It is with the deepest regret that we record the
death of Lord Farrer on Wednesday night at Abinger Hall, Surrey, at the age of eighty. Lord Farrer was before all things a great public servant, and though he worked behind the screen of the Civil Service—a screen that hides some of the noblest and most unselfish endeavour in the nation's interests—the people of England were in reality as much indebted to him as to many Cabinet Ministers. Lord Farrer was before all things a man of liberal ideas. But though too practical a statesman not to be loyal to the party he had chosen, he was never a party hack. He stood always for what was sound and honest and of good report in our national life, and though he was against Imperial expansion, no one more gladly acknow- ledged than he did the good work done by Englishmen in India or Egypt. He was a Free-trader of the most uncom- promising kind, and always ready to defend the principles of the open market with clear and cogent arguments. But even here he was no pedant or doctrinaire. He was ever quick to acknowledge that freedom was greater than even Free-trade.
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