In the House of Commons on Tuesday Mr. William Redmond's
amendment to the Tobacco Excise Duty Resolution proposing to exempt Irish-grown tobacco from the proposed increase of the duty was supported by all the Tariff Reformers—Mr. Chaplin, Mr. Boner Law, and Mr. Austen Chamberlain—as affording protection to an "infant industry." Mr. Lloyd George, while admitting that the case of Ireland was exceptional and called for special consideration, deprecated the method proposed, " for the simple reason that once they began to set up a tariff of 20 per cent., which was higher than any tariff hon. gentlemen opposite had ever proposed for any other industry, they never could withdraw it, and it would go on extending." It was far better to adhere to their present plan of spending £6,000 a year on experiments for improving the industry. After Mr. Boner Law had extolled the method of preference as compared with doles, Mr. Harold Cox stirred the Nationalists to frenzy by his pointed criticisms. The history of the suppression of the tobacco industry, he noted, was an instructive illustration of the meaning of Colonial Preference, since it was destroyed in England solely to give a preference to the Colonies. He had been informed that the whole of the present profit in Ireland was derived from the Imperial subsidy, and that the industry was simply spoon-fed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was quite easy to point to the amount of labour it employed, but you could make anything grow if you only watered it with enough British money.
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