As regards socialism, one of the most urgent needs for the promoting of local and individual autonomy is fully to reconstitute the homestead and the village community. The homestead will satisfy the most natural craving for individual property and for a family and ancestral home, with all the beneficent and sacred association implied in such a home. ‘The area of the homestead should be sufficient to employ and support a family.’ In my book _Progress and the Fiscal Problem_ (p. 172) I have spoken of such a homestead as a freehold. But it matters comparatively little what legal term we employ, provided the occupancy be permanent and not dependent on the will of officials connected with the central government. There should, however, be some guarantee that the social conditions of occupancy be fulfilled. Tax or rent might reasonably be paid into a social fund for collective needs. Here, as in other matters, one of the difficulties in elucidating a reasonable socialism lies in the fact that we have to use old words to express facts and institutions that may be expected to become new, or at least to undergo a material change in the course of social development. For such words, it should be observed, have not a final and conclusive meaning which can be stereotyped and put into a definition in a dictionary or legal enactment, but can only be unfolded in actual human use and in the process of changing human history. It is meant that the homestead and the village community be restored to a full and beneficent life under modern conditions and to serve modern needs. Of the State for the near future the most desirable type undoubtedly is one which, while providing a strong and efficient central organisation, gives a real and substantial autonomy to the various parts and members of which it may be composed. And it will be one of the noblest functions of such a State to train to a higher social and political life the peoples which are now subject and by some are reckoned inferior. This duty Great Britain is performing in India and Egypt. The United States of America have undertaken a like office in Cuba and the Philippine Islands. It might even be possible under wise guidance to lead peoples like the Kaffirs direct from the warlike and tribal stage into the industrial and co-operative stage. Some day, perhaps, the best solution for racial difficulties in America may be to give some kind of special autonomy to the negroes in the hot regions where they are most thickly planted near the Gulf of Mexico. Progress in these high matters will obviously depend on the growing insight and sympathy of the rulers, as well as on the increasing enlightenment, self-control, and political experience of the subject races. It is a most important matter that the task has been worthily begun. Such work is in quality like mercy— It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.