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388 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
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obvious that in these days of great military and naval
empires the lives and liberties, and possessions, of Eng-
lish people throughout the world are nowhere safe from
military aggression unless the whole are united for
common defence. South Africa would probably be
German or Dutch-German at the p~esent moment if
our fellow-subjects there had not had the help of the
whole empire. Australia would be exposed to similar
risks from French and German ambition without a
great Empire with it and behind it. Our own position
in Europe would certainly be most insecure if we were
Great Britain and Ireland only, and could not call upon
our kith and kin beyond the seas or exercise the force of
Empire in distant lands. In spite, then, of many faults
of logic and argument among advocates of Imperial
Federation, the policy, in my view, should command uni-
versal assent. I t is unwise and unpatriotic to stand aloof.
It is with this opinion about Imperial Federation
itself that I propose to criticise some of the suggestions
as to commercial union which are put forward as means
to the end. Federation is to be reached mainly, I be-
lieve, by political changes, assisted, where this can
properly be done, by commercial arrangements, but not
by the commercial arrangements which are most dis-
cussed and most in people's minds, such as an Imperial
Zollverein, or what are called "preferential" arrange-
ments between the mother country and the colonies.

As with many other subjects, a historical retrospect
may help to show uS'where we are. The idea that com-
mercial union inevitably tends to political union, and
is the only or best way to arrive at such union, has a
slender enough foundation historically.
In older political unions there was little question of
mutual commercial advantages. The different provinces
of France, for instance, were politic'.llly united long be-
fore Customs .barriers ceased to exist between them.
The political upion of England and Scotland, again,
began to take effect i~ 1603 by the union of the crowns,