in view, viz., that the land, as a general rule, should be let on reasonable commercial principles to the best farmer in the market, and capital freely invested in it, instead of being driven from it as now. On these suppositions, would this throwing open of the occupation of land to the action of economic laws (beneficial as it undoubtedly would be to the nation and the landowner) work in favour of large holdings or small ones? I confess that the history traced in the foregoing pages leads me to the same conclusions with regard to the occupation as to the ownership of land. I think it would favour that size of farm which was economically most advantageous, and that probably large farms would gain the race against small ones; and if so, then it would increase rather than diminish the severance of the people from the land.

In England the proper limit may have already been reached, there might even be some reaction in some districts in favour of smaller farms. But in Ireland, after the legal recognition of status-tenures and the legal definition of their rights, so soon as commercial principles and economic laws begin to work unchecked by political causes, I see no reason why some such process as that which broke up small feudal holdings in England should not go on in Ireland. The application more and more of commercial capital and machinery and division of labour to Irish farms may, as it seems to me, very likely act as a sort of flux in the dissolution of small Irish holdings as it did in England, and so, by a silent process, without confiscation and without injustice, sever more and more of the Irish people from

the land.

I know that this severance, in England as well as in Ireland, is deplored by many economists for whose opinion I have great regard. But it seems to me to be inevitably involved in the successful prosecution of that career, which, if I may so speak, this island nation has chosen for itself -a career in which it has advanced too far to admit of retreat. The British people, in pursuing this career, have already too long ago burst the gates of their island home ever to close them again. The tree rooted in England has sent out its shoots into other lands. Historically and practically (and to some extent politically) the English-speaking peoples on the other shores of the oceans are extensions of the British nation. The lands they inhabit are extensions of British land. For the purpose of inquiries into the economic condition and future prosperity of the British people, England must be looked upon only as a part of the great wholethe inhabitants of England only as a part of the great Englishspeaking people which is economically one. Do we deplore the lack of peasant proprietors in England? The true consolation is, that our English peasant proprietors are on the other side of the Atlantic, with larger farms, growing more corn, and more rapidly rising into

wealth, than they ever could have done on any little peasant holdings in the old country. This severance of the English people from the land in England has not, therefore, been without its ample compensations. It has set some of them free to pursue other and more lucrative callings, some of them to pursue their hereditary agricultural calling as farmers in England, or landowners elsewhere, under better economic conditions than otherwise could have been theirs. I submit, therefore, that this severance of the people from the land is not altogether to be regarded as in itself a cause of anxiety, provided that the English-speaking peoples can be kept substantially one, and the blood of the nation (as it were) circulate freely through them all.

I submit that the great evil and blot upon our English economic system is, not this severance of so many from the land, but that as regards four or five millions out of, perhaps, fifty millions, the severance has not been sufficiently complete. Four or five millions of English peasantry, severed from the ownership of the land, have been left still rooted to it in a sort of commercial serfdom. They are free to fly, but their wings are pinioned. They have been culpably left in ignorance. By their want of education and hereditary helplessness they are still chained to the soil they till, as completely as negro cooks in Jamaica used to be chained to their ovens. But this is no result of the application of commercial principles to land. It is no necessity of the national career to which I have alluded. It is a heavy drag upon its progress. Though unhappily prolonged by the jealousy of religious sects, it has its historical root in the lingering antipathy of landowners to the education of a peasantry which, under the mock-feudal system of land management, has been regarded far too much and too long as a subservient race. The same bells which 'Ring out the slowly dying cause,"

will, if the British nation be true to its own interests,

"Ring out the darkness of the land."

For this is clear :-no alteration in our English land laws will do much towards the promotion of the common weal, unless that darkness is rung out-unless some attempt is made to grapple with the moral evils which breed under its cover, and which not alone in country districts, but also in our great commercial centres, are sapping the roots and stunting the growth of that national industry and enterprise by which the English nation lives far more than by the land.

FREDERIC SEEBOHM.

THE WOMAN OF BUSINESS.

CHAPTER XLIV.

IN WHICH MRS. UPJOHN GIVES UP PLEASURE AND TAKES TO BUSINESS. WHEREIN ALSO MRS. ROWLEY ATTENDS TO PUBLIC AFFAIRS AS WELL

AS TO HER OWN.

MRS. UPJOHN'S circle began to crumble away immediately after the memorable night when Miss Lovibond lost her bracelet, which it was agreed in a full coterie of the lady-guests, when all the circumstances were laid before them, that Mrs. Upjohn's mysterious and unpresentable acquaintance must have purloined.

This was just the one feather too much which broke the camel's back. Mrs. Upjohn had already made her house so unpleasant by her moody behaviour and inability to command either her tongue or her countenance, that it amounted almost to a general hint to her friends that their room, as the vulgar phrase is, would be more agreeable than their company. Lord Stromness had been the first to take leave, which he did without proposing for Miss Upjohn: monstrous conduct on his part, which would have irritated the mother more than it did, only that it happened while her mind was absorbed by more serious anxieties. The Misses Lovibond, without using any strong expressions, were the next to go. Mrs. Rollick declared she would stay a few days more, simply because it suited her convenience, but not an hour longer. She did not know what it was, but the very atmosphere of the house had become absolutely insupportable.

