Chinese navvies first came to Canada to aid in building the government sections of the Canadian Pacific Railway. An immediate outcry followed, and in 1885 a head-tax of $50 was imposed on all Chinese immigrants not of the official, merchant, or scholar cla.s.ses. During the nineties slightly over two thousand {253} a year paid the price of admission to the Promised Land. Then growing prosperity attracted greater swarms. Doubling the tax in 1901 only slightly checked the flow, but when it was raised to $500 in 1904 the number willing to pay the impost next year fell to eight. But higher wages, or the chance of slipping over the United States border, soon urged many to face even this barrier, and the number paying head-tax rose to sixteen hundred (1910) and later to seven thousand (1913). These rising numbers led British Columbia to demand total exclusion; but, thanks to the diffusion of the Chinese throughout the Dominion, their lack of a.s.sertiveness and their employment for the most part in industries which did not compete with union men or the smaller merchants, the agitation did not reach great proportions.
It was otherwise with the newcomers from j.a.pan. Their compet.i.tion was more serious. Aggressive and enterprising, filled with a due sense of the greatness of j.a.pan, aspiring to not merely menial but controlling posts, they took firmer root in the country than did the migratory Chinaman. At the same time j.a.pan"s rising power, her obvious sensitiveness, and her alliance with Great Britain made it {254} expedient to treat her subjects more warily than those of quiescent China. There was practically no j.a.panese immigration until 1904-5, when three hundred entered. In 1905 the Dominion Government decided to adhere to the Anglo-j.a.panese treaty in order to secure favourable terms in j.a.pan"s market. A clause of this treaty provided for the free entrance of each country"s subjects into the other country. When asked by the colonial secretary whether they wished to reserve the right to restrict immigration, as Queensland had done, the Dominion authorities declared that they would accept the treaty as it stood, relying upon semi-official j.a.panese a.s.surances of willingness to stop the flow in j.a.pan itself. Then suddenly, in 1906 and 1907, a large influx began, amounting to seven thousand in a single year. This immigration, which was prompted by Canadian mining and railway companies acting in co-operation with j.a.panese societies, came via the Hawaiian Islands.
Alarm rose rapidly in British Columbia, and was encouraged by agitators from the United States. The climax came in September 1907, when mobs attacked first the Chinese and later the j.a.panese quarters in Vancouver, doing much damage for a time, but {255} being at last routed by Banzai-shouting bands of angry j.a.panese. The Dominion Government at once expressed its regret and in due time compensated the sufferers from the riot. To solve the larger question, Mr Lemieux was sent to j.a.pan as a special envoy. Cordially supported by the British amba.s.sador at Tokio, he succeeded in reaching a very satisfactory agreement. The j.a.panese Government itself agreed to restrict immigration direct from j.a.pan, and to raise no objection to Canadian prohibition of immigration by way of Hawaii. This method was much more acceptable to j.a.pan"s pride than direct Canadian restrictions would have been, and proved equally effective, as the number of j.a.panese entering Canada averaged only six hundred in the following years. The Dominion Government"s course was open to criticism in some points, but its earnest endeavour to safeguard imperial as well as national interests, and the success of Mr Lemieux"s diplomacy, were indications that the Dominion was rising to the demands of its new international position. Incidentally it was the Government"s unwillingness to agree to complete j.a.panese exclusion that in 1908 brought the loss of every seat, save one, in British Columbia.
{256}
After the Alaskan boundary had been settled, no critical issue arose between the two North American democracies for several years. There were still questions outstanding which in earlier days would have given opportunity for tail-twisting or eagle-plucking politicians to make trouble, but in the new era of neighbourliness which now dawned they were settled amicably or allowed to fall into blessed oblivion.
