DEBATE IN LORDS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 3 May 1923, Page 7

DEBATE IN LORDS.

• _ Received May 3, 1.15 p.m. LONDON, May 2. Viscount Long said he could not understand any serious hostility being offered to the policy of Imperial preference. If the Empire chose it could supply the whole of its own requirements. No one desired to see the British wage-earners driven from the country, but there was a surnlus which the Dominions could absorb. * Lord Devonshire said that when occasion arose the Government hoped to ■extend the principle of Imperial preference. It also hoped, in conjunction with the Dominions at the conference in October, to work out methods for still further helping Imperial trade Hie Government would not hesitate to seek further powers for the extension of State-aided migration. Th's was ■not a measure of despair or a temporary expedient for grappling with unemployment, but was a means of developing the Empire. Lord Devonshire said that a valuable and useful : migration scheme had already "been worked out which it was hoped would toe the preeurser of other wider ones, j Lord Beauehamp said there would be ' united Liberal opposition to Imperil preference if it entailed increase'! food costs in Britain. Lord Birkenhead said there was no ! prospect of a trade revival in Europe an the next five y-ears. Many men ac- : <septed doles in Britain with bitterness, and with organisation and adjustment it should be possible to overcome the English men and women's im--pulse against leaving the country. It' should not be beyond the Government 's power to draft Britain's unemployed to the Dominions. Man did not iive by sentiment and the Empire could not oe kept together by mutual eulogy and adoration. The Dominions had saeri:fieed much in giving us preference and we must be prepared to do something for them. to ; At tins stage the House rose.—Aus - ! IS\Z. Cable Assn. ' ,