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250 ; but you have allowed instead the East and West Ends to grow up in your great cities. Surely the essential characteristic of true statesmanship is foresight, the prevention of social disease; but our method for a century past has been to drift, and when things became bad we applied palliative remedies—factory legislation, housing legislation, and so forth. As things stand to-day, the only organic remedy is at any cost to loosen out the town.

These ideas apply not only to industry but also to our educational institutions and the learned professions. Our English system is to buy—we must use plain words, for the element of competition among the colleges exists—the best young brains by means of scholarships open to national competition. In the middle of last century we, in large measure, abolished the system of close scholarships, which tied particular schools to particular colleges; that was, in my opinion, by far the healthier system. By social custom you add to your scholars a number of other fortunate boys from well-to-do homes scattered over the country. So you recruit your public schools and your Oxford and Cambridge; from the beginning you lift your lads out of their local environment. From the Universities many of them pass into a centralised Civil Service,