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 tangible interest in the support of the fleet and the preservation of the whole fabric of Empire than they now possess. And if we believe with Sir Michael Hicks-Beach—as the overwhelming majority of Englishmen, whether as yet fiscal reformers or not, do believe—that the continued safety and greatness of our Imperial existence depends upon securing the cooperation of the Colonies, the refusal to make a special use of our present economic power for the purpose of developing population in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Transvaal, rather than in the United States and Argentina, can form no part of any intelligible system of politics.

XII.

That preference would actually develop the Colonies is a point not susceptible of dispute. Mr. Chamberlain's opponents concede that point by each of the mutually-destructive arguments they advance against shifting the food-taxation which we have always had, and cannot dispense with, from tea and sugar to wheat and meat. They admit (1) that the Colonies would be developed when they declare that it would raise the price of agricultural produce, since in that case emigration would flock to the Colonies to share the benefit, and also when they declare (2) that preference would complete the ruin of the farmer by flooding the home market with an increased supply of still cheaper corn. For, again, the Colonies could only cheapen supply to that degree by enlarging their agricultural population.

Let us repeat once more that there is no substitute for this market. Foreign growers attempting to find compensation elsewhere for the operation of preference in this country would still find themselves confronted in every other important consuming centre in the world by agrarian tariffs many times as high as any duties that Mr. Chamberlain suggests or democracy would ever tolerate. Foreign countries now sending us our food supplies would either have to sell cheaper or to reduce production. That they would be gradually