Now I must trench for one moment upon the economic aspect.  What does preference mean?  It can only mean one thing.  It can only mean better prices.  It can only mean better prices for Colonial goods.  I assert, without reserve, that preference can only operate through the agency of price.  All that we are told about improving and developing the cultivation of tobacco in South Africa, and calling great new areas for wheat cultivation into existence in Australia, depends upon the stimulation of the production of those commodities, through securing to the producers larger opportunities for profit.  I say that unless preference means better prices it will be ineffective in achieving the objects for the sake of which it is urged.  But the operation of preference consists, so far as we are concerned, in putting a penal tax upon foreign goods, and the object of putting that penal tax on foreign goods is to enable the Colonial supply to rise to the level of the foreign goods plus the tax, and by so conferring upon the Colonial producer a greater reward, to stimulate him more abundantly to cater for the supply of this particular market.  I say, therefore, without hesitation, that the only manner in which a trade preference can operate is through the agency of price.  If preference does not mean better prices it seems to me a great fraud on those who are asked to make sacrifices to obtain it; and by “better” prices I mean higher prices—­that is to say, higher prices than the goods are worth, if sold freely in the markets of the world.

I am quite ready to admit that the fact that you make a particular branch of trade more profitable, induces more people to engage in that branch of trade.  That is what I call stimulating Colonial production through the agency of price.  I am quite prepared to admit that a very small tax on staple articles would affect prices in a very small manner.  Reference has been made to the imposition of a shilling duty on corn, and I think it was Mr. Moor[3] who said, yesterday, that when the shilling duty was imposed prices fell, and when it was taken off prices rose.  That may be quite true.  I do not know that it is true, but it may be.  The imposition of such a small duty as a shilling on a commodity produced in such vast abundance as wheat, might quite easily be swamped or concealed by the operation of other more powerful factors.  A week of unusual sunshine, or a night of late frost, or a ring in the freights, or violent speculation, might easily swamp and cover the operation of such a small duty; but it is the opinion of those whose economic views I share—­I cannot put it higher than that—­that whatever circumstances may apparently conceal the effect of the duty on prices, the effect is there all the same, and that any duty that is imposed upon a commodity becomes a factor in the price of that commodity.  I should have thought that was an almost incontestable proposition.