THE SACllIFICE OF AGRICULTURE 189 



it for all it will produce, is Ijut following a natural Law, and 

 he who contends against tlie operation of natural Laws, pits 

 his puny strength against a F<jrge that is simply irresistible. 



We must cultivate highly every acre that is capable of 

 being cultivated in the kingdom, or we shall fail as signally 

 in the future as in the past. 



Tliere is no escape from this fact ! Xo possibility of evading 

 this Law with impunity. 



Will Nothing ever arouse the people of this country to a 

 true sense of their position ? 



Is there anything under heaven that will awaken them 

 from that fatal sleep which the destruction of their land 

 industry plunged them into fifty odd years ago ? 



Is there any power on earth that will make them under- 

 stand the simple fact that if they have an industry capable 

 of giving employment and suj^port to twelve or fourteen 

 millions of people, and they muddle it so that it can only 

 employ and support 5,000,000, they have made a shocking 

 mess of their own affairs ? 



Will they never understand that unless they work their 

 great National industry on sound, economic, and commercial 

 principles ; work it for all it is worth ; work it in a manner to 

 produce the maximum of National wealth and aflbrd employ- 

 ment to the maximum head of the population : immense loss of 

 National strength, power, vigour, energy, vitality, and wealth 

 must result ? Will they never realise that want of work, 

 poverty, and a complete derangement of social and economic 

 conditions are but the natural sequel of National Waste ? 



Cannot they see for themselves that because of thek blind- 

 ness, infatuation, madness ; because they have allowed false 

 teachers to lead them astray, to lead them away from the real 

 source of their strength and vitality, and from those springs 

 of National productiveness which are as essential to the well- 

 being of the people as the sun's warmth is to the ripening corn : 

 poverty has fallen upon them as a scourge, and that poverty 

 and its attendant horrors will continue to haunt them so long 

 as they cling to false creeds and worn-out beliefs ? 



The prevailing poverty of the people and the eminently 

 unsatisfactory condition of the entire question affecting labour, 

 have brought us face to face with a grim fact ; and now we 

 realise that our troubles proceed from the land, we should not 

 cease in our eftbrts till agriculture has been built up in a 

 manner that will render that industry strong and abiding ; till 

 it has, in short, been rendered capable of providing food for, and 

 employment to, our people just as it does in all other civilised 

 countries in the world. 



