The ninth annual Congress of the Agrarian League, which opened
in Berlin on Monday, possesses especial interest in view of the debates on the Tariff Bill and Count von Billow's recent address to the Agricultural Council. The tone of the speakers throughout betrays unmistakable hostility to the Chancellor on the strength of his last utterance, and a resentment against any criticism. Count von Billow's ad- vances were likened to a mariage de conversance. The Agrarians had no intention of allowing themselves to be treated like naughty children, or to be fobbed off with less than they asked for; and one of the speakers aroused enthu- siasm by explaining his slip of calling the Chancellor " Count von Caprivi" by saying that Count von Billow had lately become so like Count von Caprivi that the mistake was excusable. A resolution was unanimously adopted declaring that the Agrarian League expected to see the Government proposals rejected unless they were so modified in debate as to correspond to the just demands of German agriculture. The Times correspondent, in his summary of the proceedings of the Congress, states that the League now numbers two hundred and fifty thousand members, 87 per cent. of whom are small proprietors, artisans, or persons following other occupations generally in conjunction with agriculture. The majority now come from the West of the Elbe, so that there is no longer the same justification for calling the Agrarians "East Elbians."
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