the Nation.
This idle and hitherto useless horse will immediately become useful and
productive, and will enable its under-fed companion, not only to be
relieved of part of its burden, but also to get sufficient food, and
grow once more plump and strong. Thus the man, or nation, that lived,
however miserably, yet still lived, on the labour of the one famished
over-worked horse, will then be able to get a decent living, since there
will be two strong well-fed horses to work for them, instead of a single
broken-down one.

It is simply impossible within the limits of this chapter to trace out
the whole process. Enough to say that as a rule, to which of course
there are exceptions, one man's prosperity means some one else's
prosperity. Suppose I am a beggar. I wear practically no clothing. The
little I have is what somebody else has cast off. I have no home. I
sleep in the street. I get very little food, and that I do not pay for.
I produce nothing. My children, if I have any, are wastrels like myself.
But I am lifted out of this beggary, I become a productive worker. I get
a home, wear clothes, buy food, educate my children. Not only have I
improved my own circumstances, but I have helped to improve the
circumstances of others. Builders, shopkeepers, food-producers, all
profit by my redemption.

Now, if not one wastrel only, but 1,000,000 such are raised, a mighty
impetus is given to industry of every kind, and the border-landers,
instead of being driven on the black rocks by the tide of adverse
surroundings, begin to drive back the tide, and conquer the earth, and
subdue it, till the border-landers will be border-landers no longer, and
the dreadful days of hunger will live only in the stories of famine and
want, which the grey old man will tell to his happy and prosperous
grandchildren, and ten thousand links of love between emigrant sons and
home-staying fathers will bind the fertile plains of Ceylon, Burmah,
Africa, and other countries to the populous shores of India.

CHAPTER XIV.

ELEMENTS OF HOPE.

The picture which I have endeavoured to paint in the foregoing pages is
dark enough to strike despair into the hearts of the most sanguine. And
if there were indeed no way of escape for these victims of sin and
misfortune, we might well prefer to draw a veil over the sad scene, and
to bury in the ocean of forgetfulness, the very recollection of this
earthly purgatory.

But there are elements of hope in the c