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full knowledge that the great mass of our land is 

 yielding less than two-thirds of what it should and 

 would if properly cultivated, we absolutely in prac- 

 tice refuse to take one single material step towards 

 remedying this lamentable waste of our property. 



We spend millions on the minds and morals of our 

 fellow-subjects, but shrink, as if from a crime, from 

 spending a quarter of a million on what would bring 

 to each that full quota of daily food they need, and 

 which the masses now never enjoy for any twelve 

 consecutive months, and with this would relieve the 

 State of the existing all over-shadowing financial 

 incubus.* 



Here, in improved agriculture, lies the one reason- 

 able hope of extricating ourselves from our difficul- 

 ties, and our present apparently almost hopeless 

 financial position offers the most irresistible argument 

 against further delay. 



So long as things went fairly smooth with us, as we 

 could drift along after a fashion and pay our way, our 

 neglect of this great source of revenue might, looking 

 to the formidable difficulties which undoubtedly sur- 

 round the question, be only weak and foolish, but 



* I need scarcely point out that it would not only be directly 

 as regards the food of the people and their land revenue that im- 

 proved agriculture would operate. Increased production would 

 involve an increase in exports, and pro tanto probably some dimi- 

 nution of the exchange burthen. It means an increase of imports, 

 and a relief to manufacturing interests at home, who then might 

 realise (hungry men can rarely stop to be rigidly honest about the 

 food they grasp) the true merits of their recent cry and leave us 

 the remnants of our customs. In a dozen ways, it would act and 

 re-act beneficially. 



