n 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.

Germany has, however, done well. She now makes woollens, cottons,
linens, irons, steels, penknives, and Bibles quite as cheap as England,
and, as some say (one