And after all, at the worst, is it to come to this—that a shrewd, strong, hard-working man, with plenty of land of his own, cannot live unless markets and prices are favourable? Need an Englishman starve now, under circumstances in which a Saxon or a Dane of a thousand years ago would, after his fashion, have luxuriated in plenty? If so, it is the custom of excessive subdivision of labour, the growing incompleteness in themselves of men and of households, which has spoilt us for settling in a new country. Such subdivision of course increases production in a highly civilised country, but it may easily become a source of mental and physical degradation to the producer. Sheffield knives may be the best and cheapest in the world, but we have all heard of the Sheffield emigrant girl, who, landing in a new colony, and seeking employment, confessed she had never been taught to do anything whatever, indoors or outdoors, but _pack files_. If wheat or other produce will not fetch a profit, cannot a man grow less of it, and instead keep sheep and poultry to supply himself with meat, and on such a soil as this grow perhaps grapes for his own wine, such as it is, and even possibly flax for his own linen? And if his wife be of the right sort for a settler’s wife, and not of the file-packing sort, there will be few things for which he need go to a shop. Such a state of things, if possible, and not Utopian, has at least this advantage, that it saves the wife and young children from the great bane of peasant proprietorship, that of becoming like mere unthinking, routine-following beasts of burden on the soil, as we see them too often in Belgium and France, with no other thought or employment but how to put the utmost possible pound of manure on the soil, and how to extract from it the utmost bushel in return, to the neglect of all things else on earth. At any rate, it is hardly to be believed that English agricultural labourers will not, sooner or later, have spirit to attempt to solve the problem for themselves one way or another, rather than rest contented with their present condition. The present generation may hope to live to see them asking twice or three times their present wages, and, if unable to obtain them, departing for a new, and, for them, a freer country.