s unquestionable attachment to his not
over-affectionate mother, is not permitted materially to interfere.
Where his pocket is concerned he displays for her no special
favouritism. For her, in no commercial sense, is there any "most
favoured nation" clause in his code. He taxes alike imports from
Britain and from Batavia. His wool goes to England because London is
the wool market of the world, not because England is England. He
transacts his import commerce mainly with England because it is there
where the proceeds of the sale of his wool provide him with financial
facilities. But he has no sentimental predilection for the London
market.'

IV.

Proposals of a more original kind than those of Sir Henry Parkes have
been made by the Earl of Dunraven, though they are hardly more
successful in standing cross-examination. Lord Dunraven has seen, a
great deal of the world, and has both courage and freshness of mind.
He scolds Liberals for attaching too little importance to colonies,
and not perceiving that our national existence is bound up with our
existence as an empire. We are dependent in an increasing degree on
foreign countries for our supply of food, and therefore we might
starve in time of war unless we had an efficient fleet; but fleets, to
be efficient, must be able to keep the sea for any length of time, and
they can only do this by means of the accommodation afforded by our
various dependencies and colonies dotted over the surface of the
globe. This is a very good argument so far as it goes, but of course
it would be met, say in South Africa, by keeping Table Mount and
Simon's Bay, and letting the rest go. It might, too, as we all know,
be met in another way, namely, by the enforcement at sea of the
principles of warfare on land, and the abandonment of the right of
seizure of the property of private individuals on the ocean.

Besides that, says Lord Dunraven, the colonies are by far our best
customers, and our only chance of increasing or maintaining our trade
lies in 'the development of the colonies.' What development means he
does not very clearly explain. Subsidised emigration and all such
devices he dismisses as futile. Some means should be devised, he says,
whereby the independent colonies should have a voice in the management
of matters affecting the empire: what those means might exactly be he
does not even hint. The mother country and the colonies might be
drawn closer together by the abandonmen