APRIL 169 



announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has, I think, done 

 more harm than good, at any rate in this neighbourhood. The 

 ordinary smoker does not care whether he pays a few pence more 

 or less for his pound of tobacco, while the working man will be 

 charged exactly the same for his ' screw,' and many thinking 

 electors are angry because they see a million a year gone for ever 

 from the revenue of the country (for once remitted these taxes 

 cannot be replaced), while the heavily burdened payer of income- 

 tax wins no relief. 



Also the country clergy are in many instances exasperated, 

 believing as they do that a portion of this million would have been 

 better expended in relieving them of some of their double burden 

 of rates than in enlarging the profits of the dealers in tobacco. 

 They point out that for years they have been the steady sup 

 porters of the Conservatives, whom on many occasions they have 

 done much to return to power, and think it very hard, when there 

 is money to spend, that they should be neglected in the hour of their 

 need. Of course I am aware that some hold that the clergy have no 

 grievance, and should not object to pay the double charges, inas- 

 much as their income is not professional in the ordinary sense of the 

 word, since, nominally at any rate, it is fixed, and does not depend 

 upon continuous and constantly renewed exertion, like that of a 

 doctor or a writer. Doubtless there is something to be said for this 

 view of the case, with which, however, for my part I do not agree. 



To-day at Bungay market Hood actually refused forty-eight 

 shillings a quarter for my wheat, as he is standing out for fifty 

 shillings. Forty-eight shillings a quarter ! It sounds like a 

 beautiful dream in the ears of the poverty-stricken farmer if a 

 dream can sound. But a lively recollection of the recent history 

 of the corn trade makes me think that such dreams are ' too bright 

 to last.' I cannot forget how in 1894 and 1895 we were selling 

 wheat at about twenty-two shillings a quarter. The present rise 

 strikes me as too sudden and too violent to continue, for it is bred 

 of scarcity, scare, and speculators, but chiefly, perhaps, of specu- 

 lators. If only wheat would keep at about forty-two shillings 



