local administration; and the excuse for sending out Thomson, and accepting Colborne's resignation, is the necessity of appointing a Governor thoroughly acquainted with all that has passed both abroad and at home, cognisant of the intentions, and possessed of the confidence of the Cabinet. All this will appear to furnish inadequate grounds for recalling Colborne, who has acted with sense and vigour, albeit not pretending to be a statesman or a legislator. A story is told, which shows the levity of the Government people, and how they make game of what might be thought matter of anything but pleasantry to them. At the end of the season there is always a fish dinner at Greenwich, the whipper-in (Secretary of Treasury), Ben Stanley, in the chair; and this is on the plan of the Beefsteak Club, everybody saying what he pleases, and dealing out gibes and jests upon his friends and colleagues according to the measure of his humour and capacity. Normanby, still smarting from the attacks of Brougham, was made the mark for these jocularities, after his health being drunk thus: 'Lord Normanby and the liberation of the Prisoners.' At a subsequent period, Rutherford, the Lord Advocate, attacked the Attorney-General, and said he had long known his learned friend as the advocate of liberty, but he had lately seen him in quite a new capacity, prosecuting in the Tory fashion, and having people shut up in jail in all parts of the country. Campbell said it was very true that he had lately had a very unpleasant duty to perform, and that he had been the unwilling instrument of incarcerating many of Her Majesty's subjects, but that he had all along been consoled by the reflexion that there was every probability of his noble friend Lord Normanby making a progress, during the recess, and letting them all out again. Normanby, however, did not like the witticism, and complained afterwards that the dinner was very dull, and the jokes exceedingly heavy. [Page Head: A GREENWICH DINNER.] The Dover dinner to the Duke of Wellington,[1] which took place the other day, did not present an agreeable spectacle. Brougham, who had thrust himself in among the party, was pitched upon, as having the best gift of the gab, to propose the Duke's health, which he did in a very tawdry speech, stuffed with claptraps and commonplaces. It was a piece of bad taste to select Brougham (who had nothing to do with Dover) for the performance of this office, which would have been more appropriately discharged by the local authority in the chair, although he might not have been able to make such a flourish as the practised orator favoured the company with. The Duke himself hates to be thus bepraised, and it is painful to see Brougham and him in any way connected, though for so ephemeral a purpose. The Duke's health might be proposed in three lines of Ovid, which express the position he fills more, and probably better, than the most studied oration could do:--