Changed as he is, and certain to change yet more and more in the immediate future, do not forget that the English working-man, even of the town, feels a great shrinking about leaving the old home. In a village this seems natural; the place is calm and lovely, the ancient church with its gray tower standing in the churchyard, where the rooks and pigeons and blackbirds keep up a continual chorus; the village green, the village inn, the gabled cottages, the gates that lead to the Hall, the fields and hedges, the stream, and the hills, and the hanging woods--these things enter into the very heart and soul of the Englishman; he loves them all, he cannot choose but love them, though he would not know how to express his affection; in the churchyard he knows the mounds that belong to his own people; in the tavern he sits among his cronies on the polished settle beside the fire, his mug before him, his pipe in his mouth. In his heart he wants no other life. These things he could not find in America or Australia or New Zealand. Yet he is changed, and if you wait for twenty years you will no longer recognise him for what he was. He is getting a touch from America, a thought from Australia, a custom from New Zealand; he will be a citizen of the world, and, if I read the signs aright, he will become before another generation the owner and the master of agricultural England. [Illustration: _Painting by Sir George Hayter_ THE MARRIAGE OF THE QUEEN TO PRINCE ALBERT] Let us leave the village and turn to the town. There are two books in our literature which tell of English factory life in the early part of this century. One of these is Disraeli’s _Sybil_; the other is Mrs. Trollope’s _Michael Armstrong_. I fear that these two books are not read so much as they should be; partly, perhaps, because we do not love to dwell too much on the shameful side of history. The condition of the working-man before the Victorian era is indeed a very shameful part of history. The record of the factory and the mine is very black. Let me show you something of what it was. I tell you beforehand, that the story proves that power over his fellow-men must never be entrusted to any man; for he will abuse that power--he will become an oppressor and a tyrant. He began this oppression with the children. He has a mill, a factory, a mine; in which he made the children work. He worked them so cruelly; he gave them such long hours, such poor food, such wretched clothing, that he lowered the vitality of these unfortunate children so that an epidemic broke out among them; it carried off thousands. This frightened the owner of these children, because, if they all died, what would become of his mill?