there are now over 15,000 people employed in woollen and tweed mills and in knitting factories, and the annual wagesheets amount to about £2,000,000.

Although the operating tariff varies in respect of certain commodities in which wool is used, the actual materials made in the factories referred to in the preceding paragraph are protected against foreign competition by a duty of 45 per cent. (ad val.) and against British competitive articles by a duty of 30 per cent. (ad val.).

One might give similar figures in regard to various other manufacturing industries which have grown up under protective tariffs, and it is in the light of their experience that the Australians, excepting a small minority, are in favour of protecting any industry which gives promise of turning local raw materials into finished articles for local consumption at reasonable prices. Again it is necessary to say that it is useless for British capitalists to protest against this policy in the face of the strength of Australian opinion.

It is, of course, very unlikely that the Australians can consider becoming exporters of manufactured goods during the next quarter of a century, because they obviously could not compete in the open market with countries having a low standard of living or highly specialized massed production; but they believe that they are displaying wisdom in desiring to become self-supporting as far as possible in the manufacture of essential commodities. That they desire that any overseas trade should be with the Motherland is evidenced by the substantial preferences to Britain which obtain wherever duties operate. It is here to be emphasized that this preferential policy is often designed solely to protect British industry. Last year £26,000,000 worth of British goods entered Australia free of duty, protected by a tariff, averaging 10 per cent., against similar goods from any foreign country. The cash value to British exporters of that absolute preference was therefore £2,600,000; and they were to that extent better off in the Australian market than they would have been had sales been effected in this country in the face of unrestricted foreign competition. On the whole range of British exports to the Commonwealth, the preferential advantage is about 12 per cent., and expressed in cash it amounts to about £8,000,000 a year.

The persistent critic will remind us that trade is an exchange of commodities, and will ask how overseas traders could pay for the Commonwealth's export of raw materials if Australia did not take manufactured goods in return. The obvious reply is that any increase in the local manu

facturing population will mean a corresponding increase in local consumers of primary produce, and that such increase will be in due proportion to the falling off in the volume of sales of raw materials overseas. In other words, Australia will not need that proportion of overseas buying of her goods which will be provided by increased population within her shores; and her vital need, if she is to defend herself against possible invasion, is for more people. It is the wish of the citizens of this all-British continent that migrants should be drawn from Britain, and each one leaving these shores will help by so much to solve Britain's unemployment and housing problems, and the proper redistribution of the white people of the Empire would tend greatly to simplify Imperial defence. No assisted passage schemes are available to foreign nationals, and Australia reserves to herself the right to deny admission to people from foreign countries.

It must be pointed out that the value of imports of manufactured goods to Britain (with a population of 45 millions) during the past three years have averaged over £250,000,000 annually, whereas the average value of imports of manufactured goods to the Commonwealth (where there are only 6 million people), over the same period, has been about £150,000,000 annually. That is to say, the per capita Australian purchases of manufactured goods from overseas are over four times as great as the corresponding per capita British purchases. British manufacturers depend largely upon their export trade-in increasing competition with the rest of the world. On the other hand, Australian manufacturers have a relatively enormous market in their own country, and they are protected by tariff walls which they can absolutely control against all overseas-and especially against foreign-competition.

The delegation of British motor manufacturers, which is now touring the Commonwealth, is an encouraging evidence that the opportunities awaiting capital investment in Australia in secondary industries are not being entirely overlooked. What is needed is a far wider appreciation of the position.

This article would not be complete without reference to the Labour situation in Australia. From time to time much is heard in Britain of industrial unrest in the Commonwealth, and the reason is perhaps that particular news value attaches to reports of this nature. But the outstanding fact remains that the added value per employee in Australian factories amounts to £334 per annum. The average wage per

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employee (male and female) last year averaged £193, showing a gross profit per employee of £141 to cover overheads and to provide interest on capital investment.

In conclusion, reference may fittingly be made to the share in the cost of Imperial Defence as borne by Australia. This year the Commonwealth's naval expenditure was £5,300,000 (including 2 millions for construction, spent in Great Britain), or over five times the combined naval expenditure of the other three Dominions. Britain's naval outlay this year was £58,000,000, or about 24s. per capita, as against Australia's 17s. 8d. per capita. To this sum it is only fair to add the cash value, to British exporters, of the tariff preferences extended to them in the Australian market. This sum (as is explained above) is estimated to amount to about £8,000,000 a year, and can fairly be regarded as a contribution towards Imperial Defence expenditure. On that basis, Australia's contribution, this year towards Imperial Defence may be said to amount to £13,000,000, viz. 23 per cent. of what was expended by the Motherland.

