54
mining and lumbering machinery. It must be remembered that it is the export of merchandise that enables the producers of one country to draw upon the supplies of other countries, and it is precisely where the largest export of merchandise finds a market that the principal supplies are best obtained.
The imports above enumerated can only be obtained from the United States. The only question that might present itself to His Majesty's Ministers is in relation to machinery, and it is presumed that any doubt on that point will be removed by the following quotation from remarks of the Prime Minister of Canada, at the Colonial Conference in 1902, viz.:
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" is another class of goods imported directly from the United States and which I do not see any prospect of being similarly introduced from Great Britain-mining machinery. Canada is fast becoming a great mining country. The United States are more accustomed to the manufacture of mining machinery which is more suited to our purpose than anything we can import from Great Britain in that way."
." (See page 44 of Proceedings of Colonial Conference.)
06
It cannot but be apparent to His Majesty's Government that between this Colony and the United States of America there exists all the elements for a mutually advantageous trade, and it will not be a matter of surprise, therefore, that it is the desire of the Government and the people of this Colony to encourage and extend it. A hostile tariff, a preferential tariff in favour of the United Kingdom and other parts of the Empire, could only result in keeping closed the ports of the United States to the free admission of the exports of this Colony, while, on the other hand, it would in no way increase the trade between this Colony and other parts of the Empire. The reason for this was clearly set forth by the Prime Minister of this Colony before the Colonial Conference in 1902, when he said "I do not think it would be any advantage to the Mother Country for us to revise our tariff in any way, inasmuch as the only goods that we import from foreign countries, principally the United States of America, are goods which this country (England) could not supply to us."
." (See page 128 of Proceedings of Colonial Conference, 1902.) It might be added, neither could the Dominion of Canada supply those goods.
As the Prime Minister of this Colony further stated at the Colonial Conference in 1902, "the principle of our tariff taxation is, and always has been, entirely a free trade principle, without discrimination of countries" (page 15 of Proceedings of Conference); it must, for the reasons herein before stated, remain such for many years to come, and, therefore, the only induce- ment that the Colony had to hold out to the United States to move its Government to grant free admission to our products was the guarantee "that no heavier duty shall be imposed in Newfoundland on articles coming from the United States than is imposed on such articles coming from elsewhere," during the continuance of the Convention.
4
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It is submitted that the principle involved in Article V. of the Convention is in no way opposed to that for which Mr. Chamberlain is so strenuously labouring to-day, and which he enunciated before the Colonial Conference in 1902. In a pamphlet published by the General Secretary of the Imperial Tariff Committee in 1903, entitled "Mr. Chamberlain's Proposals. What they mean and what we shall gain by them," and which pamphlet received the impri- matur of Mr. Chamberlain, it is stated, "If we again set up a tariff, we shall,
in Mr. Chamberlain's phrase, have 'resumed the power of negotiation "which we last used to advantage in the Cobden Treaty. This does not "necessarily mean that we shall do away with free trade for foreign manu-
44
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factures. We may still, if we choose, give them free trade; they will probably get it, as the French got it in 1860, for something less than free "trade. But they will not get it for nothing." (Page 62.)
By the Convention to which His Majesty's Government has recently taken exception, this Colony is secured in getting something, namely, free admission for its products into the markets of the United States, in exchange for a guarantee that while that privilege continues American goods shall be admitted at the same rate of duty as goods from all other countries.
3. In paragraph 2 of the despatch under reference His Majesty's Govern- ment state "it was the declared policy of His Majesty's Government that the
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