ENGLISH LAND CULTIVATION. 59 



could reach the industrial centres of Europe at 

 a price far lower than any possible cost of 

 European production. It could reach, and in 

 the case of Great Britain it did reach. In prac- 

 tically all other countries it found tariff barriers. 

 Those other nations considered that the pro- 

 duction by the people of the people's food 

 staples without danger of interference by other 

 people was too important a matter to be allowed 

 to be governed solely by the formulae of some 

 economic theory. Great Britain was practically 

 the only country which adopted Free Trade in 

 agricultural products ; and the cheap products 

 of the New World thus concentrated on her 

 markets. 



The British landowner had, then, to face first 

 a keen competition for his native labour supply, 

 then an open market for his products, and then 

 an era of low prices for agricultural products — 

 an era which can never recur in all probability, 

 since it was due to the first exploitation of 

 virgin soils, a condition which cannot be re- 

 peated. Under all those blows the land in- 

 dustry in England was prostrated. The idea of 

 making a fair profit out of an agricultural estate 



