The British Empire had its beginning in the initiative of private business men, not in any conscious policy of state. Yet as the Empire grew the teaching of doctrinaires and the example of other colonial powers had developed a definite policy whereby the plantations overseas were to be made to serve the needs of the nation at home. The end of empire was commercial profit; the means, the political subordination of the colonies; the debit entry, the cost of the military and naval and diplomatic services borne by the mother country. But the course of events had now broken down this theory. Britain, for her own good, had abandoned protection, and with it fell the system of preference and monopoly in colonial markets. Not only preference had gone but even equality. The colonies, notably Canada, which was most influenced by the United States, were perversely using their new found freedom to protect their own manufacturers against all outsiders, Britain included. When Sheffield cutlers, hard hit by Canada's tariff, protested to the Colonial Secretary and he echoed their remonstrance, the Canadian Minister of Finance, A. T. Galt, stoutly refused to heed. "Self-government would be utterly annihilated," Galt replied in 1860, "if the views of the Imperial Government were to be preferred to those of the people of Canada. It is therefore the duty of the present government distinctly to affirm the right of the Canadian legislature to adjust the taxation of the people in the way they deem best--even if it should unfortunately happen to meet the disapproval of the Imperial Ministry." Clearly, if trade advantage were the chief purpose of empire, the Empire had lost its reason for being.