'There is still a considerable amount of fetish-worship, but the ideas upon which any commercial union must rest will not in future incur the furious and unswerving hostility that would have greeted them twenty years ago. It is getting to be understood that Free Trade is made for man, not man for Free Trade, and any changes that may be proposed will have a better chance of being discussed upon their own merits rather than in the light of high-and-dry theory backed by outcries of the thin edge of the wedge. The British Empire is so large and so completely self-supporting, that it could very well afford, for the sake of serious political gain, to surround itself with a moderate fence.' And again, discussing a resolution passed in the Dominion House of Commons in favour of preferential trade with Great Britain, the same journal has lately said:-- 'We have not disguised our opinion that if the colonies as a whole, and without _arrière pensée_, were prepared to enter into a Customs Union with the mother-country on mutually advantageous terms, there would be a strong body of public opinion in favour of meeting the offer, if possible, even at the cost of some departure from the rigorous doctrines of Free Trade. ... If, by not too great a departure from the strict lines of Free Trade, it were possible to bind the great self-governing colonies in close {285} and permanent commercial alliance with the mother country, securing not only a vast reserve of political strength but the command of large and rapidly growing markets, it would probably be thought well worth while to incur some sacrifice. When nations like the United States, Russia, and France are strengthening their exclusive systems against us, and when central Europe is involved in a network of commercial treaties, it is not pleasant to contemplate the possibility that, under protective tariffs of increasing stringency, our colonial trade may slip from us, and the political allegiance of our colonial subjects may be gradually broken down.'