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life, and every extension of the powers of the State, invite criticism and require it. Free criticism is the breath of our constitution. To shrink from great tasks or newer enterprises because of the greater burden they impose upon representatives, and representative institutions, means simply shrinking from growth, and the responsibilities of growth. If we wish one we must take the others. It is impossible for us to become more closely united, indeed, it is impossible for us to develop our own local self-governments in any direction without running more of those very risks which Mr. Churchill has painted with great eloquence and with much force, but as it appears to me, with a momentary oversight, of the fact that he is really condemning our whole system of Government and its adaptability to modern needs. He is criticising, by implication unfavourably, that Parliamentary system which he is ostensibly at the same moment enthusiastically upholding or intending to uphold. His argument is also fatal to all 'possibilities of commercial relations, not only within the Empire but without the Empire. You can have no arrangement with a foreign country of any kind based on mutual concessions; you must not even go the length that Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand have ventured to go. You must stop far short of that. You must hesitate before you press for most-favoured-nation treatment anywhere, because that means making discriminations; you will be getting advantages; you will be overcoming disadvantages, but you are bringing yourselves and your relations with them into the arena of conflict. If there are such dangers from friction within the Empire there must be danger from the same commercial friction without the Empire. If his argument is pushed, as it ought to be pushed, a stage further, it means cutting off Great Britain from any business negotiations with her rivals involving possible causes of friction with them, or possible causes of further discussion in the House of Commons. More than that, I should have said in his presence that his argument appears to me to go to the root of the Empire as an Empire. It would isolate Great Britain, not only in trade, but in every other operation forbidding joint action; it would tell against every operation by agreement, It would enforce isolation. lam sure that is not what the Under-Secretary of State intended. I am perfectly prepared to be told that he sees where he is going to draw the line, but, I cannot see why, to use his own words, if he follows out the logical deductions of his own argument, he can stop short of a complete isolation of the Mother Country from all her Colonies in matters of trade and commerce, and from all foreign countries. Finally, he has to count with the effect of his disruptive and extreme doctrines of individualism when they come to be applied to any state action whatever, even in this country itself. CHAIRMAN : I think he spoke specially of food and raw material. Mr. DEAKIN : He did speak specially of duties on food and raw materials as affording special cause for complaint. This argument applies in either a greater or lesser degree to everything else, although he properly laid most peremptory stress just now upon them. To other duties or agreements about duties as to other forms of political action it applies with varying force. There are matters far from all fiscal connection which might become almost as vital, but it would be idle to pursue this speculation further. As his remarks were general and theoretical from first to last, and as he admitted himself developed a doctrine, I meet them in the same general and rapid way. The interjection of the Chairman is pertinent, since it was upon the treatment of food and raw materials that Mr. Churchill dwelt, but the whole of his thesis as to dangers of friction, delays in the House of Commons, and the other various difficulties he foresees applies of necessity to the whole range of possible political bargains and activities.

Twelfth Day. 7 May 1907.

Preferential Trade. (Mr. Deakin.)