A remarkable change in the spirit in which the two peoples regarded each other came about in this period. The abandonment by the United States of its traditional policy of isolation, its occupation of the Philippines, its policy of the open door for China, its partic.i.p.ation in the Morocco dispute, effected a wonderful transformation in the American att.i.tude towards questions of foreign policy and compelled a diplomacy more responsible and with more of give and take. This led to incidents--such as that in Manila Bay, when a British admiral lined up alongside the American fleet against a threatening German squadron--which made it clear that Great Britain was the one trustworthy friend the United States possessed. The steady growth of democratic feeling in Britain, her daring {257} experiments in social betterment, her sympathetic treatment of the Irish and South African questions, increased the friendliness and the interest which the majority of Americans felt at bottom for what was their motherland.
Canada"s prosperity awakened respectful interest. A country which fifty or a hundred thousand good Americans every year preferred to their own must be more than the negligible northern fringe it once was thought to be.
Canada reciprocated this more friendly feeling. Prosperity mended her querulous mood and made her too busy to remember the grievances of earlier days. Her international horizon, too, had widened; the United States was no longer the sole foreign power with which she had to deal, though still the most important. Yet this friendlier feeling did not lead to a general desire for freer trade relations. Quite the contrary; confident in her own newly realized resources and in the possibility of finding markets elsewhere, dominated by protectionist sentiment and by the growing cities, Canada became on the whole indifferent to what had once appeared an essential goal. In Sir Wilfrid Laurier"s phrase, the pilgrimages from Ottawa to Washington had ceased: {258} the pilgrimages must come, if at all, from Washington to Ottawa.
Washington did come to Ottawa. Notable was the visit of Secretary Root in 1907, to discuss outstanding issues. Notable too, in another direction, was the increased interest of the British amba.s.sador at Washington in Canadian affairs. This was particularly true of Mr Bryce, who made it a point to visit Ottawa every year of his term, and declared that he was really more the Canadian than the British amba.s.sador. His skilful diplomacy and his intimate knowledge of American politics served Canada in good stead, and quieted the demand which had frequently been voiced for a separate Canadian representative at Washington.
Among the fruits of the new friendliness and the more direct diplomatic discussion was the settlement of two long-standing fishery disputes.
The much discussed Convention of 1818, in respect to the Atlantic fisheries, was referred to the Hague Tribunal in 1910, where it was finally set at rest. The controversy as to fur-sealing on the Pacific was settled by international agreement in 1911. Less success was met in dealing with the fisheries of the Great Lakes. A comprehensive treaty {259} for the protection and development of these fisheries, drawn up in 1908, was not ratified because of the opposition of some private interests in the United States.
The most significant achievement of these years, however, was a broad provision for the settlement of all disputes as to boundary waters.
The pressure for the use of boundary rivers for the development of power, with all the difficult questions arising as to division of the power or obstruction to navigation, made necessary such a provision.
In accordance with a suggestion from the United States a temporary Waterways Commission was set up (1905); and in 1910 a treaty was ratified providing for a permanent International Joint Commission, to consist of three Canadians and three Americans. The treaty provided, further, that any matter whatever in dispute between the two countries, quite aside from boundary-water issues, might be referred to the commission for settlement, with the consent on the one hand of the United States Senate, and on the other of the Governor-General in Council--the Dominion Cabinet. Quietly, with little public discussion, the two countries concerned thus took one of the most advanced steps yet made towards {260} the peaceful settlement of all possible sources of conflict.
The revival of the tariff issue was the most spectacular and most important episode in the new relationship. The revival started in the Republic. For some years a steadily growing agitation in favour of reciprocity with Canada had been carried on in the New England and Northwest states. Nothing might have come of the agitation, however, had not the Payne-Aldrich tariff of 1909 compelled official negotiation and opened up the whole broad issue. Under that tariff the system of maximum and minimum schedules was adopted, the maximum designed to serve as a club to compel other nations to yield their lowest rates.
