APRIL 171 



whence for the most part he does not return. ' The inevitable 

 issues of Free Trade which must be faced in all their logical 

 completeness,' and such phrases, sound very fine and conclusive in 

 the moulhs of platform speakers, but to the minds of many people 

 it is a question whether doctrines cannot be driven too far, 

 and whether it is worth while to sacrifice classes which from the 

 beginning of its history have been the pith and marrow of England 

 to a blind and narrow spirit of fiscal and political consistency. 



Whatever may be the theoretical rights and wrongs of this Free 

 Trade, certainly to some of us it does seem a matter of regret and 

 danger that the system should have dealt so fatal and sweeping a 

 blow to agriculture and to all connected with the land. It is curious 

 to reflect also that a tax so small that the consumer would scarcely 

 feel it, a tax which might merely clip a tithe from the swollen 

 profits of some thousands of middlemen, besides largely benefiting 

 the Exchequer, would suffice, in most cases, to nullify these very 

 substantial evils. Yet such salvation is, and is likely to remain, 

 impossible, not because it might work a practical hardship, but for 

 the simple reason that it would offend against a modern law of 

 the Medes and Persians and excite bitter prejudice among the 

 electorate. So there the case stands ; alone amidst the peoples of 

 the earth we have set this King Stork to rule over us, and we 

 must feed him. At present he is engaged chiefly in depleting and 

 digesting the rural interests. When he has finished with them ; 

 when the strike system has become perfected ; when, too, in another 

 score of years America and Germany, and possibly India, Japan and 

 the Colonies, have really found their feet as producing manufac- 

 turers, and gone into serious competition with the British towns 

 and their trades, as already they are threatening to do then, 

 perhaps, we shall hear another frog begin to scream in those 

 remorseless mandibles. 



To show how extraordinarily the price of the different kinds 

 of grain may vary in the course of a century, I will here copy out 

 the contents of a tablet which is let into the front of a house 

 belonging to this estate in Bungay. 



