viii A FARMER'S YEAR 



as they presented themselves in the year 1898 to the eye and mind 

 of a landowner and farmer of the smaller and therefore more repre- 

 sentative sort ; a man who chanced to have had the advantage of 

 visiting other countries, and to the best of his ability to have 

 observed the conditions, social, agricultural and political, which 

 prevail in them. 



How that crisis will end it is not possible for the wisest 

 among us to guess to-day. Thus, in obedience to some little 

 understood and subtle law of averages and economic retaliation. 

 Agriculture the starved and neglected, may yet avenge itself upon 

 the towns full-fed with cheap and foreign produce, by swamping 

 them with the competition of the inhabitants of the hamlets who 

 troop thence to find a higher wage than ' the land that dies ' can 

 pay them. This movement, indeed, perhaps one of the most 

 significant if the most silent and unnoticed of our time, is already 

 in rapid progress, and when — should no unforeseen event, accident 

 or political change, such as the revival of some modified form 

 of Protection, not expected now, but still possible as an expedient 

 of despair, occur to stay it — the exodus is completed, and the 

 rural districts are desolate, then it may be asked : Must not the 

 numbers, health, and courage of our race in their turn pay a portion 

 of the price of the ruin of its wholesome nurseries ? 



When the ' highways were unoccupied ' and the ' inhabitants of 

 the village ceased ' Deborah the Prophetess and a wise Mother in 

 Israel did not think the omen good. 



Perhaps it is a superstition and no more ; yet it seems hard to 

 credit that a country will remain prosperous for very long after 

 it has ceased to be even moderately remunerative to till any 

 but its choicest fields for food, and when for the lack of a 



