We have pointed out from time to time the various
reasons which make the present Government thoroughly deserve the name of "an organized hypocrisy." They deserve it abundantly on the question of Free Trade. They tell us repeatedly that they would rather perish than tax the food of the people or give any protection to a special industry and so benefit the manufacturer or producer at the expense of the consumer and of the revenue, and yet they are deliberately doing this very thing. In the House of Commons on the Second Reading of the Revenue Bill on Tuesday, Mr. Russell Rea very properly protested from the Free Trade point of view against the protection given to home-grown beet sugar, which, owing to the taxation of imported sugar, occupies a position of financial privilege. Mr. Lloyd George defended himself in the follow- ing manner :—
" The English beet-sugar industry was in an experimental stage, and as the factory established in Norfolk produced only between 2,000 and 3,000 tons of taxable sugar at present it would be absurd to tax such a small quantity as that, and he was prepared to defend his action from the point of view of Free Trade. If the soil and climate of this country was found suitable for the culti- vation of sugar-beet he believed that it would be possible to build up an industry here as good as anything to be found on the Continent. When sugar was produced in this country on a much larger scale it -would be time to consider the question of putting a duty on it."
Previous page
