every sign of dying down to the root. Had the price of cotton been normal last year, our whole export of manufacture to foreign markets throughout the world would have been rather less than was the same trade thirty-five years ago. Even with inflated cotton values we see that the increase in our whole export of manufactured articles to foreign countries since 1870 has only been £6,000,000 sterling, or under 5 per cent. The parallel increase in our finished exports to the Colonies has been over £50,000,000, or 116 per cent. Were it not for this one fact, Germany would at this moment be within easy reach of the first place as an industrial Power manufacturing for export.
In the face of these figures no rational argument can be held with Free Traders who deny that our position and prospects in the world's trade now depend upon the retention and improvement of our position in Imperial markets. Any Free Trade economist, however, who admits that fact may be very safely challenged to show whether there is any conceivable alternative to Mr. Chamberlain's policy. There is, in truth, none.
XI.
For let us see what will happen if we lose our present position in the colonial trade, and what, on the other hand, may reasonably be expected if the preferential policy is adopted. The present writer has repeatedly declared that the alternative to a preferential system of commerce with the Colonies will be the rise of a system of colonial McKinleyism against the Mother Country and foreign States indifferently. In that deplorable habit of 'crabbing the Colonies ' which Free Traders have formed since Mr. Chamberlain launched his great agitation, they have failed to do justice to the extent of the advantages we have enjoyed in Imperial trade up to the present point. It is sometimes assumed that the average colonial tariff is as severe as the average foreign tariff. There is no comparison between the two. We
