ble, while the benefits of free transit are incalculable.
To decentralise the population so as to efface the distinction between
dwellers in town and country is to renovate humanity physically and
morally."[747]

After travel and transport has been made absolutely free on land
throughout the length and breadth of Great Britain, the free travel
and transport principle will of course be extended to travel and
transport by sea, and free travel and transport by sea will better
bind the Empire together than a Pan-Britannic Customs Union. The most
scientific body of British Socialists, the Fabian Society, says: "A
logical consequence of the national management of internal means of
communication will be the completion of the State control of our
oversea transit. It is impossible here to go into details. Let it
suffice to remark that already the nation has a direct financial
interest in the great steamship lines, through its mail subsidies and
Admiralty loans with corresponding claims for service in war; that
intellectually the nation, by its pride in its magnificent mercantile
fleet, regards it as a national possession, and declines to consider
our shipping as the mere private property of the shareholders of the
steamship companies; and finally, that our navy is maintained at
enormous public expense expressly to protect the mercantile fleet,
which at present is mainly private property."[748] "The notion that
the forces making for disintegration can be neutralised by 10 per
cent. preferential duties is not worth discussing; indeed, the raising
of the fiscal question seems at least as likely to reveal our
commercial antagonisms as our community of interests. And the huge
distances will be mighty forces on the side of disintegration unless
we abolish them. Well, why not abolish them? Distances are now counted
in days, not in miles. The Atlantic Ocean is as wide as it was in
1870; but the United States are four days nearer than they were then.
Commercially, however, distance is mainly a matter of freightage. Now
it is as possible to abolish ocean freightage as it was to make
Waterloo Bridge toll-free, or establish the Woolwich free ferry. It is
already worth our while to give Canada the use of the British Navy for
nothing. Why not give her the use of the mercantile marine for nothing
instead of taxing bread to give her a preference? Or, if that is too
much, why not offer her special rates? It is really only a question of
ocean ro