237

A.—6

Law complains of the deficiency of his material, and speaks tentatively just as one would do under the circumstances, but what is pertinent in this particular connection in his study of export and import trade and its character and possibilities on both sides. That represents a business-like way of disposing of questions of this kind, exhaustive having regard to the materials at hand, so that I have taken the opportunity of quoting it as a better illustration than any statement of the way in which we try to handle such matters. Before closing this argument, may I say that a good deal appears to us to depend upon what you make the unit of your consideration. I have already admitted that the British tariff should be dealt with, taking the United Kingdom as the unit first, and that the other units should come afterwards. At the same time, those other units together with the United Kingdom make up what we speak of as the British Empire. The view that has very strongly pressed us in relation to all these questions of the tariff and a great variety of other questions, especially such as we have been considering at this Conference, is the future of the larger unit, the Empire as a whole. After the United Kingdom has studied its individual interests; after Canada, and the Commonwealth, and South Africa, have studied their individual interests within themselves, and in their dealings with each other, necessarily the greater question presents itself as to the mutual possibilities which those units possess to-day. Their fortunes are bound up together, their trade and commerce are mostly with each other. You come then to the next stage of the question which is quite separate from the first, because you have a great political motive for inquiring how far it is possible for these units to assist each other by interchange. That interchange must be mutually profitable in itself, and even if it were only slightly profitable might become of immense importance as a factor in the interests of the group of units of the Empire considered as a whole. Whatever the possibilities of trade may be between us, and they appear to our minds to be considerable, we are never blind to the fact that closer relations of this kind might play a most important part in ways too numerous to mention not only in bringing us together, but in keeping us together and making us stronger by union for national business bargains. Certainly we should then become better equipped for making those bargains which nations from time to time enter into in order to preserve the peace of the world. We proceed on the supposition, which is much more than a supposition to us, that it is possible in this way to strengthen the Empire as a whole, and this becomes one of the strongest motives we have for looking hopefully to movements of this kind even while we recognise that they have to begin as business operations, and cannot succeed if they are conducted, or sought to be conducted, in breach of business principles. So far as I can speak for the people of Australia, this motive—speaking of them as a whole —counts for as much as any promise of direct material advantage to themselves, if you can speak of direct material advantage to us, apart from that of the whole Empire. Personally, Ido not think you can. United as we are, the benefit of one must be a benefit to all, and, of course, the benefit of two is better than the benefit of one, and so on. But, for the moment, speaking as if the interests could be severed, I believe a motive quite as strong and probably stronger than that of the money gain or advantage of this trade, influences the bulk of the people of Australia, through the idea of having more intimate relations with their own countrymen and being more united with them in peace as well as in war. They look to the operation of trade and to its great agencies, particularly the shipping of the Empire, to uphold the proud position which it occupies to-day. Lord Tweedmouth,' when he was with us, mentioned some very striking figures on that point. Not the least by any means of the

Eighth Day. 30 April 1907.

Preferential Trade. (Mr. Deakin.)