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coal the way is blocked by the Miners' Federation. That body says in effect: The coal-mines of the kingdom are ours. You shall have no coal for your homes, for your factories, for your railways, for your ships, except upon our terms. To-day it is a minimum wage we demand. To-morrow it will be something else. We have you by the throat, and we mean to hold you to ransom.'

HAROLD Cox.

ENGLAND'S

ECONOMIC

POSITION AND

HER FINANCIAL RELATIONS WITH

SCOTLAND AND IRELAND

It is not necessary at this moment to emphasise the importance of an inquiry into the financial relations of England with Scotland and Ireland. The Government are about to introduce a measure providing, inter alia, for the readjustment of the financial relations of Ireland with Great Britain. In order to form a sound judgment upon the equity and practicability of the financial clauses of the Home Rule Bill, it is essential that the taxpayers of Great Britain should have a full knowledge of the present economic position of each of the three Kingdoms and their financial relations with each other. The writer has already discussed the positions of Ireland and Scotland 2; and in the following pages it is hoped to complete the study of the problem of the Federal finance of the United Kingdom by a detailed statement of the economic position of England and her financial relations with her two partners.

The first point to which attention must be directed is that as to population. It has been estimated that in 1700 the population of England and Wales was probably 6,000,000. The first Government census was taken in 1801, when the results were as follows: England, 8,598,825; Wales, 557,346; Scotland, 1,678,452-total, 10,834,623. At the second census, which was taken in 1811, the figures were as follows: England, 9,826,042; Wales, 628,487; Scotland, 1,884,044-total, 12,338,573. The population of Ireland was enumerated for the first time in 1813; and from 1821 onwards the particulars are available of the population of each division of the United Kingdom, and they are set out hereunder. (It was originally intended to submit a separate memorandum on the economic position of Wales, but the data available are too meagre and unreliable to admit of the presentation of a statement

1 Vide Nineteenth Century and After for October 1911.

'Paper read before the Royal Statistical Society, December 19, 1911, vide Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, January 1912.

which would have any real value, and the figures relating to Wales have therefore been incorporated with those of England.)

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Several features of great interest are revealed by the figures contained in the foregoing table. In the first place, it will be observed that in the ninety years that have intervened since the first census of the United Kingdom was taken, England and Wales's proportion of the total population has increased from 57.4 per cent. to 79.8 per cent. These figures establish the growing predominance of England. In 1821 England alone contained 54 per cent. of the total population of the United Kingdom; at the last census her percentage was 75.3. It is instructive to note also the growth of population in Wales. In 1821 Wales contained 717,458 inhabitants. In 1911 her population numbered 2,027,610, an increase during the ninety years of 1,310,152, or 182 per cent. Within the same period the population of England increased to the extent of 22,764,881, or 201 per cent.; that of Scotland to the extent of 2,667,924, or 128 per cent. ; while that of Ireland decreased by no less than 2,419,876, or 35 per cent. Throughout the period covered by the census returns the ratio which the population of Scotland bore to the aggregate for the United Kingdom remained in the neighbourhood of 10 per cent. with remarkable uniformity. In 1821 the population of Ireland was three-and-a-quarter times as large as the population of Scotland, and it constituted 32.6 per cent. of the population of the United Kingdom. At the date of the last census Ireland only contained 4,381,951 inhabitants, or 377,494 less than the population of Scotland, and only 9.68 per cent. of the total population of the United Kingdom. In 1821 Wales contained 3.4 per cent. of the total population of the United Kingdom; in 1911 her proportion of the aggregate increased to 4.5 per cent. The intercensal increase of England between 1901 and 1911 was only 10.5 per cent., which was by far the lowest ratio of increase recorded since 1821. Wales, on the other hand, had an intercensal increase of 18.1 per cent., the highest ratio of increase she has yet attained. The

increase of population in Scotland was only 6.4 per cent., the lowest rate of increase reported for any intercensal period with the exception of 1851-61. The decrease of population in Ireland was only 1.7 per cent., which was by far the lowest ratio of decrease reported since 1851.

