TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE FRENCH COMMERCIAL TREATY.
IT seems clear that the House of Commons were wise in adopting Mr. Monk's resolution that no treaty with France based on the reactionary general tariff, and not in- tended to develope a free commercial intercourse between the two countries, would be acceptable to that House.. Sir Charles Dilke opposed the resolution, on purely official grounds ; but, in fact, the adoption of the resolution, and the rapidly accumu- lating evidence that the whole country means what the HOMO of Commons said, has certainly produced more impression in Prance than any previous representation of the Government had succeeded in producing. The French Press are begin- ning to see that November 8th may find the country in a very awkward position, saddled with a tariff that, in relation to a great number of important articles of com- merce, is virtually prohibitive; and as a necessary conse- quence, every country in Europe contracting to the utmost point its purchases of France, inasmuch as the equivalents in which France has hitherto been paid for those purchases would be quite excluded by her new tariff. Nay, this would be only the beginning of sorrows. For as soon as it appeared that other nations were more anxious to trade with each other than France is to trade with them, they would, of course, begin arrangements specially adapted to promote such trade ; and of these arrangements the necessary result would be that France would be supplanted by the neighbouring countries in the supply even of those few articles, her export of which would for a time survive the new prohibitory import duties. For instance, there is no doubt that Italy, Spain, and perhaps Portugal, can supply us exceedingly good wines, though the wines of the two latter are certainly stronger than the French clarets, at much lower prices than they do now, if we so alter our wine tariff as to lower the duty on wines of greater alcoholic strength. Nor is there much reason to doubt that that superior alcoholic strength, whatever might be its effect on English health, would hardly be regarded as a disadvantage by English taste. If, therefore, Italy, Spain, and Portugal were inclined to conclude a favourable cons- mercial treaty with England, there is no reason in the world, economical or political, why we should not give the stronger wines the same kind of advantage which we now give to the weaker ones ; and, as we should, not be very likely to increase the number of classes of wine differently taxed, the effect of that would be to lower the duty on the stronger wines, but to increase it on those weaker wines which France now chiefly sends us. It may be true that France cares relatively less for her wine trade than she did before the ravages of the phylloxera BO greatly diminished the breadth of acreage under the vine. But still, such a change in the English wine duties would be a great blow to a class of Frenchmen who materially influence the Elections, and yet it would be one not only pro- perly consistent with Free-trade, but almost demanded in the interests of Free-trade, if it encouraged Italy, Spain, and Portugal to adopt a more liberal commercial system. There can be no reason for keeping the duties on French wines ex- ceptionally low when the Government of France is raising its duties on almost all articles important to English traders to a point often virtually prohibitive, and when that Government rather invites than resents or repudiates the experiment of com- mercial isolation. The best Free-trader in the world might say,—' If France wishes to see what commercial isolation means, why should we interfere to prevent it ? We will not, indeed, hurt ourselves to oblige her ; we will not put protec- tive duties on what we get from France, as compared with the duties on the same articles which we produce ourselves, or import from other countries. But there is no reason in the world why we should distinguish with special favour those
products of France which we cannot produce ourselves, or why we should prefer them in our tariff to the more or less similar products of other countries, only because we happened to lower the duty on them exceptionally in 1860. The con- ventional tariff of 1860 being at an end, and no disposition being shown in France to renew it, it is now rather our interest to see whether we cannot succeed in persuading other nations, and persuading them with a more satisfactory and per- manent result than we persuaded France, that the true policy is commercial freedom, and not prohibitive taxa- tion.' If, indeed, France does revert to the saner policy of 1860, it will be this argument which will convince her. Her statesmen have got too much of the idea that we regard' our commercial tariff as a thing so absolutely required for our aim benefit, that we shall never alter it, whether France shuts out all English goods, or not. In point of fact, however, the. exceptionally low duty on French wines is no more for our own benefit, than a low duty on Italian, Spanish, or Portu- guese wines would be. The only motive of interest in either case is the motive that by such a policy we may induce. some relaxation of the unwise commercial restrictions now enforced by other countries. And if Italy, Spain, or Portugal held out the hope which France excludes, it would be our commercial interest, in every sense of the term, to meet Italy, Spain, or Portugal half-way, even at the expense of France.
But though there is no reason in the world for con- cluding any treaty with France at all, unless France con- cedes to us terms at least as good as those of the Conven- tion of 1860, it is, under present circumstances idle to. expect that either she or any other country of equal import- ance will offer us, at present, better terms than those of 1860. We observe a statement that, in the opinion of very influential men at Bradford, it would be wise to refuse oven a renewal of the Treaty of 1860, unless France will engraft on it further- and special modifications in favour of England. That seems to us a great mistake. We ought not to let France go' back. But to insist that she must absolutely go forward, if she is to expect us to grant her the same terms. as before, is to misunderstand the position. It is quite true that we have certain inducements to hold out, especially in rela- tion to French wines, even in offering to renew our old arrange- ments. But it is not true that we have so much to give, that we can expect completely to overpower at the present moment the strong protective interests in France, and to compel the French Government to offer us better terms than. the renewal of the old agreement. That we could not possibly do, unless we were prepared to enter on a war of tariffs. And' a more dangerous and sillier policy than that could hardly be' imagined. Professor Bonamy Price regards it, indeed, and regards it justly enough, as at least conceivable that on than economical economical grounds you might rightly do that which on economical grounds it would be simply a blunder to do. A statesman might, he thinks, by possibility, persuade himself, and even, perhaps, persuade himself on sufficient grounds, that the French people, for instance, are so timid and so con- servative of any benefit once gained, that the mere threat to- put protective duties on French manufactures as a retaliatory measure, would produce the excellent effect of inducing them. not to impose the protective duties with which they are now threatening us. But though this may be conceivable in the abstract, we can hardly assume the existence of an English states- man foolhardy enough under present circumstances to try the ex- periment, As a matter of fact, we do not know what the policy of retaliation would result in. It might result hs angry quarrels, and ultimately even in war ; and that would, indeed, be a brilliant result of a coup de main intended to force France into Free-trade. Besides, it might, and probably would, have a worse result still,—to shake the popular confidence of the English people in Free-trade ; for it would be very difficult to persuade such a people as ours that any British Government was deliberately proposing to injure British trade certainly and immediately, on the bare chance of improving it very much in
the ultimate result by the concessions we might possibly wring- out of France. The far more probable result would be that the English people would suppose that the Free-trade principle had been abandoned by their own Government, and that for the future, the democracy would be quite justified in listen- ing to all the innumerable claimants for Protection who would at once put in their pleas. The simple fact of the case ifs- that we neither can nor will give up the Free-trade principle ; and that this being so, we have not very much, though we have something to offer as an inducement to France not to retro- grade. The most we can now hope for is that before the 8th November comes, the French Government will see the danger and folly of risking French trade not only with us, but with almost all the nations of the Continent, by the adoption of so reactionary a system as the new general tariff. But this is the most we can hope for. To hope that we can persuade the French Government to improve on the Commercial Treaty of 1860, is to cry for the moon. The Bradford gentle- men overrate British influence, and underrate the advantages of renewing the Treaty of 1860 instead of allowing it to expire.
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