The Gladstonian managers have summoned a Conference of Villagers from
all England, which met on Thursday in the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street. Some four hundred dele- gates attended, and though they were all Gladstonians, and most of them evidently Nonconformists, they for the most part really belonged to the agricultural working classes. They spoke under a five-minutes rule, and generally to the point. Their general drift was, that small Councils were wanted with power to expropriate land, and let it to labourers cheaply, the idea evidently being that allotments could be obtained, but were too dear. They were decided against the present system of letting cottages, under which, if a labourer lost his work, be lost his home—a real and a serious grievance —they wished for a relaxation of the Poor-Law and a reduc- tion in the rates, and they were very bitter about the " tyranny " of the farmer, the parson, and the squire. The parson, in fact, was never mentioned, if mentioned at all, except in terms of hostility, the prevalent feeling apparently b3ing that his profession ought to bind him to the side of the poor. Nothing absolutely new was mentioned in the way of grievance, and only one delusion was strongly urged,—viz., that there is a mass of land in the country which might be cultivated, but is not, out of selfishness on the part of owners, who ought to regard themselves as mere trustees for the poor. The most regrettable fact in the meeting, which was not revo- lutionary in tone, was that the speakers seemed hopeless of doing anything for themselves. They all appealed to the State or the gentry to provide them with what they wanted.
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