Page:The Australian Commonwealth and her relation to the British Empire.djvu/8

 of $300,000,000, and there are no less than—and when you consider our population, it is a remarkable total—there are no less than 1,600,000 individual accounts in the savings banks of Australia. Every man and woman in Australia can claim if need be a liberal old age pension when 65, and can get it before if they break down and are unable to work.

Then railways. I think one of the grandest things about Canada is the marvellous enterprise which you have shown in railway construction. I think some of your railways are among the grandest monuments of man's enterprise on the face of the world to-day. (Applause.) But we have already 18,000 miles of rail, 2,000 private and 16,000 miles belonging to the people. (Applause.) In spite of the fact that those railways were authorized by political bodies, I am glad to be able to tell you that, taking the whole of these public railways of 16,000 miles, they yield already enough to pay all working expenses, all renewals, all the interest on the loans borrowed for their construction, and return besides a surplus of 1,000,000 pounds sterling into the public treasury. (Applause.) If that is so in the very beginnings of Australia, you can imagine the untold wealth which awaits the Australian railway system in the future. There are no dividends, of course, to be paid; as the railways increase in prosperity the rates on the passages and the freights go down. (Applause.)

Our trade. Our imports are $335,000,000, our exports $400,000,000—a total trade of $735,000,000. I am very glad to be able to tell the loyal men of Canada that—far removed as we are from the ancestral home—in our trade 75 per cent, of all our purchases from the world are bought within the British Empire. (Applause.) Twenty-five per cent, of our trade goes to all the rest of the world; and when you remember that there are many large articles of import which must be bought from foreign countries, for natural reasons, I think you will admit that Australia is showing in the practical sphere of commercial and industrial life the magnificent loyalty which she feels for the British Empire. (Applause).

One of the finest things, I think, in the public policy of Canada was that handsome tariff preference you gave to the people of the