enthusiasm of the Hindoo fanatic, who shouts praises to Seeva, the destroyer, even as he casts himself under the wheels of Juggernauth !' 'It is not only the beneficent working of free trade,' says the Cobden Club, that prescribes the agricultural ruin of England, it is the great natural law of the preservation of the fittest that proclaims that, as England is not the best fitted to grow corn, therefore she must grow corn no longer.' But do the enlightened gentlemen who so glibly appeal to the beneficence of natural laws realise what the change means? A thousand acres in grain will support eight times the population of a thousand acres in grass.

A million of acres of wheat supplies grain for 3,500,000 people. During the last ten years a million acres of wheat have gone out of cultivation, so that now, in 1881, if the population had remained stationary, we should be in a position to feed 3,500,000 of people less than we were in 1872. But during that period our population has increased nearly 3,000,000, so that in 1881 we are actually in a position to feed nearly 6,500,000 less than we were in 1872. We actually grow less corn now to feed 34,000,000 of people than we did. forty years ago to feed 17,000,000. During the last ten years our live stock has diminished in value to the amount of 5,000,000l. Our farmers have lost 6,500,000l. annually for some years on the depreciated prices of the wool alone. Our dairy farming, our market gardening, our small rural industries are rapidly disappearing.

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Our importation of corn, meat, dairy produce, and vegetables averages 45,000,000l. per annum more than it did ten years ago. We have a redundant population hemmed in by the melancholy How are we to feed them if the country is to be laid down in grass? Buy your grain abroad, of course,' say our free-trade theorists; buy it cheaper than you can grow it; that is the way to make the country rich.' 'But how are we to find the money to pay for it?' ask those of little faith. By the increased produce of your manufacturing industries, of course,' is the reply. Can't you see that the more money the Americans make by their corn the more they have to spend on your manufactures?' But unfortunately this process is now reversed. The Americans no longer invest their surplus receipts from corn in buying our manufactures; on the contrary, they invest them in extending their own-their profits are spent on new ironworks, new textile factories, new railroads, &c., at home. They intend to continue to supply us with their corn certainly in ever-increasing quantities, but they are still more determined to supply themselves with their own manufactured products. We cannot trust to the increased value of our manufactured products to pay for our increased importation of corn, for the very good reason that the value of our manufactured products does not increase. Since 1872 it has been falling off year by year, at first slowly, now rapidly. Year by year foreign nations take less of our manufactured goods and

send us more of their own; and every year, as agricultural distress has increased, the purchasing power of our own home consumers has diminished. Comparing an average of the three years 1878 to 1880 with an average of the three years 1869 to 1871, we find that in our chief manufacturing industries, cotton, silk, iron and steel, glass, sugar, paper, boots and shoes, carpets, flannels, blankets, and worsted, there has been a decreased exportation to the value of 21,000,000l. sterling and an increased importation to the value of 18,500,000l. sterling, a balance against us of 40,000,000l. per annum. It is true that the credit side of the export account during the same period shows an increase in our exports of coal and coke and scrap iron and machinery to the extent of 5,000,000l.; but coal and coke and pig iron represent more or less a portion of the national capital that we are expending, whilst scrap iron is a waste product, the skim milk of the iron industry, sold without profit to any one, and our increased sales of machinery abroad merely represent the increasing manufacturing productions of our foreign rivals. In the face of these facts we are warranted in again asking our economic philosophers how we are to continue to find money to purchase foreign food. The food question is at the bottom of our commercial troubles; we are buying food from abroad faster than we are making money to pay for it. But, of course, this cannot last. Until the immense and increasing excess of imports over exports is considerably diminished, there can be no return of general prosperity. We may for a time draw upon our capital and our accumulated wealth, but for how long? If we cannot get as much for our goods as we are compelled to pay for foreign food, the deluge must be at hand. It is no exaggeration to say that another ten years like the preceding ones must virtually annihilate grain culture in England and Ireland.

