CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES 441 



can, like our forbears, school ourselves to endure what we cannot cure. 

 But most local societies, anxious to preserve the amenities of their own areas, 

 must be prepared to face the opposition of convinced and earnest members 

 of an influential school of thought, and may find that opposition supported 

 by skilful propagandists influenced less, perhaps, by sympathy with urban 

 ambitions than by prejudice against rural interests, who manifest their real 

 feelings most clearly when they profess urban sympathy with rural wrongs 

 as a means of enlisting rural support for urban policy. They have ready to 

 hand the most powerful of weapons for their purpose — ' the lie that is half 

 a truth.' 



But members of local societies are able to observe that when urban social 

 reformers make the ' enclosure of commons ' the basis of a charge that 

 English rural economy, a century and a half ago, deprived the rural popula- 

 tion of certain hitherto acknowledged rights and privileges, the speakers omit 

 to remind their hearers that this was the result of legislative action taken to 

 enable English agriculture to comply with a request made by English industry. 

 It may be conceded that the agricultural response to this industrial appeal 

 was as free from altruism as the appeal which induced it. But there is no 

 indication that the agricultural response was inspired by selfish motives : 

 on the contrary, the benefits which accrued to rural economy were devoted 

 to the advancement of public interests. That the industrial appeal may 

 have been less unselfish than the agricultural response, is suggested by the 

 fact that, the moment English industry found it possible to obtain supplies 

 of food from other sources, English urban sympathy with English rural 

 interests vanished like a ' morning mist.' 



The impatience evinced by the representatives of urban constituencies 

 when the needs of English agriculture are explained or discussed is due to 

 something more than lack of understanding : it is in accordance with a 

 familiar natural law. If it be true that ' gratitude for favours received ' is 

 one of the traits which distinguish instinct from reason, it is equally true 

 that one of the traits which distinguish reason from instinct is the pro- 

 pensity of man as an animal to dislike those he finds it convenient and thinks 

 it safe to treat unjustly. This trait is perhaps more collective than individual, 

 seeing that it is most manifest in social groups that are class-conscious and 

 in members of the community who regard party allegiance as of more conse- 

 quence than their duty to the State. But all those who serve the State in 

 any capacity are only too familiar with what guides the action of most 

 Government departments. Nor are many of us in our private capacities 

 unaware of the existence of the tendency : we find ourselves, as members of 

 committees, ready to approve lines of action and to adopt courses of policy 

 which, as individuals, we should hardly dream of pursuing. 



Nevertheless rural residents have more reasons than one for regarding 

 with some forbearance the attitude towards country interests adopted by 

 denizens of towns. If urban industrial workers enjoy the advantage of de- 

 voting their lives to tasks that demand constant attention, they suffer the 

 drawback of having to expend their energies on occupations that soon cease 

 to arouse interest in the labour they involve : the rural labourer enjoys the 

 twofold benefit, thanks to the diflferences of the seasons, of variety of occupa- 

 tion and corresponding diversity of attention. This reduction of the urban 

 industrial worker to the condition of a machine renders him especially 

 susceptible to corresponding influence from those whose interest is served 

 by misleading him. When the agencies engaged in the distribution of food, 

 raw materials, and manufactured goods borrowed from Industry the idea of 

 harnessing steam, they secured legislative sanctions as inimical to hitherto 

 recognised rights as anything ever granted to rural economy. In the lay-out 



