THE CORN DUTY AND PROTECTION,
(Daily Press, 30th June.)
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THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND rendered duties of some sort necessary, and Great Britain has hitherto contrived' to but confine these to a few isolated items; the indications are that these articles are already taxed to the fullest extent they can It would be idle to deny that the duty on bear, and it is necessary to widen the list. imported corn proposed by Sir MICHAEL Something must be taxed; and it was for "Protec- the Chancellor of the Exchequer to select HICKS BEACH is, so far as goes, tive." In, the eyes of the rump of the old that which offered the best prospert of Cobdenite party, anything, that by any increasing his revenue and of making the process of reasoning can be called protective burden more equable. He selected corn is a mortal financial sin; and therefore the it is not coucéaled that it was intended to scheme of the Chancellor of the Exchequer be more far-reaching than merely a sessional an impartial and Im- is a crime and an abomination. But all affair, and from duties are necessarily protective of some perial point of view the special tax had much There are large tracts thing or other; and all taxes are in the to recommend it. nature of them obstructives to free trade of country in the United States, to name one country, where wheat and other grains and free communications, and therefore in any well regulated system of imperial can from the nature of the soil and the ceonomy there should be no taxation, and fact that it is virgin be grown cheaper than fleets, armies, and Parliament itself should at present in England, and the consequence be left to pay their own expenses as best has been that year by year we were becom they can. This is the logical outcome of ing more dependent on foreign countries; the principles given utterance to by Sir and our own fields were gradually being WILLIAM HARCOURT which failed to find diverted from the growth of coru crops. the present House of In the present explosive condition of affairs acceptance in Cominons. Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT when this is a position in which no prudent himself Chancellor of the Exchequer statesman would care to leave his country, entirely changed the traditional system of and quite independently of any benefit to one class over another, it is distinctly a source taxation by the imposition of enormous
of present weakness to the country at large. death duties, which have since formed a very important item in the national income; The question is here an entirely different cue from the odious protection of class so too he and the school which he repre- sented have used every effort to throw the against class from which Sir ROBERT PEEL burden of taxation on to the shoulders of delivered the country half a century ago. the monied class, while leaving the vast But we may believe that the proposal had cven wider aims, which Sir WILLIAM majority untaxed. This system in the hands of Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT certainly HARCOURT seems to have scented out in an But has not the served its purpose, and the country at large," Imperial Zollverein."
whole course, first of English, and now of if it were no better, was apparently no
British history, been the raising of one worse; but it is apt to be forgotten that the period was one of profound peace, and Zollverein after another? Time was when all the increased expenditure necessary to every city or country had its own tariff. be provided for was for home purposes, and Time so was mainly a transfer from one pocket to another. Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT'S suc. cessor has found himself in a very different position, having to provide for an enor mously expensive war waged at a distance of more than a quarter of the earth's circumference; even as it was, the want of elasticity in the late system was apparent, and indicated that in case of strain it would be necessary to widen considerably the basis of Imperial taxation. The country is wisely desirous that as much of the burden of the war as is possible should be borne by the present generation, without handing down to our successors a burden of debt which would seriously hamper them in any future undertaking. The political atmosphere is by no means clear; there is a distinct sulphurous smell about, and low grum. blings of internal forces seeking an outlet are conspicuous above the ordinary groau- ings of traffic. It is distinctly a period when each Britisher, be he Englishman, Britou, or any other of the various races which at the moment constitute the Empire, should unite in furnishing his quota to the general contribution.
