You would hear recrimination and reproaches exchanged across the table; you would hear assertions made that the representatives of the different States who were parties to the Conference were not really representatives of the true opinion of their respective populations, that the trend of opinion in the country which they professed to represent was opposed to their policy and would shortly effect a change in the views which they put forward.  You would find all these undemocratic assertions that representatives duly elected do not really speak in the name of their people, and you would, of course, find appeals made over the heads of the respective Governments to the party organisations which supported them or opposed them in the respective countries from which they came.  That appears to me to open up possibilities of very grave and serious dangers in the structure and fabric of the British Empire, from which I think we ought to labour to shield it.

My right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has told the Conference with perfect truth—­in fact it may have been even an under-estimate—­that if he were to propose the principle of preference in the present House of Commons, it would be rejected by a majority of three to one.  But even if the present Government could command a majority for the system, they would have no intention whatever of proposing it.  It is not because we are not ready to run electoral risks that we decline to be parties to a system of preference; still less is it because the present Government is unwilling to make sacrifices, in money or otherwise, in order to weave the Empire more closely together.  I think a very hopeful deflection has been given to our discussion when it is suggested that we may find a more convenient line of advance by improving communications, rather than by erecting tariffs—­by making roads, as it were, across the Empire, rather than by building walls.  It is because we believe the principle of preference is positively injurious to the British Empire, and would create, not union, but discord, that we have resisted the proposal.

It has been a source of regret to all of us that on this subject we cannot come to an agreement.  A fundamental difference of opinion on economics, no doubt, makes agreement impossible; but although we regret that, I do not doubt that in the future, when Imperial unification has been carried to a stage which it has not now reached, and will not, perhaps, in our time attain, people in that more fortunate age will look back to the Conference of 1907 as a date in the history of the British Empire when one grand wrong turn was successfully avoided.

FOOTNOTES: 

[2] The following, among others, were present at the Conference: