INSANE IMPERIALISM.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7077, 15 March 1910, Page 6

INSANE IMPERIALISM.

Though the cable service had not acquainted us with the fact, it is clear from the newspapers which reached Wellington by yesterday's English mail that official Onionist organs had grown rather ashamed of the " appeal of the colonies " so often heard from the platforms of tariff-mongers. The thing had really gone too far. Tory candidates all over the country wer« passionately demanding to know hon much longer the colonial " offers" were to be spurned—how often th« "door was to be banged" upon th« oversea Dominions. It was even suggested that the loyalty of Britons beyond tho ocean depended upon preference being granted to colonial im. ports—that taxes upon colonial pro. ducts must be - paid by British consumers if they wished to maintain the Imperial connection. We were giver samples of this insolent nonsense frorc

day to day, and it has to bo said that, generally speaking, the methods followed by the party on whose behalf such statements were made received no approval in this country. Tho suggestion that tho peoplo in New Zealand desired to seo taxation imposed upon the food of tho British artisan was at all times wildly ridiculous. It never had the slightest justification, [t has been repudiated over and over igain. Some inkling of tho unfortunate consequences of their ahuse of colonial sentiment seems to have penetrated tho minds of the Unionists, for on reading tho speeches delivered in various parts of the country in tho later stages of tho election, campaign it is noticeable that the old picture of an Empire rendorod indissoluble by food taxes was not often presented to tho public view. There was a tendency to say as little as possible about the Imperial significance of Customs duties.

This restraint among the Oppositionists was particularly marked after "The Times" had told them to be more careful and to realise that it was not a pleasant compliment to either Australasjfl. or Canada to suggest that their loyalty to the Empire depended in any degree whatever on permission to secure their interest in the British market at the expense of the British working classes. This was a timely caution. It amounted to a repetition of what had been said on many occasions by tho majority of colonial newspapers, and '' Tho Times " rounded oif its rebuke by declaring that every tariff-reformer who quoted the desire of the colonies for preference as full and sufficient argument for taxing the British workman's food was talking " not merely bad politics but unsound and insane Imperialism." ""We should soon havo reason to despair of the Empire," it said, "if the British working class had so lost its native common-sense as to be impressed by it." As it happens it was not " tho •working class " which .was impressed by a travesty of Imperialism, but a class who posed as the saviours of the nation. The only colonial opinion there is upon tariff reform in Britain is that for the, people in this part of the world to appeal for a preference that would increase prices to tho great body of consumers would be an unwarrantable interference in a purely domestic dispute.. The less they hear of "banging doors" and "straining loyalty " from party rhetoricians the Wore will all colonials be pleased.