Lord Derby met the Lancashire Farmers' Club on Saturday -at
Liverpool, and made an important speech on agricultural matters, which is sufficiently described elsewhere. We must notice here, however, that among the concurrent causes of dis- tress he mentioned the chance of a great war and the occurrence of two little ones. That is correct, but it is also new. It is one of the scarcely perceived effects of free-trade that war is no longer the farmers' interest. Except in the single case of war with America, the supply of food would come in as usual, and prices would rise only by some small addition to the cost of freight and insurance. Even in the event of war with America, the wheat would only have to pay some additional freight to Canada, whence it would be shipped to England as British corn ; while the Indian supply, which increases year by year, would be suddenly enlarged. The interest of the farmers is therefore not in war, but in low taxation, in carrying cheap county railways into every district, and in insisting on free cultivation, which Lord Derby says, in the present state of the farm market, they can obtain by combination.
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