Dissimilar though they are in almost every aspect, England and
Madeira may be fruitfully compared : one may learn by contrast. Supposing—as children say—that we had spent in England on draining and reclaiming one half of the labour spent in Madeira on irrigation alone, let alone the terracing, we should have at leaSt doubled the productive possibilities of 6,000,000 acres or so. The difference between work in Madeira and England is that there the standard, the unit of calculation, is the livelihood that a family can extract from a small piece of land. Here it is the industrial wage. But in ease a more elemental view of life should presently be forced upOn us, it may be well to come down to earth and realize that contempt of the land is an unstable basis on which to build any civilization whatever. One can say this, though the poverty of many of the countries that rely chiefly on husbandry is general and severe. The almonds and karabs, with the beans and peas below them, composing the chief industry of Majorca, help to make the island singularly like Madeira in many aspects. The genera- tions have built the great walls and terraces with the same continuous labour, and parsimoniously cultivate in poverty the little gardens they support. Neither is a model, but both are suggestive.
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