The supporters of the anti-bounty movement held a meeting at
Cannon Street Hotel on Monday, Lord Stan- more being in the chair. A letter was read from a firm of Glasgow refiners complaining that the present Government by not insisting at the Brussels Conference upon the abolition of bounties bad allowed British interests to go by the board. This attempt to make Lord Salisbury's Adminis- tration responsible for the bounties was supported by Lord Stanmore, by Mr. Eades, and by Sir John Commerell, who "thought he knew who were the members of the Cabinet against the anti-bounty movement," and who proposed that the seats of those Ministers should be attacked at the nest General Election. A significant feature of the meeting was the fact that very little was said about the West Indies and a great deal about the British sugar-refiners. The odd notion that the bounties ruin the cane-sugar industries by depressing the price of sugar, but that the removal of the bounties would revivify the cane-sugar trade and our own home refineries without raising the price of sugar, was also dropped. Mr. Eades, the Secretary of the Birmingham Trades Council, for example, declared that if sugar were raised Id. a pound the workmen were "prepared to bear that slight extra burden." We do not agree with Mr. Eades that this increase would be immaterial ; but we are interested to see that he admits that the price would be raised.
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