Sir Fitzroy Kelly has come out in the part of
eminent agricul- turist,—a part which, like most other parts, he plays well. He took the chair at a great Anti-Malt Tax meeting at the Free- masons' Tavern on Wednesday. He was moderate, and fixed the demands of the country gentlemen at this—that whenever any indirect taxation is to be given up the reduction of the malt-tax has the first claim. A good many Conservative members of Parliament and one Radical who is not a member of Parlia- ment spoke, some extravagantly, many with more or lass intel- ligence, against the tax. But no argument used at the meeting against the malt-tax was anything like so wild as one used by the Times of yesterday in its favour,—" A man has not a right to con- vert the food of man and beast into an intoxicating liquor except under such rules and conditions as the State shall see fit to impose,"—that is, the owners of French and German vineyards have no " right " to manufacture wine without stringent State conditions I—or is it otherwise there, because grapes are food for man, but not for beast ? It would be much more plausible to say a man had no right to refuse to grow food for man and beast in any soil in which it would grow at all, except under a special licence from the State ;—and still more so, that no man has a right to con- vert language and the appearance of thought to such monstrous uses as the Times' writer without a special licence from the State. On Thursday Mr. Gladstone (eived a crowded and very noisy deputation in favour of the 'fauction of the malt-tax, and answered it of course guardedly, but not without words which must have raised a hope.
