The Dake of Argyll, in a letter to Tuesday's Times,
takes Mr. Gladstone heavily to task for his rash statement in regard to Welsh rents. After criticising the speech made from "a huge boulder," the Duke points out that " the vulgar idea that landowners can make their own rents and keep them up to an arbitrary scale is the grossest of delusions. No landowner can possibly find it his interest to have bankrupt tenants. Rents must and do come down sometimes, as in Essex, to a zero line only—decrements which are determined by the market and by the obvious interests of both parties. These movements of rent are of public interest, just as the parallel movements of wages are of like interest ; but politicians can do nothing but mischief by meddling or threatening to meddle in such matters." The writer goes on to mention the case of two towns in the North of England, in which the wages of artificers in the same trade differ by 14 per cent., and expresses his belief that, if any political end is to be gained by it, we shall have such cases trotted out in another "boulder-stone oration." "The effusive praise," he goes on, "bestowed on English landowners because they have submitted to the inevitable, was equally absurd. They could not help themselves, even if they had wished ; and the butter spread upon them is clearly a mere oratorical expedient for greasing the wheels of an assault on a class which it was politically expedient to attack." This is robust common-sense, as well as hard hitting ; and if the reasoning-power of the country has not gone soft, it should have its effect.
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