Lord Derby made a speech at Leeds ou Monday on
Co-opera- tion, which, besides the usual praises of that form of copart- nership, contained some striking social reflections. Like Lerch Macaulay, Lord Derby thinks that a society " in which one class has all political power, as is the case under household suffrage, and another class nearly all the surplus wealth which men, desire to possess," is very liable to an explosion, or at all events, to confiscatory direct taxation. He suggests that co-operatiou may be a remedy, but with his usual inability to blind himself to facts, notices in the same breath that the largest fortunes. are accumulated in the most democratic countries, especially the United States, and that no attempt has been made in them tee. limit aggregations of wealth. lie does not profess to explain the contradiction, but is not the explanation this P Democracy tends to diffuse wealth, particularly by its views about land and the distribution of property after death, and increases the desire for " property," irrespective of amounts. Everybody
Possessing it or hoping to - wishing for it, and a majority either possess it, a strong desire to protect it becomes nearly universal. This is certainly true in America, France, and Switzerland, and strange as the remark may seem, in Ireland. Five-sixths of the Irish discontent arises from the sense that what the tenantry deem their property is unprotected by law.
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