35 G BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



respect to its food supplies, is to deprive a man of his eye-sight 

 and then to reproach him for not being able to see. 



Cynical Indifference to Facts 



This line of reasoning is so deliberately cold, selfish, cruel, 

 and professedly cynical, as to positively offend and disgust that 

 enormous section of the British community which has hitherto 

 posed as spectators of what they regarded as an interesting 

 comedy l)etween Free-traders and their oi>ponents, but which 

 they now perceive is a vast National Drama full of pathos and 

 deep tragedy. They are, moreover, tired to death of the Jesuitical 

 juggleries and the eternal Machiavelianisms of " scientific 

 economists," political economists, and others of the same cult, 

 and would prefer to see the entire ([uestion of wliether we can, 

 or cannot, grow our own corn, and whether we should, or should 

 not, grow it, reduced to its last and proper denomination — 

 Grow it, and then let the common-sense of the British people 

 determine the results. " Too much talk and too little work " 

 is, perhaps, the greatest enemy of the British people to-day, and 

 it is certain that so long as they permit their better judgment 

 to be beguiled by those who tell them that Great Britain is, as 

 regards her food supplies, in an Exceptional position, so long 

 will the fallacy be maintained to their own undoing and the 

 destruction of National interests. 



Whether we grow our own food supplies or get foreigners to 

 grow them for us, is a vital question that affects the interests of 

 the British people as no other question can affect them ; and yet 

 Free-trade economists treat it as a matter of course, and either 

 with light-hearted levity, or a supreme disregard of every 

 interest outside the narrow circle of their own selfish con- 

 siderations. 



Great Britain is not in a position to provide her people 

 with ample supplies of home-grown agricultural produce, and 

 Free-trade economists not only put her in that position, but 

 keep her in a condition of helpless dependence upon foreign 

 countries for her daily bread. 



Producing our own Food a Burning Question 



This is a question which has not found favour with the 

 British public till quite recently, but now that the pauper yoke 

 is becoming intolerable and the unemployed question pressing ; 

 now that militant Socialism is battering at the doors of the 

 commonwealth, and demanding from Society drastic changes in 



