38 LAND REFORM 



schools, it would perhaps be better to let the present 

 system of education remain as it is, and to improve it 

 in the direction of making these children efficient 

 "little clerks," so as to give them equal chances with 

 those turned out from urban schools with whom they 

 have to compete.^ Therefore, the recommendations 

 contained in the " Rural Education Bill " must be 

 taken with those contained in the " Land Purchase 

 Bill," particularly in the second part thereof which 

 relates to the creation of a peasant proprietary. To 

 the extent that these reforms taken as a whole could 

 be carried out, to that extent v/ould the whole force 

 and meaning of our country life be changed. 



Agriculture is the one industry that never dies. It 

 is the one for the produce of which there is an ever- 

 increasing demand. To the degree that it is restored 

 to prosperity on the lines suggested, to that degree the 

 " decay of our villages," about which so much has 

 been written, would be stopped, and their " silent 

 loneliness," so much complained of, would disappear. 

 In olden times village life in " Merrie England" was 

 not a dull one. The villages were peopled by all 

 those classes of cultivators that have been destroyed, 

 largely by legislation, and which it should now be the 

 object of legislation to restore. The old yeoman 

 farmers were alive with interests in their own pro- 

 perty. The small colonies of peasant proprietors in 

 Worcestershire and elsewhere are not "lonely," nor 

 are their lives dull, and with proper education and fair 



* " Some country schools have a kind of connection with various 

 London firms, and find regular employment there for some of their 

 brightest boys, who often do very well." (Mr. Henderson, Report on 

 Elementary Schools, Cd, 1706, 1903, p. 75.) 



