19 AUGUST 1893, Page 3

Mr. Henry Hobhouse contributes to last Saturday's Times a useful

letter. He points out that though Parliament has been sitting for six months, and since the end of March has had the whole time of the House, all it has done has been to pass a very simple Budget and an Act for limiting the hours of railway servants, to which there was no sort of opposition. Ireland, as he saye, blocks the way far more than under a Unionist Government, for not an hour can be found to discuss even such a pressing matter as the condition of British agriculture. Yet one of the great inducements offered to the English voter was that Mr. Gladstone's policy would give ample time for the consideration of non-Irish matters.