INTRODUCTION xxiii 



the state of our streets at night, the unemployed, etc., 

 etc. — which occupy and perplex the mind of every 

 thoughtful person in the kingdom. 



The unceasing migration from our country-sides 

 into the centres of population is at the root of those 

 evils. During the period in which our trade and 

 manufactures were increasing by " leaps and bounds " 

 labour from the country was more or less welcome and 

 useful, but for years past our towns and other centres 

 of industry have been dangerously overstepping their 

 powers of profitably absorbing this steady human 

 influx. The process of the evil is a simple one, and 

 I have watched it in individual cases. The man from 

 the country, being strong, towardly, and cheap, finds 

 as a rule employment of some kind. But there is no 

 legitimate room for him ; he only displaces another 

 man, who in his turn displaces another, and so on till 

 an older and a broken man is found at the bottom of 

 the social scale, to swell the ranks of the unemployed 

 and destitute. 



The proposals made in the following pages are 

 — in the true and not in a party sense of the word — 

 conservative in the highest degree. However they 

 may be criticized, they have at least the merit of 

 being definite, practical, and such as can be put into 

 immediate operation without injury to any existing 

 interest. Whether or not a British Government will 

 deal with the question in the same wise spirit and 

 with the same object as similar questions were dealt 

 with by great continental statesmen, remains to be 

 seen. 



In any case our present wasteful out-of-date land 

 system cannot long remain unchanged. In times of 



