Towards a Social Policy. (Speaker Publishing Company. is. and 2s.
net.)—We commend this pamphlet to the notice of our readers, not as accepting all its "suggestions for constructive reform," but because it discusses various questions of supreme importance to the welfare of the nation and expresses opinions which have a right to be heard. It is to be wished that its tone were more judicial. How significant is this. The writer hopes that the "new President of the Board of Agriculture" will "aggrandise it." Very good ; too many of the enactments with which it is concerned have remained a dead letter. But what follows ? He "must aggrandise it as widely, though not as unwisely, as Mr. Chamberlain aggrandised the Colonial Office." It is "King Charles's head" over again. Generally, we think, the writers of these papers do not see that there are two sides to a question. One proposal is that the labourer is to have "an independent footing in a house of his own." Take the case of a sheep farm (we presume that all farms are not to be divided up into small holdings). On the eve of the lambing season the shepherd goes on strike, or in some way makes himself impossible. He has the only available cottage, and he cannot be turned out of it. What is the farmer to do ? Of course the man cannot go on very long without wages; but he can go on long enough to destroy the flock and ruin the farmer.
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