regardless of everything but its electioneering value.  From first to last there has been the same desire to make the worst of things, sometimes by very disingenuous means.  First of all it was said that there was “no Colonial offer.”  But when the representatives of the Colonies came here, and all in the plainest terms offered us preference for preference, this device evidently had to be abandoned.  So then it was asserted that, in order to give preference to the Colonies, we must tax raw materials.  But this move again was promptly checkmated by the clear and repeated declaration of the Colonial representatives that they did not expect us to tax raw materials.  And so nothing was left to Ministers, determined as they were to wriggle out of any agreement with the Colonies at all costs, except to fall back on the old, weary parrot-cry—­“Will you tax corn?” “Will you tax butter?” and so on through the whole list of articles of common consumption, the taxation of any one of which was thought to be valuable as an electioneering bogey.

For my own part, I am not the least bit frightened by any of these questions.  If I am asked whether I would tax this or tax that, it may be proof of great depravity on my part, but I say without hesitation, that, for a sufficient object, I should not have the least objection to putting two shillings a quarter on wheat or twopence a pound on butter.  But I must add that the whole argument nauseates me.  What sort of opinion must these gentlemen have of their fellow countrymen, if they think that the question of a farthing on the quartern loaf or half a farthing on the pat of butter is going to outweigh in their minds every national consideration?  And these are the men who accused Mr. Chamberlain of wishing to unite the Empire by sordid bonds!  It is indeed extraordinary and to my mind almost heartrending to see how this question of Tariff Reform continues to be discussed on the lowest grounds, and how its higher and wider aspects seem to be so constantly neglected.  Yet we have no excuse for ignoring them.  The Colonial advocates of Preference, and especially Mr. Deakin, with whose point of view I thoroughly agree, have repeatedly explained the great political, national, and I might almost say moral aspects of that policy.  There is a great deal more in it than a readjustment of duties—­twopence off this and a penny on that.  I do not say that such details are not important.  When the time comes I am prepared to show—­and I am an old hand at these things—­that the objections which loom so large in many eyes can really be very easily circumvented.  But I would not attempt to bother my fellow countrymen with complicated changes in their fiscal arrangements, or even with the discussion of them, if it were not for the bigness of the principle that is involved.