212 OUR ENGLISH LAND MUDDLE. 



Belgium, or the United States, and in return 

 for his taxes gets no superior right in his 

 own market." 

 Those are views of landowners, who were, as 

 a rule, also Unionists. But I have encountered 

 gentlemen who, professing themselves Free 

 Traders on every other point, were willing to 

 concede that the agricultural industry stood in 

 a special position to any other industry, and 

 might be given with advantage some pro- 

 tection. These Free Traders argued that Pro- 

 tection is in itself economically wrong — a tax on 

 all the community for the benefit of a section 

 of the community — but maintained that the 

 benefits springing to the nation from a sound 

 agricultural industry were so great as to com- 

 pensate for ' the exactions arising from pro- 

 tective taxes." They argue that the importance 

 of large local food supplies from the point of 

 view of defence, and the health value to a civi- 

 lized community — which has always neurosis as 

 its most formidable internal enemy — of a large 

 proportion of husbandmen, justify an exception 

 in the case of agriculture to the general economic 

 law of Free Trade. 



