There is a more serious infringement, as it seems to me, upon the
principle of self-government. The preferences which have hitherto been
accorded to the Mother Country by the self-governing States of the
British Empire are free preferences. They are preferences which have
been conceded by those States, in their own interests and also in our
interests. They are freely given, and, if they gall them, can as
freely be withdrawn; but the moment reciprocity is established and an
agreement has been entered into to which both sides are parties, the
moment the preferences become reciprocal, and there is a British
preference against the Australian or Canadian preferences, they become
not free preferences, but what I venture to call locked preferences,
and they cannot be removed except by agreement, which is not likely to
be swiftly or easily attained.

Now I must trench for one moment upon the economic aspect. What does
preference mean? It can only mean one thing. It can only mean better
prices. It can only mean better prices for Colonial goods. I assert,
without reserve, that preference can only operate through the agency
of price. All that we are told about improving and developing the
cultivation of tobacco in South Africa, and calling great new areas
for wheat cultivation into existence in Australia, depends upon the
stimulation of the production of those commodities, through securing
to the producers larger opportunities for profit. I say that unless
preference means better prices it will be ineffective in achieving the
objects for the sake of which it is urged. But the operation of
preference consists, so far as we are concerned, in putting a penal
tax upon foreign goods, and the object of putting that penal tax on
foreign goods is to enable the Colonial supply to rise to the level of
the foreign goods plus the tax, and by so conferring upon the Colonial