Chapter VIII: Part 8

Then--labour, the great agricultural _crux_. If the occupier pays 3s. per week more to seven men, that adds more than another L50 per annum to his outgoings, to meet which you must somehow make your acres represent another L500. Turnpikes fall in, and the roads are repaired at the ratepayers' cost. Compulsory education--for it is compulsory in reality, since it compels voluntary schools to be built--comes next, and as generally the village committee mull matters, and have to add a wing, and rebuild, and so forth, till they get in debt, there grows up a rate which is a serious matter, not by itself, but added to other things. Just as in great factories they keep accounts in decimals because of the vast multitude of little expenses which are in the aggregate serious--each decimal is equivalent to a rusty nail or so--here on our farm threepence or fourpence in the pound added to threepence or sixpence ditto for voluntary Church-rate, puts an appreciable burden on the man's back. The tightness, however, does not end here; the belt is squeezed closer than this. No man had such long credit as the yeoman of yore (thirty years ago is 'of yore' in our century). Butcher and baker, grocer, tailor, draper, all gave him unlimited credit as to _time_. As a rule, they got paid in the end; for a farmer is a fixture, and does not have an address for his letters at one place and live in another. But modern trade manners are different. The trader is himself pressed. Competition galls his heel. He has to press upon his customers, and in place of bills sent in for payment once a year, and actual cash transfer in three, we have bills punctually every quarter, and due notice of county court if cheques are not sent at the half-year. So that the agriculturist wants more ready cash; and as his returns come but once a year, he does not quite see the fairness of having to swell other men's returns four times in the same period. Still a step further, and a few words will suffice to describe the increased cost of all the materials supplied by these tradesmen. Take coals, for instance. This is a fact so patent that it stares the world in the face. A farmer, too, nowadays has a natural desire to live as other people in his station of life do. He cannot reconcile himself to rafty bacon, cheese, radishes, turnip-tops, homespun cloth, smock frocks. He cannot see why his girls should milk the cows or wheel out manure from the yards any more than the daughters of tradesmen; neither that his sons should say 'Ay' and 'Noa,' and exhibit a total disregard of grammar and ignorance of all social customs. The piano, he thinks, is quite as much in its place in his cool parlour as in the stuffy so-called drawing-room at his grocer's in the petty town hard by, where they are so particular to distinguish the social ranks of 'professional tradesmen' from common tradesmen. Here in all this, even supposing it kept down to economical limits, there exists a considerable margin of expenditure greater than in our forefathers' time. True, wool is dearer, meat dearer; but to balance that put the increased cost of artificial manure and artificial food--two things no farmer formerly bought--and do not forget that the seasons rule all things, and are quite as capricious as ever, and when there is a bad season the loss is much greater than it used to be, just as the foundering of an ironclad costs the nation more than the loss of a frigate.

Experience every day brings home more and more the fatal truth that moderate farms do not pay, and there are even ominous whispers about the 2,000 acres system. The agriculturist says that, work how he may, he only gets 8 per cent. per annum; the tradesman, still more the manufacturer, gets only 2 per cent. each time, but he turns his money over twenty times a year, and so gets 40 per cent. per annum. Eight per cent. is a large dividend on one transaction, but it is very small for a whole year--a year, the one-thirtieth of a man's whole earning period, if we take him to be in a business at twenty-five, and to be in full work till fifty-five, a fair allowance. Now, why is it that this cry arises that agriculture will not pay? and why is it that the farmer only picks up 8 per cent.? The answer is simple enough. It is because the earth is idle a third of the year. So far as actual cash return is concerned, one might say it was idle eleven out of the twelve months. But that is hardly fair. Say a third of the year.

