army, where promotion would be denied to an officer
who, like Marlborough, could not spell. But in agriculture a landlord
has only to inquire who can give the highest rent, having the largest
capital, subject by the strictest penalties of law to the conditions of
a lease dictated by the most scientific agriculturists under penalties
fixed by the most cautious conveyancers. By this mode of procedure,
recommended by the most liberal economists of our age,--barring those
still more liberal who deny that property in land is any property at
all,--by this mode of procedure, I say, a landlord does his duty to his
country. He secures tenants who can produce the most to the community by
their capital, tested through competitive examination in their bankers'
accounts and the security they can give, and through the rigidity of
covenants suggested by a Liebig and reduced into law by a Chitty. But on
my father's land I see a great many tenants with little skill and less
capital, ignorant of a Liebig and revolting from a Chitty, and no
filial enthusiasm can induce me honestly to say that my father is a good
landlord. He has preferred his affection for individuals to his duties
to the community. It is not, my friends, a question whether a handful of
farmers like yourselves go to the workhouse or not. It is a consumer's
question. Do you produce the maximum of corn to the consumer?

"With respect to myself," continued the orator, warming as the cold
he had engendered in his audience became more freezingly felt,--"with
respect to myself, I do not deny that, owing to the accident of training
for a very faulty and contracted course of education, I have obtained
what are called 'honours' at the University of Cambridge; but you must
not regard that fact as a promise of any worth in my future passage
through life. Some of the most useless persons--especially narrow-minded
and bigoted--have acquired far higher honours at the University than
have fallen to my lot.

"I thank you no less for the civil things you have said of me and of my
family; but I shall endeavour to walk to that grave to which we are all
bound with a tranquil indifference as to what people may say of me in
so short a journey. And the sooner, my friends, we get to our journey's
end, the better our chance of escaping a great many pains, troubles,
sins, and diseases. So that when I drink to your good healths, you must
feel that in reality I wish you an early deliverance from the