Lord Hartington lectured the tenant-farmers of Ireland with almost pedagogic
severity at an agricultural meeting at Lismore on Thursday week. The occasion was an anniversary meeting of a farmers' society founded forty years ago by his father, the Duke of Devonshire, so that the Marquis felt, as it were, at home, and did not scruple to be didactic. He commented on the improve- ment he discovered in live stock,—cattle, and pigs, "especially pigs ; " and on the improvement in the physique of the labourer within the last twenty years —(he did not say in loyalty and con- tent, and while they improve in sinew and savings and do not im- prove in loyalty, the prospect is not a very good one),—and then he went on to remind the tenant-farmers what very prejudiced people they were. That "tenant-farmers," as Lord Hartington said, "are not the persons to form a perfectly impartial judgment on the land question," is very clear ; but then, for precisely the same reason, neither are the landlords ; and while the tenant- farmers have very little direct influence on the decision of this question, the landlords will have much. In fact, there are no less than seven great landlords in the Cabinet, and of the remainder, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr. Bright (!) belong to the landlord party, while the tenant-farmers have not, we need hardly say, a single representative in the Cabinet. The tenant-farmers, therefore, may well retort upon Lord Hartington that as the landlords are, on his own showing, by no means impartial judges,
it is somewhat hard that they should have the ultimate decision so completely in their own hands.
