Accept the expression of my hearty thanks for your kind welcome, and for the gratifying assurance of your loyal and affectionate attachment to the Queen and her Family. I have been much pleased by the opportunity which your kind invitation has afforded me of seeing and admiring the great work which you this day open to the public—a work which not only deserves all admiration in itself, on account of the excellence of the arrangements and the magnificence of the design, but which will, I trust, be found eminently conducive to the comfort and health of the City of London. That its success will be commensurate with the spirit in which it has been undertaken and carried out I cannot doubt. A certain dislocation of habits and interests must inevitably attend the removal of the great City market from the site it has occupied for so many centuries, and this may possibly retard for the moment the fullest development of the undertaking; but any opposition arising from such causes will soon cease, and the farmers will, doubtless, soon learn to appreciate the boon thus conferred upon them by the Corporation of London in the increased facility which will be afforded to them for the transaction of their business and the comparative security with which they will be enabled to bring up and display their valuable stock in the Great Metropolitan Cattle Market.
[The Lord Mayor gave the health of His Royal Highness, who, in responding to the toast, said]—
My Lord Mayor,—
I return you my best thanks for the honour you have done me in proposing my health, and to you, gentlemen, for the kindness with which you have responded to the toast.
It has given me very great pleasure to have been able to accept the invitation of the Lord Mayor to be present at the opening of this splendid and useful work; and I beg to assure him that the oftener he shall invite me to similar ceremonies, the better I shall be pleased.
This wonderful metropolis, which has already gathered beneath its roofs nearly two million and a half of human beings, and has even within these last six years added not less than 290 miles of street to its extent, imperatively requires that those establishments which are to minister to the common wants of the whole should keep pace with its growth and magnitude. They can only be undertaken by public bodies, they can only be successfully carried out by public spirit. I know that the difficulties which have to be overcome, where so much private capital has acquired vested interests, are immense; but I hail the spirit which is rising amongst us, and which, I doubt not, will meet those difficulties. I hail this instance as an earnest of your determination to accept the duties which your position has imposed upon you, and as a proof that success will at all times reward a bold and conscientious execution of them.
I beg now to propose to you to drink the “Health of the Lord Mayor and Corporation of the City of London, and Prosperity to the New Metropolitan Cattle Market.”