The earth does not continue yielding a crop day by day as the machines do in the manufactory. The nearest approach to the manufactory is the dairy, whose cows send out so much milk per diem; but the cows go dry for their calves. Out of the tall chimney shaft there floats a taller column of dark smoke hour after hour; the vast engines puff and snort and labour perhaps the whole twenty-four hours through; the drums hum round, the shafts revolve perpetually, and each revolution is a penny gained. It may be only steel-pen making--pens, common pens, which one treats as of no value and wastes by dozens; but the iron-man thumps them out hour after hour, and the thin stream of daily profit swells into a noble river of gold at the end of the year. Even the pill people are fortunate in this: it is said that every second a person dies in this huge world of ours. Certain it is that every second somebody takes a pill; and so the millions of globules disappear, and so the profit is nearer 8 per cent. per hour than 8 per cent. per annum. But this idle earth takes a third of the year to mature its one single crop of pills; and so the agriculturist with his slow returns cannot compete with the quick returns of the tradesman and manufacturer. If he cannot compete, he cannot long exist; such is the modern law of business. As an illustration, take one large meadow on a dairy farm; trace its history for one year, and see what an idle workshop this meadow is. Call it twenty acres of first-class land at L2 15s. per acre, or L55 per annum. Remember that twenty acres is a large piece on which some millions multiplied by millions of cubic feet of air play on a month, and on which an incalculable amount of force in the shape of sunlight is poured down in the summer. January sees this plot of a dull, dirty green, unless hidden by snow; the dirty green is a short, juiceless herbage. The ground is as hard as a brick with the frost. We will not stay now to criticize the plan of carting out manure at this period, or dwell on the great useless furrows. Look carefully round the horizon of the twenty acres, and there is not an animal in sight, not a single machine for making money, not a penny being turned. The cows are all in the stalls. February comes, March passes; the herbage grows slowly; but still no machines are introduced, no pennies roll out at the gateways. The farmer may lean on the gate and gaze over an empty workshop, twenty acres big, with his hands in his pockets, except when he pulls out his purse to pay the hedge-cutters who are clearing out the ditches, the women who have been stone-picking, and the carters who took out the manure, half of which stains the drains, while the volatile part mixes with the atmosphere. This is highly profitable and gratifying. The man walks home, hears his daughter playing the piano, picks up the paper, sees himself described as a brutal tyrant to the labourer, and ten minutes afterwards in walks the collector of the voluntary rate for the village school, which educates the labourers' children. April arrives; grass grows rapidly. May comes; grass is now long. But still not one farthing has been made out of that twenty acres. Five months have passed, and all this time the shafts in the manufactories have been turning, and the quick coppers accumulating. Now it is June, and the mower goes to work; then the haymakers, and in a fortnight if the weather be good, a month if it be bad, the hay is ricked. Say it cost L1 per acre to make the hay and rick it--_i.e._, L20--and by this time half the rent is due, or L27 10s. = total expenditure (without any profit as yet), L47 10s., exclusive of stone-picking, ditch-cleaning, value of manure, etc. This by the way. The five months' idleness is the point at present. June is now gone. If the weather be showery the sharp-edged grass may spring up in a fortnight to a respectable height; but if it be a dry summer--and if it is not a dry summer the increased cost of haymaking runs away with profit--then it may be fully a month before there is anything worth biting. Say at the end of July (one more idle month) twenty cows are turned in, and three horses. One cannot estimate how long they may take to eat up the short grass, but certain it is that the beginning of November will see that field empty of cattle again; and fortunate indeed the agriculturist who long before that has not had to 'fodder' (feed with hay) at least once a day. Here, then, are five idle months in spring, one in summer, two in winter; total, eight idle months. But, not to stretch the case, let us allow that during a part of that time, though the meadow is idle, its produce--the hay--is being eaten and converted into milk, cheese and butter, or meat, which is quite correct; but, even making this allowance, it may safely be said that the meadow is absolutely idle for one-third of the year, or four months. That is looking at the matter in a mere pounds, shillings, and pence light. Now look at it in a broader, more national view. Does it not seem a very serious matter that so large a piece of land should remain idle for that length of time? It is a reproach to science that no method of utilizing the meadow during that eight months has been discovered. To go further, it is very hard to require of the agriculturist that he should keep pace with a world whose maxims day by day tend to centralize and concentrate themselves into the one canon, Time is Money, when he cannot by any ingenuity get his machinery to revolve more than once a year. In the old days the farmer belonged to a distinct class, a very isolated and independent class, little affected by the progress or retrogression of any other class, and not at all by those waves of social change which sweep over Europe. Now the farmer is in the same position as other producers: the fall or rise of prices, the competition of foreign lands, the waves of panic or monetary tightness, all tell upon him quite as much as on the tradesman. So that the cry is gradually rising that the idle earth will not pay.

