the undesirables, the "riff-raff," the weak and incompetent. If any of these are sent they will be promptly rejected and sent back. The number of emigrants sent back by the United States in 1904 was: British and Irish, 366; foreigners, 1198; total, 1566. The number rejected by the Colonial authorities in the same year was: British and Irish, 39; foreigners, 197; total, 236. Nearly all these emigrants were rejected for reasons stated under two headings-"Disease" and "Paupers or likely to become a public charge."1 It is only the strong, the physically sound, the "fit and carefully selected"-in other words, those who constitute the real strength of the nation—who are eligible. The regulations which have been gazetted in New South Wales with regard to immigration assisted by the Government of that colony are that immigrants must be in sound mental and bodily health and of good moral character, and must not be over fifty years of age. They must be selected mainly from the classes skilled in rural industry, and each individual must possess at least £10 on landing at Sydney. We spend immense sums of money in educating, training, and otherwise caring for the children of our rural population; and when they arrive at manhood or womanhood we are asked to spend further large sums in order to get rid of them. No doubt the capitalist classes are exporting their money for the development of undertakings in other countries; but that is a secondary matter, though, for obvious reasons, an important one. Money so exported can, as a rule, be got back again, often increased 1 "Emigration and Immigration Reports," Board of Trade, 1905, No. 137. The number of British and Irish male agricultural labourers (excluding women, and children under age) who emigrated in 1904 was 21,028, of whom 10,778 went to the United States. in amount; and if lost, being only money, it is not of vital concern. But to export "carefully selected" able-bodied persons-shiploads of English sinew, muscle, and lustihood-is a suicidal proceeding, It is to send away the real wealth of the nation, which, once gone, can never be recovered. This proposal for wholesale assisted emigration is an object-lesson for foreign countries, especially for those who protect their agricultural industries. It shows the humiliating position to which the "richest country in Europe" has been reduced by its fiscal and agrarian policy. But where is the necessity for this big, complicated, and costly scheme? Is it because something sensational is needed to arrest the attention of the general public to a crying evil and so induce them to deal with it? It The object of the foregoing pages is to show that a remedy, commonplace perhaps in its character, but cheap, natural, and effective, lies at our doors. is for the State-for the State alone can do it on the required scale—to provide machinery for the purpose of repeopling our own sparsely peopled villages and country places, and for the cultivation of the great areas of land now lying idle, or akin to idle, and which are "crying out" for the very kind of labour it is proposed to send abroad. There is room in Rural England not only for the "20,000 carefully selected families," but for at least fifty times that number. Each family thus settled, instead of being a burden on the rates, would become ratepayers and be an additional stay of the nation. The enduring character of the benefits, social, economic, and political, which a repeopling of our country-sides would secure to the general community -who after all are the State-has been dealt with in previous chapters, and should cause the public to hesitate before they give sanction or support to a proposal for the wholesale deportation of the choicest of our working classes. For a Government to support the scheme would be an act little short of criminal in its character. Two arguments are often used in favour of this emigration, first, that it will increase the ties between the colonies and the motherland, and, secondly, that it will develop and strengthen our empire over-sea; but our great empire will remain sound, strong, and undiminished in size so long, and only so long, as its heart and centre abide strong and sound. That strength and soundness can be retained not by the riches of this country, but only by the quality of its manhood. In the eighteenth century there was a far-seeing French statesman, of whom it is stated that his reforms, if they had been carried out and not been frustrated by the "classes," would have either hindered the great revolution altogether, or at least made it less violent and ungovernable. Bearing on the question under consideration this eminent man wrote: "Is it not evident that the only real wealth of the State being the yearly productiveness of its land and the industry of its inhabitants, its wealth will be at its greatest when the produce of each acre of land and the industry of each individual shall be carried to the highest possible point? And is it not evident that each proprietor has more interest than any other person to draw from his land the greatest possible return? "1 1 "Life and Writings of Turgot," by W. W. Stephens. Longmans, CHAPTER XXIII CONCLUSION LAND REFORM is a hackneyed subject. Legislative and other attempts to deal with it have been, as a rule, attempts to graft improvements on the present system of landlord and tenant with a view to better the condition of the agriculturists as a class; consequently they have had little or no interest for the public at large. In these pages the subject has been treated, however imperfectly, as a national one, with the object of bringing home to the minds of all members of the community, whatever their position and whatever their occupation, the fact that they have a living interest in agriculture, and that their happiness and well-being depend upon it. The farmer is put in a secondary place, and regarded only as a necessary agent through which the general welfare is to be secured. Agriculture (in its widest sense) is held up as the parent industry of the world, of which trade and commerce are but the offspring and handmaids.1 The ancients regarded that industry as the basis of civilization. They had their goddesses of agriculture, to whom temples were built and splendid offerings made. Our harvest thanksgivings, feasts, and other rural festivals, so real even up to recent times, were 1 "The Earth, which having a divine and everlasting youth bestowed upon it, is called the common parent of all things." ("Husbandry," Columella, Book i.) "The land is mother of us all; nourishes, shelters, gladdens, lovingly enriches us all." (Carlyle.) also offerings of gratitude for the fruits of the earth on which human life and welfare depend.1 Amongst the ancient writings which exalt agriculture the Pastorals and Georgics of Virgil may be said to take the first place. Though written about two thousand years ago they are fresh and living to-day. With the exception of some errors, which have been corrected by later discoveries, they are wonderfully applicable to the agricultural industry of the present time. The advice given to cultivators has never been bettered. The poetic treatment, to which no other calling lends itself, glorifies the common incidents of country life. "The plough-share glitters by the furrow worn.' "The earth herself, solicited by none, freely each want supplied." "All things are full of Jove. He gives to earth her fruitfulness." The peasant's homestead is called "his little realm." Honey, no doubt a more important article of food than it is now, is "a gift from heaven." Virgil, himself a practical farmer, deals with every operation and phenomenon connected with agriculture: ploughing, planting, improving the land, horses, flocks, cattle, implements, the seasons, the animal and vegetable world, nature of soils, etc. etc. Apart from their practical value to the agriculturist, the teachings of Virgil, through the beautiful language in which they are given, create a universal interest in the calling they exalt, and impress on the general reader a sense of the paramount moment of the cultivator's art. 1 In olden times the prayers "For Rain," "For Fair Weather," "For Plenty," that "Our Land may yield us her fruits of Increase," etc., were not mere forms. But the harvest thanksgiving of the present day seems almost an irreverent act, and the wheat-sheaf in the church a mockery, in a country the policy of which is to lessen and destroy the harvest and to spoil the husbandman. |