164 EOOT MATTERS IN SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS. 



is the mo&t complete vindication tliat could be given 

 practically, tliat the nation which has the greatest amount of 

 foreign interchange trade and, presumably, the greatest 

 amount of obstacles — is also the nation which, by her great 

 wealth, affords the greatest amount of satisfactions to 

 divide among her consumers. 



The answer to this supposed objection certainly involves 

 many complex questions, but it may at once be affirmed that 

 it does not in the slightest degree diminish the value of the 

 argument from obstacles as applied to Euphrasia. In 

 making this aflSrmation it is not denied that the wealth of the 

 United Kingdom in the aggregate is unbounded, and no one 

 can reflect upon her grand achievements in science, wealth, 

 and progress, without admiration and pride. The skill and 

 energy of her people are marvellous, and our admiration is 

 not lessened, but increased, by the thought that her vast 

 resources and enormous interchange of trade have been built 

 up by her prodigious energy and industry in spite of obstacles 

 of every hind. Her skill, daring, and enterprise have given 

 her the command of important lands under every clime. 

 This skill and enterprise, however, could not within her own 

 borders increase, beyond a certain limit, the necessary supplies 

 to meet her rapidly growing needs, as regards food and 

 clothing for her people and raw products to supplement her 

 needs for supplying manufactures in exchange for prime 

 necessaries, failing which she could not support the lives of 

 her people. It is necessity, therefore, which inevitably forced 

 her to direct her industries in such a manner that her lack 

 in food and other raw products at home should be purchased 

 by a surplus creation of manufactures. Food, being one of 

 the prime essentials to the life of each person, must be 

 secured in sufficient quantity, or the lives of her workers 

 cannot be sustained. A nation possessed of all the world's 

 "wealth of exchange could not preserve the lives of her people 

 if this one form of wealth — Food — be lacking or insufRcient. 

 With such a nation — so unfavourably conditioned — her 

 existence depends upon her power to command supplies of 

 the food of other countries in exchange for such products as 

 food-producing countries may think it desirable to take from 

 her. 



The food-producing countries may carry on this exchange 

 as a matter of choice or preference ; but with the food- 

 requiring country the exchange must be effected. — on the 

 best terms possible — but if necessity presses hard, ?i mii^st he 

 effected tipon any terms forced upon Tier. 



Fortunately for such a country all lands capable of pro- 

 ducing large food supplies are not in the condition of our 

 ideal Euphrasia, and hence there is little danger of a 



