for weights and measures that vary from county to county, or for
a token coinage that is only valid in one town or in one trade. But most
of all, for making our modern arrangements a standard English language
is so necessary that those who are unfamiliar with it can neither manage
their own affairs efficiently nor take their proper share in the
national life.

And this is the situation of the labourer to-day. The weakness of it,
moreover, is in almost daily evidence. One would have thought that at
least in a man's own parish and his own private concerns illiteracy
would be no disadvantage; yet, in fact, it hampers him on every side.
Whether he would join a benefit society, or obtain poor-law relief, or
insure the lives of his children, or bury his dead, or take up a small
holding, he finds that he must follow a nationalized or standardized
procedure, set forth in language which his forefathers never heard
spoken and never learned to read. Even in the things that are really of
the village the same conditions prevail. The slate-club is managed upon
lines as businesslike as those of the national benefit society. The
"Institute" has its secretary, and treasurer, and balance-sheet, and
printed rules; the very cricket club is controlled by resolutions
proposed and seconded at formal committee meetings, and duly entered in
minute-books. But all this is a new thing in the village, and no
guidance for it is to be found in the lingering peasant traditions.

To this day, therefore, the majority of my neighbours, whose ability for
the work they have been prepared to do proves them to be no fools, are,
nevertheless, pitiably helpless in the management of their own affairs.
Most disheartening it is, too, for those whose help they seek, to work
with them. In the cricket-club committee, on which I served for a year
or two, it was noticeable that the members, eager for proper
arrangements to be made, often sat tongue-tied and glum, incapable of
urging their views, so that only after the meeting had broken up and
they had begun talking with one another did one learn that the
resolutions which had been passed were not to their mind. Formalities
puzzled them--seemed to strike them as futilities. And so in other
matters besides cricket. A local builder--a man of blameless
integrity--had a curious experience. Somewhat against his wishes, he was
appointed treasurer of the village Lodge of Oddfellows; but when,
inheriting a considerable sum