The Sun.
London, England, 1859-10-28 00:00:00

a station of respectability; or, not even that, tell
me hew many men owe it to the noble lord that
they have been enabled to bring up their families
with respectability, with good sense, with a know-
ledge of their duty to the State and to God—,
(cheers)—tell me that ; count them, no blue-book
will tell it ; but to every family and to every man
of whom that can be said, we can point and say,
" Here are the results of the triumphs of educa-
tion." (Loud and renewed cheers.) Ido not in-
tend to trespass longer upon your time. I shall
conclude with one single sentiment regarding the
future. The noble lord and his coadjutors—but he,
indeed, stood almost alone—had it in view when
their labours commenced—and none has it more at
heart now—to elevate the great mass of the work-
ing community of this country. I believe that has
been done to a degree which it is impossible to
gauge; but which, in all probability, it is difficult
to overrate. But there is a great deal more to be
done. My only observation—and with this I will
conclude—is this, that intelligence has so much
spread among the working classes of this country,
that they are so respected, so powerful, and so in-
telligent that I believe that the next great move-
ment in social reform and in educational economics
must be a movement in that cause by themselves—
that it is for the working men especially to provide,
or at all events to promote the cause of education
among themselves, and it is my belief that the time
is not far distant when, instead of standing upon
platforms and dwelling upon the benefits of educa-
tion to an educated audience like this before me, we
shall have the working men taking up the cause
themselves, and through the families of the work-
ing classes themselves insisting that every child
shall be taught to read and write, and that educa-
tion shall be the standard among themselves of re-
spectability and worth. (Cheers.) I have to pro-
pose " The Education of the People." (The toast
was drunk amid loud cheering.)
Lord BROUGHAM then rose to propose " The
College of Justice." He said—My Lord Provost, I
am about to propose to you a toast in which I take
a very great interest, an interest, indeed, I may
say personally felt by me in it for very nearly 60
years—l mean the College of Justice, for next
February I shall have been for 60 years a member
of that great body (cheers), and I will say as to the
members of it, whether of the judges or of the
advocates, or of the writers, or other agents, all of
whom I have constant, I may say daily, experience,
in my judicial capacity in the House of Lords on
appeals, that I have there had the experience of
their sound sense, their wisdom, and their liberality
in the various measures for the amendment of the
law which it has been my lot for many years to
bring forward. (Applause.) I have found the
most marked difference—but they say comparisons
are odious, and therefore I won't compare my
brethren of the College of Justice with any other
bodies ; but I will say of them that I have found
them 'singularly liberal and sound in their princi-
ples in all 'questions concerning the improvement of
the law. . (Cheers.) I speak this with the most
distinct recollection of the particulars; but there
has been a work published by my friend Sir Eard-
ley Wilmot, containing an account of my bills and
acts, forming, no doubt, a very cumbrous volume—
cumbrous in all respects—(a laugh)—difficult to
buy, difficult to read, and I need scarcely say diffi-
cult to remember when you have read it ; but I see
there has been advertised by Sir Eardley within the
lastjtwo or three days a very short abridgment of
the larger book, containing not the details of all the
acts and hills, but containing the substance of them
in short discourses in a very small handy book, and
they who will look at it will see a proof of what I
have said, because I am very much mistaken if it
does not appear that of the obstacles, and obstruc-
tions, and delays which were interposed to these
various great improvements, not one of them came
from members of the College of Justice. I would
say more in praise of the members of the college
were I not in the presence of the heads of the court,
but. indeed that would be superfluous, for every
one who has presided in the Housa of Lords as long
as I have done in appeals must know the infinite
merit of the decisions of these learned judges.
(Cheers.)
Lord President M'NEILL, in acknowledging the
toast on behalf of the senators and members of the
College of Justice, said-1 hat our humble efforts to
maintain the character and reputation of that in-
stitution should have elicited such expressions of
approbation from our noble guest is in my estima-
tion no mean reward; for of all living men he is
perhaps the best qualified and the best entitled to
form an opinion, and to pass a judgment upon that
point. In saying this, Ido not allude merely to his
acknowledged talents and erudition, and scientific
attainments, nor even to the wide range of his ac-
quaintance with the laws of nations, as well as our
national system of jurisprudence. (Hear, hear.) I
allude also, and more especially, to his most distin-
guished professional character, both forensic and
Judicial, He is a member, as he has said, of the Col-
lege of Justice; and a considerable portion of his
long life has been devoted to the study and practice
of our law. He made himself familiar with it, and
when he had to devote his attention more particu-
larly to the law of the sister kingdom he did not
forget, but, on the contrary, he improved, the les-
sons of his eat her training ; and when, in the course
of time, and by the force of his talents and his cha-
racter, he became a member of the highest legal
tribunal, and had to deal with Scottish interest in
the Court of last resort, he did not forget that
such interests could be justly dealt with only in ac-
cordance with the established law of Scotland.
