and really did concentrate upon it I think the expansion in the figures over the next forty years would tell a tale which would mean a perfectly amazing position for the whole of the Empire as a commercial nation. That side I think is one we must stress if we are going to pretend that we have any sort of a vision into the future, and if we are really determined to try and achieve something for the generation that is coming after us.

Comparative Value of Dominion and Foreign Trade.

Just now I referred to the question of the comparative value of the Dominions' trade as against foreign trade, and I wish to emphasise it in this way. I want to show in regard to the exchange. between the Dominions and Great Britain that the Dominions take from Britain just about what Britain takes from them. In the case of foreign countries it is a very different story, particularly in regard to those countries where there is a possibility of development on the same lines as in the Dominions, namely, countries which are producing foodstuffs and raw materials. In those cases, Britain takes a great deal from them but they take very little from Britain. The particular countries I refer to are the Argentine, Denmark, and the United States, and these were the figures for 1922 :

Taking as a whole these three countries, the exports to Britain in 1922 were £318,842,759; the exports from Britain in 1922 were, British produce and manufactures £90,182,275, re-exports £23,557,960, making a total of just over 113 millions. These three countries exported to Britain 318 millions and they took from Britain 113 millions.

In the same year the five large Dominions exported to Britain 232 millions and they took in exchange 229 millions. I think one can appreciate the value of a trade of that character as against the value of a trade where the amount taken by the other country is so much smaller. I think that point has to be particularly emphasised;

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it can be very well illustrated by the case of the United States which exported to Britain, in 1922, 222 millions, whilst the total exports from Britain to them were 76 millions. In view of the burden of interest on the American Debt, it would certainly help our whole economic situation if we could to some extent vary the position which exists at the present moment.

The per capita figures are well within the knowledge of most of you. According to their populations the Dominions buy on a much higher basis than any foreign countries in the world, as shown in the following table: :

The highest is New Zealand with 131. 18s. 3d. a head. Australia is next with 117. 18s. 8d., and the lowest on the list, if I exclude Russia, is Italy, which takes 10s. 11d. a head. A country such as the United States takes 14s. 7d. a head as against a Dominion like Australia 117. 188. 8d.

Those figures, I think, show that the Dominions at the present time are doing their trade with Britain as far as it is possible for them to do it. I think they must convince anybody that at the present moment the Dominion markets are of very great value to Great Britain and that their potential value is a thing, if we proceed along a proper line of development, which no man can possibly estimate.

There are some people who say everything is all right in this best of all possible worlds; that there is nothing wrong with British trade or British methods or anything else. I am not saying that as against Britain. It happens in every country. It happens in Australia. We also have people who say everything is all right in this best of all possible worlds. But it is not. That is not the attitude that is going to help.

We are very often told that everything that is happening now is a result of the war; that if there had been no war everything would have gone on perfectly well for Great Britain, and that there would have been no industrial situation to meet and no economic trouble at all. In 1913 I used to live in England and I certainly did not gather the impression that everything was running quite on oiled wheels at that time. If one considers the positions of Britain, Germany, and the United States over the period between 1890 and 1912 (not complicating the situation at all by dealing with the period after the war) the export figures are certainly of considerable interest. I am quoting them only to show the relative advances made by the three countries:

I think these figures must suggest that there was certainly a very difficult period ahead of Britain on account of the intense competition of those two countries, which reserved to themselves their own markets, and used Britain only for the purposes of their surplus production.

Another point that I would venture to state (though in regard to anything I have to say I wish to make it perfectly clear that we are not in any way interfering in affairs which are matters of purely British interest and matters of British determination) is that the requests which have come in recently from rather surprising quarters that some action should be taken to protect their industries, certainly point to the fact that the position is not as satisfactory as might be desired. The woollen industry, the silk industry, and other industries have asked for protection under the Safeguarding of Industries Act. I am not using that as an illustration of any particular fiscal system at all. All I am using it for at this moment is to show that it is desirable that Britain should exhaust all the possibilities of creating new markets for herself, and that there is a real necessity for her to give that matter serious consideration.

Effect of a Preference Policy on Britain's Relations with other Countries.

There is one other point I have to deal with, and that is a fear which was expressed in many quarters that if the British markets were ensured in any way-and I say that quite deliberately, in any way to the Dominions, it would provoke foreign retaliation and would complicate the whole of Britain's economic relations with

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other countries. I personally cannot believe that that is so. Other countries have tariffs protecting their own industries, and those countries have offered Preference to Australia. Could anybody resent it if Britain, Australia's own mother-country, did exactly the same thing as foreign countries are doing at the moment? We in Australia and all the other Dominions have taken action to ensure that our markets to some extent will be available to Great Britain. Nobody has resented that, and nobody has ever suggested that it is not a perfectly legitimate and proper thing for us to do, and one that is well within our competence as an independent people.

