PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE.
but well known in the co-operative world, who has taken all his life a great part in promoting the welfare of his fellow-countrymen, and no apology is needed for reading a few extracts from his letter.[1] The fall in prices, which hit all those interested in land so heavily, landlords, farmers, and labourers alike, did not take place till thirty years after the introduction of Free Trade, and was mainly due to the cheapening of the cost of transportation, which brought the virgin lands of new countries into close proximity to the markets near at home. I therefore assert that neither cheapness of production nor cheap food are absolutely, and perhaps not even mainly, dependent on free trade.
Grounds for Mr. Chamberlain's action.Now, Mr. Chamberlain's reform of our fiscal policy is put forward for three main reasons. One of those is of especial interest to you, but the others are not. Still, it is worth while that I should mention them here. The first is retaliation. The immediate cause of Mr. Chamberlain's action, I take it, was the treatment of Canada by Germany. In 1897, Canada gave a preference to the goods of the mother country, as well as of those colonies and foreign countries which admitted Canadian goods free, or practically free. Germany, in consequence, excluded Canada from the most favoured nation treatment. I will read to you what Lord Lansdowne says on this point in a dispatch published in the Parliamentary papers just issued. 'That action,' says Lord Lansdowne, 'has incontestably had the effect of bringing about the loss by Canada of the relatively advantageous position which she occupied prior to 1897, a loss which she has sustained not because she had imposed upon German
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