48 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



simply IrreconcilaLles, iiud uotliing more need be said about 

 them. 



Up and down the line there is no loophole of escape ; 

 political parties, Governments, political economists, have all got 

 their private axes to grind, and, between them all, national afiairs 

 suffer. Party and policy rule the situation. Every man, before 

 he enters Parliament, must first learn some political creed, and 

 that creed l)inds him, body and soul, to his Party. Independence 

 is lost ; initiative is dead ; he may have ideas, but he never 

 voices them, albeit in this he is of use to his Party : he falls 

 into what somebody has called " the general mush of con- 

 cession," and his usefulness to his country is lost. 



No Hope fkom " Business " Men 



Turning to our business men, there seems little help in that 

 direction. 



The prevailing idea is that if we hold out a helping hand 

 to our industries, assisting one of them in this direction and 

 another in that, and generally put them in a position to fight 

 on more equal terms with their foreign rivals by setting them 

 free of those shackles with which they are so sorely hampered 

 to-day, we shall overcome all difficulties; but in this we are 

 mistaken. 



By altering our laws so as to give the country a wise, well- 

 considered fiscal system, we shall, without doubt, do some good, 

 but beyond that — nothing. Our industries may absorb a few 

 thousand more " hands," wages may even slightly rise ; in 

 certain industrial sections there may be less uncertainty of 

 employment and less distress ; but the main question — the 

 poverty of the general body of the people — will remain 

 untouched. 



It is not so much tlie thousands that we want to assist as 

 the millions. 



The surplus thousands may be absorbed by manufactures, 

 but the surplus millions only hy the Land. 



This is the great central fact around which the entu^e 

 question rotates ; it is the keystone of the arch, the pivot on 

 which the fulcrum works ; and yet, strangely enough, it is 

 persistently left out as a factor of no importance at all, by all 

 the Governments of the past, by publicists, speakers, and by 

 most of the Press. Study The National Statute Book for years 

 past, and see how barren it is of effort to relieve the situation 

 by means of the land, save in one or two attempts to afford 

 partial relief. Listen to the rhetoric of platform orators, and 



