Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/263

Rh a centralised legal profession, and even a centralised medical profession. In London they wait, eating out their hearts during their best years. A few of them come through and shine in a great but unnaturally segregated competition of wits, and you complain of your Government by lawyers! The whole system results from historical momentum; when the Midlands, the East, and the South of England were all of England that counted, Oxford and Cambridge were local Universities, and London was the natural market centre of a single country-side. But in the past century the roads and the railways have enabled the Metropolis to attract to itself the careers that were destined for the inspiration of other country-sides. The natural place of an exceptional man is to be leading his own people and helping them to bear their burdens. Your exceptional brain is serving the nation best if it remains racy of its own particular soil.

One of the most serious difficulties in the way of the realisation of the balanced local community Hes in the difference of dialect spoken by the common people and the upper