The Agricultural meetings are even duller than usual this year,
—we suppose because the political prospects of the moment are so decidedly cheering to the Tories and so depressing to the Liberals, that they must be wholly ignored at merely agricultural meetings, unless there is to be a certain breach of harmony. Even Mr. Henley finds it difficult to be lively: At the meeting of the Woodstock Agricultural Association on Tuesday, having to respond' to the health of "the Members for the county," he made a speech of which the only point was that England ought to be cheerful when she considers that France and Spain are in such a bad plight, while she is, if not quite as prosperous as she has been, still comfortable enough. "Our neighbours in France had been delivered from the German occupation, and nobody could say but that the pot would boil over again in five minutes." But we had nothing to grumble about, "especially when we saw that in Spain fighting was going on. Nobody knew what parties were there. We were in possession of ships in trust, but whose ships they were we could not say. Nobody knew the proper persons to deliver them up to." It is quite evident that Mr. Henley thinks this a legitimate object for increased thankfulness on our part, just like Dr. Watts, who makes the pious little boy of his hymn especially grateful when, on taking his walks abroad, he sees so many paupers, and reflects that God had made no pauper of him. For our own part, we would submit to Mr. Henley that it might be an additional source of thankfulness to some of us, and not a reason for diminished gratitude, if, in addition to our own moderate prosperity, we had good reason to believe that tlie French pot was not likely to boil over again immediately, and that the Spanish people knew their own Government, and obeyed it. Is that a wrong, un-English sentiment ?
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