1120 ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION [PART V 
powers whose treaty rights might be affected. This principle 
was fully accepted by Canada in respect of the French Con- 
ventions of 1907 and 1909, and similarly in respect of the 
concessions made to Germany, the United States, and Italy 
in 1910, and proposed to the United States in 1911. 
(2) Further, His Majesty’s Government regard it as 
essential that any tariff concession conceded by a Dominion 
to a foreign power should be extended to the United King- 
dom, and to the rest of His Majesty’s Dominions. It is clear 
that no Dominion would wish to afford to foreign nations 
better treatment than it accords to the rest of the Empire of 
which it forms a part. For example, when informal discus- 
sions with a view to commercial arrangements between the 
Dominion of Canada and the United States were conducted 
in 1892, the Dominion Government declined to agree that 
Canada should discriminate against the products and manu- 
factures of the United Kingdom, and on this ground the 
negotiations were broken off! Similarly, when Newfound- 
land in 1890 had made preliminary arrangements for a con- 
vention with the United States which would have accorded 
preferential treatment to that power,? Her Majesty’s Govern- 
ment acknowledged the force of the protest made by Canada, 
and when the Newfoundland Government proposed to pass 
legislation to grant the concession stipulated for by the 
United States, the Secretary of State in a dispatch of 
March 26, 1892, informed the Dominion Government that 
they might rest assured ‘ that Her Majesty will not be advised 
to assent to any Newfoundland legislation discriminating 
directly against the products of the Dominion ’. 
(3) His Majesty’s Government cannot agree to a Colony 
asking from foreign powers concessions hostile to the interests 
of other parts of the Empire. If, therefore, a preference was 
sought by or offered to a Dominion in respect of any article 
in which it competed seriously with the other Colonies or the 
Mother Country, His Majesty’s Government would feel it 
! See United States Senate, 52 Congress, Sess. 1, Exec. Doc. No. 114 ; 
Canadian Gazette, xviii. 603; Hopkins, Sir John Thompson, p. 402. 
* Cf. Canadian Gazette. xviii, 482; Parl, Pap., C. 6303, pp. 14 seq., 33 seq.