NARRATIVE OF POLITICS.

Parliament has been Prorogued from the 16th instant
to the 14th of December.

At the banquet in Guildhall on the installation of the
new Lord Mayor, Mr. Moon, on the 9th inst., Lord
Aberdeen, in acknowledging the toast of her Majesty's
ministers, made some observations on the state of the
War. "In acknowledging," he said, "the cordiality
of my reception, and in returning thanks for the honour
which you have been pleased to confer on my colleagues
and myself, there are various topics to which, perhaps,
I might without impropriety advert; but I wish to do
so in a few words, and to allude only to that subject by
which the minds of all men are at this moment entirely
engrossed. My Lord Mayor, on this day last year, when
I had the honour of being present in this hall and
addressing those who were then assembled, we still
continued to enjoy a state of peace. It is true that the
prospect was then threatening, but as war was not
imminent, and as the policy of her Majesty's Government
was a policy of peace, I declared that no effort would be
wanting on their part to endeavour to preserve peace.
I know it is the opinion of many persons that those
efforts were too long protracted, and that we ought
much earlier to have had recourse to the arbitrement of
the sword. So far is that from being my opinion, that,
in spite of the justice of the war, and in spite or its
disinterested objects, I am perfectly persuaded that it
never would have received the universal support it has
met with in this country and the sympathy of Europe,
had it not been clearly seen and fully admitted that
every effort was employed to avert the horrors of war.
I think it not improbable that many of those who have
been eager for war may perhaps he found easily
discouraged by those vicissitudes to which a state of warfare
is proverbially liable; but I trust that you will never
find anything of that sort, on the part of her Majesty's
Ministers. We are determined, under all circumstances,
to persevere in the endeavour to perform our duties in
such a manner as we think our Sovereign and our
country have a right to expect from us; keeping steadily
in view the great objects of the war, and looking to the
permanent interests of this country. Acting, too, in
strict concert with our great ally, I cannot entertain a
doubt that we shall be enabled to bring this contest to
a happy termination." These observations were received
with loud and general cheering.

Lord John Russell having been entertained at a great
banquet by the Corporation of Bristol, delivered an
address on the subject of The War, which made a great
impression on the assembly. He vindicated the conduct
of the campaign, giving a compressed history of the
period between the declaration of war and the landing
of the allies in the Crimea.—"Gentlemen (he said), you
will agree with me, that I should scarcely discharge my
duty of thanking you for your kindness, were I to do so
without alluding to that leading topic of the day which
engages all minds, which keeps us all in continued and
increasing anxiety, and which, I am constrained to add,
while it has brought fresh glory on our arms, has filled
many hearts with sorrow and affliction. My lords and
gentlemen, those who may have hitherto thought
lightly of the calamities of war must now be convinced
that we, who have now embarked in it, urged to it by
cruel necessity, were not wrong in pausing long—in
exhausting all the means of preserving peace ere we
entered upon war. Yet I trust that we shall prove, as
we have proved, both as a government and a nation,
that if we have been slow to enter into a quarrel, we
shall yet bear ourselves in the quarrel so 'that the
opposer may beware of us.' It is now three-quarters of
a year since we entered into hostilities with a power
which boasted of some six-hundred thousand men, and
which proclaimed that, with its allies, in the course of
the last winter, those six-hundred thousand men would
be raised to a million—with a power which had twenty-
seven ships of the line in the Baltic and eighteen in the
Black Sea. This was a foe worthy to be met by the
forces of England and of that ally who has stood by us
with the greatest constancy, who has taken counsel with
us, and has stood by us in the field as in the cabinet. I
allude to the Government of the French empire. Well,
gentlemen, since that time we have seen, with regard to
the naval part of the operations, that, whereas in former
wars we contended with enemies who came out at least
to endeavour to win naval renown, in this we have shut
up the enemy in his ports and prevented any operations
against us. Among the first considerations which came
before us, was what steps should be taken to prevent
the march of a great army which was in progress against
an enemy despised by the chiefs among the Russians,
despised by her statesmen and her generals—I mean
Turkey. It was said and boasted that the Turkish
empire could never do anything against the Russian
armies. For us, seeing at least that the army of Turkey
was not equal to the Russian army, not amounting to
one-fourth of it, and that her finances were disarranged,
we had to consider how best to assist her. Constantinople
could not have been saved by fleets, for fleets would not
have prevented the march of the Russian legions. After
much consideration, and much communication with the
French generals and statesmen, it was determined to land
an army—a considerable army—on those shores; and the
question arose who should be placed at the head of it.
That question was soon decided, because there was one
man, Lord Raglan, who had been constantly by the side
of the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular war, who
was beloved and admired by the army, and who had
justified every reliance and answered every expectation.
When Lord Raglan (Lord John Russell continued)
placed himself at the head of the army near Constantinople,
he immediately had an interview with Omar
Pasha with respect to the steps it would be necessary to
take. It was determined not to risk the Turkish army
in the field against the organised troops of Russia, which
would have given those troops considerable advantage.
The interview took place at Varna. It has been stated
that Omar Pasha had asked for assistance from the
allied armies to relieve Silistria, and I have seen a statement
in the public papers that it would have been only
necessary to have sent ten thousand men for that purpose:
but, my lords and gentlemen, men accustomed to military
duty, men of great experience, caution, and judgment,
do not concur in that opinion; neither Marshal
St. Arnaud, Lord Raglan, nor Omar Pasha so judged
of the matter. Although Omar Pasha had succeeded
in repelling the Russians, and might have succeeded
without the presence of the allied army, still I
believe that Russia would have renewed her aggressive
attacks again and again, and might have in the end
proved successful, had it not been for the neighbourhood