Page:What colonial preference means.djvu/15

13, the cattle-food makers (and through them the farmers), would all be severely hit. What with dearer food and dearer materials, it would be impossible for the British consumer, paying much more for his nourishment, to pay more also for his clothes, his furniture, and his houses. As regards our exports of manufactures, they would come more or less to an end without a liberal system of drawbacks, ending inevitably in export bounties, which, again, would have to be paid by the home consumer. In calculating these drawbacks the duty on the raw material, the extra wages necessary to pay for dearer food, the larger capital employed, and the requisite return upon it would all have to be considered. The drawbacks would, no doubt, be fixed with the aid of some such impartial body as the Tariff Commission, with all the openings for widespread political corruption which such a system would lead to, as it has done in most Protectionist countries. These are a few of the grounds on which the taxation of raw materials is unthinkable, though it would logically and inevitably follow if we adopted Colonial Preference.

The next great division in our Imports need not delay us long from the colonial point of view, for our self-governing Colonies send us practically no manufactures. The following analysis is, however, important to the Mother Country from a different point of view.