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 place at the disposal of all the sister States of the Empire, practical information as to their respective industrial conditions and commercial requirements.

I have endeavoured throughout this article to indicate briefly the part trade is playing in the evolution of a united Empire. Attention has been called to the steady growth of common obligations, to the close dependence—largely, but not wholly, financial—of most of the Colonies upon the Mother Country, to the vast fabric of reciprocal interests which not only unite the Colonies to the Mother Country, but are binding them with increasing strength to each other The old simple trade relationship of Mother Country and Colonies, in which the one supplied practically all requirements of manufactured goods and the other paid for them in raw materials, has passed away, and has been replaced by something far more highly organized and complicated. One by one the great Colonies are ceasing to be dependents, and are taking their places as allies of the Mother Country in the struggle for the world's trade, bringing to her aid all the wealth of their natural and developed resources. It is clear that in the variety of its commercial activities, in the multiplicity and abundance of its products, the British Empire is rapidly becoming a self-sufficing commercial State.

Is it destined to fulfil its great possibilities? Will the elements of solidarity or of separation prove the stronger? The answer, in my opinion, rests with us. The forces which tend to divide us can, with care and forethought, be weakened, while those which draw us together can be increased in strength. Political and commercial influences act and react upon each other. As was said earlier, all the deep-lying causes which are drawing the Empire into more intimate political relations are also bringing it into closer commercial relations, and vice versâ. We actually see the political concentration of the Empire taking place before our eyes in the gradual federation of the great groups of self-governing Colonies. The North American Colonies are already merged in