No doubt the large scale on which emigration has proceeded from Great Britain during the past ten years is largely responsible for the check which has been experienced to the growth of population in England and Scotland. The official returns with regard to emigration are not yet very satisfactory. They show in detail the number of persons leaving each port of the United Kingdom, but they do not distinguish their nationality, i.e. whether Scottish, Welsh or English, nor do they distinguish emigrants from ordinary passengers. During the ten years 1902-11, 3,110,617 passengers of British nationality proceeded from the United Kingdom to countries outside Europe; while 1,431,250 passengers of British nationality entered the United Kingdom from countries out of Europe. It may, therefore, be assumed that in ten years no fewer than 1,779,367 British subjects emigrated, giving an average of 177,936 per annum. This loss of population is a serious economic factor and its gravity is emphasised by the fact that in recent years there has been a steady increase of emigration from both Scotland and England. During 1911 the volume of emigration reached the highest total yet recorded—namely, 270,244; and, so far as it is possible to form a judgment, this aggregate was provided from the different divisions of the United Kingdom as follows-namely, England, 179,714; Wales, 5355; Scotland, 61,348; and Ireland, 23,827. One of the most satisfactory features of this question is the growing tendency for British emigrants to settle within the Empire. Out of the total departures during 1911, amounting to 270,244, no fewer than 217,516 went to the British Empire134,900 to Canada, 58,700 to Australia, and 23,916 to other parts of the Empire.

The decline in the agricultural population of Great Britain, which has formed a prominent feature of the census returns for the past sixty years, has materially helped to swell the volume of emigration. In 1861 the total number of persons engaged in agriculture in England and Wales was 1,454,222; and at the census of 1901 the number thus employed had fallen to 868,029, a' decline of 586,193, or 40 per cent. In 1906 the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries instituted a valuable inquiry with regard to the movement of agricultural population and the causes which have affected it. A considerable number of circular letters of inquiry were issued by the Board to their staff of agricultural correspondents. Among the causes assigned for a smaller demand for labour on the farm was the necessity imposed upon farmers to

reduce their expenditure by reason of low prices and diminished capital. In this connexion it is instructive to note that in 1905 Sir R. H. Inglis Palgrave estimated the losses of agriculture in the United Kingdom between the years 1872-77 and 1904 at about 1,600,000,000l. Under the pressure of economic necessity the farmers have altered their methods of farming as far as possible, with a view to economising labour. One of the most important and practically universal changes referred to by the correspondents was the laying down of land to grass. In the twenty years 1881 to 1901 there was a loss of 2,000,000 acres of arable land in England from this cause, which is estimated to have thrown between 60,000 and 80,000 agricultural labourers out of work. Another and still more potent influence has been the introduction of labour-saving machinery; and it is claimed that the saving of labour from this cause on the 15,000,000 acres of arable land that still remain under the plough was greater than on the 2,000,000 acres laid down to grass. Concurrently with these adverse influences affecting the demand there has been an increased desire on the part of the labourers to leave the land, and the higher wages and the attractions of town life have tended to increase the volume of rural migration.

Notwithstanding these adverse influences, agriculture remains one of our most important industries. It is true that in England the value of the gross output of the cotton industry exceeds the value of the agricultural production, but the number of workers employed in agriculture is still greater than in any other industry. The following may be submitted as an estimate of the value of a year's agricultural production in England and Wales, on the basis of the prices and crops, etc., of 1910, namely:

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The sea fisheries of England and Wales are of considerable and growing importance. The value of the fish landed at English and Welsh ports in 1910 was 8,194,2771.

The decline of the agricultural industry in England and Wales has, of course, coincided with a vast expansion of their manufacturing and extractive industries. At the beginning of the nineteenth century England was well on the way to become an

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