The president was directed to enforce these higher duties against all countries which had not agreed by April 1910 to grant the concessions demanded. The proposal partook of the highwayman"s methods and ethics even more than is usual in protectionist warfare; and it was with wry faces that one by one the nations with maximum and minimum tariffs consented to give the United States their lower rates. France and Germany were the last of European nations to accept. Canada {261} alone remained. It was admitted that the preference granted other parts of the Empire did not const.i.tute discrimination against the United States, but it was contended that the concessions made to France should be given to the United States.
Canada resented this demand, in view of the fact that the minimum tariff of the United States stood much higher than the maximum of Canada, and it was proposed to retaliate by a surtax on American goods.
In the United States there was wide sympathy with this att.i.tude; but under the act the president had no option but to enforce the higher duties if the concessions were not given. Fortunately he was left to decide as to the adequacy of such concessions, and this made agreement possible at the eleventh hour. President Taft proposed a conference at Albany; the Dominion Government accepted, and an agreement was reached on the 30th of March, the last day of grace but one. Canada conceded to the United States its intermediate rates on a few articles of minor importance--china-ware, window-gla.s.s, feathers, nuts, prunes, and other goods--and the United States accepted these as equivalent to the French concessions. Then, to complete the comedy, Canada at once made {262} these lower rates part of its general tariff, applying to any country, so that the United States in the end was where it started--enjoying no special concessions whatever. Canada had gone through the motions of making a concession, and that sufficed.
This agreement, however, was only the beginning. President Taft, who recognized too late that he had antagonized the growing low-tariff sentiment in the United States by his support of the Payne-Aldrich tariff, decided to attempt a stroke for freer trade. He proposed a broad revision of trade relations with Canada. In negotiations which began at Ottawa and were concluded at Washington in January 1911, an agreement for a wide measure of reciprocal free trade was effected. It was nearly as broad as the treaty of 1854. Grain, fruit and vegetables, dairy products, live stock, fish, hewn lumber and sawn boards, and many minerals were put on the free list. Meats, flour, coal and other articles free in the earlier agreement were subjected to reduced rates, a limited number of manufactured articles were included, some of them Canadian and some of them American specialties. The agreement was to be effected, not by treaty but by concurrent legislation for an {263} indefinite period. The Canadian Government announced that the same terms would be granted all parts of the British Empire.
After the cabinets, the legislatures. President Taft had great difficulty in securing the consent of Congress. Farmers and fishermen, stand-pat Republicans and anti-administration insurgents, opposed this sudden reversal of a traditional policy. Only by the aid of Democratic votes in a special session of Congress was the measure adopted, late in July. Meanwhile the Opposition in the Canadian parliament, after some initial hesitation, had attacked it with growing force. They resorted to the obstruction which the Liberals had practised in 1896, and compelled the Government to appeal to the country, a week after Congress had accepted the agreement.
After parliament, the people. Apparently the Government antic.i.p.ated that the bargain would be welcomed by nearly all Canadians. That expectation was not without warrant. It was such a treaty as Canada had sought time and again during the last fifty years, and such as both parties would have accepted without question twenty years before.
Every important leader of the Conservative party was on record as favouring such an {264} arrangement. Yet it was received first with hesitation, then more and more freely denounced, and finally overwhelmed.
On the economic issues concerned the advocates of the agreement apparently had a good case. The farmer, the miner, the fisherman stood to gain from it, not so notably as they would have done twenty years before, but yet undoubtedly to gain. It was contended that the United States was itself a rival producer of most of the commodities in question, and that Canada would be exposed to the compet.i.tion of the British Dominions and the most-favoured nations. These arguments had force, but could not balance the advantages of the arrangement, especially to the western farmer. That this gain would accrue and a large trade north and south be created, to the destruction of trade east and west, was in fact made by the opponents of the treaty the chief corner-stone of their economic argument. It was held, too, that the raw products of farm and sea and forest and mine ought not to be shipped out of the country, but ought to be kept at home as the basis of manufacturing industries. And though the arrangement scarcely touched the manufacturers, the thin end of the wedge argument had much weight {265} with them and their workmen. It would lead, they thought, to a still wider measure of trade freedom which would expose them to the compet.i.tion of American manufacturers.
