304 BlUTAIN FOR THE T5TUT0N 



uor agriculture, that their case would be materially improved 

 by sacrificing manufactures to agriculture ; that the land is 

 the chief source of employment, of full wages and general 

 prosperity ; that all tlie.y have to do is to vote solid for the 

 re-establisliment of agriculture, and they would plump their 

 votes for a great national agricultural j)olicy, in supersession 

 of the present industrial system, without any more discrimina- 

 tion than their forbears did in the days when Cobden and 

 his Manchester School preached the opposite doctrine. 



Tlie reformers and economists of the '•' thirties and forties " 

 showed the people how they might better their condition, how 

 they might CtAIN, and those starving masses to whom Cobden 

 so strongly appealed gave their mandate to bring about the 

 changes recommended by their advisers with as little know- 

 ledge or regard to consequence as their compeers would to-day 

 if they were shown how a reversal of the fiscal policy, which 

 had reduced them to a state of semi-destitution, would ensure 

 better wages and a reasonable standard of comfort. How could 

 it be expected that a penurious multitude, many of whom had 

 not had a square meal for months, or, in some cases, for years, 

 could reflect on the remote economic consequences of their 

 mandate ? Is it likely that the destitute unemployed of the 

 present day, being Parliamentary voters, and finding no work 

 either in trades or manufacturing industries, would pause to 

 ponder over the far-off economic effect of their mandate if 

 they were made to believe that the establishment of a universal 

 agricultural industry, in sui^crsession of manufactiires, would 

 serve their turn ? Not they ! It would be a race for 

 agriculture and — " The Devil take the hindmost." 



'O' 



The Mistake of the " Hungry Forties" 



The mistake made in the " forties " was in sacrificing 

 agriculture, just as we to-day should make a similar mistake 

 if we sacrificed manufactures to agriculture. To sacrifice 

 either the one or the other was, and is, not only quite 

 unnecessary, but futile and fataL 



With this digression, which is necessary to show the source 

 from which this fatal mandate of sixty years ago sprung, the 

 reader's attention is now drawn to that radical error in 

 economics which underlies the present agricultural and fiscal 

 system of the country ; and if the writer can but make it 

 clear that his efforts in respect hereto are made in no party 

 spirit, but solely with the object of helping the people to 

 come to some realisation of the terrible loss they incur under 



