"Skeletons at the Feast," or the Radical Programme (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from "Skeletons at the Feast," or the Radical Programme

It is an undisputed fact that during the last thirty years there has been an exodus from the rural parts of England to its urban centres; that the population of the country has diminished, and the population of the towns greatly increased. Apart from the growing passion for society, in the accurate sense of that word, for excitement, and for what is called amusement, a motive that has operated in all countries, since the making of railways, to seduce country-folk of all classes into cities, the prin cipal cause of this migration has been that change in our economic policy, decreed forty years ago, which, whether wise or the reverse, people are beginning to discern is most inaccurately described as Free Trade. There were two prophecies made at the time of its introduction. Its advocates prophesied that, before a generation had passed away, foreign nations would throw open their ports to our goods as freely as we were going to throw open our ports to theirs, and thus what would then have been properly called Free Trade would be established throughout the world. Its Opponents prophesied that it would have no such effect, and that it would grievously depress, if it did not end bv ruining, the trade of English agriculture.

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