Is the Government literally going to do nothing ? Everybody
expected a Local Government measure, but it appears, from a speech of Mr. Clare Read to his constituents, delivered at Harles- ton on Wednesday evening, that Government does not intend to touch the question this Session. His words were :—" He had read in the paper that Mr. Cecil Raikes, in a speech to his con- stituents at Chester, had said they were going to have a great reform of local taxation next Session. That was the first whisper he had heard about it, and had it been contemplated, he almost fancied that they would have known something about it at the Local Government Board. He could only say that beyond the consolidation of the Sanitary Acts and the amendments of the Adulteration Act, and one or two smaller measures, he did not think their department—the Local Government Board—would have " a very conspicuous part to play in the Parliament." We gather from the same speech that there is to be a Tenure Bill, and suspect, but only suspect, for this is not in Mr. Read's department, that the great difficulty of that Bill has been got over by a compromise. There is to be one year's notice to -quit instead of Mr. Disraeli's two years, but the landlords sur- render the right to contract themselves out of the Bill. There is also to be compensation for unexhausted improvements.
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