28 APRIL 1923, Page 2

But a more important event for agriculture was the e

Government's decision, announced on Saturday last, to accept the recommendation of the . Agricultural Tribunal for an Excise Duty of 10s. a quarter on imported malting barley. This is 'another of those measures of petty. Protection of which we have lately been given so many examples. They are granted on no broad principle of Protection, which, however much opposed we may be to it, is at least a coherent policy, but are simply the signs of a surrender _by the Government to some particular interest. Incidentally they are all too small to injure the country appreciably. But collectively they form a growing obstruction to that free circulation of exehapges by which alone the country can live.