360 BRITAIN FOli TUE BKITON 



Fatal Eesults of Class Interests 



If Colxlen'.s policy for the last fifty years and more had 

 fallen in " with the good of the rest of the comrminity'' should we 

 l)e required to collect annually from over-burdened ratepayers 

 the stupendous sum of £35,000,000 in Toor Eates, and spend 

 half of it in providing relief for the more aggressive forms of 

 pauperism in our over-crowded pauper establishments ? 



Had Cobden's policy not dispossessed nearly one-half of the 

 entire population of the country from their legitimate and 

 natural means of subsistence, would there be to-day an 

 enormous and ever-growing host of unemployed marching up 

 and down the country in search of work and standing as a 

 reproach to his own scheme and a menace to the commonwealth ? 



Had the " good of the rest of the community " been truly 

 served by the destruction of the people's greatest industry, 

 would there be that deep-seated resentment on the part of the 

 people to practically all existiug things and institutions, which 

 has found expression in the form of Socialism, and which 

 threatens to uproot society itself and give to the world a new 

 order of things because of the many grievances of a long-suffer- 

 ing people ? Universal land culture, among other things, is one 

 of the prominent features in the revolutionary programme of 

 the Socialists, and is it likely that these red-hot reformers 

 would have marked this vast question down for immediate 

 reform had they not been alive to the supreme importance 

 which agriculture plays in the lives of the people ? 



Had the interests of the masses been served as Cobden's 

 biographer would have ns believe, would there be cause for all 

 the sullen discontent, the political and social unrest, and that 

 seething sedition, which sears and corrodes the people's minds 

 as the lightning blasts and destroys the sturdy oak ? 



These, and a score of other questions of a kindred nature, 

 might well be asked in connection with this single part of a 

 many-sided question, but it would serve no purpose to prolong 

 the investigation. It is enough to say that, although by grave 

 mischance, the people of Great Britain are in the unique and 

 unenviable condition of not being in a position to grow their 

 own food supplies, they are only in that " cxceptioncd " position 

 because of the folly and selfishness of Cobden and his followers, 

 who sixty years ago thrust upon the British people a trade 

 policy which time has proved to be as unsuited to the best 

 interests of this country as tlie winter snow would be to the 

 golden time of harvest. 



