The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1873-04-15 00:00:00

j3groet &twig exinego.
TUESDAY. APRIL lb, 1873

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

The Queen, with the Princess Beatrice and
Prince Leopold, are spending Easterr. at Osborne,
the Prince and Princess of Wales at Sandring-
ham, and the Ministers in all directions, the
Premier in FUntahire, Mr. Lowe at his pleasant
cottage in the Surrey hills, and Lord Granville
at Weimer Castle, playing the part of Lord
Warden of the Cimino 'Porte, and perhaps !
studying at his leisure the polities and maps of
of Central Asia, and the contingencies that the
Russian newspapers are now threatening twa with
as the result of the Khivan expedition.
The first term of the Parliamentary session
has been brought to a aloes, and its vicissitudes
have furnlsheJ ample Lenten thoughts for the
Ministry. Only two months ago, the Gladstone
Ministry was all-powerful; to-day its existence
bangs (as Mr. Lowe has candidly said) on the
thread of Mr. Disraeli'. pleasure. This great
change hes been brought to pas. by the Irish
University Bill which Lord Derby had the
prudence to suggest on the first night of the
session could not be passed ; and now Mr.
Gladstone has been oblNed to make Mr.
Fawoett's Bill for Abolishing Tests a Govern-
ment measure, after having barked it year after
year on the ground that it settled nothing. The
Conservatives, with the unsolicited aid of the
Ultramontanes, put the Ministry in a minority,
and then declined ontoe on high grounds of public
convenience; and Mr. Gladstone perforce con-
tinues to bear the unwelcome burden of
office. But it is felt that the power of the
MinistrT is considerably weakened, and that •
dissolution only can rehabilitate them. Still,
the several Ministers in their departments, have
achieved noteworthy successes. Mr. Cardwell
, has heightened his reputation as an
adminis-
trator, by the skill with which he is working out
! the Army Localization Scheme; Mr. °cachou,
I beset with all the difficulties of big guns and
armour plates of increasing thickness, has created
, an impression that he was not demonstrably
wrong in his views as to the management of the
ironclad navy, which is is much as can be said
of any naval administrator or reformer. Mr.
Ayrton got satisfactorily out of the pit that his
enemies bad dug for him, and complacently
pleaded that he wa. but an innocent subordinate,
carrying out the orders of his masters as to the
management of the Parks ; and Mr. Bruce
quietly settled the blazing question of the
Regulations by throwing open the whole avail-
able space in Hyde Park to public meetings.
Private members have been allowed some
triumphs of the sort that delights them. An
, abstract motion made by Mr. Harcourt in favour
of reduction of expenditure WLO unexpectedly
crowned with the concession of a Select Com-
mittee. Mr. Plimsoll has been promised his '
Commission to inquire into his allegations as to
I the treatment of merchant seamen. Indignant
householders have secured a special Committee
I to examine and inform them why their opals are
' so dear ; and Mr. Gladstone had the softest and
kindest words for his faithless Ultramontanes
when smarting under the erratic lash of the
Pall Mall Gazette. The Burials Bill, which was
suddenly lifted out of obscurity into a great
party question. afforded an opportunity to the
Government of showing the Nonconformists who
were their friends ; while Parliament has
enjoyed the pleasure of bucking without •
murmur proposals such as those for enabling
widowers to marry their sisters-in-law, and
I the Turks to make a long railway through
their deserts at the expense of England.
Of measures in progress the Chancellor's Judica-
ture Bill is under the chastening band of •
I Select Committee; Mr. Chichester Fortescue's
I Railway and Canal Bill is being forwarded satis-
factorily, but nobody knows how it will work ;
the Attorney-General's Jury Bill for reducing
the number and dispensing with the unanimity
of juries, is not at all likely to pass. The 'He-
mmed modification of the Education Bill seems
likely either to be unsatisfactory to the Probe,.
taut Nonconformist., or to bring about • new
coalition between the Conservatives and Irish
I Catholics: while the measure for remodelling
! Local Taxation is full of difficulties. A dissolu-
tion cannot long be averted ; and one of the signs
of the times is the popularity Budget of Mr.
i Lowe, unfolded at the lea sitting before the
Easter vacation. A relief of 25 per cent, on the
Income Tax is • great boon ; the working-classes
and the advocates of a " Free Breakfast Table"
will be sweetened by the reduction of the sugar
duty by one half; and the removal of the tax
on waiters will conciliate the licensed victuallers.
' The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been
"wise in his generation," and his Lenten budget
will scan when the day of reckoning comes, and
! the Conservative "policy of criticism" is
I brought to bear upon it.
The mess will give county M.P.. an oppor-
tunity of talking over with their constituents
the question whether it is necessary, in passing
Mr. Howard and Mr. Clare Reas'enant Right
Bill, to pass it with • clause making it illegal
for tenants to contract themselves out of the
Act. This is the only point upon which, at
present, there is apparently the slightest
difference of opinioo. The cardinal principle of
the Bill—the principle, that is, of giving cosi- !
peaaation to an outgoing tenant for unexhausted
improvements, • principle which is acted upon
! in some parts of the country—has been generally
• recognised. But there is a division of opinion
upon the question whether, in recognising this
custom and clothing it with an Act of Parlia-
ment, it is necessary to prohibit all agreements
' which do not happen to run within the grove of
the lot. "The purpose of the 12th obtuse," as
, it is explained by Mr. Howard, "is to make the
tenant-right which the Bill proposes to establish
, inalienable, and to prevent its being contracted
ewer, because if a landlord can except the right
, under an agreement, the farmers will be to-
. morrow a. they were.'- But the principle upon
. which we have always acted in this country till
! now has been that contracts should be free.
Even in the Irish land Act the 12th clause
allows tenants with holdings valued at £5O or
upwards, and not haring rights under the Ulster
or similar custom, to "contra A themselves out
of" the Act; that is to accept a1e,,.. or other
agreement by which they renounce all their
statutory elaims and many of the agriculturists
themselves, like Sir John Pakington and Mr.
Chaplin, although strongly in favourof protecting
the property of the tenant in his improvements,
I think that • landlord and tenant should be left
free to enter into independent agreements outside
I the scope of the Act. Take this case, for
instsnee. A landlord offers a tenant a thirty-
f one years' law of a piece of land at a low rent.
"It is poor soil, but make the beet of it; and
as the terms are *say, you may without
' difficulty repay yourself before the lease runs
out." In such a case the tenant secures hip
compensation In advance, through the lease
' and the reduced rent, and there seems

