excommunicating people because they do not agree with me about Tariff Reform, I am entirely in accord with it. I am only a convert to Tariff Reform myself, although I am not a very recent convert, for at the beginning of 1903, at Bloemfontein, I was instrumental in inducing all the South African Colonies to give a substantial preference to goods of British origin. I was instrumental in doing that some months before the great Tariff Reform campaign was inaugurated in this country by its leading champion, Mr. Chamberlain. But while I am all for personal tolerance, I am opposed to any compromise on the question of principle. I am not opposed to it from any perverseness or any obstinacy. I am opposed to it because I see clearly that dropping Tariff Reform will knock the bottom out of a policy which I believe is not only right in itself, but is the only effective defence of the Union and of many other things which are very dear to us--I mean a policy of constructive Imperialism, and of steady, consistent, unhasting, and unresting Social Reform. I have never advocated Tariff Reform as a nostrum or as a panacea. I have never pretended that it is by itself alone sufficient to cure all the evils inherent in our social system, or alone sufficient as a bond of Empire. What I contend is that without it, without recovering our fiscal freedom, without recovering the power to deal with Customs Duties in accordance with the conditions of the present time and not the conditions of fifty years ago, we cannot carry out any of those measures which it is most necessary that we should carry out. Without it we are unable to defend ourselves against illegitimate foreign competition; we are unable to enter into those trade arrangements with the great self-governing States of the British Crown across the seas, which are calculated to bestow the most far-reaching benefits upon them and upon us; and we are unable to obtain the revenue which is required for a policy of progressive Social Reform. I hope that people otherwise in agreement with us, who have hitherto not seen their way to get over their objections to Tariff Reform, will, nevertheless, find themselves able to accept that principle, when they regard it, not as an isolated thing, but as an essential part of a great national and Imperial policy.