still have the benefit of milder treatment in our market than they experience from each other.
They would still have no substitute for this market, and they would still be bound to give us 'most favoured nation' treatment in return for the same. Imperial preference would not injure our general trade connections. A judicious national tariff, with a low scale for all who gave us reciprocity and a high scale for those who refused it, would improve our foreign connections by reducing somewhat the present level of hostile duties.
XVI.
3. That preference would entail disproportionate burthens upon the working-classes of the Mother Country.
This proposition, like most of the fundamental questions of politics, resolves itself into a battle of belief. The rival prophets cannot argue; they can only disbelieve each other. All great legislation is adopted or rejected in advance of the results that refute or justify. Proposers claim that results will be beneficial, opponents that they must be mischievous. The working out of events is commonly somewhat different from the anticipations of either. In the present case we are not wholly without scientific light, and we have additional suggestions that would carry, on the whole, conclusive weight with a jury.
It has been shown that colonial preference cannot benefit the Colonies without increasing the demand for British goods and for the British labour embodied in them. To the consequent improvement of exchange and enlargement of output, wages as well as profits must respond. But it is further contended that a general and serious rise in prices must swallow up any benefit of that kind. Let us consider. We have already had the proof that a shilling tax upon all wheat imports did not raise the price of bread. That a two-shilling tax upon little more than half those imports would raise the cost of the quartern loaf at all is in the highest degree improbable.
