The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-09-25 00:00:00

THE BRUSSELS CONGRESS

This bedy met for the despatch of business on Monday.
The day was dull, damp, and dreary. Nevertheless, it did
not abate the ardour of the delegates from various nations, who
have taken up their abode in this city for a few days, to
discuss the grave subject of Customs Reforms all ov.r the world,
in an International Congress. On the previous evening a preli-
minary private meeting of the delegates was held at the Hotel
de Suede, at which business of a formal character was dis-
cussed, and in which vice-presidents of the various sections
into which the Congress is separated were appointed. That
sections are determined to work, and that the Belgian Customs
Reform Association keep clearly in view the elimination of
telling facts, while they discourage mere oratorial flourishes,
are points which may encourage us to hope that, ere the
Congress separates, it will have passed a series of im-
portant resolutions ; and more, will be ready to
back them with carefully-arranged illustrative reports.
The Belgian Association has already poured no less than
140,000 printed reports, pamphlets, &c., over the country.
The ironmasters are up in arms, and while the manufacturers
demand the total abolition of the import duties on coal and iron
on the one hand, thew producers of native iron use tbeir power-
ful influence upon tho legislature to p, event the demand from
being heard. Moreover, they pretend that the gentlemen who
have called together the International Congress, now sitting,
are simply actuated by interest, being chiefly manufacturers, or
rather merchants who have everything to gain through the
reduction or abolition of import duties on raw materials.
These arguments are represented by such ironmasters as M.
Dupont, of Fayt, and M. Moncheur. Of course the members
of the association have replied to these taunts, and successfully ;
being, in the first place, clearly able to retort upon their
accusers, who appear to talk about the heavy compensation the
government will owe them, should they listen to the free-
traders. But the appeal made by the association to the
manufacturing towns of Belgium shows, by the answers it has
called forth, the temper of the Belgian people with regard to
Customs Reform. The resolutions submitted by the Central
Association to the chambers of commerce of the provincial
manufacturing towns ran thus :-
1. The free admission of raw materials.

2. An ad valorem duty of 10 per cent, on manufactured
articles. Certain industries, however, now protected by pro-
hibitive duties, may for a time and under exceptional cir-
cumstances be protected by a higher duty, to be fixed here-
after.

