The Sun.
London, England, 1855-01-05 00:00:00

Off Gallipoli, ()It board the Magdalena, Dec. 23.

A. fortnight ago this day I left my home for the Cri-
mea. Several of my friends and neighbours had intrusted
to my care their offerings to our brave troops in that dis-
tant scene of our country's warfare, At the stations of
the South-Eastern and Brighton Railways, on which I
had to travel on my way to Portsmouth, I inquired if
those packages might be allowed to pass free. Not only
was the boon granted most readily at both, but every care
was taken to inform the servants ,at all the stations
where I had to stop on their respective lines of my be-
ingn
goodt io n
wishesstnd greetedcivility,
ma
es
well
onmi nays the
er
iatvnrayal train
n;
d warmlyawn edr
ee xe
ovp
ffer ree ysr se eda dtte o
nmy
departure without
a single exception. Even the ordinary "cloak-room "
fee was remitted on the two occasions when it was ne-
cessary for me to avail myself of those great conve-
niences. My packages consisted mainly of blankets,
articles of warm clothing, Ice.

press my gratitude, both on behalf of myself and our
I am sure you will excuse ply
brave troops, on such an occasion ; and if you think it
troubling you to ex-
worth while to publish my letter you are at full liberty
to do so.

I have the honour to subscribe myself, my dear Sir,
Very truly yours,
DAN. WINHAM,
Assistant Official Chaplain to the Army in the East

afuotilllion" lag:steeits Stotini on , in Kilkenny, a sub-constable, -late of
to a com-
rade
el The
"Camp near Balaklava, Crimea, Dec. 7, 1854.
lft the Joseph Shepherd on '
" ' There are two sides to every picture.' Up to the
time we came to Balaklava we had good times, but in-
deed going through now you
just
uhoe
seue
td thelldco823d, e
scarcelydatinos discomforts
where
pitched
believe.i
: e hr
theets d our tents a mile above Balaklava,
engagement of the sth took place, we
We are
e
and where so many of our brave countrymen fell. You
could not believe that the fine army of England is re- ,
duced to what it is out here. The few horses that are
left are scarcely able to carry their hides, and the poor
men, from the cold and hardship they are going threugh,
are scarcely able to walk. It is admitted by old sol-
diers to be the severest campaign that the English have
been engaged in for the last century. The Russian
army that engaged our troops on the sth are encamped
about three miles on our right rear ; we can see quite
plain, sitting in, our tents, the Cossack sentries, and of
course they can see Ours. We have batteries placed in
good position, and it would require a great force to dis-
lodge us. Our (the constabulary)duty at present is the
keeping the passages clear about Balaklava, and where
there is such great traffic, takingforage and everything else
that a great army requires, from Balaklava to where the
main body of the army is encamped near Sebastopol. The
roads are knee deep with mud, and to see poor men and
horses dragging and pulling along the road it would strike
pity into any person's heart. There is a good deal of the
men dying ; they take cramps from the cold of their
feet. The hospitals here are full, and they are sending
We have an
almostahem
believe
constant
ohnesshiploadsbteans besieged
g cannonading
d burn t oSci i ttahrei
mostu every a
t day,
Sbastopol, and I
powder. The French
are admittedly before the English, both in being able to
: carryneeo n
what I can hear the Russian
fleet are protecting the town, and must he dislodged be-
, aon Sebastopol.
war'stop inoi . a ,
By foreign
fore the place can be taken. The Allied forces are
throwing up batteries to play on the fleet. The Rus-
sians sally out at night to take the batteries and are
beaten back again, and I believe that is the way things
are going on there. The weather as yet is not colder
than in Ireland, but when a man gets wet to the skin he
has no place to go to but a cold tent : when he gets up in
the morning he must go about collecting wood to boil
his breakfast, which consists of green coffee, which must
be roasted on the stable shovel, pounded and thrown into
the water—that, with some biscuit, is our breakfast ; bis-
cuit and salt-beef our dinner ; supper same as breakfast.
We get 2 glasses of rum a day, which is chiefly the thing
that keeps life in us • but we hope it won't be always as
bad as it is now. If gebastopol was once taken our condi-
tion would be better. Why, if it is not taken, and that the
troops have to winter here, history will record another
1812. Some of the mounted Staff corps are in excellent
health and spirits ; and I myself never was in better
health and spirits ; and we hope, with the Divine assis-
tance, to rub out and return to our native country again.
Only two of our men died—one a mounted man from
Waterford, named Maguire, the other one of the Eng-
lish constabulary."

