the principles that have brought their race all its signal prosperity. It may be held, then, that with all the various grades of self-governing communities which form the British nation at the present time, some means of expression is surely attainable which shall make all acknowledge in their various degrees of constitutional spontaneity the essential utility and so the absolutely binding nature of freedom of exchange within the boundaries of the Empire.

The St. Stephen's Parliament takes direct fiscal charge of most of our colonies. Many of these have been with extraordinary success. made into absolutely free ports. Such are the thriving entrepôts of commerce, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Gibraltar. There remain. those groups of colonies possessing the right of spontaneous action in this matter-in Canada, in Australia, and in South Africa.

The three cases differ essentially from one another. In Canada we have a community of some four millions in political contiguity to an energetic foreign state of some fifty millions. This state, keeping closed its own markets against Canadian produce, attempted to flood Canadian markets. The Canadians, in natural pique, raised up the wall of a high tariff to stay this evil. This policy has been inspired by two motives, the one to force the United States to a policy of reciprocity at all events, if not of mutual free trade; the other simply to reserve the Canadian market at all events for Canadian produce. This latter is no doubt the policy most in favour with Canadians. They feel there is dangerous similarity between the products of Canada and of the States, these being the resultants of similar natural and human forces. They know the competition of the larger threatens to swamp that of the smaller. Canada feels that if she be shut out from her own market her case is hopeless; and yet the case is little mended by her shutting herself up in her own market. Happily for Canada she yet retains, if she will, the market of the world through England. England is eager to buy of Canada if Canada will only buy of England; and in this case there is no destructive competition because the products exchanged are the resultants of very diverse natural and human forces. Such a policy at once opens up the whole world as a market for Canadian produce. It enables Canada to compete, at insuperable advantage, with the United States for English custom. Englishmen will naturally purchase American produce where they can pay for it in kind.' Trade always flows in those channels where it meets with least obstruction. The ship that leaves England to load with wheat will always go by preference to that port where an outward cargo of English products can be sold with least obstruction.

The case of the Australias is of a totally different character. Here we have seven large colonies at the present existing in total fiscal independence of one another. But as these seven colonies fill up with population they feel more and more their geographical contiguity; and already, in addition to the increasing expense of col

lection along thousands of miles of border, all the evils incident to fettered intercourse are rapidly developing. At the recent conference in Sydney every colony, with the single exception of Victoria, strongly supported a movement in favour of a uniform and low tariff for all the Australasian colonies.

And Australians are looking further afield. They know that each one's staple products-wool, and wine, and gold, and wheat, and meatare exactly similar; the resultants of precisely similar natural and human forces. Thus, if they would achieve a right prosperity, they must exchange them with other commodities, the resultants of differing natural and human forces. This is necessary if they would secure the rewards due to their peculiar productions. Australians, both before and after the question of a customs union amongst themselves, will be ready to acknowledge the high benefits of assured freedom of exchange in the widespreading and varied market of the British Empire.

The case of South Africa just now occupies prominent public attention. The quarter-million of Europeans colonising South Africa have been and are unable to hold their own physically with the vast hordes of natives within and without the territory they have taken on themselves to civilise. The rest of the Empire aids them in this their uphill task. Were it not for this aid, the European element in South Africa would long ago have been driven into the sea. The people of England are paying to retain South Africa as a market for their wares and as an area of supply. They have the right, let us hope they will have the reason, to see to it that they are repaid by the mutual benefits of freedom of commercial intercourse. The Cape Colony, alone in South Africa, has fiscal independence of the Home Government. But the Cape is as much interested as any to secure permanent European supremacy over the African natives. This can only be secured by the permanence of English aid, and the price of this, a price the wise men at the Cape will, for their own interest, willingly pay, is the secured assurance of freedom of exchange with the rest of the Empire.

All the colonies must feel that commercial union is even more important for them than for England. They know they obtain, by means of continued connection with England, safety and credit; those two pillars of prosperity which alone support a community from sinking under hostile aggression or commercial restriction. But this connection is a tie which must depend in the main on identity of material interests. And this identity can only be preserved by the means of commercial union.

All these colonies do feel that commercial union is desirable. Indeed we have just witnessed in England what may be described as the first combined act of our colonies on approaching manhood; the first great move in Imperial politics that has originated in the

colonies. Accredited representatives of their interests have met in London, and with the assistance of leading Englishmen have founded an association for the promotion of the commercial interests of the British Empire, and for the preservation of its unity and integrity to draw closer the trade relations between its various component territories.' This is a startling reply to those who in ignorance conceived that the colonists, the very men who, by the indubitable standard of practical success, were admittedly the best judges, made no move in the matter. That the Colonists should come to England and agitate in favour of low tariffs throughout the Empire is a most welcome sign of the increased vitality of the English race. It remains for those to whom the prosperity of their nation is matter of concern to support and recognise this wholesome movement.

The British Constitution has, then, to be drawn upon to provide for a new development which has grown up with the growth of the Empire, and which presses on us as the inseparable accompaniment of the continued prosperity of the Empire. It needs no keen sight to see that community of material interests is crying aloud for unfettered commercial intercourse; and we know that community of national sentiment and tradition, as well as of enterprise and industry, yet flourishes in the nation; and that this community is the one powerful agent in any national effort. We have a national consciousness of the right end: statesmanship has to see that efficient means are adopted to give effect to this consciousness.

