I have never advocated Tariff Reform as a nostrum or as a panacea.  I have never pretended that it is by itself alone sufficient to cure all the evils inherent in our social system, or alone sufficient as a bond of Empire.  What I contend is that without it, without recovering our fiscal freedom, without recovering the power to deal with Customs Duties in accordance with the conditions of the present time and not the conditions of fifty years ago, we cannot carry out any of those measures which it is most necessary that we should carry out.  Without it we are unable to defend ourselves against illegitimate foreign competition; we are unable to enter into those trade arrangements with the great self-governing States of the British Crown across the seas, which are calculated to bestow the most far-reaching benefits upon them and upon us; and we are unable to obtain the revenue which is required for a policy of progressive Social Reform.  I hope that people otherwise in agreement with us, who have hitherto not seen their way to get over their objections to Tariff Reform, will, nevertheless, find themselves able to accept that principle, when they regard it, not as an isolated thing, but as an essential part of a great national and Imperial policy.

Of course, they will have to see it as it is, and not as it is represented by its opponents.  The opponents of Tariff Reform have a very easy method of arguing with its supporters.  They say that any departure whatsoever from our present fiscal system necessarily involves taxing raw materials, and must necessarily result in high and prohibitive duties, which will upset our foreign trade, and will be ruinous and disorganising to the whole business of the country.  But Tariff Reformers are not going to frame their duties in order to suit the argumentative convenience of Mr. Asquith.  They are going to be guided by wholly different considerations from that.  It is curious that everybody opposed to Tariff Reform says that Tariff Reformers intend to tax raw material, while Tariff Reformers themselves have steadily said they do not.  I ask you in that respect to take the description of a policy of Tariff Reform from those who advocate it, and not from those who oppose it.  And as for the argument about high prohibitive duties, I wish people would read the reports or summaries of the reports of the Tariff Commission.  They contain not only the most valuable collection that exists anywhere of the present facts about almost every branch of British industry but they are also an authoritative source from which to draw inferences as to the intentions of Tariff Reformers.  Now the Tariff Reform Commission have not attempted to frame a complete tariff, a scale of duties for all articles imported into this country, and wisely, because, if they had tried to do that, people would have said that they were arrogating to themselves the duties of Parliament.  What they have done is to show by a few instances that a policy of Tariff Reform