Page:What colonial preference means.djvu/8

6 Not content with their natural development in opening up virgin continents, our Colonies, hasting to emulate old communities, wish also to manufacture, a natural ambition which in the course of years would be fulfilled without injury, but which can only be attained at present by Protection: that is, by hindering their normal development by raising the cost of living, and thus delaying the growth of agriculture, of mining, and of other exploitations of the soil. All this, however, has nothing to do with us at home. We have given our colonists self-government, and this includes absolute fiscal freedom, even when they proceed to shut out by duties those manufactures by which the Mother Country lives. We think they are mistaken, but we do not complain, for they are free to do as they please. Of late years, however, the self-governing colonists have gone further, and they now ask the Mother Country, which already gives them practically absolute freedom to enter her markets, to go further and to surtax the imports of foreign countries.

An immense amount has recently been heard of Colonial Preferences, and any amount of laudable sentiment has been imported into the question. This, however, is a matter of business, and it has to be regarded commercially, which is the main, if not the only, standpoint from which a change in our fiscal system could be justified. We design, therefore, to look at this particular proposal in the cold light of statistics, to see what it involves arithmetically regarded and what results its adoption would be likely to have on the preponderating partners in the Empire—the 40,000,000 Britons at home, as compared with the 11,000,000 abroad. Mr. Chamberlain, the apostle of the Protectionist revival, has himself stated what is indeed obvious, that we cannot give pre-