REMEDIES SUGGESTED. 51 



Therefore if our " high-pricers " want to be consistent, it 

 is a continuance of the war that they should ask for, not 

 Protection. 



The weakness of the plea put forward is emphasized by 

 the fact that it is based upon an assumption that war-time 

 arrangement — which clearly constitutes emergency measures 

 — should be made permanent. The invalid of to-day is 

 to be kept in bed all his life, coddled and fed upon titbits, 

 having a nurse to look after him, and being physicked 

 with medicine. His own right hand seems to have perman- 

 ently lost its cunning. 



Mr. Middleton has shown how very little — indeed, less 

 than nothing — Protection has done for German Agriculture. 

 And there is other evidence in plenty to corroborate his 

 statement. The matter was thoroughly threshed out in 

 Germany in 1903. In a country in which reigning potentates 

 and their entourage are the most broad-acred among a 

 numerous and powerful host of broad-acred men, the interest 

 of lords of many fields and forests is of course sure to be 

 well looked after. In Germany, where the Emperor owns 

 250,000 acres, his cousin the Prince of Hohenzollern- 

 Sigmaringen and Prince Pless, 150,000 acres each, the 

 King of Saxony 75,000 acres, Prince Bismarck 30,000 acres, 

 and so on through a long list of reigning or else mediatised 

 potentates and wealthy Standesherren, and where there is 

 a vast number of landed proprietors below that supreme 

 caste, all waiting to be bribed, in order that their loyal 

 support may be assured to the ruling dynasties, it is quite 

 natural that a measure which necessarily appreciates landed 

 property, however much it may damage other interests, 

 should be stoutly fought for and allowed to prevail. Had 

 German Agriculture, however, not been assisted by other 

 favourable adjunct occurrences, as Mr. Middleton has 

 shown, such policy would have led those very beneficiaries 

 into something approaching to bankruptcy, even if they 

 had not, as this appreciating measure tempted them to 

 do, promptly carried the benefit received to the mortgage 

 pawnbroker, who now feasts upon the spoils. 



Protection certainly has not made Germany independent 



