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THE DREAM OF A BRITISH ZOLLVEREIN 395

foreign countries in competition with articles imported
from the colonies. The business is to be arranged on
the Do ttl des principle. and the effect is to be the in-
creased mutual dependence of the different parts of the
Empire and their increased joint and several independ-
ence of foreign countries.
Such suggestions involve the certainty of injury to
both the colonies and tpe mother country if they are
tried, and the uncertainty of any advantage whatsoever.
Each part of the Empire is to divert a portion of its
trade from the channels in which it naturally flows, a
procedure necessarily involving loss, and it is to have
the same trade afterwards inside the Empire, only at
greater expense. Political advantage may conceivably
ensue in the end from the different parts of the Empire
sticking closer together even in this way, though it
appears unlikely j but there is no commercial advantage
at any time. But as to the political advantage, where
there is no commercial advantage, may there not also
be doubts? One or the other party must be exposed to
extreme deception. If the colonies get a better price
in the mother country for their raw materials and
articles of food than they would otherwise do, some
people in the mother country will have to pay more,
and it will have to be very clear indeed that they got a
fjuid pro fjuo either in higher prices in the colonies for
what they sell or increased profits from large trade with
them. At the time of the famous Hofmeyr suggestion
that the colonies and the mother country should impose
a special tax of 2 per cent. ad valorem on all imports
from foreign countries. a duty calculated to yield about
£7,000,000, which could be appropriated to purposes
of mutual defence, I recollect making a calculation,
( I) that the portion of the £7,000,000 paid by the
_United Kingdom would be nearly the whole, (2) that
the price of the cemmodities imported into the Vnited
Kingdom from the ~olonies as well as from foreign
countries would be ratsed by a larger sum, and (3) that
the colonies contributing a small part of the amount