16 DECEMBER 1882, Page 3

Mr. Arthur Arnold made a good speech on Monday to

his constituents at Salford, in which ho showed how genuinely prudent and, in the best sense, Conservative, a thoroughly Radical Member of good. sense and careful habits of mind may be, without giving up a jot of his Radicalism. Expressing a very strong desire for the easier distribution of landed property, —which he thinks Lord Cairns's Settled Land Act quite insuffi- cient to produce,—Mr. Arnold examined the ambitious scheme for what is called the "nationalisation of the land," and told his constituents that he had come to the conclusion that not only under that scheme " would the cost and labour of collect- ing land revenue be enormous, but even if it were possible to carry the law necessary to set this scheme in motion, they would find the value of laud so depreciated, that the transaction would have to be reversed, to save the State from ruin." That we believe to be strictly true. And it is only good Radicals who will inspire confidence, when they tell the wilder Democrats this sort of home truth.