Lord Beaconsfield's coolness has certainly not deserted him. It had
been announced for some days that he would speak at' Aylesbury on Thursday, and diplomatists, politicians, reporters, and indeed, the whole world, was on the qui, vim. It seemed. quite impossible that a British Premier should speak in public for the first time after a huge disaster, and not say one word either to console, or to encourage, or to guide his countrymen. Lord Beaconsfield, however, was equal to the occasion, and repeated for an hour his now habitual nonsense about the "three profits" which the land must yield,—rent, wages, and interest -on capital,--and drew his deduction that these three profits ought to be divided among three persons, the landlord, labourer, and farmer. He believed that the agricultural system had no more "broken down" under the depression than the commercial system had broken down under bank failures, and consoled the farmers under American competition, by stating that Canada would E10011 beat the Union out of the wheat market, a bit of Imperialism which will not greatly com- fort Mr. Greenaore. He thought the true remedy was a reduc- tion of rents, to be arranged between landlords and tenants for themselves. There was a party in England which always was opposed to the agricultural interest, because they were opposed, to "a free and aristocratic Government." They might get rid of that Government, but "they would have either a despotism ending in democracy, or a democracy ending in a despotism." That is the kind of rubbish which the Premier thinks good enough for a country boiling over with agitation under a great calamity. He had not even a word of' Pitt for his own agent, sent to an- almost certain death through the ignorance of the Ministry. Indifference so calm to the feeling of the country has been too much even for the loyalty of the Times, which ventures to say that "at such a time reticence will. not be inter- preted as indicating self-possession and resolve."
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