Page:The empire and the century.djvu/142

 goes down. 'We have brothers there.' We have only not enough of them. The main end of policy, aiming to establish the only basis broad and firm enough for the British Empire to rest upon, is to see British settlers spreading where was none before. Their hand-clasp will be the 'sordid bond.' It would be difficult to characterize the imbecility of that phrase. Citizens of the same State, unless that State is in decay, are promoting each other's interests every day of their fives. They take the national sentiment for granted, but they know that the worth of it depends upon a mutually helpful activity. As walking is a series of little falls, the progress of national prosperity in any country means the continued inter-weaving of an infinity of 'sordid little bonds.' If the phrase had any meaning, it would be a strong argument for low wages. Imperial trade promotes the growth of British population and power upon both sides of the exchange; our foreign trade promotes it only upon one; the former—transactions being nominally equal—is twice the political value of the latter. And upon the decision with which we grasp and the vigour with which we apply this principle the future of the British Empire depends. We have now to examine in this light the present situation and further possibilities of British trade in the third sphere of our commerce, and to show that the parallel increase of home production and colonial population under preferential arrangements now forms the only possible solution of our politico-economic problem.

X.

It is essential that the reader's mind should have at this point a perfectly distinct impression that, as regards foreign trade pure and simple, British supremacy is not a thing in jeopardy, but a thing which has already disappeared. The leading nation in foreign trade is Germany, and without our Colonies we should be at the present moment a bad second. In 1904, exceptionally favourable to our returns owing to the inflated values of cotton, British exports to the chief protected