LAND TKXURES 245 



lands of Great Britain may be cultivated so as to produce the 

 niiuiinura results — as at present— they may be farmed in a 

 manner that will employ, support, and feed a few hundred 

 thousand more people — men, women, and chihh'en — than are 

 supported by agriculture to-day, or, our land may be so manipu- 

 lated that frora ten to fifteen millions of our people may he settled 

 iqjon, and employed, suiyportcd and fed hy a yreat agricultural 

 industry and the many subsidiary industries resultiny therefrom. 



Obviously, then, an industry that is charged with such 

 enormous potentialities and is either capable of affording 

 profitable employment and full sup])ort to one-third of the 

 Jiritish people, or, of employing and bai'cdy supporting — as at 

 present — less than one-ciijhtli of the })opulation, is an industry 

 that should be carefully handled and jealously guarded and 

 conserved, otherwise leakage and loss are sure to result. 



Agriculture, in fact, is elastic as indiai'ub1)er, and plasmatic 

 as potter's clay. An acre of laud badly cultivated will only 

 yield eight bushels of wheat, for example ; highly cultivated it 

 will easily produce forty bushels. Manifestly, an industry of so 

 pliable a nature should never be allowed to fall into the hands 

 of those who are either indifferent to its interests, unconscious 

 of its importance as a dominating factor in the national life, or 

 politically or financially interested in preventing it from 

 assuming its proper position in the national scheme of economy. 



Agriculture the Dominating Factor 



The land question and the agricultural industry play the most 

 important part in the political economy of every civilised State 

 in the world — save our own — and nothing is perndtted to interfere 

 with its interests or to obstruct its progressive prosperity. It is 

 rightly regarded as the primal industry, the great permanent 

 labour- employer, the industrial sheet-anchor, and the chief 

 wealth-producer and wealth-distributor. It is common know- 

 ledge that the universal adoption of this wise yet necessary 

 attitude by the nations towards the greatest of all the many 

 economical questions which flow out of and surround human 

 existence, has resulted in the establishment of such conditions 

 as ensure success to agriculture and render the industry safe 

 from the corroding intluence of vested interests, the intrigues 

 uf political parties, or the predatoriness of Parliaments. 



The best vindication of industry is the measure of its 

 success. All the countries that have conserved and fostered 

 t^heir great land industries, while vigorously prosecuting their 

 ijianufacturing industries and rendering them so formidable as 



