ad making. A national mercantile fleet plying between the
provinces of the Empire, and carrying Empire goods and passengers
either free or at charges far enough below cost to bring Australasia
and Canada commercially nearer to England than to the Continent, would
form a link with the mother-country which once brought fully into use
could never be snapped without causing a commercial crisis in every
province."[749]

The purchase of the whole British mercantile marine by the Government
would incidentally have the effect of abolishing the British shipping
rings, which, like the British railways, frequently penalise with
discriminating rates the British producer and shipper. "Of the real
conditions of ocean traffic, at present, the public has no suspicion.
All our lines of communication are controlled by shipping rings which
carry preferential rating (an illegal practice in our inland transit)
to an extent that would shock Mr. Chamberlain back again to Free
Trade if he realised it; for their preferences are by no means
patriotic; they have helped Belgium into our Indian market, and
Germany and America into South Africa and New Zealand. The cotton
conference of Liverpool directly assisted the American exporters of
cotton to China by the heavy charges they made against the Lancashire
manufacturer--charges which were modified only after repeated
protests. These rings and rates constitute the most dangerous
disintegrating force we have to face."[750]

There is much justification in the complaints of the Socialists with
regard to British railways and shipping, but their proposals are, as
usual, quite Utopian. For all ills of the body politic and economic,
the Socialists have only one remedy, and that an infallible
one--nationalisation, or rather Socialisation.

The policy of the British railway and shipping rings is no doubt a
national scandal, but their defects and delinquencies may no doubt be
counteracted by appropriate Government action and legislation. It is
probably now too late for the State to acquire the railways. The State
cannot afford to risk a large capital loss. Railway purchase would
apparently be too speculative an undertaking.

If the State should acquire the railways, they would certainly be run
at a profit. The sooner the Socialists abandon their fixed idea that
profit on private and national undertakings is immoral, the better
will it be for them. So long as they decry profit and propose to work
State un