NARRATIVE OF POLITICS.

A DEPUTATION from the Ulster Tenant Right Provincial
Committee waited on Lord Clarendon during his late
visit to Belfast, for the purpose of presenting an address.
His Lordship declined to receive the deputation, on the
ground of his engagements, but a copy of the address
was transmitted to him; and the following reply, dated
the 18th of September, was sent by his private secretary:
—"Gentlemen,—I am directed by the Lord-Lieutenant
to thank you for your address, congratulating him upon his
visit to the north, and expressing your dutiful attachment
to Her Majesty. His Excellency observed with extreme
satisfaction the agricultural and manufacturing prosperity
that prevailed throughout the district to which you more
particularly called his attention; but he forbears to
enter into any analysis of the causes which have
contributed to this happy state of things, respecting which
a variety of opinions must necessarily exist. His
Excellency considers, also, that it would be improper,
on his part, in replying to your address, to discuss the
relations that should subsist between landlord and tenant,
as the question will be brought under the consideration
of parliament next session; and you may rest assured
that it is the earnest desire of Her Majesty's Government
to promote such an arrangement as may be satisfactory to
all parties concerned. The Lord-Lieutenant is much
gratified at learning that you do not assume the attitude of
complainants against any class of our fellow subjects, as he
cannot doubt that temperate discussion and a careful
abstinence on all sides from offence and irritation, will greatly facilitate the adjustment of this important question.

The agricultural body you represent must be well aware
that landlords and tenants are mutually dependent on
each other; that their interests are identified, and can
never be separated without reciprocal injury; but his
Excellency is convinced that in Ireland, as elsewhere,
respect for the rights of property will be found perfectly
compatible with that security and confidence upon
which the profitable investment of capital must depend."

Mr. Nicholas Maher, one of the members for Tipperary,
and a large landed proprietor in that county, and the
Hon. Cecil Lawless, member for Clonmel, and son of
Lord Cloncurry, have given in their unconditional
allegiance to the principles of the Tenant League.

The Durham Agricultural Society held its annual
meeting on the 3rd inst. The most remarkable feature
of the proceedings was the speech of the Duke of
Cleveland, a conservative and protectionist, who, on this
occasion, putting aside the usual views of his party,
inculcated the necessity of every sort of exertion on the
part of the farmers; telling them that, by discarding
their antiquated modes of cultivation, they may make
the land bear double the produce now generally raised
from it.

At a meeting of the Bury Agricultural Association
on the 4th, Lord Stanley, the chairman, made a speech
which was remarkable as containing a retractation of
the opinion he had expressed in the House of Peers,
that the recent free trade legislation had altogether
swamped the energies of the farmer, and brought both
him and the landlord to ruin. He now congratulated
his audience on the spirit of agricultural improvement
and expenditure which he saw around him, and expressed
his confident belief that that spirit, and that expenditure,
would be equally beneficial to landlord and tenant. He
entreated them not to relax in their efforts. "Let the
zeal" he said, "which you have manifested in the first
instance be continued, as I am sure it will. Let the landlord
and the tenant, let the merchant and the agriculturist,
pull together in a joint endeavour after our common
prosperity; and believe me, that we shall insure, in
spite of all discouragement and difficulty, great and
gratifying success."

A great gathering of the Essex Protectionists took
place on the 9th, the occasion being the annual dinner
of the Saffron Walden Agricultural Association. The
principal speakers were Major Beresford, one of the
county members, and the Rev. Mordaunt Barnard,
rector of Little Bardfield. The rev. gentleman, in
acknowledging the "health of the bishop and clergy,"
said, that at a meeting which had been recently held in
a neighbouring county, the clergy had been compared
to rooks. The clergy were certainly birds which once
or twice in the year eat some of the corn—he did not
mean to say they eat one-tenth part—and he was quite
sure the farmers did not grudge them their share. At
all events, he trusted they would not attempt to cut
down those tall and ancestral trees in which the clergy
had built their nests. Both speakers ridiculed the idea
of "high farming," and contended that no kind of
high farming, at the present prices, could save farmers
from ruinous loss, doctrines which seemed to receive the
unanimous assent of the meeting.

The Tenant League held a monster meeting at Navan,
the capital of Meath county, on the 10th. Some fifteen
thousand are said to have been present, chiefly tenant-
farmers. Mr. Columbus Drake, J.P., presided; Mr.
Sharman Crawford, M.P., was the most notable speaker.
Mr. Crawford claimed the League's principle of adjusting
the relations of landlord and tenant by valuation, as his
own; founding its justice on the fact that in Ireland the
relation of landlord and tenant is such as to render
necessary a protection against extortionable bargains
about the land, which is not necessary in bargains about
other matters. Contemning, at his time of life, the
charge of popularity-hunting, he pledged himself to do
everything he could, in Parliament or out of it, to obtain
for the tenants their rights. A letter from Mr. Henry
Grattan, M.P., refused a "pledge to any particular
body of men, or any set of principles they may adopt;"
and one from Mr. Corbally, M.P., expressed a belief
that "the proceedings of the Tenant-Right Conference
have materially injured a good and just cause."

The annual aggregate meeting of the Parliamentary
and Financial Reform Association was held on the
14th in the London Tavern. The meeting was crowded.
Sir Joshua Walmsley was in the chair, and the
principal speakers (besides the chairman) were Mr.
Searle, Mr. W. J. Fox, Mr. Hume, Colonel Thompson,
and Mr. Feargus O'Connor. The leading resolution
(which, with the others, was passed unanimously) was—
"That, on a deliberate review of the proceedings of the
last session of Parliament, this meeting feels called upon
to express its strong dissatisfaction with many of the
votes of public money—votes altogether unwarranted
by the reasons assigned for them, or by the financial
condition of the country; that, connecting these votes
with the neglect of numbers of petitions from the people
for Parliamentary and other reforms at home; the
disregard of general and just complaints from our fellow-
subjects in the colonies abroad; the continuance of
heavy and oppressive taxation, and the maintenance of
overgrown and unnecessary establishments; this meeting
is deeply impressed with the necessity for a radical
reform in the Commons' House of Parliament, for the
purpose of giving to the people a constitutional control
over the proceedings of that assembly, and, consequently,
over the taxation and expenditure of the country."

At the Waltham Agricultural Society's Annual
Meeting, on the 19th, there was an excellent Show of
Stock, followed, as usual, by a dinner, at which the
Marquis of Granby presided, supported by a number of
the neighbouring landlords and clergy. Unlike the
speakers at some of the previous meetings this season,
the noble Marquis stoutly maintained the old
protectionist doctrines, which, he affirmed, were still held to
their full extent by Lord Stanley. Among the other
topics of his speech, was the present cry for financial
reform, which, he held, is a consequence of the distress
caused by free trade. "What is the meaning (he said)
of this crying out from one side of England to the other
for diminishing the expenditure? What is it but that
the people are now feeling the pressure of taxation much
heavier than they have ever done before? Dickens, in
a late work, said that in 1815 the taxes of the country
were at the rate of £5 4s. 10d. for each man, but that
now it is £21 14s. 11d½., about one-half. If that be the
case—if taxes are only one-half of what they were then,
how is it that there is this outcry for a reduction of
taxation? The system which is now being carried on is
ruining the country and destroying her vitality together
with her best interests." He concluded by advising the
farmers to cultivate their land as well as possible, and
by referring to the next general election as the period