374 BraTAiN for the briton 



our hearts and find occupation for the vast hordes of Un- 

 employed in works that are unproductive and useless, and 

 which serve no purpose but to increase the burdens of British 

 rate-payers and tax-payers. 



These arc but a few of the many anomalies and grotesque 

 results of Fiiee-tkade, which should soon give place to other 

 and better contlitions. But the Free-trader discerns none of 

 these outward and visible signs, and it is doubtful if anything 

 in this world will arouse him to a sense of danger until his 

 Eree-trade structure is brought rattling about his ears like a 

 pack of cards. His Free-trade system is as full of economic 

 paradoxes, ludicrous inconsistencies, and grotesque commercial 

 solecisms, as an egg is of meat, yet he sees it not, nor does he 

 want to see it. Eidicule may kill that Free -trader, but it is 

 doubtful if anything else will. 



Loss OF Agpjcultural Wealth 



When our most competent statisticians affirm that in thirty 

 years agricultural wealth has decreased by £1,600,000,000 it is 

 time the British people took note of the fact, for they may be 

 sure that no country, however rich it may be in other respects, 

 can lose Sixteen hundred millions sterling of its wealth without 

 the people feeling it sorely. Loss of agricultural wealth means 

 loss of a great industry, loss of employment, loss of a wage- 

 earning power, loss to the people, and the marvel is that — the 

 people have endured the loss so patiently. It also means extra 

 rates to rate-payers and extra taxes to tax-payers, and the 

 sooner those who provide the funds for municipal and Imperial 

 expenditure realise this simple fact, the earlier will come that 

 psychological moment when they will cry — halt ! to the horse- 

 leech policy of every Government, whether Tory or Eadical. 

 These patient " shellers out " have hitherto been to Governments 

 what the aphides are to the ants — a source of never-failing and 

 easily acquired wealth — but their eyes are opening to the fact 

 that their surrendered millions no more mitigate the sufferings 

 of the people, or remove the festering mass of pauperism which 

 clings to them as a foul growth, than the toy spade of a child 

 can remove the mighty mass of sand on the seashore. They, 

 moreover, realise that this ever-present pauperism, distress, and 

 increasing unemployment which demand £135,000,000 in Poor 

 Bates and Public charities (see Chapters X. and XL) from the 

 people of this country every year, is not the result of normal, 

 social, and economic conditions, but solely the outcome of an 

 abnormal, selfish, and vicious system of national economics, 

 jjorn oi" the sejf-interests of a bajul of manufacturer-reformers 



