IV.
Military and naval federation with the Colonies, even if we could secure it, would not people our territories or extend our trade. Protection was adopted in the United States and Germany as a doctrine of development. It has been brilliantly successful for that purpose in both instances. Our competitors have unquestionably made the most of their opportunities; of ours we as unquestionably have made the least. What the British Empire needs in its turn is a policy of practical development meant to develop as well as to unite the human and financial forces of the Mother Country and her Colonies. If we succeed in that end we shall maintain the Empire; if not, it will be impossible to maintain it; and the economic issue is the primary, the vital factor of the whole problem. 'Commercial union,' says Sir Wilfrid Laurier, 'must precede political and military union, and we cannot wait for ever. But Sir Michael Hicks-Beach points out, what no one else has yet attempted to deny, that it will become absolutely impossible for us to sustain alone the burthen of Imperial Defence, and that unless we can obtain the financial cooperation of the Colonies, 'our Imperial power must go.' The Colonies are willing to approach the question on the commercial side, they are not willing to approach it on any other; and since they will not federate with us upon Free Trade terms, we must federate with them while yet we have the opportunity on other than Free Trade terms. We have no alternative. A definite union of interests in this respect may be safely trusted to develop subsequently, and of itself, the necessary financial and, in Captain Mahan's sense, 'military' organization for the protection of those interests. Preference, as the biologists say, will prove to be the true 'growing spot' of Imperial Federation.
We have no alternative. Persistence in a policy of free imports is not, as a matter of fact, whatever may be desired, a practicable course. That would mean, as