On arable land it is perhaps even more striking. Take a wheat crop, for instance. Without going into the cost and delay of the three years of preparation under various courses for the crop, take the field just before the wheat year begins. There it lies in November, a vast brown patch, with a few rooks here and there hopping from one great lump to another; but there is nothing on it--no machine turning out materials to be again turned into money. On the contrary, it is very probable that the agriculturist may be sowing money on it, scarifying it with steam ploughing-engines, tearing up the earth to a great depth in order that the air may penetrate and the frost disintegrate the strong, hard lumps. He may have commenced this expensive process as far back as the end of August, for it is becoming more and more the custom to plough up directly after the crop is removed. All November, December, January, and not a penny from this broad patch, which may be of any size from fifteen to ninety acres, lying perfectly idle. Sometimes, indeed, persons who wish to save manure will grow mustard on it and plough it in, the profit of which process is extremely dubious. At the latter end of February or beginning of March, just as the season is early or late, dry or wet, in goes the seed--another considerable expense. Then April, May, June, July are all absorbed in the slow process of growth--a necessary process, of course, but still terribly slow, and not a penny of ready-money coming in. If the seed was sown in October, as is usual on some soils, the effect is the same--the crop does not arrive till next year's summer sun shines. In August the reaper goes to work, but even then the corn has to be threshed and sent to market before there is any return. Here is a whole year spent in elaborating one single crop, which may, after all, be very unprofitable if it is a good wheat year, and the very wheat over which such time and trouble have been expended may be used to fat beasts, or even to feed pigs. All this, however, and the great expense of preparation, though serious matters enough in themselves, are beside our immediate object. The length of time the land is useless is the point. Making every possible allowance, it is not less than one-third of the year--four months out of the twelve. For all practical--_i.e._, monetary--purposes it is longer than that. No wonder that agriculturists aware of this fact are so anxious to get as much as possible out of their one crop--to make the one revolution of their machinery turn them out as much money as possible. If their workshop must be enforcedly idle for so long, they desire that when in work there shall be full blast and double tides. Let the one crop be as heavy as it can. Hence the agitation for compensatory clauses, enabling the tenant to safely invest all the capital he can procure in the soil. How else is he to meet the increased cost of labour, of rent, of education, of domestic materials; how else maintain his fair position in society? The demand is reasonable enough; the one serious drawback is the possibility that, even with this assistance, the idle earth will refuse to move any faster.

We have had now the experience of many sewage-farms where the culture is extremely 'high.' It has been found that these farms answer admirably where the land is poor--say, sandy and porous--but on fairly good soil the advantage is dubious, and almost limited to growing a succession of rye-grass crops. After a season or two of sewage soaking the soil becomes so soft that in the winter months it is unapproachable. Neither carts nor any implements can be drawn over it; and then in the spring the utmost care has to be exercised to keep the liquid from touching the young plants, or they wither up and die. Sewage on grass lands produces the most wonderful results for two or three years, but after that the herbage comes so thick and rank and 'strong' that cattle will not touch it; the landlord begins to grumble, and complains that the land, which was to have been improved, has been spoilt for a long time to come. Neither is it certain that the employment of capital in other ways will lead to a continuous increase of profit. There are examples before our eyes where capital has been unsparingly employed, and upon very large areas of land, with most disappointing results. In one such instance five or six farms were thrown into one; straw, and manure, and every aid lavishly used, till a fabulous number of sheep and other stock was kept; but the experiment failed. Many of the farms were again made separate holdings, and grass laid down in the place of glowing cornfields. Then there is another instance, where a gentleman of large means and a cultivated and business mind, called in the assistance of the deep plough, and by dint of sheer subsoil ploughing grew corn profitably several years in succession. But after a while he began to pause, and to turn his attention to stock and other aids. It is not for one moment contended that the use of artificial manure, of the deep plough, of artificial food, and other improvements will not increase the yield, and so the profit of the agriculturist. It is obvious that they do so. The question is, Will they do so to an extent sufficient to repay the outlay? And, further, will they do so sufficiently to enable the agriculturist to meet the ever-increasing weight which presses on him? It would seem open to doubt. One thing appears to have been left quite out of sight by those gentlemen who are so enthusiastic about compensation for unexhausted improvements, and that is, if the landlord is to be bound down so rigidly, and if the tenant really is going to make so large a profit, most assuredly the rents will rise very considerably. How then? Neither the sewage system, nor the deep plough, nor the artificial manure has, as yet, succeeded in overcoming the _vis inertiae_ of the idle earth. They cause an increase in the yield of the one revolution of the agriculturist machine per annum; but they do not cause the machine to revolve twice or three times. Without a decrease in the length of this enforced idleness any very great increase of profit does not seem possible. What would any manufacturer think of a business in which he was compelled to let his engines rest for a third of the year? Would he be eager to sink his capital in such an enterprise?

