LORD SALISBURY ON PROTECTION.
IT is convenient to go as far as possible with an opponent, and for that reason we shall not contest any of the state- ments made by Lord De La Warr in his speech in the House of Lords last Monday. We will grant that owners and occupiers have lost six hundred millions during the last ten years, that growers of wheat alone have for some time past lost seventeen millions annually, that half the landowners cannot live in their houses, and that nearly four millions of the labouring class have the greatest difficulty in finding employment. Our sole
ground of quarrel with Lord De La Warr relates to the conclusion which, in his opinion, follows from these premisses. Agricul- ture, he says, is in a very bad way. Therefore it is the duty of her Majesty's Government to take into their serious con- sideration what can be done to improve it. Lord De La Warr's .theory plainly is that for every ill there is a remedy, provided that Ministers look out for it with sufficient care. That legislation plays but a very small part in the cure of human • ills, is a doctrine which he will not hear of. There is a way .of dealing with agricultural distress which, if the Government would only adopt it, would make everything straight. It is by adapting our own fiscal system "to the altered circum- stances and commercial relations of different countries."
Lord Handy, who seconded the motion, took a more original line. He admits Lord De La Warr's contention that the English farmer is ruined by foreign competition, but he adds the curious fact that his foreign rivals are as badly off as he is. Lord Huntley has travelled over the wheat-growing world, and everywhere he has found the farmer supplying the English
consumer with bread at a dead loss to himself. In India, the difference in the rate of exchange gives the agriculturist a
chance which is elsewhere denied him ; but even at Delhi the fall in values has seriously affected the farmer's position. In Australia, in New Zealand, in North-Western America, in Canada, it does not pay the farmer to grow wheat at the present English price. At this point we confess our thoughts wandered from the grower to the consumer, and framed a horrible picture of famine following upon the refusal of foreign agriculturists to go on sending us wheat at a loss. Lord
• Huntly is too kind, however, to leave us in this state of alarm. "Your lordships," he said, "may wonder why, then, *they send it." Certainly we did wonder, whatever may have been the case with their lordships. "They are obliged," Lord Hnntly explains, "to send it at whatever price they can get." Why a farmer should be under this mysterious compulsion we cannot imagine. If it applied only to India, it might be supposed that it was due to some caste rule which forced agri- culturists to grow wheat whether they lose or gain by it. But in Australia and the North-West of America there are no caste rules, and we are left to wonder what the force can be that compels • the farmer in these countries to go on year after year growing a crop which he must sell for less than it costs him to raise it. As Lord Hnntly seconded Lord De La Warr's motion, it is • scarcely necessary to say that he does not believe in Protection. No two agriculturists agree either on the diagnosis or on the treatment of agricultural distress. Lord De La Warr is all for a duty on corn ; Lord Hnntly pins his faith on a change in the system of assessment, the abolition of preferential rates, and the establishment of agricultural schools. The two Peers are altogether at issue as to what the Government ought to do. The only point on which they agree is that they ought to do something.
Lord Salisbury might have contented himself with playing the mover and seconder of the resolution against one another. If they had intended to provide him with an escape from the need of speaking plainly, they could not have managed more cleverly. But Lord Salisbury very wisely took a bolder coarse. He treated the motion precisely as the mover intended it to be treated,—as a cry for a return to Protection. If agricul- tural distress is to be effectually relieved, it must be in that way, and in no other. A duty on corn would set the English . farmer on his legs, but nothing else that Parliament can do would have that effect. This time the Prime Minister has gone out of his way to be clear. If Lord De La Warr wishes to challenge the doctrine of Free-trade, let him do it by a definite motion. "When he does so," says Lord Salisbury," I shall be quite prepared to lay before him the arguments which utterly prevent me from agreeing with any such proposition." The Prime Minister finds himself in precisely the same position in reference to Free-trade as that in which Sir Robert Peel found himself in 1846. The political argument weighed with Peel even more heavily than the economical argument ; and, in Lord Salisbury's judgment, "the political argument has lost none of its force." It is not in the power of the Lords to reintroduce Protection ; Lord De La Warr makes a .demand on them which would overtax their strength. But if it were in their power, it would be both foolish and wicked to try the experiment, since it would "introduce a state of division among the classes of this country which would differ little from civil war." Nothing that Lord Salisbury could have said would have disposed of the con- troversy so completely. If he had confined himself to the economical argument, he might have been answered by long
economical demonstrations. If he had rested his refusal on the present unpopularity of Protection, he would have been over- whelmed with testimonies to the change that English opinion is alleged to be undergoing. As it is, he takes his stand on the maelstrom of opposing interests that a return to Protection would necessarily create. The natural instinct of the con- sumer is to get his bread as cheaply as he can ; under Protection he would be called on to do violence to that instinct. Corn would be stopped at every port of entry and compelled to pay a duty imposed for the express purpose of making the loaf dearer, and consequently more profitable to the producer. The whole community would be subjected to a compulsory rate in aid of the farmer. A penny or two- pence would be added to the price of each loaf by way of benefiting the original maker of it. Lord Salisbury argues that no reasons that can be assigned for this course would out- weigh the certain mischiefs of it. The community would come to regard the farmers, and the Legislature controlled by the farmers, as its natural enemies. Outside England would be crowds of wheat-growers eager to supply wheat at the lowest possible cost. Yet in order to keep the farmers prosperous, this foreign wheat would virtually be forbidden to enter. It would be of no avail to tell the poor consumer that the loaf he bought of the English farmer was worth the fivepence or sixpence he had paid for it. His grievance would be not that the loaf was not good value for his money, but that if Parlia- ment would only have let things alone, he would have got the same loaf for less money. In every cottage, therefore, the farmer would find a foe, for in every cottage he would find a man or a woman who had to pay more for a necessary of life than need have been paid if Parliament had given the farmers nothing more than a "fair field and no favour." This is what Protection means to Lord Salisbury, and meaning this, it is not strange that he will have nothing to say to it. This time at least he cannot be accused of playing with the subject. There could not have been one among his listeners who did not thoroughly understand that there is as much chance of getting Protection from Lord Salisbury as there is of getting it from Mr. Gladstone. Any hopes that may have been cherished of seeing the Unionist Party broken up on this question must now have died out. A Minister who identifies Protection with civil war may be trusted not to give it a place in his political programme.
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