THE DEBATE ON BOUNTIES. T HE debate on the Sugar Convention
was remarkable for the complete adoption by Mr. Chamberlain of the doctrine attributed. to Cobden, that Free-trade demands that "every natural source of supply should be open to us as Nature and Nature's God intended it should be." This doctrine is as much violated by excess as it is by defect. It is violated by Protective duties, because they prevent the flow of commodities from foreign countries into our own, and so defeat the intention of Nature and Nature's God. It is violated by bounties, because they unduly stimulate the flow of commodities from foreign countries' into our own,' and so the intention of Nature and Nature's God is again interfered with. We confess that this theory takes Free-trade into a high theological region where ordinary mortals find it difficult to tread with confidence. We may envy the intimate knowledge of the mind of Providence which underlies the argument, but we cannot pretend to share it. We have always thought ourselves good Free-traders, but when we hear Free- trade justified in this majestic strain, we recognise that we are but feeling after an economic truth which to others is already a religion. Is it so certain that Nature and Nature's God have ever laid down positive laws as regards the interchange of commodities ? We should have thought that this was one of the many subjects about which man- kind have been left to puzzle out the truth for themselves. Great Thitain has until lately regarded Free-trade as nothing more abstruse or recondite than a system which declined to interfere with the natural course of the market. What has been offered to us we have bought, and bought the more willingly when it happened to be cheap. In future, it seems, we must insist on inquiring how it has become cheap. If this cheapness is the result of an abun- dant supply or of a low cost of production, we may buy and be thankful. But if it is the result of an artificial process, if the foreign producer is enabled to sell us his goods at a low price by a grant of money from his Govern- ment, we ought at once to bethink us of Nature and Nature's God, and refuse to acquiesce in any such defiance of the laws which they have imposed. "Bounties," said Mr. Chamberlain on Monday, "absolutely contradict the principle of Free-trade " ; consequently every consistent Free-trader is bound to do his utmost to put an end to them. If a foreign producer chooses to sell us his goods at a. price which appears to be one that cannot bring him an adequate profit, we must check ourselves in the very act of buying. There is evidently something wrong about the transaction ; how can we be sure that the foreigner will not prove to be deliberately standing in the way of Nature and Nature's God ? The proper course for a Free- trader to take is to investigate the whole history of the production which has thus cheapened the goods in ques- tion. If the foreigner's own Government has had any hand in it, if the lowness of price over here is made up to him by a money payment which converts his loss into a profit, we must at once take steps to get this payment withdrawn.
It is really terrible to think under what grave misappre- hension we have been living. We have learnt to regard the arrival of cheap foreign goods in this country as a benefit, as a means by which we are enabled to keep money in our own pockets which must otherwise have gone into the pocket of the foreign producer. This is all wrong. What we have supposed to be a benefit is in truth an invasion. Bounties are intended, says Mr. Chamberlain, to " invade and secure the markets of another country to which entrance cannot be obtained by legitimate means. They are intended to secure them by artificial stimulus and arrangement." But in what respect does the result of this artificial stimulus and arrangement differ from the result of a natural process ? The French or German producer is enabled to sell his sugar in the British market at a cer- tain price because his Government grants him a bounty on all that he exports. But supposing that he had been enabled to sell sugar at this price, not by a bounty, but by the discovery of a new manure or a new kind of machinery, we should then have been called on to admire the foreigner's ingenuity and resource, and con- gratulate ourselves that we were among his customers. There is a great difference, no doubt, as regards the foreign producer's own fellow-countrymen. They have to provide the bounty by which we profit, and we cannot but wonder at their simplicity in so doing. But why are we to insist on peeping behind the curtain in order to find out the reason why sugar is cheap ? In deference, we are told, to a supposed decree of Nature and Nature's God. Now before this obedience is demanded from us we ought at least to be given the chapter and the verse in which it is enjoined. The prophet who claims to be the medium of an express revelation must expect to have his authority questioned. It is not the duty of a Free-trader to accept every statement of Cobden's as infallible truth. As we have said in the Spectator on another occasion, " the United Kingdom is market overt, and we no more ask a man how he comes to be selling things so cheaply than does the private customer in his own town when he buys cheaply." In the private market prices are left to find their own level, and no questions are asked. Until now the national market has equally been left to itself ; but for the future the history of the commodity is to be investigated, and a difference made according as the cheap- ness is natural or artificial. Mr. Chamberlain, to do him justice, did attempt to supply a reason for taking this course over and above the will of Nature and Nature's God. He says that the object of giving bounties is to drive the British producer out of his own market, and that when this is accomplished the price will at:once be raised, and the British consumer, all other sources of supply being closed to him, will have no choice but to pay whatever he is asked. Certainly, if this be the inevitable. effect of the bounty system, it is well to arrange for taking precautions against it whenever it is seen approaching. But is there any reason to suppose that it is approaching ? Is the market so entirely in the hands of certain sugar- producing countries that only immediate action can save us ? We greatly doubt it, and we doubt too whether even if it were within sight the effect would necessarily be disastrous. The production of beet sugar is so gigantic an industry that it would scarcely care to destroy one of its best markets by sheer greed.
Perhaps, however, in the opinion of the Colonial Secretary, the action of the bounty system on the con- dition of the West Indies is a more weighty reason for abolishing it than any dangers nearer home. The last part of his speech on Monday was devoted to this aspect of the question, and he ended with an eloquent appeal to " all who think that the loss of Empire would be for this country in the future to lead a meagre life and to have more paltry ambitions " to vote for Mr. Gerald Balfour's Motion. There was a solid reason for voting for Mr. Gerald Balfour's Motion in the fact that its rejection would have placed the Government in an exceed- ingly awkward position, but we question whether Mr. Chamberlain had quite counted the cost of voting for it on the ground he himself suggested. He wished that he were addressing an audience of working men that he might say to them : "What have you done ? You have destroyed a trade which might have found employment for goodness knows how many people." Why, the West Indies alone, even in their present impoverished condition, " will keep something like forty thousand persons fully employed, and that is worth considering." If it is worth while to abolish bounties, and, if necessary, impose countervailing duties, in order to make the West Indies prosperous and to keep fer.V thousand persons fully employed, why is it not worth while to impose a moderate duty on corn, not, as now, to fill the Treasury, but to revive a vast industry, an industry which keeps, not forty thousand, but four million persons fully employed ? Everything that can be said in favour of legislation which shall make it possible for the West Indies to grow sugar profitably applies with tenfold force to legislation which shall make it possible for England to grow corn profitably. If the British workman may legiti- mately be asked to consent to a trifling rise in the price of sugar to benefit the West Indies, may he not with equal reason be asked to submit to a trifling rise in the price of bread to benefit his own country, and through the stimulus which successful agriculture gives to a variety of trades, to benefit himself ? In other words, Mr. Chamberlain's argu- ment is the ordinary Protectionist argument, stated with far less force than it would have in the mouth of an English farmer. Why should the interests of our kinsfolk across the seas be more dear to us than the interests of our kinsfolk on this side of the water ? It is a dangerous thing to allow the momentary convenience of an argument to conceal the extent of its possible application.
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