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 to emphasize the fact—wherever they hurt us economically. They directly attack the very sinews of Empire. Free import without reciprocity strengthens the fibre of the competitive Powers in every element, human and financial, of their political as well as of their economic strength. This is why the problems of our commercial dealings with foreign countries and the Colonies respectively are not separate, but one. We cannot part the retaliation issue from the preference issue. Hostile tariffs on the one, free imports on the other, acting together, the former to diminish British manufacturing trade, the latter to increase foreign manufacturing trade, cut at the root of our relative power and work against the maintenance of Empire.

While we have kept an unconditionally open market for all comers, the tariffs against our own trade have risen with impunity. Under the same circumstances they will continue to rise. Foreign producers enjoy a system of privilege in their home market and equality in ours which enables them to make the best of both worlds; only a very credulous mind can expect them to abandon, and of their own initiative, a position by which their manufactured exports to us must continue to flourish, while ours to them must continue to decline. We have lately reached another well-marked stage in this process. The continental treaties pivoting on the new German tariff come into operation next year. They will put up a higher wall round the Central European markets, containing four-fifths of the population of the Continent; and, in spite of the nominal equality supposed to be secured by the 'most favoured nation' clause, we shall find that as British trade was unrepresented in the negotiations it will be hardest hit in the result. We cannot doubt that much of our improved trade with Germany this year means an anticipation by importers in that country of the inevitable consequences of the tariff. Our European trade in British manufacture is, in short (this has been shown beyond any possibility of challenge), a withering branch,