The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-04-27 00:00:00

JUST AS IT SHOULD BE.

change

One of the suggestions to landowners contained in
the pamphlet by Mr. McNeel Caird on the land
tenancy laws of Scotland was that where they meant to
treat with a tenant for the renewal of his lease they
should do so and settle the new lease before the last
course of cropping under the existing lease had been
begun (remarks the Pall Mail Gazette). It is obvious
that to do this must be beneficial both to landlord and
tenant. Givina the tenant security, it would put him
in a position to go on making the best of his bisiness.
Making it the tenant's interest to keep the land in good
order, instead site exhaust it, during the last years of
a lease, it would—after allowing for capital invested by
him—make the farm worth more to him during the
new lease, and would enable him to pay the
landlord the more rent. Of course, no question
of compensation could arise when a lease had thus !
been ienewed. It seems as if this suggestion
of Mr. Caird's were bearing fruit. Lord Bundy
has just renewed for nineteen years the lease of no
fewer than thirty-seven of his tenants, three, and
in several CASeSi more than three years before the
exidry of their current leases. Let us hope that in
giving ease of mind, continued posses-ion of their
homes, and improved prospects of profitable work to
thirty-seven households, Lord llnntly has done himself
pecuniarily no injustice. But probably he thiuk; that
a great landowner had better lose some money and
secure the good opinion of the farming class, than
strain the rights of property with the result of pro-
ducing estrangement from and hostility towards the
. landowners among the farmers. His wise and con-
siderate conduct should find imitators.

MIL GLADSTONE AND THE NON-
CONFORMISTS.

The Manchester Ouardian publishes • correspond-
ence between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. W. Warburton,
honorary secretary of the Salford Nonconformist As-
sociation. This emaciation had passed the following
resolution and forwarded a copy of it to Mr. Glad-
stone :
- • -

'That this Association regards with anxiety and appre-
hension the utterances of the Government with reference to
the question of education in Ireland, and enters its earnest
protest against both existing and prospective national
schemes which shall in any manner or degree permit the
appropriation of public money to sectarian or denomina-
tional purposes."
In acknowledging the resolution through his secre-
tary, Mr. Gladstone asked the Association to specify
the declarations to which they took exception, as he
had art impreadon that they must have acted under a
misapprehension. The request having been complied
with at great length, Mr. Gladstone wrote on the 20th
inst. to Mr. Warburton as follows :
. _

--
Dear Sir, —I am obliged by your letter, especially as it con.
tains a quotation which explains manifestations pat I
should otherwise have been at a loss to understand. That
quotation has reference to Mr. Synan's amendment on the
second reading of Mr. Fawciatt's bill. I have not said that
I should not be deterred from supporting that amend-
ment 'by finding that it pledged the House to concurrent
endowment." I did say that I should not be deterred from
supporting it on the ground of its pledging the House to
concurrent endowment, and this for the simple reason that ,
It involved no such pledge. A slight and doubtless accidental
change is the words has entirely altered the sense. The
context, as reported in The T ietes, shows the sense I attached
to the amendment, which was a perfectly different one.
To concurrent endowment, when proposed by the late
Government in 1868, I at once objected, and I have never
ceased to entertain and proclaim a corresponding opinion. I
will not now enter on the other wide questions referred to
in your letter, butt again thank you for having brought to
nip notice the error I have just corrected. In another part
of your letter you express an objection to other " similar
views to which I have given utterance." What these may
be I know not but if they be specified we shall [lnd that
on no occasion have I deviated from the line of opinion here
stated.