SOME BEACONSFIELD EPIGRAMS.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5415, 23 June 1879, Page 3

SOME BEACONSFIELD EPIGRAMS.

Lord' Beaconsfield said to a member of the -Manchester Chamber of Commerce, •who' 'came to tell him that the Chamber intended to vote resolutions condemnatory of ■ the Ministerial policy on the Eastern question : — " I have heard a good deal about Manchester ' clayed cotton,' which is disgracing the English name in China. Please tell your Chamber that if they attend.to ray business, I will try and attend to theirs." Equally smart was a stricture of his upon Birmingham, pronounced in the hearing of the heir to the throne, whom it tickled.-— *' A -curious city, Birmingham;

;its prosperity is founded on the manufacture of instruments of war and aliam jewellery, yet it has the. disinterestedness to elect three members (Bright, : Dixoii, and Muntz), who do not know .tf> gunbarrel from a pea-shooter, and Iwho never had a watchrchain between them."'. "'.• Of Mr . Carlyle he saicl^ ' \ He; ' has his reasons: for writing civilly '> of Oromw/ell— Cromwell would have hanged him." '„ Of Mr Browning : " I like Mr Browning's verses, and wish somebody would translate them into English." A lady was telling, the Premier, that she had been to Spurgeon's Tabernacle, and had heard him preach a scathing political sermon, in which he (Lord B.) was much abused. " I wish I had been there,'? was the dry rejoinder ; " I have heard he can be very amusing."