The practical man will, of course, exclaim that all this is very true, but Nature is Nature, and must have its way, and it is useless to expect more than one crop per annum, and any talk of three or four crops is perfectly visionary. 'Visionary,' by the way, is a very favourite word with so-called practical men. But the stern logic of figures, of pounds, shillings, and pence, proves that the present condition of affairs cannot last much longer, and they are the true 'visionaries' who imagine that it can. This enormous loss of time, this idleness, must be obviated somehow. It is a question whether the millions of money at present sunk in agriculture are not a dead loss to the country; whether they could not be far more profitably employed in developing manufacturing industries, or in utilizing for home consumption the enormous resources of Southern America and Australasia; whether we should not get more to eat, and cheaper, if such was the case. Such a low rate of interest as is now obtained in agriculture--and an interest by no means secure either, for a bad season may at any time reduce it, and even a too good season--such a state of things is a loss, if not a curse. It is questionable whether the million or so of labourers representing a potential amount of force almost incalculable, and the thousands of young farmers throbbing with health and vigour, eager _to do_, would not return a far larger amount of good to the world and to themselves if, instead of waiting for the idle earth at home to bring forth, they were transported bodily to the broad savannahs and prairies, and were sending to the mother-country innumerable shiploads of meat and corn--unless, indeed, we can discover some method by which our idle earth shall be made to labour more frequently. This million or so of labourers and these thousands of young, powerfully made farmers literally do nothing at all for a third the year but wait, wait for the idle earth. The of strength, the will, the vigour latent in them is wasted. They do not enjoy this waiting by any means. The young agriculturist chafes under the delay, and is eager _to do_. They can hunt and course hares, 'tis true, but that is feeble excitement indeed, and feminine in comparison with the serious work which brings in money.

The idleness of arable and pasture land is as nothing compared to the idleness of the wide, rolling downs. These downs are of immense extent, and stretch through the very heart of the country. They maintain sheep, but in how small a proportion to the acreage! In the spring and summer the short herbage is cropped by the sheep; but it is short, and it requires a large tract to keep a moderate flock. In the winter the down is left to the hares and fieldfares. It has just as long a period of absolute idleness as the arable and pasture land, and when in work the yield is so very, very small.

After all, the very deepest ploughing is but scratching the surface. The earth at five feet beneath the level has not been disturbed for countless centuries. Nor would it pay to turn up this subsoil over large areas, for it is nothing but clay, as many a man has found to his cost who, in the hope of a heavier crop, has dug up his garden half a spade deeper than usual. But when the soil really is good at that depth, we cannot get at it so as to turn it to practical account. The thin stratum of artificial manure which is sown is no more in comparison than a single shower after a drought of months; yet to sow too much would destroy the effect. No blame, then, falls upon the agriculturist, who is only too anxious to get a larger produce. It is useless charging him with incompetency. What countless experiments have been tried to increase the crop: to see if some new system cannot be introduced! With all its progress, how little real advance has agriculture made! All because of the stubborn, idle earth. Will not science some day come to our aid, and show how two crops or three may be grown in our short summers; or how we may even overcome the chill hand of winter? Science has got as far as this: it recognizes the enormous latent forces surrounding us--electricity, magnetism; some day, perhaps, it may be able to utilize them. It recognizes the truly overwhelming amount of force which the sun of summer pours down upon our fields, and of which we really make no use. To recognize the existence of a power is the first step towards employing it. Till it was granted that there was a power in steam the locomotive was impossible.

It would be easy to swell this notice of idle earth by bringing in all the waste lands, now doing nothing--the parks, deer forests, and so on. But that is not to the purpose. If the wastes were reclaimed and the parks ploughed up, that would in nowise solve the problem how to make the cultivated earth more busy. It is no use for a man who has a garden to lean on his spade, look over his boundary wall, and say, 'Ah, if neighbour Brown would but dig up his broad green paths how many more potatoes he would grow!' That would not increase the produce of the critic's garden by one single cabbage. Certainly it is most desirable that all lands capable of yielding crops should be reclaimed, but one great subject for the agriculturist to study is, how to shorten the period of idleness in his already cultivated plots. At present the earth is so very idle.

AFTER THE COUNTY FRANCHISE

The money-lender is the man I most fear to see in the villages after the extension of the county franchise--the money-lender both in his private and public capacity, the man who has already taken a grasp of most little towns that have obtained incorporation in some form. Like Shylock he demands what is in his bond: he demands his interest, and that means a pull at every man's purse--every man, rich or poor--who lives within the boundary. Borrowing is almost the ruin of many such little towns; rates rise nearly as high as in cities, and people strive all they can to live anywhere outside the limit. Borrowing is becoming one of the curses of modern life, and a sorrowful day it will be when the first village takes to it. The name changes--now it is a local board, now it is commissioners, sometimes a town council: the practice remains the same. These authorities exist but for one purpose--to borrow money, and as any stick will do to beat a dog with, so any pretence will do to exact the uttermost farthing from the inhabitants. Borrowing boards they are, one and all, and nothing else, from whom no one obtains benefit except the solicitor, the surveyor, the lucky architect, and those who secure a despicable living in the rear of the county court. Nothing could better illustrate the strange supineness of the majority of people than the way in which they pay, pay, pay, and submit to every species of extortion at the hands of these incapable blunderers, without so much as a protest. The system has already penetrated into the smallest of the county towns which groan under the incubus; let us hope, let us labour, that it may not continue its course and enter the villages.

