fierce demand for it.
But these food taxes by which you seek to bind the Empire together—these curious links of Empire which you are asking us to forge laboriously now—would be irremovable, and upon them would descend the whole weight and burden of popular anger in time of suffering. They would be irremovable, because fixed by treaty with self-governing Dominions scattered about all over the world, and in return for those duties we should have received concessions in Colonial tariffs on the basis of which their industries would have grown up tier upon tier through a long period of time.
Although, no doubt, another Conference hastily assembled might be able to break the shackle which would fasten us—to break that fiscal bond which would join us together and release us from the obligation—that might take a great deal of time. Many Parliaments and Governments would have to be consulted, and all the difficulties of distance would intervene to prevent a speedy relief from that deadlock. If the day comes in this country when you have a stern demand—and an overwhelming demand of a Parliament, backed by a vast population suffering acutely from high food-prices—that the taxes should be removed, and on the other hand the Minister in charge has to get up and say that he will bring the matter before the next Colonial Conference two years hence, or that he will address the representatives of the Australian or Canadian Governments through the agency of the Colonial Office, and that in the meanwhile nothing can be done—when you have produced that situation, then, indeed, you will have exposed the fabric of the British Empire to a wrench and a shock which it has never before received, and which any one who cares about it, cannot fail to hope that it may never sustain.
Such a deadlock could not be relieved merely by goodwill on either side. When you begin to deflect the course of trade, you deflect it in all directions and for all time in both countries which are parties to the bargain. Your industries in your respective Colonies would have exposed themselves to a more severe competition from British goods in their markets, and would have adjusted themselves on a different basis, in consequence. Some Colonial producers would have made sacrifices in that respect for the sake of certain advantages which were to be gained by other producers in their country through a favoured entry into our market. That one side of the bargain could be suddenly removed, without inflicting injustice on the other party to the bargain, appears to me an impossibility.
I submit that preferences, even if economically desirable, would prove an element of strain and discord in the structure and system of the British Empire. Why, even in this Conference, what has been the one subject on which we have differed sharply? It has been this question of preference. It has been the one apple of discord which has been thrown into the arena of our discussions. It is quite true we meet here with a great fund of goodwill on everybody's part, on the part of the Mother Country and on the part of the representatives of the self-governing Dominions—a great fund of goodwill which has been accumulated over a long period of time when each party to this great confederation has been free to pursue its own line of development unchecked and untrammelled by interference from the other.
We have that to start upon, and consequently have been able to discuss in a very frank and friendly manner all sorts of questions. We have witnessed the spectacle of the British Minister in charge of the trade of this country defending at length and in detail the fiscal system—the purely domestic, internal fiscal system of this country—from very severe, though perfectly friendly and courteous criticism on the part of the other self-governing communities. If that fund of goodwill to which I have referred had been lacking, if ever a Conference had been called together when there was an actual anti-colonial party in existence, when there was really a deep hatred in the minds of a large portion of the people of this country against the Colonies and against taxation which was imposed at the request or desire of the Colonies, then I think it is quite possible that a Conference such as this would not pass off in the smooth and friendly manner in which this has passed off.
You would hear recrimination and reproaches exchanged across the table; you would hear assertions made that the representatives of the different States who were parties to the Conference were not really representatives of the true opinion of their respective populations, that the trend of opinion in the country which they professed to represent was opposed to their policy and would shortly effect a change in the views which they put forward. You would find all these undemocratic assertions that representatives duly elected do not really speak in the name of their people, and you would, of course, find appeals made over the heads of the respective Governments to the party organisations which supported them or opposed them in the respective countries from which they came. That appears to me to open up possibilities of very grave and serious dangers in the structure and fabric of the British Empire, from which I think we ought to labour to shield it.
My right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has told the Conference with perfect truth—in fact it may have been even an under-estimate—that if he were to propose the principle of preference in the present House of Commons, it would be rejected by a majority of three to one. But even if the present Government could command a majority for the system, they would have no intention whatever of proposing it. It is not because we are not ready to run electoral risks that we decline to be parties to a system of preference; still less is it because the present Government is unwilling to make sacrifices, in money or otherwise, in order to weave the Empire more closely together. I think a very hopeful deflection has been given to our discussion when it is suggested that we may find a more convenient line of advance by improving communications, rather than by erecting tariffs—by making roads, as it were, across the Empire, rather than by building walls. It is because we believe the principle of preference is positively injurious to the British Empire, and would create, not union, but discord, that we have resisted the proposal.
It has been a source of regret to all of us that on this subject we cannot come to an agreement. A fundamental difference of opinion on economics, no doubt, makes agreement impossible; but although we regret that, I do not doubt that in the future, when Imperial unification has been carried to a stage which it has not now reached, and will not, perhaps, in our time attain, people in that more fortunate age will look back to the Conference of 1907 as a date in the history of the British Empire when one grand wrong turn was successfully avoided.
FOOTNOTES:
2 The following, among others, were present at the Conference:
The Earl of Elgin, Secretary of State for the Colonies; Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Prime Minister of Canada; Sir F.W. Borden, Minister of Militia and Defence (Canada); Mr. L.P. Brodeur, Minister of Marine and Fisheries (Canada); Mr. Deakin, Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia; Sir W. Lyne, Minister of Trade and Customs (Australia); Sir Joseph Ward, Prime Minister of New Zealand; Dr. L.S. Jameson, Prime Minister of Cape Colony; Dr. Smartt, Commissioner of Public Works (Cape Colony); Sir Robert Bond, Prime Minister of Newfoundland; Mr. F.R. Moor, Prime Minister of Natal; General Botha, Prime Minister of the Transvaal; Sir J.L. Mackay, on behalf of the India Office.
3 The Prime Minister of Natal.
Imperial Preference - II
House of Commons, July 15, 1907
Mr. Lyttelton had moved the following vote of censure:
"That this House regrets that his Majesty's Government have declined the invitation unanimously preferred by the Prime Ministers of the self-governing Colonies, to consider favourably any form of Colonial Preference or any measures for closer commercial union of the Empire on a preferential basis." (Mr. Lyttelton.)
This was met on behalf of the Government by the following Amendment:
"To leave out all after the word 'that' and add the words 'In the opinion of this House, the permanent unity of the British Empire will not be secured through a system of preferential