All Free-traders will rejoice at the smashing blow dealt to
the hopes of the Protectionists by Sir Michael Hicks Beach in the House of Commons on Wednesday. After his speech it is impossible to entertain the notion that the Government have any intention of making concessions to those who think that we are bleeding to death because we do so large a foreign trade, or to those who regard the inestimable advantages of a free and open market as equivalent to being turned into "a damping-ground" for foreign goods. The bleeding- to-death theory Sir Michael Hicks Beach answered once and for all by appealing to the growth of the Income- tax and of the Savings Bank deposits. People who are bleeding to death do not put on weight. As to the notion that you can keep out manufactured articles while allowing raw material to enter, the -Chancellor of the Ex- chequer was equally explicit. " If anybody looks through the list of our imports and exports and can draw the line between raw materials and manufactured goods, he will be a much cleverer man than I am." We import, for example, £9,000,000 worth of leather. Is leather a raw material or a manufac- tured article? We cannot further summarise Sir Michael Hicks Beach's speech, but we must congratulate both him and the Government and the nation on the manly and un- equivocal declaration made by him on the question of Pro- tection,—and made by him, be it noted, in his capacity as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and representative of the Cabinet. That clear declaration may to some extent reconcile
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