TOPICS OF THE DAY.
FREE-TRADE AND THE IMPERIALIST IDEAL.
WE are always glad to meet Mr. Chamberlain when he deals with the question of the Empire, and, in effect, accuses those who oppose him of being indifferent or hostile to Imperial unity. Such attacks give us the oppor- tunity which we desire above all others of insisting that it is our cause which is the truly Imperial cause, and that his antiquated and illiberal policy—the panacea of • the "tied house," derived in its essentials from the policy of the men who lost us America—is a policy which, if it were to be allowed to prevail, which it will not be, would rend the Empire in pieces. In his Birmingham speech on Wednesday Mr. Chamberlain, after declaring that he could not understand what the position of the Free-trade Unionists was, went on, with characteristic inconsequence, to assert that they were Imperialists in theory but Little Englanders in practice. Well, we will tell him what the position of the Free-trade Imperialists is, and why they object to his policy, and regard him as men might regard some water rodent, who, all unconscious of the evil it is doing, is burrowing in the base of a mighty dyke that safe- guards a whole country from inundation. The creature ,does not want to destroy the dyke—nay, would prefer to keep it intact—but that does not make its efforts any the less dangerous to the commonwealth. The Free-trade 'Imperialists believe that if Mr. Chamberlain's mixed policy of preference and old-fashioned Protection were applied to the Empire, it would strike both at the heart and at the extremities of the Empire. The Empire remains in health and strength because, while the centre is strong and prosperous and rich, and so able to bear the heavy burden of Empire, the extremities— the young and tender branches of the great oak-tree- remain free and untrammelled, and have imposed on them little of the weight of the Imperial Crown. While the communities oversea, the free nations of the Empire, are still young and growing it is only right that they should be relieved from this weight. They have their houses to build, their roads to make, and a thousand-and- one works of necessity to perform ; and while they are thus busy it is only right that the Mother-country should pay for the guards who leave them free to carry on the work of development. We do not grudge them for an instant our help, or deplore the fact that it is we who-pay for the sailors and the soldiers who guard the Empire, and who keep up the central fabric. All we ask is that no rash and ill- cons:-Iered schemes shall be allowed to weaken the central citadel of the Empire.
Again, we ask that the fiscal freedom of the Colonies shall • not be tampered with in any access of windy rhetoric. We are, of course, quite aware that Mr. Chamberlain no more thinks that his fiscal proposals will injure the Empire than does the rat of our metaphor who is burrowing a hole in the base of the dyke think that his operations will drown a vast district. On the contrary, Mr. Chamberlain thinks that he is improving the foundations. But that does not alter the fact that his policy, if carried out to - its full extent, must in the end impair the fiscal freedom • of the Colonies. If, instead of keeping our markets open to all comers, we impede the access of the majority of sellers to them, and introduce a system of prefer- ence, we shall expect the Colonies not only to give us privileges, but also not to withdraw those privileges with- out our consent. Further, as Mr. Chamberlain hinted, we • shall expect them not to establish new industries which will compete with ours. Surely that is interfering with the freedom of the Colonies. It may be argued, of course, that the interference is for the good of the Empire, and that therefore it is an interference to which the Colonies • ought not to object, and will not object ; but nevertheless it appears to us as interference, and a form of interference • which the Colonies, accustomed to absolute freedom, will in the end regard as intolerable. George Ministers at the beginning of the quarrel with the American Colonies • doubtless believed that they were not interfering, or, at any rate, were not interfering in any way which ought to appear objectionable to the Colonies. They soon, however, found out their mistake, and so shall we if we accept Mr. Chamber- ]ain's declaration that his schemes will not interfere in the least with the fiscal freedom of the Colonies, and that it is a libel to say that they will. Imagine a system of preference, say, from Australia to Britain established which would really favour our goods, and then think what would happen if a wave of popular feeling brought in an out- and-out Protectionist Federal Ministry which declared that Australians ought to make for themselves half the goods now sent from the United Kingdom. What sort of a, quarrel would be likely to arise in such circumstances? Can Mr. Chamberlain guarantee that the young lions of trade here would not protest that two could play at that game, and that if Australia insisted on making her own pianos, and her own machinery and tools, and other articles which she had never made up till now, we must withdraw our preference from her wines and her meat. There is little difficulty in divining the sort of arguments that would be used. It would be found to be extremely unfair to the other Colonies to allow Australia as good a position here as New Zealand if Australia was rejecting our machinery, &c., while New Zealand was taking them. Australia, in a word, would be warned that she could not expect us to treat her as well as we treated New Zealand while she treated us so much worse than did her neighbour. But it is not necessary to enlarge upon the point. No impartial person can doubt that Mr. Chamber- lain's complicated system would afford far more oppor- tunities for quarrelling within the Empire than does the plain and simple policy of allowing all our Colonies to trade freely with the Mother-country while at the same time they are absolutely free to regulate their own fiscal policy.
