The Imperialist - Sara Jeannette Duncan (general ebook reader .txt) 📗

place of imperial union in that case; and a few thousands more for shipping subsidies and cheap cablegrams would have a great look of strengthening the ties with the colonies. But if they commit themselves to a zollverein with us and the rest of the family you won't hear much more about the need to foster communications. Communications will foster themselves."

"Just so," remarked John Murchison. "They'll save their money."

"I wouldn't think so before--I couldn't," Lorne went on, "but I'm afraid it's rather futile, the kind of thing we've been trying to do. It's fiddling at a superstructure without a foundation. What we want is the common interest. Common interest, common taxation for defence, common representation, domestic management of domestic affairs, and you've got a working Empire."

"Just as easy as slippin' off a log," remarked Horace Williams.

"Common interest, yes," said his father; "common taxation, no, for defence or any other purpose. The colonies will never send money to be squandered by the London War Office. We'll defend ourselves, as soon as we can manage it, and buy our own guns and our own cruisers. We're better business people than they are, and we know it."

"I guess that's right, Mr Murchison," said Horace Williams. "Our own army and navy--in the sweet bye-and-bye. And let 'em understand they'll be welcome to the use of it, but quite in a family way--no sort of compulsion."

"Well," said Lorne, "that's compatible enough."

"And your domestic affairs must include the tariff," Mr Murchison went on. "There's no such possibility as a tariff that will go round. And tariffs are kittle cattle to shoo behind."

"Has anybody got a Scotch dictionary?" inquired Stella. "This conversation is making me tired."

"Suppose you run away and play with your hoop," suggested her brother. "I can't see that as an insuperable difficulty, Father. Tariffs could be made adaptable, relative to the common interest as well as to the individual one. We could do it if we liked."

"Your adaptability might easily lead to other things. What's to prevent retaliation among ourselves? There's a slump in textiles, and the home Government is forced to let in foreign wool cheaper. Up goes the Australian tax on the output of every mill in Lancashire. The last state of the Empire might be worse than the first."

"It wouldn't be serious. If I pinched Stella's leg as I'm going to in a minute, she will no doubt kick me; and her instincts are such that she will probably kick me with the leg I pinched, but that won't prevent our going to the football match together tomorrow and presenting a united front to the world."

They all laughed, and Stella pulled down her lengthening petticoats with an air of great offence, but John Murchison shook his head.

"If they manage it, they will be clever," he said.

"Talking of Lancashire," said Williams, "there are some funny fellows over there writing in the Press against a tax on foreign cotton because it's going to ruin Lancashire. And at this very minute thousands of looms are shut down in Lancashire because of the high price of cotton produced by an American combine--and worse coming, sevenpence a pound I hear they're going to have it, against the fourpence ha'penny they've got it up to already. That's the sort of thing they're afraid to discourage by a duty."

"Would a duty discourage it?" asked John Murchison.

"Why not--if they let British-grown cotton in free? They won't discourage the combine much--that form of enterprise has got to be tackled where it grows; but the Yankee isn't the only person in the world that can get to understand it. What's to prevent preferential conditions creating British combines, to compete with the American article, and what's to prevent Lancashire getting cheaper cotton in consequence? Two combines are better than one monopoly any day."

"May be so. It would want looking into. We won't see a duty on cotton though, or wool either for that matter. The manufacturers would be pleased enough to get it on the stuff they make, but there would be a fine outcry against taxing the stuff they use."

"Did you see much of the aristocracy, Mr Murchison?" asked Mrs Williams.

"No," replied Lorne, "but I saw Wallingham."

"You saw the whole House of Lords," interposed Stella, "and you were introduced to three."

"Well, yes, that's so. Fine-looking set of old chaps they are, too. We're a little too funny over here about the Lords--we haven't had to make any."

"What were they doing the day you were there, Lorne?" asked Williams.

"Motorcar legislation," replied Lorne. "Considerably excited about it, too. One of them had had three dogs killed on his estate. I saw his letter about it in the Times."

"I don't see anything to laugh at in that," declared Stella. "Dogs are dogs."

"They are, sister, especially in England."

"Laundresses aren't washerwomen there," observed Mrs Murchison. "I'd like you to see the colour of the things he's brought home with him, Mrs Williams. Clean or dirty, to the laundry they go--weeks it will take to get them right again--ingrained London smut and nothing else."

"In this preference business they've got to lead the way," Williams reverted. "We're not so grown up but what grandma's got to march in front. Now, from your exhaustive observation of Great Britain, extending over a period of six weeks, is she going to?"

"My exhaustive observation," said Lorne, smiling, "enables me to tell you one thing with absolute accuracy; and that is that nobody knows. They adore Wallingham over there--he's pretty nearly a god--and they'd like to do as he tells them, and they're dead sick of theoretic politics; but they're afraid--oh, they're afraid!"

