342 BRITAIN FOR THE iUUTOX 



poiut of view wliicli by no means commends itself to Free- 

 traders or to " scientific " economists ; nevertheless, this view 

 must bo taken in naiwnal interests, or Great Britain will lose 

 her exalted position among the nations. 



The next point under consideration is :— 



Fallacy 2. "To he sdf-sufficiny as regards food, a portion of the 

 population would ■need to emigrate, and of the remainder, the 

 majority mud betake themselves to agrleidtund. pursuits . . . 

 to 'provide a hare suhsisteuce from a niggardlg soil, and a 

 •vast army of unemployed artisans now receiving high ivagcs 

 would be driven to agrieidture," 



This statement postulates a position which has no material 

 basis, while it, moreover, contains a radical economical error of 

 the first importance, which seriously impairs the validity of its 

 writer's reasoning. It shows, at the same time, an imperfect 

 knowledge of the enormous power of Britain's great land 

 industry, and a disbelief in the marvellous fertility and 

 tremendous capabilities of British soil. 



The mischief of all this is that so long as we have '•' econo- 

 mists " who disbelieve in the far-reaching advantages arising 

 from cultivating our own soil instead of allowing it to remain 

 untilled ; and " scientists " who tell the people it is better for 

 them to import their food-stuffs from abroad and pay for them 

 with manufactured goods — as the sole means of supporting our 

 industries — than to grow them themselves on their own splendid 

 soil and with tlieir own strong hands, so lono; will this mis- 

 chievous fallacy be maintained to the national detriment and 

 the people's ruin. 



Fight the Fallacy by Explaining it 



The best way to fight this evil is to explain it ! 



In the first place, to say that if we grow our own corn — 

 a vast army of unemployed, artisans, now receiving high wages, 

 would be driven to agriculture — is to generalise, and to generalise 

 in economics is one of the easiest thin^fs in the world ; and it is 

 l3ecause people have hitherto accepted these doctrinal generalisa- 

 tions of " expert" and " scientific" economists as the laws of an 

 " exact " science — which economics is a long way from being — ■ 

 that they have been beguiled into all sorts of extraordinary 

 beliefs in respect to that valuable labour-employing and wealth- 

 producing jjossession of theirs — The Land. 



Political economy, or economics, political science, and any 

 other 'ology or 'ism that has to do witli the politics of any 

 country, is necessarily a complicated affair, and in the hands of 



