148 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE 



We find that we are being overtaken with a heavy and 

 ever-increasing burden of taxation ; that the people can- 

 not find work and are obHged to emigrate in ever-grow- 

 ing numbers; that poverty increases and pauperism 

 grows; that despite our unique position as manufac- 

 turers we are not holding our own in the markets of the 

 world; and we therefore conclude that we had better look 

 at this matter through our own spectacles rather than 

 through those which have been fitted to our noses 

 by others, and which have done nothing but obscure our 

 vision. 



We naturally want to knuw why the British people 

 have been humbugged and deceived? 



That we have been deceived there is no question, and 

 we want to know why our politicians and statesmen, our 

 legislators, our Governments of the past, whether Whig 

 or Tory, Conservative or Liberal, have done nothing to 

 undeceive us? 

 Living In these pages we are face to face with living 



Truths 1 1 • 1 • -11 



truths which are mcontrovertible. 



It has been left to a handful of laymen, men who work 

 for their daily bread and whose business does not take 

 them to the national legislative assemblies at West- 

 minster — men who appoint others to administer their 

 fiscal affairs and conduct the national business on the 

 most economic principles — literally to discover that their 

 affairs have been so badly managed as to involve the 

 State in heavy financial losses and the people in wide- 

 spread and yet unnecessary poverty and degradation 

 And these men who represent the entire section of 

 British workers, the whole of the British tax-payers and 



