egree, though
in an increasing degree, is coming to be occupied by the fighting
Services. Whatever advantages from a Party point of view, or from the
point of view of gratifying Colonial opinion, may be gained by food
preferences, they would be very small compared with the enormous boon
of keeping the field of Colonial politics separate from the social and
economic issues on which Parties in this country are so fiercely
divided.

It is possible to take a still wider view of this question. If I quote
the right hon. gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, let me assure
the House that I do not do so for the purpose of making any petty
charge of inconsistency, but because the words which I am going to
read are wise and true words, and stand the test of time. When the
right hon. gentleman spoke at Manchester in 1897, not in the distant
days before the great Home Rule split, but when he was already a
Minister in the Unionist Government, and had been Secretary of State
for the Colonies for nearly two years, he used these words, of the
highest wisdom: "Anything in the direction of an Imperial Commercial
League would weaken the Empire internally and excite the permanent
hostility of the whole world. It would check the free imports of the
food of the people. It is impracticable; but if it were practicable,
and done in the name of the Empire, it would make the Empire odious to
the working people, it would combine the whole world against us, and
it would be a cause of irritation and menace. Our free commerce makes
for the peace of the world."

Let us then seek to impress year after year upon the British Empire an
inclusive and not an exclusive character. We who sit on this side of
the House, who look forward to larger brotherhoods and more exact
standards of social justice, value and cherish the British Empire
because it represents more than any other similar organisation has
ever represented, the peaceful co-operation of all sorts of men in all
sorts of countries, and because we think it is, in that respect at
least, a model of what we hope the whole world will some day become.
The House has to-night a considerable and important opportunity. If in
rejecting this vote of censure, which is so ill-conceived and so
little deserved, we choose to adopt the Amendment, we shall have
written upon the records of Parliament a profound political truth,
which will not, I think, soon be challenged, and which, I believe,
will never be overt