nothing wrong in his binding himself not to
finally claim the additional compensation for
inuexhauated improvements provided for by this
Bill. But Mr. Clare Read and Mr. Howard
propose to make sal agreements of thissort null
and void, and to give the tenant power, in spite
of the agreement, to institute an action at the
end of his term to recover compensation to; 41
the improvements on his farm, with this single
proviso, that DO permanent improvement—
' excepting drains and watercourass—is to be
made trithout the landlord's previous consent in
writing. The Central Chamber of Agriculture
has accepted the clause the essence of the
Bill, and if the Chamber represent.; ths general
feeling of agriculturists, the landiciii
have a difficult question to settle with them.-
selves.
After the reams Sir She! to Adair will take his
seat se Lord Wavency, and the Earl of Nor-
wanton (di the Irish peerags. Lord Somerton.
Thaw two addition& to gm House of Lords will
bring up the total nutober of Mr. Gladstone's
creations to thirty, among which thre.e ootoh
and three Irish peers have received United
Kingdom peerages. Two bars of peers have
also been called to the Howe of Lords during
the lives of their fathom As two of the 014
atone peerages have already become extinct
(Ossioston and Hailing), the net number of
additions is thirty. But though Mr. Gladstone
has followed tile example of other Premiers in
adding to the rolls of the peerage, the Ilona. of
Lords is in no danger of being swamped by his
proceedings A large propoltioe of the new
creations would have been necessary to sully
.
the place of extinct th and as epo
nos of the United Kingdom has doubled Itself
in 60 years, ths increase of the mwatairol peers
from 393 in MO to 490 at the present time
does not appear to be excessive. The rapidg
' with which a large proportion of peerages
become extinct, through failure of direst hisin
mole, is illustrated by the fad that o(400 peerages
created in the reign of George 111., only 130
now Tanis. The_ Elms. House is more repro-
sentelive and ler bstairy than may people
WINO&