In the Debate on the Gracious Speech, I raised a question which I said might cause a lot of controversy, but I found that, far from causing controversy, I received encouragement from every side of the House on the very important point which I raised. It was the question of Imperial integration. I tried to show, in my speech at that time, how our population was far too great for these islands, and the density of population far greater than that of almost any other country in Europe. I said that our population was rising in these islands to 50 million. It was 46,200,000 in 1938, and it has been heavily increasing since then. We have also been drawing inhabitants into the country to help us out with our industries, and our intention at present seems to be that we have to bring these people into this country in order to help us to export our manufactures so as to import the food which we need. Yet these people whom we are now bringing in are eating a large part of the food that we are importing. In fact, the margin between the export of the manufactured goods and the imports of the food which these people consume is not going to leave us a very big benefit, and probably we shall find that, as time goes on and the export market is drying up, we may be sorry that we are bringing so many people into these islands to increase the already crowded condition in which we live at present.

When Britain was at its most prosperous peak, between 1890 and 1900, we had between 40,000,000 and 42,000,000 inhabitants, and those figures include Southern Ireland as well. At present, we have a population rising to 50,000,000. In that prosperity which we enjoyed between 1890 and 1900, we were the supreme masters of the world. We had practically the whole of the China trade, a large part of the trade in India, because India had not undergone the great industrialisation which has happened since, and the large part of which has been caused by the shortages of commodities during two wars; we had the whole of the South Seas trade, we had a terrific trade with European countries which were then not industrialised as they are now. Eighty per cent. of the ocean-going mercantile marine of the world was ours, either sailing under our flag or under another flag, but still ours; and 85 per cent. of the marine insurance business of the world was done in this country. We became so prosperous that our money and investments went out all over the world and produced an income that allowed us to buy food which otherwise we should not have had.