Los Angeles herald., 1892-05-23
MONDAY MAY as, 1902.
SALISBURY AND THE TARIFF.


SALISBURY AND THE TARIFF.
The departure of Lord Salisbury on
the tariff Issue in England is really q
most sensational political episode. 1t
is all the more go in view of the fact that
there was little or nothing to lead up to
it. For half a century free trade has
been the great cry of all English states
men of all schools. The business was
started by some of the greatest dreamers
among the theorists of the time that the
world has produced. Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, the poet and metaphysical
writer, was among the leaders of the
movement. The connection of Taylor,
Lamb, Southey, Keats and other literary
philanthropists with the matter was
purely humanitarian. The English
laborer and artisan were perishing for
bread, which was made very dear by a
heavy import duty imposed for the SUD-
port of the very costly form of bad gov
ernment in which England persists in
indulging. These philanthropists
thought it hard the poor mans loaf
should be made so dear in order that
the royal family and the numerous at
taches of the government Offices should
dress in purple and fine linen and fare
sumptuously every day.
Situated as England was the removal
of the taxes on breadstuffs had most
beneficial effect, and the principle was
extended from time to time, until in a
few years taxes on imports were re-
duced to very narrow limits, excepting
on few articles not necessaries of life,
as the revenues were raised by other
means. England's immense coal fields
gave her the advantage over the rest of
the world in manufactures, and her
trade opened a wide market for her
goods, bringing back cheap bread to her
toilars. The artisans were doubly bene-
fited.
With the agricultural class the results
here have been otherwise. Protected
by the imports, the farmers of England
were very Independent people. Un-
der the changed conditions brought
about by free trade the English farmer
is reduced to state bordering on beg
gary. 1t is only within ten years that
this has been badly felt aud it is only
within the last FIVE years that the causes
of agricultural depression in the
united kingdom have come to be gener-
ally understood.
As to Lord Salisbury's political SOM
ereault, it is merely ground and lofty
tumbling to bewilder the electors among
the farmers and artisans. Lord Church
i'll a few years ago astonished the world
on the very threshold of an election by
coming out fat-footed and advocating
some of Gladstone's most advanced
measures. The ruse worked and the
Conservatives came back into harbor on
q wind raised by their Liberal antago-
nists. The Tories at this time find
themselves again confronted by very
grave situation. Defeat surely stares
the government in the face. Salisbury
proposes to weather this storm by a
novel device. He knows the material
with which he is dealing. Newspapers
are not read in England as they are in
the United States. The average En-
glish elector is not by any means
30 well informed in economics
as the American voter. He is very
easily hoodwinked. The farmer is
about as easily bewildered on such ab-
struse subjects as the. artisan, and Sails
bury, no doubt, expects to bewilder
both classes.
In the case of the farmer the Tories
will have eolid ground to proceed upon.
It will not be difficult to show that a
protective tariff on food products would
be Of great benefit to them. OF course,
much will be made of the discrimination
made by the American tariff against
English products, and this will raise the
ire of the average Englishman to no
small degree. Here the artisan grud-
geon in the English mills may be
taken by the we'll baited hook the Con-
servatives are Offering; their reciprocity
of trade with the colonies will be used
too, with much effect, and the English
factory hands will be led to vote for
measure that will make their bread cost
them double, and that will cut off good
markets where the products of their
labor are now sold, thus throwing them
out of employment entirely, or at least
reducing their wages.
Salisbury is simply indulging in fit
OF political claptrap to catch votes for
his party. This action of the English
premier has no more bearing on the
principles of free trade and protection
than it has on the man in the moon.
The Republican organs, which so
ably advocated unjust protection of
capital rather than what might be the
just protection of labor, are making a
great ado about Salisbury's great feat in
political acrobatics. To apply this in
serious argument to the bearing of the
tariff question in the United States is
merely following in the wake of the
English Tory leader. and trying to
throw dust in the eyes OF our people.
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THE eastern people have holy horror