306 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



Some of the Losses 



The United Kingdom became a manufacturing nation, and 

 gave up her agriculture at the bidding of Cobden and his school 

 of manufacturer-economists. Is she the wealthier for it ? 



It has been shown in earlier chapters that, owing to the 

 sacriiice of agriculture, the United Kingdom has lost enormously 

 in actual agricultural wealth, as also in further immense losses 

 arising from the dying out of the many subsidiary industries 

 depending upon a prosperous agricultural industry for their 

 support. It will never be actually known what this direct 

 and indirect loss amounts to, but it is variously estimated by 

 our ablest statisticians to total anything from £1,000,000,000 

 to £1,600,000,000 (see Chapter VI.); but whether it be the 

 smaller or the larger amount, no country that has lost so 

 stupendous a sum in about thirty years can be said, even by the 

 smartest conjurer among our many smart political economists, 

 to be the wealthier for it. 



Then it has been shown in Chapters XII. and XIX. that, 

 besides colossal loss of agricultural wealth, the Mother- Country 

 has lost in that period many millions of the best and hardiest 

 of her children, who, forced thereto by the inexorable laws 

 which a false and pernicious system of economics has imposed 

 on the country, sought refuge in wholesale emigration to avoid — 

 Starvation. 



Loss of Virile Power 



Since 1853, during which year the emigration returns were 

 properly tabulated, showing the distinction between the British 

 emigrants and foreign, it is found that the enormous total of 

 14,768,909 English, Scotch, and Irish emigrants were forced to 

 leave their native land for foreign countries. This vast army of 

 hjst citizens exceeds the entire population of the Australian 

 Colonies, New Zealand, and Canada — wliich at the census of 

 1901 was given at *.),926,977— by nearly 5,000,000 of souls. 

 Assuming, as we safely may, that had this country set up a 

 constructive instead of a destructive agricultural policy sixty- 

 two years ago, side by side with a constructive commercial and 

 industrial policy, the vast majority of this mighty host of 

 toilers would have been still with us, working out a splendid 

 universal system of agriculture which might easily have co- 

 existed with an equal universal system of commercial-indus- 

 trialism. These great sister industries should have been closely 

 drawn together by the strongest bonds of affinity — closer, 