But it was the political aspect of the pact that the Conservatives most emphasized. Once more, as in 1891, they declared Canadian nationality and British connection to be at stake. Reciprocity would prove the first long step towards annexation. Such was the intention, they urged, of its American upholders, a claim given some colour by President Taft"s maladroit "parting of the ways" speech and by Speaker Clark"s misplacedly humorous remark, "we are preparing to annex Canada." And while in Canada there might be as yet few annexationists, the tendency of a vast and intimate trade north and south would be to make many. Where the treasure was, there would the heart be also. The movement for imperial preferential trade, then strong in the United Kingdom, would be for ever defeated if the American offer should be accepted. Canada must not sell her birthright for a mess of Yankee pottage.
The advocates of reciprocity denounced these arguments as the sheerest buncombe. Annexation sentiment in the United States {266} they declared to be rapidly disappearing, and in any case it was Canada"s views, not those of the United States, that mattered. Reciprocity from 1854 to 1866 had killed, not fostered, annexation sentiment in Canada.
And, if the doubling and trebling of imports from the United States in recent years had not kept national and imperial sentiment from rising to flood-tide, why now should an increase of exports breed disloyalty?
Canadian financiers and railway operators were entering into ever closer relations with the United States; why should the farmer be denied the same right? The reciprocity proposed in 1911, unlike the programme of twenty years earlier, did not involve discrimination against Great Britain, but in fact went along with a still greater preference to the mother country. The claim that reciprocity would kill imperial preference was meaningless in face of this actual fact.
Moreover, the British tariff reformers proclaimed their intention, if Mr Chamberlain"s policy prevailed, of making reciprocity treaties with foreign countries as well as preferential arrangements with the Dominions, so why should not Canada exercise the same freedom?
But elections are not won merely by such {267} debate. The energy with which they are fought, or the weight of the interests vitally concerned, may prove more decisive than argument. And in this contest the Opposition had the far more effective fighting force and made the far stronger appeal. Mr Borden"s followers fought with the eager enthusiasm which is bred of long exclusion from office, while the ministerialists--save only the veteran prime minister himself and a small band of his supporters--fought feebly, as if dulled by the satiety which comes of long possession of the loaves and fishes.
Outside the party bounds the situation was the same. The western farmers were the only organized and articulate body on the side of reciprocity, while opposed to it were the powerful and well-equipped forces of the manufacturers and the closely allied transportation and financial interests. Through the press and from a thousand platforms these forces appealed to the dominant beliefs and feelings of the people. Quite effective was the appeal founded on the doctrine of protection. In twenty years Canada had become a city-dominated land, and the average city-dweller had come to believe that his interests were bound up with protection--a belief not unnatural in the {268} absence for a decade of any radical discussion of the issue, and not to be overcome at the eleventh hour. But the patriotic appeal was still more effective. Here was a chance to express the acc.u.mulated resentment of half a century against the unneighbourly policy of the United States, now suddenly reversed. The chance could safely be seized, for Canada was prosperous beyond all precedent. "Let well enough alone" was in itself a vote-compelling cry. In fact, "Laurier prosperity" proved its own Nemesis. Jeshurun Ontario, having waxed fat, kicked. An American philosopher, Artemus Ward, has recorded that his patriotism was so worked up during the Civil War that he consented to send all his wife"s relations to the front. Many an Ontario patriot in 1911 was prepared to sacrifice the interests of his fellow-Canadians to prove his independence of the United States. And in Quebec the working arrangement between the Conservatives and Mr Henri Boura.s.sa and his party told heavily against the Government.
