Again  the  advocate  of  a  policy  which  is  the  reverse  of  that  which'
has  been  adopted  in  this  country  for  the  last  forty  years  assures
us,  in  solemn   and  prophetic  language,  that  his  expedient  will
heighten  profits  and  wages.    He,  dilates  on  the  land  which  has
gone  out  of  cultivation,  on  the  numbers  of  the  unemployed,  on  the
stint  of  profits,  on  the  decline  of  wages.    But  an  inquiry  has-
latterly  shown  ^that  the  land  which  has  gone  out  of  some  sort,
of  tillage  or  the  other,  is  less  than  '00006  of  the  area  of  England
and  Wales,  a  very  low  fraction.     Mr.  Goschen,  who  is  not  a  friend
of  Mr.  Howard  Vincent  (he  would  belie  his  own  income-tax  returns-
if  he  did  not  admit  it),  shows  that  profits,  especially  in  incomes
between  dglOOO   and  £150  a  year  are  increasing.     The  savings-
bank  returns  are  also  increasing,  the  average  of  each  depositor-
being  rather  lessened.     And  I  should  like  to  know  a  little  about
the  statistics  of  the  unemployed.     They  are  not  yet  forthcoming,,
except  in  so  far  as  I  obtained  a  Parliamentary  return  of  the  Oxford-
and  Cambridge  professors.    I  do  not  much  care  for  vague  state-
ments, especially  when  there  is  a  suspicion  about  the  motives-
of  the  vagueness.    For  many  years,  in  the  infancy  of  my  researches  •
into  English  agriculture,  I  used  to  examine  the  reports  of  each
year's  harvest  in  the  Mark  Lane  Oazette.     I  dare  say  that  I  noted
them  for  near  twenty  years.     The  report  invariably  stated  that
the  harvest  was  below  an  average.    Now  as  such  a  statement,
annually   repeated,    constitutes   an  arithmetical   impossibility,  I.
