PREFACE. 



OUTSIDE my previous books brief extracts from a 

 small selection of the press opinions on which are given 

 on a page preceding the title page of this work I am 

 unaware of any book in which even an endeavour has 

 been made to present, in anything like concrete form, 

 a subject that is of urgent national importance to all 

 British peoples. 



Scattered through newspapers and magazines there 

 have been, during the past half century, brief and 

 fragmentary allusions to this subject ; but I was the 

 first, I think, in 1872, to put it into consecutive book 

 form, and to endeavour to make a comprehensive picture. 



As if to make such comprehensive treatment even 

 officially " conspicuous by its absence," a few monu- 

 mental heaps of " Blue books" are, here and there 

 through the course of the last fifty years scattered 

 along the historical track ; but these have been practi- 

 cally dropped still-born, " overlain," or asphyxiated, 

 by the mass of undigested, ill-arranged material 

 obtained ; and they are only used by the M.P. or other 

 public man in hot haste to speak on the subject. 



Yet the alarming and increasing depopulation of our 

 rural districts, and the bearing of the whole question 

 upon our national food supply, surely make this subject 

 an important and urgent one for every inhabitant of the 

 British Islands ; and my last five chapters will, I trust, 



