The Cobden Club has taken a new, but what we
cannot regard as a wise, departure. It has issued a manifesto in favour of the open door." The manifesto urges that though we should recognise the right of foreign Powera to settle their own tariffs in any way they like in their present territories and old possessions, " we cannot recognise that they have a similar right in countries now passing under their control and where Englishmen have already established interests." Surely this is one of the most tremendous pieces of Imperialism ever deliberately conceived by Englishmen. It is, of course, useless to take up such an attitude unless we are prepared to enforce it by war. Therefore it comes to this :—We are to forbid fresh annexations—there are practically no places now annexable in which we have not trade interests—unless the annexing Power regulates its fiscal policy in its new terri- tories not in accordance with its own ideas, but in accord- ance with ours. It is useless to say that our ideas are in the true interests of the annexing Power, for foreign Powers scout that plea as a piece of British hypocrisy. Foreign Powers do not annex for the pleasure of it, but in order to do the very thing which the Cobden ()lab tells them we will not allow them to do,—i.e., to get exclusive trade privileges for their own people. To adopt the Cobden Club's proposal is, there- fore, to defy every Power that wishes to expand in order to get trade. We should be very glad to see the "open door'' if we could get it, but in our opinion the only safe plan is to say that we will not meddle with the domestic affairs of other Powers, whether in their old territories or in newly annexed possessions. All that we can do is to say that they must really annex.
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