A GOOD TIME COMING. 61 



laws, whereby &quot; families &quot; are built up at the expense of the 

 nation, have already received a shattering blow by the late 

 abolition of the purchase of commissions in the army. 

 Commissions are now given only after the passage of exam 

 inations severe enough to eliminate from the candidates the 

 hosts of younger sons and poor relations of whom army 

 officers have hitherto been composed. Here is one avenue 

 closed against the juniors. By and by will come the sever 

 ance of Church and State, and the loss of the right to give 

 away or sell the cure of souls. Then the landed gentry will 

 have to provide for their entire families, instead of getting 

 all their sons, save the eldest, supported at the public ex 

 pense, as is the custom now. When this is forced upon 

 them, they will no longer bar the correction of the ancient, 

 unjust laws of entail and inheritance; and then, in natural 

 sequence, will follow the breaking up of the large aggrega 

 tions of land in single hands. Thus it is plain that the griev 

 ances of the English farmers, which consist in the actual 

 existence of injurious laws, and not, as is the case with 

 American farmers, in the evasion and open breaking of laws 

 by high-handed aud too-powerful corporations, are in a fair 

 way of being abolished. There, as here, it will have to be 

 done by organization and concerted action. In both cases, 

 the enemies of the farmers are well organized, wealthy, and 

 unscrupulous; in both cases, it is a battle of the weak 

 against the strong ; and in both cases, the odds are greatly 

 in the favor of the weak, if they will be true to themselves. 

 They have the numerical majority, and it is only by 

 fomenting divisions among them that their exactors can 

 longer hope to continue their usurped power. 



