Page:The empire and the century.djvu/153

nated as the productive power of the Colonies expanded there can be little doubt. The following figures, showing the change in the origin of our wheat supplies during the last few years, have a force of their own:

Wheat Imports into the United Kingdom from Foreign Countries and British Possessions, 1900-1905.

	From Foreign Countries. $\scriptstyle {\overbrace {\quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad } }$		From British Possessions. $\scriptstyle {\overbrace {\quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad } }$
	Million Cwt.	Percentage of Total.	Million Cwt.	Percentage of Total.
1900	58.5	84	10.2	16
1901	52.9	76	16.9	24
1902	58.3	72	22.7	28
1903	60.2	68	27.9	32
1904	55.4	57	42.4	43

That the Colonies and the Punjaub together are capable of furnishing our entire wheat-supply there is no doubt. As little that they could send us all the meat that we now purchase from the foreigner, to the tune of nearly £20,000,000 annually. As little that our tropical possessions could produce all the cotton now imported from foreign countries (including Egypt), to the amount of more than £40,000,000 annually.

And the people who grow the raw cotton are the people who wear the cotton manufacture. When Lancashire draws the crude staple from the United States, the successors of Alexander Hamilton take excellent care that Lancashire does not send back the finished goods. But when we develop within the Empire a field for the raw growth, we develop simultaneously a new market for the manufacture, and set up the reciprocal mechanism of exchange that Cobden intended and McKinleyism prevents. It is not, indeed, proposed (as it might be were Lancashire sufficiently far-sighted and bold in its commercial thinking) to put a preferential duty upon cotton as the most efficacious means of developing the British cultivation. But in confining ourselves to the food supplies upon which