From 1850 to 1870 the average price of wheat was 538. 4d. per quarter. During that period we consumed annually, on an average, wheat to the value of 55,500,000l. sterling. Of this amount 37,000,000l. sterling was produced at home, 18,500,000l. imported. From 1870 to 1880 the average price was 48s. per quarter. During that period we consumed annually, on an average, wheat to the value of 57,500,000l. sterling, of which only 24,000,000l. was produced at home, and 33,500,000l. imported. That is to say, in the ten years between 1870 and 1880 we produced annually, on an average, to the value of 13,000,000l. sterling less, and imported annually, on an average, to the value of 15,000,000l. more, than we did in the previous twenty years between 1850 and 1870, a difference against us of 28,000,000l. per annum. The home production of wheat is, of course, very much a question of price; 528. per quarter appears to be the lowest price at which it continues prosperous, and it rapidly declines as it falls below this price. It is the opinion of the best agricultural authorities that if the price of wheat could have been maintained at a permanent

standard of 528. per quarter, the present agricultural collapse would have been avoided. When Sir Robert Peel abolished the corn laws, he predicted the average price of wheat would be 57s. per quarter; and if the conditions of the problem had continued the same, probably his predictions would have been verified. But when Sir Robert Peel spoke steam was in its infancy; the multiplication of railways and steamers in Europe and America had not commenced; the gold of California and Australia was scarcely discovered; Manitoba and Minnesota were the hunting-grounds of Red Indians; the freight across the Atlantic was 108. or 15s. a quarter; now it is 1s. 4d. The average price during the past ten years has been 48s. per quarter, and therefore to maintain a permanent standard of 528. or 53s. a quarter a duty of 5s. a quarter would have been required. Let us see for a moment what the effect of this duty would have been. From 1870 to 1880 we consumed annually a total of 25,000,000 quarters of wheat, at a cost of 57,500,000l.; a duty of 58. per quarter would have increased this cost 6,250,000l., bringing it to 63,750,000l. Now a 58. duty amounts to as nearly as possible d. on the four-pound loaf: it is a large family that consumes twelve four-pound loaves in the week, so that a 5s. duty means a food tax of 6d. per week on every large family in the country, probably something under one penny per week per head of the population.

But this sum of 6,250,000l. cannot be considered altogether lost. Considerably more than one half would have gone into the Treasury as customs duty on foreign corn, and, of course have relieved some other sources of taxation. A duty of 58. per quarter would have maintained the price of wheat at 52s. or 53s. per quarter, and we have seen that when wheat was at 52s. per quarter we grew more and imported less to the value of 18,500,000l. sterling, or about 11s. per head of the population; whereas when it fell to 488., we grew less and imported more, to the increased value of 33,500,000l., or nearly 208. per head of the population. If, therefore, a duty of 5s. per quarter, or, in other words, a corn tax of something under a penny per week per head of the population during the last ten years, would have prevented the loss and depreciation of 600,000,000l. of agricultural capital, and the annual loss of 23,000,000l. of agricultural income, and if, moreover, as there is good reason to believe, it would, if continued, restore agricultural prosperity, bring more land into cultivation, reduce the enormous importation of foreign food, increase the incomes and. purchasing powers of the great agricultural class, I do not think common sense need revolt from its adoption; at all events, it is as well to familiarise ourselves with the consideration of a moderate customs duty on corn, for it is almost certain the time is not far distant when we shall, in an actual struggle for national existence, have to return to it. Do not let us suppose that because there is no duty on corn therefore we are always secure of cheap corn. During four years since VOL. X.-No. 54.

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the abolition of the corn laws, wheat has been over 608. a quarter, and during three consecutive years it has been over 708. a quarter.

With a rapidly increasing population, England has allowed her own food produce to dwindle away and trusted entirely to foreign countries for her supply. Do we suppose that drought, and flood, and blight, and lean seasons are never again to be the portion of America? Is it so impossible that maritime wars should again limit our supply and again run freights up to 10s. or 15s. a quarter? And then, too late, we shall curse the passion and short-sighted folly of a school of politicians who, in their anxiety to ruin a class, have ruined the country.

