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THE bREU( OF A BRITISH ZOLLVEREIN 399
attachment of New Zealand to the mother country was
not sedtimental, but was based on £ s. d. The mother
country bought New Zealand mutton. and that was the
reasQn why. Noone would attach too much import-
ance to a casual expression in conversation. even if
true, but that it should be reported when Mr. Seddon
is coming home to advocate his ideas of preference
is not quite pleasant reiding for friends of Imperial
federation on patriotic grounds. At the same time,
we hear from Canada that Sir Wilfrid Laurier has
refused an invitation to an Imperial Conference to
discuss the subject of defence-surely the main problem
of federation-thou~h he was willing to discuss the
subject of commercial relations. The Opposition in
the Canadian Parliament in tum have complained of
the Prime Minister (in long debates), that. if he had
acted differently, Canada might have received exemp-
tion from the new corn duty, with more of like favours
to come. Thus it is always Protection that is being
argued for, and not so much the federation which is
professedly the excuse. Not only, then, is the cause
of Imperial Federation being sought by means of pre-
ferential arrangements which will tend to frustrate the
object, but the argument is all in the wrong key, and
tends very strongly to set against the cause some
powerful influences that should be wholly in its favour.
How is federation to be promoted. and what sort of
commercial arrangements, if any, will really assist?
While rejecting the notion of a Zollverein because
it is impossible in the peculiar circumstances of the
British Empire, and while rejecting most strenuously
the notion of preferential arrangements as economically
and politically dangerous, and deprecating the line of
argument by which the latter policy is supported as
additionally fatal to the prospects of success in pro-
~oting federatione by means of commercial union, I
believe that in various ways such a un ian may be pro-
moted with mutual advantage to all parts of the Empire.
including the further advantage of accelerating a closer