Lord Salisbury made a very skilful and interesting speech in
St. James's Hall this day week to the Conservative and Unionist candidates for the next General Election. He insisted that the new principle of equalising the Death-duties on land and personalty would press much more heavily on the clientele of the various landowners in England and Wales than it would press even on the landowners themselves. In the present. depressed condition of agriculture, when it is impossible to sell land, to enforce a fine of some four years' income on every devolution of the property will practically throw out of employment a large number of poor retainers for four years at least, whereas the legatees of personalty would simply cur- tail their expenditure for three or four years. He attacked the Government for not inviting the judgment of the country On the Irish question, and said they were really refusing to appeal to the only possible jury, until they had first spent several months in trying to persuade that jury not to give their atten- tion to the one subject of the greatest constitutional im- portance and the greatest novelty to be submitted to. their judgment. And he insisted that the Conservatives are both willing and anxious to study and alleviate as far as possible the social grievances of the time, while the Radicals are only bent on pulling to pieces once more the political machinery which has been so often tinkered but which Radicals- never think it possible to tinker too often. "Your Newcastle programmes," he concluded, "are so many appeals to the people to quarrel with each other in order that the Radical party may remain in power." But they will hardly be suc- cessful appeals. There are evident signs that the impatience with a fruitless as well as a very tedious policy are beginning to tell in the direction of exasperating the people with their own nominees. The great change in the municipal vote- at Rotherhithe seems to point clearly in this direction.
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