SHORTCOMINGS OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 17 



money which tariffs brought to Agriculture is the sole, 

 or even the main, cause of the increase in production. If 

 other, and quite different, causes had not been operating, 

 German Agriculture must have been bankrupt ere now. 

 . . . An examination of prices shows that, if world prices 

 had not favoured the agriculturist, the protective tariffs 

 of Germany could not have removed his financial embarrass- 

 ment." That is really to some extent understating facts 

 as they are. The matter was thoroughly threshed out in 

 Germany itself during the heated tariff controversy of 1903, 

 when a new, higher tariff was under consideration. And 

 the facts brought forward in the perfect library of publi- 

 cations, issuing from the highest authorities on either side, 

 have made it convincingly clear that Protection has had 

 nothing whatever to do with the happy development of 

 German Agriculture — if indeed it has not actually checked 

 and retarded it. The tariff policy began in 1879, ^s a purely 

 political move — although the fact that by its Constitution 

 the Empire was debarred from raising money for its growing 

 wants by direct taxation, when it wanted money badly for 

 its ambitious military measures, of course, served as a 

 pretext. That hindrance might at the time spoken of have 

 been got over without serious difficulty. However, to 

 serve those " vast ambitions " of which Lord Beaconsfield 

 pointedly spoke at a Guildhall Banquet during his last 

 Premiership, the leading classes concerned — agriculturists 

 on the one hand and commercial men and industrialists 

 on the other — were to be won over, bound to the Throne — 

 which still, as in the 'sixties, distinguishes between " king's 

 friends " and others — by the golden chains of apparent 

 benefits coming out of other people's pockets. Agricul- 

 turists, like industrialists, required a gread deal of per- 

 suasion to make them accept the boon, because they had 

 been well enough off before. In truth, barring the recent 

 war, prices for cereals were higher under comparative Free 

 Trade than after, although at the earlier date Germany 

 was still a meat and grain exporting country. I have then 

 heard our maintaining that shilling registration duty upon 

 wheat denounced in Germany as a piece of " Protection " 



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