Sir Thomas Acland, M.P. for Devon, has made a speech
to the Broadclyst Agricultural Association which must have bothered his audience not a little. It was full of hints that the Landed Pro- perty system of Great Britain, that ark of the Constitutional covenant, needed, and would very soon receive, a little overhauling. The philosophers and the people were murmuring that " the rent rises while the landowner sleeps," and he himself viewed with alarm the enormous accumulations of wealth which they now saw side by side with so much misery. lie rather dreaded the rise going on in rents, believing that causes other than calculation were at work, such as the desire of young men to get married and settle. Sir Thomas did not offer any definite idea as to the way to avoid these evils, rather thought, in fact, that society was "on an inclined plane" drifting beyond control ; but he said enough to set the farmers thinking, and, we suspect, to earn a somewhat Radical reputation. He is really a very benevolent man, bothered by the condition of the agricultural labourer, and slowly groping his way towards light. Let him try the experiment of giving a dozen labourers half an acre of land each in addition to the usual wages, and see what the result of that is. It will only cost him £10 a year, and they will be as comfortable as skilled artizane.
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