The Cutlers' Feast at Sheffield was not this year attended
by any Cabinet Minister. Lord George Hamilton and Mr. Stanhope were the only Ministers present, but they both made, perhaps, all the better speeches. Lord George Hamilton was especially brisk. He found Sheffield suffering, he said, yet attached to the Government, and supposed therefore that the town rejected the theory of the Tory Government being the obstacle to prosperity. He thought the Ministry had become stronger, having undergone the Bessemer process of alternate hot and cold blasts, which had made the material tenacious. The Government, in fact, was tougher now than at first. He believed the Government was wise in not spending its majority, but keeping it as long as it could. He de- clared that the "atrocity agitation" had cost the country eight millions sterling, for but for that agitation the Government could have had its own way with Russia without arming. The Government had succeeded in resisting Russia. It was all very well for Mr. Gladstone to say it had not, but the Russian diplomatists were of a different opinion, and "when an English- man represents a foreign nation, let him produce his cre- dentials." The restoration of the prestige of England is the best guarantee for the peace of Europe, and "with durable peace, increased influence, and revived prosperity, this country will not think unkindly of this Government." Certainly not, if Lord Beaconsfield is turned out. It will be too grateful for its escape to think unkindly of anybody.
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