In the House of Lords on Wednesday Lord Welby made
an important contribution to the fiscal controversy. He asked the Duke of Devonshire whether in the course of their in- quiries the Government would collect information as to the administration of preferential and retaliatory duties under the system of Protection which prevailed from 1815 to 1842. He admitted that the information might be difficult to pro- cure, but he indicated the sources from which it might be obtained, and drew upon his own recollections as a Treasury official in a very instructive manner. By way of illustrating the anomalies that existed under the Protective system, he referred to the time when, owing to the differential duties on coffee, it actually paid importers from Hamburg and the Continent to send the coffee a journey to the Cape in order to bring it back here at a duty of ninepence. The duty on foreign timber, again, in the early decades of the century raised the price by nearly twice the amount of the duty; and it had been calculated that the Sugar and Wheat Duties took £18,000,000 out of the pockets of the consumers in addition to the amount of the duty. " Many such effects of the tariffs were never intended by the Ministers of the day. They were dealing with trade questions which they did not understand, and these results were in their essence results of legislative blunders. Who could guarantee that on a renewal of the system these blunders would not be repeated ? " The Duke of Devonshire in a sympathetic reply admitted the desirability of such a return, and promised that if Lord Welby moved for it, or communicated privately with himself or the Treasury, the Government would endeavour to give what information they could.
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