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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

C.O.8

Reference :-

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18 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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SIR,

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No. 64. BARBADOS.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE to THE ACTING GOVERNOR.

(Confidential.)

[Answered by No. 94.]

Downing Street, July 15, 1907. WITH reference to Sir G. Carter's confidential despatch of the 19th of April last* on the subject of the sugar industry in Barbados, I have the honour to transmit to you the accompanying copy of a lettert from the Foreign Office in which some exception is taken to Sir G. Carter's estimate of the cost of production of sugar in Barbados.

2. I request that you will furnish me with your observations and obtain the observations of Sir Daniel Morris on the enclosed letter.

I have, &c.,

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No. 65.

JAMAICA.

THE GOVERNOR to THE SECRETARY OF STATE. (Received July 16, 1907.)

[Copy to Foreign Office and Board of Trade, August 22, 1907.]

(No. 389.) MY LORD,

ELGIN.

King's House, Jamaica, July 4, 1907. I HAVE the honour, by request, to transmit to you the enclosed transcripts of resolutions passed by the Legislative Council of Jamaica, by the Jamaica Agricultural Society at its half-yearly general meeting, and by the Council of the Royal Jamaica Society of Agriculture and Commerce and Merchants' Exchange. arising out of the reports received here of the statement made in the House of Commons on the 6th of June by Sir Edward Grey relative to the attitude of His Majesty's Government on the question of continued adherence to the Brussels Convention, and restriction of sugar bounties.

2. My predecessor in this Government in his despatch, No. 431 of 5th October last. expressed to you his views upon this question, with the general purpose of which I desire to associate myself, and I would urge Your Lordship's careful attention to the significance of the particulars of information which have been furnished to your Department in subsequent despatches § from Sir Alexander Swettenham with regard to the salutary effect on the cane industry of this island of the Convention from which His Majesty's Government now intimate their intention of withdrawing, except upon a condition which it appears hardly reasonable to presume will be conceded by the other parties to that instrument.

3. I would ask Your Lordship to consider attentively the statements and arguments embodied in the resolution by the Legislative Council and the Merchants' Exchange, with regard to the soundness of which there can, I think, for the most part be but little question.

4. The decision of His Majesty's Government appears to have been taken out of regard to general considerations of fiscal policy independent of those indicated on behalf of the West Indies, and I do not presume to question the cogency of such considerations. But I trust that Your Lordship will allow me, as one who has had exceptional opportunities of learning the significance of the sugar-bounty question in the West Indian Colonies, to state without reserve some of my own impressions of the aspect which the decision of His Majesty's Government presents to His Majesty's West Indian subjects.

5. When His Majesty's Government announce that they consider that the limitation of the sources from which sugar may enter the United Kingdom as

• No. 1.

‡ No. 9 in Miscellaneous No. 206.

† No. 50.

Nos. 22 and 29 in Miscellaneous No. 206.

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incompatible with the interests of the sugar-using manufacturers, they appear to persons interested in the West Indies and in the cane-sugar industry to overlook two considerations :-

(1) That the effects of the revival of bounties and the removal of the other restrictions of the Convention will be to produce a contraction and limitation of the sources from which sugar may enter the United Kingdom, by crippling an important source of the supply of cane sugar. This argument has been sufficiently laboured by others, and I need not enlarge on it. (2) That, presuming the interests of the British consumers and sugar-using manufacturers to be measurable in terms of price of sugar (which appears to be a reasonable interpretation of the intention of Sir Edward Grey's announcement), it is straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel to denounce the exclusion of Russian, Argentine and other bounty-fed sugar from the British market, which cannot affect the price by more than a few pence a hundredweight, whilst maintaining the British import duty of 4s. 2d. a hundredweight, which raises the price by many times the amount that can possibly be due to the exclusion of bounty-fed sugars.

6. The average West Indian producer, stung in his personal interest, impatiently denounces this attitude as one of political hypocrisy, and he argues that by the time the British Government has cast the beam of the import duty out of the eyes of home politicians, the magnitude of the mote of augmented price attributable to the continued exclusion of bounty-fed sugar may possibly become discernible, and will be found to be an evil entirely negligible in comparison with the evils which will be produced by the abandonment of the Convention.

7. The special character of this evil other than the mere economic effects I endeavoured to impress upon Your Lordship in a conversation which I had with you shortly before I left England. The continued acceptance by Great Britain of bounty-fed sugar under the condition which caused continual depression to the principal West Indian industry always appeared to the populations of these Colonies a mean, unjust, and contemptible thing, and provoked alienation and impatience in the attitude of these Colonies towards the Mother Country. It had a great effect in stimulating the popularity of proposals for exclusive commercial union with the United States, which could not but have resulted to the detriment of the trade with Great Britain. The action of Mr. Chamberlain in attacking the bounty system appeared to the populations of these Colonies a statesmanlike, Sympathetic, and above all an honourable and highminded policy, and it did more than anything has for many years past to revive British sentiment and a pride in the connection with Great Britain in these parts. The economic results in increased confidence and enterprise have already been dealt with.

8. It does not appear to those interested in the West Indian sugar industry that His Majesty's Government can sufficiently have weighed between the advantage of admitting the sugar of countries which still give bounties to the British market and the advantage of maintaining this stimulated confidence and enterprise in part of the Empire which may either progress or retrogress, but which will certainly progress more assuredly if the Convention and all that it means, sentimentally as well as commercially, is maintained.

I have, &c.,

SYDNEY OLIVIER,

Enclosure 1 in No. 65.

Governor.

At the meeting of the Legislative Council of Jamaica, held pursuant to adjournment at Headquarter House in the town of Kingston, on Friday, the 2th day of June, 1907.

Mr. Farquharson moved—

That this Council notes with regret that His Majesty's Government have intimated their intention to give notice of withdrawal from the Brussels Conven- tion unless the other contracting parties thereto will allow of the unrestricted importation of bounty-fed sugar into Great Britain.

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