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a comparative handful of people existing there I feel that as an element in conection with the line of argument I am submitting to this Conference, as one calling, from either an Imperial standpoint or, if you like, from a business standpoint, for at least the generous recognition and generous consideration of the powerful Mother Country. Our trade relationships are so material to each other. Our attachment and destiny are on mutual lines, and we should try and shape a policy which we believe to be safe and beneficial for ourselves. I do not want to take up the time of this Conference by giving a number of figures for the purpose of impressing upon them the view that New Zealand takes of this proposal to have preferential trade, and, indeed, it would be unnecessary for me to do so in view of the very full and valuable information furnished by Mr. Deakin regarding this important matter. A point that I want to impress upon the Conference is that in another twenty years from now, which is a very short period in the history of Australia and New Zealand, if they go on at anything like the proportionate increase of trade that has characterised their development up to now, they will be amongst the most important of the traders with the Old World. I want to make this point as I am passing, that I honestly believe that some of the great foreign Powers—Germany, France, and Italy—if they have not reached their purchasing limit, have very nearly reached it, and I will give my reasons for it. Unlike Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, those countries having populations fully as great as they can reasonably carry, fix for their teeming millions within their own borders a policy of industrial development and constructional development in the way of industries that means the employment of their own people for the producing of what they require for themselves. And as the outcome of the thick population within their territories they will be bound to find employment for their own people in regard to the manufacture of goods and raising of products their own people require. In proportion to the development that will go on in these great self-governing Colonies with their limitless tracts of land still available, especially in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, for people to settle upon, I re-affirm that the possibility of the development of trade from Great Britain to the old Continental countries, if it has not reached its limit, will be very small as compared with the enormous development of trade that will go on in these growing self-governing possessions. That being so, what I am anxious to put before the Conference is— though I know we can only go forward slowly, and a great question such as this must, in its ordinary cause, take time to be matured—how anxious all of us are to see our ideas put into operation at as soon a date as possible. What I want to try to impress upon this Conference is the difference between preference between Great Britain and the Colonies and what is known as Protection. I draw the distinction for this reason. I take a typical case. You may have an importation of meat, if you like, or dairy produce. You may take Russia and America as cases in point who may be sending large quantities of these articles to England at the moment. If you were to put a duty against America and Russia upon a special article and give the opportunity to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, to send that same article to England, I am as persuaded in my own mind as I am alive that the price would be as low by the competition and natural rivalry between Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, as it would have been by allowing that product to come in from Russia or America. It is because I believe that, that I urge upon the consideration of this Conference the desirability of drawing a line between the complex, difficult, and certainly controversial matter of Protection, in a great country such as England is, and preference upon certain articles from our own countries as against the same articles from foreign countries. It is a very important matter from the

Ninth Day. 1 May 1907.

I'kkkkrential Trade. (Sir Joseph Ward.)