Mr. Gladstone has written a letter to the Chairman of
the Sugar Operatives' Committee, in which he insists that the ques- tion as to the decline iu the demand for labour caused by the foreign bounties on sugar, is not whether there has been a decline of employment in the refining business alone, but whether there has been a decline in the whole sugar industry, and that the increase of employment of labour in the moist- sugar business should be set off against any decline in the refining business ; and Mr. Gladstone holds that on the balance it would be found that the field of labour had, on the whole, been enlarged. He also points out that even though it may be true that bounties imposed by foreign Governments are hardly consistent with the obligations under which nations have placed themselves to us by the favoured-nation clause, it does not at all follow that we should be justified, under the best legal construction of that clause, in imposing countervailing duties, and he states that the Law Officers of the Crown dis- tinctly think that we should not be justified. The Sugar Opera- tives' Committee reply with great and most unjustifiable bitter- ness to this perfectly reasonable letter,—virtually declaring war to the knife against the present Government for not threaten- ing all bounty-giving States with countervailing duties, whether in defiance of public law or otherwise. The letter of the Com- mittee is a mere jet of mortified spleen.
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