Page:What colonial preference means.djvu/14

12 It will be seen that, taken as a whole, approximately seven-tenths of our raw materials come to us from foreign countries, two-tenths from self-governing Colonies, and one-tenth from other British possessions. The prospect of taxing the articles embraced in the table is little short of appalling. We are, to begin with, to pay £20,000,000 to £50,000,000 more for our food, and then to pay £10,000,000 or £20,000,000 (at 5 or 10 per cent.) on the materials imported for our manufactures. Besides this we are to pay a similar percentage of increase for such of our raw materials (wool and timber, for instance) which we also produce at home. The case of raw materials also differs materially from that of food, inasmuch as a far larger proportion is produced in British oversea possessions other than self-governing Colonies. Why should India and the Crown Colonies be left in the cold while the Dominions of Canada and New Zealand (the latter with about the population of Birmingham) and the Commonwealth of Australia receive their preferential millions? Such favouritism would be grossly unfair. It is true that India, with its 300,000,000 of people, objects to the preferences asked for by the 11,000,000 self-governing colonists. But India, like the Mother Country, is said to be turning from the new light illuminating the Antipodes and British North America, to say nothing of that emitted by the economic sages inhabiting South Africa. Yet the Mother Country would have to be impartial and to scatter its gifts fairly all round among its children. It is worth considering some of the details of our imports of raw materials, for it will be seen that they affect practically every interest in the country except the coal miners. The metal workers, the textile weavers in Lancashire and Yorkshire, the boot-makers in Nottingham, the builders, the newspaper people (including those violent Protectionists the yellow halfpennies), the