Page:Bearing and Importance of Commercial Treaties in the Twentieth Century, 1906.djvu/17

 light of reason and respect for each other's difficulties and interests.

Incidentally, I may say it is my experience that reason and honest, straightforward conduct in international relations always eventually come out victorious, just as the reasonable, straightforward, honest man in business is always eventually appreciated in his trade. A leading German man of business recently observed to me, "We would rather do business with an Englishman at a slight diminution of profit than with men of any other nation." I have heard the same thing said in France. Why? Because the Englishman is not a chicaneur: because he does not resort to tricks to get out of his bargain, if it does not suit him to go on with it: because he values his self-respect and his fair-mindedness as an asset in his business, and has confidence that they pay better in the long run than the shams and pretences and other poorspirited, hypocritical, unmanly methods of some of his competitors.

Let us now examine our relations with the United States of America, which are in sore need of treaty regulation.

The Dingley Tariff Act, it will be remembered, was passed at an extraordinary session called by President McKinley, in March, 1897. It is entitled "An Act to Provide Revenue for the Government and to Encourage the Industries of the United States." It contained a clause, "That for the purpose of equalising the trade of the United States with foreign countries and their colonies producing and exporting to this country" (i.e., the U.S.A.) "in respect of the following articles:—Argols or crude tartar or wine lees, crude; brandies or other spirits