336 Timehri. 



than a preference ? Why put duties at all on each others' products ? It 

 is not such a large matter as to mean a great loss of revenue and the 

 benefit to be obtained should surely more than compensate for this, 

 while, in addition, such an act would go far towards drawing us together 

 in a common interest. To give only two instances : Would not British 

 Guiana benefit by having a free market throughout the West Indies for 

 its rice ? Would not Trinidad find the advantage of a free market for its 

 oils ? Would every colony not benefit by being able to draw on its sister 

 colonies for their produce in time of failure of crops ? I think that the 

 subject is at least worthy of consideration. The second part of the 

 matter is more complex. One would like to see a state of things whereby 

 goods imported into and paying duty, for instance, in Trinidad, could be 

 resold, say, to St. Lucia or St. Vincent without paying a further duty. 

 Thus would each colony have the whole of the rest to draw on for its 

 supplies instead of being debarred from doing so as at present, by the 

 double duty. But this abolition of the double duty is at once the object 

 and the difficulty of the proposal. It might be possible — I am not an 

 expert and do not know — to arrange a system of refund between colony 

 and colony of the revenues collected on imports ; if not, it might become 

 necessary to pool the whole of the Customs revenues and redivide them 

 according to the volume of trade or the population of the respective 

 colonies. If the latter, one must admit that the subject is one rather for 

 the future than the present, as this would probably mean a West Indian 

 Customs service with a central governing body. At the same time one 

 can see much advantage in such a service whereby junior officials may 

 be promoted from colony to colony and thus enlarge their experience 

 much more than they can do in any one place, and already it has been 

 said that even if the proposed Customs Conference accomplishes what it 

 will set out to, a permanent West Indian visiting Customs Inspector 

 would be a necessity, in order to see that each colony was really working 

 in a uniform manner with the others, and to prevent each slipping away 

 into a separate channel again, as, owing to varying local conditions, the 

 tendency must inevitably be, 



A West Indian Appeal Court. 



Let us now pass from Customs to Laws. Let us consider the pro- 

 posals that have already been made for the establishment of a West 

 Indian Court of Appeal. I know that both our Chief Justice and Attor- 

 ney General take a great interest in the question. Before such authorities 

 the layman naturally lies low and therefore I shall only touch shortly on 

 the subject. The common interest here would be shown in the un- 

 doubted saving in judges' salaries in most if not all of the colonies, and 

 in the fact that there would always be a certainty of Appeal cases being- 

 heard by those who till then had had no interest in them. A beginning 

 should be made, in my humble opinion, by the establishment of a Court 

 consisting of the Chief Justices of the larger colonies who would visit 

 each colony including the Windward and Leeward Islands, periodically. 

 The cost of this would be small and more than compensated by the saving 



