lation
suffering acutely from high food-prices--that the taxes should be
removed, and on the other hand the Minister in charge has to get up
and say that he will bring the matter before the next Colonial
Conference two years hence, or that he will address the
representatives of the Australian or Canadian Governments through the
agency of the Colonial Office, and that in the meanwhile nothing can
be done--when you have produced that situation, then, indeed, you will
have exposed the fabric of the British Empire to a wrench and a shock
which it has never before received, and which any one who cares about
it, cannot fail to hope that it may never sustain.

Such a deadlock could not be relieved merely by goodwill on either
side. When you begin to deflect the course of trade, you deflect it in
all directions and for all time in both countries which are parties to
the bargain. Your industries in your respective Colonies would have
exposed themselves to a more severe competition from British goods in
their markets, and would have adjusted themselves on a different
basis, in consequence. Some Colonial producers would have made
sacrifices in that respect for the sake of certain advantages which
were to be gained by other producers in their country through a
favoured entry into our market. That one side of the bargain could be
suddenly removed, without inflicting injustice on the other party to
the bargain, appears to me an impossibility.

I submit that preferences, even if economically desirable, would prove
an element of strain and discord in the structure and system of the
British Empire. Why, even in this Conference, what has been the one
subject on which we have differed sharply? It has been this question
of preference. It has been the one apple of discord which has been
thrown into the arena of our discussions. It is quite true we meet
here with a great fund of goodwill on everybody's part, on the part of
the Mother Country and on the part of the representatives of the
self-governing Dominions--a great fund of goodwill which has been
accumulated over a long period of time when each party to this great
confederation has been free to pursue its own line of development
unchecked and untrammelled by interference from the other.

We have that to start upon, and consequently have been able to discuss
in a very frank and friendly manner all sorts of questions. We have
witnessed the spectacle of the British Minister in charge of