ways and steamships, about
improved machinery, about telegraphs, the cheap post and telephones,
about education and better facilities of travel."[772]

The unsoundness of the fundamental doctrine of Free Trade, "Buy in the
cheapest and sell in the dearest market," has frequently been exposed
by Socialists. Mr. Blatchford, for instance, in a book of his of which
more than a million copies have been sold gives prominence to Cobden's
pronouncement in the House of Commons in which he expounded the
celebrated maxim: Buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market:
"To buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest, what is the
meaning of the maxim? It means that you take the article which you
have in the greatest abundance and with it obtain from others that of
which they have the most to spare; so giving to mankind the means of
enjoying the fullest abundance of earth's goods."[773] Mr. Blatchford
then comments upon Cobden's doctrine as follows: "Let us reduce these
fine phrases to figures. Suppose America can sell us wheat at _30s._ a
quarter, and suppose ours costs _32s. 6d._ a quarter. That is a gain
of 1/15th in the cost of wheat. We get a loaf for _3d._ instead of
having to pay _3-1/4d._ That is all the fine phrases mean. What do we
lose? We lose the beauty and health of our factory towns; we lose
annually some twenty thousand lives in Lancashire alone; we are in
constant danger of great strikes; we are reduced to the meanest shifts
and the most violent acts of piracy and slaughter to 'open up
markets' for our goods; we lose the stamina of our people, and we lose
our agriculture."[774]

Most Socialists recognise that under the Free Trade _regime_ Great
Britain has sacrificed her safety and her strength to profit. "Did you
ever consider what it involved, this ruin of British agriculture?
Don't you see that if we lose our power to feed ourselves we destroy
the advantages of our insular position?"[775] "Don't you see that the
people who depend on foreigners for their food are at the mercy of any
ambitious statesman who chooses to make war upon them? And don't you
think that is rather a stiff price to pay to get a farthing off the
loaf? No nation can be secure unless it is independent; no nation can
be independent unless it is based upon agriculture."[776] "We must buy
wheat from America with cotton goods; but first of all we must buy raw
cotton with which to make those goods. We are therefore entirely
dependent up