Look at the average labourer of our own day. He has, as Newman clearly points out, "more than enough to do in rearing a family, and has no better prospect in his declining years than rheumatism and the poorhouse, perhaps with separation from his wife, or at least a miserable dole of out-door relief." [Footnote: We have gone some way since these words were written in our Old Age Pensions.] Here he puts his finger on the very spot where one thoughtless cruelty of bureaucratic legislation is most shown. For many faithful servants of the State come in their last extremity to this destiny. This irony of legislation shone out lately in its true colours when it was discovered that, of over a thousand survivors of the Indian Mutiny, a large proportion, who were invited to the demi-centenary celebration dinner, came out of workhouses where they, who had served their country so well in the days of their youth, had been forced to spend their old age. There is no doubt that Francis Newman's remedy for the economic evils of the people is the right one. To develop rural industry, to come back to the land, is the hope for England's future. "It is essential to the public welfare to multiply to the utmost the proportion of actual cultivators or farmers who have a firm tenure of the soil by paying a quit-rent to the State.... The soil of England ought to be the very best investment for rich and poor, pouring out wealth to incessant industry, and securing to every labourer the fruit of his own toils." And in this way, he urges, can this suggestion be carried to its definite conclusion. The revival of small freeholds, the re-institution of peasant proprietorships, are the ways out of the block at the end of the way where there is at present a deadlock in regard to the peasants' individual advancement. It is well known how admirably this system has worked in France, where millions of peasants have profited by the law in favour of small freeholds, and its regulation that such land shall always be divided equally among the children of the landholder. It is well known how largely Indian revenue was drawn from the rent paid by small cultivators in the Dekkan. It may be taken as an invariable consequence that the measure which really profits the citizen profits the State too. I remember seeing among some old papers dating back to the early quarter of the nineteenth century, an account showing that tobacco planting was really started somewhere in the Midlands by two or three Englishmen, and it was found that the soil was thoroughly adapted to the culture of tobacco. Indeed, the venture proved a complete success. Then the Government of that day, fearing later consequences to the import trade, promptly intervened and put a stop to the home cultivation. But the fact remains that it had been proved, by a definite experience, that there _was_ an opening for this industry in England.