nobler and a
purer life--and that can be accomplished by the laws which they may
set in action at once. Then they will be able to say, "England is
wealthy, and we have our share."

Some excellent articles have been turned out by the brilliant
professor of biology who inspects our fisheries for us. He has done
rare service for the people in his own way--no one better, for he was
one of the first who eagerly advocated the education of the masses;
but I fear he is now becoming "disillusionised." He talked once about
erecting a Jacob's Ladder from the gutter to the university; and he
has found that the ladder--such as it is--has merely been used to
connect the tradesman's shop and the artisan's dwelling with the
exalted place of education. The poor gutter-child cannot climb the
ladder; he is too hungry, too thin, too weak for the feat, and hence
the professor's famous epigram has become one of the things at which
scientific students of the human race smile sadly and kindly. And now
the professor grows savage and so wildly Conservative that we fear he
may denounce Magna Charta next as a gross error. I know very well that
all men are not equal, and the professor's keenest logic cannot make
me see that point any more clearly than at present. But suppose that
one fine day some awkward leader of the people says, "You tell us,
professor, that we are wealthy, and that it is right that some men
should be gorged while we are bitten with famine. If Britain is so
wealthy, how is it that eleven million acres of good agricultural land
are now out of cultivation, while the people whom the land used to
feed are crushed in the slums of the towns in the case of labourers,
or gone beyond the sea in the case of the farmers?" I want to be
impartial, but freely own that I should not like to answer that
question, and I do not believe the professor could. The men who used
to supply our fighting force are now becoming extinct. If they go into
the town and pick up some kind of work, then the second generation are
weaklings and a burden to us; while, if they go abroad, they are still
removed from the Mother of Nations, who needs her sons of the soil,
even though she may feel proud of the gallant new States which they
are rearing. And, while rats and mice and obscure vermin are gradually
taking possession of the land on which Britons were bred, the signs of
bursting wealth are thick among us. Is a nation rich that cannot
afford even to keep the kin