A—s

310

conditions under which we- are carrying on the debate- at this moment, and therefore, gentlemen, I should not be honest, and should be guilty of the grossest disrespect to you, if 1 did not tell you that in view of those circumstances it is impossible for His Majesty's Government to propose (and if they elid propose it, it is perfectly certain that Parliament would reject it) any scheme of Colonial preference by means of tariff manipulation. lam obliged to state that bluntly and frankly at the outset. You will not suppose that I am wanting in any way in consideration or respect for the various arguments which have been used here. Now having made that quite plain, as 1 am bound to do, 1 should like to deal, and I will do so very briefly, with two or three points that have been made in the course of the discussion. It was said by Mr. Deakin in his lucid and exhaustive address, that we here—and he included the Colonies and the other parts of the Empire—are being excluded from foreign markets by tariff walls. Gentlemen, I do not think that is a proposition which is capable of being sustained. We possess, in the case of almost all the countries with whom we are trade rivals, that Treaty stipulation which goes by the name of the most favoured nation clause, and I believe I am speaking well within the facts—and my friend Mr. Lloyd George will, I daresay, be able to supplement it if necessary by actual figures —when I assert these two propositions : that we stand better at this moment industrially in the tariff-protected markets of Europe than any of the nations which have protected themselves inter se by retaliation. That is one proposition. I say next —and I believe this to be equally true as a matter of fact —that our foreign trade has been growing of late years in those very protected markets even at a more rapid rate than it has elsewhere. I will not say than it has in China or the Argentine, but certainly than it has in the Colonies. The reason is not very far to seek. Nations may put up tariff walls as much as they like, but if they are well-to-do and go-ahead people, there are lot of things they cannot do without. You know very well they cannot do without your raw material. We were teilel the other day by Mr. Deakin that there are some provisions in the German Tariff which operate particularly against Australian meat. I take it from him that is so. But they cannot exclude your wool, and they do not exclude it. Mr. DEAKIN : America excludes a great deal of it. Mr. ASQUITH : But I am speaking of Germany; Germany does not. • Mr. DEAKIN : No. Mr. ASQUITH : In the same way there are lot of things we make. Although we do not provide raw materials like wool, our exports to Germany are manufactures which the Germans cannot do without, and they recognise it, as everybody must do. We have seen it in the case of Canada. In the long run you cannot go on selling without buying. There is no tariff wall that has vet be'en erecte-el, even in America, which is the highest of them all, which has succeeded in excluding, or ever will succeed in excluding, British goods from a market, so long as British goods retain their pre-eminence in quality and adaptability to the needs of mankind, and so long as those needs remain a constant or growing quantity. You cannot do it, and no power on earth can do it. It is a very curious thing, and worth noticing in passing, that in the paper to which reference was made yesterday, " Miscellaneous Statements as " to British and Foreign Trade," you will find on page 3 a list of the exports of United Kingdom produce for an average of years, given in the order of

Tenth Day. 2 May 1907.

Preferential Trade. (Mr. Asquith.)