The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-07-23 00:00:00

FREE TRADE AND RECIPROCITY.

The Evening Standard remarks :—The growing
demand • for either reciprocity of free trade or of pro-
tection is causing great uneasiness and irritation
among Liberals. These do not attempt to prove that
recpirocity would not benefit those who are demand-
ing it, but content themselves with angrily denouncing
the movement as a heresy. Now, a heresy means a
denial or a divergence from an established religion.
Considering that free trade was only carried in this
country after a prolonged and desperate struggle,
and that a very large portion of the public dissented
utterly from this dogma, it is rather strange that
a party whose whole policy is directed to the over-
throw of that of their predecessors should yet treat as
a monstrous heresy any rising of opinion against their
own work. If the premises and arguments by
which free trade was carried in this country had all
proved well founded, the indignation and dismay
with which any assault upon its principles is received
among Radicals would be intelligible. But, in
point of fact, all their arguments have proved wrong,
all those of its opponents have been justified. It was
declared that if England opened her ports all the world
would do the same, and that a marvellous increase in
the trade and prosperity of England would be the
result. These predictions have been abs:lutely falsi-
fied. Other nations, even those at first inclined to
follow the example of England, are now rigidly Pro
tectionist, and one by one the markets of the
world are being closed to us. Not only, as the
Protectioni,ts argued would be the case, is agricul-
ture in England in a state of profound depression, but
many formerly flourishing branches of trade, such as
the silk manufacture, :_ave been absolutely des-
troyed, and the rest are suffering severely.
No wonder artisans are making common cause
with agriculturists in this cry against a policy
which has injured both, and that the cry for recipro-
city of free trade, or for a return to protection
against the countries which exclude our products,
is daily gaining in strength. That protection in
the full sense of the word to agriculture is impossible
is allowed by the agriculturists themslves ; but they are
beginning to ask why each bushel of wheat which comes
from abroad should no pay a tax equal to that paid
by the farmers upon every bushel produced at home.
This, farmers contend, would to some slight extent
equalise the one-sided competion to which they are at
present subjected. Reciprocity is now asstunin4 its
place as a great public question, and it is useless for
its opponents to endeavour to arrest it by childish
cries of " heresy."

Mr. Ecroyd, the member for Preston, who is one
of the leading exponents and advocates of Reci-
procity," gives in The Times.pf Monday a very clear
and definite account of the aims and intentions of
himself and those who think with him. What they
desire is that all foreign manufactures should be sub-
jected to an import duty of ten per cent., and that an
import duty of ten per cent. should also he levied
on all foreign food products. By the first it is con-
tended that England would be placed in a better posi-
tion for bargaining for the free admission of our manu-
facturers by foreign countries, and by the second we
should "transfer the growing of our food from those
who will not take our manufacturers in return to those
who will, and determine the future movement of our
capital, enterprise, and emigration into our own
splendid undeveloped empire, instead of into countries
like the United States and Russia, where it goes to
build up forces actively hostile •to our industries."
Notwithstanding the heavy duties imposed on our
goods by the tariffs of some of the Australian colonies,
each inhabitant of them is by sixteenfold a better
customer for our industrial products than each citizen
of the United States. It would, therefore, Mr.
Ecroyd holds, not be difficult to estimate the price
which, if needful, the British workman would be wise
in paying in order to give his vast and steady custom
to food-growers who will employ him in return,
instead of those who are trying to starve him out by
prohibitive duties.