INTRODUCTION 



If ever there was urgent need for awakening the people of this 

 country from their prolonged sleep of upwards of sixty years to 

 a full realisation of the great national and other perils which 

 await them, that need surely exists at the present time. 



So deeply impressed has the author been with the terrible 

 amount of ignorance, apathy, and criminal neglect which have 

 wrought so much havoc throughout the United Kingdom, that 

 he has been impelled to devote his energies to the task of 

 endeavouring to place before his readers facts which, if properly 

 considered, must convince them that it would be really suicidal 

 to continue to live in the Fool's Paradise in which they have 

 been content to dwell for more than half a century. 



With this object in view he has deliberately cut himself 

 adrift from all political parties that he might be free to urge, 

 in season and out of season, the adoption of such vitally 

 necessary reforms as are best calculated to give his fellow- 

 countrymen that relief from the many evils which tlie irrational 

 policy of the last sixty years has resulted in. 



An attempt was made by the writer, in a work entitled 

 " The ]\Iurder of Agriculture," to focus the attention of the 

 people on the phenomenal, widespread, and yet unnecessary, 

 poverty which existed in the United Kingdom as the inevitable 

 result of neglecting the land industry, as well as on the use- 

 lessness of all effort, whether State or private, to relieve the 

 terrible pressure on the nation, until that industry had been 

 built up on a firm and solid foundation and maintained in a 

 highly prosperous condition. 



An earnest appeal was then made to them to awaken from 

 their dreams of folly and indifference, and to realise the hope- 

 lessness of expecting a further development of trades and 

 manufactures to relieve the existing pressure without develop- 

 ing, at the same time, the agricultural resources of this country ; 

 to think seriously of the ghastly incubus of legalised pauperism 

 under which the country is staggering like no other nation in 

 the world ; and to reflect upon the expenditure of untold 

 millions in private charity, and the immense burden entailed 

 by the poor rates in the support of the flotsam and jetsam of 



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