CHAPTER XXI 

 FISCAL POLICY AND AGRICULTURE {continued) 



The results ol our fiscal and agrarian policy on the 

 rural population are still more marked. It is to be 

 regretted that in the controversy on tariff reform 

 attempts are made to use the agricultural labourers 

 for party purposes. The advocates of free imports, 

 in addressing county audiences, make statements 

 which too often secure the end in view, but the truth 

 of which will not bear examination. Labourers are 

 told how much their position has been improved 

 in every way, and are assured that the improvement 

 is the result of so-called free trade. They are warned 

 against going back to the "bad old days of protec- 

 tion," though of course the intelligent among these 

 speakers know well that nobody has made the faintest 

 suggestion of going back to what was then known 

 as protection. 



The advantages obtained through the progress of 

 science, through better sanitation, through labour and 

 other social legislation, through the facilities for transit, 

 through discoveries of various kinds, are all held up as 

 the direct results of free trade. ^ 



The policy of unrestricted free imports of foreign 

 grain having, through the ruin of agriculture, driven 



^ As instances, the present witcr remembers that candles were an 

 important item in the weekly budget of the labourer. He remembers 

 spending many an hour by the gloomy light of a slender dip, which had 

 to serve for all in the room. Now, through the discovery of petroleum, a 

 splendid light is secured at less cost. The manufacture of margarine, 

 equal as an article of food to butter itself, was a saving to the poor. Free 

 education is a further saving of from threepence to a shilling a week. 

 These and a variety of other things — results of general progress— make 

 the people to a certain extent better off, but are not due to free trade. 



