A.—s

398

Mr. DEAKIN ; We will not, if legislation can prevent it. Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : I know. I was very much impressed by what Sir Joseph Ward told me about the social position of the people of New Zealand. He assured me that for years no beggar had accosted him in that fortunate land. We, in these old countries, are not so happily circumstanced. Neither Free Trade nor Protectionist countries can claim that they are immune from dire poverty and distress amongst large masses of their population. We have in every old country of the world multitudes of poor people who from the cradle to the grave, are never out of sight or hearing distance of the wolves of hunger. Attempts have often been made to saddle our fiscal system with responsibility for the distress of our times; there might have been something to say for that had Protectionist countries been free from the same condition, and also if it had not been for the fact that Britain is, in spite of everything, the richest country under the sun per head of her population. Free Trade has been a great success as a weaith-creating machine, and all this wretchedness is not so much the sorrow as the shame of Great Britain. Had our Colonial friends proposed resolutions calling upon us to use the gigantic resources of this country to put an end for ever to a condition of things which is a blot on the fair fame of the Empire as a whole, then we should have been happy to have assented to their resolution, and to do all in our power to give it effect. But an alteration in our fiscal system is not going to achieve this end; the causes are deeper, as they are older, than any existing fiscal system. The most rabid Free Trader would not have contended that the abolition of the tariffs of the Continent would put an end to all the poverty that exists in Continental countries, and we feel perfectly certain that a change from Free Trade to Protection would simply aggravate the distress we wish altogether to avert. You seem in the New World to be profiting by the bitter experience of the Old, and dealing thoroughly and effectively with the social and economic evils that afflict your people ere those evils harden into malignity; but when we seek to heal those sores in these tradition-bound countries, we do so timidly and fearfully, as men would attempt interfering with the dispensations of Providence. It will be a long time ere we can summon the courage to apply remedies which you have already boldly used for less aggravated evils. In the meantime there will be much suffering and privation in this land of abundant plenty. We beseech you, then, not to lend countenance to any schemes which, however, much they might profit you, would have the effect of increasing by one grain of sand the weight of unendurable poverty now borne by many sons and daughters of this affluent country. I am exceedingly obliged to the Conference for having listened to me so patiently. Adjourned to to-morrow at half-past 10 o'clock.

Eleventh Day. 6 May 1907.

Preferential Trade.