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A SYNOPSIS 389 



world's marts, gold in abundance has come to our shores, but it 

 has gone into the pockets of the merchant and the manufacturer, 

 while it has also benefited certain of our industrial workers. 

 The masses, however, are still sunk in that same pitiable state of 

 semi-destitution and of actual grinding, biting poverty in which 

 they were in the thirties and " hungry forties " of the last 

 century, and which called into being that band of reformers 

 who subsequently gave to this country those fiscal laws whose 

 effects we are now considering. Admitting, for the sake of 

 argument, that those strenuous workers in the field of reform 

 may have been honest in theii' convictions and sincere in their 

 beliefs ; and that the people of those days had many grievances 

 and were in a condition demanding prompt aid and generous 

 support, while reform of a drastic nature was imperative, they 

 had no more right, when giving the country a new order of 

 economy and establishing their vast industrial and commercial 

 system, to supersede and subsequently destroy the great land 

 industry, than we should have to-day if, in re-establishing 

 agriculture, we foolishly and recklessly cast aside or destroyed 

 our manufactures and commerce. 



Three great fundamental economical errors were then made 

 by those who gave to Great Britain her present economical 

 system, but a still greater error is committed Ijy those who 

 cannot, or will not, see that it is in the perpetuation of the 

 error and not necessarily in its inception, or in its first appli- 

 cation, the danger proceeds, and until this simple fact is 

 recognised and admitted, remedial measures are impossible. 



No country in the world is in a position, nor ever can be in 

 a position, to treat the greatest of all industries — agriculture — 

 as a factor of little or no importance in whatever system of 

 national economy it may choose to set up for itself, because this 

 would be to advance a proposition that is not demonstrable by 

 any laws that are known to man. History is incapable of 

 recording a single instance where this has been done, but, on the 

 other hand, it records several examples of the ruin of countries 

 and the crumbling away of empires hecausc of the neglect of 

 agriculture. 



Cobden and Bright, however, dreaming only of that com- 

 mercial and industrial world supremacy which they were so 

 anxious to win for this country, gave to Great Britain an 

 economical system as uusuiteil to the practical daily needs of 

 a great people, as the gauzy raiment of the tropics is unsuited 

 to the cold regions of the arctic circle. Out of their sanguine- 

 ness, and at their bidding, she tln-ew aside her agricultm-e, as of 

 no account, and arrogantly stood forth as the mistress of the 

 seas, the controller of commercial and industrial destinies, the 



