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youngest among us. While the old country is willing to learn from its children, it has a long history of error and of slow progress burnt into its memory, which newer communities have not. When, therefore, our colonists adopt our discarded methods we can look on tolerantly, while we reflect that the diseases of youth have to be gone through before maturity is reached, and that this is all in the natural course of humanity.
Especially is this attitude natural with reference to Protection, that old economic dragon slain by us so long ago and after such fierce struggles. That new countries should espouse the heresy is natural enough, for in them it does not affect their food, while indirect revenue is far more easy to raise in young and scattered communities, and interested parties have a freer hand in so working fiscal arrangements as to divert to their own pockets what should be public revenue. Hence it is natural enough that our colonists should have adopted Protection, as it has not such obviously evil effects in new countries, with their untapped wealth and their resources enormous in proportion to their sparse population. It is also natural enough that they cannot realise that we are in a totally different position, with our small and densely peopled islands, with their economic developments going back for two thousand years. Our Colonies have endless supplies of food for the asking, and they have not reached the stage when they can profitably manufacture for those outside their boundaries. They cannot, therefore, realise that the United Kingdom is unable to feed itself without importing corn and meat from abroad, and that we also live by manufacturing for the world, for which purpose we have to import increasing quantities of raw materials from which to work. In short, the Colonies export food and raw materials, and we export the manufactures, by which it is stated that one-third of our population live.
