118 AWAKENING OF ENGLAND. 



As Mr. Charles Roden Buxton, in his 

 admirable sketch, A Living Village, observes : 

 •' The Parish Councillors know every acre as 

 intimately as they know every man. No 

 great landlord is half as business-like as they. 

 There is a healthy pressure of public opinion 

 which keeps pushing up the standard of 

 efficiency. There is a bad tenant here and 

 there, no doubt, but it is not very pleasant for 

 him as he walks down the village street of 

 North Creake among his fellow-ratepayers 

 and the tenants who know that the weeds 

 from his neglected ground are sowing them- 

 selves in their clean and constantly tended 

 holdings. I talked with a small holder at 

 Wottan who hoed his turnip-field nine times 

 last year and this year has done so seven times 

 already. His would be a surly greeting, I 

 fear, to a neighbour who let the thistles grow." 



I have said advisedly, " where the parish 

 councillor can work with free hand," for in 

 spite of our much-vaunted democracy and 

 the pgean of triumph trumpeted by politicians 

 over the passing of the English rural Magna 

 Charta of 1894, parish councils as executive 

 bodies are far from being democratic. Their 

 executive power is restricted within narrow 



