if his business fails his income goes; the head of a government department knows that whatever happens to the business under his control his income is secure until he is ready to retire upon a pension. Similar considerations affect subordinates. A junior in a private firm knows that, if he distinguishes himself by industry and intelligence, chances of rapid promotion lie before him; a junior in a government office knows that promotion can only come to him through the slow creeping years that lead to seniority. Nor do the men who serve in the ranks-the junior clerks and the manual workers escape the deadening influences of State management. In a private business a clerk or workman who habitually idles is discharged; in government service dismissal for idleness or incompetence is almost unknown. Once engaged, always engaged, with the result that the 'govern'ment stroke' has long been a by-word. Until some way has been discovered of dealing with these fundamental defects of State enterprise it is certain that State control, though it may in some directions be necessary, will not yield money; it will cost money.

There is another somewhat obvious consideration which Mr. Wilson Fox and his Committee have overlooked. They foreshadow a national debt of £4,000,000,000, and their estimate may be even more than justified. But that debt will be an obligation upon the United Kingdom alone. Yet this Committee propose to wipe it out by utilising the natural resources of the Empire as a whole, including those under the ownership or control' of the Dominion or Indian govern'ments.' It would be interesting to hear the comments of Australian and Canadian ministers on this proposal, and also the comments of the Government of India. The proposal is in direct conflict with the main principle upon which the organisation of the Empire has been based for at least threequarters of a century. It is a reversion to the old colonial principle of treating the colonies as the property of the Mother Country, to be used by her for her own ends.

To show the kind of material upon which this Committee based their recommendations it is interesting to note that one of the proposals laid before them-and apparently smiled upon by them-was a scheme for the creation of a Great Empire Farm.' England is to advance £40,000,000

to Canada in four yearly instalments, on condition that the Dominion Government spends that money in purchasing and developing 200,000,000 acres of arable land. It is believed 'that the value of these great lands in such an Empire farm 'would speedily reach £20 an acre, or, in all, the Empire 'would receive in cash £4,000,000,000-the value of its debts 'for war or pre-war' ('The Times,' Jan. 29, 1917). The author of this fantastic calculation is evidently a pupil of the late Henry George, who imagined that all the wealth of the world came from the unearned increment in the value of land. But even supposing that £40,000,000 could be 'speedily' converted into £4,000,000,000, is it conceivable that any Canadian government would agree to administer such a scheme and to surrender all the realised profits to the government of the United Kingdom? Or is it conceivable that the settlers, who are to do the work of converting land worth £I into land worth £100, would look on calmly while the government of the United Kingdom appropriated the results of their labour to pay its debts? Except for the pleasant element of humour involved, it is a distinct public evil that the hard problems of war finance in a prosaic world should be discussed in a spirit which recalls the fairy tales of childhood.

Unfortunately, schemes such as these also recall the uglier pages of our eighteenth-century history, when, in Professor Seeley's phrase, colonies were looked upon as public estates ' of which the profits were to be secured to the population of 'the Mother Country.' That was the essential basis of the trade restrictions on which the old colonial system was founded. There was little or no interference with the colonies, so far as their internal government was concerned. Apart from trade restrictions, they enjoyed almost complete independence. In this respect the English colonies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries differed widely from the French and Spanish colonies. France and Spain insisted on maintaining an autocratic rule over their possessions abroad, and even subjected the settlers to restrictions on their personal freedom, from which they would have been exempt if they had remained at home.

'Nothing of the kind (writes Seeley) can be said of the English colonies. They were subject to certain fixed restrictions in the matter of trade, but apart from these they were absolutely free. Carrying their nationality with them, they claimed everywhere

the rights of Englishmen. It has been observed by Mr. Merivale that the old colonial system admitted no such thing as the modern Crown colony, in which Englishmen are governed administratively without representative assemblies. In the old system assemblies were not formally instituted, but grew up of themselves, because it was the nature of Englishmen to assemble. Thus the old historian of the colonies, Hutchinson, writes under the year 1619: "This year a House of Burgesses broke out in Virginia.". . . Thus our old colonial system was not practically at all tyrannous; and when the breach came the grievances of which the Americans complained, though perfectly real, were smaller than ever before or since led to such mighty consequences. The misfortune of that system was not that it interfered too much, but that such interference as it admitted was of an invidious kind. It claimed very little, but what it did claim was unjust. It gave unbounded liberty, except in one department-namely, trade-and in that department it interfered to fine the colonists for the benefit of the home traders.'

