COLONIAL PREFERENCE [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Twenty-five years
ago, at the time of the last agitation for Colonial Preference, I was present at the Bankers' Institute on the occasion of an address by a well-known banker. The following is what he said. " We are shut up in a small island;
dependent upon imports for 75 per cent. of our food and raw material. We have to keep in touch with every wheat-growing country, so that, if a shortage occurs in one country, we can fly to another. What would happen if we cut ourselves adkift from foreign supplies, and confined our wheat resources to Canada—for that is the only Colony we could draw from ?
The market would lend itself to cornering by speculators in grain that would bring about periodical famine prices, and, should Canada have a bad harvest, the effect on this country would be too awful to contemplate. We could not go to our old suppliers ; for these countries would have laid out their
land for other purposes ; they would not grow wheat for our emergency. The country would simply be faced with star- _ (The Metal and General Agency). 1 Leadenhall Street, E.C. 3.
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