511

A—s

dealing in a simple business fashion with a series of business propositions which may refer to any one of the things 1 have mentioned, or to any other projects of the same character which are regarded as of Imperial importance, and to which two or more governments, counting the United Kingdom and the parts of the Empire represented, may be able and may desire to combine for the common good. The representatives will meet for that practical purpose, sift these business proposals from a business standpoint, closely examine their cost, carefully consider the returns to be obtained, and lodk at all the associated consequences, and then prepare schemes, some of which will interest only the United Kingdom and a particular dominion, others the United Kingdom and two or more, others can perhaps be devised which would interest them all. Then those propositions require to be submitted to the Legislatures affected before they can be endorsed. So that what we get is, first of all, a fund; next the expert consideration on a business basis of the means of employing that fund. So when the several Parliaments came to deal with it they would be fully equipped, to judge these propositions, to accept or reject them as they please, or perhaps modify them by referring them back, the proportionate contributions of each being scrutinised by each party. It is not necessary to work that out now in detail. At all events, we should be face to face with the certainty of having money to spend for Imperial purposes, and practical proposals how to spend it after thorough examination had satisfied the different Legislatures. I can see no interference with self-government, or with fiscal policy. First of all, the amount suggested by Sir G. Sydenham Clarke is only one per cent., and that amount need not be levied on the goods, but provided by contribution. Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL : By subvention. Mr. DEAKIN : Yes, so that the fiscal question cannot possibly arise. I see the President's estimate yesterday was quite correct. It is reckoned roughly speaking, on a recent year at 4,600,000/.— it would be higher this year when every return is higher—but, taking it roughly, four and a half millions one year with the other, as a rule would be likely to be made available on that scale. You are not obliged to spend that each year, but could carry it on, if necessary, and accumulate it for a particular purpose, either for a series of expenditures year by year for the one purpose, or by i capital outlay. I need not go into details. I think 1 have made the general sense quite plain. It is to bring us to a point, if possible, and to give a positive character if we can and a direct impulse to these means of action already approved by the Government. I think there is a great deal to commend this, or I should not lay it before the Conference. Allow me to say that not only have I no proprietary rights in the proposition, but if I had, I should recognise that this was not a developed plan to stand upon at all. Any amendment which will make it more effective, and any reshaping of it which would accomplish the same end, would commend itself to me. It w 7 ould only then become a question of degree, which was the speediest and most practicable form to give it. lam not wedded to it. But we do want, as it seems to me, some means of concentrating the consideration of all the legislatures upon these Imperial problems. Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : I should like to know something about your idea of the administration of the fund. Mr. DEAKIN : If the contribution of a particular Dominion were so many hundreds of thousands of pounds, shillings and pence, the arrangement would not be that that amount should be spent merely upon the Dominion in question, but the principle observed would be that practically to all intents and purposes each community would control and see expended the amount of its contribution with its own consent.

Fourteenth Day. 9 May 1907.

Imperial Surtax on Foremin Imports. (Mr. Deakin.)