3. The classification of articles liable to duty in broad
classes, so that the tariff may be reduced to the simplest
possible form.
We observe that the answers received from the more
important commercial towns prove that the movement has the
entire sympathy of the Belgian people. On Saturday
evening the list of registered members and delegates to the
Congress contained no less than 561 names. Among these are
the Lord Mayor; Mr. Ewart, M.P., who represents the
question of uniform weights and measures ; Mr. C. Lawson,
delegate from the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce; Mr.
W. Scholefield, MT, delegate from the Birmingham Chamber
of Commerce; Sheriff Mechi, from the Society of Arts ; the
Right Hon. Milner Gibson; Mr. Alfred Taylor; Messrs
Leone Levi, John Bennett, George Lawford, James Yates,
and Dr. Buchanan, delegates from the Decimal Coinage Asso-
ciation; Messrs Titus Salt, Henry W. Winckam, Jacob
Behrens, and John Darlington, a deputation from the Bradford
Chamber of Commerce; Mr. J. R. Jeffery, from Liverpool ;
ntet Ootifn,thSeirmka'nrecdheer,:tcekr
dawnida
Auf
rti. a
je w.
Tinuires. elir,enPrYresuide.
Foster, and
Commercial Association. At the opening proceedings the chair
was taken by M. Cor Vac der Maeren, who in a speech of some
length, thanked the foreign delegates for their presence on that
occasion. He bade them welcome in the name of prosperous
Belgium. Their present Congress was widely different from
that of 1847. We had advanced. Holland had abolished
her navigation laws, and in England the opposition of
the protectionists to an established law had ceased.
France had modified her tariff, and was about to
erase the word " prohibition" from it ; and Sar-
dinia, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Sweden, &c., had
liberalised their customs dues. Something had been
done, it must be confessed in Belgium ; but a coalition of
interested men had prevailed to retard the application of the
good intentions of the government. Still the principle of free
trade, or of a reduction of duties, had been allowed ; the
method of reduction was alone the question. And now the
two great questions which the present Congress would have to
deal with were—lst. What were the obstacles in each country
to the reduction of customs dues? 2nd. What were the
remedies applicable to the restrictions that existed in each
country ? Nor would their enquiries be limited to these
questions. There were the coinage and passport systems—both
matters that restricted the free commercial intercourse of
nations. This remark was received with loud cheers. The
hon. gentleman then referred to the meeting held at the
Hotel de Suede last evening, at which the twenty-four vice-
presidents, representing various nations, were nominated. At
this point, the secretary, M. Conorem, read the names of
the vice-presidents, in which the names of Messrs. Oliveria,
Henry Bohn, and Winkworth, figure with others, for Eng-
land. The reading of the list over, the vice presidents were
requested to advance from the body of the hall, and take their
places around the president. This was done amid general
cheers. M. Cor Van der Maeren then announced to the
meeting that M, Brouckere, burgomaster, of Brussels, had
accepted the post of president to the Congress; and the hon.
gentleman proceeded to take the seat vacated by the active
president of the Customs Reform Association. M. de Brouckere
then addressed the Congress, and expressed his pleasure in
doing so, seeing that while in 1847, when he last presided at a
Reform Congress, they had to deal with theories, they bad
now advanced to a point when it became their business to
consider the application of principles generally accepted. He
now declared the Congress constituted, and opened ; and he
thought that their first act should be to return thanks to the
active Association, under the auspices of which it had been
called together. This proposition was received with loud
cheers. The president then read the order of the day, and
called upon the Dutch delegates to open the discus
sion. The first of these gentlemen who addressed the
Congress maintained that Holland might lay claim to
be one of the liberal nations of Europe, because she had
abolished her navigation laws, had admitted corn free
since 1847, and had abolished her old duties on the transit of
goods. He contended, therefore, that Holland had little to
yield, and much to demand from her neighbours. And, he
might add, that the prosperity of the country had fully
justified the liberality of the government. A delegate from
Antwerp then rose, and proceeded to show, amid the applause
and to the amusement of the Congress, that Holland was
apparently a liberal State, but in reality a protectionist—a
highly protectionist—State. Protection and prohibition were,
in truth, the law. She had steadily continued to refuse
concessions of railways between Holland and Belgium ; and
was, in short, only in appearance a liberal State, In reply to
this delegate, a second Dutch representative rose, and while
dealing effectively with the colonial policy of Holland, and
allowing that it was most faulty, begged the Congress to
believe that Holland was on the high road to a veritable
state of free trade. The President then introduced Mr.
Winkworth, who appeared for the Society of Arts ; and, after
having expressed a regret that Colonel Sykes could not be
present, intimated that as he could not freely express himself
in French, a friend of his would read a translation of his
address to the Congress. This address, in which Mr.
Winkworth went into a history of the Society of Arts, and
then glanced at its influence in evolving the great Exhibitions
of 1851 and 1855, included statistics showing the progress of
British manufactures since the establishment of free trade.
Mr. Winkworth's ad lress was followed by a call from the
President for Mr. Hertz, a ielegate from Hamburg. Title
gentleman read to the Congress an amusing paper, in which
he explained that Hamburg was necessarily a free port, since
freedom was the only advantage it could offer to the world.
It was a town that was also a State in itself, that had no
interior, no manufactures of its own to protect, But there
were great abuses still in Hamburg: The little bourgeois
had not the privileges which the great bourgeois enjoyed
there were still corporations of working men, with
privileges that reminded us of the middle ages ; there
were closed trades, as the bakers and brewers; and there was
the octroi which levied enormous duties on the food of the
citizens. The delegate concluded by hoping that Hamburg
would get rid of her errors, and that the world would soon
enjoy the commercial freedom which was the only attraction
to foreign nations. The amusing manner in which this dele-
gate put his case, and more especially the contrast he drew
between a little bourgeois and a great bourgeois, elicited
frequent bursts of laughter. M. Cherbuliea, delegate from
Switzerland, then addressed the Congress, in explanation of the
Swiss tariff, upheld, according to the speaker, simply to repair
the roads—neither the cantons nor the federal government
being able to pay the cost of maintenance,