Then and Now 19 



keeping. I can pay the purchase annuity out of 

 a strawberry plot which is less than thirteen 

 perches, leaving me the rest of the land for nothing. 

 The rhubarb is specially successful, and I see that 

 these intensive products, on a larger scale, could 

 be made much more profitable than cows, had it 

 not been for the organised virtue of thieving. Yet 

 the thieves have the necessary land of their own, 

 as good as mine or better, and comparatively idle ; 

 but they must enjoy the general holiday for three 

 or four months of the working year, when I am 

 grubbing up the gardens for the products which 

 they prefer to steal. As I have said elsewhere, 

 all are not thieves, but they are sufficiently 

 numerous, sufficiently intelligent and sufficiently 

 respectable to prevent the more profitable pro- 

 duction on any extensive scale, which means that 

 they make the advance of civilisation impossible in 

 industry, not to mention their own material loss 

 in the wages which might be earned from the 

 products which they keep unproducible. They 

 proceed on the general idea that it is not wrong for 

 a man to steal anything the neighbour has in 

 excess of himself ; in other words, that the produc- 

 ing scale of the lowest must be the consuming 

 scale for the highest. It is a source of consistent 

 wonder why I have more than one pair of boots, 

 one suit of clothes and two shirts ; and I am not 

 alone in my acquaintance with the highly respect- 

 able man who, after refusing 2s. 6d. for the day, 

 will stay out of bed all night to steal the value of 6d. 

 Without going into detail, the general character 