It may reasonably be supposed that when once the extension of the franchise becomes an established fact, some kind of local government will soon follow. At present country districts are either without any local government at all--I mean practically, not theoretically--or else they are ruled without the least shadow of real representation. When men are admitted to vote and come to be enlightened as to the full meaning and force of such rights, it is probable that they will shortly demand the power to arrange their own affairs. They will have something to say as to the administration of the poor-law, over which at present they do not possess the slightest control, and they are not at all unlikely to set up a species of self-government in every separate village. I think, in short, that the parish may become the unit in the future to the disintegration of the artificial divisions drawn to facilitate the poor-law. Such divisions, wherein many parishes of the most diverse description and far apart are thrown together anyhow as the gardener pitches weeds into his basket, have done serious harm in the past. They have injured the sense of personal responsibility, they have created a bureaucracy absolutely without feeling, and they have tended to shift great questions out of sight. The shifting of things out of sight--round the corner--is a vile method of dealing with them. Send your wretched poor miles away into a sort of alien workhouse, and then congratulate yourself that you have tided over the difficulty! But the difficulty has not been got over.

A man who can vote, and who is told--as he certainly will be told--that he bears a part in directing the great affairs of his nation, will ask himself why he should not be capable of managing the little affairs of his own neighbourhood. When he has asked himself this question, it will be the first step towards the downfall of the inhuman poor-law. He will go further and say, 'Why should I not settle these things at home? Why should I not walk up to the village from my house in the country lane, and there and then arrange the business which concerns me? Why should I any longer permit it to be done over my head and without my consent by a body of persons in whom I have no confidence, for they do not represent me--they represent property?'

In his own village the voter will observe the school--his own village then is worthy to possess its own school; possibly he may even remotely have some trifling share in the control of the school if there is a board. If that great interest, the children of the parish, can be administered at home, why not the other and much less important interests? Here may be traced a series of reflections, and a succession of steps by which ultimately the whole system of boards of guardians with their attendant powers, as the rural sanitary authority and so forth, may ultimately be swept away. Government will come again to the village.

Then arises the money-lender, and no time should be lost by those who have the good and the genuine liberty of the countryside at heart in labouring to prevent his entry into the village. Whatsoever constitution the village obtains in future, let us strive to strictly limit the borrowing powers of its council. No borrowing powers at all would be best--government without loans would be almost ideal--if that cannot be accomplished, then at least lay down a stringent regulation putting a firm and impassable limit. Were every one of my way of thinking, government without loans would be imperative. It would be done if it had to be done. Rugged discomfort is preferable to borrowing.

I dread, in a word, lest the follies perpetrated in towns should get into the villages and hamlets, and want to say a word betimes of warning. Imagine a new piece of roadway required, then to get the money let a penny be added to the rates, and the amount produced laid by at interest year after year, till the sum be made up. Better wait a few years and walk half a mile round than borrow the five or six hundred pounds, and have to pay that back and all the interest on it. Shift somehow, do not borrow.

In the discussions upon the agricultural franchise it has been generally assumed that the changes it portends will be shown in momentous State affairs and questions of principle. But perhaps it will be rather in local and home concerns that the alterations will be most apparent. The agricultural labourer voters--and the numerous semi-agricultural voters, not labourers--are more than likely to look at their own parish as well as at the policy of the Foreign Office. Gradually the parish--that is, the village--must become the centre to men who feel at last that they are their own masters. Under some form or other they will take the parish into their own hands, and insist upon their business being managed at home. Some shape of village council must come presently into existence.

Shrewd people are certain to appear upon the scene, pointing out to the cottager that if he desires to rule himself in his own village, he must insist upon one most important point. This is the exclusion of property representation. Instead of property having an overwhelming share, as now, in the direction of affairs, the owner of the largest property must not weigh any heavier in the village council than the wayside cottager. If farmer or landowner sit there he must have one vote only, the same as any other member. The council, if it is to be independent, must represent men and not land in the shape of landowners, or money in the shape of tenant-farmers. Shrewd people will have no difficulty in explaining the meaning of this to the village voters, because they can quote so many familiar instances. There is the Education Act in part defeated by the combination of property, landowners and farmers paying to escape a school-board--a plan temporarily advantageous to them, but of doubtful benefit, possibly injurious, to the parish at large. Leaving that question alone, the fact is patent that the cottager has no share in the government of his school, because land and money have combined. It may be governed very well; still it is not _his_ government, and will serve to illustrate the meaning. There is the board of guardians, nominally elected, really selected, and almost self-appointed. The board of guardians is land and money simply, and in no way whatever represents the people. A favourite principle continually enunciated at the present day is that the persons chiefly concerned should have the management. But the lower classes who are chiefly concerned with poor relief, as a matter of fact, have not the slightest control over that management. Besides the guardians, there is still an upper row, and here the rulers are not even invested with the semblance of representation, for magistrates are not elected, and they are guardians by virtue of their being magistrates. The machinery is thus complete for the defeat of representation and for the despotic control of those who, being principally concerned, ought by all rule and analogy to have the main share of the management. We have seen working men's representatives sit in the House of Commons; did anyone ever see a cottage labourer sit as administrator at the board before which the wretched poor of his own neighbourhood appear for relief?

