A deputation to the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor of
the Exchequer on Monday concerning the French and Dutch sugar bounties, was followed on Tuesday by a debate, brought on by Mr. Ritchie, M.P. for the Tower Hamlets, on the same subject, proposing a Committee of Inquiry, which,—with some modifications in the terms which • governed it,—the Government conceded. The discussion was a confused one,—partly owing to the extreme difficulty of ascertaining the facts,—the French sugar bounties being, for instance, esti- mated by some official authorities at not more than £94,000 in all, while by others they are estimated as high as a. million sterling; and again, there being much question as to the fact whether or not the British refineries of sugar have been really to any sensible extent extinguished, or only driven from less to more suitable places. But besides this doubt as to the facts, great confusion was introduced by the Liberals opposed to compensating duties to balance the bounties, insisting ou calling them retaliatory duties, as if they were merely vin- dictive, instead of not only perfectly consistent—in theory, at least—with Free-trade, but positively conceived in the interests_ of Free-trade. We have no doubt that the Government are quite right in refusing to attempt the certainly difficult, if not almost im- possible, task of devising compensating duties which would restore, so far as any duties would, the exact proportions of natural advan- tage ; but we do marvel at the pertinacity with which economists as clear-headed as Mr. Forster and Mr. Courtney, persist in describing as hostile to the principles of Free-trade, an attempt, —however difficult in practice,—to neutralise a deliberate dis- turbance of the rules of natural advantage, merely because that disturbance is one which saves the English sugar-consumer something for the present, at the cost of the French taxpayer, only, however, by causing a much more serious loss to the world at large, and therefore ultimately to England too.
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