The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1903-08-02
The Prospects of Mr.. Chamberlain
Plan.

1t is evident that the leaders of the
Unionist coalition have agreed for the
present to disagree concerning MIR.
CHAMBERLAIN's plan of preferential
trade. dissolution of Parliament will
therefore not take place before next
autumn, and may perhaps be deferred
until the ensuing spring.
Meanwhile, Mr. CHAMBERLAIN is push
ing his campaign against the Free Trad
ers with characteristic energy. He no
longer confines himself to the promise of
applying to old age pensions the funds
secured by duties on food products i'm
ported from foreign countries. He finds
that workingmen are not consoled for
the probable necessity of paying an
extra cent or two cents. for a loaf of
bread by the assurance that they will
get five shillings week if they live to be
IS years old. He has, accordingly, put
forward other inducements. He now
tells the workingInen that wages will be
sure to rise with prices, and that, conse-
quently, the additional cost of bread will
not be felt. Workingmen, however, are
quite too shrewd not to see that if wages
are increased, the cost of manufactured
articles will be Correspondingly aug
mented, and that to this extent Great
Britain will be disabled for competing
with her rivals.
So far as the employers of labor are
concerned, Mr. CHAMBERLAIN may Sc
duce few of them to subscribe for cam
paign expenses by promising that they
shall be specially protected under the
new tariff. But protected where? OBJ
viously, in the United Kingdom only.
What British manufacturers want is a
fair field in foreign markets, and this
Mr.. CHAMBERLAIN will deprive them of,
if they are compelled to raise wages to
meet an increased cost of food, for they
will then be forced to exact higher prices
of their foreign customers. Another
argument put forward by some of Mr..
CHAMBERLAIN supporters is that only
for brief period will the British prole-
tariat have to pay an additional cent or
two for loaf of bread because, at no
distant day, colonial brcadstuifs will
suffice to meet the wants of the United
Kingdom, and as they will pay no duty.
the cost of bread will then return to it's
present level. But, i'll the meantime, what
is to become of the millions of toiers
who are already on the verge of star
walton They may rot live to reach the
Promised Land.
On the other hand, il is perfectly true
That unless England shall give prefer
ence to colonial food products, and
thereby bind the Colonies to her with
the ties of material interests, no further
consolidation of the British Empire is
attainable. Mr.. CTAMBERLAIN seems to
think that this argument is unanswer-
able and conclusive. Suppose, however,
that his opponents should take the bull
by the horns, and reply that. sooner than
starve the toiing millions Of Great Brit
ain, they are ready to let the Empire go.
II the choice lies between a Xollverein
and the ACKNOWLEDGMENT Of the British
Empire, let the Empire be dismembered
That is practically the answer made by
Mr., AUSTIN TAYLOR, a Conservative
Member of Parliament for a Liverpool
constituency
Mr.. TAYLOR has declared under his
signature that the one thing TO which |
will not willingly he party is the placing
Of the food of our denscly crowded popu-
lation in one scale and the Empire in the
other II he is driven to choose between
taxing the loaf Of bread and allowing the
Colonies TO set up for themselves, he is
willing to be called Little Eng|ander.
Some of the wjsest of British statesmen
and economists have been Little Eng
landers Lord BEACoNSEIELD saw that
IN the nature Of things Great Britains
colonial empire could not be held to-
gether forever These wretched Colo
MES, he wrote in 1852, will be indie
pendent in few years, and are mill
stone round our necks." JAMES MILL.
also an anti-imperialist, and Sir GEoHGE
CoRNEwALL LEWIS, in his treatise on