ficate of proficiency in them should carry with it special advantages.1 Under these new conditions numbers of men and women, whose natural tastes and inclinations lean towards country pursuits, would speedily qualify themselves as teachers in rural schools where the education given would be so interesting to themselves and to their pupils. There are many who hold it absurd to suppose that agriculture can be taught to young children in elementary schools. But the term agriculture is used here, not in the usual and restricted sense of referring only to the farmer's work of raising corn, cattle, etc. It is used in its real and inclusive sense, as relating also to horticulture and to everything else connected with the cultivation of the soil. No one pretends that advanced agriculturists can be turned out of the elementary schools. But what can be done is, in the words of Lord Kelvin, "to initiate" the children in rural subjects; and, during the most impressionable age, to form and confirm their taste and love for everything belonging to country life. It is a timely and necessary beginning of an education to be continued during later years. Those who are old enough can remember at what a very early age children in former times-either by apprenticeships or through the needs of parents— took part in farm work; and it is astonishing what 1 Mr. Howard states: "Facilities and assistance are at present needed for rural teachers to attend suitable classes. Even if fees for tuition are merely nominal, the travelling expenses are serious for a teacher with a small salary" (General Reports on Elementary Schools, Cd, 1706, This cus useful things they were capable of doing. tom, however, was a wrong one, not on the score of health, but because it deprived the children of education, and wiped out the period of child-life with its leisure and play. Still, if we are to have a continuous race of agriculturists, this "initiation," this training, must be begun at the same early age, and the elementary school is the only place where such training can be given to an extent sufficient for the object in view, and in a manner that will leave the pleasures of childlife untouched. Work in connection with the land is not like that in factories and workshops. Children have a natural bent to busy themselves in it whenever they can get the chance of doing so. It is useless, however, to expect that this alteration in rural education will be sufficient of itself to stop migration, at any rate, so far as the cleverer children are concerned. Indeed, so long as there is no visible career on the land, and to become "little clerks remains the ambition of sharp children in rural A letter recently received from a clergyman illustrates this point. "I have been Vicar and Rector of two country parishes: twenty-two years in Suffolk, twenty-one in Berkshire. During most of that time I have taken children out of school hours and had them to work in the house; if girls, in the garden, and in the stable if boys. Many have thus got 'technical education' and have started in good places on leaving me. I have a boy now nearly twelve, who came to me eighteen months ago. He has learnt to clean shoes, knows how to milk, to help in the stables, even to harness a pair, and has got some knowledge of poultry-keeping, growing cucumbers and melons in frames, and, in fact, is generally useful and perfectly healthy. He regularly attends school. He began at is. a week, and now earns 3s. a weck. If he were free from school he would be worth 6s. a week." (From the Rev. C. T. Cornish, Childrey Rectory, Wantage, August, 1903.) The present writer could dig, plant, attend to poultry and pigs, and do other work of the same kind at ten; could mow, harness, and "put to" a horse, and do other things on the land at twelve to fourteen, the doing which was regarded as a pleasure, and not as a toil. C schools, it would perhaps be better to let the present system of education remain as it is, and to improve it in the direction of making these children efficient "little clerks," so as to give them equal chances with those turned out from urban schools with whom they have to compete.' Therefore, the recommendations contained in the "Rural Education Bill" must be taken with those contained in the "Land Purchase Bill," particularly in the second part thereof which relates to the creation of a peasant proprietary. To the extent that these reforms taken as a whole could be carried out, to that extent would the whole force and meaning of our country life be changed. It Agriculture is the one industry that never dies. is the one for the produce of which there is an everincreasing demand. To the degree that it is restored to prosperity on the lines suggested, to that degree the "decay of our villages," about which so much has been written, would be stopped, and their "silent loneliness," so much complained of, would disappear. In olden times village life in "Merrie England" was not a dull one. The villages were peopled by all those classes of cultivators that have been destroyed, largely by legislation, and which it should now be the object of legislation to restore. The old yeoman farmers were alive with interests in their own property. The small colonies of peasant proprietors in Worcestershire and elsewhere are not "lonely," nor are their lives dull, and with proper education and fair I "Some country schools have a kind of connection with various London firms, and find regular employment there for some of their brightest boys, who often do very well." (Mr. Henderson, Report on Elementary Schools, Cd, 1706, 1903, p. 75.) prospects the rural youth would learn to regard the country districts as their permanent home. These ideas may appear somewhat visionary, and it is possible that the attempt to realize them would be tempered by some failures. But they are in reality reasonable and practical. The policy they contain should be a popular one, because, to say the least, it gives some hope of a remedy for the present deplorable condition of rural life in England. CHAPTER VII THE ENGLISH LAND SYSTEM ITS ORIGIN AND GROWTH BEFORE dealing further with the arguments for and against a scheme for the restoration of Yeoman or Occupying Ownership, and Peasant Proprietary, it is well to review the causes which have led up to the present system of land tenure in England. Such a sketch, however, to be of any use, must begin at a very early date, for "the centuries are all lineal children of one another."1 Without this historical reference, it is impossible for the general reader to understand the present position of the Land question. The problems contained in that question can only be solved in the light of history. It is quite necessary "to learn the meaning of the old order of things with its community and equality, as a key to the right understanding of the new order of things, with the contrasting individual independence and inequality." This sketch, however, is by no means made in a spirit of antagonism to any particular class. On the contrary, it is made in the hope that all classes-landlords included—after seriously considering the results of past legislation and methods, will come to the conclusion that for their own as well as for the national good, a drastic alteration is urgently needed. At the 1 Carlyle. "The English Village Community," Seebohm. |