SCOTLAND.
The installation of the Duke of Argyll as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow was performed on Thursday last week, with the usual cere- monies, in the presence of the authorities, the students, and a large com- pany of ladies. Topics of local interest, particularly the bearing of the free competition, by examination of candidates, for the Indian civil service, occupied the greater part of the Lord Rector's inaugural address : the Duke also spoke with earnestness on his recent and present relations with the Government, especially with the Earl of Aberdeen.
"I entered official life at a time when many of the old divisions of party bad become obliterated, not from the sacrifice of any principle of individuals, but from the exhaustion and disappearance of those great questions of pub- lic policy on which they had formerly arisen ; and I became a member of a Government which included in itself some members who had never acted together before in public life, and many more who had been opposed for a long series of years; and I can truthfully declare here, that during those two years I never saw—whatever may be the supposition out of doors—during those two years I never saw the smallest symptom of the appearance of any of the old divisions of party. Whatever differences arose were not in any degree parallel to those divisions, nor partook of the old traditions of party differences. Not only did I derive satisfaction from this, but also from another circumstance. Those years have been, as you all know, years of difficulty and of danger. There have been internal difficulties and external difficulties to a considerable extent, which you all know broke up that Go- vernment, and have ended in the dissolution of many of its principal ele- ments. Well, gentlemen, during that period I have seen something of the working of the great public men of the country ; and I can sincerely say I believe them actuated—I am not specially ranked to any statesman—actuated by the highest and purest motives ; and you may depend on it, when you put the best construction on their conduct, it is one not only the most gene- rous but the most just and the nearest to the truth. And, gentlemen, I should be the most untrue to my own feelings' and convictions, if I did not say, what you as Scotchmen will be glad to hear, whatever may be the bias of your own political opinions, that among the public men with whom I have been associated, I have have seen none whom I admired more than our dis- tinguished countryman, Lord Aberdeen. (Cheers and hisses.) I ad- mire him, gentlemen, for the singleness of his ends ; I admire him for the thorough liberality of every sentiment he entertains on every question affecting the moral, the social, and the political advancement of this great people; but, above all, I admire him for what is perhaps the rarest virtue in a popular government—for that incomparable love of justice, of truth, and of moderation, which never allows his language to partake, for the sake of passing popularity, of the passions and prejudices of the hour : and I tell you it will be ill for the English people when this is a virtue which they do not know how to honour. (Applause.) Well, gentlemen, feeling thus towards Lord Aberdeen, and feeling thus towards the Government constituted under him, I need hardly add that it has been a great pain to me to be separated from him and from several of his colleagues. Not only would it have been painful, but it would have been repugnant to my own knowledge of the fact, if that separation had taken place under cir- cumstances which could imply any assent to the popular delusion that the policy of that Government was more the policy of one section and not of the whole. But when the noble Viscount who is now at the head of the Govern- ment, I mean Lord Palmerston, received the commission from the Sovereign to form a new Government, and did me the high honour of asking that I should continue to render whatever assistance I might be able to give as a member of the House of Lords in his Government, I felt I had no valid reason to refuse; and in this opinion I was strengthened and confirmed by the ad- vice and opinion of Lord Aberdeen. I had had the high honour of being a colleague of that noble Viscount during two years. I had seen his upright and honourable conduct as a member of Lord Aberdeen's Administration ; and I never saw grounds which could lead me for an instant to suppose that a policy to which he had been a party as a member of one Government he would alter or repudiate as head of another. On the contrary, I felt the fullest conviction, that in the hands of my noble friend Lord Clarendon, under Lord Palmerston, as well as under Lord Aberdeen, the foreign policy of this country would be conducted with justice, firmness, and moderation."
Mr. Robert Wallace of Kelly, who sat in the House of Commons four- teen years as Representative for Greenock, died on Sunday last, at Sea- field Cottage, near Greenock, at the age of eighty-two. Mr. Wallace will be remembered as the persevering advocate of Post-office reform, and exposer of Post-office abuses and mismanagement. For some years he kept the subject constantly before the public, and paved the way for the great practical plan of Mr. Rowland Hill. Mr. Wallace also interested himself in the reform of Scotch law ; but the time was not ripe for the much-needed changes, and Mr. Wallace could not back his views by the fruits of a legal education. In 1846 Mr. Wallace got into pecuniary difficulties, to meet which he honourably parted with every shilling of property; and in thil strait his friends came forward and speedily raised for him, by subscription, a sum sufficient to purchase an annuity of 6001. a year. The immediate cause of Mr. Wallace's death was an attack of bronchitis, which soon proved fatal.
Thine has been some rioting at Greenock, in consequence of a street preacher having been sent to prison for a breach of the peace. A large mob demolished the windows of a Roman Catholic chapel ; and they resisted the Police for a time. A detachment of Militia was sent from Glasgow to pre- vent further disturbances.
A large addition has just been made to the public park at Holyrood, by embracing within it a field of about thirteen acres, situated North of the Duke's Walk, and East of the ground used for military exercise and parade. This field was purchased by the Board of Works some years ago ; but, the lease having just expired, it is only now available for conjunction with the pasturage of the Royal Park.
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