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 sees before him some five to
six hundred millions of foreign imports on which to raise them, and so
his first and very natural reflection is, that by distributing duties
pretty equally over this vast mass of imported commodities he could
raise a very large revenue without greatly enhancing the price of
anything. Our present system throws away, so to speak, the advantage
of our vast and varied importation by electing to place the burden of
duties entirely on very few articles. As against this system the
Tariff Reformer favours the principle of a widespread tariff, of
making all foreign imports pay, but pay moderately, and he holds that
it is no more than justice to the British producer that all articles
brought to the British market should contribute to the cost of
keeping it up. It is no answer to say that it is the British consumer
who would pay the duty, for even if this were invariably true, which
it is not, it leaves unaffected the question of fair play between the
British producer and the foreign producer. The price of the home-made