The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1862-06-03 00:00:00

POTATO MARKET.

SOUTHWARK WATERSIDE, Friday.—New potatoes
are in fair supply, and are selling at from lls. to 163.
per owe. Old qualities move off heavily, at drooping
I.rices.

NAT AND STRAW MARKETS.
SHITEFIELD. —Meadow bay, £2 Os. to £4 155.; clover,
108. to DS ; and draw, £1 18s. to El 2s. per load.
' A t•low trade.

CUMBERLAND —Meadow hay;£2 2s. to £4 15s. ; clover
LI 10s. t, £7 15s. ; aud straw, £1 18s. to £2 2e. per
loal. Tra le B..eady.
iIT MITA PV. L. —Meadow hay, £2 O. to £4 151 ;
clover, £3 10s. to £8 Os.; and straw, £1 18s. to £2 28.
per load. Supply good.

THE
DORSET COUNTY EXPRESS
DgRCHF,STER, TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 1862.

of Commons is not composed of many Lord
Overatones. Much as the House of Commons
may tal of economy, it is always on the side
of expenditure when there is money to spend.
As a contemporary justly remarks, 'There are
' people who never can be trusted with ready
money in their pockets. The House of Commons
certainly belongs to this class." Lord Grey
followed in the cuckoo cry of the Opposition.
He kept the ball going, even if he could not find
any fatal error or serious fault in the finances of
Mr. Gladstone. He sympathised in the remark
r of Lord Overstone, that we were meeting our
large expenditure by every spendthrift device.
There was not an item of expenditure which he
, could put his finger upon that ought not to be
there, but he objected to the repealing of taxes
while this expenditure was going on—taxes, the
repeal of which did not benefit the people, and
which, if unrepealed, would have greatly belie-
fitted the revenue. Sooner than the income
should fit so tightly on the expenditure as it now
did, he would rather see a little elasticity given
to the national purse by the imposition of fresh
taxes. With such sentiments as these, we fear
it will be a long time before Lord Grey
becomes an advocate for the repeal of the Malt
fax. The Duke of Argyll entered into an
elaborate defence of the policy of the Govern-
ment. The deficit of last year was due to the
suspension of our commerce with America and
preparations for a probable war on account of
the affair of the Trent—contingencies which, he
asserted, no one could have foreseen. He denied
that the Government dealt in a spendthrift
manner with the resources of the country.
"The repeal of the paper duty had been effected
in consequence of the promise made to the House
of Commons to repeal that tax, a promise that
could not be recalled ; and the commercial
treaty with France, viewed in the light of a
strictly financial operation had signally succeeded.
The whole remissions effected by Mr. Gladstone
had been in the Customs and in the
Excise, and what bad been the result
The diminished stores to which his noble friend
referred were now laro'r and more full than
they were two years before Mr. Gladstone's
operations. Was it not, therefore, trifling
with the judgment of the House and of the
country to come down with fine sentences about
diminished stores, and not to be able to put a
flutter upon a single store that had been
diminished?" No doubt of it. But if the
Opposition could by a clever dis.iolving view
change the fair landscape into a desert, the
goddess of plenty into a squalid mendicant, the
honest reapers into skulking banditti, the
running stream into dry sand, and the stately
mansion into a blank prison wall—if they could,
in short, by apeing the shepherd boy in crying
wolf, and by the professions of economy, the
principles of which they never practice, step
into office, they would obtain the end for
which this little skirmish was got
up. Hitherto the fighting had all been in the
rear, and accordingly when Lord Derby got up
he changed the order ef battle. He said the
object of the discussion was not rettospective,
but entirely prospective—not for reviewing or
finding fault of the past, but for the guidance of
generations and parliaments to come. He
deprecated any diminution of the efficiency of
our armaments, but thought our expenditure
unnecessarily large. "He did not presume to
say in what direction Government should effect
reductions. He would be sorry to affirm cate-
gorically that reductions were capable of being
effected at the present moment, consistently with
the circumstances of the country. His firm
belief was that they might, but he had not the
information on which to ask the House to come
to that conclusion." Bravo ! But if the Lord
Derby had not the information sufficient to form
an opinion, why should be entertain an opinion
that the Governmental estimates were excessive
Lord Russell, who took upon himself to reply to
the attack by some heavy broadsides, answered
this question. "It does," said his Lordship, "I
confess, appear to me as if the noble Lord, not
choosing to commit himself to a definite affir-
mation that reduction can be practised, yet
wishes to hold out to those who are firmly con-
vinced that great reductions can be made, a
shadowy hope that he would be the man to carry
them into effect." This, no doubt, was the great
object for which the debate was got up, but if so,
why not have come forward with a distinct
proposition. We could then have understood
what all the fuss was made about. As it is,
there seems to us to have been a great waste of
rhetorical gunpowder. There was all
the noise, all the smoke e very thing
in fact, to show that a fearful attack
was being made on the stronghold of the enemy,
but when the air became calm and the hubbub
was over, the Ministerial works were found to
be intact, and there was not the slightest
necessity for ambulances to convey the wounded
to the hospital. Nobody was "kilt ;" nobody
was hurt. It was a noisy, though harmless
attack, and all the Opposition can boast of, after
an engagement which lasted five hours and a
half, is a repetition of the Sumter miracle!