p. 442) that the whole body collected at the Westminster Palace Hotel on the 2nd and 3rd November last, "were not prepared to advocate a duty on manufactured goods without imposing also a duty on foreign food; and although they all wished to place the Colonies on privileged terms, yet few were disposed to give them free entry to the markets of our agriculturists." So it may be assumed that all Fair Traders, who have the courage of their convictions, admit that any fiscal reform which is to benefit the British farmer must include, either a protective duty of a decided character on all corn, both colonial and foreign, or a bounty on cultivation. Two definite proposals, fulfilling these conditions, have been placed before the public during the past year, but neither has met with a very enthusiastic reception. In February last a Mr. Poynter unfolded to the Central Chamber of Agriculture a scheme for a bounty on wheat-growing, which was, briefly, to place a duty of 2s. 6d. a quarter on imported corn, a duty of 5s. a sack on imported flour, a duty "sufficient to place the English grower on an equality with the foreigner " upon any other imported produce which competed with home produce, and a 10 or 12 per cent. duty on imported manufactures: and to distribute the proceeds, estimated at £10,000,000 a year, in giving a bonus of 10s. a quarter upon all wheat grown in England when it amounted to twenty million quarters. This precious proposal, under which the county of Essex would get more bonus than Scotland and Ireland put together, was duly debated for some time, and much sympathy was expressed for a portion of Mr. Poynter's speech, in which he said that as he could not produce a quarter of wheat, or a sheep or bullock, without paying local and imperial taxation, he could not understand why the foreigner should send his wheat into English markets without paying any portion of our taxation. Ultimately an amendment declaring the scheme impracticable was negatived by 18 to 12, though supported by Mr. W. J. Harris* of Halwill; but a motion approving it found no support and was withdrawn, and the discussion was finally closed by the adoption of a colourless resolution. More recently, in reply to Lord Randolph Churchill's appeal, the same Mr. W. J. Harris has put forward in the National Review, and elaborated in considerable detail, a somewhat similar * In fairness to Mr. Harris, I ought to state that he said he would have voted differently had Mr. Poynter's scheme applied to all land under the plough. It should be borne in mind that the number of members and delegates entitled to vote in the Central Chamber of Agriculture is about 300, the great majority of whom do not seem to expect any practical result from the Fair Trade agitation, even if they are in favour of it. For instance, out of seventy-six members present during a recent debate on Fiscal Reform, only thirty-five all told waited for the division, a large proportion of the majority coming from two counties. but more far-reaching plan; and though he is careful in his article to disclaim, as a Protectionist, any official connection with the Fair Traders, yet few will disagree with him when he claims that the course they are pursuing will lead to the same goal he has himself attained. Mr. Harris's idea is to be carried out as follows:-Pyrites, iron ore, crude petroleum, seed and oil seed, oil cake and manures, are still to enter our ports free; and the present taxation on tea, spirits, tobacco, &c., is not to be altered; but all manufactured goods, including flour and yarn, are to pay a duty of 30 per cent., and all other goods a duty of 20 per cent.; exports from colonies which give us the same preference being taxed 10 per cent. less than those of foreign nations. It is assumed that this arrangement would not lose us through retaliation more than £20,000,000 of our export trade in manufactured articles; and after allowing for a drawback of 10 per cent. on the remainder, on account of the duty paid on the raw material when it first came in, it is estimated that the Custom House would bring in £31,000,000 more than it does at present, which is to be devoted to Free Education, remission of Poor Rate, and a grant, estimated at £13,300,000, of £1 an acre for wheat land, and 108. an acre for all other land kept under the plough. I am not going into a detailed criticism of these proposals, which, by the way, ought, in their author's opinion, to be supplemented by proper regulations to limit the amount of butcher's profits; but some of the admissions that Mr. Harris makes in the course of his article are noteworthy. He disposes of the "taxing the foreigner" argument, which is so freely used by his friends to country audiences, by allowing that a duty increases the price to the consumer (unless buyers happen to be less numerous than the goods that are for sale); he more than hints that a land court would be necessary to prevent landlords getting an unfair share of the £13,300,000 per annum, and he assumes rather than proves that the labourers would get a portion of this sum through the greater demand for labour which the additional tillage would create. True this demand for fresh labour might be considerable, as, for anything shown to the contrary, the owner might claim £1 an acre from the State, if he tiled for wheat mountain or moorland which was under no circumstances worth more than 2s. 6d. Free Education, too, and remission of Poor Rate are tempting baits, while any scheme which promises to employ the unemployed is sure of finding supporters. But if ever the democracy goes in for giving work to the public on a large scale, it will surely find a simpler method of doing it than to hand over £13,300,000 of taxes every year to the owners and occupiers of but a quarter