Part 8 (1/2)

The earth at five feet beneath the level has not been disturbed for countless centuries. Nor would it pay to turn up this subsoil over large areas, for it is nothing but clay, as many a man has found to his cost who, in the hope of a heavier crop, has dug up his garden half a spade deeper than usual. But when the soil really is good at that depth, we cannot get at it so as to turn it to practical account. The thin stratum of artificial manure which is sown is no more in comparison than a single shower after a drought of months; yet to sow too much would destroy the effect. No blame, then, falls upon the agriculturist, who is only too anxious to get a larger produce. It is useless charging him with incompetency. What countless experiments have been tried to increase the crop: to see if some new system cannot be introduced! With all its progress, how little real advance has agriculture made! All because of the stubborn, idle earth. Will not science some day come to our aid, and show how two crops or three may be grown in our short summers; or how we may even overcome the chill hand of winter? Science has got as far as this: it recognizes the enormous latent forces surrounding us--electricity, magnetism; some day, perhaps, it may be able to utilize them. It recognizes the truly overwhelming amount of force which the sun of summer pours down upon our fields, and of which we really make no use. To recognize the existence of a power is the first step towards employing it. Till it was granted that there was a power in steam the locomotive was impossible.

It would be easy to swell this notice of idle earth by bringing in all the waste lands, now doing nothing--the parks, deer forests, and so on. But that is not to the purpose. If the wastes were reclaimed and the parks ploughed up, that would in nowise solve the problem how to make the cultivated earth more busy. It is no use for a man who has a garden to lean on his spade, look over his boundary wall, and say, 'Ah, if neighbour Brown would but dig up his broad green paths how many more potatoes he would grow!' That would not increase the produce of the critic's garden by one single cabbage. Certainly it is most desirable that all lands capable of yielding crops should be reclaimed, but one great subject for the agriculturist to study is, how to shorten the period of idleness in his already cultivated plots. At present the earth is so very idle.

AFTER THE COUNTY FRANCHISE

The money-lender is the man I most fear to see in the villages after the extension of the county franchise--the money-lender both in his private and public capacity, the man who has already taken a grasp of most little towns that have obtained incorporation in some form.

Like Shylock he demands what is in his bond: he demands his interest, and that means a pull at every man's purse--every man, rich or poor--who lives within the boundary. Borrowing is almost the ruin of many such little towns; rates rise nearly as high as in cities, and people strive all they can to live anywhere outside the limit. Borrowing is becoming one of the curses of modern life, and a sorrowful day it will be when the first village takes to it. The name changes--now it is a local board, now it is commissioners, sometimes a town council: the practice remains the same. These authorities exist but for one purpose--to borrow money, and as any stick will do to beat a dog with, so any pretence will do to exact the uttermost farthing from the inhabitants. Borrowing boards they are, one and all, and nothing else, from whom no one obtains benefit except the solicitor, the surveyor, the lucky architect, and those who secure a despicable living in the rear of the county court.

Nothing could better ill.u.s.trate the strange supineness of the majority of people than the way in which they pay, pay, pay, and submit to every species of extortion at the hands of these incapable blunderers, without so much as a protest. The system has already penetrated into the smallest of the county towns which groan under the incubus; let us hope, let us labour, that it may not continue its course and enter the villages.

It may reasonably be supposed that when once the extension of the franchise becomes an established fact, some kind of local government will soon follow. At present country districts are either without any local government at all--I mean practically, not theoretically--or else they are ruled without the least shadow of real representation. When men are admitted to vote and come to be enlightened as to the full meaning and force of such rights, it is probable that they will shortly demand the power to arrange their own affairs. They will have something to say as to the administration of the poor-law, over which at present they do not possess the slightest control, and they are not at all unlikely to set up a species of self-government in every separate village. I think, in short, that the parish may become the unit in the future to the disintegration of the artificial divisions drawn to facilitate the poor-law. Such divisions, wherein many parishes of the most diverse description and far apart are thrown together anyhow as the gardener pitches weeds into his basket, have done serious harm in the past. They have injured the sense of personal responsibility, they have created a bureaucracy absolutely without feeling, and they have tended to s.h.i.+ft great questions out of sight. The s.h.i.+fting of things out of sight--round the corner--is a vile method of dealing with them. Send your wretched poor miles away into a sort of alien workhouse, and then congratulate yourself that you have tided over the difficulty! But the difficulty has not been got over.

A man who can vote, and who is told--as he certainly will be told--that he bears a part in directing the great affairs of his nation, will ask himself why he should not be capable of managing the little affairs of his own neighbourhood. When he has asked himself this question, it will be the first step towards the downfall of the inhuman poor-law. He will go further and say, 'Why should I not settle these things at home? Why should I not walk up to the village from my house in the country lane, and there and then arrange the business which concerns me? Why should I any longer permit it to be done over my head and without my consent by a body of persons in whom I have no confidence, for they do not represent me--they represent property?'

