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THE -DREAM OF A BRITISH ZOLLVEREIN 397

industries. There is no prospect in reality that the
colonit!s, from which we import about £110,000,000
annually and to which we export about £102,000,000
annwally, could really for generations take the place
in our trade of foreign countries from which we im-
port £413,000,000 annually and to which we export
'£252,000,000 annually.1 How are the colonies to do
it? Even to take the nJace of foreign countries to a
very partial extent would involve a complete revolu-
tion in the conditions of their industry, and an enorm-
ous increase in their population which is quite incon-
ceivable.
Apart from the quantity of our purely foreign trade,
there is another difficulty in the way of a proposal to
substitute colonial trade for it. No country or empire
in the world produces every kind of thing it wants;
and the British Empire is no exception. However
united the Empire may be, the United Kingdom must
still go outside for many things-to Spain for iron ore,
to the Dutch East Indies for tin, to the United States
and Spain for copper, to the United States for raw
cotton, and so on. Either foreign countries are the sole
producers of such articles or the only producers in
quantities necessary for business. It would be no light
matter, therefore, to penalise our foreign customers,
and make access to their markets more difficult than
they make it themselves.
Reciprocal or preferential arrangements between the
mother country and the colonies are accordingly most
dangerous, economically and politically. It is a com-
plete misconception that they are of the same nature
as a Zollverein, which is a measure of pure free trade.
but happens not to be possible (or the British Empire
as a whole.
While the advQCates of commercial union as a means
to Imperial Federation have thus mistilken their way.
, Excluding in both cases the transhipment trade and imports and
exports of gold and silver.