Fifth, the difficulty in arranging bonding privileges in such free ports as Singapore and Hong Kong.
This letter was so plausible that even the Times in an article on the 19th June, said:
Colonel Denison is a representative Canadian of the highest character and proved loyalty, and no doubt his views prevail widely in British North America. At the same time the criticisms of his plan from a strictly economic point of view which Sir Robert Giffen published in our columns on Tuesday appear to us to be conclusive.
This attack was satisfactory to me as it gave me an opening for a reply which I made as follows:
Sir,
In your issue of yesterday there is a letter from Sir Robert Giffen commenting upon my address to the London Chamber of Commerce, and requesting me to give information on certain points. May I give my answer?
He asks (1) how much under the scheme I proposed the Mother Country would have to pay; (2) how much each of the principal Colonies; (3) how the trade of each would be probably affected; (4) what exceptions would be made as to Hong Kong and Singapore, which are distributing centres?
1 and 2. These I shall answer together, dealing only with Canada, as space will not admit my going fully into the whole question. I will take Sir Robert Giffen’s figures, although he puts the foreign imports of Canada and Newfoundland together at £24,000,000; while the statistical abstract for colonial possessions gives the figures for Canada alone at over £27,000,000 for 1900. Taking Sir Robert Giffen’s figures, however, Canada would have to pay, on a basis of ten per cent. on foreign imports, nearly £2,400,000 per annum. As the normal amount Canada has been spending on defence in years past, has been about £400,000 per annum, this would mean an additional payment by her of £2,000,000 a year. Sir Robert Giffen claims that the United Kingdom would have to pay £41,000,000 per annum. This is an extraordinary statement. The expenditure of the United Kingdom upon the Army and Navy in ordinary years, not counting war expenses, far exceeds £41,000,000. So that the United Kingdom would not pay one farthing a year more under the proposition than she always does expend.
This answers the first two points. The United Kingdom would pay nothing additional, Canada would expend £2,000,000 more than she has been doing.