"They'll do well to ca' canny," said John Murchison.

"There's two things in the way, at a glance," Lorne went on. "The conservatism of the people--it isn't a name, it's a fact--the hostility and suspicion; natural enough: they know they're stupid, and they half suspect they're fair game. I suppose the Americans have taught them that. Slow--oh, slow! More interested in the back-garden fence than anything else. Pick up a paper, at the moment when things are being done, mind, all over the world, done against them--when their shipping is being captured, and their industries destroyed, and their goods undersold beneath their very noses--and the thing they want to know is--Why Are the Swallows Late? I read it myself, in a ha'penny morning paper, too--that they think rather dangerously go-ahead--a whole column, headed, to inquire what's the matter with the swallows. The Times the same week had a useful leader on Alterations in the Church Service, and a special contribution on Prayers for the Dead. Lord, they need 'em! Those are the things they THINK about! The session's nearly over, and there's two Church Discipline Bills, and five Church Bills--bishoprics and benefices, and Lord knows what--still to get through. Lot of anxiety about 'em, apparently! As to a business view of politics, I expect the climate's against it. They'll see over a thing--they're fond of doing that--or under it, or round one side of it, but they don't seem to have any way of seeing THROUGH it. What they just love is a good round catchword; they've only got to hear themselves say it often enough, and they'll take it for gospel. They're convinced out of their own mouths. There was the driver of a bus I used to ride on pretty often, and if he felt like talking, he'd always begin, 'As I was a-saying of yesterday--' Well, that's the general idea--to repeat what they were a-sayin' of yesterday; and it doesn't matter two cents that the rest of the world has changed the subject. They've been a-sayin' a long time that they object to import duties of any sort or kind, and you won't get them to SEE the business in changing. If they do this it won't be because they want to, it will be because Wallingham wants them to."

"I guess that's so," said Williams. "And if Wallingham gets them to he ought to have a statue in every capital in the Empire. He will, too. Good cigar this, Lorne! Where'd you get it?"

"They are Indian cheroots--'Planters,' they call 'em--made in Madras. I got some through a man named Hesketh, who has friends out there, at a price you wouldn't believe for as decent a smoke. You can't buy 'em in London; but you will all right, and here, too, as soon as we've got the sense to favour British-grown tobacco."

"Lorne appreciates his family better than he did before," remarked his youngest sister, "because we're British grown."

"You were saying you noticed two things specially in the way?" said his father.

"Oh, the other's of course the awful poverty--the twelve millions that haven't got enough to do with. I expect it's an outside figure and it covers all sorts of qualifying circumstances; but it's the one the Free Fooders quote, and it's the one Wallingham will have to handle. They've muddled along until they've GOT twelve million people in that condition, and now they have to carry on with the handicap. We ask them to put a tax on foreign food to develop our wheat areas and cattle ranges. We say, 'Give us a chance and we'll feed you and take your surplus population.' What is to be done with the twelve million while we are growing the wheat? The colonies offer to create prosperity for everybody concerned at a certain outlay--we've got the raw materials--and they can't afford the investment because of the twelve millions, and what may happen meanwhile. They can't face the meanwhile--that's what it comes to."

"Fine old crop of catchwords in that situation," Mr Williams remarked; and his eye had the spark of the practical politician. "Can't you hear 'em at it, eh?"

"It scares them out of everything but hand-to-mouth politics. Any other remedy is too heroic. They go on pointing out and contemplating and grieving, with their percentages of misery and degeneration; and they go on poulticing the cancer with benevolence--there are people over there who want the State to feed the schoolchildren! Oh, they're kind, good, big-hearted people; and they've got the idea that if they can only give enough away everything will come right. I was talking with a man one day, and I asked him whether the existence of any class justified governing a great country on the principle of an almshouse. He asked me who the almsgivers ought to be, in any country. Of course it was tampering with my figure--in an almshouse there aren't any; but that's the way it presents itself to the best of them. Another fellow was frantic at the idea of a tax on foreign food--he nearly cried--but would be very glad to see the Government do more to assist emigration to the colonies. I tried to show him it would be better to make it profitable to emigrate first, but I couldn't make him see it.

"Oh, and there's the old thing against them, of course--the handling of imperial and local affairs by one body. Anybody's good enough to attend to the Baghdad Railway, and nobody's too good to attend to the town pump. Is it any wonder the Germans beat them in their own shops and Russia walks into Thibet? The eternal marvel is that they stand where they do."

"At the top," said Mr Williams.

"Oh--at the top! Think of what you mean when you say 'England.'"

"I see that the demand for a tariff on manufactured goods is growing," Williams remarked, "even the anti-food-tax organs are beginning to shout for that."

"If they had