Mr. Stansfeld made a speech at Liverpool on Thursday, con-
taining some very telling points. He defended his measure for completing the incidence of the taxation upon land,—that is, for abolishing all exemptions,—as an inevitable one, and declared the argument of the Lords, that they had no time to consider it, a mere excuse. They would have thrown the Bill out if they had had time. Any scheme must contain this scheme as a part, and this Government would propose no general tax until all land has borne its fair share of taxation. [There is this rider to be made to that declaration, that a mode of rating which would bring all parks under the plough would be rejected by the whole country.] He elicited the greatest applause, however, by denouncing Lord Salisbury's middle-party scheme, which "would take from Con- servatism its characteristics and from Liberalism its dynamic force," and end in a bureaucratic system. This was no English plan, but an idea borrowed from the Continent, of governing by the aid of a Left Centre,—which governs as we have lately seen, that is, by choosing illiberal men who may faintly and half- heartedly pursue a liberal course.
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