26 CANADA AND THE EMPIRE.

the Government will be measured by the number
or political power of the dissatisfied, and they will
do their best to obtain the denunciation of the
treaty and the removal of the responsible Ministers.
But when, as in the case of commercial treaties
within an Empire, the fiscal arrangements of a
nation have to be modified, not at the unfettered
will of her own Ministers in her own interests, but
conjointly by her own Ministers and the Ministers
of another nation, or indeed of other nations, for
the supposed welfare of a machine, in the complications
 of which the individuality of each nation has
to be merged, then the dissatisfied have ground for
complaint against the Empire and the Imperial
connection which prompted the transaction.
Business must be conducted on business lines,
and in endeavouring to conduct it along the grooves
of sentiment, there lies the great danger of creating
in the colonies an anti-Imperial class. The trade
of a country to be satisfactory to its inhabitants
should be conducted wherever adequate profit is to
be made, and not merely where sentiment desires
intercourse.

A similar danger exists at home. If a system
which began with an impost on the food of the
British taxpayer, and resulted in depriving his
Government of the control of the financial arrangements
 of Great Britain in his interest; if the poor
man’s purse was squeezed and his family deprived
of cheap food for the supposed benefit of the
colonies, there is little doubt that an anti-Imperial