The working of this old colonial system is discussed in detail by Adam Smith. He shows how the export trade of the colonies was regulated in particular by the Act of Navigation. That Act enumerated' certain commodities which the colonies were permitted to export to the Mother Country alone; 'non-enumerated' commodities might be exported to other countries provided they were carried in British or Plantation ships,' of which the owners and three-fourths of the mariners were British subjects. The enumerated' commodities consisted (a) of articles which were not produced in Great Britain at all-such as molasses, coffee, cotton, beaverskins, indigo, etc.; (b) of articles—such as naval stores, tar, pitch, pig and bar iron, copper ore, etc.—which, though produced in Great Britain, were not then produced in sufficient quantity to satisfy our demand. As regards the first category, Adam Smith states that the object of the restrictions was not only to enable the merchants of the Mother Country to buy the colonial produce more cheaply, and so to sell it at a better profit, but also to make Great Britain the emporium for distributing colonial produce to other European countries. As regards the second category, it was calculated that, by a proper scale of duties, colonial produce could always be placed at a disadvantage in relation to home produce, while receiving an advantage in relation to foreign produce; so that the net result would be to discourage the produce not of Great 'Britain, but of some foreign countries with which the balance

'of trade was believed to be unfavourable to Great Britain.' Here we almost seem to be reading the language of tariffreform pamphlets of the twentieth century.

The non-enumerated commodities could originally be exported from the colonies to all parts of the world, subject to the condition above mentioned with regard to the employment of British ships. But the classification of enumerated and non-enumerated articles was varied from time to time; and by an Act passed in the sixth year of the reign of George III. the export of all non-enumerated articles was limited, so far as the European market was concerned, to countries lying south of Cape Finisterre. On this last restriction Adam Smith comments :

'The parts of Europe which lie south of Cape Finisterre are not manufacturing countries, and we were less jealous of the colony ships carrying home from them any manufactures which could interfere with our own.'

While describing these restrictions and their effect upon the value of colonial produce, Adam Smith points out that in certain other directions the colonies were allowed to enjoy a very wide liberty in matters of trade. In particular he refers to the complete freedom of trade which the American colonies enjoyed with the British West Indies to their immense mutual advantage. But he adds:

'The liberality of England, however, towards the trade of her colonies has been confined chiefly to what concerns the market for their produce either in its rude state, or in what may be called the very first stage of manufacture. The more advanced or more refined manufactures; even of the colony produce, the merchants and manufacturers of Great Britain choose to reserve to themselves, and have prevailed upon the Legislature to prevent their establishment in the colonies-sometimes by high duties, and sometimes by absolute prohibitions.'

He goes on to give examples. The refining of sugar in the West Indies was prevented by imposing a duty of £4 2s. 5d. per cwt. on West Indian refined sugar imported into Great Britain, as compared with 6s. 4d. a cwt. on Muscovado sugar. In America, though the production of pig and bar iron was encouraged, there was an absolute prohibition upon the erection of steel-furnaces. Another regulation prevented the American colonists from conveying from one province to another such articles of local manufacture as hats and

woollen goods, the object being to confine the production of the domestic industries concerned to domestic use. That these restrictions did not, in the then condition of industrial development in North America, prove so oppressive as they appear on paper Adam Smith admits; for the colonists in their own interest were more busily engaged in exploiting the untouched natural resources of the vast territory they occupied than in trying to establish manufacturing industries prematurely. Consequently, he argued, these restrictions upon the freedom of the colonies must be regarded for the moment merely as 'impertinent badges of slavery imposed upon them; 'without any sufficient reason, by the groundless jealousy of the merchants and manufacturers of the Mother Country. 'In a more advanced state, they might be really oppressive ' and insupportable.'

Nor was it only the colonies across the ocean which were subject to tyrannical restrictions on their commerce and industry. At the bidding of trade rivals in the Mother Country, exactly the same policy was applied to Ireland. Such industrial and agricultural prosperity as Ireland achieved in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was undoubtedly due to the energy of the English and Scottish settlers. In this sense Ireland was a colony and was treated as such. The actual injury she suffered was, however, far more serious than that inflicted upon the American colonies by English protectionists; for while England may, at worst, have slightly retarded the natural development of the North American colonies, in Ireland she definitely destroyed industries which had begun to flourish. The story is a shameful one. Take first the most important of Irish industries, then as now-the cattle industry. The importation of Irish cattle into England was prohibited, at the request of English landlords, by an Act of Parliament passed in 1663, which was humorously styled 'An Act for the Encouragement of Trade.' A few years later an Act was passed declaring that the importation of Irish cattle, swine, and sheep into England was a public nuisance. The effect of this legislation was that Irishmen, being unable to export cattle or sheep, turned their attention to the exportation of wool. That again aroused English jealousy, and a few years later the importation of Irish woollens into England was forbidden. Almost at the same time Government encouragement was given to the linen trade in Ireland. England then had no