LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE NEW PROTECTION.
[To TER EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] SIB,—Since I last wrote to you (Spectator, June 13th) I have been endeavouring to reduce the aspiration after Pro- tection to a system, but hitherto without much success. I can see that one difficulty will solve itself naturally and easily. When the revenue from the tax on food disappears with the cessation of food imports from foreign countries, the expendi- ture on account of the old-age pension scheme will naturally become a charge on the revenue from the Income-tax. I am still struggling with the problem of how to advance the wages of the working classes by raising their expenditure. This problem has somehow got mixed up in my mind with a scheme which I have in hand for working the village pump by an ingenious mechanism set in motion by the drippings from the pails. I had concluded to set both problems aside to cool, but I think I have discovered a better way. I will persevere with the pump scheme myself, and suggest that the wages problem should be referred to a Committee of Rand magnates, who might take it up along with the problem of how to tax the Kaffirs into habits of industry, as it is quite plain that the principles applicable in the one case are equally suitable to the other. Meantime my economic education pro- ceeds apace. I have just learned that Adam Smith's " Wealth of Nations" contains a cryptogram. The phrases qualifying the doctrine in a Protectionist sense, and hitherto supposed to apply only to exceptional circumstances, contain, it appears, the real doctrine and are applicable to all circumstances, while what I had hitherto supposed to be the doctrine is simply so much verbal padding. This theory of cryptograms is so attractive that I have followed it up for myself a little further, and by a slight alteration of the text here and there I think I can prove that the " Wealth of Nations " was not written by Adam Smith at all. In fact, the evidence on this point is conclusive. My only remaining difficulty is to determine whether it was written by Dr. Samuel Johnson in advocacy of the right of taxation without representation, or by an eighteenth-century Seddon asserting a claim to dictation without contribution. I have also been told on high authority that Cobden, having concluded a treaty with France containing reciprocal clauses, was never really a Cobdenite ; that, in fact, he was a Fair- trader, and may therefore be claimed as a Protectionist.
I now indeed begin to perceive that Protection is really an improved kind of Free-trade, and an instance of its beneficial application has been placed ready to my hand by no less an authority than the Colonial Secretary himself. In a letter to the Trade•Unionists, which I take to be meant to serve the double purpose of a treatise on the new political economy fur beginners, and a gentle feline pat to the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Colonial Secretary says that he thinks it is proved that the shilling per quarter duty imposed last year on imported wheat was paid by America, which met the impo- sition of the duty by lowering prices. It is certainly very
comforting to know that America suits its prices with such facility to our duties; but the statement is open to the trifling objection that America did not reduce prices to meet the duty, but, on the contrary, advanced them. There is one member of the Government, however, with whom I find myself in agreement. The Foreign Minister has pointed out in a very telling speech that import-duties create Trusts, and that, for instance, a German Trust in the steel trade is in the habit of selling steel rails in our markets at eighty-five marks per ton, and charging the home consumers a hundred and fifteen marks per ton. The Foreign Minister's cure for this appears to be that we should erect tariff walls of our own, and it is easy to see how we could thus most effectively pay the Continental nations back in their own coin. To go no further than the steel industry, we might put a duty on im- ported steel which would preserve the home market to the British manufacturers. They would naturally form a Trust, because it is not to be supposed that our people would be in any way behind the Continental peoples in seeing the advantages of the Trust idea. They would make a good profit by supply- ing plates to the British shipbuilder at " Trust " prices, and if they found they were left at any time with an inconvenient surplus, they could force this surplus on Continental buyers at, say, 30 per cent. under the price they were charging the British shipbuilder. Short-sighted people might object to this that foreign shipbuilders might buy those plates and produce ships so cheaply that they would seriously endanger our marine supremacy ; but I am not sure that that would be an unmixed evil. We have to keep up an enormous Navy at great expense to protect our huge mercantile marine, and a great deal of this money might be saved if we had fewer mer- chant ships. Besides, we have far too many people wandering over the face of the globe who might be better employed at home growing wheat.
This brings me back to the consideration of the question of the proposed Corn-duty, which I believe is fixed by universal consent at five shillings per quarter. There is a point here where I observe the Protectionist landlords are being mis- judged, and concerning which they are preserving the most magnanimous silence. I see it is being freely asserted that a five-shilling duty on wheat would mean that the landlords would get as much as one pound per acre more rent for their land. Now I have gone into this question with some care, and I cannot see how it will help them to get more than ten shillings per acre additional rent, and besides, they would not get this ten shillings at once. The farmers, as a rule, have at least one year's tenure, and some of them have leases for a term of years, and it would not be possible for the landlords to secure for themselves the advantage created by the tax until those agreements terminated. I think it is only fair to the landlords that this matter should be put in its proper
[Our correspondent's letter is another proof that wit, verbal as well as pictorial, is in this controversy on the side of the Free-traders.—En. Spectator.]
Previous page