WIP.EI KILLED BY VER HUSBAND.—TIIO inquest OD
Ellen Bruin' the wife of Joseph Bruin, a waiter, who
was killed.by her husband throwing a teakettle at her,
as described in ne Sun of yesterday, terminated on
Wednesday evening, in a verdict of manslaughter
against the husband, who was committed for trtal at the
Liverpool assizes.

Yesterday a ceremony took place in this little maritime
town, the inauguration of a literary institute, which served
to attract the intellect and refinement of the county of Dur-
ham for miles round, and of the adjacent towns of Newcastle
and Shields, and to elicit from the learned and accomplished
historian of the great French Revolution an address which,
at this crisis of the nation's fortunes, will be read with deep
interest throughout the country, entering as it does largely
upon the discussion of the leading questions affecting the
commonweal at this moment—viz., the right education of
the people, the national debt, our system of taxation and its
results, strikes between masters and workmen, and, above
all, the great contest which we are now waging against
Russia. The building which was yesterday dedicated to
the use and benefit of the inhabitants of Seaham, some 4,000
in number, the great bulk of whom are engaged in mining
and seafaring pursuits, has been erected under the auspices,
and almost wholly at the cost, of the Marchioness of Lon-
donderry—her ladyship in that respect carrying out a wish
long dear to the heart of the lite marquis, and being
prompted as well by her own benevolent impulses. It is
in the Grecian style of architecture, after the model of the
famous Temple of Minerva at Athens, and internally it
consists of a large, lofty, and commodious lecture-room, a
library and reading room, and a news-room. Precisely at

.2 o'clock Sir L. Alison entered the lecture-room, accom-
panied by a distinguished party now enjoying the hospita-
lities of Lady Londonderry atWynyard-park in this county,
including the Marchioness herself, the Earl and Countess
Vane, the Earl and Countess of Portarlington, Lady Alison,
Lord Ernest Vane Tempest, the Earl of Sunderland (an in-
teresting boy, eldest son of the Marquis and Marchioness
of Blandford), Mr. John Vandeleur Stuart and Lady He-
len Stuart. They were cordially greeted on their arrival
by the auditory, among whom, besides the inhabitants of
the town, were many of the gentry of the surrounding
neighbourhood.
The 'Earl :VANE, having assumed the chair, said, in
doing so, the pleasing duty devolved upon him on that
occasion to introduce to their notice a distinguished indi-
vidual who had kindly consented to leave the many pur-
suits and claims upon his time and attention, in which
his eminent talents and abilities involved him, and to de-

liver the inaugural address of the Seaham Mechanics' In-
stitute. (Cheers.) It would be presumptuous in him to
enter on that occasion into any lengthened panegyric on
the character of Sir Archibald Alison, inasmuch as he
should bo very imperfectly able to express his high sense
of the abilities, and of the energy of mind and character,
which had rendered Sir Archibald so deservedly eminent
among his fellow-men, and inasmuch as they themselves
must have already formed their own estimate of his intrin-
sic merits, as the great historian of the age, whose name
would be handed down to posterity with feelings of the
deepest gratitude. (Cheers.) The noble earl proceeded
gracefully to state that the institution they were that day
inaugurating had originated in one of the dearest wishes
of the life of his late lamented father—the happiness and
prosperity of Seaham harbour, which he might be said to
have called into existence, and he expressed an ardent
hope that it would realise the beneficent aims of its
'founder.

