874, REPORT—1896. 
the subject of private property are formidable, but they could doubtless be overcome 
by the short and simple process of confiscation, This transformation is theoretically 
conceivable. It is in the subsequent development of the scheme of nationalised and 
municipalised industries that we are confronted with tasks not so easy of solution. 
How is its working to be reconciled with that opening up of more and more pro- 
ductive fields which is one of the prime factors of social progress? How is the 
allotment of men to be directed so that they may be shifted about as new centres 
open and old centres close? What checks or commands can be invoked to restrain 
the growth of population in a district when it should be dwindling? These are 
questions that can scarcely be put aside, and it may even be acknowledged that 
they gain fresh force when viewed in the light of another experience. Agricul- 
tural industry has recently been subjected to severe trials through a great breadth 
of this country. This has been due to cheaper importations from other lands, and 
though the competition has in my judgment been aggravated by causes into which 
I will not now digress (which aggravation however might and should be dealt 
with), the importation of food at less cost is a result no Economist wil] regard 
as otherwise than beneficial to the community as a whole. It is well that 
bread and flesh and the sustenance of life should be procured with as little toil as 
possible, however severe the trial for those who have been engaged hitherto in 
the production of those necessaries. We know that it has been so severe that 
demands for relief and assistance have been loudly made, and their power has been 
such as to have been in some measure successful; but had land been nationalised 
and farms held from the State or from county, town, or parish, they would have 
assumed a different shape, have been urged with greater purpose, and have received 
larger treatment. The difficulties of such a nationalised industry, passing into what 
may be described as a water-logged condition, would test beyond the straining point 
such statesmanship as our experience warrants us to believe possible. 
However much we may contemplate the reconstruction of an industrial system, 
it must, if it is to be a living social organism, be constantly responsive to the ever- 
changing conditions of growth ; some parts must wax whilst others wane, extend- 
ing here and contracting there, and manifesting at every moment those phenomena 
of vigour and decline which characterise life. Inthe development of industry new 
and easier ways are constantly being invented of doing old things; places are 
being discovered better suited for old industries than those to which resort had 
been made ; there is a continuous supersession of the worth of known processes and 
of the utility of oldforms of work involving a supersession, or at least a transfer, of 
the labour hitherto devoted to them. All these things compel a perpetual shifting 
of seats of industry and of the settlements of man, and no organisation can be enter- 
tained as practicable which does not lend itself to those necessities. They are the 
pre-requisites of a diminution of the toil of humanity. As I have said before, the 
theory of individual liberty, however guarded, afforded a working plan; society 
could and did march under it. The scheme of collective action gives no such 
pra of practicability ; it seems to lack the provision of the forces which should 
ring about that movement upon which growth depends. The Economist of the 
past generation still holds his ground, and our best hope lies in the fuller accept-— 
ance of his ideas. Such, at least, appears to me to be the result of a dispassionate 
inquiry ; but what may be wanting is something more than a dispassionate temper— 
a certain fervour of faith. The Economist must feel, if he is to animate multitudes 
and inspire legislatures, that he, too, has a religion. Beneath the calmness of his 
analysis must be felt the throb of humanity. Slow in any case must be the secular 
progress of any branch of the human family ; but if we take our stand upon facts, 
if our eyes are open to distinguish illusions from truth, if we are animated by the 
single purpose of subordinating our investigations and our actions to the lifting up 
of the standard of living, we may possess our souls in patience, waiting upon the 
’ promise of the future, 
