THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE. 121 



duction to a quite unforeseen extent ; and recent dis- 

 coveries, now tested on a small scale, promise to widen 

 those limits still farther to a quite unknown degree. 



The present tendency of economical development in 

 the world is we have seen to induce more and more 

 every nation, or rather every region, taken in its geo- 

 graphical sense, to rely chiefly upon a home production 

 of all the chief necessaries of life. Not to reduce, I 

 mean, the world-exchange : it may still grow in bulk ; 

 but to limit it to the exchange of what really must be 

 exchanged, and, at the same time, immensely to increase 

 the exchange of novelties, produce of local or national 

 art, new discoveries and inventions, knowledge and 

 ideas. Such being the tendency of present development, 

 there is not the slightest ground to be alarmed by it 

 There is not one nation in the world which, being armed 

 with the present powers of agriculture, could not grow 

 on its cultivable area all the food and most of the raw 

 materials derived from agriculture which are required 

 for its population, even if the requirements of that popu- 

 lation were rapidly increased as they certainly ought to 

 be. Taking the powers of man over the land and over 

 the forces of nature such as they are at the present day 

 we can maintain that two to three inhabitants to each 

 cultivable acre of land would not yet be too much. But 

 neither in this densely populated country nor in Bel- 

 gium are we yet in such numbers. In this country 

 we have, roughly speaking, one acre of the cultivable 

 area per inhabitant 



Supposing, then, that each inhabitant of Great Britain 

 were compelled to live on the produce of his own land, 

 all he would have to do would be, first, to consider the 

 land of this country as a common inheritance, which 

 must be disposed of to the best advantage of each and 

 all this is, evidently, an absolutely necessary condition. 

 And next, he would have to cultivate his soil, not in some 

 extravagant way, but no better than land is already 