Sir ARCHIBALD ALISON then rose to address the meet-
ing, and was received with loud and prolonged cheers. He
said, often as he had been called on to take part in
meetings of this description he never rose to speak with
feelings of warmer gratitude, and with higher satisfaction
than he did on the present occasion. He had assisted at
public meetings of this kind in many of the older cities of
the empire—in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow,
and Aberdeen; but this was the first time that he had been
honoured with an invitation to attend a meeting of a
different description, which was called not in an ancient,
bat in a rising city, which attested not the efflorescence of
civilisation, but its commencement. (Cheers.) When
they looked around thorn, and reflected on what they now
saw, in what ho might now call this rising town—this
beautiful and commodious harbour, and this flourishing
neighbourhood, and contrasted its present position with
that which obtained five-and-twenty years ago, they were
almost led to think they were placed amid, not the ancient
civilisation of England, but amid the rising energies of
America—on the shores of the Ohio, or on the banks of
Mississippi—for in no part of that promising and favoured
land had been found indications of a more rapid progress
than those they saw about them here, or the seeds of ulti-
mately a prosperous development. (Cheers.) They could
not but reflect, when they beheld around them those mag-
nificent docks and harbours, and they could not forget
when they were assembled in that hall—containing within
it so much that was interesting, attractive, and ennobling,
and constructed on the best model of Grecian taste—that
all that was mainly owing to the energy, the determina-
tion' and the patriotism of one man--(renewed cheers)—
and he trusted that as one man had laid the foundation of
that prosperity and edifice, many mon would assist in
raising the superstructure, and thus the wishes and aspi-
rations of the noble family who had founded this city on
the very shore of a stormy ocean would be more than
realised by those ou whom they had conferred those bene-
fits. Wbilst they stood in the very midst of so much that
was calculated to remind them of the illustrious noble-
man whom it had pleased Providence to take from them
within the past year, there was room for consolation when
they reflected that his mantle had not fallen on unworthy
shoulders. They had now in that room some of the sur-
viving relatives of the deceased nobleman, among whom
was to be found all that was most attractive and amiable
in the one sex, and all that was energetic, manly, and
beneficent in the other. In their presence was one who
had been the ornament of courts, and another whose chief
anxiety was, as it had always been, to see the prosperity
and happiness of all around him. (Hear.) In contemplat-
ing this rising city, and all that bad been done here within
a quarter of a century, he could not help indulging in the
hope that the efforts of the original founder of the place,
and of those noble persons who survive him, would not
prove unsuccessful to themselves. The prosperity, wealth,
and happiness which they had diffused around them, would
he trusted reflect on their own family, and that all which
they now saw about them on every hand was only a dim
foreshadowing of what ultimately was to be the grandeur
of the house of Vane. (Cheers.) There was also much in
what they saw that reminded them of the past; and it
was only by combining considerations of the past, the
present, and the future, that an institution of this kind
could have its due influence in elevating and ennobling
the human mind. In the records of this noble family
there was to be found enough to awaken and sustain the
interest of the most thoughtful men. During the last 150
years England had been engaged in three gi eat contests;
he meant the wars of the succession in the beginning of
the eighteenth century, the war of the French Revolution,
and the one in which we were now engaged. They be-
held before thorn in that room the lineal representative of
the great hero of the war of the succession. (Cheers.)
The young nobleman, then in their company (the Earl of
Sunderland), who took his title from a town in this neigh-
bourhood, as he was destined to be the lineal descendant,
so he (Sir Archibald Alison) trusted ho would be the
worthy representative of the great Duko of Marlborough.
(Hear, hear.) On the other hand, in their president, who
had just addressed them in terms characterised alike by
good taste, eloquence, and philanthropy, they had a repre-
sentative of the companion in arms and in diplomacy of
the Duke of Wellington ; and in another scion of that
noble family they had a young nobleman who was not pre-
sent at the ceremony only because lie was serving his coun-
try in the Crimea, and prepared to lay down his life for it
if required. (Cheers.) Of him it might be said, as Brutus
and Cassius said of a brave comrade in arms, that "he
was only the more present to the thought because he was
withdrawn from the sight." (Hear, hear.) It was iu the
social tendency of institutions like the ono they were now
seeking to establish, in forming and moulding private cha-
racter, in withdrawing men, and especially the humbler
orders, from habits of vies and degradation, and generally
its elevating and improving all classes of the community,
that their merit is said to consist. Far be it from him to
throw any chill on such pleasing anticipations. They must
all have seen to what a large extent these anticipations
had bean realised. But ou the present occasion he felt
that an institution of this kind ought to be regarded in an-
other light, that was to say, not so much as conducing to
lie elevation of the individual and to the virtue and hap-

