“With respect to you, Soldiers, there never was a period when the country had stronger claims on your attachment; when the regulations of the service so carefully provide for your maintenance, your comfort, and your protection, while serving; your support and honourable retirement, when age and infirmity render you incapable of active duty; and I may say, with confidence, there never was a time when the British soldiers were more sensible of the advantages they enjoy—more firm in their allegiance—more faithfully devoted to their King and country. “And whenever your services shall again be required to encounter the enemies of our country in the field, need I say to the CONNAUGHT RANGERS, by these Colours you must stand or fall—with these Colours you must conquer or perish?” The Commanding Officer, Colonel O’Malley, replied to the Major-General as follows:— “It becomes my duty for the Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers, and Soldiers of the EIGHTY-EIGHTH, to return thanks to you, Lady Woodford, and to you, Sir Alexander, for the honour done to us this day; in performing which duty, I feel, with much regret, how very incapable I am to do justice to the occasion, or to the grateful feelings towards you, which animate me and every individual of the regiment. “RANGERS! the Colours you have just received have been in my possession above two years, in which I have watched over them with a constant and anxious desire to witness their delivery to you. Unavoidable circumstances have hitherto prevented this, more especially, which we all have viewed with deep sympathy and regret, the long and severe indisposition of Lady Woodford. We have now, however, thanks to the Almighty, the great satisfaction to see her Ladyship on this parade in renewed health and strength; under any circumstances you would receive with pleasure and honour throughout your lives, those Colours, borne as they are on the old and wounded poles which accompanied the regiment through many successful and triumphant battles, and with the only remaining fragments of the old Colours attached to them; but tenfold will be your satisfaction in having received them through the hands of Lady Woodford, a circumstance in itself which could not fail to insure them your respect and devotion; of this I was fully aware, when in your name I solicited her Ladyship to present those Colours. “In reference to them, identified as they are with the history and gallant achievements of the regiment, I might, and would say much, and that without a fear of the charge being made against me, of sounding my own praises, (for, unhappily, I had no share in the deeds of glory to which I allude); but my feelings, excited by the very impressive address that the Major-General has had the goodness to make to us, and by the interesting presentation of the Colours by Lady Woodford, altogether unfit me for the task.