But, for the reasons already explained, in replying to Mr. Williams I do not rely wholly on British figures. It is from the double testimony of British and foreign figures that I deduce the fact that of all our customers Germany is one of the best. The practical moral of this fact is sufficiently obvious. In private business a tradesman does not go out of his way to offend a good customer, even though that customer is also a keen trade competitor. He bestirs himself instead to keep ahead, if possible, of his rival without doing anything to destroy the mutually profitable trade relationship between them. Such palpable considerations of expediency are ignored by our latter-day Protectionists, among whom Mr. Williams deservedly ranks as a leading prophet. Their ambition is to induce the Colonies to discriminate in their tariffs between goods from the Mother Country and goods from foreign countries, admitting the former on favourable terms and penalising the latter. It is avowedly against German competition that this policy is directed, and we are light-heartedly told to risk our trade with one of our best customers on the chance of encouraging trade with Colonies which so far have shown much more eagerness to sell their goods to us than to buy ours. Even supposing that this policy succeeded in destroying the whole of the German export trade to our Colonies and Possessions, the possible gain to us would be very small. Here are the figures of the trade of our three principal Colonies with the United Kingdom and with Germany, derived in each case from the Colonial returns:— TRADE OF THE FOLLOWING BRITISH POSSESSIONS WITH THE UNITED KINGDOM AND WITH GERMANY. Ten Years’ Average, in Millions Sterling or Millions Rx. -----------------+---------------------------+---------------------------- | IMPORTS. | EXPORTS. +---------------+-----------+---------------+------------ | From Germany. | From U.K. | To Germany. | To U.K. -----------------+---------------------------+---------------------------- India (Rx) | ·9 | 58·4 | 3·8 | 36·4 Australasia | ·9 | 27·4 | ·7 | 28·2 Brit. N. America | ·8 | 9·1 | ·1 | 10·1 -----------------+---------------+-----------+---------------+------------ Thus these great groups of Colonies and Dependencies together buy rather less than £3,000,000 worth of German goods against more than £60,000,000 worth of British goods. Yet in order to crush this fractional competition of Germany in neutral markets, in order to scrape up these crumbs that have fallen from our table, we are invited to risk the loss of a direct trade with Germany worth nearly ten times as much as all the crumbs heaped up together. CHAPTER III. PICTURESQUE EXAGGERATIONS.