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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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Thirteenth Day.

8 May 1907.

TREATY QUESTION.

(Mr. Lloyd George.)

6

arrangement with you which would involve the expenditure of 400,000l., and that you would contribute 200,000l. and we 200,000l., that is one way of interpreting "equivalent contribution." The other is the way you have explained now, that we should contribute forty times as much.

Mr. F. R. MOOR: With about forty times as much at stake.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: No, it is not we who have come first of all to complain of present arrangements.

Mr. DEAKIN: First of all, we are 5,000,000 people and I have yet to learn that you number forty times that.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The difference would be nearly ten to one.

Mr. DEAKIN: You are a little more than eight to one.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: One per cent. would mean that your share would be 50,000%.

Mr. DEAKIN: I will not touch that now. I will go into the figures later. The principle is that you put into this fund, for argument's sake, 500,000, and we 100,000, as far as we two are concerned. Then for any joint service you would consider how much of your 800,000l. you would devote towards it, and we should consider how much of our 100,000l. we should devote towards it. We should not be the only partners. Any proposal we were interested in, New Zealand might be and Canada might be, and others might be. But the idea is to have a joint fund. Roughly the amount contributed by each country to that fund should be within its own control to the extent, that it could not be applied to any purposes until its legislature has approved of the proposal, which would set out how much the United Kingdom, how much Canada, how much Australia, and how much New Zealand contribute. The Legislatures do not let go of anything. They deal with their own money under this resolution as they do now, and unless they are satisfied a fair distribution has been arranged they will not pass it.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Still, if it is a bargain between us and the Colonies that we should spend some four million pounds upon objects of this kind, we have to spend them somehow or break the treaty.

Mr. DEAKIN: Yes, while the treaty lasts.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Before we enter into a bargain of that sort we have to see what it means.

Sir WILFRID LAURIER: You say it is to be a general fund, and if you create a general fund, how are you leaving it to the Legislatures to distribute?

Mr. DEAKIN: You have no choice between that and creating some other body which would displace our Legislatures. I think that is impossible.

Sir WILFRID LAURIER: You can leave it to each Legislature to do as much as it pleases without creating a fund.

8 May 1907.

TREATY QUESTION.

Mr. DEAKIN But if we can agree at once that there shall be such a Thirteenth Day. fund and fix its amount that would be a first step to Imperial co-operation. The existence of that fund would make it imperative that there should be from time to time consultations of a business character as to how that fund should be applied, and how the respective portions contributed by each shall be arranged. It would have to be absolutely under the control of the Legislatures, but there would be a fund and full consideration from time to time as to how it could be most fruitfully applied. The Legislatures would have to be satisfied as to its application in each instance.

Sir WILFRID LAURIER:

morning?

Mr. DEAKIN : No.

understand you do not move it this

Dr. JAMESON: I think this is an attempt on Mr. Deakin's part to found

a fund for the schemes which the President of the Board of Trade suggested.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: To found a fund at our expense.

Dr. JAMESON: Not all at your expense. Up to now, the indication has been that it was to come entirely from Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: We should contribute at least 51. net for every 11. the Colonies in the aggregate would contribute. Perhaps that is too high; but two or three to one at least.

Mr. DEAKIN: We are over 12,000,000 people and you 43,000,000 people -between three and four times as much.

CHAIRMAN: May we proceed now to the other business?

COASTWISE TRADE.

Mr. DEAKIN: With reference to this resolution, as to coastwise trade, I had expected my colleague would be here in time to deal with this. The matter which is embodied in this resolution was fully considered on a number of occasions by the Conference of 1902. We have now before us its resolution, which asks the attention of the Government to the state of the navigation laws in the Empire and the advisability of revising the privileges as to coastwise trade, including trade between the Mother Country and its Colonies and Possessions, and between one Colony or Possession and another, to countries in which the corresponding trade is confined to ships of their own nationality. It was upon the motion of the late Mr. Seddon, representing New Zealand, that this question was given such prominence to. This same resolution was passed in 1902.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Do you recollect what the Imperial Government did then?

Mr. DEAKIN: They allowed the resolution to be passed without any objection whatever. It was brought forward by Mr. Seddon, from whose speech I take a quotation of an utterance of Senator West, in the United States Congress, when he said: "We can exclude foreign ships from our coastwise trade, and no foreign nation can complain; and, of course, with

COASTWISE TRADE.