TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. , 557 
Political Standpoint.—The policy of preferential trading is advocated 
by many, on the ground that the present dependence of the United Kingdom 
on foreign countries for her food supplies constitutes a grave Imperial 
danger, but this dependence is actually in some respects a source of 
strength. It secures to Great Britain friends in need, for the countries that 
supply her wants are bound to her by the tie of mutual interest. The 
United States, for example, would be little likely to stand by and see food 
supplies for Great Britain made ‘ contraband of war.’ It thus appears that 
a self-sufficing Empire is no more attractive asa political than as an 
economic ideal. 
Finally, the policy of preferential trading relations is advocated as 
‘tightening the ties’—reinforcing the existing bonds of sentiment and 
blood relationship by a sense of economic unity, or common material interest 
throughout the Empire. But the policy of Imperial preference, once 
adopted by Great Britain, could not be confined to food stuffs. It must 
inevitably extend and grow till it became an all-round system of high protec- 
tion ; and there is grave reason to doubt whether an Imperial preferential 
tariff could be arranged without bringing into dangerous conflict the diverse 
and often opposing interests of the different States of the Empire. The 
present Canadian preference, as the voluntary gift of a free people, stands 
on quite a different footing. Great Britain’s hold on the colonies is not 
conditional on her adoption of protection. The bonds of Empire are other 
and stronger than those of mere commercial interest. 
2. The Insufficiency of a National Basis for Economic Organisation. 
By Professor Epwin Cannan, M.A., LLD. 
Prevailing opinion assumes that the nation is and must be the unit of 
economic organisation, whether the organisation is based on individualist 
or socialist principles. There is some difficulty in deciding what a nation 
is, but it is generally taken to mean the people of any area with common 
customs-duties. Socialists at the present time usually propose to take 
each of these nations as the society or community which should own the 
means of production. It may easily be shown that this would lead them 
into insuperable difficulties. Either each nation must be self-sufficient 
as regards capital, or borrowing and lending must be established between 
them. The former alternative would delay economic progress enormously 
by preventing the capital accumulated in the old settled areas from being 
applied to the development of ‘the new; the other alternative would 
involve the abandonment of the fundamental socialist tenet of the illegiti- 
macy of interest, and would also end in drastic restrictions on migration 
from the poorer areas into the richer. To the question whether the 
socialist may not reasonably regard national organisation as a forward 
step in the progress towards mundane organisation the answer is in the 
negative. The proposed national organisation, supposing it turned out 
successful inside each nation, would only have the effect of enlarging the 
surplus available for warfare. 
To the individualist the national unit is in reality equally unsatis- 
factory. The socialist can at any rate conceive his nation as a sort of 
family closed from outside intrusion; but this is scarcely possible for an 
individualist who thinks that men should be free to move about and 
acquire property where they will. To him the material welfare of the 
nation can convey no very definite meaning. The struggle which is carried 
on between the different nations cannot be regarded as a beneficent compe- 
tition tending to the good of the whole number, like the competition carried 
on between individuals within a civilised country, since it is anarchic, 
instead of being directed into beneficent channels by institutions and laws 
