SHORTAGE OF WORK IN OUR TRADES 103 



to the welfare of the people as rain is to the growing plants. 

 They have seen that although commerce and industries are 

 valuable and even necessary factors in building up the pros- 

 perity and greatness of a country, the land is even a far greater 

 factor. The land is the source from which life itself springs, 

 and it must therefore form the basis of all human effort. 

 Neglect the land, and the real wealth of a country at once 

 declines. Cultivate it highly, and real abiding wealth increases, 

 full lucrative work is found for the people, prosperity develops, 

 and poverty disappears. This is not a theory of economics but 

 a Natukal Law, and those who care to study the matter for 

 themselves will find that it is a law which knows no change. 



We alone of all nations of the Western World have thought 

 fit to deride that law and to set it at naught. Years ago, in the 

 pride and full plenitude of our commercial and industrial 

 success, we cast aside, almost scornfully, the nation's great 

 agricultural industry, and opened our Free-trade flood-gates to 

 the world's earth-productions. " We will manufacture for the 

 peoples of the earth, and wax fat thereby; they shall grow 

 our corn ; they shall be our hewers of wood and drawers of 

 water," said we in our arrogance. We were to be lords of 

 manufacture and they — slaves of the soil. 



A singularly bold idea was this of Eichard Cobden, and had 

 it been realised our position would have been unique in the 

 world's history ; but " the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men 

 gang aft a-gley." Other nations also saw the necessity of 

 developing their manufactures, and they would not have inter- 

 national Free-trade, and so this great scheme was foredoomed 

 to failure. Among other things, we have let in free the land- 

 products of other nations, but in so doing we have killed the 

 people's greatest industry, and we shall presently see how 

 terribly we have sutfered in consequence. 



Mr. Balfour's " only possible mode " will not then be found 

 in manufactures, but in the Land, and only in the land. 



Such views as these are the outcome of independent observa- 

 tion and anti-Free-traders would seem to have the best of the 

 argument so far. 



