NEWS OF THE WEEK.
31[R. BALFOUR delivered his anxiously awaited speech at Sheffield on Thursday night. He began by saying that he meant to talk on one subject, and one subject alone— tariff reform—and he made good his word. There had been, he said, for a long time past a growing uneasiness as to the condition of British trade in relation , to the trade of the world, and the effect of Mr. Chamberlain's speech in May— "the great speech of a great man "—was largely due to the fact that it fell on ground already prepared by circumstances. The result of Canada's attempt to give us preferential treat- ment had made us realise our helplessness—this was the key- note of the whole speech—to deal with a situation of this kind under our existing tariff system. "You cannot go to war over tariff questions. Tariff attacks can only be met by tariff replies." Mr. Balfour here digressed into a discussion of Cobdenism and Cobden. Cobden, he admitted, was a patriot, but he had an imperfect sentiment of nationality. That sentiment had grown prodigiously since Cobden's time, and• concurrently with it the system of Protection and of tariffs which had walled us off, a nation of economic dreamers, not only from foreign countries, but from our own Colonies. By this system we had suffered "deeply and profoundly," and were threatened with still greater injury by the development
of the Trust system under the protection of tariffs. •
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