The result of the elections, which were held on the 21st of September, was the overwhelming defeat of Sir Wilfrid Laurier"s Ministry. In Ontario the Liberals saved only thirteen seats out of eighty-six. In the rest of the {269} country they had a majority, but not sufficient to reduce substantially this adverse Ontario vote. The complete returns gave 133 Conservatives to 88 Liberals. As usual, the popular vote was more equally divided than the parliamentary seats, for the Liberals secured 625,000 and the Conservatives 669,000 votes. The Liberal majority of only 5000 in Quebec, 3000 in the maritime provinces, and 20,000 in the prairie provinces was overcome by the Conservative majority of 63,000 in Ontario and 9000 in British Columbia. A fortnight later Sir Wilfrid Laurier tendered his resignation to the governor-general and Mr Borden formed his Government.
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CHAPTER XIII
NATION AND EMPIRE
Imperial preferential trade--Political relations--Defence
Neither new relations with foreign lands across the sea nor new-old relations with the United States bulked as large in these later years as relations with the other parts of the British Empire. The question of the Empire"s future was a constant theme. It was a time of unparalleled progress in each and all the British states. Great Britain"s vast strides towards social justice, Canada"s growth and economic activity, the similar, if lesser, expansion of Australia and New Zealand, the unification of South Africa, all bespoke the strength and soundness of each of the Five Nations. The steady growth of community of feeling and of practical co-operation in many fields bore witness that progress did not mean disunion.
Yet there were many at home, and in Great Britain and the other lands overseas, who were far from content with the trend of events, who {271} were convinced that the Empire was drifting to eternal smash unless some change in policy should be effected. To some it was Britain"s free-trade policy that was the danger; to others it was the steady growth of self-government in the Dominions. Imperial preferential trade, political federation, colonial contributions to a central army and navy, were all vigorously urged as remedies. Not one of these things came to pa.s.s in the years under survey, and yet when the testing-time arrived the Empire proved one in heart and soul.
Great Britain"s free-trade policy was first called in question.
Scarcely ended were the Boer War and the disappointing Conference of 1902 when Mr Chamberlain, fresh from a tour through South Africa, launched his great campaign for imperial preferential trade. Though protection and retaliation later became more important phases of the tariff-reform movement, at the outset it was its imperial side which was emphasized. The colonies and the mother country, it was urged, were certain to drift apart unless bound by links of material interest.
Give the colonies a preference on their wheat or wool in Britain, give British {272} manufacturers a real preference in colonial markets, and the Empire would cease to be merely a sentiment.
Once committed to setting up a protective tariff in order to make reductions in favour of such colonies as would reciprocate, Mr Chamberlain and his followers went on to find in it other great advantages. It would aid British agriculture and British industry, would protect both farmer and manufacturer from the compet.i.tion they were increasingly unable to bear, and would give a weapon for forcing foreign countries to tear down their tariff barriers. The colonial market, the home market, and the foreign market would thus all be gained, and none too soon, if the complete decay of British industry and the triumph of its rivals were to be averted. "We have reached our highest point," declared Mr Chamberlain. "Our fate will be the fate of the empires and the kingdoms of the past.... Sugar has gone, silk has gone, iron is threatened, wool is threatened, cotton will come.... We are no longer first. We are third. We shall be fifth or sixth if things go on as they are at present.... The trade of this country, as measured by the exports to foreign countries and to British possessions, {273} has during the last twenty or thirty years been practically stationary; our export trade to all these foreign countries which have arranged tariffs against us has enormously diminished, and at the same time their exports to us have enormously increased."
For a time it seemed that the tariff reformers would sweep all before them. Their chief was the most skilful and popular leader of his time.
The inevitable growth of other countries in manufacturing had excited the alarm of the British manufacturer, and protectionist sentiment among the landowners, though scotched, had not been killed. The almost universal reign of protection in foreign countries and the other colonies appeared to prove obsolete the doctrines of Cobden and Bright.
It seemed that fifty years of unquestioned triumph in England itself had left free trade a traditional dogma, not a living belief. To the poor, tariff reform promised work; to the rich, a shifting of heavy taxation from their shoulders; to the imperialist, the indissoluble empire of his dreams.
