第55章 TO THE COUNTRY!--THE FARM COLONY.(2)

The answer to this is,that you cannot give your man as much soil as he has on the prairies or in the Canadian lumber lands.This,no doubt,is true,but the squatter who settles in the Canadian backwoods does not clear his land all at once.He lives on a small portion of it,and goes on digging and delving little by little,until,after many years of Herculean labour,he hews out for himself,and his children after him,a freehold estate.Freehold estates,I admit,are not to be had for the picking up on English soil,but if a man will but work in England as they work in Canada or in Australia,he will find as little difficulty in making a livelihood here as there.

I may be wrong,but when I travel abroad and see the desperate struggle on the part of peasant proprietors and the small holders in mountainous districts for an additional patch of soil,the idea of cultivating which would make our agricultural labourers turn up their noses in speechless contempt,I cannot but think that our English soil could carry a far greater number of souls to the acre than that which it bears at present.Suppose,for instance,that Essex were suddenly to find itself unmoored from its English anchorage and towed across the Channel to Normandy,or,not to imagine miracles,suppose that an Armada of Chinese were to make a descent on the Isle of Thanet,as did the sea-kings,Hengist and Horsa,does anyone imagine for a moment that Kent,fertile and cultivated as it is,would not be regarded as a very Garden of Eden out of the odd corners of which our yellow-skinned invaders would contrive to extract sufficient to keep themselves in sturdy health?I only suggest the possibility in order to bring out clearly the fact that the difficulty is not in the soil nor in the climate,but in the lack of application of sufficient labour to sufficient land in the truly scientific way.

"What is the scientific way?"I shall be asked impatiently.I am not an agriculturist;I do not dogmatize.I have read much from many pens,and have noted the experiences of many colonies,and I have learned the lesson that it is in the school of practical labour that the most valuable knowledge is to be obtained.Nevertheless,the bulk of my proposals are based upon the experience of many who have devoted their lives to the study of the subject,and have been endorsed by specialists whose experience gives them authority to speak with unquestioning confidence.

SECTION 1.--THE FARM PROPER.

My present idea is to take an estate from five hundred to a thousand acres within reasonable distance of London.It should be of such land as will be suitable for market gardening,while having some clay on it for brick-making and for crops requiring a heavier soil.If possible,it should not only be on a line of railway which is managed by intelligent and progressive directors,but it should have access to the sea and to the river.It should be freehold land,and it should lie at some considerable distance from any town or village.The reason for the latter desideratum is obvious.We must be near London for the sake of our market and for the transmission of the commodities collected by our Household Salvage Brigade,but it must be some little distance from any town or village in order that the Colony may be planted clear out in the open away from the public house,that upas tree of civilisation.

A sine qua non of the new Farm Colony is that no intoxicating liquors will be permitted within its confines on any pretext whatever.

The doctors will have to prescribe some other stimulant than alcohol for residents in this Colony.But it will be little use excluding alcohol with a strong hand and by cast-iron regulations if the Colonists have only to take a short walk in order to find themselves in the midst of the "Red Lions,"and the "Blue Dragons,"and the "George the Fourths,"which abound in every country town.

Having obtained the land I should proceed to prepare it for the Colonists.This is an operation which is essentially the same in any country.You need water supply,provisions and shelter.All this would be done at first in the simplest possible style.Our pioneer brigade,carefully selected from the competent Out-of-Works in the City Colony,would be sent down to layout the estate and prepare it for those who would come after.And here let me say that it is a great delusion to imagine that in the riffraff and waste of the labour market there are no workmen to be had except those that are worthless.

Worthless under the present conditions,exposed to constant temptations to intemperance no doubt they are,but some of the brightest men in London,with some of the smartest pairs of hands,and the cleverest brains,are at the present moment weltering helplessly in the sludge from which we propose to rescue them.

I am not speaking without book in this matter.Some of my best Officers to-day have been even such as they.There is an infinite potentiality of capacity lying latent in our Provincial Tap-rooms and the City Gin Palaces if you can but get them soundly saved,and even short of that,if you can place them in conditions where they would no longer be liable to be sucked back into their old disastrous habits,you may do great things with them.

I can well imagine the incredulous laughter which will greet my proposal.