THE LAND AND TARIFFS. 201 



If, then, it will be asked, an agricultural tariff 

 is not going to raise prices generally, what is its 

 use to the farmer ? If he is not to get more 

 for his products, how is he advantaged ? The 

 answer to that is that the main advantages 

 sought by a wise agricultural tariff would be 

 surety and steadiness of market. At the present 

 price of wheat — to take again the stock example 

 — I believe that there could be a fairly large 

 increase of acreage under wheat in England if 

 there were a certainty that that price would 

 last. But there is no such certainty. The 

 farmer fears that there will come a time of low 

 prices again. He hesitates to break up grass 

 lands, or to bring derelict land back to grain 

 cultivation. It is a steadiness of the local 

 market at fair prices to producer and consumer 

 that the rightly designed tariff would aim at, 

 and could secure.* 



* Broadly speaking, it would give (at the outset, at least) hardly 

 as much as an equalization of market tolls as between the foreign 

 and the home producer. A market represents a safe place in which 

 to sell and exchange goods. The British market is maintained by 

 the British taxpayer. The foreign producer now pays nothing 

 towards its maintenance. If in return for freedom to use it he 

 opened his market free, the bargain, perhaps, would be a fair one. 

 He does not do so. To ask him to pay market dues here is, there- 

 fore, but bare justice. 



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