Yet the pendulum soon swung against Mr Chamberlain. Investigation showed that his jeremiads were largely unfounded, and gave new life to the principles of free trade. They {274} were shown not to be obsolete dogmas, but reasoned deductions from the actual situation of the United Kingdom. Imperial preference meant a crippling tax on food and on raw materials for no adequate return. The share of colonial markets which British manufacturers did not have, for which they could compete, and which colonial producers did not desire to keep themselves, was very small. Mr Chamberlain was stricken soon after with lingering illness, and of the younger men of capacity who came upon the scene practically all were on the side of free trade. The stars in their courses fought against him, for, from 1903 onward, British trade began to flourish as never, or rarely ever, before. In the elections of 1906, though other issues were also factors in the result, the sweeping victory of the Liberals was mainly a triumph for free trade.
In Canada, also, at the outset, Mr Chamberlain"s proposals were widely welcomed. He was personally popular. The majority of Canadians believed in protection. Some of those who did not were ready to recognize the value of a preference in the British market. Yet as the full implications of the proposal became clear, and as the British free-trader made good his case, opinion in Canada became {275} as divided as in Great Britain. It was realized that it was one thing for Canada to give a reduced tariff, leaving the fiscal system protective still, and quite another for Great Britain to abandon entirely her free-trade policy in order to be able to give preferential rates to colonies or to low-tariff foreign states. Canadian manufacturers gave the movement a warm but vague welcome; it soon became clear that Mr Chamberlain was much mistaken in supposing they were prepared to relinquish any corner of the Canadian market to British manufacturers.
They declared officially that they would not favour an increase in the British preference even on articles not made in Canada: "we were not prepared to admit that there was any article that could not at some point in Canada, and in time, be successfully manufactured."[1] They were, however, fully prepared to give British manufacturers lower rates than American, provided that both rates were high enough. The farmer, who chiefly was to profit, did not appear eager for the boon of a preference in the British market, so far as farm journals and farmers"
organizations represented his view. He would be glad {276} to have higher prices for his wheat or stock, but did not want the British workman to pay a halfpenny a loaf to bribe him to remain in the Empire.
To some extent opinion followed party lines. The Conservative party had consistently supported reciprocal preference and opposed the Laurier-Fielding free gift. The Liberals had defended that preference as in itself a benefit to the Canadian consumer, and had deprecated higgling with Great Britain. They would be glad to receive a preference in Great Britain if Britain felt it in her own interest.
Convinced believers in self-government for themselves, however, they were willing that the United Kingdom should have the same privilege, and declined to intervene in the British campaign. Mr Borden took the same stand as to intervention; but many of his followers were not hampered by such scruples, and Mr Foster made eloquent speeches in England on Mr Chamberlain"s behalf.
The Conference of 1907 was essentially an appendix to the Chamberlain campaign. Imperial preference found vigorous advocates among colonial prime ministers, notably Dr Jameson of the Cape, Mr Ward of New Zealand, and especially Mr Deakin of Australia, {277} whose eloquent appeal was one of the chief features of the Conference. All expressed themselves as not wanting the United Kingdom to set up a protective and preferential system unless convinced it was for her own good; but with more persistence than success they sought to prove that it would be for her good, and especially to show that prices to the English consumer would not be increased, and yet that colonial producers would gain.