(Applause.) He was not afraid, and hehad no cause
to be afraid, to draw on the resources of his own
previous knowledge and familiarity with those
laws. (Applause.) We, the present members and
senators of the College of Justice, cannot expect to
attain to the high and distinguished reputation
which still attaches to the name of some of our pre-
decessors. They were giants in their own time, and
the race of giants is now fast wearing away, al-
though I cannot be permitted in the presence of the
noble lord to say that it is yet extinct. I can-
not conclude without congratulating the College of
Justice on the honour of having among their mem-
bers one so distinguished as the noble lord. (Cheers.)
He is our solitary representative in the great as-
sembly to which he belongs ; for although the rolls
of the College of Justice disclose the names of many
who would have done honour to any country, and
to any age, yet it so happens that that distinction
which in the sister kingdom is frequently bestowed
on the profession of the law, and not unfrequently
too in the sister island, has I believe hitherto in no
instance since the Union been given to the profes-
sion of the law in Scotland. (Hear, hear.)
Mr. Solicitor-General MAITLAN D proposed " Both
Houses of Parliament."
The Duke of ARGYLL in reply said,—My Lcrd
Provost and gentlemen, it will never be otherwise
than a grateful task to return thanks iu the name
of the Parliament of Great Britain—that most an-
cient and famous Parliament, whose manly and in-
dependent spirit—a spirit at the same time the
most loyal and the most peaceful, delighting in the
love of liberty and in the love of law, the happiest
union for the welfare of the people, and whose ex•
ertions have built up our constitution through pre-
ceding ages, and have made it what it is, the ad-
miration and the envy of the world. (Cheers.)
Gentlemen, I need hardly tell you that I have no
right to thank you for that which is the most
powerful branch of Parliament—the House of Com-
mons. I deeply regret to say that I never had an
opportunity of belonging to that great body. I
believe that if it is not necessary, at least it is the
best entrance to public life—(hear, hear)—and I
have never ceased to regret that I had not an op-
portunity of entering the House of Commons. One
word I may perhaps be allowed to say, not so much
as a member of the Legislature as a member of the
Government, that having seen the deliberations of
one or two Governments at very critical times, I
have never known an instant's hesitation as to
appealing to the House of Commons on any ques-
tion in which the interests and honour of this coun-
try were concerned. (Cheers.) That is a ques-
tion upon which no minister ever entertains for one
moment a single doubt. (Loud cheers.) In regard
to that assembly to which I have the honour to
belong, I trust, gentlemen, you will allow me to
say that though it is not an elected, it is not the
less on that account a representative assembly.
(Hear, hear.) It is not, indeed, representative—
for I repudiate the idea—of any one class, or of any
one interest of the hingdom. (Cheers.) It repre-
sents the great historic memories of our national
growth, the great barons of the olden time, the
great lawyers, the great statesmen, and the great
orators of every succeeding generation. (Loud
cheers.) It represents their memory ; and I trust
I may be allowed to say that it represents some-
thing more than their memory—something of their
spirit also. (Renewed cheers.) Nothing can be
more different than the right apparently by which
I have the honour of sitting in that assembly and
the right by which my noble and learned friend
whom we have met here to honour to-night has
acquired by his own exertions and his own tran-
scendant abilities a title to sit in it. (Loud cheers.)
I acknowledge from the heart the immense supe-
riority of the one and the great inferiority of the
other. (Renewed applause.) But this I will say,
that he must be dead to some of the best feelings of
our nature in whom ancient and honourable descent
are not a stimulus to a life of continued and hon-
chargecl by
geehrsi2
tiAiendketel
the Pecra,)%73 of this country it is not for
hon-
ourable exertion. (Prolonged cheers.) How far
fol you, if you can, to acknowic-di4c
that duty, that. ~tcylorlin obligation, has been dis-
me to say ; it is
lappreciateem ethat,
it.alth(Coun nliselonvtiielsltssa.
agnendt
of
public life, and the unlimited freedom of expression
which exists in this country, we may sometimes, at