But it may be asked, Is the village council, then, composed of small proprietors, to sit down and vote away the farmer's or landowner's money without farmer or landowner having so much as a voice in the matter? Certainly not. The idea of village self-government supposes a distinct and separate existence, as it were; the village apart from the farmer or landowner, and the latter apart from the village. At present the money drawn in rates from farmer or landowner is chiefly expended on poor-law purposes. But, as will presently appear, village self-government proposes the entire abolition of the poor-law system, and with it the rates which support it, or at least the heaviest part of them. Therefore, as this money would not be concerned, they could receive no injury, even if they did not sit at the village council at all.

Imagine the village, figuratively speaking, surrounded by a high wall like a girdle, as towns were in ancient times, and so cut off altogether from the large properties surrounding it--on the one hand the village supporting and governing itself, and on the other the large properties equally independent.

The probable result would be a considerable reduction in local burdens on land. A self-supporting and self-governing moral population is the first step towards this relief to land so very desirable in the interest of agriculture.

In practice there must remain certain more or less imperial questions, as lines of through road, police, etc., some of which are already managed by the county authority. As these matters affect the farmer and landowner even more than the cottager, clearly they must expect to contribute to the cost, and can rightly claim a share in the management.

Having advanced so far as a village council, and arrived at the stage of managing their own affairs, having, in fact, emerged from pupilage, next comes a question for the council. We now govern our village ourselves; why should we not possess our village? Why should we not live in our own houses? Why should we not have a little share in the land, as much, at least, as we can pay for? At this moment the village, let us say, consists of a hundred cottages, and perhaps there are another hundred scattered about the parish. Of these three-fourths belong to two or three large landowners, and those who reside in them, however protected by enactment, can never have a sense of complete independence. We should own these cottages, so that the inhabitants might practically pay rent to themselves. We must purchase them, a few at a time; the residents can repurchase from us and so become freeholders. For a purchaser there must be a seller, and here one of the questions of the future appears: Can an owner of this kind of property be permitted to refuse to sell? Must he be compelled to sell?

It is clear that if the village voter thoroughly addresses himself to his home affairs there is room for some remarkable incidents. There is reason now, is there not, to dread the appearance of the money-lender?

About this illustrative parish there lie many hundred acres of good land all belonging to one man, while we, the said village council, do not possess a rood apiece, and our constituents not a square yard. Rightfully we ought to have a share, yet we do not agitate for confiscation. Shall we then say that every owner of land should be obliged to sell a certain fixed percentage--a very small percentage would suffice--upon proffer of a reasonable amount, the proffer being made by those who propose to personally settle on it? Of one thousand acres suppose ten or twenty liable to forcible purchase at a given and moderate price. After all it is not a much more overbearing thing than the taking by railways of land in almost any direction they please, and not nearly so tyrannous, so stupidly tyrannous, as some of the acts of folly committed by local boards in towns. Not long since the newspapers reported a case where a local authority actually ran a main sewer across a gentleman's park, and ventilated it at regular intervals, completely destroying the value of an historic mansion, and utterly ruining a beautiful domain. This was fouling their own nest with a vengeance. They should have cherished that park as one of their chiefest glories, their proudest possession. Parks and woods are daily becoming of almost priceless value to the nation; nothing could be so mad as to destroy these last homes of nature. Just conceive the inordinate folly of marking such a property with sewer ventilators. This is a hundred times more despotic than a proposal that say two per cent. of land should be forcibly purchasable for actual settlement. Even five per cent. would not make an appreciable difference to an estate, though every fraction of the five per cent. were taken up.

For such proposals to have any effect, the transfer of real property must be greatly simplified and cheapened. From time to time, whenever a discussion occurs upon this subject, and there are signs that the glacier-like movements of government will be hastened by public stir, up rises some great lawyer and explains to the world that really nothing could be simpler or cheaper than such transfer. All that can be wished in that direction has been accomplished already; there is not the slightest ground for agitation; every obstruction has been removed, and the machinery is now perfect. He quotes a long list of Acts to demonstrate the progress that has been made, and so winds up a very effective speech. Facts, however, are not in accordance with these gracious words. Here is an instance. A cottage in a village was recently sold for seventy pounds; the costs, legal expenses, parchments, all the antiquated formalities absorbed _thirty-two pounds_, only three pounds less than half the value of the little property. Could anything be more obviously wrong than such a system.

