Scotland is doing well, and, indeed, more than well, and no part of Scotland I believe, in proportion, better than Edinburgh.  I cannot say with what pleasure I heard the figures given out by the Lord Provost and those which have been supplied to me by the gallant gentleman who has the Scottish command [cheers,] which show, indeed, as we expected, that Scotland is more than holding her own.  In that connection let me repeat what I said two weeks ago in London.  We think it of the highest importance that so far as possible, and subject to the accidents of war, people belonging to the same place, breathing the same atmosphere, having the same associations, should be kept together.

Our recruits come to us spontaneously, under no kind of compulsion, [cheers,] of their own free will to meet a national and an imperial need.  We present to them no material inducement in the shape either of bounty or bribe, and they have to face the prospect of a spell of hard training from which most of the comforts and all the luxuries that any of them have been accustomed to are rigorously banished.  But then, when they are fully equipped for their patriotic task, they will have the opportunity of striking a blow, it may be even of laying down their lives, not to serve the cause of ambition or aggression, but to maintain the honor and the good faith of our country, to shield the independence of free States, to protect against brute force the principles of civilization and the liberties of Europe. [Loud cheers.]

* * * * *

MR. ASQUITH AT DUBLIN.

Speech in the Round Room of the Mansion House, Sept. 25.

My Lord Mayor:  Some weeks ago I took it upon myself to suggest to the four principal Magistrates of the United Kingdom that they should afford me an opportunity of making a personal appeal to their citizens at a great moment in our national history.  I have already delivered my message in London and in Edinburgh.  To the first of those great communities I was able to speak as an Englishman by birth and as a Londoner by early association and long residence.  To the second, the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Scotland, I had special credentials as having been for the best part of thirty years one of their representatives in the House of Commons, ["Hear, hear!”] and now, indeed, by one of the melancholy privileges of time the senior among the Scottish members. [Laughter.] But, my Lord Mayor, tonight when I come to Dublin I can put forward neither the one claim nor the other. [A Voice—­Home Rule.] I base my title, such as it is, to your hospitality and your hearing upon such service as during the whole of my political life I have tried with a whole heart and to the best of my faculties and opportunities to render to Ireland. [Cheers.] I come here, not as a partisan, not even as a politician, but I come here as for the time being the head of the King’s Government, [cheers,]