the interests of the plough and the loom are identical. Neither can be served by protective tinkering. Reforms of a totally different character are needed, foremost among which is a widespread reduction of rent, and a general rearrangement of the relations between landlord and tenant,1 together with the adoption of the best methods, both in education and in agricultural practice, of our Continental and foreign competitors. It is on the face of it ridiculous to assert that, with an unequalled demand in the home market for all he can produce, the English farmer cannot find some means of making the land pay, and pay well. But before he can do this he must spend more capital upon it than he has lately been able to afford. 1 Cf. W. E. Bear, The British Farmer and his Competitors, pp. 12-17, and throughout the book generally. For the advantages possessed by the British farmer (the chief of which is the unequalled home market), cf. Mr James Howard's remarks quoted on p. 18 of the same book. CHAPTER XXVI MODERN INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND § 252. The Growth of our Industry. We have now traced the industrial growth of England from the diffused beginnings of manufactures and agriculture in primitive times to the more settled period of the manorial system, and have seen how, afterwards, towns gradually grew up, commerce extended, and markets arose, while manufactures became organised in various centres and regulated by guilds. We have seen that for several centuries the backbone of our national wealth was the export of wool, but that in course of time we ceased to export it, and worked it up into cloth ourselves, thereby gaining great national wealth. We have seen, too, how our foreign trade, after its petty beginnings in the Middle Ages, made a new advance in the buccaneering days of the Elizabethan sea captains, and then rapidly developed, by means of the various great trading Companies, till England became commercially supreme throughout the world. From commercial beginnings we traced the rise of our Indian Empire, and the growth of the American colonies. Meanwhile, at home, there came an Industrial Revolution, which, happening as it did at the moment that was politically most favourable to its growth, gave England a most advantageous start over other European nations in manufacturing industries of all kinds, and thus enabled her to endure successfully the enormous burdens of the great Continental war. Now comes a time of still greater progress, economic as well as commercial, for the old restrictive barriers to trade are to be swept away, and a new economic policy is to be inaugurated. Manufacturing districts are shown by slanting lines; large manufacturing towns by black circles; and the most populous counties are coloured darker than the others. It will be noticed that population since 1750 has shifted very much to the North and North West of England, whilst manufactures are far more concentrated than formerly. (Compare the Map opposite page 350) § 253. State of Trade in 1820. If we now endeavour to gain some idea of the trade of the country soon after the war, we may look for a moment at its condition1 in 1820, just before Free Trade measures were begun. The official value 2 of the total imports was declared to be £32,438,650, while the exports amounted to £48,951,537. This gives a total trade of only £3, 15s. per head of the population then existing, whereas in 1890 the proportion was no less than £18, 6s. per head. The tonnage of shipping entering and leaving our harbours was about 4,000,000 tons, of which 2,648,000 tons belonged to the United Kingdom and its dependencies.5 Steamers were, of course, as yet unknown. Professor Leone Levi calculates the trade of the country at not more than one-eighth or one-ninth of what it is at the present time. The wealth and comfort accessible to the people in general was much more limited, the consumption of tea, for instance, being only 1 lb. 4 oz. per head, and of sugar 18 lbs. a head." In fact, if we compare the £327,880,676 worth of our exports in 1890 with the £48,951,537 worth in 1820, we see at once how gigantic has been the growth of our trade. In 1891, again, the imports were £435,691,279, which is more than twelve times their value in 1820. But even at the beginning of the century England was far ahead of her It may be well to tabulate briefly the figures of trade for the forty years previous to 1820 (Palgrave's Dict. Pol. Econ., i. p. 344) : : The population of the United Kingdom in 1821 included 12,000,236 in England and Wales, and 6,802,000 in Ireland-a total of nearly 19,000,000. Accounts and Papers, 1852-53, lxxxv. 23. The calculation is in the article Commerce in Palgrave's Dict. Pol. Econ., p. 339, Vol. I. " Leone Levi, Hist. British Commerce, p. 151. • Ib., 7 See the article on Commerce in Dict. Pol. Econ., i. 339. p. 151. |