What is to happen to the 300,000 or half million land-owners of England, if outside pig-headed peoples wilfully and maliciously refuse to buy the mill products of England and so to feed the 37,200,000 people of England who have no land upon which to raise their own food? What is to happen if some fine day the 37,200,000 take it into their foolish heads to say:
"We do not like to starve. We are many, you are few. We will take the land and raise our own food, and you can emigrate if you like, or you can stand out in the cold as we have done. We don't like it."
It is not quite easy to shoot those people; and if they choose to stay in England, it is not quite easy to _make_ them emigrate--not even if the "laws of trade" tell them they really ought to go.
And besides, it is so easy for 100,000 paupers to emigrate--to take their wives and their children, their flocks and their herds, their camels and their asses, their beds and their tents, and go forth to seek the promised land--the land flowing with milk and honey. It is so simple, so pleasant, that one is lost in amazement that they do not go--that they wickedly persist in staying where they are paupers, and refuse to obey the law of "supply and demand."
Such conduct is quite unworthy of enlightened Britons who "never will be slaves."
It is too bad--it really is--and political economy ought to be preached at them severely. Why is it too that outside barbarians refuse to buy the divine productions of England? Some think we may do well to take a look at this part of the problem before _we_ go on with our plans for introducing more cheap labor into our own happy land.
A century ago, as has been said, England discovered the wonderful way of applying the _steam giant_ to the creation of manufactured goods, and for three-quarters of the century she has had a practical monopoly; has turned the golden streams of the whole world to enrich herself; has preached free trade; has said, "Buy cheap and sell dear," and has set her god on a high throne. But slowly and haltingly other and stupider nations have caught the tricks of the new Cultus; have caught little steam giants, and have set them to work to turn their mills and grind their grists. Germany and the United States are two of these dull nations who have done a stroke of work in this way. France has really been too stupid to do much at it--has indeed gone back to a tariff after having tasted of the new gospel, and now obstinately refuses to live by it--_will_ pay her debts, and will _not_ enjoy unlimited pauperism.