In his own village the voter will observe the school--his own village then is worthy to possess its own school; possibly he may even remotely have some trifling share in the control of the school if there is a board. If that great interest, the children of the parish, can be administered at home, why not the other and much less important interests? Here may be traced a series of reflections, and a succession of steps by which ultimately the whole system of boards of guardians with their attendant powers, as the rural sanitary authority and so forth, may ultimately be swept away. Government will come again to the village.

Then arises the money-lender, and no time should be lost by those who have the good and the genuine liberty of the countryside at heart in labouring to prevent his entry into the village. Whatsoever const.i.tution the village obtains in future, let us strive to strictly limit the borrowing powers of its council. No borrowing powers at all would be best--government without loans would be almost ideal--if that cannot be accomplished, then at least lay down a stringent regulation putting a firm and impa.s.sable limit. Were every one of my way of thinking, government without loans would be imperative. It would be done if it had to be done. Rugged discomfort is preferable to borrowing.

I dread, in a word, lest the follies perpetrated in towns should get into the villages and hamlets, and want to say a word betimes of warning. Imagine a new piece of roadway required, then to get the money let a penny be added to the rates, and the amount produced laid by at interest year after year, till the sum be made up. Better wait a few years and walk half a mile round than borrow the five or six hundred pounds, and have to pay that back and all the interest on it. s.h.i.+ft somehow, do not borrow.

In the discussions upon the agricultural franchise it has been generally a.s.sumed that the changes it portends will be shown in momentous State affairs and questions of principle. But perhaps it will be rather in local and home concerns that the alterations will be most apparent. The agricultural labourer voters--and the numerous semi-agricultural voters, not labourers--are more than likely to look at their own parish as well as at the policy of the Foreign Office. Gradually the parish--that is, the village--must become the centre to men who feel at last that they are their own masters.

Under some form or other they will take the parish into their own hands, and insist upon their business being managed at home. Some shape of village council must come presently into existence.

Shrewd people are certain to appear upon the scene, pointing out to the cottager that if he desires to rule himself in his own village, he must insist upon one most important point. This is the exclusion of property representation. Instead of property having an overwhelming share, as now, in the direction of affairs, the owner of the largest property must not weigh any heavier in the village council than the wayside cottager. If farmer or landowner sit there he must have one vote only, the same as any other member. The council, if it is to be independent, must represent men and not land in the shape of landowners, or money in the shape of tenant-farmers. Shrewd people will have no difficulty in explaining the meaning of this to the village voters, because they can quote so many familiar instances. There is the Education Act in part defeated by the combination of property, landowners and farmers paying to escape a school-board--a plan temporarily advantageous to them, but of doubtful benefit, possibly injurious, to the parish at large. Leaving that question alone, the fact is patent that the cottager has no share in the government of his school, because land and money have combined. It may be governed very well; still it is not _his_ government, and will serve to ill.u.s.trate the meaning. There is the board of guardians, nominally elected, really selected, and almost self-appointed. The board of guardians is land and money simply, and in no way whatever represents the people. A favourite principle continually enunciated at the present day is that the persons chiefly concerned should have the management. But the lower cla.s.ses who are chiefly concerned with poor relief, as a matter of fact, have not the slightest control over that management. Besides the guardians, there is still an upper row, and here the rulers are not even invested with the semblance of representation, for magistrates are not elected, and they are guardians by virtue of their being magistrates. The machinery is thus complete for the defeat of representation and for the despotic control of those who, being princ.i.p.ally concerned, ought by all rule and a.n.a.logy to have the main share of the management. We have seen working men's representatives sit in the House of Commons; did anyone ever see a cottage labourer sit as administrator at the board before which the wretched poor of his own neighbourhood appear for relief?

But it may be asked, Is the village council, then, composed of small proprietors, to sit down and vote away the farmer's or landowner's money without farmer or landowner having so much as a voice in the matter? Certainly not. The idea of village self-government supposes a distinct and separate existence, as it were; the village apart from the farmer or landowner, and the latter apart from the village.

At present the money drawn in rates from farmer or landowner is chiefly expended on poor-law purposes. But, as will presently appear, village self-government proposes the entire abolition of the poor-law system, and with it the rates which support it, or at least the heaviest part of them. Therefore, as this money would not be concerned, they could receive no injury, even if they did not sit at the village council at all.

Imagine the village, figuratively speaking, surrounded by a high wall like a girdle, as towns were in ancient times, and so cut off altogether from the large properties surrounding it--on the one hand the village supporting and governing itself, and on the other the large properties equally independent.

The probable result would be a considerable reduction in local burdens on land. A self-supporting and self-governing moral population is the first step towards this relief to land so very desirable in the interest of agriculture.

