The Press.
London, England, 1858-11-13 00:00:00

LORD SHAFTESBURY AND THE HOUSE OF

LORDS.
AT the dinner given by the Prime Warden and
Livery of the Fisrnongers' Company, on Tuesday,
Lord SHAFTESBURY, in returning thanks for his
health, availed himself of the opportunity to reply to
the remarks recently made by Mr. Bright on the con
stitution of the House of Lords. The noble lord
said :—At a great public meeting not long ago, he
observed some very erroneous but very weighty words
fall from the lips of a very distinguished orator, who,
speaking of the House of Lords, said it was a
proud, exclusive, arrogant body, and that the inscrip-
tion over the doors of that house should be one
which bore these ominious worth, " No traders ad-
mitted here." Now he would take this opportunity
of saying that neither himself nor any other member
of the House of Lords whom he knew could be any
party either to the use of such an expression, or to
the adoption of such a principle as that motto might
be supposed to illustrate. He believed, indeed, that
every other member of the House of Lords was as
deeply convinced as he was that the grand distinction
between the peerage of this country and the nobility
of every other country was that the British peerage
had been, still was, and by God's blessing would
continue to be, recruited from every class, rank, and
order of her Majesty's subjects. The whole force, the
intellectual, mural, and be might say the physical
vigour of our aristocracy was sustained by this peen.
liarity in its constitution ; because, if we looked for
example to the Spanish aristocracy, we might see
how the exclusiveness of their system, and their close
intermarriages amongst themselves, had reduced
them to the most miserable effigies of men ; whilst
in this country the main strength of our hereditary
peerage, and its unimpaired preservation, were due
to the fact that the doors of their house were thrown
wide open, and ever ready for the admission of every
man who by his intellect and character was enabled
to command success. Depend upon it the House of
Lords had done wisely in this respect, and not only
as a matter of Christian feeling, not only from a sense
of justice or patriotism, but even with a lower view
of self-interest, for their own sakes, and for the sakes
of those who were to come after them and inherit
their position, they might desire, as he knew they did,
to have their own body still recruited from amidst the
ranks of the people, because it was from the people
that their strength was drawn. But if at this moment
there could be found in the peerage any one so
foolish, so arrogant, and of so contemptible a spirit
as to maintain the sentiment which was alluded to by
the great orator at Birmingham, the exclusiveness
even of such a person as that would be ready to make
an exception in favour of the great Company of the
worshipful Fishmongers of London.

MR. BRIGHT'S PEACE PRINCIPLES.
THE inauguration of two guns captured at Sebastopol
and presented to the citizens of York by Lord
Panmure during his connection with the late Govern.
ment, took place on Friday. These trophies of
war were carried in procession through the principal
streets of the city, prior to their being deposited in
their final resting-place, which is within a few
hundred yards of the castle. The military would
have joined the procession had not a countermanding
order been received from the Duke of Cambridge,
who gave as his reason for making the order that if
the soldiers were allowed to take part in the proces-
sion it might be looked upon as an unfriendly act
towards a now friendly power. This order bad also
the effect of preventing the officers belonging to the
btbilussars irom attending the grand banquet in the