We must remember also that foreign nations are not particularly apt to consider Britain's interest. At the present time we are not cbtaining such extraordinary concessions and benefits from foreign countries that we need be very apprehensive that they would do anything to alter them even if they did not like what we are doing. I think it can generally be accepted that most foreign countries have done everything possible to see that Britain's trade did not get into their markets. I do not think, therefore, that we need be very much concerned with that side of the matter. This question has been raised, of course, many times, and I have a quotation here from a speech by Mr. Austen Chamberlain in the House of Commons. He said:

"What we choose to do within the British Empire is the concern of the British Empire. It gives no right for any foreign nation to take offence. No foreign nation invites or would tolerate our interference in their internal customs arrangements, and I see no reason, but for the suggestions coming from the honourable gentleman, why any foreign nation should take offence at our doing what other foreign nations have done for years without complaint from us. or anybody else. If that be the issue, if a foreign nation chooses to raise that issue, and to say, when one portion of the British Empire treats another portion of the British Empire as kinsmen, as parts of one whole, as partners in one great commonwealth, that that is an offence to the foreign nations, then, the whole British Empire would be ready to meet that and to stand shoulder to shoulder to combat it."

The whole question of tariff policies of different countries towards their dependencies has been very carefully studied, and there is a very illuminating report on the subject which was prepared by the United States Tariff Commission. Anybody interested in the subject would be well advised to read it, because it is a mine of information which sets out the whole position very clearly. I do not wish to deal extensively with it at the moment, but I do wish to give certain figures which are extracted from this report of the United States Tariff Commission. They show the arrangements which have been made by the chief foreign and colonial Powers in order to protect their dependencies in their own markets.

The United States has a differential tariff for its Possessions as against foreign countries which on the average amounts to about 100 per cent., Japan gives 100 per cent., France 50 per cent. to

80 per cent., Portugal 50 per cent. to 90 per cent., Spain 50 per cent., Italy 50 per cent. to 90 per cent. There are two countries which do not protect their colonies, namely, Belgium and Holland. There are particular reasons, however, in regard to those two countries, and, as far as Holland is concerned, without directly protecting her Colonies, she does a great deal to help them through insisting upon their shipping in Dutch boats only, and she assists them in other

ways.

I apologise for speaking for such a long time, but to my mind the keystone to every question we have to consider at both the Imperial and Economic Conferences is the establishment of markets for the Dominions so that we can get true Empire development.

I have tried to show that there is a real value in Dominion preferences and Dominion markets; that there is a wonderful possibility of expansion in those markets, and I have tried to indicate that it would be a serious thing to British manufacturers if the position they have at present in the Dominion markets were lost to them.

Value of British Market to the Dominions.

It is also necessary, of course, to consider the value of the British market to the Dominions. I think there is no Dominion which does not recognise that the British market is the best in the world and that it has been an invaluable market to the Dominions in the past; and their greatest aim and greatest ambition is to ensure that they shall at all events hold their own in that market in the future. But the Dominions feel that there is a real danger that they are not going to hold their own in the British market in the future. There are some people who say that the Dominions ought to be prepared to consider that the free access they have to this, the greatest and best market in the world, is more than an equivalent for any Preference that the Dominions might give to Britain. I am not sure that the Dominions would not agree with that, if the great ideal of those who founded the theory of free trade had been carried out, and we had world free trade instead of every country protecting itself, and we had also the corollary of a reasonable standard of living in the countries with which we should be likely to compete. If that were the position, I think there would be a great deal in the argument that to have free access to this market would be all that anybody could ask; but, unfortunately, that is not the position, and I am certain that the great founders of free trade did not visualise a world of tariffs such as has grown up. I came across an extraordinarily interesting statement of Mr. Cobden's made in 1862, which I think bears out to some extent what I am saying and which is really direct support to the case I am trying to make now, namely, that it is necessary to keep the British market as far as possible for the Dominion production of food and raw material so that we can develop the Empire; what Mr. Cobden said in 1862 was: "I doubt the wisdom, I sincerely. doubt the prudence, of a great body of industrial people to allow themselves to live in dependence on foreign Powers for the supply of food and raw material."

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