Is a nation rich that cannot
afford even to keep the kind of men who once defended her? To me the
gradual return of the land to its primitive wildness is more than
depressing. There are districts on the borders of Hertford and Essex
which might make a sentimental traveller sit down and cry. It all
seems strange; it looks so poverty-stricken, so filthy, so sordid, so
like the site of a slum after all the houses have been levelled for a
dozen years; and this in the midst of our England! I say nothing about
land-laws and so forth, but I will say that those who fancy the towns
can survive when the farms are deserted are much mistaken. "Are we
wealthy?" "Yes," and "No." We are wealthy in the wrong places, and we
are poor in the wrong places; and the combination will end in mischief
unless we are very soon prepared to make an alteration in most of our
ways of living. In many respects it is a good world; but it might be
made better, nobler, finer in every quarter, if the poor would only
recognise wise and silent leaders, and use the laws which men have
made in order to repair the havoc which other men have also made.
XI.
THE VALUES OF LABOUR.
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