The Times of last Saturday published an excellent letter from
Sir Thomas Pittar on the possibilities of Protection under the Home Rule Bill. He shows how Protection might be introduced by a disparity (écart) between the Customs import duty and the internal excise duty and by other
manipulations of the Customs. But as the Government are curtailing the rights of the Irish Parliament in respect of Customs, we may turn from this subject to the still more important one of bounties. Sir Thomas Pittar says that direct export bounties are forbidden only by the wide and ambiguous prohibition of Clause 2 in respect of "trade with any place out of Ireland," and he regards it as "very dis- putable" whether a prohibition so expressed would operate against direct bounties on exports. We are certain that it would be quite illusory. Then there is the question of internal bounties. Mr. Samuel stated last week that these would be admissible and that he saw no harm in them. Sir Thomas Pittar says :—
"This form of Protection—the worst and most glaring of all because open to such patent abuse—we are told now by a Free Trade Government, is one against which objection should not be raised. Internal bounties have always been considered by Free Traders as perhaps the most insidious and objectionable of all the forms which Protection can take, because while not purporting to be a violation of tariff freedom, it is so fatally easy to mask real Protection—not honest Protection, but corrupt bribery— under such a form."
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