"There is something else brewing down here besides Mrs. Rowley's ale," said Mr. Bittern ; so, as I have no taste for mischief with no fun in it, I'll go and pack my portmanteau."

The hostess herself and her dark-browed daughter were as heartily tired of their company as their company was of them, and they were actually talking of going away themselves for some time, when an event happened which gave them a fresh interest in the country just when they were about to leave it in disgust. An opportunity presented itself most unexpectedly for enabling Mrs. Upjohn to take the pas of her rival in the most public manner, and making herself beyond dispute the first personage in the peninsula.

It happened that just at this time, as the reader may remember, without being stricken in years, there was one of those invasionpanics to which England is periodically subject, and especially, of course, the counties on the southern and south-western coasts. This

alarm indeed had commenced early in the spring, and Mr. Cosie had alluded to it in his early communications with Messrs. Alexander and Marjoram: but it increased in the course of the summer, and steps began to be taken by the lieutenants of counties and chief landed proprietors to organise volunteer corps in various parts of England. One of the noblemen who was forward in this way was the Earl of Dartmoor, one of the principal magnates of Cornwall. He had early written to Mr. Upjohn, among other landlords, suggesting to him to raise a troop at Oakham, and he had pressed the matter so urgently in a more recent letter that Mr. Upjohn, though not a man of martial turn, could not refuse to do what lay in his power.

Immediately before leaving Kissingen he had another communication from Lord Dartmoor, requesting him to take the command of the force to be raised at Oakham, and further intimating that his lordship would be gratified if his daughter, when the proper time came, would inaugurate the business by presenting the corps with their colours.

The excitement at Foxden may be imagined when Mr. Upjohn forwarded this last letter to his wife.

"At last," she exclaimed to her daughter, "our position in the county is recognised. This is something, after all we have had to bear."

"Mamma!” cried Miss Upjohn, no less elated, "you must not wait for papa to come home; you must go among the tenantry yourself, and make them enrol themselves."

"Won't I! I should like to see one of them refuse. People shall see, my dear, who is the woman of business now that there is something to be done that a lady need not be ashamed of doing; something more becoming of a gentlewoman than breeding pigs, brewing beer, and smelting copper!"

"That it is. I suppose we shall know in good time the formalities observed on those occasions; what we ought to wear, and ought to say if I am expected to address the troops."

"I'll write myself," said Mrs. Upjohn, "to Lord Dartmoor about all that. Really this is a most gratifying occurrence. It makes me feel somebody; and I suspect it will make somebody feel very like nobody. It is just the thing to attract the notice of the Queen herself. I really should not be surprised if her Majesty was to write you or me an autograph letter."

Mrs. Upjohn now took a leaf out of her rival's book, and was on foot from morning to night, strutting about, attended by her steward, enrolling the peasantry over whom she possessed any power or influence. She told them a wonderful number of absurd things about the French; that they were coming with a million of men,

and would eat up every sheep and cow in Cornwall if they were allowed to land. The French, she assured the gaping clodpoles, never eat frogs out of their own country. She told them also that the Queen would infallibly call for the name of everybody who did not come forward, and punish him as a traitor, with a variety of similar topics perhaps as good as any other to excite a flame not difficult to kindle in any part of England. A sufficient number of names were enrolled to make a pretty good show on paper, and Mrs. Upjohn, highly pleased with her performance, forwarded the list to Lord Dartmoor, with a flourishing letter, in which she did not forget to inquire about the points of form on which her daughter required information.

In a few days an answer came from his lordship's secretary with replies to Miss Upjohn's queries; but stating that Lord Dartmoor was indisposed, and that the ceremony must stand postponed for a short time.

"Well, mamma," said Miss Upjohn, "let us go to Bath in the meantime; we shall want a great many things not to be got here, and papa and Carry can meet us there on their way down."

Mrs. Upjohn thought it a very good idea.

"I have done pretty well," she said, "as a recruiting-sergeant; but I frankly confess I am not up to drilling; let us go to Bath, by all means, and have some respite from these horrid annoyances we are daily subject to here."

"All that will be over before long, mamma," said Miss Upjohn. "I trust so, and I think so," said her mother.

The two ladies accordingly went to Bath; first giving it out in the neighbourhood that they went solely to meet Mr. Upjohn halfway, and were to return with him for the great event.

All the time the great lady of Foxden had been occupied in this dignified manner in a matter no less momentous than the defence of the realm, Dame Rowley, like a quiet respectable woman, kept going on in her usual poor-spirited humdrum way, minding her own petty concerns, not in the least likely to be honoured with the royal autograph.

One of her affairs happened just then to require her sharpest attention. The brewery was giving her some trouble of a kind she had not yet experienced, though not in itself so serious as the consequences were which it involved. It was a daring thing to attempt the cooking of accounts which had to pass under Mrs. Rowley's review, but the attempt was made. The criminal was a young man who had been appointed by Mr. Cosie to the situation he held, and of whom Mrs. Rowley had no good opinion, as it had been necessary once or twice to reprove him for smoking in his office, as well as for other irregularities. But one Sunday, in church, she observed him