From whatever point of view Australia's relationship with the Motherland is considered, it will perhaps be conceded that she is worthily upholding her status as an allBritish continent within the Commonwealth of British nations.

L. ST. CLARE GRONDONA

THE years which immediately followed 1066 raised Lakeland to a position of considerable importance, and indeed for a very long time it was a thorn in the flesh of the Norman administration of England. It was almost the ruin of Ranulf de Meslin, who was one of King William's greatest lieutenants; and when the kingdom came to be consolidated and a record made of its resources it was necessary to leave almost the whole of Cumberland and Westmorland out of Doomsday Book, because it had been found impossible to conquer that intractable district.

The monkish chroniclers of those troublous times had no words of commendation for the great Earl Boethar and his two sons, nor for any of the heroes who led the army of refugees and Norsemen which fought King William to a standstill. They were looked upon as rebels against the King's Majesty, instead of patriots fighting for their homes, who exterminated one Norman army after another, and killed far more of the invaders than did King Harold at Hastings.

The story commences with the harrying of the north, when nearly all the cultivated land north of the Humber was turned into desert, and King William reduced the population of unhappy England to about two million souls. Refugees from Yorkshire and Lancashire flocked to the Lakeland mountains; prudent ones brought the remnants of their flocks and herds, but the later arrivals were broken men and women, desperate with their losses, thankful for any respite from the Norman butchery, which spared neither young children nor the old folk, who for the sake of peace were only too ready to accept the new dominance.

Hospitality was a religion among the Norwegians whose descendants cultivated the Lakeland valleys, and without doubt the tales of pillage and wanton murder would ensure a welcome to all refugees-and a share of food, even when there were too many mouths to fill, and starvation threatened host and guest alike.

Happily there was a great man and not a weakling at the head of local affairs. He was called Boethar, a descendant of the great Halfdan, who had defeated the Angles at Carlisle in 876 and burnt their city. For over two hundred years his family had been firmly established in the mountains, and had made the home in a remote and beautiful valley among their wildest fastnesses-a valley which had the great merit of being easy to defend.

He was in constant communication with his brethren the Norwegians of Ireland, Man, and those Scottish islands called the Sudreyar, now remembered only as a titular portion of the ancient diocese of "Sodor and Man."

The first campaign against the "rebels" was led by King William in person. It was based on Lancaster, Barnard Castle, and Carlisle ; and it had immediate success, as it was confined to the great open spaces. The communications of Carlisle were, however, frequently interfered with by small armies based either on the Lakeland mountains or on the wild country about Alston in Northumberland, whose main object seemed to be the pillaging of convoys of provisions. These carried on a form of guerilla warfare at which the Normans were at a disadvantage, as there were few roads of any kind, and a great part of the country was so boggy that active men could pass over it with impunity, whilst armoured nobles and half-armoured foreigners found themselves constantly in difficulties, and often lost their lives.

A similar war was being carried on in the eastern counties by Hereward the Wake, son of Lady Godiva of Coventry, but Norman perseverance gradually overcame it; and here in the comparatively flat portions of Cumberland and Westmorland the first stages of the desperate conflict were won by the invaders in the same way.

When King William went south, Ranulf de Meslin, Earl of Carlisle, who had received a grant of all the land between Morecambe Bay and the Solway, took the supreme command. He was supplied with all the men he wanted, and probably had more than he could conveniently feed; because it is obvious that the devastation of Lancashire and Yorkshire must have made it very difficult for the Normans to provision their northern army, and this no doubt limited the number of Earl Boethar's opponents.

Ranulf de Meslin gradually made himself secure in Gospatrick's earldom, of which Aspatria was headquarters, and in all the flat country of North Cumberland. At the same time he erected the customary wooden stockades at Kendal and Penrith, from which points his men pressed westward towards that mysterious and unknown valley which was the main depot of the natives. From Kendal the Normans pressed along Windermere to Ambleside, with its Roman roads; and from Penrith a wedge was driven in along the broad valley to Keswick; but beyond these points there was little progress. Ranulf's brother, William de Meslin, meanwhile pushed on along the Roman Road