But considering how the efficiency of the agricultural labourer has been improved by improved machines since 1846, it is hardly possible to doubt that the agricultural labourer is much more indebted to the engineers than to the Corn Law League for his improved position. Under "machines" too may be included railway communications: also let us not forget how much the agricultural labourer owes, not only to drills and mowing-machines, but to boot-sewing machines, improved tea-ships, etc.
If we look to the general increase of wealth in England since 1846, the first thing that strikes us is the increase in the tribute, which is about thrice what it was. This increase is largely imperial, i.e. due to colonisation, annexation, etc. But here again we must not overlook the reaction of causes on each other: our Free Trade in corn, our improvements in machinery and ships, have so largely contributed to spread our empire that it becomes impossible to disentangle the separate work, or indeed to speak of any one cause as a simple element: the causes all act together.
England is the most comfortable country in the world for a rich man to live in, and consequently rich men congregate there; or, if they travel, keep a headquarters there. In this way we have congregated a disproportionate population in England. It may be argued that it would be a healthier economic state if the exports and imports balanced, and if the population of England was no larger than the country itself could grow wheat for, at a price not exceeding 40s. a quarter. However that may be, the important point for the working men of England to mark is, that every loss of rich men resident, every loss of tribute, every reduction of the wage-fund, every pressure on the population to emigrate, everything that leads in the direction of a self-supporting England, means immediate pressure on the poor, with reduction of wages. That is the only way emigration could be by natural law enforced. It is the poor, the labouring population, who are so hugely interested in the empire. Of all the follies taught to the labouring man the most foolish is the doctrine that the empire abroad is maintained to provide incomes for the rich, at the cost of the taxes paid for wars by the poor. It matters comparatively little to the rich whether they live at Florence or Dresden four or eight months in the year, whether the population of England is to be maintained stationary, to increase at its present rate of increase, or to be squeezed down to half its present number: but it matters vitally to the poor. Whether, ultimately, after our empire is gone and the population of England is stationary at fifteen millions say, the poor in England would be better off than now is a very difficult question, concerning which doctors differ; but it is absolutely certain that during the Banting process, in the reduction of the population down to that fifteen millions by a process of starvation and emigration, continued for two generations of men, the poor would have to go through experiences altogether novel. It is a thing that would revolutionise England; and in spite of the superior education of our labourers might lead to a break up of society. Starvation and bankruptcy make any and every man a Radical if not a Communist.
To keep the poor comfortable for the present and for many years immediately in front of us, we require a continual increase in the wealth laid out in England annually in the purchase of labour. The growth of the empire, the profitable investment of capital in foreign countries (whereof the interest is paid and consumed in England), is one great resource: the profitable investment of capital in England itself is the other great, probably safer, resource. To effect this we require every acre of land to fall into the hand of the man (or company) who can make most of it: we require a Universal Free Trade that shall render our hold on the commerce of the world secure until all nations adopt Universal Free Trade (when we shall gain so much in other ways that we shall be able to afford to share our monopoly with others); we require the removal of all restraints on railways, tramways, electric lights, etc., that hamper or prevent the employment of capital in England (in other words, that send English capital abroad). Finally, underlying the whole, and as the prime cause that shall induce capitalists to employ their capital in England rather than to send it abroad, we require the labour of every working man to be in the highest degree efficient: this retards the fall of the natural rate of profits to a minimum, and the attainment of the stationary state. Whatever ideal beauty has been discovered in the stationary state by J. S. Mill, it is pretty clear that England is not approaching it. It is as difficult for us to stand still as it is impossible to go back; and our only (third) course open (for the present and for many years to come) is to progress.