And now, though there is a great deal more to be said, I feel I must not trespass much further on your patience.  But there is one objection to Tariff Reform which is constantly made, and which is at once so untrue and so damaging, that before sitting down I should like to say a few words about it.  We are told that this is an attempt to transfer the burden of a part of our taxation from the shoulders of the rich to those of the poor.  If that were true, it would be fatal to Tariff Reform, and I for one would have nothing to do with it.  But it is not true.  There is no proposal to reduce and I believe there is no possibility of reducing, the burden which at present falls on the shoulders of the upper and middle classes in the shape of direct taxation.  On the other hand, I do not believe there is much room for increasing it—­though I think it can be increased in one or two directions—­without consequences which the poorer classes would be the first to feel.  Excise duties, which are mainly paid by those classes, are already about as high as they can be.  It follows that for any increase of revenue, beyond the ordinary growth arising from increase of wealth and population, you must look, at least to a great extent, to Customs duties.  And the tendency of the time is towards increased expenditure, all of it, mind you—­and I do not complain of the fact—­due to the effort to improve the condition of the mass of the people.  It is thus no question of shifting existing burdens, it is a question of distributing the burden of new expenditure of which the mass of the people will derive the benefit.  And if that new expenditure must, as I think I have shown, be met, at least in large part, by Customs duties, which method of raising these duties is more in the interest of the poorer classes—­our present system, which enhances enormously the price of a few articles of universal consumption like tea and sugar and tobacco, or a tariff spread over a much greater number of articles at a much lower rate?  Beyond all doubt or question the mass of the people would be better off under the latter system.  Even assuming—­as I will for the sake of argument, though I do not admit it—­that the British consumer pays the whole of the duty on imported foreign goods competing with British goods, is it not evident that the poorer classes of the community would pay a smaller proportion of Customs duties under a tariff which included a great number of foreign manufactured articles, at present entirely free, and largely the luxuries of the rich, than they do, when Customs duties are restricted to a few articles of universal consumption?