is more than probable that the labourer's son
would remain in the village, or return to it, and his daughter would
come back to the village to be married. We hear how the poor Italian
or the poor Swiss leaves his native country for our harder climate,
how he works and saves, and by-and-by returns to his village and
purchases some corner of earth. This seems a legitimate and worthy
object. We do not hear of our own sturdy labourers returning to
their village with a pocketful of money and purchasing a plot of
ground or a cottage. They do not attempt it, because they know that
under present conditions it is nearly impossible. There is no land
for them to buy. Why not, when the country is nothing but land?
Because the owner of ten thousand acres is by no means obliged to
part with the minutest fragment of it. If by chance a stray portion
be somewhere for sale, the expenses, the costs, the parchments, the
antiquated formalities, the semi-feudal routine delay and possibly
prevent transfer altogether. If land were accessible, and the cost
of transferring cottage property reduced to reasonable proportions,
the labourer would have the soundest of all inducements to practise
self-denial in his youth. Cities might attract him temporarily for
the advantage of higher wages, but he would put the excess by and
ultimately bring it home. Even the married cottager with a family
would try his hardest to save a little with such a hope before him.

The existing circumstances deny hope altogether. Neither land nor
cottages are to be had, there are no sellers, and the cost of
transfer is prohibitive; men are shifted on, they have no security
of tenure, they are passed on from farm to farm and can settle
nowhere. The competition for a house in some districts is keen to
the last degree; it seems as if there were eager crowds waiting for
homes. Recently while roaming on the Sussex hills I met an ancient
shepherd whose hair was white as snow, though he stood upright
enough. I inquired the names of the hills there, and he replied that
he did not know; he was a stranger, he had only been moved there
lately. How strangely changed are things when a grey-headed shepherd
does not know the names of his hills! At a time of life when he
ought to have been comfortably settled he had had to shift.

Sentiment is more stubborn than fact. People will face the sternest
facts, dire facts, stubborn facts, and stay on in spite of all; but
once let sentiment alte