2i6 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



touch engendered by the meeting of small district com- 

 mittees. Those benefits would be worth insisting upon. 

 However, we are not all moulded on one block. Circum- 

 stances differ greatly in different localities. The test of good 

 Co-operation is not its measure of extension, but its spirit 

 and its practice. Co-operation above all things ought to 

 be elastic. We have with advantage adopted, on the 

 foundation of the same principle, different methods of 

 practice in this country, and again in India. The Germans, 

 the Italians, the French, all have different methods, raised 

 up upon the same principle. We want to be adaptable 

 also within our own narrow frontiers in the matter of 

 Agriculture, Wherever people themselves show a pre- 

 ference for a larger society, for goodness' sake let them have 

 it ! So long as the small man is admitted to equal rights 

 and the resulting society is a society, not of capitals but 

 of persons, what the people themselves like best is likely 

 to prove the most successful. 



