LORD RIPON AND THE COLONIES.
ONE of the most important Parliamentary papers recently issued, is that which contains the Marquis of Ripon's answers to the various resolutions passed by the representatives of our chief Colonial offshoots at the Conference held last year at Ottawa. The fact that Lord Ripon has ceased, during the short interval which elapsed between the writing and publication of these despatches, to act as the mouthpiece of her Majesty's Government on Coloqial questions, detracts but little from the weight and importance of his words on the matter ; for the Imperial fiscal policy is still, happily, one of those things which stand above the influence of party strife, and there can be no doubt that the Unionist Administration will readily endorse the carefully worded but eminently practical views which the late Secretary of State for the Colonies has put on record concerning the possibility and advisability of a Customs Union between the various parts of the Empire. Lord Ripon is no Little-Englander. He sympathises, as heartily as any of us, with the Abject avowed by the Conference of "drawing continually ,:loser the bonds that unite the Colonies with the mother-country ; " but he is bound to reject with regret the corollary, which infers "the advisability of a Customs arrangement between Great Britain and her Colonies by which trade within the Empire may be placed on a more favourable footing than that which is carried on with foreign countries." He does not appeal to principles, which are perhaps a little out of fashion just at present with the party to which he belongs, but sets forth the many practical objections to the scheme with commendable lucidity. To Englishmen it would have been enough to reply that any such management is contrary to those Free-trade principles which are the basis of our national prosperity, and are acknowledged as such by all responsible politicians of both parties. But our Colonial kinsmen still cling to the belief that it is possible for a community to add to its riches by taxing itself, and so gave Lord Ripon an excellent opportunity for a lecture on Free-trade with practical examples.
Supposing that the Customs Union were to be estab- lished in the least objectionable form, the result would be the partial remission of existing duties in favour of British and Colonial goods, and the imposition of duties on foreign goods which at present compete on even terms with those of Great Britain and the Colonies ; and it is obvious that, since the volume of the Empire's trade with foreign countries is far greater than that of the trade between its various parts, the total amount of trade which would be relieved would be considerably less than the amount which would be more heavily burdened ; and " the result would not only necessitate increased taxation, but would involve a serious loss of trade, the burden of which in both cases would fall with greatest severity on those parts of the Empire which have the largest proportion of foreign trade, and the loss to those parts would more than outweigh the gain to other parts." This broad statement of the conse- quences of such a scheme is sufficiently damaging, but the objections are still more palpable if we examine the results of its working more closely. Looking at the matter, for the moment, from the point of view of Great Britain alone, we cannot fail to observe that since the greater part of our imports from foreign countries, and nearly the whole of our imports from the Colonies, consist of food-stuffs and raw materials for use in manufactures, the immediate effect of the imposition of preferential duties in favour of Colonial wares would be a rise in the price of food and a fall in industrial wages,—for profits are cut so fine in these days that any advance in the cost of raw materials could only be met by a reduction of working expenses. • Here is a pretty dish to set before the British workman ! With the results of the recent Elections to show us how strictly practical is the standpoint from which industrial constituencies regard Imperial politics, we may fairly assume that a very few weeks of dear bread and low wages would transform the labourer from a staunch supporter of the party of Imperial stability and pro- gress, into an uncompromising opponent of any "bonds of unity " and -"practical sympathy " that led to such results.
-,-Moreover, should it be contended that this material point-of -view is.not . the right one from which to look at questions of Imperial policy, and that some sacrifice ought to be made cheerfully by the inhabitants of Great Britain if it were necessary for the furtherance of the objects of the Ottawa Conference, Lord Ripon's despatches prove clearly ilatt the establishment of a Customs Union would damage not us only, but would react with equal force on the trade of the Colonies themselves. For it is pointed out that a considerable portion of our exports to foreign countries consist of articles manufactured out of Colonial produce ; and it follows that since the result of the imposition of duties on foreign goods would be a diminution of our imports from foreign nations, our exports to them would diminish pari passu,—not, necessarily, because such an action on our part would provoke foreign hostility, but because, inter- national trade being largely a matter of barter, foreign traders could not afford to take the same quantity from us if the volume of the commodities that they send us were materially lessened. So that in this respect, in so far as the new duties were effective, they would merely tend to diminish the British demand for Colonial produce, and though prices might be raised, any such advantage would be more than counterbalanced by the decrease in the volume of trade. The objects aimed at by the Con- ference were so commendable in the abstract and so dear to the heart of every patriotic Briton and Colonist, that we have some hesitation in suggesting that the means by which they are to be compassed seem singularly inadequate from every point of view ; but these attempts to combine business with sentiment are always girt with a ring of dangerous pitfalls, and in this case the arrangement put forward could only result, like all other such artificial restrictions on trade, in diminishing the prosperity of all the parties concerned, and would at the same time open the door to disagreeable unpleasantness and friction between ourselves and our Colonies, and between capital and labour both here and there, and to commercial reprisals and possibly diplomatic tension between Great Britain and her Continental neighbours.
The case can be put far more strongly from the point of view of the mother-country, and we may fairly lay some stress on this side of the question without risking any charge of insular selfishness; for it is evident that any arrangement that damages us would ultimately damage the Colonies also, since we are not only their money-lender, but their best customer. Lord Ripon is fully justified in pointing out that " one-fourth of the export trade of this country consists of foreign and Colonial produce, and the imposition of duties on foreign produce would involve an enormous immediate outlay for the extension of bonding facilities and the necessary charges for their use and main- tenance. The result would be to place such obstacles in the way of this trade that its transference elsewhere would speedily take place, goods which this country now receives for re-export being sent direct to their market, or through some other entreptit where they would not be subjected to such disabilities. Thus the position of this country as the great market of the world, already threatened, would be destroyed." After this, there is little need for the relentless despatches to add that "these changes could not fail to seriously injure our important carrying trade, and to react injuriously on every industry in the United Kingdom." But even this exposure does not satisfy Lord Ripon's inexhaustible patience ; and he goes on to show that the contention that any loss of foreign trade is a matter of minor importance owing to the rapid propor- tionate increase which is shown by Colonial trade, will not stand the test of figures, for it seems that " taking imports and exports together, the trade of this country with British possessions during 1854 to 1858 formed 25.8 per cent. of the total, and during 1889 to 1893 25.3 per cent." For thirty-five years our Colonial trade has remained practically stationary at about one-quarter of our total commerce, and then we are asked to put restric- tions on the other three-quarters on the ground that the rapid expansion of Colonial markets reduces foreign trade to a secondary position. One would have expected that the representatives of the Colonies, charged to' deal with commercial matters of vital importance, might at least have looked up the figures of the subject, hefore starting on the task of reorganiiing the fiscal system of the Empire. Since this effort was too irksome, let us hope that they will master the lessons tonveyed in Lord Ripon's temperate and exhaustive replies to their suggestions.
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