hness of ambition. Still that egotism is not seldom
disastrous to the people's interests. While these statesmen nursed their
own bantlings and held them up to national notice, they were apt to
avoid or too lightly regard the views of men as able as themselves. For
instance, Joshua Hale--who is far above these remarks generally--had
put forth a scheme for the solution of the St. Helena property
question--very likely a good one, albeit revolutionary, and nothing
would convince him that any other could succeed. He wished every man
in St. Helena--a turbulent adjunct of the British Empire--to be a
landowner, and I do think, neither desired nor hoped that any man in
that island should be happy until he was one. Yet there were other men
ready to offer simpler remedies, and to prove that if every man in St.
Helena became a landowner it would become a very hell upon earth,
and more unmanageable than it was before. If these gentlemen do not
sacrifice their pet fancies for the sake of a settlement, what will
become of St. Helena?

Just now they were discussing Ginx's Baby. One thought that repeal of
the Poor-Laws and a new system of relief would reach his case; another
saw the root of the Baby's sorrow in Trades' Unions; a third propounded
cooperative manufactures; a fourth suggested that a vast source of
income lay untouched in the seas about the kingdom, which swarmed with
porpoises, and showed how certain parts of these animals were available
for food, others for leather, others for a delicious oil that would be
sweeter and more pleasant than butter; a fifth desired a law to repress
the tendency of Scotch peers to evict tenants and convert arable lands
into sheep-walks and deer-forests; a sixth maintained that there were
waste lands in the kingdom of capacity to support hungry millions. In
fact earth, heaven, and seas were to be regenerated by Act of Parliament
for the benefit of Ginx's Baby and the people of England. Sir Charles
listened impatiently, and at last burst forth again.

He said: "When you consider it, what we are all trying to do nowadays
is--vulgarly--to improve the breed; but we go to work in a round-about
way. At the outset we are met by the depreciated state of part of the
existing generation; and one problem is to prevent these depreciated
people from increasing, or to get them to increase healthily. No one
seems to have gone directly to such a problem as that. The difficulties
to be faced are tremendous. You