CHAPTER III 



A COMPARISON WITH FOREIGN 

 COUNTRIES 



The previous chapter dealt with the dechne 

 of the agricultural population in Great 

 Britain. There is nothing new in this. 

 Attention has often been drawn to the fact, 

 which is recognised in a general way, though 

 it is not generally realised, how long the pro- 

 cess has been going on and how far it has 

 gone. But the state of this country, as com- 

 pared with others, is not realised at all, and 

 the facts contained in the present chapter 

 will be new to most readers. They are of 

 great importance and deserve the fullest 

 recognition, for it is only by comparison that 

 the strange and imique position we occupy 

 among the nations in this respect is revealed. 

 There is a vague but comfortable impression 

 that, however regrettable the decline of our 

 agricultural population may be, the same 

 thing is going on everywhere else and our 

 neighbours are in much the same state as 

 ourselves. For instance, the Departmental 

 Committee of 1906 put a comforting para- 

 graph to that effect in its report, and in a 

 quite recent book on the land question by a 

 barrister and responsible writer the assertion 



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