Baron Sonnino, who leads the Italian Opposition, and is regarded
both by the Government and the people as a kind of reserve force to be utilised in difficult crises, has delivered a most striking lecture on the condition of Southern Italy. It is so bad that the peasantry are emigrating at the rate of a hundred thousand a year, and the complaint of bitter poverty is heard on every side. Baron Sonnino would treat'the South as a separate division of Italy, and proposes to halve the Land- tax there, to reduce the rate of interest on State loans upon agri- cultural security, and, above all, to establish a system of per- petual leases at low rents. This would break up the large estates, now half cultivated by bailiffs and labourers who live in the towns, often at a great distance from their work. It is the old system of the latifundia, and is especially ruinous under modern conditions, for the estates being held by families instead of individuals, the owners cannot afford to erect the cottages and farmsteadings indispensable to any reasonable system of cultivation. The Times correspondent,' who sends a report of the lecture, believes it will make a great impression, and we hope it may ; but we fear the dread of impairing the unity of Italy by allowing differences of taxa- tion, and local loans guaranteed by the State will prevent any- thing serious being done. No remedy which does not turn the labourers into copyholders will be of any effect.
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