Without free trade, it would be impossible for our 35,000,000 to live. Without free trade, no doubt the landlord would have got higher rents from the farmers ; but the price of wheat here is regulated by the price in Chicago. The British landlord has no longer a monopoly of the means of subsistence; we import about two-thirds of the -wheat we consume, and rents, instead of increasing with our increased population, have in agricultural districts decreased of late years; and as the means of transport improve in India and elsewhere, we shall get more food from abroad, and the rent for the use of agricultural land must fall lower and lower, and the only chance of getting a living out of the land will be, not, as is suggested, by dividing the land into smaller portions, but, on the contrary, to keep to large farms only, big enough to leant a skilled intellect to manage it, and capital enough to employ thereon all the latest machinery, so as to produce the maximum of result with the minimum of expenditure. With the land, as everything else, the question finally resolves itself into, will it pay ? You may protect the farmer or any other industry, but it is giving to A at the cost of B. You may reclaim wasteland, you may grow more wheat in England; but what is the use of spending £100,000,000 of money to get £80,000,000 worth of wheat? So long as wheat can be imported at 40s. a quarter, it is madness to waste our capital and labour in trying to grow more here, where it will cost 5Os. With every article, the "cost of production " settles the question as surely as the law of gravitation settles how water will flow. Rents must come down, simply because if nominally £100, and the land will not yield more than £50, after the farmer's expenses have been paid, the