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CHAPTER XVIII. 



A FUTURE FOR THE GLEBE. 



Writing now at the close of the century, the begmnmg 

 and middle of which were adorned and enriched by 

 the fruitful labours of the two great Secretaries of the 

 Post-Office — Freeling, with his mail-coaches, in the 

 Georgian, and Hill, with his low rates of postage and 

 ever-increasing postal facilities, in the Victorian era — 

 the conviction steals upon the mind that the genius of 

 the two may have made the way easy towards the 

 solution in part of a great economic problem which 

 surely is one of the embarrassments of the day. 



The denuding of the rural districts of their popula- 

 tion, and the flocking to the towns of the sons of the 

 soil, seem to threaten England with a disaster the 

 like of which it has never yet encountered. For it is 

 the glebe, after all, which produces the food, if it is 

 the town which receives and consumes it. 



It is no part of my plan to seek deep down for the 

 causes which have conspired to initiate this pro- 

 letarial hegira, nor am I qualified to do so. All I 

 propose to show is the potentiality of the State, by 



