Later on in the afternoon the Government, to the huge
delight of their enemies, had what is described as " another knock." While the Small Holdings Colonies Bill was going through Committee, Mr. John, a Welsh Liberal, proposed that two thousand of the six thousand acres to be devoted to the scheme should be located in Wales. Mr. Acland very properly refused to assent to such a crude particularist proposal, his point being that the best land offered should be selected, whether in Wales or England. Mr. John's amendment was, however, carried by fifty-one votes to forty-six. The Morning Post pompously declares that the Government must have been in no jocular mood when they reflected that " no defeat had previously been sustained by the Government since the commencement of the war." Possibly, and yet we venture to think that somehow or other the Coalition will survive, and that the Bill will ultimately be passed without a third of the 'colony acreage being earmarked for an area which contains some- thing more like one-twentieth than one-third of the English Kingdom.
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