20 OUR ENGLISH LAND MUDDLE. 



would confine discussion of military policy to 

 skilled soldiers only. The position has to be 

 met that agriculture is something more than 

 one of a number of industries ; that its interests 

 are so closely bound up with the interests of the 

 nation as a whole that its welfare is a national 

 as distinct from a merely professional question ; 

 that, accordingly, whilst it has a special claim 

 to sympathetic consideration by the people at 

 large, it must be content to submit to some 

 overseeing, some interference from the people — 

 and their politicians. 



To a certain extent, truly, the welfare of any 

 industry carried on within a country can be 

 claimed as a matter of national interest, inas- 

 much as the prosperity or adversity of any one 

 body of workers and capitalists affects more or 

 less every other body in our modern closely knit 

 communities. This is accepted as a principle 

 of political action in countries where protective 

 systems are in force ; and the manufacture of 

 boots, or of steel rails, or of clothes receives 

 State encouragement, and is subject, perhaps, 

 in return to some State interference. But 

 general protective systems are not universal, 



