178 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



buy it, yet it would be to our interest to grow it. . . . Don't 

 you see that if we destroy our agriculture we destroy our inde- 

 pendence at a blow, and become a defenceless nation ? , . . No nation 

 can be secure unless it is independent, no nation can be independent 

 unless it is based upon agriculture. . . . The Tory land-grabber 

 and the Liberal money-grubber are killing the wheat fields of 

 England." 



Mr. Blatchford has a good deal to say about the extreme 

 fertility of British land were agriculture once established upon 

 a perfectly stable basis and regarded, as it is in every other 

 civilised country, as the chief industry of the people. He 

 rightly maintains that British agriculture, properly developed 

 and reasonably cared for by the State, could well support and 

 maintain a far greater population than we have at present, and 

 he then brings to his aid the very man who has done more to 

 bring about the destruction of agriculture, and its resultant 

 evils, than any man living or dead — Cobden. Quoting from one 

 of Cobden's speeches at Manchester, he gives the following: — 



" I heard Mr. Ogilvey say — and he is willing to go before a 

 Committee of the House to prove it — that Cheshire, if properly 

 cultivated, is capable of producing three times as much as it now 

 produces from its surface. . . . and there is not a higher authority 

 in England." 



^o^ 



What " Mr. Ogilvey " affirmed, Cobden believed. This is, 

 indeed, the crux of the entire position, and the people of this 

 country would do well to take it to heart. The fertility of 

 Cheshire is the fertility of England and of the United Kingdom ; 

 it exists to-day as it did in Cobden's time, but it is a great 

 shame that it still exists, after all these long wasted years, as a 

 latent possibility rather than as a living, mighty propelling 

 power. 



Mr. Blatchfoed on Ageiculture Ceoakers 



Mr. Blatchford wrote his " Merrie England " a good many 

 years ago, under a sense of wrong and injury done to an 

 unoffending people by Cobden and the Manchester School, but 

 the injury remains and the wrong is unredressed. 



Said he — 



" Agriculture has been neglected because all the mechanical and 

 chemical skill, and all the capital and energy of man, have been 

 thrown into the struggle for trade profits and manufacturing pre- 

 eminence. We want a few Faradays, Watts, Stephensons and 

 Cobdens to devote their genius and industry to the great food 

 question. Once let the public interest and the public genius be 