The difficulties in the way of simplification are created difficulties, entirely artificial, owing their existence to legal ingenuity. How often has the question been asked and never answered: Why should there be any more expense in transferring the ownership of an acre of land than of L100 stock?

The village council coming into contact with this matter is likely to agitate continuously for its rectification, since otherwise its movements will be seriously hampered. If they succeed in obtaining the abolition of these semi-feudal survivals, they will have conferred a substantial benefit upon the community. County franchise would be worth the granting merely to secure this.

Let us take the case for a moment of a labourer at this day and consider his position. What has he before him? He has a hand-to-mouth, nomad existence, ending in the inevitable frozen misery of the workhouse. Men with votes and political power are hardly likely to endure this for many more years, and it is much to be hoped that they will not endure it. A labourer may be never so hard-working, so careful, so sober, and yet let his efforts be what they may, his old age finds him helpless. I am sure there is no class of men among whom may be found so many industrious, plodding, sober folk, economical to the verge of starvation. Their straightforward lives are thrown away. Their sons and daughters, warned by example, go to the cities, and there lose the virtues that rendered their forefathers so admirable even in their wretchedness. It will indeed be a blessing if, as I hope, the outcome of the franchise is the foundation of solid inducements to the countryman to stay in the country. I use the phrase countryman purposely, intending it to include small farmers and small farmers' sons; the latter are likewise driven away from the land year by year as much as the young labourers, and are as serious a loss to it. Did the possibility exist of purchasing a cottage and a plot of ground of moderate size, it is more than probable that the labourer's son would remain in the village, or return to it, and his daughter would come back to the village to be married. We hear how the poor Italian or the poor Swiss leaves his native country for our harder climate, how he works and saves, and by-and-by returns to his village and purchases some corner of earth. This seems a legitimate and worthy object. We do not hear of our own sturdy labourers returning to their village with a pocketful of money and purchasing a plot of ground or a cottage. They do not attempt it, because they know that under present conditions it is nearly impossible. There is no land for them to buy. Why not, when the country is nothing but land? Because the owner of ten thousand acres is by no means obliged to part with the minutest fragment of it. If by chance a stray portion be somewhere for sale, the expenses, the costs, the parchments, the antiquated formalities, the semi-feudal routine delay and possibly prevent transfer altogether. If land were accessible, and the cost of transferring cottage property reduced to reasonable proportions, the labourer would have the soundest of all inducements to practise self-denial in his youth. Cities might attract him temporarily for the advantage of higher wages, but he would put the excess by and ultimately bring it home. Even the married cottager with a family would try his hardest to save a little with such a hope before him.

The existing circumstances deny hope altogether. Neither land nor cottages are to be had, there are no sellers, and the cost of transfer is prohibitive; men are shifted on, they have no security of tenure, they are passed on from farm to farm and can settle nowhere. The competition for a house in some districts is keen to the last degree; it seems as if there were eager crowds waiting for homes. Recently while roaming on the Sussex hills I met an ancient shepherd whose hair was white as snow, though he stood upright enough. I inquired the names of the hills there, and he replied that he did not know; he was a stranger, he had only been moved there lately. How strangely changed are things when a grey-headed shepherd does not know the names of his hills! At a time of life when he ought to have been comfortably settled he had had to shift.

Sentiment is more stubborn than fact. People will face the sternest facts, dire facts, stubborn facts, and stay on in spite of all; but once let sentiment alter and away they troop. So I think that some part of the distaste for farming visible about us is due to change of sentiment--to feeling repelled--as well as to unfruitful years. Men have stood out against weary weather in all ages of agriculture, but lately they have felt hurt and repelled, the sentiment of attachment to home has been rudely torn up, and so now the current sets against farming, though farms are often offered on advantageous terms. In the same way, besides the stubborn facts that drive the labourer from the village and prevent his return to settle, there is a yet more stubborn sentiment repelling him. Made a man of by education--not only of books, but the unconscious education of progressive times--the labourer and his son and daughter have thoughts of independence. To be humbly subservient to the will of those above them, to be docilely obedient, not only to the employer, but to all in some sort of authority, is not attractive to them. Plainly put, the rule of parson and squire, tenant and guardian, is repellent to them in these days. They would rather go away. If they do save money in cities, they do not care to return and settle under the thumb of these their old masters. Besides more attractive facts, the sentiment of independence must be called into existence before the labourer, or, for the matter of that, the small farmer's son, will willingly settle in the village. That sense of independence can only arise when the village governs itself by its own council, irrespective of parson, squire, tenant, or guardian. Towards that end the power to vote is almost certain to drift slowly.

