THE DEPUTATIONS ON DISTRESS. T HERE was one advantage in the
old doctrine of laissez-faire. It was hard-hearted, it was aggra- vating, it was almost insulting to tell people who came to the Government in anxiety, in the mood in which drowning men catch at straws and find the straws do not help them to swim, that they must help themselves or else go without help altogether ; but at least it did something to impress the truth on the commercial world, that Governments which have put no artificial shackles on trade are very much more likely, as a rule, to make bad worse by meddling, than to make bad better. The new idea of Government as the master of great resources for the benefit of all the victims of commercial disaster, is a very mistaken one, and discourages what you want most to encourage, the self- dependence of strong, hard-headed men who have made their own prosperity, and may do a great deal more by economical expedients, by audacity in experiments, to cheapen production, than they can by asking Governments to help them in their troubles. It is rather melancholy to read the accounts of the speeches of the agricultural deputa- tion to Lord Salisbury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr. Long on Wednesday, and again,—though there is more to be said for the Lancashire deputation,—of the deputation of the Lancashire cotton manufacturers to Lord George Hamilton on the same day. Lord Winchilsea had but one thought in his head, that in a time of great distress to landowners, farmers, and agricultural labourers, it would be nothing but common humanity to take taxes off them, even though it might happen, as it certainly would happen, that by doing it in the way he proposed, they would lay still heavier burdens on some of our sources of supply, and do more to increase the cost of living to foreign pro- ducers by whose contributions we benefit, than to relieve the sufferers at our own doors. Once begin the eager race to gain by artificially starving out our rivals, and there would be no end to the mischiefs of that very suicidal method of obtaining relief. For, indeed, so long as our trade is really a free exchange with foreign countries, our so-called rivals are really competitors in the useful endeavour to find equally good supplies at a. less cost. And starving them out means an attempt to profit by compelling our own people to buy worse things at a greater cost. It seemed very hardhearted to tell suffering manufacturers and traders we should do nothing but harm in the end, and very likely in the beginning, by dis- couraging the foreign supply of beer, which is cheaper than your beer, and perhaps quite as wholesome ; ' but it is really a very necessary lesson. And it is certain that if once we could rely on the aid of the Government for repelling foreign supplies, not because our own people do not find them to their purpose, but because the English competitors with them are in distress, and would like to be helped to get a class of customers who at present find better and cheaper articles elsewhere, the only ultimate result, perhaps the chief immediate result, would be to make our own manu- facturers and traders idle and indifferent to their true business, and even inclined to be constantly urging their Government to compel those who think our own beer bad, either to buy it or to go without. Lord Winchilsea's proposal to enhance artificially the price of foreign beer, in order to render it easier for our own farmers and hop. growers to sell English barley and English malt, is one of the most far-reaching expedients for injuring the commerce of the world which we have lately been invited to try. We are very glad that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach gave it no sort of encouragement. On the other hand, however, the old laissez-faire doctrine may often be pushed too far. It is quite true that a revenue derived simply for the purpose of obtaining revenue, should never make it easier to manufacture useful commodities by one method rather than by another which might be either as good or even better. If it is mischievous by taxing one method more heavily than the other to make it easier to use malt rather than sugar in the brewing of beer, it is also mischievous and equally mischievous to make it easier to use sugar rather than malt by taxing one method more heavily than the other- What Governments should aim at is not to interfere at all with the methods of manufacture, but to leave it absolutely to the consumers to judge whether they like the beer best in which malt is used, or that in which sugar is used to provide the ferment. If the Government should find that by our present system of Excise, we do give an artificial advantage to the use of sugar or other processes of fermenta- tion, to the disadvantage of malt, then that is, no doubt, a mischievous interference with the natural processes of manufacture which our Government ought at once to rectify. So far, we can imagine that Lord Winchilsea's deputation may have suggested an examination that may be really useful and not deleterious to the commerce of the world.
And in like manner the Lancashire deputation to Lord George Hamilton were quite on the right track when they suggested that if the Excise-duty levied on the Indian manufactures of cotton to balance the import duties on English cottons, give a positive advantage to Indian cottons over Lancashire cottons, and are in fact equivalent to the imposition of a differential duty against English cottons, they are bad in principle. It was said, and. we suppose it to be pretty nearly true, that the capitalist in the case of Indian cotton-mills no less than in that of Lancashire cotton-mills, is generally an Englishman. The labourers in the Indian cotton-mills are natives, but the capitalists are usually Englishmen. And if so, nothing can be less fair than to protect the Englishman who em- ploys much cheaper labour than can be got in this country, at the cost of the Englishman who has only English labour at his command. It is certainly very bad economy, as well as very bad policy, to impose a differential duty on the English capitalist who employs the dearer labour, and to give the English capitalist in India the double advantage of paying a smaller duty as well as that of having a much cheaper labour market at his command. So far as it is possible, the countervailing Indian Excise- duty ought certainly to be a real equivalent to the Import- duty on English cottons. And so far as their argument only went to enforcing this very just principle, the Lan- cashire deputation to Lord George Hamilton were quite in the right. The difficulties, of course, in collecting and enforcing the Indian Excise-duty may be almost insuper- able. If that is so, the only right inference is that the Indian Government should hasten, by economy in ex- penditure, to enable themselves as soon as possible to dispense with both Import-duty and Excise-duty alto- gether. But it is too hard on the English manufacturer to expect him to look on quietly while the English Government in India not only permits his English rival in that country to avail himself freely of the cheap native labour (which is quite right), but also to put into his pocket the difference between a 5 per cent. Import-duty and a 31 per cent. Excise-duty, as the members of the deputation maintained that their English rivals in India actually do. If it is necessary to tax, for purposes of revenue, the import of our Lancashire cottons, well and good. It is clearly not desirable to tax them for the purpose of protecting the Anglo-Indian manufacturers, as well as for the purposes of revenue. And that is what the manufacturers who waited on Lord George Hamilton maintained that the present system really effects. It is true that we ought not to impose still more burdensome taxes on the wretchedly poor natives of India, only in order that our Lancashire manufacturers may not lose a market which they greatly value. But, so far as the revenue system of-India admits of it, we should certainly en- deavour to give no extra and artificial advantage to the man who has the Indian labour market open to him, as against the man who has access only to our highly-fed and heavily-clothed English operatives.
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