was when England, Ireland and Scotland mutually taxed each other's pro- ductions. Would Sir WILLIAM have us return to the old ways? We have been led a step further within the last few years towards the conception of the possibility of a bigger and more powerful Britain than ever Sir WILLIAM with his starved little England ideas ever dreamt of, and in this it is instructive that we were urged to take the lead from Canada. Canada gave us in fact a free gift; and shall it be said of England that she is so regardless of her daughters that she accepts their free gifts, without a shadow of return? Canada not only took off or considerably reduced her own duties in her struggles to quit herself of the fallacies of Protection, but she did as she spontaneously more, inasmuch offered ourselves and her partners in Empire to promote the unity of that Empire "We cau do by granting tariff facilities. nothing in return," was at the time the we have no duties to answer of England; remove." But the exigencies of our own wants have brought us; whether we liked it or not, to consider those duties which, in imperial interests, and in order to avoid becoming mere dependents on foreign states, we have wisely accepted; and this gives us the opportunity of righting ourselves with our senior Colony. The argument that we have advanced above, as to the national danger of depending on aliens for our food supply, does not apply with the same force when a section of our own Empire is to be the caterer. Preferential tariffs here par take of wider interests than me cly class; it is the Empire itself in its fullest extent that we are protecting, as on the field of battle we have in conjunction with our colonies so nobly protected it within the
Once upon a while it was probably good policy or necessity for Wessex to tax goods from Mercia or Northumberland; not two centuries ago, an English King advised his Parliament that it was necessary to protect English trade against Irish en, croachmen's. Up till last year it was part of the settled policy of Victoria to levy taxes on goods from its neighbours New South Wales. As the growth of Empire dictated it, these have in succession been done away with. Unification of tariff has been in all civilised countries found at one Conditions of time or other necessary. revenue have in the most free-trade countries | last three years.
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[July 5, 1902. TRIPLE AND DUAL ALLIANCES.
(Daily Press, 2nd July.) · Much more than it is probably worth has been made of the renewal of the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria and Italy effected by Count YON BULOW and now finally signed; and as plainly the effect of the much vaunted Dual Alliance between Russia and France has been grossly exag gerated. Momentarily, of course, it suits all parties to these political combinations to proclaim them to the world as irrefragable, but both, as must be, seen by the careful observer, contain within themselves stronger elements of disintegration than, ever they Of course at the possessed of affinity. moment both fall in with the humours of In certain circumstances we the day.
might conceive a joint invasion of Germany from the east and west respectively by Russia and France, and if just such an event did occur there is no doubt that it. would be effectively met by the combination of the three Powers: It is, however, a useful political truth to be continually borne in mind by political students, that it is always the unexpected that happens, and a simultaneous invasion of Germany by Russia and France is probably the last danger which a far-seeing man would con- sider it necessary to guard against. Sini- lary there is no doubt that there exists in very general feeling that in France/ a entering into a close alliance with Russia, the people of France are really protecting Looked at by the peace of the world. French eyes, Germany is the type of an encroaching Power; any alliance that would be effective in placing obstacles in the way of further advance on her part would, ipso facto, be a guarantee of peace in Europe.
Seen in this light both ́alliances have their reasons for existence, and the superficial onlooker is apt to content him. self, after the manner of his kind, with These considera- this merely exoteric view, tions are, however so perfectly trite and self-evident that to the individual who looks closely into affairs the machinery must seem sadly out of proportion to the professed aims. As a fact there would be no need for the elaborate process of federa- tion paraded were a simultaneous invasion of Germany from east and west to take place. In such a case the dictates of self preservation would impel Austro-Hungary to effect a diversion, and self-interest is a far more powerful bond than the word of princes or governments. Similarly France in the case of any unprovoked aggression on the part of Germany would find far more useful allies than her present friend, Russia.
There may of course be other reasons, not so carefully paraded, for these bonds than the mere desire for peace, and it will probably be found that the leagues in the There is very main proceed rather from economic than political considerations. little, reason to doubt that Russia's con- sideration for France, a country which in every political aspiration stands at the opposite pole to herself, is produced mainly by the facilities she has found thereby for easing her financial troubles. On the other hand France has undoubtedly found a, momentarily at least, profitable investment for her spare capital, without unduly hampering her freedom of action. So far without leaving room for sentiment there are undoubled advantages to both parties in the combination. Similarly Germany has committed herself to an economic war- fare with the two great Anglo-Saxon Powers, and finds her exclusive system of
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