e delusion. I
believe that, if only we could shake off the fetters of a narrow and
pedantic theory, and freely reshape our own system of import duties on
principles of obvious common sense, we should be able at one and the
same time to promote trade within the Empire, to strengthen our hands
in commercial negotiations with foreign countries, and to render tardy
justice to our home industries.

The Free Trader goes on the principle of placing duties on a very few
articles only, articles, generally, of universal consumption, and of
making those duties very high ones. Moreover, with the exception of
alcohol, these articles are all things which we cannot produce
ourselves. I do not say that the system has not some merits. It is
easy to work, and the cost of collection is moderate. But it has also
great defects. The system is inelastic, for the duties being so few
and so heavy it is difficult to raise them in case of emergency
without checking consumption. Moreover, the burden of the duties
falls entirely on the people of this country, for the foreign
importer, except in the case of alcoholic liquors, has no home
producer to compete with, and so he simply adds the whole of the duty
to the price of the article. Last, but not least, the burden is
inequitably distributed. It would be infinitely fairer, as between
different classes of consumers, to put a moderate duty on a large
number of articles than to put an enormous duty on two or three. But
from that fairer and more reasonable system we are at present debarred
by our pedantic adhesion to the rule that no duty may be put on
imported articles unless an equivalent duty is put on articles of the
same kind produced at home. Why, you may well ask, should we be bound
by any such rule? I will tell you. It is because, unless we imposed
such an equivalent duty, we should be favouring the British producer,
and because under our present system every other consideration has got
to give way to this supreme law, the "categorical imperative" of the
Free Trader, that we must not do anything which could by any
possibility in the remotest degree benefit the British producer in
his competition with the foreigner in our home market. It is from the
obsession of this doctrine that the Tariff Reformer wishes to liberate
our fiscal policy. He approaches this question free from any doctrinal
prepossessions whatever. Granted that a certain number of millions
have to be raised by Customs duties, he