AN IMPERIAL ZOLLVEREIN
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—All such proposals as that of Sir Alfred Mond overlook the basic facts.
(1) The Dominions have long been permitted and encouraged to regulate their fiscal and industrial affairs independently of the Mother Country.
(2) A strong feeling exists in favour of making each Dominion industrially self-sufficient.
(3) It is only a question of a century or so—a short period in the life of a nation—before the Dominions will require the .great bulk of their supplies of food and raw materials for the home consumption of their own populations.
(4) The crowded condition of Central Europe and the fact that the United States no longer affords a sufficient outlet must oblige the Dominions to relax the restrictions they . exercise against European immigrants under penalty of exciting a dangerous hostility.
(5) With the lapse of time and the influx of foreign elements the attitude of the Dominions in relation to Great Britain must more and more approximate to that of the United States.
(6) The conception that a nation can maintain an enduring prosperity on the basis of land owned and controlled by other peoples is disallowed by history.
The truth is that the only means of benefiting by a wide inheritance of territory is by occupying it. The only remedy for the existing state of things lies in the distribution of our population in accordance with the natural distribution of wealth, resources and opportunities in the Empire.
It is beyond the scope of this letter to discuss the practical difficulties that are involved, but it should not be beyond the powers of statesmanship to devise a solution for them. The key to the problem would seem to depend upon the fact that the absence of population is becoming an even more serious menace for some of the Dominions than is the excess of it for Great Britain.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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