For thirty years it has been preached by free traders that agriculture was of secondary importance to us, that manufacturing industries were the real source of our wealth, and that it was better for the country and better for the people to be employed in those industries than in growing corn. But now this great free-trade theory is blown to the winds; and Mr. Bright himself tells the operatives of Bradford that agriculture, not manufacture, is the true source of the national wealth. The home trade,' says Mr. Bright, 'is bad mainly or entirely because our harvests have been bad for several years. I believe the agricultural classes, owners and occupiers of land in the three kingdoms, have lost more than 150,000,000l. sterling through the great deficiency of our harvests. This great loss must inevitably and seriously depress all our other industries. It is not Bradford alone that has suffered, the whole cotton trade of Lancashire has suffered greatly, and this is to be attributed to the condition of our great farming interests, and this again to the unfavourable seasons of several recent years; the remedy will come with more sunshine and better yield from the land-without this it cannot come.'

But suppose Mr. Bright's revelation is true, and that a return to manufacturing prosperity is impossible without a return of agricultural prosperity, and that it can be proved that a return of agricultural prosperity is impossible without a duty on corn, what is to be done?

Do free traders really suppose that when the country comes to its senses it will persevere in the road to ruin, merely to save their apostles from the mortification of being posted as economic charlatans?

Thirty-five years ago soi-disant free traders set themselves to the work-God's work' they called it—of destroying the landowner. Well, they have nearly succeeded, but in doing so they have destroyed the tenants, and the shopkeepers, and tradesmen, and carriers, and the hundred-and-one small industries in every agricultural town and village throughout the country; and their clients, the manufacturers (who supported them), now find to their dismay that their efforts have destroyed the purchasing power of eight or nine millions of their best customers. See,' said the Radical engineers of Manchester, and

Birmingham, and Bradford thirty-five years ago, how we will blow up the landowners,' and lo! they are hoist with their own petard.

In considering the arguments (if they are worthy to be so called) I have advanced in favour of a return to protective duties, two questions naturally suggest themselves.

1. Is it probable or even possible that England can return to protection?

2. If she did so, would the working classes be benefited by it? The answer to the first question must be sought in a careful analysis of the census. It appears probable that the operative classes, as a body, will go for 'protection to land and labour;' if they do so, the manufacturers, the landowners, the tenant-farmers, the labourers, every tradesman and shopkeeper in the manufacturing and agricultural towns and villages throughout the country, the brewers, the publicans, the carriers, and all the small industries, directly or indirectly dependent on the prosperity and spending power of the operative and agricultural classes, will follow them to

a man.

The country bankers, private and joint-stock, will go for protection, because they hope and believe it will lead to a return of prosperity to land and labour; and in that prosperity lies their only chance of recovering the millions they have advanced to manufacturers, and landowners, and tenants, and tradesmen. The opposition will come from the importers of foreign goods: the large wholesale houses who make more profit by selling foreign manufactured goods than English manufactured goods, the world of fashion who think life impossible without foreign articles de luxe; but, above all, it will come from the political craftsmen who, for the space of thirty years, have been crying Great is free trade,' exactly for the same reason that Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen of Ephesus cried Great is Diana,' because they believe it has given them profit and popularity.

But there is another and very powerful class who denounce the idea of a return to protection as ignorant nonsense; the promoters of companies, of foreign mines, and loans, and enterprises of all sorts: the stock-brokers, the London bankers, and the great finance houses whose profits depend on the trade of the world; on the industrial prosperity of France and America as much as, if not more than, on the industrial prosperity of England.

They have never been so well off, because there never has been so much money at their disposal; the prostration of agricultural and manufacturing industries has liberated a great deal of money; everywhere, where it is possible, money is being withdrawn from land, either to hold or to cultivate, and from manufacturing industries, for investment in stocks and shares and more or less risky foreign enterprises.