• The position of those Liberal Members who object to
the land clauses as likely to prove highly injurious to the best interests of the nation is very difficult. They are, unfortunately, too weak in numbers to influence the divisions effectively. Nevertheless, in our opinion, if they take concerted action they may yet accomplish a good deal. The object they should aim at, even though it may seem at the moment an absolutely forlorn hope, is to get the Government to withdraw the land clauses for the present year, and to reconsider them as a whole: No doubt if this were done the Government scheme, from their own point of view, could be made far more water-tight and less open to criticism than now. The present clauses are the result, not of careful and deliberate policy, but of the roughest, readiest, and most hugger-mugger scheming entered upon a month or two before the Budget was actually produced. They have been rendered still grosser and more incoherent by con- cessions first in one direction and then in another. The result is chaos.
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