11 



able. I should be prepared to advocate the limitation of its action 

 to one or two j-ears, and I would even go so far as to exempt 

 labourers' wages, seed-corn, and certain defined implements of 

 husbandry, from its operation, in order that — from a national point 

 of view — there should be some guarantee that the land may not 

 remain in an idle or unprofitable condition. Such an arrangement 

 would, to my mind, meet all the requirements of those who consider 

 this question in a practical and agricultural point of view, and who 

 do not regard it from a political and party standpoint. Now, 

 gentlemen, in order to treat this matter with all fairness, pray let 

 me give you the reasons advanced by Mr. James Howard for first 

 starting the Farmers' Alliance. In a letter written to the Times on 

 Nov. 15, 1881, he says: "Widespread disappointment was now 

 felt at the neglect of the farming interest by the Government, 

 which had been in power for six years. Great dissatisfaction was, 

 moreover, expressed that instead of remedial measures being intro- 

 duced, the Government folded its arms and contented itself by pro- 

 posing a 



EOYAL COMMISSION OF INQUIRY." 



Gentlemen, it was quite time that Lord Beaconsfield's Government 

 proposed a Royal Commission, fully alive to the importance of the 

 subject and of the serious condition to which agriculture had been 

 brought hj recent disastrous seasons, and anxious to ^ft the matter 

 to the very root in order to see in what way, if any, legislation 

 could be applied to the relief and benefit of the British farmer. 

 Upon this Commission Mr. Howard's brother sits as one of the 

 most able and independent representatives of the farmers of this 

 country. But if the Commission had done nothing more than 

 furnish an opportunity to the leaders and officials of the Farmers' 

 Alhance to air their crotchets and expose their fallacies, it would 

 deserve the thanks of the farmers of England. The Right Hon. 

 Mr. Dodson also, in a speech at Scarborough, as one of the 

 emissaries sent down by Mr. Gladstone during the recent election,, 

 said that it was a mistake to call 



THE TORY PARTY THE FARMERS' FRIENDS, 



for they were nothing more than a party of promisers and not of 

 performers, and had really done nothing for the farming interest. 

 Gentlemen, do you call it nothing that the Conservative Government 

 should have relieved local taxation to the amount of 2f millions per 

 annum, whilst in the year 1881 these subventions, the off'spring of 

 Conservative legislation, amounted to no less a sum than £2,972,451 ? 

 Is it nothing that the taxes on agricultural horses and your 

 favourite colley dogs were abolished by them ? Is it nothing that the 



AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS ACT 



was passed into law by the untiring energy of the Duke of Richmond, 



