). Lord Herschell proposed his health, in a speech in which he said that, after serving for thirty years in the House of Commons, he had quitted it with troops of friends and without a single enemy, and had earned the esteem and regard of those to whom for years he had been violently opposed. Lord Iddesleigh knew how to deal hard blows, but never used the poison which rankles in a wound. It was as important to the State that the Opposition should be well led as that the Govern- ment should, and he had led it well. Lord Iddesleigh, in returning thanks, was quite overcome with emotion, and
confined himself mainly to expressions of admiration for the House of Commons, and of his own regret at quitting an Assembly "which was my life:' He urged his audience not to forget, in their desire for quicker legislation, that the House of Commons, by its slow processes, by threshing out everything, and representing all sides, made its legislation "acceptable to the nation." That is not quite true as to Ireland, we fear ; but as to the rest of the nation it is the truth, and justifies the House of Commons just as the jury-box is justified by the resulting confidence in the law.
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