monstrate the progress that has been
made, and so winds up a very effective speech. Facts, however, are
not in accordance with these gracious words. Here is an instance. A
cottage in a village was recently sold for seventy pounds; the
costs, legal expenses, parchments, all the antiquated formalities
absorbed _thirty-two pounds_, only three pounds less than half the
value of the little property. Could anything be more obviously wrong
than such a system.

The difficulties in the way of simplification are created
difficulties, entirely artificial, owing their existence to legal
ingenuity. How often has the question been asked and never answered:
Why should there be any more expense in transferring the ownership
of an acre of land than of L100 stock?

The village council coming into contact with this matter is likely
to agitate continuously for its rectification, since otherwise its
movements will be seriously hampered. If they succeed in obtaining
the abolition of these semi-feudal survivals, they will have
conferred a substantial benefit upon the community. County franchise
would be worth the granting merely to secure this.

Let us take the case for a moment of a labourer at this day and
consider his position. What has he before him? He has a
hand-to-mouth, nomad existence, ending in the inevitable frozen
misery of the workhouse. Men with votes and political power are
hardly likely to endure this for many more years, and it is much to
be hoped that they will not endure it. A labourer may be never so
hard-working, so careful, so sober, and yet let his efforts be what
they may, his old age finds him helpless. I am sure there is no
class of men among whom may be found so many industrious, plodding,
sober folk, economical to the verge of starvation. Their
straightforward lives are thrown away. Their sons and daughters,
warned by example, go to the cities, and there lose the virtues that
rendered their forefathers so admirable even in their wretchedness.
It will indeed be a blessing if, as I hope, the outcome of the
franchise is the foundation of solid inducements to the countryman
to stay in the country. I use the phrase countryman purposely,
intending it to include small farmers and small farmers' sons; the
latter are likewise driven away from the land year by year as much
as the young labourers, and are as serious a loss to it. Did the
possibility exist of purchasing a cottage and a plot of ground of
moderate size, it