On Tuesday at Brighton Lord Lansdowne made a very important
speech covering the whole political field. We have dealt at length elsewhere with what he said about the exclusion of Ulster and negotiations with the Government, and also with his carefully worded statement in regard to the Army. The speech also dealt fully with the land problem. He began by a timely protest against the monstrous suggestion that the Liberals think they alone are competent to deal with it. "To hear them speak of it you would think that they had discovered a new continent." Agriculture, he went on, is the greatest of our national industries—an industry which no one has ever neglected with impunity. "We all of us desire that the agricultural labourer should have more abundant and better housing accommodation : we are all of us ready to admit that in many parts of England he is not sufficiently well paid ; we all of us desire that he should have a better outlook, and in the view of us Unionists no outlook that we can offer him is comparable to the prospect of owning the plot of land which he cultivates.",
