"F. W. N." The next letter is dated 31st Dec., 1880, and treats mostly of agriculture in the fens, in connection with a writer on the subject in some current paper. "He" (the writer) "says that if a general move were made in the fens to stamp out the weeds (which would require an immense expenditure of money in wages), 'very different results would be obtained from what we now see.' No doubt they would. But what then? The landlord would raise the rent, and the farmers would have spent their capital without remuneration. _Nothing but a security against the rise of rent_ can encourage the farmers to make sacrifices. He justly says ... that fruit might be more profitable. But if a farmer plant a fruit tree, it becomes his landlord's property at once, though it may need thirteen or thirty years to come to its fullest value.... The writer treats a _lowering_ of rent as out of the question. Yet from 1847 up to about 1876 it was constantly _rising_. Now, forsooth! to go back is _impossible!!!_ And why, because _recent buyers have bought at so high a price_ that they only get three per cent. They are to be protected from losing, and that, though many have bought at a fancy price to indulge other tastes than properly agricultural. Mr. Pennington [Footnote: An old friend of Newman's.] told me he had farms under his own management and despaired of not losing by them, unless he could drive down the need of _paying wages_. This is what the farmers find. Up to 1875 rents kept rising, and wages rose too, yet prices rising, the peasants were not much better off. In 1873 the peasants claimed more still, and the farmers could not give it. They are ground between two millstones--higher rents and higher wages. This seems to me a fundamental refutation of the peculiarly English system. _Fixity of rent is the first necessity._ The landlord must not pocket the fruit of the tenants' labour." The following letter has to do almost entirely with politics, and with English misrule of Ireland. It will be remembered that from 1880, when Gladstone came into office, until 1885, when his Prime Ministership ended, wars were the order of the day constantly--wars in the Transvaal; war in Afghanistan; war in Egypt, and General Gordon left to die in Khartoum. Besides all these, that which came upon us constantly, the care of countries nearer at hand over which we tried experiments. "Weston-super-Mare. "Sunday night, _20th Feb_., 1881. "My dear Anna, "Many thanks for your kind interest in the approval of my writings.