Advantages in Agricultural Production. 
253 
have an advantage over our farmers in ability to sustain de- 
pression, although a very miserable advantage. 
To claim that agriculture in this country has natural advan- 
tages superior to those cf any other is not to say that they are 
greater than the concentrated advantages of the whole world. 
Our great trial is that of having to meet in our own markets 
every country which has a special superiority in the cheap pro- 
duction of one or two or three particular commodities. One 
country can produce wheat more cheaply ; another, meat ; a 
third, fruit; and a fourth, wool ; and each makes the United 
Kingdom the dumping ground for its surplus. Under such 
circumstances the wonder is, not that our agriculturists have 
suffered severely, but that they have been able to exist all. No 
other country in the world has been subjected to such a trial, 
and it may safely be declared that no other would have stood it 
without even greater suffering than we have experienced. If 
this be true, it must be regarded as evidence in support of our 
superior natural advantages. No doubt we have the best 
markets in the world, but, as already stated, our farmers are 
handicapped in reaching them, and then other artificial disad- 
vantages, in the forms of rent, fiscal burdens, and high commis- 
sions to middlemen, have also to be taken into account. 
On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that British 
farmers are in possession of certain artificial advantages in a 
high degree. In knowledge of their business and skill they have 
no superiors, if they have any equals ; and they also enjoy 
the benefits of moderately cheap labour, cheap manures and 
feeding-stuffs, and security of property as far as it is conferred 
by a strong system of civil government and freedom from 
internal war3. 
Taking all things into consideration, and in spite of the fall 
in prices which has taken place since, I am not disposed to 
depart from the position which I took up in 1891 in this 
Journal, when writing upon “ The Future of Agricultural Com- 
petition : ” namely, that it is possible to remove the artificial 
disadvantages of British farmers to such an extent as to enable 
them to stand up against a world of competitors, whose superior 
advantages are certain to diminish on the whole by growth of 
population and consequent changes. 
The Production of Wheat. 
Let us now consider the advantages of certain countries in 
the production of a few of the principal agricultural commodi- 
ties. For many years it was the fashion to represent the United 
VOL. v. t, s. — 18 s 