piness of private families as to the due discharge of pub-
lic duties by the whole citizens of the empire. (Hear,
boar.) This was a light in which he was ready to
admit that institutions of this kind had not hi-
therto been considered, from an unwillingness on the
part of those in the habit of addressing the members of
such institutions to introduce aught in the nature of dis-
sension among them. While cordially agreeing with those
persons in that view, he still thought there were occasions
on which another line might be adopted with advantage
to all parties. And that the present was such au occasion
he thought he might, as a proof, appeal to the events pas-
sing around them, because they were events in reference
to which they all felt alike. The persons to whom he
wished to address his opinions were not merely private in-
dividuals, fathers of families, brothers, sisters, and all the
different other relations of life—he was desirous of speaking
to them as being also entrusted with certain public duties,
on the' due discharge of which the prosperity and welfare
of the empire entirely depended. It was in vain to say
they could separate the elevation and instruction of the
middle and working classes from the general prosperity of
the empire. They it was who delegated a decided majority
of representatives to the House of Commons ; and if we
were to find the foundation for wise measures,
on the part
of Government or on the part of that house, we must look
for it in wise thoughts and wise views on the part of the
constituencies. (Cheers.) It was they, and persons like
them, who formed the constituencies of the empire ; and
it was to them that the country must look for the forma-
tion of those opinions which were gradually to rise from
the great base of the pyramid of society until they
reached and properly influenced the comparatively
few individuals who were entrusted with the conduct
of public affairs. He contended that unless infor-
mation, intelligence, and wisdom were implanted in the
body of society, in whom the regulation of the nation was
vested—that was to say,in the groat majority—it was im-
possible to expect that any amount of human ability,
on the part of those who governed, was to conduct the
affairs of the nation with success, or to avert disaster. In
every point of view it was of the last importanpe that the
people of this country should be duly instructed, and that
their information should keep pace with the enlarged and
enlarging duties which they were called to discharge.
(Cheers.) Errors in conduet, either of individuals or bodies
of men, were seldom the result of want of right fooling ;
they were usually rather the result of want of knowledge;
or of misdirected knowledge. He would give one or two
instances just to show what au amount of blessing might
accrue to society if all classes, from the working man up to
the Cabinet Minister, were duly instructed, and if informa-
tion and the lessons of history were so imbibed that error
a or disastrous conduct was rendered impossible. There was

