Sir Stafford Northcote replied with extreme warmth, not to say
resentment, and on many points appeared to make good his ground against Mr. Arnold. He showed the impracticability of expecting landlords who were not getting their own rents paid, to contract improvement loans at ordinary rates of interest. He showed that the so-called public works were usually speculative and wasteful ; and he showed how impossible it was to get trustworthy information at first as to the condition of dis- tricts so wide as the distressed districts. Be defended the lower rate of wages on the "public works" as essential, to pre- vent the diversion of labour from the agricultural work most needed to assist the revival of the country, and concluded a very vigorous reply by denying any analogy between the cotton- famine in Lancashire and the wide-spread distress in the west and south of Ireland. Sir S. Northcote evidently found in Mr. A. Arnold an enemy whom he could not and did not despise. But on the whole, he showed, we think, that Mr. Arnold's attack was not well founded.
Previous page
