18 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



and surroundings, finding pleasure in both and contentment in 

 moving within them. 



The greatest blot upon the prevailing state of things is that 

 our rural population unfortunately quite unmistakably lacks such 

 congenial temper. 



Now, is not that, at any rate to some extent, our own fault ? 

 Have we not foolishly so mismanaged things as to turn the " Merrie 

 England " that was — " Merrie England " being rural England — by 

 our own doings and misdoings into that gloomy England, sparsely 

 peopled, backward in culture and to a large extent in enterprise, 

 which is ? We have the word of historians for it that English 

 country folk were " merrie " once, and relatively numerous. There 

 was, as a matter of course, less schooling in those days. But there 

 appears to have been more of that peculiar knowledge required for 

 country life. Country folk knew the agricultural needs of their farms, 

 according to the ideas of the day, and produced what ranked as 

 abundance, according to the conditions of the time. The tradition 

 of their comparative affluence survives in the popular pictures of 

 " John Bull," with his smiling round face and his rotund belly. 

 And they certainly took pleasure in their rural surroundings. There 

 was no perpetual " speering " for a way to lead elsewhere. There 

 was attachment to the country and to its homes, an attachment to 

 the existing state of rural things. 



The aspect has quite changed, by no means for the better ; and 

 that to a great extent owing, as I have insisted, to our own false 

 handling of things. The small man — who in olden time was in a 

 position of independence, self-reliance and freedom, and was as 

 active alike in his own and in the public affairs of his locality as 

 Professor Freeman, to his undisguised joy, found his politically un- 

 changed antitype, the Swiss bauer, a full-blown citizen, with a voice 

 in things and no need to cringe before any one — has been driven out 

 of his possession, his proverbial " castle," all that once made him 

 feel what he did. His " Englishman's home " is gone ; so is his 

 garden, his field, his share in the usufruct of his common. The 

 Swiss bauer retains all these things. He has his home, his field kept 

 fruitful by cultivation for which the promise of a full recompense 

 supplies the necessary skill, and the glorious run of his " Allmend," 

 which is the Swiss form of a " common," for his cattle. Accordingly 

 he still feels as did his forbears who, being " all men " (that is all full- 

 righted citizens), took for their tribe the name of Allemanni. He 

 glories in being a bauer. The Bauernsame, of which he forms part, 

 is in truth the most potent factor in his Commonwealth. He tills 



