d of the most tremendous moment. We do not undervalue our great
foreign trade, and I for one am convinced that there is nothing in the
principles of Tariff Reform which will injure that trade. Quite the
reverse. But we do hold that our first concern is with the industry
and productive capacities of our own country, and our next with those
of the great kindred countries across the seas. We hold that a wise
fiscal policy would help to direct commerce into channels which would
not only assist the British worker, but also assist Colonial
development, and make for the greater and more rapid growth of those
countries, which not only contain our best customers, but our fellow
citizens.

That, I say, is one aspect of the matter. But then there is the other
side--the question of social reform in this country. Now here again we
differ from the Cobdenite. The Cobdenite is an individualist. He
believes that private enterprise, working under a system of unfettered
competition, with cheapness as its supreme object, is the surest road
to universal well-being. The Tariff Reformer also believes in private
enterprise, but he does not believe that the mere blind struggle for
individual gain is going to produce the most beneficent results. He
does not believe in cheapness if it is the result of sweating or of
underpaid labour. He keeps before him as the main object of all
domestic policy the gradual, steady elevation of the standard of life
throughout the community; and he believes that the action of the
State deliberately directed to the encouragement of British industry,
not merely by tariffs, is part and parcel of any sound national policy
and of true Imperialism. And please observe that in a number of cases
the Radical party itself has abandoned Cobdenism. Pure individualism
went to the wall in the Factory Acts, and it is going to the wall
every day in our domestic legislation. It is solely with regard to
this matter of imports that the Radical party still cling to the
Cobdenite doctrine, and the consequence is that their policy has
become a mass of inconsistencies. It is devoid of any logical
foundation whatever.

I know that there are many people, sound Unionists at heart, who still
have a difficulty about accepting the doctrines of the Tariff
Reformers. My belief is that, if they could only look at the matter
from the broad national and Imperial point of view, they would come to
alter their convictions. I am not advocating Tariff