FARMING, PAST AND FUTURE 91 



I will begin by asking- you, for the sake of your 

 country, to forget that the questions of Free Trade 

 and of Tariff Reform were ever torn to pieces by the 

 wolves of party politics; or rather, shall I say, may I 

 ask you to realize that, owing to the stress of war, 

 these nauseous subjects have been masticated, swal- 

 lowed and digested. We have to look at the problem 

 with eyes recently recovered from blindness. 



I suggest to you that all food should bear the cost 

 of its own police protection. You ask a British 

 farmer to pay rates so that the police may protect his 

 produce; let the overseas food pay for the navy that 

 is there to protect it. Cobden, in his early days, 1 saw 

 no harm in a fiscal duty on food. I suggest to you 

 there is good in such a system of taxation. In the 

 first place, such a system of taxation might be well 

 used to check all tendency to waste ; further, I should 

 use it as a means of encouraging home-grown pro- 

 duce. 



I would begin by coming to an understanding with 

 the landlord or the capitalist. To these I would say: 

 " Our scheme of taxation will, if by the wit of man it 

 can be accomplished, insure you decent rent for, or 

 interest on, the value of every acre you possess so 

 long as it is intensively farmed. The same principle 

 will apply to any buildings you may put up or any 

 improvements you may execute that will help on pro- 

 duction to the utmost. But, on the other hand, if you 

 want to own land so as to allow yourself the pleasure 

 of entertaining your friends to great slaughters of 

 hand-reared pheasants, or so as to enable you to sur- 

 round yourself with incompetent tenants who pay you 

 part of their rent in servility or for any other sort or 

 kind of amenity, why then we have to tax your land 



1 The Political Writings of Richard Cobden, Vol. I, p. 149. Published by 

 William Ridgway, 169 Piccadilly, W., 1868. 



