270 ENGLISH SAGA

ill together. The generous note first struck by Chamberlain
became lost in a cacophony of log-rolling and auctioneering
of rival figures.

Though the official Conservative Party refused to join open
issue with them over protection, the general election of 1905
was won by the Liberals—largely on the cry of "Hands Off the
People's Bread." Actually the addition to the price of the loaf
involved in Chamberlain's original proposal of giving preference
in the home market to imperial corn-growers would have been
negligible. Owing to revolutionary changes in popular feeding
habijs, caused by new methods of ocean storage, bread was no
longer the staple dietary of the masses. But in a conservative
country the old parrot-cry sufficed.

The real strength of Free Trade lay not in its power to
provision England cheaply but in the vested interests that

. in sixty years of commercial expansion had grown round its
practice. A considered policy of imperial development might
in the course of comparatively few years have afforded the
British consumer and manufacturer adequate alternatives to
most of the cheap food and raw materials bought from the
foreigner. By guiding credit into the new area of preferential
trade* and by adequately-financed facilities for migration, stable
markets for British industrial exports could have been created in
an expanding Empire. They would have involved some immediate
sacrifice. But it would have been amply justified in, say, 1940.
But such a policy, however wise as a form of national insurance,
would have involved a transfer of trade and investment from
old-established into unproved channels. It scared cautious minds
and threatened vested interests. In an old and rich country both
were immensely powerful. With the extension of the franchise
and the ever-growing cost of electoral organisation, both the
main political parties were becoming dependent on the financial
support of the City. And the City, as opposed to the provincial
manufacturers, was opposed to any change in the country's
trade and financial policy.

Behind the City was the ordinary investor. Since the general
adoption of the limited liability principle an ever-growing

• number of citizens had obtained a shareholder's interest in
commerce. Their money was invested in British companies
trading with foreign countries in every part of the world.
Their dividends were paid by the imports with which those