DEPUTATION FKOM SOCIETY TO CHANCELLOR OF EXCFTEQUER. 205 



organising a trained body of foresters, and taking all other 

 essential steps to secure success when you advance, would be to 

 court disaster, which might discourage all future attempts. 



Development of Resources. 



" I will tell the Committee how I propose that this subject 

 should be dealt with ; but, before I do so, I have something 

 more to say about proposals for aiding in the development of 

 the resources of our own country. The State can help by 

 instruction, by experiment, by organisation, by direction, and 

 even in certain cases which are outside the legitimate sphere of 

 individual enterprise, by incurring direct responsibility. I doubt 

 whether there is a great industrial country in the world which 

 spends less money directly on work connected with the develop- 

 ment of its resources than we do. Take the case of agriculture 

 alone. Examine the Budgets of foreign countries — I have done 

 it with great advantage in other directions — examine them from 

 this particular point of view, and hon. members, I think, will be 

 rather ashamed at the contrast between the wise and lavish 

 generosity of countries much poorer than ours, and the short- 

 sighted and niggardly parsimony with which we dole out small 

 sums of money for the encouragement of agriculture in our 

 country. We are not getting out of the land anything like what it 

 is capable of endowing us with. Of the enormous quantity of 

 agricultural and dairy produce and fruit, and of the timber 

 which is imported into this country, a considerable portion could 

 be raised, and ought to be raised, on our own lands. There 

 hon. members opposite and ourselves are in complete accord. 

 The only difference is as to the remedy. In our opinion the 

 remedy they would suggest would make food costlier and 

 more inaccessible for the people ; the remedies we propose, on 

 the other hand, would make food more abundant, better, and 

 cheaper. I will tell the House what we propose. There is a 

 certain amount of money, not very much, spent in this country 

 in a spasmodic kind of way on what I will call the work of 

 national development — in light railways, in harbours, in indirect 

 but very meagre assistance to agriculture. 



A National Development Grant. 

 " I propose to gather all these grants together into one grant 

 that I propose to call a Development Grant, and this year to add 



