A hundred years ago
From the 'Spectator, 14 August /869—Parlia- ment was prorogued on Wednesday last, the 11th inst., with little ceremonial, the Queen's Speech being, in fact, a formal message, read by Commissioners to a nearly empty chamber.
After this we give up Queen's Speeches. It is vain even to hope that they will ever be decent productions, as good, say, as an average bulletin from France. Mr. Gladstone is such an orator that his enemies speak of the "tyranny" of his eloquence; Mr. Bright talks English exquisite in its strength and cadence; Mr. Lowe's letters are cruel in their pungency; the Duke of Argyll has published a volume of most masculine prose; Lord Granville has a curiosa felicitas in epigram; Mr. Goschen has made foreign exchanges interesting by his treatment; Lord Dufferin writes most amusing travels, and the lot of them put together have concocted one of the worst Royal speeches of the century,—dull, ungrammatical, and bom- bastic. . . . The words of a Queen's Speech do not matter much, but the reputation of a Ministry does, and it is lowered all over the world by such turgid rubbish.
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