The lords enjoyed a lively debate about the National Exhibition, planned for the following year. There was ‘much laughter’!
House of Lords, Friday March 22.
“Lord Brougham, with reference to the National Exhibition of 1851, said tradesmen ought not to be called upon the subscribe towards it, as it would be predjudicial to their present interest, though in after years it might produce benefits. He though the nation should subscribe 50,000l. or 60,000l. He complained that at the Lord Mayor’s banquest, or, as he designated it, the meeting of the ‘House of Mayors,’ Lord Stanley had spoen of his (Lord Brougham) as being volatile. – Earl Granville defended the object of the exhibitions from the sarcasms of Lord Brougham; and Lord Overstone, in an admirable maiden speech, said that the sneers of the noble and learnéd lord at the assembly at the Mansion-house were unbecoming, and ill assorted with those principles by the advocacy of which Lord Brougham obtained political station and power. – Lord Stanley also replied to Lord Brougham, and remarked of him, ‘In point of quickness, of activity, or rapidity, and pungency, I think that sal volatile* is nothing to him. I defy any human power, I defy even the noble and learnéd lord himself, – to apply a stopper, whether of glass or any other material, to the intensity, the activity, the ingenuity, and the pungency of his mind. (Much laughter.) But for the future, in order to form a more correct estimate of the noble and learnéd lord’s character, I shall regard him, upon his own showing, as a grave, a serious, a plodding, proper, slow, heaavy individual, not apt to form a hasty judgement, still less to pass a hasty opinion, and never making use of an expression which it might be desirable to recall (laughter), but as one who, by intense labour and study, makes himself master of one subject at a time and no more, never venturing to speak upon any question until he has made himself thoroughly master of it. (Much laughter.)”
The Stamford Mercury, 29th March, 1850.
*sal volatile – a type of smelling salts.