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 IMPERIAL DEFENCE. not found much favour in Australia. To discuss the trade relations and the trade policies of the various British dominions would take an address in itself. The trade to be attracted by any change in our fiscal policy is not the main volume which we possess already, but a small fraction. The chief object to be gained is that Australian, Canadian, and South African producers would receive an advantage in the markets of the mother country that would enable them to compete even more successfully than at present with other producers of food and raw material, whether in the Argentine Republic or the United States, and that this would increase the attractiveness of British Colonies as a field for British settlement and the employment of British capital. Though a Liberal and though a Free Trader I might be prepared under certain circumstances to vote in favour of a Customs Union, but there is no indication at present that the people of the United Kingdom are prepared to revolutionise the fiscal policy, under which the progress of the last sixty years has been achieved.

It is far more possible and of infinitely greater importance that we should be more closely united for the purposes of defence. Before we can come to any conclusion as to the part which each member of the British dominions ought to play in the defence of the whole, we must understand the general principles on which the defence of the Empire rests. It is for this reason that I propose to devote the main portion of this address to the consideration of these principles.

The main principle which I wish to lay down at the outset is that the defence of the Empire rests absolutely on our power to retain the command of the 39