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Twelfth Day. 7 May 1907.
could—that has been our policy—to throw the whole of our trade towards Great Britain. We are side by side with a nation—one of the wealthiest and most enterprising nations on earth to-day—the American people. They are of the Anglo-Saxon race, the great commercial race of the world, and if anything they are perhaps more enterprising than their progenitors, and put in perhaps more energy and activity to push their trade than any other nation that I know of. Therefore it is not surprising that in the case of Canada, with a population now of 6,000,000, by the side of a population of 80,000,000 of such enterprising business men as are the Americans, our trade with them should be larger than our trade with Great Britain. First of all they are double in number, being 80,000,000 —while you are only 40,000,00. Apart from that they are neighbours. There is no boundary line except a purely conventional one over the whole territory. Their habits are the same as ours and therefore we are induced to trade and cannot help it by the force of nature. But so far as legislation can influence trade we have done everything possible to push our trade towards the British people as against the American people. Mr. ASQUITH : May I say I did not in the least dispute that 2 My object was not, as I think I made clear, in any sense to complain of the Canadian preference; on the contrary, I recognise troth its intention and its effect. My point was that natural conditions were such that it was inevitable that the Americans should get the best of it. Sir WILFRID LAURIER : Exactly. Ido not dispute your intention, or the fact that you wanted to give us the full benefit; but I do not think with all your goodwill you reached the point that we have helped British trade in a very considerable degree. In 1897, when we introduced preference to British trade, the British importations into Canada had fallen to 29,000,000/. Now they have reached the figure of 69,000,000/., a very considerable increase. Of this there are 16,000,000/. upon the free list. We have a very large free list which covers all possible raw materials—everything of the kind. You in Britain are not in the position of selling much of what is on the free list —only 16,000,000/. —whereas our imports from the United States of free goods runs nearly to 80,000,000/. Now as to the dutiable goods, you have increased those goods to the figure of 52,000,000/, that is to say upon 52,000,000/. of importations from Great Britain into Canada, we give you a preference of per cent,, which is certainly a valuable contribution on our part to British trade. Not only have we done it by preference, by legislation, but we have forced our trade against the laws of nature and geography. If we were to follow the laws of nature and geography between Canada and the United States, the whole trade would flow from south to north, and from north to south. We have done everything possible by building canals and subsidising railways to bring the trade from west to east and east to west so as to bring trade into British channels. All this we have done recognising the principle of the great advantage of forcing trade within the British Empire. This principle we recognise. We are bound to say that though the preference which we have given has not done as much, perhaps, for British trade as the British merchant or manufacturer would like, we have told the British people at the same time that there is a way of doing more. There is the preference of mutual trade, and this is what we had in view when we adopted in 1902 the resolution of that year. Let me read out to the Conference the resolutions of 1902. The first part is in these terms : "That this Conference recognises that the principle "of preferential trade between the United Kingdom and His Majesty's
Preferential Trade. (Sir Wilfrid Laurier.)
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