78 BIOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 



theft to the neglect of production. That the form of 

 strategy fixed upon was not deliberately chosen I am 

 quite aware. The great reformer, Cobden, who played 

 so large a part in leading national thought when the 

 policy was decided upon, if I read correctly his essays 

 and speeches, had no such wish. He was at much 

 pains to explain how the land might be made more 

 productive if his theories were put into practice. He 

 wished, and not without reason, that the value of land, 

 as expressed in rent, might be less high in the second 

 than it had been in the first half of last century; above 

 all, he intended that the terrible lot of the agricultural 

 labourer should be improved. In paying my humble 

 tribute to the splendid effort Richard Cobden made 

 on behalf of this class of the community, I would 

 submit that it was the treatment that the rank and file 

 of the agricultural army received during the first half 

 of the nineteenth century that brought down the 

 judgment of God upon the industry as a whole. 

 Cobden had no conception l that the system he ad- 

 vocated would cause much of the land in England 

 to come down to prairie value. He relied, more- 

 over, upon the cost of transit 2 of food to protect the 

 farmer from competition with produce stolen from 

 the virgin soils of the world overseas, but between 

 1875 and 1885 that safeguard practically disappeared. 

 The ten shillings a quarter he foresaw as the perpetual 

 shield against the ruin of the industry, fell to a sum 

 closely approximating to tenpence, with the result 

 that this country revelled in a supply of cheap stolen 

 goods which she soon learnt to appreciate at the 

 worth of the low price she paid for them rather than 

 at their intrinsic value of life-keeping food. 



We must now review the effect of the sale of almost 



i Speeches by Richard Cobden, M.P., Vol. I, p. 52. Edited by John Bright 

 and J. E. Thorold Rogers. Macmiljan & Co. 2 Loc. cit. 



