more in harmony with their own taste and
preference, we shall not only confer an inestimable boon upon them, but
shall turn them into a source of strength and revenue for the country,
and shall with them people tracts which are at present barren and
fruitless, but which are only waiting to be occupied and which in many
cases have only to be restored to the prosperity that they formerly
enjoyed.

Finally we have the great advantage of a people already trained to
husbandry from their youth, and accustomed to the very co-operative
system of farming which General Booth advocates, where payments are
mostly to be made in kind rather than in cash, and where the exchange of
goods will largely supersede transactions in money, a strong but
paternal government regulating all for the general good.

CHAPTER III.

THE CITY COLONY.

The first portion of General Booth's threefold scheme consists of the
City Colony.

This may aptly be compared to a dredger, which, gathers up all the silt
of a harbour, and carries it out to sea, leaves it there and then
returns to repeat the operation. If such an operation is necessary in a
harbour, and if without it the best anchorages in the world would often
get choked with rubbish and become useless, how doubly important must it
be in the case of the human wastage that abounds in every large Indian
City.

Should a single ship strike on an unknown rock, we hasten to mark it
down in our charts, or erect over the spot a lighthouse as a warning to
others. Should it sink where it is likely to hinder the traffic, we set
our engineers to work to remove it, even though it may be necessary to
blow it to atoms.

And yet it is a notorious fact that our cities abound with rocks over
which there is no lighthouse,--that every channel is obstructed with
sunken vessels, and that there are not a few tribes of pirates who
fatten on the human wreckage. But we fold our hands in despair, and
allow bad to grow worse, till the problem daily becomes more enormous,
desperate and difficult to deal with.

Now General Booth's scheme proposes to establish a dredger for every
harbour, a lighthouse for every rock, an engineer for keeping clear
every channel. It may be too much to expect that there will be no
wrecks, but they will be fewer, and that surely is something! We do not
say that there will be no accidents, but there will be willing hands
held out to deliver. We cannot hope to abolish failures, mistakes,