Mr. Chamberlain will, of course, deny absolutely the possibility of any such friction as we have described, and will also refuse to admit that we should impair the strength and prosperity of the central citadel of the Empire by adopting his system. He would also, no doubt, reply that we offered no alternative. We, on our side, deny that in, tote. We agree with Mr. Asquith in thinking that an Imperial Council might be established. Mr. Haldane in a recent speech, which was unfortunately only very shortly reported in the London papers, pointed out that such a Council might, to begin with, take the shape of a Committee of the Privy Council. The plan is, we believe, a sound one. It would not involve the Colonies in our party system, to which danger they are very keenly alive, and it would also not place them in any way under our Legislature, to which they also strongly object. At the same time, such an Imperial Committee of Council might be a most useful consultative body. But, says Mr. Chamberlain, though he greatly desired the formation of an Imperial Council and twice proposed it, he found that the Colonies rejected it as premature. But surely this ought to have been a warning to Mr. Chamberlain. The Colonies rejected his Imperial Council as premature because they thought it would fetter them and interfere with their freedom. And yet he thinks that when they realise in practice what preference means they will be quite content. Remember, we are not in the least blaming the Colonies for rejecting Mr. Chamberlain's proposals for an Imperial Council. We agree that his scheme was premature. The Colonies cannot, in their own interests, consent to the establishment of an Imperial Council till Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa possess together a white population about equal to that of the United Kingdom. When that condition is fulfilled, and the Colonies are in a position to enter an Imperial Council on a footing of equality, they ought to do so, but not till then. At present they would be swamped in an Imperial Council, and to this they rightly object, for they value their absolute independence above all things. But the objections to an Imperial Council such as Mr. Chamberlain proposed, which, since it would have dealt with the problem of Imperial defence, would have involved fiscal questions, do not apply to an Imperial Committee of the Privy Council. Such a body for the present, and till the Colonies can unite with us on equal terms in a true Imperial Council, might, we believe, do valuable work, for it would not ask the Colonies to part with any of that freedom, legislative and fiscal, which they rightly guard with such jealous care.
Mr. Chamberlain ended his speech with a passage with the spirit of which we are in the heartiest agreement:— " Whether we be Free-traders, or whether we be tariff reformers, we all alike agree that the issue is one upon which derennis the prosperity of the country, the welfare of this people, the union of the Empire. For my part, I care very little whether the result will be to make this country, already rich, a little richer. The character of a nation is more important than its opulence. What I care for is that this people shall rise to the height of its great mission, that they who in past generations have made a kingdom surpassed by none should now in altered circum- stances and new conditions show themselves to be worthy of the leadership of the British race, and in co-operation with our kinsmen across the seas should combine to make an Empire which may be, which ought to be, greater, more united, more fruitful for good, than any Empire in human history." The tremendous nature of the issue before the country could not be more eloquently insisted on than it is here. We, too, believe that the welfare of the nation and the union of the Empire are at stake. We, too, care far less whether our already rich country—that country, by the way, which Mr. Chamberlain as a rule spends his time in describing as reduced well-nigh to beggary—be made a little richer than whether she maintains her character and her moral greatness. We, too, desire that the British people shall be worthy of their mission, and shall fulfil that mission in unity of heart and purpose with our kinsmen beyond sea. So far we go absolutely with Mr. Chamberlain. But it is when he tells us that we can only do these things if we will give up our old ideals of freedom, and conduct the Empire on the principle of a "tied house," that we revolt from his ill-considered proposals. If his aim is noble and worthy, it must be achieved by noble and worthy means, and not by the methods of the huckster. Our Imperial mission is not going to be carried out by a 5 per cent, preference or by a 10 per cent. duty on manufactured Articles. It will be achieved by persevering in the prin- ciples which have already made our Empire great, and which have preserved it in spite of Ministers who so neglected our essential interests that they plunged into a great war without foresight or preparation, and for a year left us at the mercy of any foreign Power that cared to attack us. That we weathered the troubles their neglect had created was due to the mercy of God, and not to the doings of a Government of which Mr. Chamberlain was among the chief and guiding spirits.
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