In practice there must remain certain more or less imperial questions, as lines of through road, police, etc., some of which are already managed by the county authority. As these matters affect the farmer and landowner even more than the cottager, clearly they must expect to contribute to the cost, and can rightly claim a share in the management.

Having advanced so far as a village council, and arrived at the stage of managing their own affairs, having, in fact, emerged from pupilage, next comes a question for the council. We now govern our village ourselves; why should we not possess our village? Why should we not live in our own houses? Why should we not have a little share in the land, as much, at least, as we can pay for? At this moment the village, let us say, consists of a hundred cottages, and perhaps there are another hundred scattered about the parish. Of these three-fourths belong to two or three large landowners, and those who reside in them, however protected by enactment, can never have a sense of complete independence. We should own these cottages, so that the inhabitants might practically pay rent to themselves. We must purchase them, a few at a time; the residents can repurchase from us and so become freeholders. For a purchaser there must be a seller, and here one of the questions of the future appears: Can an owner of this kind of property be permitted to refuse to sell? Must he be compelled to sell?

It is clear that if the village voter thoroughly addresses himself to his home affairs there is room for some remarkable incidents.

There is reason now, is there not, to dread the appearance of the money-lender?

About this ill.u.s.trative parish there lie many hundred acres of good land all belonging to one man, while we, the said village council, do not possess a rood apiece, and our const.i.tuents not a square yard. Rightfully we ought to have a share, yet we do not agitate for confiscation. Shall we then say that every owner of land should be obliged to sell a certain fixed percentage--a very small percentage would suffice--upon proffer of a reasonable amount, the proffer being made by those who propose to personally settle on it? Of one thousand acres suppose ten or twenty liable to forcible purchase at a given and moderate price. After all it is not a much more overbearing thing than the taking by railways of land in almost any direction they please, and not nearly so tyrannous, so stupidly tyrannous, as some of the acts of folly committed by local boards in towns. Not long since the newspapers reported a case where a local authority actually ran a main sewer across a gentleman's park, and ventilated it at regular intervals, completely destroying the value of an historic mansion, and utterly ruining a beautiful domain. This was fouling their own nest with a vengeance. They should have cherished that park as one of their chiefest glories, their proudest possession. Parks and woods are daily becoming of almost priceless value to the nation; nothing could be so mad as to destroy these last homes of nature. Just conceive the inordinate folly of marking such a property with sewer ventilators. This is a hundred times more despotic than a proposal that say two per cent. of land should be forcibly purchasable for actual settlement. Even five per cent.

would not make an appreciable difference to an estate, though every fraction of the five per cent. were taken up.

For such proposals to have any effect, the transfer of real property must be greatly simplified and cheapened. From time to time, whenever a discussion occurs upon this subject, and there are signs that the glacier-like movements of government will be hastened by public stir, up rises some great lawyer and explains to the world that really nothing could be simpler or cheaper than such transfer.

All that can be wished in that direction has been accomplished already; there is not the slightest ground for agitation; every obstruction has been removed, and the machinery is now perfect. He quotes a long list of Acts to demonstrate the progress that has been made, and so winds up a very effective speech. Facts, however, are not in accordance with these gracious words. Here is an instance. A cottage in a village was recently sold for seventy pounds; the costs, legal expenses, parchments, all the antiquated formalities absorbed _thirty-two pounds_, only three pounds less than half the value of the little property. Could anything be more obviously wrong than such a system.

The difficulties in the way of simplification are created difficulties, entirely artificial, owing their existence to legal ingenuity. How often has the question been asked and never answered: Why should there be any more expense in transferring the owners.h.i.+p of an acre of land than of 100 stock?

The village council coming into contact with this matter is likely to agitate continuously for its rectification, since otherwise its movements will be seriously hampered. If they succeed in obtaining the abolition of these semi-feudal survivals, they will have conferred a substantial benefit upon the community. County franchise would be worth the granting merely to secure this.

Let us take the case for a moment of a labourer at this day and consider his position. What has he before him? He has a hand-to-mouth, nomad existence, ending in the inevitable frozen misery of the workhouse. Men with votes and political power are hardly likely to endure this for many more years, and it is much to be hoped that they will not endure it. A labourer may be never so hard-working, so careful, so sober, and yet let his efforts be what they may, his old age finds him helpless. I am sure there is no cla.s.s of men among whom may be found so many industrious, plodding, sober folk, economical to the verge of starvation. Their straightforward lives are thrown away. Their sons and daughters, warned by example, go to the cities, and there lose the virtues that rendered their forefathers so admirable even in their wretchedness.

It will indeed be a blessing if, as I hope, the outcome of the franchise is the foundation of solid inducements to the countryman to stay in the country. I use the phrase countryman purposely, intending it to include small farmers and small farmers' sons; the latter are likewise driven away from the land year by year as much as the young labourers, and are as serious a loss to it. Did the possibility exist of purchasing a cottage and a plot of ground of moderate size, it 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 st.u.r.dy 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?