o 



44 BlUTAIN FOR TUE BRITON 



would be o'iven to all our manufacturing; industries which could 

 but have the effect of raising wages and assuring employment 

 to all artisans, instead of throwing them out of employment. 



Industries do not decline nor does commerce collapse 

 because you create in your midst a great agricultural industry 

 where none existed before, nor does the creation of an extra 

 industry, added to those which already exist, give birth to 

 " a vast army of itnemploycd artisans." The very reverse of 

 this is bound to happen automatically, and yet certain political 

 economists — as we have seen — tell us that it cannot be so, and 

 that if you start a great agricultural industry you are sure to 

 bring ruin upon many other industries. 



A Fundamental Euror 



The first part of this extraordinary statement contains the 

 fundamental error that has just been pointed out, and the 

 writer of the passage should now explain his proposition, as 

 most people fail to see how it is possible for a large army 

 of industrial artisans to be thrown out of employment by 

 the creation of another industry — agriculture — which must 

 necessarily take in exchange for its products a like value of 

 manufactured commodities. 



This part of the Free-trade dictum contains such an obvious, 

 fundamental economical error that it would be a supererogation 

 to consider it further. 



The other question involved in the point we are considering 

 is that the vast army of unemployed artisans, which growing our 

 own corn would start into life, " would he driven to agriculture 

 to provide a hare subsistence from a niggardly soil." 



To call the ma<?nificent land of the United Kingdom a 

 " niggardly soil "■ — is either to wilfully mislead tlie people or to 

 show a most profound ignorance of the agricultural capabilities 

 of the country. 



If there is one country more than another which possesses 

 the most highly productive land in this world, it is this country, 

 and we, moreover, possess it in such abundance that there 

 would not be the sliglitest need for any recourse to " those vast 

 'portions of inferior land " which so much alarms the writer of 

 "The Free-trade Movement," and to which he refers in the 

 excerpt which heads this chapter. 



Ample Land for Food Production 



The Board of Agriculture tells us there are in round numbers 

 49,000,000 acres of "cultivated," and 10,000,000 acres of 

 " cultivable " land in the United Kingdom ; but leaving the 