one topic of a social kind, and of great importance to all
classes of the community, to which he would advert for a
moment, and that had reference to the disastrous contests
which took place from time to time between masters and
workmen. (Hear, hear.) There was no point on which
ion were of more value than on
intelligence and information
' that. There was no subject on which practical knowledge
ought to have greater effect in promoting happiness among
the working classes, and in preventing those disasters and
misunderstandings which produced misery and heartburn-
ing among employers and employed. There was a great dif-
ference of opinion among persons as to the effect of these
strikes. They would see it often stated in the public news-
papers—it was repeatedly said during thestrike at Preston—.
that strikes were always unfortunate, and that the workmen
who engaged in them were always defeated. There were, on
the other hand, people, and generally among the workmen,
whoalleged that strikes woregenerally attended with success,
and that they were the great means which the workmen
had of raising wages. Those were the opposite feelings
floating through society on this subject ; and the effect
was that from time to time frightful collisions took place
between employers and employed, which threw hundreds
and thousands of people out of employment for months
together, seriously affected trade and commerce, and pro-
duced an amount of misery and heartburning impossible
almost to imagine. Now there was an obvious principle
by which they might distinguish truth from falsehood in
this important matter, and ho hoped to see that principle
recognised in the end. - Tho principle he apprehended to
be this, that strikes were successful when they were made
by the workmen in a rising market, in order that they
m'lght obtain a certain proportion of the profits which
were accruing to their employers • and the point when
strikes became disastrous was when they adopted that
principle which was so common among them, but which
was of all principles the most untenable, and the most de-
plorable in its results—namely, that by which, having
got their wages raised in prosperity, they sought to prevent
them falling in times of adversity. (Cheers.) A pitched
battle then often took place, on the part of the workmen,
to keep up wages, during a period of distress and suffering,
to the level which they had attaiied at a period of pre-
vious prosperity. When the workmen struck in a rising
market, they struck in their own interest, and they were
benefited by it ; but when they struck under a falling
market, they struck in the interest of the master, be-
cause the master then got quit of the working men and of
the rate of payment which he could not sustain. In
Lanarkshire, where there had been strikes as formidable
as in any other part of the empire, he had often enjoyed the
entire confidence of the leaders of those strikes, and they
often came to him for advice. He had invariably said to them
"If you 'choose to strike, don't strike when the market is
against the master. If yon want to strike, strike in a
rising market ; but don't strike when the market is falling.
You can always judge of the tendency of the market by
the state of the funds. If you choose, I will send you
newspapers by which you can ascertain, in a moment, the
state of the funds ; and when the funds are falling, for
God's sake don't attempt it." There was another matter
in regard to taxation in whioh he wished to impress upon
them, and through them upon the country, how desirable
it was that an institution of this kind should, if possible,
bring the working classes up to a level with the necessities
of the case, and put them abreast of their real situation.
He slid not know if they were aware that one-half of the
whole taxation that now pressed upon the country—
?6,ooo,oool. a-year—might have been avoided, and the
whole of it have been taken off, if the advice that was ten-
dered to the people of the country in former times hod
been followed, and if the sinking fund existing at the end
of the war had been kept up to discharge its debt. Them
was at the end of the war 15,000,0001. a-year of sinking
fund ; and if that had been kept up, we should have had
at this moment no national debt at all, It would have
been all paid off in the year 1845, and we could have car-
ried on the war to all eternity withiut either a loan or
any other assistance. (Loud cheers.) But now the op-
portunity was lost. 15,000,0001. a-year at compound
interest would have paid off the whole debt iu 1845, and
10,009,0001. is-year would have paid off the whole debt by
this time ; and since the peace we had repealed taxation to
the amount of 40,000,0001. a-year. Why was it that this
enormous benefit had been lost? It was just owing to this,
that the middle and working classes had not been properly
instructed, and did not know their duty ; and now the debt I
remained a hopeless burden on the national energies. These
were facts in reference to which he wanted the people in-
structed- He could not refrain from adverting for a
moment to the subject which almost wholly absorbed the
national mind at this time—he meant the present state of
the war. They could not look at a newspaper, or mix with
society, without feeling that that was the all-prevailing ob-
ject of anxiety. There was hardly a family in the country
who had not a father, a brother, a relation, or a friend at
present serving in the Crimea. Of the family of their
noble patroness (the Marchioness of Londondon7) there
was one member with the army before Sebastopol, and of
his (Sir Archibald Alison's) own family there were to be
found two sons engaged in the same perilous duty. (Hear.)
How many families were there to whom the departure of
relatives for that service carried sorrow and anxiety, and
from whom the receding sails of each transport-ship wafted
away at once all the endearing memories of the past and all
the hopes of the future, and cast them on the ultimate
issue of events which no human wisdom could fathom. To
them might be truly applied the words of an old English
poet :
" Then go, and round your gallant heads, like banners in
the air,
Shall float full many a tender thought, and many an
ardent prayer."
(Cheers.) When such had been the interest which the
present war had excited, it was of the last importance
that we should what was the nature of the enemy with
whom we had to contend, and what was the cause of
tet
hh.
nd
gat, nnaxtki ioiennt ywt. o
thi
hci
hce h
flowed
had sonedd
es
zu
ucd
yrd eofinfrl
te
fcteh,
aiattin?i: ep dh
H se would
thi e n tohrs iol
ml
tellof
them. The power with whom we had to contend was o
despicable enemy. He was at the head of an empire n
eoe
70,000,000 of men, who doubled themselves every seventy
years. The whole energies of the nation were dedicated to
war or to preparations for war. Commerce, agriculture,
science, art, were all held in subordination to the leading
passion. Every young man of any ability was sent to the
military schools ; 180,000 men were being constantly so
educated, and the ablest among them were reserved from
time to time to the profession of diplomacy. At the head
of that empire was to be found a man of most remarkable
character, who would leave his deeds durably imprinted
on the records of history. He was a man of energy, of
unshaken courage, of great determination. He was cor-
dially supported by the whole Russian nation—for the
Russians were unanimous on that point. Every man, from
the Emperor himself down to the serf, was iuspressed with
the idea that the Russians were to conquer the world, and
that they themselves were to be the instruments of its sub-
jugation. To this man, so qualified, and characterised by
such extraordinary and extravagant ambition, might be
applied, with a slight alteration, the lines of a poet of the
last century

" No jots to him pacific sceptres yield;
War sounds the trump, he rushes to the field ;
Behold, surrounding kings their power combine.
* *

