Ii.—: Exports.

Mr. Chamberlain proposes to sacrifice two-thirds of our exports for the sake of the other third. Speaking at the Constitutional Club, he said: “I am told that we risk the loss of a market of 300,000,000 foreigners for the sake of one of 10,000,000 of our fellow-countrymen; to that I reply, is it not more worth while to cultivate a trade with 10,000,000 of your fellow-countrymen, who take £10 per head of our products, than the foreigners, who only take a few shillings per head?”

If the 12,000,000 white inhabitants of the self-governing Colonies each took £10, that would give £120,000,000. The following are the figures for our exports to the Colonies:—

This is a good example of the sort of exaggeration in which Mr. Chamberlain habitually indulges. The Colonies have never taken £10 per head of our products; in 1904 they took a little over £4 per head, i.e., 60 per cent., less.

Mr. Chamberlain would penalise the 42,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom for sake of 12,000,000 in the Colonies.

Mr. Chamberlain talks about the German Zollverein, but what is it? The establishment of Free Trade between countries formerly separated by Customs duties. When Mr. Chamberlain talks of a British Customs Union, he is either knowingly or unknowingly using a word which does not apply, since, as he knows, none of the self-governing Colonies would give up the tariffs established with the express purpose of protecting their products against British imports.

He declares that the export of manufactures to foreign countries has declined, while that to the Colonies has increased. The following table from the 1903 Memorandum of the Board of Trade gives the variations in the export of manufactured goods (not including ships):—

As a matter of fact, comparing 1890 and 1902 there is a diminution in our exports to foreign countries. In 1900 there was a decline of £7,000,000, and in 1902 of £18,000,000. This £18,000,000 was exactly balanced by increased exports to the self-governing Colonies. Foreign countries take 58 per cent., Colonies 42 per cent; consequently the foreign market is still 16 per cent. greater than the colonial. The Report of the Imperial Tariff Committee on the Cotton Industry shows that of £73,300,000 in 1903 and £84,000,000 in 1904, the self-governing Colonies took—

i.e., 4·80 per cent. and 5·40 per cent.—a modest share.

India remains. All Protectionists have repeated that India, able to produce raw cotton and obtain a supply of cheap labour, would not only buy no more cottons from England, but would invade Lancashire with Indian cotton goods. Not at all.

In 1904 it imported 400 per cent. more cotton than all the self-governing Colonies put together.

India, not being a self-governing colony, has no say in Mr. Chamberlain’s Colonial Conference. England might justifiably feel a certain anxiety if there were no development of her Colonial exports, but such is not the case. The people of the self-governing Colonies are growing in numbers and in wealth; of English origin, their tastes and customs recommend English goods to them; it is useless to try to substitute political intervention for the normal economic development of the relations between the Colonies and the Mother Country.

What means has Mr. Chamberlain discovered for the increase of the colonial market?