PATRIOTISM AND PREFERENCE.
IT must be admitted that the Tariff Reform Party had a difficult part to play in regard to the Imperial Conference. Nobody doubts that if they had been in office during the present year the Colonial Premiers would have gone home armed with definite proposals in the direction of preferential duties on the part of the Imperial Government. But not only were the Tariff Reformers not in office, but they were face to face with the verdict in favour of Free-trade registered at the General Election. There were many " mandates " attributed to the Election of 1906 of the existence of which it is very hard to find any evidence. But that there had been a mandate on the question of Free-trade did not admit of denial. On many points the new Government were at liberty to shape our policy, but they were not free as regards the Fiscal question. On that the electors had given an unmistakable decision. What, then, ought to have been the attitude of the Tariff Reformers in regard to the Conference? It was open to them to treat the question either from the patriotic or the partisan standpoint. If they took the latter course, they might insist on the advantages which Preference gives to the British pro- ducer or to the British taxpayer, and make such capital as they could out of the refusal of the Government to meet the Colonies half-way. They might charge them with leaving the Empire to break up into fragments rather than abandon their favourite shibboleth. They might call them "Little Englanders," and dwell on their readiness to let the Colonies set up for themselves rather than risk even an infinitesimal addition to the cost of living at home. This was the course actually adopted by the party leaders. Their chief desire in all their refer- ences to the Colonies was to persuade them that they had been badly used. Every word of the Prime Minister or the Colonial Office was interpreted in the worst sense. The delegates were not left to put their own construction on official utterances. A leading Tariff Reformer was always at hand to commiserate them on some imaginary ill-usage which they would never have discovered but for his enlightening assurance. It was the Opposition, not the delegates, who declared that the door had been banged and barred in the face of the Conference. It was the Opposition, not the delegates, who asked Parliament to censure the Government for their insulting disregard of Colonial wishes and Colonial feeling.
It is possible that from the party point of view this was a judicious move. That the Liberals have insulted our daughter-States ; that they have ostentatiously refused to make the ties which bind them to us one whit tighter than they are at present ; that by this refusal they have risked the maintenance of those ties in even their present closeness,— may be useful tags for the orators of the Tariff Reform League. A good deal was heard about these crimes when the Conference ended, and what was said then will doubtless be served up again at the next General Election. We will do the Tariff Reformers the justice to say that they probably did not intend to stir up illwill between Great Britain and her Colonies. The object they had in view was quite different from this. They were not thinking of, or caring about, the Colonies. What they were concerned with was the promotion of their own political interests. To make use of the Colonies was a convenient way of securing this end, and how the interests of the Colonies would be affected by its adoption was a consideration lying altogether outside party calculations. We do not know that in acting in this way the Tariff Reformers were falling far below the ordinary standard of party morality. They saw an immediate advantage, and they did not trouble themselves as to the influence their action might have some thousands of miles away. The really patriotic line for them to have taken would have been something of this sort. "We are convinced," they might have said to themselves, "that the policy we wish to see adopted is far and away the best for Britain and the best for the Colonies. We tried our hardest to place this view before the people of Great Britain in 1906. Unfortunately, they would not entertain it even as an experiment. By an unmistakable vote they rejected both our programme and ourselves. We regret their decision, because we feel sure that it was the right policy, and that both we and the Colonies would have reaped great benefits from the course we advised them to take. During the interval which separates us from the next Election we shall do our utmost to bring our countrymen round to our view. But until we can bring about this change—until we can bring preferential duties within the region of practical politics— we shall be very careful not to sow any ill-feeling in the minds of the delegates. Even if we think that they received somewhat curt treatment at the hands of the Imperial Government, we shall not be so unpatriotic as to say so. On the contrary, we shall tell them that the difference between them and the Government is merely one of means. Both British parties wish to strengthen the union between the Colonies and the Mother-country. They only differ as to the measures best calculated to have this result." If the Tariff Reformers were to plead that they are only treating politics as business, and that just as a sharp tradesman thinks only how he can get an advantage over his rival next door, so a political party has but one object, to gain a majority at the next Election, we should not have a word to say. Patriotism too often goes to the wall when party con- siderations come in. It is only when they profess to justify their action on the ground that it is the action of men who have at heart the integrity of the Empire, and the promotion of that mutual goodwill among the members which is the best guarantee of that integrity, that we feel disposed to remind them that, as yet, the only result of their action has been to make British party divisions a subject of recrimination and controversy in a Colonial Legislature. The charges brought against Mr. Deakin and Sir William Lyne in the Parliament of the Australian Commonwealth are possibly exaggerated. What is matter for regret is that Australian Premiers should be associated in the minds of the Australian public with one party in Britain rather than with another, and be identified, not with the British nation to which they were accredited, but with a particular school of British politicians. Tariff Reformers may be pardoned for having dreamed in 1903 that they were in power for a generation. That was a delusion which was shared even by some eminent Liberals. But there is no excuse for their cherishing a similar dream in 1907, when they have not taken even the first step towards regaining power. Adversity should have had a more enlightening influence.
But though we regret that the Australians should have learned to draw distinctions between British parties, and to look for more from one of them than from the other, we find solid matter for satisfaction in the working out of that preferential system from which we have been taught to expect so much. The British manufacturer has had his ears tickled by glowing descriptions of the profits he is to make by the favours to be accorded to him in Colonial markets, and he has been led probably in some cases to forget the condition which runs through all these offers. That condition is the maintenance and extension of Colonial industries. Australia is quite willing to let in British goods on more favourable terms than those on which she lets in foreign goods. But she is as determined as ever to let in neither on terms which will enable them to compete with Australian goods in Australian markets. This kind of preference, as the new Australian tariff has shown, is perfectly consistent with a duty which, on the lower as on the higher stale, is absolutely prohibitive alike to the Briton and to the foreigner. We have no quarrel with Australia for taking this course. She is the sole judge of her own well-being. But in the interest of plain speaking we suggest that an explanatory note should m future be added whenever the term "Preference "Ia employed. When once it is understood that a preferential tariff may also be a prohibitive tariff, British manufacturers will know where they are. Punch puts the whole matter with admirable force and point in this week's cartoon. Australia has raised the tariff wall by four or five feet, and then politely informs Mrs. Britannia that he has provided her with special facilities for surmounting the wall in the shape of an eight-inch stool !
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