FUTURE OF THE EMPIRE
they have granted considerable preferences to
British goods, but they take good care not to
make them high enough to enable our manu-
factures to compete with those they are trying
to develop and desire to protect. They are all
protectionist at heart, and the only considerable
part of the Empire which has not built a tariff
wall round itself is India, and that not because
it does not desire to do so, but because it has not
yet gained the power to do so. In any conflict
therefore between imperial patriotism and local
interests it is to be feared that the former would
go to the wall. Also the Dominions have been
accustomed to fiscal autonomy so long that they
would very much resent having to give it up,
having to open their markets freely to British
goods, and having their trades with countries
without the empire restricted, all of them natural
consequences of an empire tariff. Moreover, to do
them justice, their foreign trade is very consider-
able and not to be lightly sacrificed. That of
Canada with the U.S.A., for example, actually
exceeds its trade with Great Britain. In India and
South Africa any attempt in the name of empire
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