21 JANUARY 1905, Page 3

Wednesday. He denounced the Government as occupying " the most

humiliating and dishonoured position " that any Government had held since the time of the Stuarts, Which is the kind of rhetorical exaggeration to which philosopher-politicians are sometimes addicted. He described certain differences that he found in his recent tour between our conditions and those prevalent in America with vigour and effect. There all was Protection, but there was a strong undercurrent of resistance to high tariffs. Nevertheless those tariffs con- tinued, men fearing to dislocate industry, a fact Englishmen should study when they were asked' to "try the experi- ment " of Fiscal Reform. The Americans had immense problems to face, one of them being the evil which they had inflicted on themselves in the import of an inferior race for purposes of gain. The black population was increasing in numbers and pushing slowly but perceptibly northward, and might by the end of the century number sixty millions. That was a fact to be considered when for the same purpose we were importing Chinese into South Africa. Mr. Morley was evidently greatly struck by Canada, where every man could obtain land on easy terms, and he asked why the labourers of Forfar should be taxed in order to help Colonists so much better placed than themselves.