10 OCTOBER 1885, Page 2

Lord Hartington began speaking in Lancashire on Thursday, at Bury,

but as yet he has not said much, his first speech being mainly occupied with proving that Mr. Philips, the Member for Bury, MO a good Member ; that the condition of the people had greatly improved, mainly through Free-trade ; and that the Tories did, in spite of their previous ideas of policy, suffer the Crimes Act to drop. He gave, however, a strong hint of his opinion about Land Laws, stating that he hoped much more from the removal of the restrictions imposed upon the transfer of land by bad laws and bad customs than from any artificial pro- vision for facilitating distribution—an opinion in which we heartily concur. He made an odd remark, probably jocular, but possibly also a bit of thinking aloud, upon his own term of service. The War Office, he said, considered that twenty-one years of service used a soldier up, and he was not quite sure that twenty- eight years of service—his own period as well as Mr. Philips's— did not exhaust a man too. Is Lord Hartington thinking, even in a casual way, of retiring from public life P We trust not, for he is wanted.