meantime. This year has been marked, disastrously marked, in our
annals by the emphatic and deliberate rejection on the part of our
Government of the great principle of Preferential Trade within the
Empire. All the other self-governing States are in favour of it. The
United Kingdom alone blocks the way. What does that mean? What is it
that we risk losing as long as we refuse to accept the principle of
Preferential Trade, and will certainly lose in the long run if we
persist in that refusal? It is a position of permanent and assured
advantage in some of the greatest and most growing markets in the
world. Preference to British goods in the British dominions beyond the
sea would be a constant and potent influence tending to induce the
people of those countries to buy what they require to buy outside
their own borders from us rather than from our rivals. It means beyond
all doubt and question so much more work for British hands. And the
people of those countries are anxious that British hands should get
it. They have, if I may so express myself, a family feeling, which
makes them wish to keep the business within the family. But business
is business. They are willing to give us the first chance. But if we
will give nothing in return, if we tell them to mind their own
business and not to bother us with offers of mutual concessions, it is
only a question of time, and the same chance will be given to others,
who will not refuse to avail themselves of it.

You see the beginning of the process already in such an event as the
newly-concluded commercial treaty between Canada and France. If we
choose, it is still possible for us not only to secure the preference
we have in Colonial markets, but to increase it. But if we do nothing,
commercial arrangements with other nations who are more far-sighted
will gradually whittle that preference away. To my mind the action of
Canada in the matter of that treaty, perfectly legitimate and natural