The Dominion. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1913. PREFERENCE WITHOUT FOOD DUTIES.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1674, 14 February 1913, Page 4

The Dominion. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1913. PREFERENCE WITHOUT FOOD DUTIES.

A day or two ago a cable message reported that Mr, Henry Chaplin has declared his opposition to the dropping of food duties from the Unionist' fiscal policy. This will surprise nobody who knows the firmness and intensity of this veteran politician's dovotion to Mil. Chamberlain's policy. But the evidence has accumulated to show that the extreme Tariff Reformers Have consented, for the sake of more immediately urgent national interests, to the_ adoption of a fiscal programme which will enablo the country to return tho Unionists to power at tho next election without incurring any risk of a tariff on foodstuffs. The Union'ist position is, that Preforonco will remain' the first plank of tho party programme, but that food duties will not bo imposed until, after being in power through one Parliament, the Unionists ask for and receive a clear mandate in the matter. It has for some time been obvious that Mr. Bonar Law's speech at Ashton-under-Lyne has left his party and his leadership ' as strong as over, if indeed it has not strengthened both. Wo have dealt fully in past articles with the misrepresentation and misunderstanding . of Mr. Bonar Law's reference to an ' Imperial Conference. The adroitness with which the British Radicals maniculated this portion

of thc_ speech threw the Unionist party into disorder, but tho Unionists have found their balance again and haw realised that their leader had really propounded, after all a P°licy which enabled tho party to postpone food duties, and to treat them as impossible without a precise and unmistakable order from the nation. The Radicals materially helped the new solidity of the Unionists by pressing their attack too far. Their attempts to force Mr. Bonaii Law from his post as leader resulted only in rallvintr the party about him.

_Food duties are, in tho opinion ot many leading Unionists, quite essential to an efficient scheme of Imperial tariff reciprocity. That a beginning can be made without a tariff on foodstuffs, however, they are ready to admit. It is only such fiscal "diehards" as Mit. ■ Chapi.ijj who chafe under tho omission of any part of the full and thoroughgoing scheme of tariff reform wlucil the nation may one day authorise The majority in the flirty realise that while the principle of p re . fcrcnco must faithfully upheld and defendo.a, ib i s necessary to leave ovo; food duties for some future .judgment by the people, lest 1 insistence on them as (in immediate necessity keep the Unionists out of ofnee and so make thoiu powerless I to resist the increasingly-fierce onslaught of the Radicals upon the Union, the Church, and social and industrial stability. In an interesting article on January 2 last tho London 1 imes pointed out that there are many means, apart from food duties, by which Imperial Prefer-1 enoe may bo affirmed and developed, and the great matter is so to affirm it as to convince our fcllow-subjccts in tho Dominions that wo arc not averso from, or indifferent to, tho principle itself,"_ The Times admits that the Dominions have made it quite clear that they have no d'esire to dictate Britain's tariff, but it adds (and we can testify to the correctness of this following statement the more authoritatively as we began tho - series of affirmations "upon tariff autonßmy which poured from the Australasian press) that the Dominions "do not conceal" that while Britain's tariff is Britj'mV affair, it is an affair which the Dominions expect Britain-" to settle with as much regard to their interests as Britain's interests will permit. The Times says that even under the present British tariff there is plenty of room for Preference. , Wine and tobacoo arc cited as oneicxample and of course there are others. The Dominions send a good-'deaL more than food or foodstuffs to Britain, and these other things can be ma'de a vehicle' forPreference. Apart from such things, as wool, hemp, hides, lumber and 1 paper, there are. luxuries-and manu r factures which the Dominions can supply under a British tariff preiC4ieucG. ■ i ■. | The 'tariff, however, is not everything, Our own opinion has always been that unless reasons higher , and greater than economic reasons can be ; shown why Britain should alter her fiscal system,' Britain is better off under Free-trade than she would be under a tariff even moderately protectionist. The course ,of international development may—nobody will deny this—make it desirable that there shall be some sacrifice of the sound economic policy of free exchange. That is) a very profound problem which has not been much more than preliminarily pouched so far. . Until its solution begins to take clear shape in the direction' claimed and desired by Mr, Bonaii 'Law and those others who are con-1 vinced that the; issue is less a fiscal issue than an issue relating to t'le .strategical structure of the Empire,' it is safest to concentrate upon building up the bodv of non-fiscal Preference as strongly as. possible. There are_ possibilities of preference, as the Times points out, in postal ' and telegraphic arrangements and in .'the cheapening of. inter-Imperial transport by land and sea. Thqn thero. is preference in credit and finance. It is calculated thf.t the prcferphee given to the colonies by' the terms on which the British people provide the Dominions with capital is at least 1 per cent, and Sir Edgar Speyf.r has calculated that the interest saved to the Dominions and dependencies in this way is. at least; £10,000,000 a year. There are signs already, if, we are not mistaken, that there is a great future ahead for "Preference without food-duties": and it is possible that the quick change of social and polit,ical v conditionß in Britain,, and of international developments' and the new developments in overseas defence preparations, may result in the next Unionist Government finding that food-duties can bo dispensed with in an effective scheme of Imperial co-operation.