NEWS OF THE WEEK.
NR. LLOYD GEORGE'S speech at Swindon will, we expect, prove a great disappointment to many of the hotheads as soon as they have thought it over, for it all comes down to creating another great department of State, with a body of Commissioners at the top and armies of inspectors and clerks at the bottom. The main function of the new Ministry of Lands, which is to absorb the Board of Agriculture and apparently as much of the duties of other departments as can be squeezed out of their reluctant hands—no public office ever gives up an inch of power without a bitter struggle—will be to act the part of the heavy father, especially on light soils, in regard to the land and all connected with it. If a labourer or tenant, or indeed anybody except a landlord, is discontented with his lot, he is to be put into the position of the child in the comic song : "I'll tell my father what you've done—and he'll let you have what for ! "
