AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS 141 



because there is no employment to be found on the land ; 

 it induces poverty and creates, therefore, a mass of pesti- 

 lential pauperism, and it kills that demand for manu- 

 factured goods which, under other conditions, would 

 undoubtedly come from a prosperous agricultural popu- 

 lation which might be numbered in millions. 



God help the people who in their blind folly offer up 

 in sacrifice their national heritage to the dead fetish of 

 this so-called free trade, and God forgive those who, 

 for political purposes, for individual gain, or other 

 reasons, have led the people to believe in the " cheap 

 loaf " cry as the Ultima Thule of national good and 

 the last word in the poor man's domestic economy. 



In the history of the British Constitution a cleverer 

 war cry was never raised by any political party, and 

 never was a crueller wrong wrought on a people. Never 

 was a more monstrous delusion born in the semblance of 

 truth than this free trade phantasm; and never was 



The Cheap 



a political password uttered with less veracity and with Loaf" Cry 

 less real sincerity than that of the cheap loaf. Never- 

 theless, there is just that semblance of truth in it which 

 invests it with its form of reality ; that spurious, tinselly 

 glitter which makes it appear so genuinely attractive to 

 the hard-working artisan and all those among us whose 

 everyday toil leaves little time for the study of questions 

 of this kind which are necessarily extremely complicated. 

 Full well did those who raised this clever party cry know 

 that the poor harried voters of this country would never 

 imearth the foundations of the political structure upon 

 which it was raised to ascertain if it was built on the 

 solid basis of economic truth. 



