THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, APRIL 13, 1908 INDIA AND PREFERENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13723, 13 April 1908, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, APRIL 13, 1908 INDIA AND PREFERENCE.

When a statesman of Lord Curzon's temper and experience declares upon a public platform that pome change in the British fiscal system is "necessary and inevitable," and proceeds to make such criticisms of the preferential theory as involve its general acceptance as a piece of probable statescraft, we are evidently face to face with the practical difficulties of a situation which has passed the inanities of academic discussion. For Lord Curzon, like every other Englishman who has been worthy of power and place, has the courage of his opinions, and has never hesitated to express them and to abide by them whatever the sacrifice entailed. Had it been otherwise he might still be Viceroy of India, holder of the most important and impressive office within the gift of the British Crown or under the jurisdiction of a civilised State. For there is no ruler in Europe who has the immense powers of the lieutenant of the British King in India, and there is no ruler in Asia whose orders are as unhesitatingly obeyed over a wider area or by a greater number of people. Nearly 300,000,000 of human beings are subject to the rule of the Governor-General of India ; and Lord Curzon is among those great Englishmen who have quietly and without a word of protest sacrificed even ambition to sense of duty. We may take it, then, that when the ex-Viceroy speaks in public to his countrymen he speaks the truth as it seems to him, without fear and without favour. And when he speaks of the position of India in relation to the Empire and to preferential trade, we know that he speaks upon a subject very near to his heart and very close in his thoughts. Many British politicians have given India a casual consideration, many have professed to study it keenly, more have taken part' in its governance without any but the most superficial and misleading knowledge. . But Lord Curzon is of the school which does thoroughly what it professes to do. Nobody knows India better, though men who know it at least as well do not necessarily agree with him in their deductions and conclusions. Yet whether they will agree with him or not in his views as to the relations of India to Imperial Trade, they will agree that his views are worth considering. At least they have the deepest interest for colonial preferentialists, if oniy because they run parallel in a very considerable measure to colonial prejudices against Asiatic competition and to colonial views upon the essential difference between a " dominion" and a "dependency." Lord Curzon tells us, then, in his Basingstoke speech, that while he looks upon a change in the British fiscal system as necessary and inevitable while he cannot " for the life of him" see why this inevitable fiscal change should not, after consultation with the colonial Governments, take a form which will strengthen Imperial ties, improve British trade, and secure better employment for British workers, that he does not consider it possible or desirable that India should be included in an Imperial scheme of commercial reciprocity. He thinks that she might suffer by retaliation more than she could gain by preference, and that for various" other reasons no party in India wouid favour a fiscal change of a preferential character. In this statement we may be sure that Lord Curzon speaks with authority, and though we might remark,that did Germany or America or Russia or Japan or any other nation under the sun hold India as we hold ; t, they would not hesitate to apply to it their universal fiscal method, so that the market it afforded would mainly belong to the ruling State, yet that has. not been the British method of governing India in the past, and it might add to the already sufficient diffi cullies of Anglo-Indian government to adopt that method in the future. Apart from that particular point it will immediately occur to colonial Englishmen that what Lord Curzon really means is what in their hearts they have always meant—that reciprocity is most desirable and preference more easily and naturally established between the British States of the' world than between any other. When India has been academically spoken of as a party to preference and reciprocity, colonial spokesmen have acquiesced, although in their hearts they have always recognised that to give th« same terms to Indian cotton goods as to Lancashire cotton goods would

hardly be giving the Lancashire mills a great advantage. But it- is not the hope of establishing closer relations with India which has given enthusiasm to the preferential movement in the British colonies and won for the movement its remarkable measure of success. We want fo establish cldser relations with our kinsmen at Home and in otl-er British lands, to trade with them an J to assist in making them prosperous as we knov- they instinctively wish to trade with us. and to assist in making us prosperous. So that while we would all include India in an Imperial reciprocity scheme if :$ were to her interests—as her rulers see them—to join it, yet the argument that she cannot take part in such a scheme will not affect the matter at all from the colonial point, of view. Accepting Lord Curzon's contention simply means that preferential trade and Im; ' •ial reciprocity will have to be confined primarily to the British States of the Empire. Yet if we are excluding India from the scope of preferential proposals merely because it is feared that such a policy might loosen our hold upon the to reat dependency, it is more than probable— spite of Lord Curzon— that we are taking the very step to defeat our own Indian policy. For nothing wins in Asia excepting the strong hand and the unbroken prestige. The AngloJapanese Alliance has notoriously weakened British prestige in the dependency, and if the Hindoos thi.ik we do not dare to bring them und.nnew tariff conditions they will not respect our moderation, but become all the more disposed to sedition and rebellion.