Lord Sheffield's excuses for Mr. Lloyd George merely amounted to
an argument that all landowners deserve to be driven out because they are believed to vote Tory ! How a man of his ability can bring himself to the advocacy of the very thing he condemns we cannot understand. The debate will have proved to thousands of people the simple fact that landowners have a far higher sense of the obligations of pro- perty than any other class in the kingdom. The traducers of the landlords always forget to mention the instances of intimidation practised by other classes. We venture to say, that there is far fiercer political intimidation in workshops and coal mines than on " ducal" estates. The only clear cane of a threat of eviction for "voting wrong" which has ever come under the present writer's notice was one in which a Radical owner of a suburban cottage threatened to turn out his tenant if be voted against the true interests of the people—i.e., voted
Unionist. The man was inclined to be cowed, but his wife told the landlord to go to the place of him who Dr. Johnson would have it was " the first Whig."
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