Peace courts his hand, but spreads her charms in vain ,
' Think nothing gained,' he cries, `till nought remain,
On Stamboul's walls till Russian standards fly,
And all be iniee beneath the Eastern sky.'"
(Cheers.) How was it, again, that in this contest with this
great power wo had made so sudden a transition from the
exultation of victory to the despondency of defeat? That
was to be found in the neglect of the experience of former
wars. They saw that a great deal of blame was sought by
the public journals to be laid on this Minister and on that
journal. He stood there neither to vindicate one Minister
nor another, nor ono general nor another; but ho stood
there to point out to his fellow-countrymen the errors and
faults, he would almost say the national crimes, which had
led to this war as a national punishment. We had been,
all along, unduly confident in our position, and had over-
looked, during the long peace, all future preparation for
war. The infatuation of the country in this respect had
been such that when it came to be recorded in the pages of
history it would appear almost incredible. There had not
been a single Minister since 1815 that had not come into
power, or endeavoured to retain power, by perpetual re-
ductions of the army and navy. That had not been a
matter of party. Whigs, Tories, and Radicals had hadthe
same end in view, and among them they had done their
best to render this great nation utterly powerless in the
midst of its neighbours. The people who returned the
House of Commons, which had the command of the purse
strings, did not know, when one by ono they were reducing
some small articles of taxation, that there was going on at
the same elm° the loss of the sinking fund, and the utter
prostration of the country for any purposes of just ag-
gression or defence. Three times during that pacific
period, when we were constantly reducing our arma-
ments, we were on the very verge of destruction from the
weakness of our military and naval forces. At that very
period we were three times on the eve of a war—twice
with France, and once with France and Russia united.
Indeed, so near a war were we on that last oc-
casion that the ambassadors of France and Russia
had left London. What was our force then ? At
that time, if the French had attempted to land on our
shores, we could only have opposed to them 10,200 infan-
try, and 42 guns, the carriages of which had not been re-
paired siuco the battle of Waterloo. (Laughter.) Really,
in this matter there was but one mode of securing national
independence and a durable peace, and that was by being
always prepared for war. Dining the 40 years of peace
and showing that
e pt ha
ree sdi nfoosry s
any of war
purpose,
of successful
weNv e wh had
dr
e been
wholly relaxing
defence. We were the richest nation in the world, and
the greatest in commerce ; wo were the object of envy to
every State under the sun ; and was it wise—was it not
rather the height of madness—in a country like this to go
on reducing its armaments year after year, and so pro-
claiming to the world that we were in no condition to fight
in the event of being menaced by aggression or hostility ?
Ho must say, our existence as a nation at this time might
almost be ascribed wholly to Divine interposition, for it
had not been preserved either by the wisdom of our states-
men or of our people. Why was it that we were now in-
volved in such serious danger ? It was just because our
army was one-third of its proper size. Suppose when the
war broke out England had had 100,000 regular troops,
20,000 cavalry, and 80,000 militia, we should then have
gained a decisive success in the first campaien. With
40,000 men in the Baltic wo could have taken. Cron-
stadt ; and suppose we had sent at once 50,000 to the
Crimea, we should have bee* able to destroy the enemy's
great fortress on the Euxine. If there had been 6,000
cavalry, instead of 700 at the battle of the Alma, the re-
treat of the enemy would have been converted into a
total rout •, and at Balaklava— fought on the anniversary
of the battle of Agincourt, after the lapse of 430
years—if we had had 5,000 more English troops, the valu-
able road from Balaklava to the camp would have been
protected, and 5,000 English horse would have rode tri-
umphant through 10,000 Russians. At the battle of
Inkerman, again, which was destined to be immortal in the
world, and would take its place with these of Marathon
and Platen, if we had had 20,000 more English troops,
while with the right wing we hurled the Russian bat-
talions down the heights of Inkerman, with the left wing
we would have taken Sebastopol, and the two Grand
Dukes, who were present at the action, would only. have
come up to see the total destruction of their father's hopes.
(Cheers.) Before ho concluded he would make one re-
mark of a more general character, and that was, as to the
probability of the future continuance of war, and the
moral purpose which war was intended to serve in the
admiuistratio4 of nature. We had heard a good deal of

On the motion of the Rev. A. BETHUNE, seconded by
Mr. R. PLUMMER, a vote of thanks was accorded by ac-
clamation to Sir Archibald Alison for his interesting and
eloquent address. A similar compliment was paid to
Earl Vane for presiding as chairman, and with that the
ceremony terminated.