Lord Salisbury on Wednesday addressed an immense audience at Newport,
in a speech which is intended to be the Tory pro- gramme. The speech, though it does not glitter like some of the orator's best efforts, is a goo I one, and will probably gikie the cue to the majority of Tory candidates. They are to resist nothing but Disestablishment, but to minimise the great changes which mast be conceded. Land, for example, must be made transferable cheaply, and the Tory Government will bring in a Bill for that purpose ; but Lord Salisbury says nothing of abolishing settlement or primogeniturerand rejects the diffusion of land as an impracticable ideal. He wishes for it, he says, and will allow the clergy to sell their glebes, but he wholly dis- believes in it. The yeoman has become impossible because cereals are unprofitable, the land is being made pasture, and people are nct required to till it. He doubts about allot- ments, thinking that the rent to be demanded will only be half the interest which the Council will pay on the price, and that if not the allottee, the ratepayer will be injured, while the Council will show favouritism. All that is possibly true, but is no argument, except against expropriation. If the yeomen can- not prosper, they will not buy the land. A man may lose by buying anything, but that is no reason for denying his freedom to buy. Old china injures its possessor in pocket ; but nobody demands a deed for the conveyance of old china, still less compels its owner to keep it when he wants money.
