rocks of famine, to escape which they at length
plunge into the sea amongst the submerged millions, who, weary and
bitter and despairing, or with blind submission to the iron hand of
fate, have grown hopelessly and miserably indifferent.

Now, it is notorious that millions live thus on the border-land. Granted
that after the harvest border-landers may for a time get two good meals
a day. Yet as the reserve store dwindles down and long before
harvest-time comes round, again, they get but one, and that frequently a
scanty one. They do live, multitudes of them, it is true, amidst
conditions that seem to us impossible. But how many of them die on this
one meal a day, there is nobody to chronicle. But if we do nothing
beyond rescuing a considerable mass of the totally submerged, we shall
considerably ameliorate the condition of these border-landers.

By rendering independent of charity thousands who now depend upon the
gifts of the more fortunate, by making large tracts of land productive
which at present lie waste, by enlarging the stream of emigration, and
partially draining the morass of crime, it is absolutely certain that
the conditions of life will become more favourable for the
border-landers. New markets will be created both for produce and labour,
which will tend to relieve the congested condition of the land now under
cultivation.

The land at present is like a good, but overworked and under-fed horse,
which, under this double adversity of overwork and under-feeding, dies
and leaves his poor owner, who was entirely dependent upon his earnings,
a pauper. It is a condition of things which is bad, and bound of
necessity to grow only worse and worse, till the willing horse drops
under his load, and his master falls from poverty to destitution. Once
enable the man to temporarily decrease his horse's labour and
permanently increase its food supply, that horse will regain its
strength, and by its increased strength become able to do double the
amount of work, increase its master's earnings, and so in time enable
him not only to properly feed his horse, but also to properly feed
himself.

Now close to hand there is an unemployed horse available which will
afford the relief, for want of which the overworked horse is dying. The
unoccupied and waste lands, waste labour, and waste produce, constitute
the ideal unemployed horse, on whose back we would put part of the
burden of maintaining the life and feeding the mouths of