mense damage to our economic position here and intensify
our social conditions by impoverishing the capitalist as
well as the manual worker; and, finally, that there was
very great danger of any system of Protection introducing
corruption into our public life. If four or five words, or
sometimes even a single word and a comma, added to or
taken away from the schedule of a Tariff Act can give a
man or group of men a monopoly and tax half the nation in
order to make them rich, you have given men too personal
a reason for the use of their votes.

I can summarise my position in regard to Tariff Re-
form very easily. I am no pedant about Protection, and
if it could be shown that the security of an island kingdom
like the United Kingdom could only be made complete by
Protection in certain matters, I should be perfectly willing
to vote for measures to give that security. In other words,
I would have voted for what has been called "a state of
siege" tariff. I should have regarded it as an economic.
loss which must be borne just as must the charges of the
Army and Navy, in order to ensure the safety and welfare
of the realm.

But Mr. Chamberlain and his followers, though there
was an occasional word or two about national security,
did not base their appeal to the nation on the ground of
national security. They based it on quite different
grounds. They told us in effect, "If you want to main-
tain and develop your industries, if you want to prevent
them gradually dying out, if you want to get the greatest
amount of employment for workingmen, and also for
capital, -- in a word, if you want to increase the wealth
of the nation, you must go in for Protection, i.e., Tariff
Reform." Tariff Reform thus became a national "get-
rich-quick" political war-cry. That, to my mind, was an
appeal which had to be counter-attacked at once as the

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