Note 66 — WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. ON DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS; DELIVERED AT WEST CALDER, NOVEMBER 27, 1879.

Note 66, p. 288.—In 1879 the people of England were confronted with problems which a long succession of good harvests had caused them to forget. The failure of four successive crops had brought about unexampled distress. The cry for protection was revived, and in the spring of 1879 was brought in various forms before Parliament. Lord Beaconsfield, the Prime-Minister, in a succession of quite remarkable speeches, took the ground that “the country had settled the question in another generation,” and that the distress was not to be relieved by a return to the former policy. Among other interesting things shown by the Prime-Minister, was the fact that the loss to the nation from bad harvests had been in four years not less than about 80,000,000 pounds sterling.—Beaconsfield’s “Speeches,” i., 327.