Since the institution of the Club in 1866 it has been engaged exclusively in encouraging the growth of Free Trade. It
itself, whether at home of abroad, of giving has missed no Sproreanlty that presented effect to this object, without, however, ditect=
domestic policy of the country. But the Com-interfering with the general foreign or mittee feels that the relations of the Great Powers of the world have been so completely altered in recent years by the policy of territorial expansion which is being pursued by each of them, that the time has come when it may be well to reconsider the attitude of reserve and reticence with foreign alfurs that has been maintained hitherto by the Club.
This attitude of reserve and reticence w: i the fact that, up to recent times, option of Free' rade by foreign countries was for each country a purely domestic question with which neither ish Government nor any organisation ish subjects, such as this Club is, had any right of direct interference. The Club, therefore, confined its efforts, in spreading the principles of Free Trade abroad, to an attempt to influence the opinions of individual subjects of foreign powers.
But the policy of expansion adopted by all the Great Powers raises the question of free commercial intercourse in a new and extremely important form, In this form the Committee believes that the world is
question cannot be settled finally by an: gradually coming to recognise that the nation a8 a purely domestic question, If adventurers belonging to different nations Salisbury has called " "derelict" country, fire commercial interests in what Lord
country hitherto unoccupied by any civilised power; and if after the acquirement of these interests a strong civilised power takes possession of the country, or & part it is coming to be universally felt that the commercial policy to be pursued in the newly acquired country ought not to be determined by an exclusive reference to the supposed commercial interests of the ncquiring Power.
Can' this country do anything to give strength and coherence to this feeling?" If it can, then it appears to the Committee that it clearly falls within the scope of the Club's work to promote this object.
England's interest in reference to unoccupied or derelict countries, however large her commercial interests in them may be, is not primarily the interest of acquisition. But it is primarily, though indirectly, the interest of orderly government, And secondarily, but only secondarily, it is the interest of free commerce. For it ix only where orderly government first prevails that free commerce can be fully secured to Now it has never been part, nor ought it ever to be part, of the declared policy of this country in relation to foreign countries to maintain that they have less capacity than we have to govern countries that they may acquire, and in which both they and we may have interests, Our attitude towards them has often, no doubt, been tingey and corrupted by a' spirit of suspicion and Jealousy. But on the whole the saner polied
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.