miles of the richest wheat-growing country in the world, in Canada, under crop as one vast wheat field. The new province of Manitoba

"Contains about 9,000,000 acres of land, but it is comparatively a speck on the map of the vast territory out of which it has been formed. The soil, which is mostly prairie, and covered with grass, is a deep alluvial deposit of unsurpassed richness. It produces bountiful crops of cereals, grasses, roots, and vegetables. So rich and inexhaustible is the soil, that wheat has been cropped off the same place for fifty years without manure, and without showing signs of exhaustion. It is especially a wheat-growing soil, and is believed to contain the most favourable conditions for the growth of this grain on the continent.

"It is not only that the yield per acre is very large, but the hard and flinty nature of the grain grown makes it particularly valuable for the manufacture of flour.

"Special efforts have been made to effect reasonable arrangements to transport wheat from Winnipeg to the Eastern markets, and in the autumn of 1877 a rate of freight was made of 40 cents per 100lb. from Winnipeg to Duluth-that is about 24 cents per bushel. From this point it can be taken to Toronto, by boat and rail, for about 10 cents; or floated to Montreal for 10 or 12 cents. This fact shows that the export of wheat from Manitoba is practicable; and, taken in connection with the facility of production, it will probably soon reach very large proportions."

These quotations are from a Hand-book for Emigrants, published in 1877, by the Department of Agriculture of Canada; and already the actual results of wheat-growing in the Red River-of the North-settlements more than justified all the statements contained therein. It will be thus seen that it is not only the protectionplundered and fiscally-enslaved farmer of the Western prairies with whom the Victorian wheat-grower has to compete, but with the unlimited wheat fields of North-western Canada. What the farmers of the Mississippi valley are doing, in spite of supporting the whole fabric of the States on their broad back, may be gathered from the following quotation from the Scientific American, of March 6th, 1880:

"A little over thirty years ago, the Springfield Republican notes that grain was imported to this country (the United States) from the Black Sea. During the crop year on which the country is just entering, it claims that it is certain that 160,000,000 bushels of wheat will be exported to Europe, and the amount may reach 200,000,000 bushels. The grain is in this country; the only question is one of demand. The demand last year from Europe was for 159,000,000 out of a crop estimated at 420,000,000 bushels. The production this year is larger. It is one-fourth larger in Kansas; in Minnesota the production this year is 40,000,000 bushels, a large advance over last year; the grain fields of Southern Ohio show an unprecedented yield; so do those of Iowa; and in Indiana the crop will, in some cases, pay for the ground on which it stands."

It will be thus seen that, during the last five years, the exports of breadstuffs from the United States have increased by 150 per cent.

and in case some ingenious protectionist may seize upon this fact as an evidence of the "benefits which the American farmer derives from protection," it may be well to put in a claim, also, for "Colorado bug" among his other blessings. On the whole it seems to be coming to this, as far as the production and export of wheat is concerned, that the supply has reached the level of the demand at a given ratio of exchange, and any increased consumption must be at the expense of the price. It is impossible to conceive of an overproduction of wheat so long as there are hungry labourers who are willing to give the produce of their labour in exchange for bread; and if wheat production increases faster than wheat consumption, it is probably to be accounted for by restrictions imposed upon free exchange by wealthy monopolists under various disguises, such as protection and reciprocity. That the toiling millions of Europe will be long content to starve for want of wheat while the growers in Australia, Canada, and the United Sates are suffering from overproduction, is not likely. The only thing that prevents the satisfaction of the natural desire to exchange the labour of the one hemisphere for the bread of the other are the artificial obstructions raised up by designing or ignorant politicians.

The Liberal politicians (so called) of Victoria are all protectionists, so far as we know from the common banner around which they all rally, and protection is the greatest curse of the Victorian farmer. Under his fiscal burdens the selector may linger on, but he will never flourish, as the harder he works, and the more he exports, the more he is robbed. The position of the Victorian wheat-grower is unique. He has certain extraordinary advantages in the production of this particular crop, and he has nothing else to fall back upon. He need not trouble himself, apparently, about scientific methods of culture, for often a self-sown crop turns out better than one carefully put in. Farming in these colonies-in its most recent development at least-partakes very much of the nature of manufacturing soil into wheat, and carting it away. Not much room here for science, unless economy of labour can be counted as such. That this exhaustive and melancholy process can go on long is, of course, out of the question; and all that we can expect to do is to see that, while we are living on our capital, we are not also getting into debt. If the farmer can go to fresh fields with some money in purse, and his debts paid, we may hug ourselves in the belief that, in process of time, the exhausted soil will regain some portion of its lost fertility.

Farming may pay the individual manufacturer of wheat under certain conditions of cheap production and free exchange, but it will certainly be at the expense of the soil. There is no attempt to return to the soil the phosphates and other mineral constituents which the wheat plant abstracts; and as a matter of fact, there can be no such attempt, as the economical conditions of wheat culture render anything of the kind impossible. If the growth of wheat is to be a permanent industry, it should begin by being sufficiently profitable to pay a rent for the land that would justify a landlord or owner in going to sufficient expense to maintain its fertility unimpaired. This, of course, is a wildly impossible desideratum, as things go, and therefore we may accept the ultimate exhaustion of the soil, in a few years, as one of the factors in the problem already settled. The only thing we can then do is to find out how much good we can get out of a bad bargain. The State has sold the land to the selector-or, perhaps, to be more correct, has sold the selector to the land—and, with a portentous stupidity, has said to him that in consideration of his getting it so cheaply he must endeavour to rob it of its fertility as soon as possible. This he incontinently begins to do with all the paraphernalia of double-furrow ploughs, strippers, and the other accessories of the Australian wheat-grower; and after worrying the heart out of the land for a year or two he suddenly bethinks himself of asking the question, " Does farming pay?"