I must crave pardon for mentioning that the one main fact graven on my own mind after sojourning in nearly every one of our colonies is the fact that the English nation, if it remains in close commercial union, is only in the infancy of its career. All great statesmen who have understood our colonies have come to this conclusion. Earl Russell summarised the case in the strong words, "There is no greater benefit to mankind that a statesman can propose to himself than the consolidation of the British Empire.'

And great statesmen have discussed the means to this end. Lord Grey, in an article in the Nineteenth Century, has shown most amply and conclusively the great material injury that attempts at protection in our colonies have done to their own individual prosperity as well as to the commerce and industries of Great Britain. He laments with great power of reason the policy that has prevailed in late years of relinquishing the control previously exerted by the, Imperial Parliament over the commercial policies of our colonies; and he would resuscitate the ancient Committee of Council for Trade and Plantations; and, with the aid of the various Agents-General of our selfgoverning colonies, set up in England a body of such authority and influence as to justify imperial supervision of all Colonial commercial policy in the spirit of justice to all members of the Empire.

It may not be without advantage to set side by side with this yet

another scheme with similar aim. The essential principle of procedure is simple. The Imperial Parliament resumes its supreme control over the commercial as distinct from the fiscal policies of the Empire; but in so doing it takes ample cognisance of the fact that large portions of the Empire have a prescriptive constitutional voice in this rearrangement. Indeed, action should be taken on the invitation of the various self-governing colonies. There must be combination and mutual agreement, quasi-diplomatic if necessary, in favour of low tariffs throughout the Empire. And the Imperial Parliament will be charged with the task of defending and maintaining for the future this new charter of industrial prosperity. It is true the United States will not allow local tariffs even for the purpose of raising revenue; but the low tariff necessary for revenue purposes is practically but little hindrance to trade. All that is necessary is that, by the direct means of the spontaneous action of enlightened local government, and by the indirect influence of advice and information, the various communities of the British Empire may come to subscribe, each in its own degree of autonomous action, to an agreement to keep its tariff low. For this purpose one of two principles would suffice. Earl Russell suggested the one, viz., that no customs duties should exceed a certain ad valorem percentage. A second principle would be the rule that no customs duty be levied for any purpose save that of raising revenue. Thus could be secured the inauguration of that free exchange of products between all Englishmen which, if we regard the teachings of the past, augurs a future of unprecedented prosperity.

I have reserved till the last what is perhaps the most important point in the whole case; and that is the question as to the position such a commercially unified Empire is to hold to outsiders. The courses possible are practically reduced to two-the one the exclusion of outsiders, the other the non-exclusion of outsiders.

To exclude outsiders is to appeal to the selfish concurrence of one or two interests affected favourably by such action. It is not and cannot be denied that the nation as a whole must be the loser. All see there is no reason in a policy which shuts off supplies and custom other communities are willing to afford. The advocates of this policy have but one plea that is likely to obtain patient hearing. This is the plea that high duties to those outside the union are the sole means to inducing those outsiders to lower their tariffs and join the union.

It is even said that without some such national fence colonies themselves will be loth to join. I have already given the grand answer to this contention in noting the recent actions and expressions proceeding from the colonies themselves. This point is sometimes not quite grasped in high places; the feelings and acts of two only of our fifty colonies, because they chance to be feelings and acts that

run counter to the general national tendencies, are apt to assume undue prominence, and have even been regarded as typical of the acts and feelings of the whole. They are distinctly not so. All the encouragement our colonies require is the guarantee that low tariffs shall exist en permanence in all British markets.

The alternative plan, the non-exclusion of outsiders, implies a low tariff for all without exception. It is a plan which will ultimately prevail if only we pay any heed whatever to reason, experience, and expediency. A low tariff all over this vast agglomeration of English markets will supply all these markets with products at their lowest cost of production. Each English community will then batten on the fact, which has done so much to enrich England, that whatever it uses or consumes will be obtained at the lowest cost possible. This is the one main condition of profitable production. This plan prevents any portion of the nation wasting its energies on products that can be produced cheaper elsewhere.

For instance, for many years to come the colonies, if they judge aright of their real economic position, will be the natural markets for manufactures, the natural producers of raw materials. Manufactories only thrive in centres of dense population. Sparse populations, occupying vast tracts of fertile and virgin soil, if they would profit most, will produce cotton, and wool, and wheat, and minerals. Among such populations, if there is no baneful interference of high tariffs to subvert the natural order of prosperity, our home manufacturers will be assured natural and extensive markets for their wares, and reliable and inexhaustible supplies of those raw materials and food-stuffs which we are prevented producing in these islands by reason of the fact that our manufactures employ a population too dense for so utilising our limited area of soil. We have to live on and not out of our soil, because we are in the manufacturing and not the pastoral or agricultural stage. Our colonies are in these other stages, and to keep tariffs low is to enable all to profit by one another's opportunities through the medium of free exchange.

That a high tariff for outsiders is unnecessary, we see when we remember the natural expediency of a low tariff. Trade is forced, by the insuperable power of its own inherent attributes, to flow along that channel which has fewest obstructions. Interchange of products always has and always will thrive and increase most where there are fewest restrictions. To that community in which low tariffs are established, with certainty of no upward change, trade will be diverted by the damming obstructions of high tariffs elsewhere. In this we shall find the natural sanction' that low tariffs, permanently established over the British Empire, will increase the interchange of products, and in so far develope every industry and enterprise.

There will be a natural tendency to buy our wheat of Canada and not of the States when we know our manufacturers meet with no