THE AGITATION AGAINST .THE REPEAL OF THE CORN-DUTY, T HE agitation
against the repeal of the Corn-dutir 11 grows in volume. Agricultural associations of all kinds are active in protest, and 'they have 'the- valuable support of the Times: Probably at this moment the Government 'would gain in popularity by 'withdrawing this part of the Budget. Many of their supporters either think that Mr. Ritchie is throwing away two millions and a, half of money which might be better employed, or see no reason for giving needless offence to the agricultural interest, and risking the possible loss of the agricultural vote. That we take a wholly different view of the con- sequences of such a surrender on the part of the Govern- ment there is no need to say. We have welcomed the dis- appearance of the duty on the double ground that it puts an end to false hopes and takes a cause of offence out of the way. So long as the duty continues to be levied farmers will see in it an earnest of better things, and the Opposition will have an excuse for maintaining that only timidity prevents the Government from avowing themselves Protectionist. The first result would be mischievous to an important industry, the second would make the Unionists needlessly unpopular in the great towns. We do not believe, however, that there is the least danger of Mr. Ritchie climbing down in this fashion. The agriculturists' bite seldom comes up to their bark, and if they do not gain anything by keeping the Unionists in office, they would stand to lose a good deal by replacing them by a Liberal Administration.
The argument against the repeal of the duty as it is com- monly stated necessitates the acceptance of two seemingly irreconcilable propositions at one and the same time. The first is that the tax does not injure the consumer ; the second is that it does not benefit the farmer. The first may be regarded as an indispensable concession to public prejudice. The farmer would say that if the con- sumer knew his own business, he would not need to be humoured in this way. On the contrary, he would see - without being told, say the Protectionists, that in proportion as the greatest industry of the country prospers or suffers, the consumer, that is, the com- munity at large, prospers or suffers with it. So long, however, as he remains in his present unenlightened state, large allowances must be made for him. He is the victim of Free-trade fallacies, and for the moment he must be left undisturbed in his ignorant belief that he would be less well off if he had to pay more for his bread. But then it is equally necessary to preach that the farmer does not gain by the duty. This follows from the former proposi- tion. The duty can only benefit the farmer by raising the price of corn. But if the price of corn were to rise, the consumer must in the end pay more for his bread, which ex hypothesi he is not to do. In addition to this, the duty is too small to do the farmer any real service. The lowest price at which he can count upon growing corn profitably is far more than a shilling a quarter beyond the present price. Consequently the duty as it stands is of no value to him. The only way in which it can be of use to him is by serving as a stepping-stone to better things.
It is at this point that the advocates and the opponents of the duty come face to face. Whatever the farmer may say, a duty of a shilling a quarter would not be worth the enthusiasm now being expended on it if there were nothing behind it. The effect it can have, whether on the farmer or on the consumer, is too slight to be worth discussing. But if it is an earnest of better things, the farmer's excite- ment about it is quite intelligible. For more than half-a- century he has, he holds, been sacrificed to a popular fetish. Cheap bread has been wrongly treated as the one condition of national well-being. Every industry in the country has been injured in a greater or less degree by the paralysis that has overtaken agriculture, and yet Parliament has blindly persisted in the same ruinous course. Now at last there has been a turn in the tide. The farmer is not, indeed, the better for it yet, but if it means a real change in the public temper, he will be the better for it by and by. His case is so clear, the arguments on which he relies are so convincing, that the nation must come round to his view if it can but be disabused of the absurd notion that corn has an inherent right to go untaxed. The duty does at least prepare the way for this. It is only a shilling a quarter, it is true, but all the same, it is a duty, and the fact that it is once more lsvied on corn just as naturally as on tea or tobacco is enough to deprive corn of the excep- tional, the mischievously exceptional, position it has so long held. So runs the Protectionist argument. This is precisely the reason why we objected to the impo- sition of the duty last year, and why we welcome its repeal this year. It is only valuable as an earnest, as a stepping-stone, as anything else you like to call it, so long as it means the beginning of a new financial policy which is bound to have further developments. If it were not for this, there would be comparatively little harm in the duty. It does good to the revenue, and it does per as no very great harm to the public. This much we willingly grant. But we are as much convinced as the farmers are that if it is retained the expected further developments are sure to follow. Mr. Chaplin and his friends have proved our case for us. They would not waste their zeal on the defence of a duty which put nothing into the pockets either of farmer or landlord. That it puts nothing into them so long as it remains at a shilling a quarter is admitted by all parties. But why should it remain at a shilling a quarter ? No tax is altogether stationary. They are all capable of being raised or lowered as the needs of national finance or the interests of the national industries happen to demand. All that the farmer wants to give him hope and confidence is the dethronement of corn from its solitary pinnacle of exemption. And it is because we feel sure he cannot cherish this hope and confidence without harm coming of it that we wish to deprive him of it at the very outset.
