Then again there is the fact that, though the influx from the country to the cities has commenced, yet it has not at present got beyond manageable proportions, so that it is possible for us, if awake to the emergency, to rise up and divert the stream into more desirable channels. If instead of waiting for a further irruption of village Goths and Vandals, (which is only a matter of time, and which will soon overwhelm our City labour market and compel the attention of our civil authorities,) we anticipate the event and meet them half way by opening up fresh channels for them, more in harmony with their own taste and preference, we shall not only confer an inestimable boon upon them, but shall turn them into a source of strength and revenue for the country, and shall with them people tracts which are at present barren and fruitless, but which are only waiting to be occupied and which in many cases have only to be restored to the prosperity that they formerly enjoyed. Finally we have the great advantage of a people already trained to husbandry from their youth, and accustomed to the very co-operative system of farming which General Booth advocates, where payments are mostly to be made in kind rather than in cash, and where the exchange of goods will largely supersede transactions in money, a strong but paternal government regulating all for the general good. CHAPTER III. THE CITY COLONY. The first portion of General Booth's threefold scheme consists of the City Colony. This may aptly be compared to a dredger, which, gathers up all the silt of a harbour, and carries it out to sea, leaves it there and then returns to repeat the operation. If such an operation is necessary in a harbour, and if without it the best anchorages in the world would often get choked with rubbish and become useless, how doubly important must it be in the case of the human wastage that abounds in every large Indian City. Should a single ship strike on an unknown rock, we hasten to mark it down in our charts, or erect over the spot a lighthouse as a warning to others. Should it sink where it is likely to hinder the traffic, we set our engineers to work to remove it, even though it may be necessary to blow it to atoms. And yet it is a notorious fact that our cities abound with rocks over which there is no lighthouse,--that every channel is obstructed with sunken vessels, and that there are not a few tribes of pirates who fatten on the human wreckage. But we fold our hands in despair, and allow bad to grow worse, till the problem daily becomes more enormous, desperate and difficult to deal with.