Will Mr. Chamberlain, in face of opposition such as that
of the Daily Mail, abandon the taxation of food P Mary of his supporters declare that he must and shall, as without such abandonment the country will never consent to " protection of the home market from the raids of the foreigner." When it is pointed out that Mr. Chamberlain is a strong and rersis- tent man, and is by no means likely to drop a cherished scheme in obedience to outside dictation, it is asserted that he has tacitly dropped his old-age pensions scheme under pressure, and that he will do the same in the case of the food-taxes, and will find some way of consoling the Colonies for the false hopes be has raised. In spite of the difficulties which he is clearly going to encounter over the food-taxes, we ourselves have very little hope that Mr. Chamberlain will drop them. In our opinion, Mr. Chamberlain has not adopted his present policy on any mere party considerations, and he will not throw over the food-taxes from motives of that kind. His object is to do what he thinks will consolidate the Empire,—i.e., to endow the Empire with a system of preferential duties. This is his ideaL But he knows that the only preferential duties which can help the Colonies are duties on food. Therefore he can- not obtain the only thing he cares for greatly in this con. troversy save through a tax on food. We may be wrong, and Mr. Chamberlain may be preparing to climb down and to tell the Colonies that he was mistaken in thinking be could do anything for them ; but unless we strangely misjudge him, he will do nothing of the kind.
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