SACRIFICE OF AGRICULTURE 19 



Now if great expansion of national trade means any- 

 thing at all, it certainly should include, among other 

 things, full work and prosperous times for the people; 

 and without being over sanguine we should certainly 

 safely calculate on that. But as a matter of fact it means 

 nothing of the kind; it only means, in this connexion, 

 that fuller work may be found for a time for those who 

 are already engaged, but for that vast throng of those 

 unfortunates who are not engaged — and these are in 

 their hundreds of thousands and their millions — as the 

 emigration returns prove, there is no work and no 



HOPE. 



In plain, terse English, your Cobdenites, free traders. The 

 political economists, or whatever cult they may belong industry 

 to, have, between them, killed the national indus- 

 try, the chief source of the people's support and 

 employment, and have given them nothing in return 

 save a lot of vapid promises and an international trade 

 policy of so Utopian a nature as to result in nothing but 

 poverty to millions of our countrymen. 



And it is just here that we should do well to bear in 

 mind that most of these millions who have been driven 

 from their country by inept fiscal laws were of the 

 body electorate, and had an inalienable right to partici- 

 pate in and benefit by the wise and well-considered 

 legislation of those whom they sent to Parliament to 

 govern in the interests of the body politic. Every one of 

 these unfortunates, and every one of those who are being 

 exiled to-day, have a well-defined grievance, nay, a just 

 cause for deep-rooted, bitter animosity against any 

 government and its followers who, solely for political 



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