Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/217

 hundred thousand souls have left our shores, or migrated from country to town, since 1872. At that time members could with difficulty pay three cents a week to the union; now the subscription is five cents, and there is still a solid phalanx of twenty-five thousand subscribers.

But the good work is hardly begun. The laborer has to obtain the franchise, and the land has to be completely defeudalized before Mr. Arch' s mission will have been fulfilled. I have never met a man who, from personal observation, has grasped so comprehensively the evils of our land monopoly. In his own neighborhood Mr. Arch is an encyclopaedia of information regarding the past and present produce of the various adjacent estates. Within the last twenty-five years, cattle and sheep, he will tell you, have in most cases decreased by more than one-half, without a single rood of pasture-land being broken up. Instead of "three profits," there will hardly be enough for one if the present system is to obtain much longer. Feudalism is eating itself up in England. These be truths which no one could inculcate with greater authority at St. Stephen's, whither it is a cause for profound regret he was not sent, at the last general election, by the borough of Wilton to explain his view of the "three profits," and who ought to reap them.