666 
Light Railways. 
the new departure. The same thing is, of course, true of all 
other perishable produce, and agricultural authorities are, I 
believe, agreed in thinking that it is in the production of articles 
which deteriorate rapidly when carried, rather than in corn- 
growing, that the best hope for the future of English farming lies. 
One may turn the matter the other way round, and point 
out that there must evidently in the near future be a consider- 
able growth iu what may be called home manufactures. The 
demand for home-spun linens, and woollens, and silks, for hand- 
printed rather than machine-printed calicoes and papers, for 
beaten brass and hammered iron, for originality and variety, 
rather than cheapness and million-multiplied monotony, the 
rapid development of electricity as a motive power — all these 
are on the side of village industries as against wholesale town 
factories. Now, for a village industry on any but the very 
smallest scale to establish itself in a place five miles from rail- 
way communication is practically out of the question. The pro- 
ducers must, in such case, be hopelessly out of touch with the 
consumers. The buyers from the great towns will not come 
down, while the master-workmen in their turn will hardly 
get up. 
There is another point of view from which the advantages 
of light railways may be regarded — a point of view even less 
material. It is a commonplace that the best workmen, the men 
most capable of using both hands and heads, refuse to stay in 
the villages where they were born, and gravitate ever more and 
more to the great towns. It is not so much (so we are told by 
the best authorities) the higher wages of London that attract 
them as the want of opportunity, the narrowness of interest, the 
isolation of the life in a country village, that repel them. 
Against this sentiment of isolation even the lightest of light 
railways, provided it possesses a printed time-table showing 
through connexions to London, or other great centres, and 
issues cheap excursion tickets at Christmas time, should furnish 
a powerful antidote. 
But, after all, these are questions that can mainly be left to 
settle themselves. The position at present is an exceedingly 
simple one. In every other country in the world it is possible 
to build cheap railways, and in every other country cheap 
railways are regarded as such valuable agencies of national life 
that the Governments are ready to spend public funds largely to 
secure their construction. Here it is impossible, owing to 
restrictions laid down by Parliament and its executive organ, the 
Board of Trade, to build cheap railways at all, though in 
consequence of the wealth of the population it is very probable 
