Page:The empire and the century.djvu/104

 food-supplies and raw material from the United States and Argentina as to those from the Dominion and the Commonwealth. War is an occasional episode in the life of nations. Commerce is its constant element. At present Canada gains nothing from the navy that is not gained also by a competitive agricultural country like Argentina, developing by the use of the British market almost equally fast. If the Colonies are to enter into a fast partnership with regard to the navy, they will require a commercial as well as a strategical inducement. Thus the finance of sea-power under the existing fiscal system—and the probable bearing upon Imperial defence of an alteration of that system will be considered later—must continue to be supported by the population of the Mother Country only. English trade, still taxed through the National Debt for the past struggles by which the Empire was won, as well as for the fleet which retains it, enjoys—apart from the preference movement as already applied—no advantage in the Colonies and India that American and German trade does not enjoy. This is a case of special taxation without special advantage where the most austere of the classical economists might consistently have supported a policy of preferential tariffs as a practical measure.

Meanwhile, however, we must consider the conditions not as they may be or ought to be, but as they are. For all vital purposes of the competition for trade and sea-power we have but a population of 43,000,000 in the Mother Country, as compared with one of 61,000,000 in Germany and about 83,000,000 in the United States. But the Kaiser's subjects increase more than twice as fast as ours; the population under the American flag grows more than three times as rapidly. The stream of emigration flows towards the Republic in broadening rather than diminishing volume, and even in Germany the rate of acceleration in numbers is increasing. In a dozen years from now—how swiftly such a period passes in politics we know—the United States will have a population of 100,000,000; that of the German Empire will