on foreigners for our existence."[777]

"The present national ideal is to become 'The workshop of the world.'
That is to say, the British people are to manufacture goods for sale
to foreign countries, and in return for those goods are to get more
money than they could obtain by developing the resources of their own
country for their own use. My ideal is that each individual should
seek his advantage in co-operation with his fellows, and that the
people should make the best of their own country before attempting to
trade with other people's."[778] "The Free Traders tell me that under
their glorious system of free exchange nations naturally occupy
themselves in those industries which produce the most wealth. Thus, if
Great Britain, by employing a million men in growing corn, can produce
_50,000,000l._ a year, while she can produce _51,000,000l._ by
employing the men in getting coal. Great Britain will 'naturally'
employ those men in getting coal! Sending her coal abroad, Great
Britain can get _1,000,000l._ a year more wealth. What a beautiful
doctrine! Enormous increase in wealth. Foreigners can send us
_51,000,000l._ of corn for our coal, while Great Britain could only
grow _50,000,000l._ Free Trade for ever! It never occurs to the Free
Traders to ask: 'Is it better to have a million men working in the
bowels of the earth, or a million men tilling the surface?"[779]

"The idea is, that if by making cloth, cutlery, and other goods we can
buy more food than we can produce at home with the same amount of
labour, it pays us to let the land go out of cultivation and make
Britain the 'workshop of the world.' Now, assuming that we can keep
our foreign trade, and assuming that we can get more food by foreign
trade than we could produce by the same amount of work, is it quite
certain that we are making a good bargain when we desert our fields
for our factories? Suppose men can earn more in the big towns than
they could earn in the fields, is the difference all gain? Rents and
prices are higher in the towns; the life is less healthy, less
pleasant. It is a fact that the death-rates in the towns are higher,
that the duration of life is shorter, and that the stamina and
physique of the workers are lowered by town life and by employment in
the factories. And there is another very serious evil attached to the
commercial policy of allowing our British agriculture to decay, and
that is the evil of our dependence upon foreign countries