If the land had been sold at its natural value, in lots to suit purchasers, as a legitimate demand for land for agricultural purposes rose, this question would have been asked before, and probably would have been answered satisfactorily by the "bona fide" farmers, who would understand that having paid for the land it was at least politic not to destroy it.

But taking it for granted that the soil of Victoria, for wheatgrowing purposes, is a machine of limited life, we may than ask— "Can the selector, on this assumption, for the time being, make wheat-growing pay?" The answer is: "Probably he can if he is allowed to buy and sell in the open market; certainly not if he is mulcted of 20 per cent. of his produce for the benefit of a few wealthy manufacturers." The farmer might gather some little consolation if he were sure that the sacrifice of 20 per cent. of the value of his produce incidentally benefited the working men engaged in protected industries; but we see that the effect of protection is to bring down wages, and the once familiar cry of "what will we do with our boys?" has lost much of its potency for the cultivator, who

is making the tardy discovery that his boys, at least, are not likely to benefit by their labour being depreciated in value for the purpose of concentrating masses of "unemployed" in Melbourne. The farmers and selectors of Victoria are a brave, hardworking, and loyal race. Most of them are strongly imbued with Liberal principles, and their simple credulity makes them an easy prey to designing politicians. In their struggles against the many difficulties of their position, they command the sympathy and respect, even of those who live upon them; and the protected interests of the large towns look with respectful wonder upon labours which they decline to share. There is a very general feeling that the decadence of the agricultural interest would be a national calamity, while there is an uneasy consciousness-felt rather than expressed —that it is not altogether on a satisfactory footing. For some years back, the farmers have suffered severely from an unhappy combination of natural, economical and political disabilities which, in their evil concurrence, has been nearly ruinous. That the farmers have struggled on at all is a sufficient evidence of the wonderful vitality of the trade, which is, and always has been, the victim of circumstances. Scattered, as they are, over wide areas, the efforts of the farmers at combination are feeble and intermittent; and when they do meet to discuss matters of vital importance to themselves, they too frequently depend for inspiration upon the cut-and-dried opinions of their natural enemies, the protected industries. Some corypheus of trade monopoly mounts the stump, and drawing upon his vivid imagination, and possibly his experience in making boots, teaches (or impudently attempts to teach) the farmer the secret of agricultural prosperity. The enthusiastic votary of restriction talks about driving the plough from the "lowest valley to the mountain top;" and this remarkable feat of rhetorical ploughing so tickles the farmer, that he joyfully accepts a fine of 20 per cent. upon the labour of his hands. It seems to be in accordance with the eternal fitness of things that the cultivator should always be a slave. When he shakes off the burden of a feudal lord, it is only to accept the yoke of interested trade organisations. "In modern Europe," says Mill, "the cultivators have gradually emerged from a state of personal slavery. The barbarian conquerors of the Western Empire found that the easiest mode of managing their conquests would be to leave the occupation of the land in the hands in which they found it, and to save themselves a labour so uncongenial as the superintendence of troops of

slaves, by allowing the slaves to retain, in a certain degree, the control of their own actions, under an obligation to furnish the lord with provisions and labour." The barbarian conquerors spoken of here were probably satisfied with a percentage of the crop; and the difference between the amount taken from the enslaved cultivators of medieval Europe and the amount of the 20 per cent. protective duties extracted from the hard earnings of the Victorian farmer is a difference of degree rather than of kind.

The farmer produces something which is of no value to him until it is exchanged. Before he is allowed to exchange it, the commodity he is willing to receive in exchange for his produce is arbitrarily raised in price 20 per cent. Anyone but a farmer would probably see that such a procedure is exactly the same as if 20 per cent. was deducted from the weight, or the quantity, or the price of his crop. That the farmer does not see it is, perhaps, one of those beneficent arrangements of Providence which tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. The mechanic in the town works eight hours a-day, and the farmer in the country works eighteen. The farmer pays 20 per cent. duty for the privilege of having the mechanic as a customer. The artisan works when times are good, and for his eight hours labour receives from 10s. to 13s.; the farmer works from sunrise to sunset, in many cases for a bare livelihood. When times are bad, the artisans assist to swell the ranks of the unemployed; and the farmer pays his share of the taxes required to find them in employment. This is not as it should be. It would be bad enough if such an anomalous condition of affairs was the natural result of free competition. There would then be the consolatory feeling that the inevitable law of the survival of the fittest would, in a comparatively short time, work a cure of an evil which is carefully kept alive by judicious administration of political nostrums.

The producers of the colony, if they knew their own interests, would insist upon the natural industries of Victoria having, at least, fair play. If the working-men and the artisans also knew their own interests, they would advocate justice and freedom for the exchange of the products of labour. The success of every trade may almost be summed up in the formula, "Conservation of force." Cheapness of production is in itself a virtue, as it indicates that certain results have been obtained with the least waste of energy. It is, of course, understood that the cheapness of production here referred to is not obtained at the expense of the moral or physical well-being of the workmen. With this qualification we