On the whole, I should be sorry to say that this sort of thing was not desirable. If a nation is to be great, it is essential that it should contain a large body of workers, and the more industrious and dependable and trustworthy that body of workers, the better it is for the State and for the pillars and props of the State, the employers included. But the point is that the English take too much credit for it and get too much ease out of it. It has been complained by Mr. Crosland and other masters of elegant English that the Scot goes to London and the smaller industrial markets and there enters into successful competition with the English employed, and it appears to annoy Mr. Crosland that the Scot should not be content with good work, say book-keeping from nine to six, good wages, say L150 per annum, and kind employers, say Messrs. Reachemdown & Reachemdown, all his life. It seems to annoy him, too, that the Scot never acquires that pathetic satisfaction in being employed which permeates the beautiful spirit of his English competitor. You will meet hoary and bald-headed Englishmen who will tell you with a quaver that they have been in the employment of one and the same house, man and boy, for over half a century, sir! Somehow the Englishman tells you this with a look of pride, and rather expects you to regard him as a sort of marvel. It never occurs to him that he is really bragging of his own ineptitude,--to use Mr. Crosland's favourite abstraction,--his own lack of enterprise. The number of Scots who have been in the employment of one house for forty years, least of all the number of Scots who brag about it, is probably not a round dozen. As a general rule, when a Scot has been in a house forty years, it is his house.