CHAPTER XIII
NATION AND EMPIRE
Imperial preferential trade—Political relations—Defence
Neither new relations with foreign lands across the sea nor new-old relations with the United States bulked as large in these later years as relations with the other parts of the British Empire. The question of the Empire's future was a constant theme. It was a time of unparalleled progress in each and all the British states. Great Britain's vast strides towards social justice, Canada's growth and economic activity, the similar, if lesser, expansion of Australia and New Zealand, the unification of South Africa, all bespoke the strength and soundness of each of the Five Nations. The steady growth of community of feeling and of practical co-operation in many fields bore witness that progress did not mean disunion.
Yet there were many at home, and in Great Britain and the other lands overseas, who were far from content with the trend of events, who were convinced that the Empire was drifting to eternal smash unless some change in policy should be effected. To some it was Britain's free-trade policy that was the danger; to others it was the steady growth of self-government in the Dominions. Imperial preferential trade, political federation, colonial contributions to a central army and navy, were all vigorously urged as remedies. Not one of these things came to pass in the years under survey, and yet when the testing-time arrived the Empire proved one in heart and soul.
Great Britain's free-trade policy was first called in question. Scarcely ended were the Boer War and the disappointing Conference of 1902 when Mr Chamberlain, fresh from a tour through South Africa, launched his great campaign for imperial preferential trade. Though protection and retaliation later became more important phases of the tariff-reform movement, at the outset it was its imperial side which was emphasized. The colonies and the mother country, it was urged, were certain to drift apart unless bound by links of material interest. Give the colonies a preference on their wheat or wool in Britain, give British manufacturers a real preference in colonial markets, and the Empire would cease to be merely a sentiment.
Once committed to setting up a protective tariff in order to make reductions in favour of such colonies as would reciprocate, Mr Chamberlain and his followers went on to find in it other great advantages. It would aid British agriculture and British industry, would protect both farmer and manufacturer from the competition they were increasingly unable to bear, and would give a weapon for forcing foreign countries to tear down their tariff barriers. The colonial market, the home market, and the foreign market would thus all be gained, and none too soon, if the complete decay of British industry and the triumph of its rivals were to be averted. 'We have reached our highest point,' declared Mr Chamberlain. 'Our fate will be the fate of the empires and the kingdoms of the past.... Sugar has gone, silk has gone, iron is threatened, wool is threatened, cotton will come.... We are no longer first. We are third. We shall be fifth or sixth if things go on as they are at present.... The trade of this country, as measured by the exports to foreign countries and to British possessions, has during the last twenty or thirty years been practically stationary; our export trade to all these foreign countries which have arranged tariffs against us has enormously diminished, and at the same time their exports to us have enormously increased.'
For a time it seemed that the tariff reformers would sweep all before them. Their chief was the most skilful and popular leader of his time. The inevitable growth of other countries in manufacturing had excited the alarm of the British manufacturer, and protectionist sentiment among the landowners, though scotched, had not been killed. The almost universal reign of protection in foreign countries and the other colonies appeared to prove obsolete the doctrines of Cobden and Bright. It seemed that fifty years of unquestioned triumph in England itself had left free trade a traditional dogma, not a living belief. To the poor, tariff reform promised work; to the rich, a shifting of heavy taxation from their shoulders; to the imperialist, the indissoluble empire of his dreams.
Yet the pendulum soon swung against Mr Chamberlain. Investigation showed that his jeremiads were largely unfounded, and gave new life to the principles of free trade. They were shown not to be obsolete dogmas, but reasoned deductions from the actual situation of the United Kingdom. Imperial preference meant a crippling tax on food and on raw materials for no adequate return. The share of colonial markets which British manufacturers did not have, for which they could compete, and which colonial producers did not desire to keep themselves, was very small. Mr Chamberlain was stricken soon after with lingering illness, and of the younger men of capacity who came upon the scene practically all were on the side of free trade. The stars in their courses fought against him, for, from 1903 onward, British trade began to flourish as never, or rarely ever, before. In the elections of 1906, though other issues were also factors in the result, the sweeping victory of the Liberals was mainly a triumph for free trade.
In Canada, also, at the outset, Mr Chamberlain's proposals were widely welcomed. He was personally popular. The majority of Canadians believed in protection. Some of those who did not were ready to recognize the value of a preference in the British market. Yet as the full implications of the proposal became clear, and as the British free-trader made good his case, opinion in Canada became as divided as in Great Britain. It was realized that it was one thing for Canada to give a reduced tariff, leaving the fiscal system protective still, and quite another for Great Britain to abandon entirely her free-trade policy in order to be able to give preferential rates to colonies or to low-tariff foreign states. Canadian manufacturers gave the movement a warm but vague welcome; it soon became clear that Mr Chamberlain was much mistaken in supposing they were prepared to relinquish any corner of the Canadian market to British manufacturers. They declared officially that they would not favour an increase in the British preference even on articles not made in Canada: 'we were not prepared to admit that there was any article that could not at some point in Canada, and in time, be successfully manufactured.'[[1]] They were, however, fully prepared to give British manufacturers lower rates than American, provided that both rates were high enough. The farmer, who chiefly was to profit, did not appear eager for the boon of a preference in the British market, so far as farm journals and farmers' organizations represented his view. He would be glad to have higher prices for his wheat or stock, but did not want the British workman to pay a halfpenny a loaf to bribe him to remain in the Empire.