Turning from the towns to the agricultural population, where we have the right to expect the fullest measure of health, we find a condition of things which strikes an observer with dismay. The cultivators of the soil constitute the backbone of a nation. I have carefully observed them in America, and have learned to consider them the ruling force of the nation; independent, thoughtful, exercising judgment and common-sense. Again and again I have seen the corrupt or mischievous vote of the large towns reversed or overwhelmed by the country majorities. The condition of the peasants who cultivate the soil all over our country presents a terrible contrast to this picture. Fever, produced by extreme misery, seems to be endemic amongst them, sapping their strength and stupefying their minds, when it does not kill; they are crippled by rheumatism and destroyed by scrofula; their miserable cottages are damp, dark, close, and overcrowded; their pitiful wages will not supply them with decent dwelling, sustaining food, and other necessaries of life. Let me quote testimony from high authority given within the year: ‘As many as ten persons are often crowded into a sleeping-room not 12 feet square;’ ‘the external walls are too thin, the rooms too small, no ventilation, brick or tile floors;’ ‘cottages are frequently built in marshy situations, and by stagnant water, or at the foot of hills where there is no free circulation of air; the spot is chosen on account of the small value of the land and its uselessness for agricultural purposes;’ ‘they are not able to pay what would be a fair interest on a decent cottage.’ ‘If a new colliery is opened in an upland valley, 200, 300, or 400 cottages are built very rapidly, and they are inhabited long before they are dry. The foundations as a rule are simply upon the sod, which is merely turned over, and a flag is put on that sod. There is no drainage of any kind; 40,000 to 50,000 persons will live in houses of this kind, in one valley.’ ‘There are numbers of villages throughout England where the people are drinking polluted water.’ ‘I have seen no place in England in a worse condition than this village. I have seen many native villages in South Africa, but none so bad as this!’ Volumes might be filled with similar testimony as to the physical state of our country population--a population whose condition is the truest measure of a nation’s substantial strength. There is no error so dangerous in national life as the discouragement of honest labour. If the conditions of labour are injurious and repulsive, whether from exhausting hours of toil, unhealthy workplaces, squalid homes, or dreary monotony of toil, the workers of either sex will inevitably seek relief from hopeless drudgery in the excitement of vicious indulgences.