229

A.—s

"the expediency of granting in the United Kingdom preferential treatment " to the products and manufactures ol tlie Colonies either by exemption " from or reduction of duties now or hereafter imposed. (i 3) That the " Prime Ministers present at the Conference undertake to submit to then "respective Governments at the earliest opportunity, the principle of the " Resolution and to request them to take such measures as may be necessary "to give effect to it." The Canadian Government adhere to this Resolution, and have none other to propose than that, and 1 intend at the proper time to move it again. As 1 understand the Resolutions of Australia, they agree in substance with this Resolution. The first three parts, I think, are verbatim the same. As to the others, there is not much difference between the fourth and fifth parts of the Resolution adopted in 1902 and the Resolution proposed by Mr. Deakin. But perhaps Mr. Deakin himself will show what difference there is, and what he has in mind in substituting the new draft for what the previous Conference concluded. Mr. DEAKIN : My-Lord, Mr. Asquith, and gentlemen, our variation lies first of all in the omission from the fourth Resolution of the words " either by exemption from or reduction of duties," words which do not appear to be material to the substance of that proposal, and its application to the self-governing dominions between themselves. The fifth paragraph does not mark a departure. The fifth says it is desirable that the United Kingdom grant preferential treatment to the products and manufactures of the Colonies. That is complementary to the proposal included previously in the third Resolution, which was that the Colonies were to give substantial preferential treatment to the products and .manufactures of the United Kingdom. By adding the fifth Resolution it is intended to propose that we should recommend the adoption of reciprocal preference as in the fourth Resolution of 1902 —a preference from the United Kingdom in return for any preference granted to the United Kingdom, or, at all events, in association with that. In moving these Resolutions may I, in a very brief fashion, in the first place allude to the rather significant circumstance that from the earliest occasion of the summoning of representatives of the self-governing Dominions to a Conference of all parts of the Empire, this very question at once presented itself as a natural and proper, if not necessary, subject for consideration as between the several Parliaments concerned. It has never been omitted since from any of these Imperial assemblies. When the first Conference assembled in 1887, with that prescience for which the late Lord Salisbury was disl inguished, he put in the forefront of his brief address to the assembled representatives the situation as it then appeared, in these words, which appear on page 5 of the Reports of the Proceedings of 1887* : " I fear " that we must for the present put in the distant and shadowy portion of our " task, and not in the practical part of it, any hope of establishing a Customs " Union among the various parts of the Empire. Ido not think that in the " nature of things it is impossible; I do not think that the mere fact that we " are separated by the sea renders it impossible. In fact, the case of Ireland, " which has a Customs Union with England, shows that it is not impossible " But the resolutions which were come to in respect to our fiscal policy 40 years "ago set any such possibility entirely aside and it cannot be now resumed " until on one side or the other very different notions with regard to fiscal "policy prevail from those which prevail al the present moment." The Colonies at that time were as they are now, more or less definitely Protectionist in principle. The United Kingdom was then, and it is now, practically Free Trade in every detail. The prospect, therefore, of any f<>*-m of "Customs Union" —words used, of course, by the Prime Minister, in a *[C. 5091.]

Eighth Day. 30 April 1907.

I'FiKI'KKENTIAI. TliA[>K. (Si.- Wilfrid Laurier.)