56 OUR ENGLISH LAND MUDDLE. 



national life on agriculture, trading, and fisheries, 

 in that order of importance. When the age of 

 coal and steam and of power machinery came 

 to the world, with its demand for a great mining 

 and factory population, it fell out that England 

 was called upon to meet that demand first. 

 Her coal measures were in part responsible, in 

 part her national genius for organization, in 

 part her supremacy in sea-power, which had 

 kept away from her territory the wars which 

 had ravaged the chief nations of the world and 

 deeply disturbed their industrial development. 

 For a while the British Isles had almost a 

 monopoly of the task of supplying the world's 

 needs of machinery, railways, and all the para- 

 phernalia of the new civilization. A very great 

 material prosperity came from this, but also a 

 very great unsettlement of equilibrium. In 

 other countries where the growth of what may 

 be called the new industrial life was very much 

 more slow, the unsettlement was very much 

 less. 



It is well to keep in mind that if there had 

 not been a Free Trade system adopted in Eng- 

 land shortly after the growth of the new in- 



