Lord Beaconsfield delivered on Wednesday, at a dinner of the
Royal and Central Bucks Agricultural Association, at Aylesbury, a speech on the present position of the Government with regard to the Eastern Question and the wishes of the country, which cer- tainly illustrated his old character for audacity, if nothing else. He began, however, with reference to himself and his new position. He said he would never have left the House of Commons, if he had continued equal to discharge his duties in it as Prime Minister and as the representative of Buckinghamshire. But he was not as young as he was forty-three years ago, when he first addressed an assembly in Aylesbury, and the secret of his age could not be concealed. " My private secretaries were more discreet than Gil Blas, but I, gentlemen, am not so conceited as the Archbishop of Grenada." The midnight hours of struggle which used to be a rapture,—cerlaminis gaudia,—were too much for him, and he had no choice but to tell the Queen that at the end of the last Session she must dispense with his ser- vices. The Queen, however, suggested his taking his seat in the House of Lords, and so relieving himself of much exertion ; and all his colleagues pressed him to retain the post of First Minister. The story was gracefully related, but it was an unkind return to these attached colleagues to launch forth a speech which will of course be taken as spoken in their name, if it is not disavowed by them, and which is little short of a deliberate insult to the recent great display of national feeling and purpose.
