Lord Monteagle, who has a fairly impartial mind, writes to
the Times to point out that Mr. Balfour's new clause in the Purchase Act giving a preference to small owners will go further than he intended, or than the House supposes. He wished so to employ the money voted that the sum granted to each class should be in proportion to its numbers, and not to the total area of its holdings. That is sound, the end of the measure being to make freeholders of as many peasants as possible ; but Lord Monteagle gives official statistics to show that in actual working only one in fifty of the large holders will obtain the benefit of the Act. They therefore will continue the agitation. That does not matter, from our point of view, because we contend for a general measure of compensated enfranchisement, the cost to be defrayed by a terminable quit-rent ; but if Mr. Balfour sincerely intends, as he said on Thursday week, to spend no more money, he has pushed his just preference for the small tenants a little too far, and will in. the Lords encounter dangerous opposition,
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