of the country. Yet if a fiscal system is to be adopted under which growing wheat is always to pay, and if the British voter is unlikely to consent to promote that by giving a bonus on cultivation, the only alternative is a heavy import duty on corn, colonial and foreign alike; and here the other great weakness of the Fair Traders appears the want of any politician of standing to recommend their nostrums. The food of the people is a dangerous thing to touch, and, as Major Rasch, M.P., said at the Chamber of Agriculture in March last, the candidate who advocates the dear loaf is as likely to leave his meeting by the window as by the door. It is arguable, indeed, that increased employment and better wages would repay the agricultural labourer all, and more than all, the additional halfpence his loaf would cost him if the price of wheat were raised by taxation to 40s. or 45s. And wherever the men have allotments big enough to grow sufficient corn for their own consumption the argument might be used with success; but the rural voter has a better memory for facts than for figures, and I expect the remembrance of the low wages which went with the dear loaf in old times will outweigh with him all Fair Trade calculations. And if the 14 per cent. of the population of Great Britain who are supported by agriculture are hard to convert, what hope will there be of the remainder, to whom the advantages of dear bread will be even more obscure; and who will ask, if trade has revived without artificial help, why agriculture should not do the same? This has been realised by all the men on the Conservative benches who could possibly lead a movement in the other direction. Even Mr. Chaplin, when invited to face the big fence the other day disappointed his supporters, and bolted for the gap of Currency Reform. He, I believe, thinks we made a mistake when we gave up Protection; and there are others who have no prejudice in favour of Free Trade, and would support Lord R. Churchill if the voice of the people called upon him to tax corn or anything else; but there are many also who see, with Mr. Balfour, that any system of State interference must eventually be bad for the industry in favour of which it interferes. And many more who feel, with Lord Salisbury,† and Sir Michael HicksBeach, that Protection means nothing else but civil war, and that * Speech at Manchester, reported in the Times of 15th Dec. 1887. the adoption of either it or Fair Trade would only aggravate our present difficulties. So far as can be seen, then, the position is this: If the Fair Traders are to accomplish their programme, they must not only put countervailing or retaliatory duties on various foreign manufactures and goods, but they must also, by some artificial means, make the cultivation of corn in this country more profitable to the occupiers of the soil; and they have not yet shown how this can be done without raising the price of bread. They are honestly persuaded that the country would be richer and more prosperous in consequence, but they have not converted any of the leading. men of the only party likely to give effect to their views, and the recruits they have got within that party are, some of them, afraid of their own programme. Thus, though there are a good many people-some Liberals, I fear, among them, too—who think something should be done in this direction, the probability that Mr. Howard Vincent will be able to do mischief, either to the country or the Unionist cause, seems to be sufficiently remote. EBRINGTON. 836 ARE RICH LANDOWNERS IDLE? WE read, in the writings and speeches of agitators, constant allusions to the idle classes, to the wealthy landowners, who do nothing but exist in perfect indolence of mind and body, to employers of labour who are represented as fattening on the earnings of the poor, and to the hereditary possessors of wealth and influence, who, we are asked to believe, have no occupation beyond enjoying the possessions they inherit, and counting up the gold in their bursting coffers. The wives and daughters of these unjustly favoured people are represented as passing their lives in lolling on couches, or in chariots, in bedecking themselves with priceless gems and sumptuous raiment, in going from banquets to balls, or babbling away their hours of idleness. But how different is the real state of the case? How many large hereditary landed proprietors have scarcely a minute's leisure, if they are alive, as the bulk of them certainly are, to the duties and responsibilities of their positions? Many who possess three, four, or five country houses, with properties belonging to each, make a rule of spending a certain time every year at each residence, and of laying out sums of money in proportion to the value of the estate on each property, besides spending considerable sums in charity among the poor of every parish with which they are connected. The state of the land, the condition of the tenants, whether holders of large farms or small cottages, the welfare of the labourers, the improvement of the woods, must all be attended to carefully. Indeed, a large landed proprietor in these days, in order to fulfil his duties with satisfaction to himself and to those dependent on him, must possess much practical knowledge on a great variety of subjects. And there are not infrequent instances of large proprietors sending their eldest sons to study farming, and afterwards to learn the management of estates, under experienced land agents. I have heard it said that to fulfil the duties of a great landed proprietor efficiently is in itself a profession, and one in which a man may become a real benefactor to his country. If the estates are in sporting counties, much serious attention must be paid by the master to details connected with the par |