98 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



manufacturing wealth must have been greater than it is now, 

 because in the place of a small, poor, struggling agricultural 

 population we should have had many millions of prosperous 

 agriculturists whose purchasing power would have been enormous. 

 Indeed, it is quite easy to conceive that the purchasing power 

 of a great prosperous agricultural community of our own 

 people, interspersed throughout our own country, must neces- 

 sarily have been greater than that of many of the agricultural 

 communities of those countries from which we had hitherto 

 drawn our food supplies. The purchasing power of the Eussian 

 agricultural peasant or the Indian ryot, for example, cannot 

 be very great, but a prosperous British agricultural community, 

 well planted in their own country, would certainly require 

 and consume more commodities than their confreres in those 

 countries. 



Looked at from this aspect it appears that, in order to 

 increase the manufacturing wealth of the country, enormous 

 loss of agricultural wealth was involved in the process — a 

 method of " augmenting " the collective wealth of the nation 

 which will hardly appeal to the mind of independent, un- 

 biassed men. N"or can this "robbing Peter to pay Paul" 

 method of conducting public business be defended upon the 

 basis of equity and justice, because, when reduced to its last 

 denominator, it is nothing more nor less than running the 

 economical affairs of the country on a deliberate and unequivocal 

 system of — Class Legislation ! 



What else is it or can it be ? 



" I am afraid that most of us entered upon the struggle with 

 the belief that we had some distinct class-interest in the question," 



said Cobden, with commendable frankness, sixty-four years 

 ago, and although his followers are not bold enough to-day 

 to avow that the policy which was inaugurated by the manu- 

 facturer-reformers of Cobden's time, in class-interests, is now 

 maintained by the Manchester School for that purpose, and 

 only for that purpose, it nevertheless remains an indubitable 

 Tkuth. 



The Liberal-Unionist party have it in their power to right 

 a grievous wrong, but if they fail to do so, if they continue 

 to regard the stimulation of manufactures as 



" the only possible mode in which the population of this country can 

 largely increase or its wealth augment," 



they will but be following in the footsteps of Cobden and his 

 Manchester School, following in bolstering up Class Legislation 



