The Dominion. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1907. IMPERIAL PREFERENCE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 46, 18 November 1907, Page 6

The Dominion. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1907. IMPERIAL PREFERENCE.

The speecli of Mr. Balfour at Birmingham has obviously created a new position in the Tariff Eeform controversy that lias been raging in England since May of 1903. During those four and a half years the quarrel over the wisdom or otherwise .of Mr. Chamberlain's proposals has been hardly more interesting than the quarrel over Mr. Balfour's attitude towards them. With an adroitness that has probably never been surpassed by any politician, the leader of the Unionist party has contrived to disouss Tariff Reform in scores of speeches and letters, without enabling anyone to say whether or not he has been in favour of the Tariff Reform programme. So skilfully did he frame his manifestoes that each of the rival factions in the Unionist party has all along claimed him for its leader. At Birmingham he has set the,, doubts finally at rest—he has definitely come out as a Tariff Reformer'at last. Tho immediate results of his speech are not likely to be large, or to change tho position in any material respect. The gulf between the Unionist Freetraders and the Unionist Tariff Reformers will remain, and it will only bo widened by this definite committal of tho official party to a programme vitally hostile to the principles of the Freetraders whose Unionism is free of fiscal embroideries. The Unionist Freetraders contend that nothing has happened to give tho Tariff Reformers encouragement, that the by-elections have shown that the public is opposed to protective duties, and that there is no upheaval of colonial, opinion in favour of Mr. Chamberlain's scheme. It must be confessed that all of these contentions are ver,y. just and .very trup„.

The Australian tariff, if it is intended as a reply to the banging of the door at the ; Colonial Conference, is certainly a discouraging one, for the preference which is given to Great Britain is placed on top of such a high wall that it is not a very great benefit to the Mother Country. We anticipate that the final adoption of Tariff Reform as a plank in the platform of the Unionists will, for a timo at least, seriously injure the efficiency of the Unionist attack upon Socialism. The Unionist Freetraders have unceasingly advised that Socialism and Tariff Reform are essentially complementary: the Tariff Reformers claim that tariff reform is the best weapon with which to attack Socialism, the surest way of suppressing Socialistic activity being to remove the conditions that breed Socialistic discontent. With the Unionist party so seriously at variance upon a point to which compromise can hardly be applied, the outlook for united and consistent enthusiasm for their other ends is not a good one. For the present the weight of British opinion is in favour of Free Trade, and against everything but the sentiment of the Tariff Reformers If, now, that Mr. Balfour has definitely pledged ,his leadership on the question, the Unionist candidate is henceforth to advocate fiscal reform, future by-elections will have an added interest for other parts of the Empire. Britain's domestic politics are Britain's own affair, and the Dominions must be careful not to allow themselves to be dragged in as critics, and thus rendered liable to become'objects of dislike to the British people.