[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The Sugar Commission embodied
the facts, given in my letter, in their report. This, therefore, represents the considered conclusions of the majority of the Committee who saw, heard, and—we may suppose—weighed the evidence submitted to them. As regards shipping, I quoted from the report ; nor does Mr. Stewart Cook's reply seem to me to be an adequate one. The point is, that if the subsidized sugar had not been produced here, there presumably would have been increased freightage for shipping in its place ; and the same may be said in respect to the internal traffic, too. The I'm ther argument about the employment of 30,000 men is simply moonshine. The money spent in subsidizing a non-self-supporting industry would not lose, but must increase its faculty for providing work, if it had been left in the pockets of the people, to find its proper economic channel in its natural distribution among other trades in the country.
Surely the ethics of eleemosynary education attained its apotheosis when Mr. Chamberlain—with an extraordinary lapse of humorous perception—congratulated the deputation, who petitioned for a continuance of the duties, on the great services they had rendered to agriculture ! Graciously accepting a gift of £53,000,000 from the National Exchequer ? One wonders, in the vernacular of the day, that he didn't conclude with : What about a quick million with me ? "-
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