392 LAND REFORM 



in amount ; and if lost, being" only money, it is not of 

 vital concern. But to export "carefully selected" 

 able-bodied persons — shiploads of English sinew, 

 muscle, and lustihood — is a suicidal proceeding, It is 

 to send away the real wealth of the nation, which, 

 once gone, can never be recovered. 



This proposal for wholesale assisted emigration is 

 an object-lesson for foreign countries, especially for 

 those who protect their agricultural industries. It 

 shows the humiliating position to which the "richest 

 country in Europe " has been reduced by its fiscal and 

 agrarian policy. But where is the necessity for this 

 big, complicated, and costly scheme ? Is it because 

 something sensational is needed to arrest the attention 

 of the general public to a crying evil and so induce 

 them to deal with it ? 



The object of the foregoing pages is to show that 

 a remedy, commonplace perhaps in its character, but 

 cheap, natural, and effective, lies at our doors. It 

 is for the State — for the State alone can do it on the 

 required scale — to provide machinery for the purpose 

 of repeopling our own sparsely peopled villages and 

 country places, and for the cultivation of the great 

 areas of land now lying idle, or akin to idle, and which 

 are "crying out" for the very kind of labour it is 

 proposed to send abroad. There is room in Rural 

 England not only for the " 20,000 carefully selected 

 families," but for at least fifty times that number. 

 Each family thus settled, instead of being a burden 

 on the rates, would become ratepayers and be an 

 additional stay of the nation. 



The enduring character of the benefits, social, 

 economic, and political, which a repeopling of our 

 country-sides would secure to the general community 



