But seeing that nowadays one is reduced almost to wandering about hat in hand begging for _one_,--just one,--redeeming point in favour not only of town life, town conditions and town charms, but also of one’s own fellow townsmen themselves; it must strike people as a little odd that the accredited authorities for generations should have been so completely lacking in any definite policy concerning this all-important question. Is England to become one long ugly street, full of ugly, toothless people, pretending that their clammy urban passions are something more exalted than the rut of rats? You would have thought that a consideration of the food situation alone, apart from any other aspect of the matter, would have induced the rulers of the nation, long ago, to adopt some means to encourage rural, and to discourage urban life; and yet, as if with malice prepense, all the efforts of past Governments have secretly been made in the very opposite direction. One is almost inclined to cavil less at the growth of urban centres and their unwieldy proportions, than at the absurd lack of policy towards this question which continues to be shown by the legislature. If it be a desirable movement, then by all means promote it openly; if, on the other hand, it can only fill every patriot’s breast with alarm, then, be sure to frame a definite policy about it, and do so quickly. The present writer can only see disaster [p213] ahead, if these large urban centres are allowed to spread any further, and he would feel inclined to inaugurate immediately, a movement for strictly circumscribing their area. Concurrently with this drastic move, he would encourage by all means in his power, the adoption of rural occupations and homes by the proletariat. “But what about the increasing population?” cry a hundred voices,--as if an increasing population were a sort of elemental phenomenon like the rising tide, or the waxing and waning of the moon, that no man can help. The reply to this question brings the author to the last of the matters of detail with which he proposes to deal, and therefore to his concluding remarks. The question of population, like that of the relative desirability of urban or rural life, is one to which it is madness to maintain an attitude of indifference or unconcern. The rulers of this country can as little afford to ignore the consideration of the multiplication of its inhabitants, as they can afford to ignore the consideration of the nation’s finances. And the more the State arrogates to itself the rôle of a beneficent and divine Providence,--that is to say, the more it interferes with the natural consequences of improvidence in the matter of bringing forth children, either by helping indigent parents, or by mitigating the hardships of the unmarried mother, the more it is entitled to impose and to inflict penalties upon irresponsible and wanton procreators of children.