XVlll INTRODUCTION 



and he does so in the fervent hope that the facts and argu- 

 ments presented therein will commend themselves to their 

 practical sympathy and support. 



He has made no attempt to deal with the numerous 

 questions involved in the problems, urgently calling for national 

 consideration and practical settlement, in a manner which 

 would commend the work only to theorists and statisticians, 

 nor does he anticipate that his work will commend itself to 

 such " scientific " economists who still affirm that it is more 

 economical " scientifically " — to allow our splendid corn lands, 

 among other things, to lie waste, to throw our people out of 

 employment, to produce nothing of our own for their support, 

 and then employ foreigners to grow our food for us — than to 

 grow it ourselves. 



He has long recognised that to create a separate entity for 

 British national economics and then subject it to a separate course 

 of rigid " scientific " treatment of the abstract order, without 

 considering the number of concrete cases demanding altogether 

 dilferent treatment, is on a par with the physician who insists 

 on treating his patient for a separate minor disease and ignoring 

 graver complications which ultimately prove fatal. Our great 

 industries, land and others, have been " scientifically " treated 

 so long by political economists, and many others who have 

 served their own interests rather than the people's, that the 

 Country has taken the matter au grand serieux, and has come 

 to regard it as a perfectly natural course of treatment. Fortu- 

 nately, however, vast numbers of his fellow-countrymen have 

 at length realised that the entire question of British economics 

 cannot be treated as a separate entity having no part in, and 

 no connection with, other States and other systems of economics, 

 and that Great Britain can no more afford to ignore what other 

 countries have found the necessity of doing — as a means to 

 national strength and prosperity — than a man can afford to be 

 unmindful of the fact that his system requires the daily intake 

 of certain food to prevent bodily waste and atrophy. 



National economics ramify through the veins and arteries 

 of public life in so many directions as to extend beyond the 

 ken even of true economic science, and to apply one or two of 

 its multitudinous laws to the requirements of a people and 

 wilfully ignore the rest is to resort to economic quackeiy. To 

 beg the question in this manner and to display such an amount 

 of economic ignorance would be utterly ridiculous were it not 

 at the same time fatal to public interests. Economic science, 

 like everything else in this ui)-to-date practical world, must be 

 free from Uoctrinarianism, and unless it be tempered with a 

 judicious admixture of common-sense, much of it, that might 



