Proposals of a more original kind than those of Sir Henry Parkes have been made by the Earl of Dunraven, though they are hardly more successful in standing cross-examination. Lord Dunraven has seen, a great deal of the world, and has both courage and freshness of mind. He scolds Liberals for attaching too little importance to colonies, and not perceiving that our national existence is bound up with our existence as an empire. We are dependent in an increasing degree on foreign countries for our supply of food, and therefore we might starve in time of war unless we had an efficient fleet; but fleets, to be efficient, must be able to keep the sea for any length of time, and they can only do this by means of the accommodation afforded by our various dependencies and colonies dotted over the surface of the globe. This is a very good argument so far as it goes, but of course it would be met, say in South Africa, by keeping Table Mount and Simon's Bay, and letting the rest go. It might, too, as we all know, be met in another way, namely, by the enforcement at sea of the principles of warfare on land, and the abandonment of the right of seizure of the property of private individuals on the ocean.

Besides that, says Lord Dunraven, the colonies are by far our best customers, and our only chance of increasing or maintaining our trade lies in 'the development of the colonies.' What development means he does not very clearly explain. Subsidised emigration and all such devices he dismisses as futile. Some means should be devised, he says, whereby the independent colonies should have a voice in the management of matters affecting the empire: what those means might exactly be he does not even hint. The mother country and the colonies might be drawn closer together by the abandonment of free trade and the formation of an imperial Zollverein or Greater British Customs Union. In this way capital would move more freely within the empire from one portion to another—as if capital which has gone from Great Britain to the Australian group of colonies to such a tune that the public indebtedness there is three times the amount per head in the mother country (to say nothing of the vast sums embarked in private enterprise, bringing up the aggregate debt to a million and a quarter), did not move quite freely enough as it is. Supply would at last have an opportunity of accommodating itself to demand without let or hindrance over a large portion of the earth's surface—as if more were necessary for this than the simple reduction of their tariffs, which is within the power of the protectionist colonies without federation, confederation, or any other device whatever. As it is, by the way, the colonies take nearly four times as much per head per annum of our manufactures as is taken by the United States (32s. against 8s. 4d.)

It is not necessary for me here, even if there were space, to state the arguments against the possibility of a perfect Customs Union embracing the whole British Empire. They have been recently set forth by the masterly hand of Sir Thomas Farrer (Fair Trade v. Free Trade, published by the Cobden Club, pp. 38-60). The objections to such a solution rest on the fact that it involves the same fiscal system in countries differing widely as the poles in climate, in government, in habits, and in political opinions. 'It would prevent any change in taxation in one of the countries constituting the British Empire, unless the same change were made in all.' To require Canada and Australia to adopt our system of external taxation, to model their own internal taxation accordingly, and to continue to insist on that requirement, whatever their own change either of opinion or condition might be, would be simply destructive of local self-government. 'Free Trade is of extreme importance, but Freedom is more important still.'