252 Advantages in Agricultural Production , 
been reclaimed from the sea, the severity of her winter and the 
greater heat of her summer place her slightly below us for all- 
round agricultural production. If we take any other European 
country, not excluding the fertile Danubian lands, into consider- 
ation, it will be found that the climate at one season or another 
is less favourable to a high average of quantity and quality in the 
fruits of the soil, taken together, than our own. The Channel 
Islands we claim, of course, as part of the United Kingdom. 
It may be asked how it is, if we have such paramount 
natural advantages, that we suffer so severely from foreign and 
colonial competition. I think that the answer to this question 
is twofold. In the first place, we had farther to fall than any 
other country ; and secondly, in the supply of certain commodi- 
ties, some of our competitors have artificial advantages over us. 
Owing to the high degree of prosperity at one time attained by 
British agriculture, our landowners and farmers had become 
accustomed to higher standards of living and expenditure than 
those owning or occupying equal areas of land in any other 
country had reached. “ He that is low need fear no fall,” and 
the farmers of certain countries which compete with us most 
keenly have lost less because they had less to lose, and have 
been less reduced in style of living because they were never 
above the status of superior labourers. Again, our former 
prosperity led to the imposition of burdens upon agriculture 
greater than have been put upon it in any country not protected 
by heavy duties on imports ; and the same remark applies to 
the high value to which land, as an investment, rose in this 
country. Nor is this all, for in many parts of the world where 
land is extremely cheap, railway charges and ocean freights to 
England are also very low, while here railway rates are so 
high that bulky produce will often not yield enough money to 
cover its conveyance from one end of England to a central 
market. Moreover, it is difficult to compare degrees of depres- 
sion in different countries. We know how the shoe pinches 
here, but have not equal facilities for gauging the pressure 
elsewhere. 
On several occasions recently men of position, in Parliament 
and elsewhere, have affirmed that agricultural depression is 
even worse in some other countries than it is in England. For 
reasons already given I doubt this, though I believe that, in 
proportion to preceding prosperity, the fall has been as great 
elsewhere as here, and that the difficulty of making ends meet 
has become as serious. But where farmers can live entirely off 
the produce of their land, and are accustomed to a life which the 
best paid of English or Scottish labourers would disdain, thej 
