manly people at the centre.  Stunted, overcrowded town populations, irregular employment, sweated industries, these things are as detestable to true Imperialism as they are to philanthropy, and they are detestable to the Tariff Reformer.  His aim is to improve the condition of the people at home, and to improve it concurrently with strengthening the foundations of the Empire.  Mind you, I do not say that Tariff Reform alone is going to do all this.  I make no such preposterous claim for it.  What I do say is that it fits in better alike with a policy of social reform at home and with a policy directed to the consolidation of the Empire than our existing fiscal system does.

Now, what is the essential difference between Tariff Reformers and the advocates of the present system?  I must dwell on this even at the risk of appearing tiresome, because there is so much misunderstanding on the subject.  In the eyes of the advocates of the present system, the statesman, or at any rate the British statesman, when he approaches fiscal policy, is confronted with the choice of Hercules.  He is placed, like the rider in the old legend, between the black and the white horseman.  On the one hand is an angel of light called Free Trade; on the other a limb of Satan called Protection.  The one is entirely and always right; the other is entirely and always wrong.  All fiscal wisdom is summed up in clinging desperately to the one and eschewing like sin anything that has the slightest flavour of the other.  Now, that view has certainly the merit of simplicity, and simplicity is a very great thing; but, if we look at history, it does not seem quite to bear out this simple view.  This country became one of the greatest and wealthiest in the world under a system of rigid Protection.  It has enjoyed great, though by no means unbroken, prosperity under Free Trade.  Side by side with that system of ours other countries have prospered even more under quite different systems.  These facts alone are sufficient to justify the critical spirit, which is the spirit of the Tariff Reformer.  He does not believe in any absolute right or wrong in such a matter as the imposition of duties upon imports.  Such duties cannot, he thinks, be judged by one single test, namely, whether they do or do not favour the home producer, and be condemned out of hand if they do favour him.

The Tariff Reformer rejects this single cast-iron principle.  He refuses to bow down before it, regardless of changing circumstances, regardless of the policy of other countries and of that of the other Dominions of the Crown.  He wants a free hand in dealing with imports, the power to adapt the fiscal policy of this country to the varying conditions of trade and to the situation created at any given time by the fiscal action of others.  He has no superstitious objection to using duties either to increase employment at home or to secure markets abroad.  But on the other hand he does not go blindly for duties upon