THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10. 1909. THE COMMERCIAL CONGRESS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9591, 10 September 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10. 1909. THE COMMERCIAL CONGRESS.

I The Imperial Chambers of Commerce Congrese, to which delegates are now gathering in Sydney, is none the less important because the question of Imperial Trade is tem porarily obscured in the United Kingdom by|the struggle over the Budget. We must recognise that the entirely local question is absorbing public interest in the United Kingdom, for the time being, to such an extent that the much wider question has been thrown into the background, and that it is exceedingly doubtful whether the Unionist leaders will be able to obtain impartial public consideration of preferential until the Budgut has been disposed of. For although the preferential form of protection may be put forward as a revenue-yield ■ ing alternative to the confiscatory proposals of Mr Lloyd-Genrge, the feelings of class and party have been so aroused by the Budget struggle that the alternative suggestion would fall upon prejudiced minds in many quarters which would otherwise be favourable to preference. This would be especially the esse if the House of Lords rejects the Budget and thus compels aopeal to the electors upon a well-defined and unavoidable issue. Whatever we may think or the taxation proposals of the Asquith Cabinet, and however dangerous we may regard the unveiled threat thereby made against all and every form of accumulated or inherited possession, it cannot be de» nied'that the matter is one directly affecting the people of the United Kingdom, and very reasonably the subject of a great national division of opinion. No Imperialist would claim that preferential trade can be inextricably entangled with any party policy, or would admit that it must stand or fall as an alternative to some other method of taxation. Whether graduated income taxes and graduated death duties, graduated land taxes and increase! beer duties, are politic or impolitic, does not affect the desirability of a close commercial alliance between the Mother Country and the daughter States. Admittedly, the imperative necessity of Free Trade Britain for larger revenues seemed to make a golden opportunity for the imposition of preferential duties and for the consequent establishment of Imperial reciprocity. But Imperialism is to I wide and too great, its aims are too vast, and its Dasis too sound and permanent. for any local problems of a purely domestic character to interfere with its natural development and Isgitimate expansion, even when these domestic problems particularly

concern the United Kingdom. We have only to look around the world and to consider the economic situation of every great nation and great Empire, other than the British, to realise that neither Mr Lloyd-George nor any other revolutionary Budgetmaker can prevent the commercial alliance of the British States by any other process than that of breaking up the Empire. Among the great forces which are mailing for the closer union of the liritish Em pire, the commercial factor must be regarded as one of the most potent. The Commercial Congress, now gathering together, will make preferential trade within the Empire the principal tonic, an ! some of the delegates are cunfidrfnt in the belief that a beneficial scheme will be devised at the meeting. If the effect is only to draw Australia into line with Canada and New Zealand a great step forward will have been attained.