Mr. Gladstone made a very fresh and interesting speech to
his Hawarden tenants on Wednesday, at the annual dinner of the tenantry, on the subject of the present condition of English agriculture. He insisted that the farmer, as the producer of food and drink, has an almost indefinite opening before him, since, he said, "the capacity of the human stomach is enorm- ous." He showed how vastly the amount of food imported for every member of the population had increased in the last genera- tion. For instance, the number of eggs imported had increased from 100,000,000 in 1855, to 750,000,000 in 1880,—indeed,the con- sumption per head of foreign eggs was in 1882 nearly eight times what it was 27 years previously. Mr. Gladstone remarked that English farmers ought to compete with the Continent more strenuously than they do in the supply of poultry, eggs, butter, fruit, Stc. ; and especially as regarded fruit, he pointed out that the high price of butter was leading to a very large con- sumption of foreign jam, which could be bought for from 7d. to 9d. a pound, while butter costs from ls. 3d. to ls. 8d. a pound. He thought that this foreign jam ought to be more or less undersold by the English jam, and that the farmers should cultivate fruit with a direct view to the supply of good, wholesome jams, either better than those sent from abroad, or equally good at tr cheaper rate. Mr. Gladstone stated that a New Zealand farmer, who recently found the Derbyshire farmers throwing up their farms, took several of them, and had made them pay him 12 per cent. On the whole, Mr. Gladstone's speech was very encouraging, —and gave encouragement founded on facts, not on mere amiable and sanguine anticipations.
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