Nothing can be conceived more harshly antagonistic to the feelings of a naturally industrious race of men than the knowledge that as a mass they are looked upon as prospective 'paupers.' I detest this word so much that it is painful to me to write it; I put it between inverted commas as a sort of protest, so that it may appear a hated intruder, and not native to the text. The local government existing at this day in country districts is practically based upon the assumption that every labouring man will one day be a 'pauper,' will one day come to the workhouse. By the workhouse and its board the cottage is governed; the workhouse is the centre, the bureau, the _hotel de ville_. The venue of local government must be changed before the labourer can feel independent, and it will be changed doubtless as he becomes conscious of the new power he has acquired. Shall the bitterness of the workhouse at last pass away? Let us hope so let us be thankful indeed if the franchise leads to the downfall of those cruel walls. Yet what is the cruelty of cold walls to the cruelty of 'system'? A workhouse in the country is usually situated as nearly as possible in the centre of the Union, it may be miles from the outlying parishes. Thither the worn-out cottager is borne away from the fields, his cronies, his little helps to old age such as the corner where the sun shines, the friend who allows little amenities, to dwindle and die. The workhouse bureau extends its unfeeling hands into every detail of cottage life. No wonder the labourer does not deny himself to save money in order to settle where these things are done. A happy day it will be when the workhouse door is shut and the building sold for materials. A gentleman not long since wrote to me a vindication of his workhouse--I cannot at the moment place my hand on the figures he sent me, but I grant that they were conclusive from his point of view; they were not extravagant, the administration appeared correct. But this is not my point of view at all. Figures are not humanity. The workhouse and the poor-law system are inhuman, debasing, and injurious to the whole country, and the better they are administered, the worse it really is, since it affords a specious pretext for their continuance. What would be the use of a captain assuring his passengers that the ship was well found, plenty of coal in the bunkers, the engines oiled and working smoothly, when they did not want to go to the port for which he was steering? An exact dose of poison may be administered, but what comfort is it to the victim to assure him that it was accurately measured to a minim? What is the value of informing me that the 'paupers' are properly looked after when I do not want any 'paupers'?

But how manage without the poor-law system? There are several ways. There is the insurance method: space will not permit of discussion in this paper, but one fact which speaks volumes may be alluded to. Two large societies exist in this country called the 'Oddfellows' and the 'Foresters'; they number their members by the million; they assist their members not only at home, but all over the world (which is what no poor-law has ever done); they govern themselves by their own laws, and they prosper exceedingly--an honour to the nation. They have solved the difficulty for themselves.

When the village governs itself and takes all matters into its own hands, in time the sentiment of independence may grow up and men begin to work and strive and save, that they may settle at home. It would be a very noble thing indeed if the true English feeling for home life should become the dominant passion of the country once again. By home life I mean that which gathers about a house, however small, standing in its own grounds. Something comes into existence about such a house, an influence, a pervading feeling, like some warm colour softening the whole, tinting the lichen on the wall, even the very smoke-marks on the chimney. It is home, and the men and women born there will never lose the tone it has given them. Such homes are the strength of a land. The emigrant who leaves us for the backwoods hopes to carve out a home for himself there, and we consider that an ambition to be admired. I hope the day will come when some at least of our people may be able to set up homes for themselves in their own country. To-day, if they would live, they must crowd into the city, often to dwell in the midst of hideous squalor, or they must cross the ocean. They would rather endure the squalor, rather say farewell for ever and sail for America, than stay in the village where everyone is master, and none of their class can be independent. The village must be its own master before it becomes popular. County government may be reformed with advantage, but that is not enough, because it must necessarily be too far off. People in the country are scattered, and each little centre is naturally only concerned with itself. A government having its centre at the county town is too far away, and is likely to bear too much resemblance to the boards of guardians and present authorities, to be representative of land and money rather than of men. Progress can only be made in each little centre separately by means of village councils, genuinely representative of the village folk, unswayed by mansion, vicarage, or farm. Then by degrees we may hope to see the re-awakening of English home-life in contradistinction to that unhappy restlessness which drives so many to the cities.

Men will then wake up and work with energy because they will have hope. The slow, plodding manner of the labourer--the dull ways even of the many industrious cottagers--these will disappear, giving place to push and enterprise. Why does a lawyer work as no navvy works? Why does a cabinet minister labour the year through as hard as a miner? Because they have a mental object. So will the labourer work when he has a mental object--to possess a home for himself.