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citizen can well do for himself." There may be poison in the gift ; 

 and there certainly is robbery in the tax which provides it. 



Education, which in this application may be taken to cover very 

 much wider ground than mere schooling, stands on a totally different 

 footing altogether, so long as support given to it is rightly directed. 

 Education, so it has long been admitted, is a public interest, even 

 when applied to specific callings. The entire nation gains by it, 

 when well carried out — certainly in the present case, where the point 

 aimed at is to make the most of the whole nation's very limited 

 endowment of land, and to make sure of providently keeping the 

 population alive in time of trial. For the prosecution of education, 

 accordingly, the State need not stint public money, whatever be the 

 shape that that education takes, whether in school or in university 

 teaching, in experiment, demonstration, analysis, lip-to-ear advice 

 or otherwise. " The Government, through the Department of 

 Agriculture," so says President Roosevelt, " does not cultivate any 

 man's farm for him. But it does put at his service useful knowledge 

 that he would not otherwise get." The Governments of our sister 

 States across the Atlantic have well understood this. Alike in 

 Canada and in the United States, at headquarters and in the several 

 Provinces or States, agricultural departments have — under rather 

 different conditions than prevail in the United Kingdom, so it must 

 be admitted — freely and amply accepted this task as specifically 

 their own. Every effort is there made — and generally judiciously 

 and wisely made — in support of the promotion, above all things, of 

 education among the farming class, beginning on the lowest rung, 

 at the earliest years, in which elementary teaching is required, up 

 to the highest points. The sums there expended by the community 

 for this purpose are such as make our own corresponding expenditure 

 look paltry. And in the United States, so it should be borne in 

 mind, they are, as in Switzerland (which probably set the example) 

 doubled by going-without-saying contributions from the local 

 communities. And at all points is the State's paternal action 

 visible — in the appointment of " county agents " or " county 

 representatives," who teach the upgrowing farmers " face to face " — 

 " mouth to mouth," as the Greek Testament really has it — in the 

 encouragement of farmers' associations for the perfecting of technical 

 knowledge and the promotion of common action, in the temporary 

 forestalling of the effects of co-operative action in such matters as 

 official analyses of fertilisers and feeding stuffs, which involve 

 sellers' guarantees and the like. The last-named is a matter also 

 much studied on the European Continent. In no country does the 



