from the Report of the Royal Commission on Technical Instruction that foreign nations had outstripped us in technical knowledge, and in the arts and sciences as applied to commerce. During the succeeding generation up till our own hour, we have been regaining this ground. Accordingly, for full thirty years, our industry has developed under conditions of stress and rivalry which are sure to continue in the future, and which therefore have already exposed to view the fundamental facts of our position.
There is an essential factor in the economic situation of England making decidedly for instability and weakness, and explanatory of most of our past and present distresses. Our area is very limited; our soil is, on the whole, poor and unable to supply even a third of our food; our climate is northern, inclement, and incapable of producing the raw materials of our industries, much less the luxuries of civilisation; finally, our mineral resources in regard to such essentials of commerce as copper, tin, lead, zinc, gold, silver, and so forth, are slight or non-existent. To exercise no initial control over the production of these requisites, and to have to import them from far over sea, is a radical flaw in our situation, compromising in a measure the solidity of our whole industrial structure.
There is, however, another essential factor in our position which, to some degree, counteracts this grave default of Nature. In the extent and rich-
