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Unionist party in England in 1906, and the accession to power of a Liberal government opposed to anything which appeared to be inconsistent with free trade, the movement for colonial preference, based on tariff reform, continued to make headway in the United Kingdom, and was definitely adopted by the Unionist party. And at the Imperial Conference of 1907 it was advocated by all the colonial premiers, who could point to the progress made in their own states towards giving a tariff preference to British goods and to those of one another.

The question of self-government is closely associated with the question of self-support. Plenty of good land and the liberty to manage their own affairs were the causes assigned by Adam Smith for the marked prosperity of the British colonies towards the end of the 18th century. The same causes are still observed to produce the same effects, and it may be pointed out that, since the date of the latest of Adam Smith's writings, upwards of 6,000,000 sq. m. of virgin soil, rich with possibilities of agricultural, pastoral and mineral wealth, have been added to the empire. In the same period the white population has grown from about 12,000,000 to 53,000,000, and the developments of agricultural and industrial machinery have multiplied, almost beyond computation, the powers of productive labour.

It is scarcely possible within this article to deal with so widely varied a subject as that of the productions and industry of the The imperial factor in industry and trade. empire. For the purposes of a general statement, it is interesting to observe that concurrently with the acquisition of the vast continental areas during the 19th century, the progress of industrial science in application to means of transport and communication brought about a revolution of the most radical character in the accepted laws of economic development. Railways did away with the old law that the spread of civilization is necessarily governed by facilities for water carriage and is consequently confined to river valleys and sea-shores. Steam and electricity opened to industry the interior of continents previously regarded as unapproachable. The resources of these vast inland spaces which have lain untouched since history began became available to individual enterprise, and over a great portion of the earth's surface were brought within the possessions of the British empire. The production of raw material within the empire increased at a rate which can only be appreciated by a careful study of figures, and by a comparison of the total of these figures with the total figures of the world. The tropical and temperate possessions of the empire include every field of production which can be required for the use of man. There is no main staple of human food which is not grown; there is no material of textile industry which is not produced. The British empire gives occupation to more than one-third of the persons employed in mining and quarrying in the world. It may be interesting, as an indication of the relative position in this respect of the British empire to the world, to state that at present it produces one-third of the coal supply of the world, one-sixth of the wheat supply, and very nearly two-thirds of the gold supply. But while these figures may be taken as in themselves satisfactory, it is far more important to remember that as yet the potential resources of the new lands opened to enterprise have been barely conceived, and their wealth has been little more than scratched. Population as yet has been only very sparsely sprinkled over the surface of many of the areas most suitable for white settlement. In the wheat lands of Canada, the pastoral country of Australasia, and the mineral fields of South Africa and western Canada alone, the undeveloped resources are such as to ensure employment to the labour and satisfaction to the needs of at least as many millions as they now contain thousands of the British race. In respect of this promise of the future the position of the British empire is unique.

It is not too much to say that trade has been at once the most active cause of expansion and the most potent bond of union in the development of the empire. Trade with the tropical and settlement in the temperate regions of the world formed the basis upon which the foundations of the empire were laid. Trading companies founded most of the American and West Indian colonies; a trading company won India; a trading company colonized the north-western districts of Canada; commercial wars during the greater part of the 18th century established the British command of the sea, which rendered the settlement of Australasia possible. The same wars gave Great Britain South Africa, and chartered companies in the 19th century carried the British flag into the interior of the African continent from south and east and west. Trading companies developed Borneo and Fiji. The bonds of

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 / "Brescia" to "Bulgaria"