Why, it may be asked, should you be so much afraid of a Corn-duty even if in the end it did rise to two, or even five, shillings a quarter ? The rise in the price of bread would be slight even at the higher of these figures, and a revival of agricultural prosperity would act as a stimulus to several other industries, and so increase the general prosperity in at least an equal degree. We will for the moment and for the purposes of argument admit this. It may be that a very small amount of Protection would have these beneficial results, and so compensate the consumer for the trifling addition to his baker's bill. There is no need, however, to inquire whether this is a true account of the effect of a moderate duty on corn, because we are quite sure that it would not remain moderate. The argument that where one industry suffers the rest suffer with it, that where one industry prospers the rest prosper with it, if it is once accepted as valid, is bound to carry us further. The industry in question takes to itself a semi-sacred character. Those who follow it come to believe themselves possessed of a share in that semi-sanctity, and regard any one who proposes to interfere with it not only as mistaken, but as in some sort morally blameworthy. This feeling is already visible in the agitation against 31 r. Ritchie's proposal. Ordinarily a proposal to take off a tax excites no particular emotion beyond a more or less active satisfaction on the part of those who will no longer have to pay it. But in this case the Chancellor of the Exchequer is reproached as though he were deliberately wronging a whole class. If he had proposed to lay a special tax on agricultural profits, the farmers could hardly be more indignant than they are now. Patriotism in a statesman holding this particular office demands that he should differentiate between his countrymen and the foreigner, and to retreat from this position after it has once been assumed is to be a wrongdoe. r. But when once this view of a duty becomes accepted, as would be the case if Mr. Ritchie were to yield to the present demand, those who hold it may be trusted not to stand still. If it is the duty of a Chancellor of the Exchequer to benefit a great industry by imposing a duty which is Protective in form, it must equally be his duty as opportunity offers to impose one that shall be Protective in fact.. Otherwise he will only be playing with the class he is pretending to benefit. It may be objected that he is only thinking of the revenue, and that having got the money he wants, he is under no obligation to do anything more. Then, why did he choose a duty which was certain to create expectations that he would do something more ? The proper course for him to take is to raise the Corn-duty by easy stages until it has reached a point where it enables the farmer to compete with' the foreigner in the _British market. The reasons that are now urged in defence of the duty will have equal force in behalf of a higher duty. If it is worth a Chan- cellor of the Exchequer's while to risk an infinitegmal increase in the price of bread in order to establish the principle that a tax is not to be rejected merely because it favours a home industry, it is equally worth his while to risk an appreciable but slight rise of- price in order to make the benefit to that industry substantial Nobody wants to make bread dear. All that is proposed into give the consumer the power of paying the increased prices which will in the end make him, not poorer, but richer, by the operatiOn of the duty. No Protectionist can safely be trusted to recognise the point at which the interests of the consumer outweigh those of the protected industry. He sees the advantage to himself in the larger duty, but, as the fiscal history of the -United States shows, he sees nothing else. The author of the Book of Proverbs must have had the ideal Protectionists in his mind when he wrote: "The horse-leech bath two daughters, crying Give, give."
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