The representatives for the United Kingdom, ministers in the British Government, fresh from a three-year discussion of the whole issue and backed by the largest parliamentary majority on record, were equally frank in their reb.u.t.tal of the arguments advanced and their refusal to lead Britain to commit what they considered commercial suicide. Mr Asquith and Mr Churchill were especially uncompromising; Mr Lloyd George showed more temperamental sympathy with protection in the abstract, but was equally clear that free trade had been proved best for Great Britain beyond question.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier was the doyen of the Conference, the only member present for a third time. He took a less vigorous part than in the previous meetings, letting the younger {278} lions roar. He had opened the debate by announcing his intention to move again the preference resolutions of 1902, and did so in a brief speech at the close, making his position clear. Canada had given a free preference to British goods deliberately, and had not repented. If it had not done for the British manufacturer all that he would like, more could be done by a system of mutual preference. "Yet this is a matter," he continued, "that is altogether in the hands of the British people, and if they think on the whole that their interests are better served by adhering to their present system than by yielding ever so little, it is a matter for the British electorate. I think the best way of serving the whole is by allowing every part to serve and recognize its own immediate interests." On his motion the resolutions of 1902--recognizing the value of preferential trade, declaring free trade between the different parts of the Empire impracticable, urging the colonies to follow Canada"s example in giving a preference to the United Kingdom, and urging the United Kingdom to consider the expediency of granting a preference to colonial products, either by an exemption from or reduction of duties now or hereafter imposed--were adopted by {279} all the Dominions, the United Kingdom dissenting. Sir Wilfrid laid more stress upon the proposal for an All-Red line of steamers for faster and better service on the Atlantic and on the Pacific, with joint subsidies, urging that the best way to bind the Empire together was to facilitate intercourse. The proposal was received with enthusiasm; yet, though its advocacy was continued by Lord Strathcona and Mr Sifton, little progress was made towards its adoption.
After the Conference of 1907 preferential trade ceased for a time to be a living issue. Social reform, the budget controversy, the struggles with the House of Lords, Home Rule, foreign affairs, in turn took the leading place on the stage. Four years later, at the Conference of 1911, the subject was not even mentioned. The Unionist party was now definitely pledged to protection on manufactures, but the tax on food, essential to effective colonial preferences, had been thrown overboard by a large section of the party. The British farmer was promised land reform instead of protection on foodstuffs. Even Mr Bonar Law, speaking in 1912, declared that he did not wish to impose food duties, and would impose them only if, in a conference {280} to be called, the colonies declared them to be essential. This endeavour to throw on the colonies the onus and responsibility of making the Englishman pay food taxes was denounced on every side, and after much shuffling a compromise was reached to the effect that "if when a Unionist Government has been returned to power it proves desirable, after consultation with the Dominions, to impose new duties upon any articles of food, in order to secure the most effective system of preference, such duties should not be imposed until they have been submitted to the people of this country at a general election."
Thus, after ten years of ardent agitation for tariff reform, one great party in the state was as resolutely opposed to the scheme as ever, and, while the other was committed to it, the duty on foodstuffs, once declared essential to save the Empire, was made conditional and given second place to protection of manufacturers. It was by no means improbable that the whirligig of time would once more bring to the front food taxes and imperial preference. Yet as far as the early years of the century went, the years within which Mr Chamberlain declared that the decision had to be made, no step towards preference had {281} been taken by Great Britain, and still the Empire drew closer together instead of drifting apart. As a matter of fact, the empire-binding value of tariff preference was greatly exaggerated by its advocates. The Laurier-Fielding preference was a real bond of imperial unity simply because it was a free-will offering, given from motives of sentiment, not of profit. A system of preferences such as Mr Chamberlain advocated might possibly be a good business arrangement for one or all of the countries concerned, but it could have little force as empire-cement. It would be a matter of cold-blooded bargain, on a par with the similar reciprocal or preferential arrangements which the protectionists proposed to make with foreign countries. There would be nothing exclusive about it.
Good came of the agitation. It compelled a bed-rock consideration of British business and social conditions, and proved that if free trade had made possible the production of great wealth, it had not been enough to ensure its fair distribution. This searching inquest was largely responsible for the great series of democratic and social reforms adopted by the Asquith Government, reforms which gave the United Kingdom the world"s leadership in {282} democracy and won fresh sympathy and loyal emulation in the Dominions. In undying words Mr Asquith gave (1909) a definition of Liberalism which awoke immediate sympathy in every Dominion. It expressed in concentrated form ideals which more and more would be the common heritage of all the Empire, particularly in those Dominions, such as Australia and Canada, where all parties are almost equally democratic and progressive: