■SHE COLLAPSE OF 
 ARIFF REFORM •»: 
 
 gp ■TChambcrlain'5 Case Exposed 
 
 By J. M. ROBERTSON. M.P,
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE COLLAPSE OF "TARIFF 
 REFORM " : 
 
 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE EXPOSED
 
 THE COLLAPSE OF 
 "TARIFF REFORM": 
 
 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE EXPOSED 
 
 BY 
 
 J. M. ROBERTSON, M.P. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 The Right Hon. RUSSELL REA, M.P. 
 
 Published by the COBDEN CLUB, Caxton House, 
 
 Westminster, S.W., and 
 
 Printed by CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD. 
 
 La Belle Sauvace, Luugate Hill, Lonuon, E,C. 
 
 191 1
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 
 - • '1 6 
 
 1 ^ 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The two great speeches of Mr. Chamberlain at 
 Glasgow and Greenock in 1903, in which he first 
 cA expounded to the country in detail his policy of Tariff 
 ^ Reform, remain to-day the best exposition in its 
 >_ main lines of the policy to which his party are 
 5 committed, and which the Tariff Reform Commission 
 
 ac 
 
 £ have formulated; and the arguments by which it was 
 then defended are to-day the arguments, and the sole 
 arguments, of his followers. 
 
 More than seven years have passed since those 
 speeches were delivered, and it appears to the Cobden 
 Club that no better assistance could be rendered to 
 the country to come to a final conclusion on the 
 merits of the case, as then presented to it, than to 
 4 recall and review these speeches in the light of seven 
 _ years' experience. 
 
 r-H Surely never was false teacher more completely 
 ^] confuted by argument, or false prophet more 
 ^^ promptly confronted and confounded by the event. 
 
 Balaam of old set out to curse, but was compelled 
 to turn his cursing into blessing. Our modern 
 Balaam pronounced his curses duly, but such has 
 been the course of events that these curses might well 
 appear to be the very spells which brought down the 
 blessings. 
 
 Did Mr. Chamberlain "rest his case" upon the 
 P; stagnation of our export trades to protected 
 -••countries — that very branch of our trade sprang at 
 once into unprecedented expansion. Did he point 
 to the relatively greater growth of our export trade 
 to our own Colonies — that very branch of our trade, 
 temporarily inflated by the South African War, sank 
 
 38S<>5;>
 
 vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 almost at once to precisely the old proportion of our 
 total trade which it had maintained for a generation. 
 Did he pronounce this trade to be "going," that to 
 be "gone" — those very trades immediately asserted 
 their vitality by an increase of their activities even 
 beyond that of the general level of expansion. 
 
 Did he prophesy the flooding of this country in 
 time of depression by the dumped products of 
 American furnaces and factories, and even fix a period 
 of three or four years for the fulfilment of his pro- 
 phecy — fortune at once provided the depression and 
 the most striking confutation of the most positive of 
 his many prophecies. Did he appeal to the "offer " 
 of the Colonies — the Colonies promptly repudiated 
 the "offer." 
 
 And finally, we are likely to see the possibility of 
 a preferential duty on corn, the corner-stone of the 
 structure, made for ever impossible by the action of 
 the Colonies themselves. 
 
 The Cobden Club, by the republication of these 
 speeches, desires to recall the attention of the people 
 of this country, and especially of that section of the 
 people which still clings to the delusions of Protec- 
 tion, from the wrangles on small side issues — such as 
 questions of aliens and the emigration of persons and 
 capital, with which their leaders now attempt to cover 
 their defeat on the main issue — to their own main case 
 itself, as it was presented by their own great leader, 
 and as it still stands before the country, the authori- 
 tative exposition and defence of a policy the estab- 
 lishment of which is still authoritatively declared to 
 be the first task of the Protectionist party if it should 
 return to power. 
 
 Russell Rea.
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 In a letter to the Times, on January 7th, Mr. 
 W. A. S, Hewins, of the Tariff Reform League, 
 averred, among other things, that "No attempt is 
 now made to contest the general soundness of Mr. 
 Chamberlain's warnings as to the comparative 
 decline of British industries." Even the gross licence 
 of assertion so long associated with Tariffist propa- 
 ganda seems to be here wildly exceeded. Never, 
 since Mr. Chamberlain put forth his egregious case, 
 have Free Traders ceased, in general platform dis- 
 cussion, to expose and confute his enormities of mis- 
 statement, fallacy and false prediction. Books and 
 pamphlets exposing them have been continuously on 
 sale. The state of his health might explain for most 
 people the non-publication in recent years of fresh 
 specific criticisms of his speeches of 1903. Since, 
 however, Mr. Hewins thinks fit to represent such for- 
 bearance as tacit admission of Mr. Chamberlain's 
 accuracy, it becomes expedient to set forth once more, 
 as precisely and pointedly as may be, the worthless- 
 ness of the propaganda which initiated the present 
 Tariffist movement. For that purpose, Mr. Chamber- 
 lain's Glasgow and Greenock speeches of the autumn 
 of 1903 are here reprinted verbatim et liter alim from 
 contemporary reports, with a commentary in face. 
 Any reader who will take the trouble to peruse both 
 •will be able to pronounce upon the spirit, as well as 
 the letter, of the assertion of Mr. Hewins. 
 
 J. M. R. 
 
 February, igir.
 
 The Reports of Mr. 
 Chamberlain's Speeches 
 are reprinted from the 
 Glasgow Herald by per- 
 mission of the Editor.
 
 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE
 
 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 Speech delivered at Glasgow, Oct. 6, 1903. 
 
 My first duty is to thank this great and representative 
 audience for having offered to me an opportunity 
 of explaining for the first time in some detail the 
 views which I hold upon the subject of our fiscal 
 policy. I would desire no better platform than this. 
 I am in a great city, the second of the Empire ; a 
 city which, by the variety of its trade, by the enter- 
 prise and intelligence which it has always shown, is 
 entitled to claim something of a representative 
 character in respect of British industry. I am in the 
 city in which Free Trade took its birth, the city 
 in which Adam Smith taught so long, and where he 
 was one, at any rate, of the most distinguished of 
 my predecessors in that great office of Lord Rector 
 of your University to which reference has been made, 
 and to which it will always be to me a great honour 
 to have filled. Adam Smith was a great man. It 
 was not given to him, it never has been given to 
 mortals, to foresee all the changes that may occur 
 in something like a century and a half, but with a 
 broad and far-seeing intelligence which is not 
 common among men, Adam Smith did at any rate 
 anticipate many of our modern conditions, and when 
 I read his books I see how even then he was aware 
 of the importance of home markets as compared with 
 foreign (cheers);* how he advocated retaliation under 
 certain conditions ; how he supported the Navigation 
 Laws ; ^ how he was the author of a sentence which 
 
 2
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 
 
 ^ After thus eliciting cheers by remarking 
 on " the importance of home markets as com- 
 pared with foreign," Mr. Chamberlain pro- 
 ceeds (pp. 14-16) to ground his case for taxation 
 of imports on the alleged slowness of the 
 increase in the export trade. We shall see that 
 his test figures are so selected as to be mis- 
 leading in the highest possible degree ; but 
 the fact remains that it is on the prosperit3% 
 not of home trade, but of foreign trade, that 
 he founds his argument. If foreign trade had 
 not been expanding greatly there would be a 
 presumption that home trade had been ex- 
 panding. But immediately after claiming a 
 superior importance for home trade, Mr. 
 Chamberlain proceeds to treat it as of no 
 importance in comparison with foreign as a 
 test of prosperity. Thus his case is divided 
 against itself from the start. 
 
 ^ If this remark means anything, it sug- 
 gests that the Navigation Laws ought to have 
 been maintained. Neither Mr. Chamberlain nor 
 any other tariffist, however, suggests their re- 
 estabhshment. Here, again, the speaker indi- 
 cates that he is possessed by conflicting ideas. 
 He is arguing, if anything, that fighting-power 
 at sea is of more importance than expansion 
 
 3
 
 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 we ought never to forget, that "Defence is greater 
 than opulence." When I remember, also, how he, 
 entirely before his time, pressed for reciprocal trade 
 between our Colonies and the Mother Country,* then 
 I say he had a broader mind and a more Imperial 
 conception of the duties of the citizens of a great 
 Empire than some of those who have taught also as 
 professors, and who claim to be his successors. 
 
 I am not afraid to come here, to the home of 
 Adam Smith, and to combat free imports; and still 
 less am I afraid to preach to you preference with our 
 Colonies— to you in this city, whose whole prosperity 
 has been founded upon its colonial relations. And I 
 must not think only of the city — I must think of 
 the country. It is known to every man that Scotland 
 has contributed out of all proportion to its population 
 to build up the great Empire of which we are all so 
 proud — an Empire which took genius and capacity 
 and courage to create — and which requires now genius 
 and capacity and courage to maintain. 
 
 I do not regard this as a party meeting. I am 
 no longer a party leader. I am an outsider,* and 
 it is not my intention — and I do not think it would 
 be right — to raise any exclusively party issues. But 
 after what has occurred in the last few days, after the 
 meeting at Sheffield, a word or two may be forgiven 
 to me, who, though no longer a leader, am still a 
 loyal servant of the party to which I belong. 
 
 I say to you that that party, whose continued 
 existence, whose union, whose strength I still believe 
 to be essential to the welfare of the country and to 
 the welfare of the Empire, has found a leader whom
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 5 
 
 of foreign trade. Yet he proceeds to assert 
 that if our foreign trade is not rapidly expand- 
 ing, the State is on its way to collapse. 
 
 ^ Mr. Chamberlain carefully suppresses the 
 fact that Smith pressed for free trade with 
 France as being enormously more advantageous 
 than the preferential trade ^^dth the Colonies. 
 It is true that Smith wanted reciprocal trade 
 between Britain and her Colonies. He desired 
 to give fair play to the Colonies, which were 
 then being exploited by the aristocrats and 
 plutocrats of the Mother Country. And his 
 conception of Imperial policy was far too sane 
 and just to permit of his joining the aristo- 
 crats and plutocrats who now seek to exploit 
 the mass of the British population by a tariff 
 framed to raise the price of food under the 
 pretence of helping the farmers of Canada, 
 who declare that they do not want such help. 
 Smith would never have dreamt of trying to 
 " unite the Empire " by a policy which would 
 identify Imperial union wath dear bread for 
 the poor. There are only one or two professors 
 who to-day advise that course. They are Mr. 
 Chamberlain's counsellors. 
 
 ^ The accuracy of this assertion can be 
 ascertained from the next paragraph.
 
 6 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 every member may be proud to follow." Mr. Balfour, 
 in his position, has responsibilities which he cannot 
 share with us, but no one will contest his right — a 
 right to which his high office, his ability, and his 
 character alike entitle him — to declare the official 
 policy of the party which he leads, to fix its limits, 
 to settle the time at which application shall be given 
 to the principles which he has put forward. For 
 myself, I agree with the principles that he has stated. 
 I approve of the policy which he proposes to give 
 effect to, and I admire the courage and the resource 
 with which he faces difficulties which even in our 
 varied political history have hardly ever been sur- 
 passed.^ It ought not to be necessary to say more. 
 But it seems as though in this country there would 
 always be men who do not know what loyalty and 
 friendship mean, and to them I say that nothing 
 they can do will have the slightest influence or wull 
 affect in the slightest degree the friendship and the 
 confidence which exist and have existed for many 
 years between the Prime Minister and myself. Let 
 them do their worst. Their insinuations pass us by 
 like the idle wind, and I would say to my friends, 
 to those who support me in the great struggle on 
 which I have entered, I w'ould say to them also, I 
 beg of you give no encouragement to these mean 
 and libellous insinuations. Understand that in no 
 conceivable circumstances will I allow myself to be 
 put up in any sort of competition, direct or indirect, 
 with my friend and leader, whom I mean to follow. 
 What is my position ? I have invited a discussion 
 upon a question which comes peculiarly within my 
 province, ownng to the office which I have so recently 
 held. I have invited discussion upon it. I have not 
 pretended that a matter of this importance is to be 
 settled offhand. I have been well aware that the
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 7 
 
 ^ If this is not an " exclusively party issue," 
 what issue could be so described ? In the 
 very act of professing to avoid such issues, 
 Mr. Chamberlain lets it be seen that the triumph 
 of his party as such is his primary object. A 
 recently published letter, written by him to 
 Lady Dorothy Nevill in 1904, conveys his 
 doctrine that the proper course in politics is, 
 never to defend your past policy but alwa3'^s 
 to attack by means of a new one. It is not a 
 question of being right, but solely of having 
 something to attack with. 
 
 ^ Mr. Chamberlain ought to know ! He 
 made them ! His further remarks about friend- 
 ship and loyalty recall the proverb about glass 
 houses and stone-throwing. He once had 
 Liberal colleagues. As a Unionist, he had 
 other colleagues than Mr. Balfour. Was it 
 to colleagues or to principles that he was loyal 
 in either case ?
 
 8 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 country has to be educated, as I myself have 
 had to be educated ' before I saw, or could see, 
 all the bearings of this great matter; and there- 
 fore I take up the position of a pioneer. I go 
 in front of the army; if the army is attacked, I go 
 back to it." 
 
 Meanwhile, putting aside all these personal and 
 party questions,^ I ask my countrymen, without 
 regard to any political opinions which they may have 
 hitherto held, to consider the greatest of all the 
 great questions that can be put before the country, 
 to consider it impartially if possible, and to come 
 to a decision. And it is possible — I am always an 
 optimist — it is possible that the nation may be pre- 
 pared to go a little farther than the official pro- 
 gramme. I have known them to do it before, and 
 no harm has come to the party ;^^ no harm that I 
 know has come to those who as scouts, or pioneers, 
 or investigators and discoverers have gone a httle 
 before them. Well, one of my objects in coming 
 here is to find an answer to that question. Is the 
 country prepared to go a httle farther? I suppose 
 there are differences in Scotland, differences in 
 Glasgow, as there are certainly in the southern 
 country, and those differences, I hope, are mainly 
 differences as to methods. For I cannot conceive 
 that, so far as regards the majority of the country 
 at any rate, there can be any differences as to our 
 objects. 
 
 What are our objects? They are two. In the 
 first place, we all desire the maintenance and increase 
 of the national strength and the prosperity of the 
 United Kingdom. I do not know — that may be a 
 selfish desire; but in my mind it carries with it some- 
 thing more than mere selfishness. You cannot ex- 
 pect foreigners to take the same views as we do of
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 9 
 
 ^ This is the first allusion made by Mr. 
 Chamberlain in his pro-tariff speeches to the 
 fact that up till a few years before he had 
 been a confident champion of Free Trade prin- 
 ciples, and that he had in that, as in other 
 matters, renounced the doctrines of a lifetime. 
 And here he makes no attempt to explain 
 why he has suddenly embraced doctrines which 
 during twenty years he had represented as 
 false and subversive of national well-being. 
 He merely suggests or implies, if anj^thing, that 
 the question takes on a new aspect when faced 
 from the side of Imperial or " Colonial " policy. 
 Yet he goes on to ground his case, not on 
 Colonial or Imperial poHc}', but on economic 
 doctrines which he had always before declared 
 to be delusions. 
 
 ® Another introduction of an " exclusively 
 party issue," in a speech which claims to appeal 
 to Liberals. 
 
 ^ After having gratuitously introduced them 
 under profession of making a non-party speech. 
 
 ^'^ And still the speaker professes to avoid 
 all exclusively party issues.
 
 10 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 our position and duty. To my mind Britain has 
 played a great part in the past in the history of 
 the world, and for that reason I wish Britain to con- 
 tinue." Then, in the second place, our object is, 
 or should be, the realisation of the greatest ideal 
 which has ever come to statesmen in any country or 
 in any age — the creation of an Empire such as the 
 world has never seen. 
 
 We have to cement the union of the States be- 
 yond the seas; we have to consolidate the British 
 race ; we have to meet the clash of competition and 
 strife, commercial now — sometimes in the past it has 
 been otherwise, and may be again in the future. 
 Whatever it be, whatever danger threatens, we have 
 to meet it no longer as an isolated country. ^^ We 
 have to meet it fortified and strengthened and but- 
 tressed by all those of our kinsmen in all those 
 powerful and continually rising States which speak 
 our common tongue and pay allegiance to our 
 common flag. 
 
 Those are two great objects, and, as I have said, 
 all should have them in view. How are we to attain 
 them ? 
 
 In the first place, let me say one word as to the 
 method in which this discussion is to be carried on. 
 Surely it should be treated in a manner worthy of 
 its magnitude, worthy of the dignity of the theme ? 
 For my part I disclaim any imputation of motive, of 
 evil and unworthy motive, on the part of those who 
 may happen to disagree with me ;'^ and I claim equal 
 consideration from them. I claim that this matter 
 should be treated on its merits — without personal 
 feeling, personal bitterness, and, if possible, without 
 entering upon questions of purely party controversy ; 
 and I do that not only for the reason I have given, 
 but also because, if you are going to make a change
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS ii 
 
 1"^ If any rational motive can be assigned 
 for the introduction of this passage, it would 
 seem to be the desire to suggest that Mr. 
 Chamberlain's political opponents do not " wish 
 Britain to continue." 
 
 ^^ The suggestion here is that in the past 
 Great Britain had acted as "an isolated coun- 
 try." On the contrar}^ her policy throughout 
 the eighteenth century had been to use her 
 Colonial system primarily for the ends of the 
 Mother Country ; and it was as a result of 
 this policy that the original Colonies in North 
 America revolted. 
 
 ^^ This disclaimer is edifying. A few pages 
 farther on we find Mr. Chamberlain alleging 
 that his opponents '* do not seem to care " 
 about the possibility of the dissolution of the 
 Empire ; at the close we find him imputing 
 to them futile superstition and inept pre- 
 judice; and in the next speech we shall see 
 him vilifying them as Little Englandcrs, with 
 a " cowardly and selhsli " policy, etc.
 
 12 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 ill a system which has existed for nearly sixty years, 
 which affects, more or less, every man, woman and 
 child in the kingdom, you can only make that change 
 successful if you have behind you not merely a party 
 support — if you do not attempt to force it by a small 
 majority on a large and unwilling minority,'* but 
 if it becomes, as I believe it will become, a national 
 policy which is consonant with the feelings, the 
 aspirations, and the interests of the overwhelming 
 proportion of the country. 
 
 I was speaking just now of the characteristics of 
 Glasgow as a great city ; I am not certain whether I 
 mentioned that I believe it is one of the most pros- 
 perous of cities, that it has had a great and continued 
 prosperity; and if that be so, here, more than any- 
 where, I have to answer the question, Why cannot 
 you let well alone ? Well, I have been in Venice — 
 the beautiful city of the Adriatic — which had at one 
 time a commercial supremacy quite as great in pro- 
 portion as anything w^e have ever enjoyed. Its great 
 glories have departed; but what I was going to say 
 was that when I was there last I saw the great tower 
 of the Campanile rising above the city which it had 
 overshadowed for centuries, and looking as though 
 it was as permanent as the city itself. And yet the 
 other day, in a few minutes, the whole structure fell 
 to the ground. Nothing was left of it but a mass 
 of ruin and rubbish. I do not say to you, gentlemen, 
 that I anticipate any catastrophe so great or so sudden 
 for British trade; but I do say to you that I see signs 
 of decay ;*^ that I see cracks and crevices in the walls 
 of the great structure; that I know that the founda- 
 tions upon which it has been raised are not broad 
 enough or deep enough to sustain it." Now, do I 
 do wrong, if I know this— even if I think I know it — 
 do I do wrong to warn you ? Is it not a most strange
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 
 
 ^* Is it safely to be concluded from this that 
 if the tariff party should secure a parHamen- 
 tary majority of 30 or 40 in a general election, 
 it would not attempt to impose a tariff ? 
 
 ^^ In his election address of 1900, Mr. Cham- 
 berlain had asserted that under the administra- 
 tion of himself and his colleagues the country 
 had had a period of ** unexampled prosperity." 
 In 1902 he had assured his constituents, " I 
 see no signs of any imminent or pressing 
 danger to the prosperity of this country. 
 During the last five years we have been building 
 up an unparalleled condition of trade. . . . 
 The prospects are extremely good, and I am 
 not at all disposed to take a pessimistic view 
 of the situation." Thus, Vvdthin the space of 
 a year, Mr. Chamberlain absolutely reversed 
 his account of our recent commercial history, 
 without showing the slightest reason for his 
 change ; and his adherents have never shown 
 the shghtest misgiving over this any more 
 than over his other " unparalleled " tergiversa- 
 tions. 
 
 ^'' From almost the month of this deliver- 
 ance British trade continued to expand, till 
 in 1907 it had reached the highest figures ever 
 known in human history, both for values and 
 quantities. These will be given in detail later.
 
 14 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 and inconsistent thing, that while certain people are 
 indicting the Government in language which, to say 
 the least of it, is extravagant, for not having been 
 prepared for the great war from which we have 
 recently emerged with success — is it not strange that 
 these same people should be denouncing me in 
 language equally extravagant because I want to pre- 
 pare you now, while there is time, for a struggle'^ 
 greater in its consequences than that to which I have 
 referred — a struggle from which, if we emerge de- 
 feated, this country will lose its place, will no longer 
 count among the great nations of the world — a 
 struggle which w'e are asked to meet with antiquated 
 weapons and with old-fashioned tactics? " 
 
 I tell you that it is not well to-day with British 
 industry. We have been going through a period of 
 great expansion. The whole world has been pros- 
 perous, and we have been prosperous with the rest 
 of the world. I see signs of a change, but let that 
 pass. When the change comes I think even the Free 
 Fooders will be converted. But meanwhile, what are 
 the facts ? The year 1900 was a record year of British 
 trade. The exports were the largest we had ever 
 known. The year 1902 — last year — was nearly as 
 good, and yet, if you will compare your trade in 
 1872,^^ thirty years ago, with the trade of 1902 — 
 the export trade — you will find that there has been a 
 moderate increase of tw'enty millions. That, I think, 
 is something like 'j}4 per cent. Meanwhile, the popu-
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 15 
 
 ^^ The implication here is that a struggle 
 lies ahead such as has not occurred before — a 
 new episode, like the Boer War. This is the 
 language of the rhetorician. The commercial 
 " struggle " has always been going on since 
 there was commerce. It was going on while 
 Britain lived under a system of Protection ; 
 and a main reason for the abandonment of that 
 S3''stem was the recognition that, under it, the 
 nation was losing ground industrially. 
 
 ^^ Mr. Chamberlain has never been noted for 
 knowledge of history. Yet even he might be 
 presumed to be aware that the " tactics " he 
 proposes are the most old-fashioned of all. 
 There is no more antiquated device in foreign 
 policy than that of taxing heavily the imports 
 of rival States. Tariffists exhort Free Traders 
 not to cling to the methods of their grand- 
 fathers. They propose to substitute the methods 
 of the Middle Ages. Ten years before, Mr. 
 Chamberlain had so regarded the metliod of 
 tariffs. 
 
 ^'•^ In selecting the year 1872 Mr. Chamber- 
 lain makes the most disingenuous comparison 
 possible to him. That, as all students of 
 modern economic history know, was a year of 
 inflated prices, the result of the large demand 
 in France and Germany for the raw material, 
 fuel, and machinery required to re-establish their 
 industries after the war. If, instead of com- 
 paring the money values of the exports of 1872 
 with those of 1902, he had compared quantities, 
 it would have been made clear that, even 
 though 1872 was a " boom " year, the increase
 
 i6 MR. CIIAMBKRLAIN'S CASE 
 
 lation has increased 30 per cent. Can you go on 
 supporting your population at that rate of increase, 
 when even in the best of years you can only show 
 so much smaller an increase in your foreign trade ? *" 
 The actual increase was twenty millions, and we are 
 a Free Trade country. 
 
 In the same time the increase in the United States 
 of America was no millions; the increase in Germany 
 was fifty-six millions. In the United Kingdom trade 
 has been practically stagnant for thirty years. It 
 went down in the interval. It has now gone up in 
 the most prosperous times. But in the most pros- 
 perous time it is hardly in the least degree better than 
 it was thirty years ago.^* 
 
 Meanwhile the protected countries, which you have 
 been told, and which I myself at one time believed, 
 were going rapidly to wreck and ruin, have pro- 
 gressed in an infinitely better proportion than ours.^^
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 17 
 
 in actual export trade between then and 1902 
 was far more than y^ per cent. If we even 
 take 1873 as starting-point, with exports valued 
 at £255,000,000, we find the progression to be 
 as follows, when the exports are reckoned at 
 the prices of 1873 : — 1883 : £295,000,000. 1893 : 
 £329,000,000. 1902 : £416,000,000. Either Mr. 
 Chamberlain knew this or he did not. Either 
 way ! 
 
 -^ There is now, be it observed, no question 
 of the importance of the home market. It is 
 not even asked whether the home trade has 
 increased. The subject has simply disappeared 
 from Mr. Chamberlain's consciousness. 
 
 "^ How, then, could Mr. Chamberlain assert, 
 as he did in his election address of 1900, that 
 under the government of himself and his col- 
 leagues the country had passed through " a 
 period of unexampled prosperity " ? He here 
 flouts alike his own words and the facts of the 
 case. The export trade of Germany in the 
 year after the close of the war with France is 
 taken as a basis of comparison with that of 
 Britain, and the increase in the former case, 
 where a nation had to a large extent suspended 
 its trade at the beginning of the period under 
 notice, is put in contrast with that of the 
 nation which, in 1872, was unusually active. 
 Yet, as we have seen, the real British export in 
 1902 was 61 per cent, more than in 1873. The 
 words " practically stagnant " are thus essen- 
 tially untrue. 
 
 ^~ The facts are as follows : France, in the 
 years 1881-85, had an average annual total 
 export of £135 millions, against £223 millions 
 of British exports ; in 1896-1900 the rcspcc-
 
 iS MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 Now, that is not all. But the amount of your trade 
 remained stagnant, while the character of your trade 
 has changed. When Mr. Cobden preached his 
 doctrine, he believed, and he had at that time con- 
 siderable reason to suppose, that while foreign 
 countries would supply us with our food-stufifs and 
 raw materials, we should remain the workshop of 
 the world, and should send them in exchange our
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 19 
 
 tive figures were £150 millions and £253 mil- 
 lions, and in the year 1903 £170 millions and 
 £290 millions. Thus the British lead had 
 steadily risen from £88 millions to £120 mil- 
 lions. Apart from Germany, no other European 
 country is worth comparing. The exports of 
 Italy, which in 1887 were 1,002 millions of lire, 
 fell for several years below 900 millions, and did 
 not recover the figure of 1887 till 1894. From 
 1894 to 1903 the increase was only £30 millions, 
 as against a British increase of £135 millions ; 
 and nearly half of the Italian increase was in 
 food and raw or semi-raw material. Between 
 1880 and 1891 the total exports of Austria- 
 Hungary rose only from £56.3 to £65.6 millions 
 sterhng. When, in the decade 1896-1905, they 
 increased by £29 millions, those of Britain in- 
 creased by nearly £90 millions. Of the British 
 increase, more than two- thirds was in manu- 
 factures ; of the Austrian, less than half. The 
 export trade of Switzerland in the same period 
 progressed much less, proportionally, than that 
 of either Holland or Britain — less, indeed, than 
 that of Belgium, where the tariffs are much 
 lower. Russia, Sweden, and Norway exhibit an 
 equal failure to promote manufactures b}^ Pro- 
 tection. Only in Germany and the United 
 States is there any progress comparable to the 
 British, and in both cases this has gone with 
 much greater population, to say nothing of the 
 vastly greater area and natural resources of the 
 United States. In the case of Germany the main 
 factor in the expansion has been the virtual 
 acquisition of a vast store of iron-ore through 
 the discovery of the Gilchrist-Thomas process 
 for working hematite iron, perfected about
 
 20 MR, CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 manufactures. But that is exactly what we have not 
 done. On the contrary, in the period to which I have 
 referred, we are sending less and less of our manu- 
 factures to them, and they are sending more and 
 more of manufactures to us.^'^
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 21 
 
 1879, when the Bismarck tariff was imposed. 
 Ore previously worthless now became work- 
 able. That the tariff is not the effective factor 
 in such expansion is proved by its total failure 
 to promote export of manufactures from other 
 countries. 
 
 ~'^ This again is a mystification. British 
 imports of so-called manufactures necessarily 
 increase for three reasons : (i) Britain has 
 about half of the most effective shipping ton- 
 nage of the whole world, and so does an immense 
 part of its total carrying trade, not only carry- 
 ing most of her own exports and imports, but 
 much of the goods exchanged between other 
 nations ; (2) Britani lends more capital abroad 
 tiian any other nation ; and (3) she does most of 
 the marine insurance (underwriting) of the 
 world. For the first and third services, which 
 are on a par with her exports, and should 
 always be reckoned with her export trade, she 
 can be paid only in goods. For her exports of 
 capital, which go as goods, she must get either 
 interest or principal in goods also. If she were 
 entirely paid in raw materials, these could not be 
 worked up, having regard to the total demand. 
 But of a total import of sonie £120,000,000 of 
 so-called manufactures, only some £45,000,000 
 are completely finished goods ready for final 
 consumption ; and this class of imports in- 
 creases most slowly. The rest are but semi- 
 manufactured goods, such as leather, chemicals, 
 metals, and paper, and constitute the imme- 
 diate " raw material " of great industries. 
 And German imports of n.anufactures are 
 increasing more rapidly than British ! In the 
 years 1902-6 British imports of manufactured
 
 22 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 Now, I know how difficult it is for a great meeting 
 like this to follow figures. I shall give you as few 
 as I can, but I must give you some to lay the basis 
 of my argument. I have had a table constructed, 
 and upon that table I would be willing to base the 
 whole of my contention. I will take some figures 
 from it. You have to analyse your trade. It is not 
 merely a question of amount; you have to consider 
 of what it is comprised.^* Now, what has been the 
 case with regard to our manufactures ? Our existence 
 as a nation depends upon our manufacturing capacity 
 and production. We are not an agricultural country. 
 That can never be the main source of our prosperity. 
 We are a great manufacturing country.^' 
 
 In 1872 we sent to the protected countries of Europe 
 and to the United States of America ;^ 116,000,000 of 
 exported manufactures. In 1882, ten years later, it 
 fell to ;;^88, 000,000. In 1892, ten years later, it fell 
 to ;^75,ooo,ooo. In 1902, last year, although the 
 general exports had increased, the exports of manu- 
 factures had declined again to ;673>50o,ooo, and the 
 total result of this is that, after thirty years, you are 
 sending ;^42, 500,000 of manufactures less to the pro- 
 tected countries than you did thirty years ago.^^ Then 
 there are the neutral countries, those countries which, 
 although they may have tariffs, have no manufactures, 
 and therefore the tariffs are not protective — such 
 countries as Egypt and China, and South America, 
 and similar places. They have not fallen to any 
 considerable extent. They have practically remained 
 the same, but on the whole they have fallen 
 ;^3, 500,000. Adding that to the loss in the pro- 
 tected countries, you have lost altogether in your 
 exports of manufactures ^46,000,000.^' 
 
 How is it that that has not impressed the people 
 before now ? Because the change has been concealed
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 23 
 
 goods increased only from £117.2 millions to 
 £131.9 millions, or 12 per cent. ; while German 
 imports of such goods increased, by the 
 German accomit, from £54.2 to £82.3 millions, 
 or 50 per cent. And in the same period the 
 excess of British exports of manufactures over 
 imports increased by 57 per cent, as against 
 an increase of only 37 per cent, in Germany, 
 In the 3^ear 1907, finally, 80 per cent, of the 
 whole of British exports consisted of manu- 
 factures ; in the case of Germany, only 70 
 per cent. ; in that of France, only 60 ; and 
 in that of the United States, only 40. 
 
 ^^ You have also to distinguish between 
 values and quantities when comparing years 
 of high prices with years of low prices. This 
 Mr. Chamberlain, as aforesaid, is careful not 
 to do. 
 
 2^ Home trade has now entirely disappeared 
 from the argument, and quantity of employ- 
 ment is not even glanced at. 
 
 ^^ As already shown, this calculation is solely 
 in terms of values. The quantities had not 
 declined ; and it we substitute the year 1870 
 for starting point, excluding the " boom " 
 year 1872, even the values had increased. 
 
 ^' All this is but a fresh parade of the illu- 
 sory figures reached by comparing the values of 
 1872 and 1902 instead of the quantities of these 
 years. In former days Mr. Chamberlain perfectly 
 realised the fallacy of such comparisons, and 
 derided them when made by Protectionists. 
 In 1903 he was thus sinning against light.
 
 24 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 by our statistics.'^ I do not say they have not shown 
 it, because you could have picked it out,'^'-^ but they 
 are not put in a form which is understanded of the 
 people. Vou have failed to observe that the continu- 
 ance of your trade is dependent entirely on British 
 Possessions. While those foreign countries have 
 declined by ^"46, 000,000, your British Possessions 
 have increased ;^'40, 000,000.^" And at the present 
 time your trade with the Colonies and British Posses- 
 sions is larger in amount, very much larger in 
 amount, and much more valuable in its character 
 than the trade in any other of the categories I have 
 named. It is much larger than our trade with the 
 whole of Europe and the United States of America.^^ 
 It is much larger than our trade to those neutral 
 countries of which I have spoken, and it remains at 
 the present day the most rapidly increasing, the most 
 important, the most valuable of the whole of our 
 trade. 
 
 One more comparison. During this period of 
 thirty years in which our exports of manufactures 
 have fallen ^46,000,000 to foreign countries, what 
 has happened as regards their exports of manufac- 
 tures to us? They have risen from ;i^63,ooo,ooo in 
 1872 to ^149,000,000 in 1902.^^ They have increased 
 ^86,000,000. That may be all right. I am not for the 
 moment saying whether that is right or wrong, but 
 when people say we ought to hold exactly the same 
 opinion about things that our ancestors did, my 
 reply is that I dare say we should do so if circum- 
 stances had remained the same. 
 
 But now, if I have been able to make these figures 
 clear, there is one thing which follows— that is, that 
 our Imperial trade is absolutely essential to our pros- 
 perity at the present time. If that trade declines, or 
 if it does not increase in proportion to our population
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 25 
 
 ^^ The exact reverse is the truth. The 
 statistics of values concealed the facts as to 
 the volume of trade. 
 
 -^ It is Mr. Chamberlain v/ho has picked 
 out precisely the most misleading figures. 
 
 ^'^ Largely in respect of the special exports 
 to South Africa in connection with the South 
 African War. After 1902, the proportion of 
 our exports to our self-governing dominions 
 fell from 21 per cent, to 15 per cent, in 1905, 
 remaining at that point till 1909. 
 
 ^^ When we put aside the misleading figures, 
 and note the real progress of trade, Mr. Cham- 
 berlain's statement is found to be completely 
 refuted. At any time from 1855 to 1906 our 
 exports to foreign countries (in five-year aver- 
 ages) have varied between 62.7 and 74.2 per 
 cent, of our total exports ; while those to the 
 Empire varied between 25.8 and 37.3 per 
 cent. The latter figure was reached in the 
 years 1900-4, and represented largely export 
 of war material to South Africa. Immediately 
 thereafter there was a fall. From £60 millions 
 in 1902 our exports to the self-governing Colonies 
 sank to £52 millions in 1904 and 1905 ; and even 
 in 1907 they were only £63 millions. In the 
 meantime our exports to foreign countries rose 
 continuously from £174 millions to £288 millions, 
 and those to India from £32 millions to £52 
 millions — an increase of £20 millions, as against 
 only £3 millions in the case of the self-governing 
 Colonies. Mr. Chamberlain is careful to lump 
 India with the Colonies. 
 
 '•''' This was a war year, and the figures in- 
 clude re-exports.
 
 26 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 and to the loss of trade with foreign countries, then 
 we sink at once into a fifth-rate nation. Our fate 
 will be the fate of the empires and kingdoms of the 
 past. We shall have reached our highest point, and, 
 indeed, I am not certain that there are some of my 
 opponents who do not regard that with absolute com- 
 placency. I do not. As I have said, I have the 
 misfortune to be an optimist. I do not believe in 
 the setting of the British star, but then, I do not 
 believe in the folly of the British people. I trust 
 them. I trust the working classes of this country, 
 and I have confidence that they who are our masters, 
 electorally speaking, will have the intelligence to see 
 that they must wake up. They must modify their 
 policy to suit the new conditions. They must meet 
 new conditions with altogether a new policy .^^ 
 
 I have said that if our Imperial trade declines 
 we decline. My second point is this. It will decline 
 inevitably, it w'ill decline unless, while there is still 
 time, we take the necessary steps to preserve it. 
 Have you ever considered why it is that Canada takes 
 six times as much or thereabouts of British manu- 
 factures as the United States of America does per 
 head ? " When you answer that, I have another 
 conundrum. Why does Australasia take about three 
 times as mucli per head as Canada ? " And, to wind 
 up, why does South Africa — the white population of 
 South Africa — take more per head than Australasia?"
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 27 
 
 ^^ Mr. Chamberlain's advice was not taken, 
 and the result was, in the years 1903-7, the 
 greatest expansion of British export trade 
 theretofore known. The British people so 
 successfully met the new conditions under the 
 old policy that they actually increased their 
 lead over other nations. 
 
 ^■* Largely because of exports of British 
 capital to Canada, and of American tariffs. 
 
 ^'' Because Australia has not a United States 
 for neighbour. 
 
 ^^ Because South Africa has almost no manu- 
 factures, and imports British capital.
 
 28 MR. CHAMBERLAIX'S CASE 
 
 When you have got to the bottom of that — and it is 
 not difficult — you will see the whole argument. 
 
 These countries are all protective countries. I see 
 that the Labour leaders, or some of them, in this 
 country are saying that the interest of the working 
 class is to maintain our present system of free im- 
 ports. The moment those men go to the Colonies 
 they change. I will undertake to say that no one of 
 them has ever been there for six months without sing- 
 ing a different tune.^' The vast majority of the work- 
 ing men in all the Colonies are Protectionists. Well, 
 I am not inclined to accept the easy explanation that 
 they are all fools. I do not understand why an intelli- 
 gent man — a man who is intelligent in this country — 
 becomes at once an idiot when he goes to Austra- 
 lasia. But I will tell you what he does do. He 
 gets rid of a good number of the old-world prejudices 
 and superstitions.''^^ 
 
 I say they are Protectionist, all these countries. 
 Now, what is the history of Protection ? In the first 
 place a tariff is imposed. There are no industries, 
 or practically none, but only a tariff; then gradually 
 industries grow up behind the tariff wall. In the 
 first place they are primary industries, the industries 
 for which the country has natural aptitude or for 
 which it has some special advantage — mineral or 
 other resources. Then, when those are established, 
 the secondary industries spring up, first the neces- 
 saries, then the luxuries, until at last all the ground 
 is covered. These countries of which I have been 
 speaking to you are in different stages of the pro- 
 tective process. In America the process has been 
 completed. She produces everything; she excludes 
 everything.'® There is no trade to be done w-ith her,
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 29 
 
 ^^ There are irany Free Traders in the 
 Labour Party in Australia. The reason why 
 man}^ turn Protectionist is that, Australia 
 being able to produce a surplus of food and of 
 certain raw materials, a tariff there burdens the 
 agricultural population to the profit of the 
 industrial, who are politically the best organised 
 section. Tariffs always plunder a majority in 
 the interest of a minority. 
 
 ^^ Seeing that tariffs are an invention of the 
 old world, and are imposed by most European 
 countries, including Spain and Russia, it would 
 appear that it is, after all, old-world prejudices 
 and superstitions that rule in Australia. And 
 these prejudices and superstitions had been 
 denounced as such by Mr. Chamberlain through 
 the greater part of his political life. 
 
 ^'■^ This is one of the most extravagant 
 falsifications ever achieved in tariffist propa- 
 ganda. The United States in 1907 imported 
 manufactures to the value of £131 millions, as 
 against £128 miUions imported for home con- 
 sumption by Britain. In the United States 
 the import of manufactures was 44 per cent, 
 of the total ; in Britain only 23 per cent. In 
 the same year Britain exported £342 millions 
 of manufactures ; the United States only £154 
 millions, and even this only under a classifica- 
 tion which treats kerosene as a manufactured 
 article. In the years 1900-4 the average im- 
 ports of manufactures in I3ritain for home 
 consumption were £113 millions ; those of the 
 United States, £79 miUions. Thus the Ameri- 
 can import of manufactures, like the German, 
 is increasing much more rapidly than tlie 
 British.
 
 30 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 or only a paltry 6s. per head."" Canada has been pro- 
 tective for a long time, and the protective policy 
 has produced its natural result. The principal in- 
 dustries are there, and you can never get rid of them. 
 They will be there for ever, but up to the present 
 time the secondary industries have not been created. 
 There is an immense deal of trade that is still open 
 to you, that you may still retain, that you may in- 
 crease. In Australasia the industrial position of the 
 country is still less advanced. The agricultural pro- 
 ducts of the country have been first of all developed. 
 Accordingly, Australasia takes more from you per 
 head than Canada. In the Cape there are, practically 
 speaking generally, no industries at all. Very well. 
 Now^, I ask you to suppose that we intervene in any 
 stage of the process. We can do it now. We might 
 have done it with greater effect ten years ago. 
 Whether we can do it with any effect or at all twenty 
 years hence I am very doubtful. We can intervene 
 now\ We can say to our Colonies: "We under- 
 stand your views and your contentions. We do not 
 attempt to dictate to you. We do not think ourselves 
 superior to you. We have taken the trouble to learn 
 your objects, to appreciate and sympathise with your 
 policy. We know that you are right in saying 3^ou 
 will not always be content to be what the Americans 
 call a one-horse country, with a single industry and 
 no diversity of employment. We can see that you 
 are right not to neglect what Providence has given 
 you in the shape of mineral or other resources, but 
 to profit by any natural products you may have. We 
 understand and we appreciate the wisdom of your 
 statesmen when they say they will not allow their 
 country to be solely dependent on foreign supplies 
 for the necessities of life. 
 
 " We understand all that, and therefore we will not
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 31 
 
 *° If America is not to give away the goods 
 she exports, she must take goods in return. 
 In so far as she does not take our goods for 
 those she sends us, she must take the goods 
 of countries who are our debtors, or debtors to 
 our debtors, in the round-about trade of the 
 world. Thus, any restriction she puts upon 
 her import of our goods merely forces up our 
 exports to the other countries from whom she 
 docs import, and so gives us an advantage in 
 our competition with her in neutral markets.
 
 32 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 propose to you anythiiii,^ that is unreasonable or con- 
 trary to this pohcy, which we know is deep in your 
 hearts; but we will say to you, * After all, there are 
 many things which you do not now make, many 
 things for which we have a great capacity of produc- 
 tion — leave them to us as you have left them hitherto."*^ 
 Do not increase your tariff walls against us. Pull 
 them down where they are unnecessary to the success 
 of this policy to which you are committed. Let us 
 in exchange with you have your products in all those 
 numberless industries which have not yet been 
 created. Do that because w-e are kinsmen — without 
 regard to your immediate interest — because it is good 
 for the Empire as a whole, and because we have taken 
 the first step and have set you an example. We 
 offer you a preference ; we rely on your patriotism, 
 your affection, that we shall not be the losers 
 thereby.' " 
 
 Now, suppose that we had made an offer of that 
 kind — I won't say to the Colonies, but to Germany, 
 to the United States of America — ten or twenty years 
 ago. Do you suppose that, if you had, we should 
 not have been able to retain a great deal of what we 
 have now lost and cannot recover ?^^ 
 
 I will give you an illustration. America is the 
 strictest of protective nations. It has a tariff which 
 to me is an abomination — it is so immoderate,"^ so 
 unreasonable, so unnecessary; and although America 
 has profited enormously under it, yet I think it has 
 been carried to excessive lengths, and I believe now 
 that a great number of intelligent Americans would 
 gladly negotiate with us for its reduction.** But 
 until very recent times even this immoderate tariff 
 left to us a great trade. It left to us the tin-plate 
 trade, and the tin-plate trade amounted to millions 
 per annum, and gave employment to thousands of
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 33 
 
 '^^ The Canadian Protectionists promptly 
 notified Mr. Chamberlain that they could not 
 agree to any such reservation. They mean to 
 protect every kind of Canadian industry, pre- 
 ference or no preference. 
 
 *^ Any such preference would have the 
 instant effect of depriving us of the most- 
 favoured-nation treatment in every other Pro- 
 tectionist country. We are asked to injure 
 four-fifths of our total trade to improve the 
 chances of one-fifth. 
 
 '^3 Why ? Mr. Chamberlain's bluster is an 
 evasion of the plain lesson of tariff history. 
 Tariffs in most countries tend to rise, simply 
 because they are found to fail of their pur- 
 pose ; and the only course open to the tariffists, 
 on his own principles, is to increase them. On 
 tariffist principles the American tariff is not 
 unnecessary. It fails to exclude foreign manu- 
 factures. British goods enter over duties, in 
 some cases, of 60 per cent. 
 
 "*' How conld they negotiate on Mr. Cham- 
 berlain's principles ? If we give the Colonies 
 a preference, we are thereby excluded from 
 making concessions to any foreign country. 
 Negotiation would be made at once impossible.
 
 34 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 Britisli workpeople. If we had gone to America ten 
 or twenty years ago and had said, "If you will leave 
 the tin-plate trade as it is, put no duty on tin-plate 
 — you have never had to complain either of our 
 quality or our price — we in return will give you some 
 advantage on some articles which you produce," we 
 should have kept the tin-plate trade.^^ It would not 
 have been worth America's while to put a duty on 
 an article for which it had no particular aptitude or 
 capacity. 
 
 If we had gone to Germany in the same sense, 
 there are hundreds of articles now made in Germany 
 which are sent to this country, which are taking the 
 place of goods employing British labour, which they 
 would have left to us in return for our concessions 
 to them. 
 
 We did not take that course. We were not pre- 
 pared for it as a people. We allowed matters to 
 drift. Are we going to let them drift now ? Are we 
 going to lose the Colonies? This is the parting of 
 the ways. You have an opportunity. If you do 
 not take it, it will not recur. If you do not take it, 
 I predict, and I predict with certainty, although I 
 seldom prophesy with equal faith, that Canada will 
 fall to the level of the United States, that Australia 
 will fall to the level of Canada, that South 
 Africa will fall to the level of Australia, and that 
 will only be the beginning of the general decline 
 W'hich will deprive you of your most important cus- 
 tomers, of your most rapidly increasing trade."*^ 
 
 Now, I am quite convinced I have some reason 
 to speak with authority on this subject — the Colonies 
 are prepared to meet us. In return for a very 
 moderate preference they wall give us a substantial 
 advantage. In the first place, I believe they w-ill 
 reserve to us the trade which we already enjoy. They
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 35 
 
 ^^ This is a very good test case, the his- 
 tory of which is a fatal commentary on Mr. 
 Chamberlain's doctrine. The McKinley Tariff 
 on tin-plates did for a time injure the British 
 tin-plate trade. At the same time it struck 
 a frightful blow at the American canning 
 industries, causing food to the value of many 
 millions of dollars to be left to rot because the 
 price of cans, for the time, exceeded the pos- 
 sible profit from canning. Thereupon the 
 British producers of tin-plate sought new mar- 
 kets in Central and South America and the 
 British Colonies and at home, and there raised 
 up new rivals to the canning industries of the 
 United States, which have never since re- 
 covered their supremacy in export. The 
 average export of British tin-plate in the four 
 years before 1891 was £5,682,000. In 1907 it 
 had risen to £5,917,000, and the gross produce 
 to £9,350,000, the number of factories (with 
 improved machinery) having risen from 323 
 (in 1897) to 444 (in 1907). In 1910 the export 
 rose to £6,545,329. In the United States, 
 meantime, the effect of the tin-plate duty had 
 been so ruinous to exports that a rebate of 
 99 per cent, was soon allowed on tin-plate for 
 re-export. Thus the American export of canned 
 goods is still carried on with British tin-plate ! 
 
 *'' It was not the most rapidly increasing 
 trade ; but it has continued to increase. Mr. 
 Chamberlain's " certain " predictions are all 
 falsified by the event.
 
 36 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 ^vill not arrange their tariffs in future in order to 
 start industries in competition with those which are 
 already in existence in the Mother Country.'*'^ They 
 will not — and I would not urge them for a moment 
 to do so — they will not injure those industries which 
 have already been created. They will maintain them, 
 they will not allow them to be destroyed or injured 
 even by our competition ; but outside that there is 
 still a great margin, a margin which has given us 
 this enormous increase of trade to which I have 
 referred. That margin I believe we can permanently 
 retain, and I ask you to think, if that is of so much 
 importance to us now, when we have only eleven 
 millions of white fellow-citizens in these distant 
 Colonies, what will it be when in the course of a 
 period which is a mere moment of time in the history 
 of States, what will it be when that population is 
 forty millions or more ? Is it not worth while to 
 consider whether the actual trade which you may 
 retain, and the enormous potential trade which you 
 and your descendants may enjoy, be not worth a 
 sacrifice, even if sacrifice be required?*^ 
 
 But they will do a great deal more for you. This 
 is certain. Not only will they enable you to retain 
 the trade which you have, but they are ready to give 
 you a preference on all the trade which is now done 
 with them by foreign competitors. I never see in 
 any argument of the free importers any reference to 
 the magnitude of this trade. It will increase. It 
 has increased enormously in thirty years, and if it 
 goes on with equally rapid strides we shall be ousted 
 by foreign competition, if not by protective tariffs, 
 from our Colonies. It amounts at the present time — 
 I have not got the figures here, but I believe I am 
 right — to over ^47, 000,000. But it is said that a 
 great part of that £47,000,000 is In goods which
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 37 
 
 ■*7 Mr. Chamberlain had not the shghtest 
 right to hold out any such prospect, and the 
 Canadian Protectionists promptly told him so. 
 
 '^^ There is now every prospect that, under 
 Free Trade, we shall do more business than 
 ever with Canada, the agricultural population 
 there being strongly bent on increasing British 
 preferences without seeking any preferences in 
 return. 
 
 388i>5.'i
 
 38 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 we cannot supply. That is true, and with regard 
 to that portion of the trade we have no interest in 
 any preferential tariff. But it has been calculated, 
 and I believe it to be accurate, that ;^26,ooo,ooo a 
 year of that trade might come to this country which 
 now goes to Germany and France and other foreign 
 countries, if a reasonable preference were given to 
 British manufactures.^^ 
 
 What does that mean ? The Board of Trade 
 assumes that of all manufactured goods one-half the 
 value is expended in labour — I think it is a great 
 deal more, but take the Board of Trade figures — 
 ;^i3, 000,000 a year of new employment. What does 
 that mean to the United Kingdom ? It means the 
 employment of 166,000 men at 30s. a week.^*^ It 
 means the subsistence, if you include their families, 
 of 830,000 persons ; and now, if you will only add 
 to that our present export to the British Possessions 
 of ;^96,ooo,ooo, you will find that that gives, on the 
 same calculation, ^^'48, 000, 000 for wages, or employ- 
 ment at 30s. a week to 615,000 workpeople, and it 
 finds subsistence for 3,075,000 persons. In other 
 words, your Colonial trade as it stands at present, 
 with the prospective advantage of a preference against 
 the foreigner, means employment for three-quarters 
 of a million of workmen, and subsistence for nearly 
 four millions of our population .^^ 
 
 I feel deeply sensible that the argument I have 
 addressed to you is one of those which will be 
 described by the Leader of the Opposition as a squalid 
 argument. A squalid argument ! I have appealed 
 to your interests, I have come here as a man of busi- 
 ness. I have appealed to the employers and the 
 employed alike in this great city. I have endeavoured 
 to point out to them that their trade, their wages, all 
 depend on the maintenance of this Colonial trade.
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 39 
 
 *^ This assumes that under a system of 
 preferences the Colonies will take from foreign 
 countries none of the articles which Britain 
 could supply. Probably no man of business 
 on the Protectionist side believes that this 
 could happen. Mr. Chamberlain's calculations 
 are all of this futile kind. 
 
 ^^ The expansion in exports which has actu- 
 ally taken place under Free Trade is far greater 
 than that which Mr. Chamberlain promised 
 under a tariff. But it should be noted that 
 when he assumes all increase in exports in terms 
 of values to represent the employment of new 
 labour in a proportion of 50 per cent, of the 
 increase in values, he asserts what any busi- 
 ness man could tell him does not take place. 
 The constant increase in the productivity of 
 machinery has always meant disproportion 
 between increase in output and increase in 
 employment in terms of numbers of hands. 
 Further, the half of export values cannot 
 stand for wages in the sense of w^ages paid to 
 the producers of the finished article. Labour 
 cost enters into raw material, and that is to a 
 large extent imported. 
 
 "^ This astonishing argument assumes (i) 
 that the Colonies, as aforesaid, would cease to 
 take from foreign countries any articles which 
 Britain could supply, and (2) that all the pre- 
 sent British export of those articles to foreign 
 countries would continue as before ! Such an 
 assertion stands for sheer hallucination, and the 
 forecast is a statistical cliimera. The very act
 
 40 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 of Avhich some of my opponents speak vith such 
 contempt, and, above all. with such egregious 
 ignorance." 
 
 Now, I abandon lliat line of argument for the 
 moment. I appeal to something higher, which I 
 believe is in your hearts as it is in mine. I appeal 
 to you as fellow-citizens of the greatest Empire that 
 the world has ever known ; I appeal to you to recog- 
 nise that the privileges of Empire bring with them 
 great responsibilities.^^ I want to ask you to think 
 what this Empire means, what it is to you and your 
 descendants. I will not speak, or, at least, I will not 
 dwell, on its area, greater than that which has been 
 under one dominion in the history of the world 
 before. I will not speak of the hundreds of millions 
 of men for whom we have made ourselves respon- 
 sible.^* We have an Empire which, with decent 
 organisation and consolidation, might be absolutely 
 self-sustaining. Nothing of the kind has ever been 
 known before.^^ There is no article of your food, there 
 is no raw material of your trade, there is no necessity 
 of your lives, there is no luxury of your existence 
 which cannot be produced somewhere or other in the 
 British Empire, if the British Empire holds together, 
 and if we who have inherited it are worthy of its 
 traditions. 
 
 There is another product of the British Empire^ 
 and that is, men. You have not forgotten the ad- 
 vantage, the encouragement, which can be given by 
 the existence of loyal men, inhabitants, indeed, of 
 distant States, but still loyal to the common flag. 
 It is not so long since these men, when the Old 
 Country was in straits, rushed to her assistance. No 
 appeal was necessary; it was a voluntary movement. 
 Tiiat was not a squalid assistance. They had no 
 special interest. They were interested, indeed, as
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 41 
 
 of giving preference to the Colonies would raise 
 all foreign tariffs against us. If, further, the 
 Colonies dropped £26 millions of their imports 
 from foreign countries, their export trade would 
 be seriously injured. 
 
 ■" In the display of ignorance of the facts 
 of trade, Mr. Chamberlain has in these speeches 
 transcended all the records of tariffist propa- 
 ganda. Frde Traders have never spoken of 
 Colonial trade with contempt. They have 
 simply stated the statistical facts. 
 
 ^^ If the proposed policy is profitable, why 
 speak of responsibilities ? 
 
 ^'^ Most of them in British India, which, on 
 tariffist principles, ought to be allowed to set up 
 a system of protective duties on imports. Docs 
 the tariffist party propose to do this ? 
 
 ^^ China was such an Empire. Mr. Chamber- 
 lain's ideal is that of an unreformed China — a 
 state of isolation from and of enmity with all 
 the rest of the human race. His policy is the 
 pohcy of the Boxers, who hated the foreign 
 devils.
 
 42 MR. CHAMBERT.AIN'S CASE 
 
 sons of the Empire; but if they had been separate 
 States they would have had no interest at all. They 
 came to our assistance and proved themselves indeed 
 men of the old stock. They proved themselves 
 worthy of the best traditions of British freedom, and 
 gave us an assistance, a material assistance, which 
 was invaluable. They gave us moral support, which 
 was even more acceptable. That is the result of 
 Empire.^'' I should be wrong if, in referring to our 
 white fellow-subjects, I did not also say, that in 
 addition to them, if any straits befell us, there are 
 millions and hundreds of millions of men born in 
 tropical climes, and of races very different from ours, 
 who, although they were prevented by political con- 
 siderations from taking part in our recent struggle, 
 would be in any death-throe of the Empire equally 
 eager to show their loyalty and their devotion.^''' 
 
 Now, is such a dominion, are such traditions, is 
 such a glorious inheritance, is such a splendid senti- 
 ment — are these worth preserving ? ^^ They have cost 
 us much. They have cost much in blood and 
 treasure ; and in past times, as in recent, many of our 
 best and noblest have given their lives, or risked 
 their lives, for this great ideal. But it has done 
 much for us. It has ennobled our national life, it 
 has discouraged that petty parochialism which is the 
 defect of all small communities. I say to you that 
 all that is best in our present life, best in this Britain 
 of ours, all of which we have the right to be most 
 proud, is due to the fact that we are not only sons 
 of Britain, but we are sons of Empire. ^^ I do not 
 think, I am not likely to do you the injustice to 
 believe, that you would make these sacrifices fruit- 
 less, that you would make all this endeavour vain.
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 43 
 
 ^*^ That is, of Empire on a Free Trade basis 
 as regards the Mother Country. It was under 
 a protective system that the North American 
 Colonies revolted, and Canada was long " dis- 
 loyal." Under Free Trade all those dangers 
 disappeared. And now, after expressly affirm- 
 ing the disinterestedness of our kinsmen in 
 the Colonies, Mr. Chamberlain besmirches them 
 by declaring that only under a system of trade 
 preferences can they be expected to stand by 
 the Mother Country in future. 
 
 '"'' The reference here is to India. Is it, then, 
 proposed to confer upon India the power of 
 setting up protective tariffs against British 
 goods on Colonial lines ? If not, what is the 
 point of the reference ? 
 
 ^^ The implication is that the "sentiment" 
 will die out in the Colonies unless we bribe 
 them by tariff preferences. This imputation 
 they have repeatedly and indignantly repu- 
 diated. 
 
 ^^ A gross extravagance. What is best in 
 the life of any nation is its character, its cul- 
 ture, its liberties, its popular well-being. Mr. 
 Chamberlain, in effect, says that we cannot 
 compete with smaller States in moral and intel- 
 lectual qualities, and that we are their superiors 
 in virtue of the extent of our " possessions."
 
 44 3/A\ CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 But if you want to complete it, remember that each 
 generation in turn has to do its part, and you are 
 called to take your share in this great work. Others 
 have founded the Empire; it is yours to cement it 
 together; it is yours to build firmly and permanently 
 the great edifice of which others have laid the founda- 
 tion. 
 
 I believe we have got to change somewhat our 
 rather insular habits.^ When I have been in the 
 Colonies I have told them that they are too pro- 
 vincial, but I think we are too provincial also. We 
 think too much of ourselves; we forget — and it is 
 necessary we should remember — that we are only 
 parts of a larger whole. And when I speak of our 
 Colonies, it is an expression ; they are not ours — 
 they are not ours in a possessory sense. They are 
 sister States, able to treat with us from an equal 
 position, able to hold to us, willing to hold to us, 
 but also able to break with us. I have had eight 
 years' experience. I have been in communication 
 with all the men, or with many of the men, states- 
 men, orators, writers, distinguished in our Colonies. 
 I have had intimate conversation with them. I have 
 tried to understand them, and I think I do under- 
 stand them, and I say that none of them desire 
 separation. There are none of them who are not loval 
 to this idea of Empire which they say they wish us 
 to accept more fully in the future. 
 
 But I have found none who do not believe that 
 our present Colonial relations cannot be permanent. 
 We must either draw closer together or we shall drift 
 apart. ^' 
 
 When I made that statement with all responsibility 
 some time ago, some people, political opponents, 
 said: "See, here is the result of having such a 
 Colonial Secretary. Eight years ago the Colonies
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 45 
 
 ^'^ Immediately before, Mr. Chamberlain had 
 been planning for an entirely self-sustaining 
 Empire. This would mean an entire cessation 
 of commercial intercourse with the continent 
 of Europe and with the United States of 
 America. Nothing that ever happened in 
 human history, outside of China, could com- 
 pare with such a development of insularity as 
 this. 
 
 '^^ This assertion was at once repudiated by 
 the leading statesmen of Canada, and it has 
 been repeatedly repudiated since. Mr. Cham- 
 berlain, after extolling the Imperial patriotism 
 of the Colonies, in effect sa3's that if they do 
 not get a preference in our markets, which will 
 raise the price of food to the mass of the British 
 people, they ^^■ill " cut the painter." Such is 
 his " ideal of Empire."
 
 46 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 were devoted to the Mother Country. Everything 
 was for the best. Preferences were not thought of. 
 There were no squalid bonds. The Colonies were 
 ready to do everything for us. They were not such 
 fools as to think we should do anything for them. 
 All that happy state of things existed when the 
 Colonial Secretary came into office. Now it has all 
 disappeared. We are told if we do not alter our 
 policy we may lose our Empire." 
 
 It is a fancy picture, but I will not rest upon my 
 own opinion. It is not I alone who have said this. 
 Others have said it before me. We have a states- 
 man here in Scotland whose instincts are always 
 right, but whose actions unfortunately often lag 
 behind his instincts. What did he say many years 
 before I came into office, in 1888? Lord Rosebery'^'^ 
 was speaking at Leeds, and he said this: "The 
 people in this country w'ill in a not too distant time 
 have to make up their minds what position they 
 W'ish their Colonies to occupy w'ith respect to them, 
 or whether they desire their Colonies to leave them 
 altogether. It is, as I believe, absolutely impossible 
 for you to maintain in the long run your present 
 loose and indefinable relations and preserve these 
 Colonies as parts of the Empire. ... I do not 
 see that you can obtain the great boon of a peaceful 
 Empire encircling the globe wath a bond of com- 
 mercial unity and peace without some sacrifice on 
 your part." Well, we have to consider, of course, 
 what is the sacrifice we are called upon to make. 
 No; let me first say if there be a sacrifice, if that 
 can be shown, I will go confidently to my country- 
 men, I will tell them what it is, and I will ask them 
 to make it. Nowadays a great deal too much atten- 
 tion is paid to what is called the sacrifice; no atten- 
 tion is given to what is the gain. But, although I
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 47 
 
 ^^ Lord Rosebery may be left to answer for 
 liimself. He now prefers a tariff revenue to 
 one obtained by taxation of unearned incre- 
 ment, super-tax, and deatli-duties.
 
 48 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 would not hesitate to ask you for a sacrifice if a 
 sacrifice were needed to keep together the Empire to 
 which I attach so much importance, I do not beheve 
 that there would be any sacrifice at all. This is an 
 arrangement between friends. This is a negotiation 
 between kinsmen. Can you not conceive the possi- 
 bility that both sides may gain and neither lose? 
 
 Twelve years ago another great man — Mr. Cecil 
 Rhodes — with one of those flashes of insight and 
 genius which made him greater than ordinary men, 
 took advantage of his position as Prime Minister of 
 the Cape Colony to write letters, which have recently 
 been published, to the then Prime Minister of Canada 
 and the Prime Minister of New South Wales. He 
 said in one of these letters: "The whole thing lies 
 in the question — Can we invent some tie with our 
 Mother Country that will prevent separation ? It 
 must be a practical one. The curse is that English 
 politicians cannot see the future." ^^ 
 
 Well, I ask the same question, Can we invent 
 a tie, which must be a practical one, which will pre- 
 vent separation ? and I make the same answer as 
 Mr. Rhodes, who suggested reciprocal preference, 
 and I say that it is only by commercial union, 
 reciprocal preference, that you can lay the founda- 
 tions of the confederation of the Empire to which we 
 all look forward as a brilliant possibility. 
 
 Now, I have told you w'hat you are to gain by 
 preference. You will gain the retention and the 
 increase of your best customers. You will gain work 
 for the enormous number of those who are now un- 
 employed;"* and you will pave the way for a firmer 
 and more enduring union of the Empire. ^^ What 
 will it cost you ? What do the Colonies ask ? They 
 ask a preference on their principal products.*^® You 
 cannot give them, at least it would be futik to offer
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 49 
 
 ^^ Mr. Rhodes' s power of forecasting the 
 future was vividly ilUistrated by his opinion 
 that the Transvaal could be easily and cheaply 
 conquered. No grosser miscalculation was ever 
 made in political history. 
 
 ^* Here is an explicit assertion that " Tariff 
 Reform means work for all," a proposition 
 which Mr. Lyttelton later declared to be worthy 
 of " a madman." But a. far greater increase of 
 trade than Mr. Chamberlain forecasted did 
 actually occur between 1903 and 1907 under 
 Free Trade conditions. When he spoke, there 
 was not an enormous number of unemployed. 
 But if there had been, what is to be thought 
 of his avowal that what chiefly moved him 
 was the Imperial problem ? 
 
 ^'"^ A union, that is, which in the terms of the 
 case could only be maintained by taxing the 
 food of the British people. 
 
 *^" Not "they," but the tariffists in power. 
 The Canadian agriculturists as a body have 
 expressly repudiated the pretence.
 
 50 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 lluMii, a preference on manufactured goods, because 
 at the present time the exports of manufactures of the 
 Colonies are entirely insignificant. You cannot, in 
 my opinion, give them a preference on raw material. 
 It has been said that I should propose such a tax; 
 but I repeat now, in the most explicit terms, that I 
 do not propose a tax on raw materials, which are a 
 necessity of our manufacturing trade. 
 
 What remains? Food. Therefore, if you wish 
 to have preference, if you desire to gain this increase, 
 if you wish to prevent separation, you must put a 
 tax on food. Now, there is the murder. The murder 
 is out. I said that in the House of Commons, and 
 I said a good deal more, but that is the only thing 
 of all that I said that my opponents have thought 
 it particularly interesting to quote. And you see 
 that on every wall, in the headlines of the leaflets of 
 the Cobden Club, in the speeches of the devotees of 
 free imports, in the arguments of those who dread 
 the responsibilities of Empire, but do not seem to 
 care much about the possibility of its dissolution ^^ — 
 all these, then, put in the forefront that Mr. Chamber- 
 lain says "You must tax truth." "You must tax 
 food." There is no need to tax truth, for that is 
 scarce enough already .^^ I w-as going to say that 
 this statement which they quote is true. But it is 
 only half the truth, and they never give you the 
 other half. You never see attached to this statement 
 that you must tax food the other words that I have 
 used in reference to this subject, that nothing that 
 I propose would add one farthing to the cost of living 
 to the working man, or to any family in this country. 
 How is that to be achieved ? I have been asked for 
 a plan. I have hesitated, because, as you will readily 
 see, no final plan can be proposed until a Govern- 
 ment is authorised by the people to enter into
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 51 
 
 ^'^ This follows upon a profession of anxiety 
 to exclude all personal bitterness and imputa- 
 tion of unworthy motive. 
 
 ^^ Then is there such superfluity of food as 
 to call for its taxation ?
 
 52 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 negotiations upon these principles. Until that 
 Government has had the opportunity of negotiating 
 with the Colonies, with foreign countries, and with 
 the heads and experts in all our great industries, any 
 plan must be at the present time more or less of a 
 sketch-plan. 
 
 But at the same time I recognise that you have 
 a right to call upon me for the broad outlines of my 
 plan, and those I will give you if you will bear with 
 me. You have heard it said that I propose to put 
 a duty of 5s. or los. a quarter on wheat. I propose 
 to put a low duty on foreign corn, no duty at all on 
 the corn coming from our British Possessions. But 
 I propose to put a low dut}^ on foreign corn, not 
 exceeding 2S. a quarter. I propose to put no tax 
 whatever on maize, partly because maize is a food 
 of some of the very poorest of the population, "^^ and 
 partly also because it is a raw material for the 
 farmers, who feed their pigs on it. I propose that 
 the corresponding tax which will have to be put on 
 flour should give a substantial preference to the 
 miller, and I do that in order to re-establish one of 
 our most ancient industries in this country,'^ believ- 
 ing that if that is done not only will more work be 
 found in agricultural districts, with some tendency, 
 perhaps, operating against the constant migration 
 from the country into the towns, and also because, 
 by re-establishing the milling industry in this 
 country, the offals, as they are called — the refuse of 
 the wheat — will remain in the country, and will give 
 to the farmers or the agricultural population a food 
 for their stock and their pigs at very much lower 
 rates."' 
 
 That will benefit not merely the great farmer, 
 but it will benefit the little man, the small owner of 
 a plot or even the allotment owner who keeps a single
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 53 
 
 ^^ Is not wheaten bread, then, a food of 
 some of the very poorest of the population ? 
 It is here taken for granted, be it observed, 
 that " the foreigner " will not pay. 
 
 ''^ An industry which has gone on increas- 
 ing under Free Trade. Our imports of flour 
 have fallen steadily from an average of 21 
 milHon cwts. in the years 1 896-1 900 to 11 
 millions in 1909 ! The milling industry is 
 brilhantly " re-estabhshed " by its own enter- 
 prise, without help from a tariff. 
 
 '^^ The offals yielded by our milling trade 
 are actually in excess of the home demand, 
 and are largely exported ! In 1909 the import 
 for home consumption was £764,460, and the 
 export £1,488,944 !
 
 54 ^tR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 pig. I am told by a high agricultural authority that 
 if this were done so great an effect would be produced 
 upon the price of the food of the animal that where 
 an agricultural labourer keeps one pig now he might 
 keep two in the futureJ^ I propose to put a small tax 
 of about 5 per cent, on foreign meat and dairy 
 produce. I propose to exclude bacon, because, once 
 more, bacon is a popular food with some of the 
 poorest of the population."^ It forms the staple food 
 for many of the poorest.''* And, lastly, I propose to 
 give a substantial preference to our Colonies upon 
 Colonial wines and perhaps upon Colonial fruits. 
 Well, those are the taxes, the new taxes, or altera- 
 tions of taxation which I propose as additions to your 
 present burdens. But I propose also some great re- 
 missions. I propose to take off three-fourths of the 
 duty on tea and half of the whole duty on sugar, with 
 a corresponding reduction on cocoa and coffee.^^ 
 
 Now, what will be the result of these changes, in 
 the first place upon the cost of living, in the second 
 place upon the Treasury ? As regards the cost of 
 living, I have accepted, for the purpose of argument, 
 the figures of the Board of Trade as to the consump- 
 tion of an ordinary workman's family, both in the 
 country districts and in the towns, and I find that if 
 he pays the whole of the new duties that I propose 
 to impose it would cost an agricultural labourer 16% 
 farthings per week more than at present, and the 
 artisan in the town 195^ farthings per week. In other 
 words, it would be about 4d. per week of an increase 
 to the expenditure of the agricultural labourer and 
 5d. per week on the expenditure of the artisan. But, 
 then, the reduction which I propose, means — taking 
 the consumption as it is declared by the Board of 
 Trade — the reduction would be, in the case of the
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 55 
 
 ^■^ The real effect of Mr. Chamberlain's policy 
 would be that the cost of all feeding stufts and 
 manures used by agriculturists would be in- 
 creased ; and dairy farmers could recoup them- 
 selves only by raising the price of milk. 
 
 ^^ And also with many of the rich ! Here, 
 again, it is admitted that " the foreigner " 
 will not pay. 
 
 ''* Mr. Cham.berlain seems to be unaware 
 that bacon is a relatively dear food. To call 
 it the staple food of many of the poorest is a 
 gross absurdity. 
 
 ^^ More than half of the duty on sugar, and 
 part of the duty on tea, were taken off by Mr. 
 Asquith without any addition to other food 
 taxes. The tariffists, therefore, cannot now 
 offer these remissions as an offset to new food 
 taxes. And if a Liberal Government should be 
 able to remove the whole of the breakfast-table 
 taxes, the tariff will be a sheer burden to its 
 full extent, with no remissions. Yet it will still 
 be proposed !
 
 56 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 agricultural labourer 17 farthings a week, and in the 
 case of the artisan 195^ farthings a week."^ 
 
 You will see, if you have followed me, that upon 
 the assumption that you pay the whole of the new 
 taxes yourselves, the agricultural labourer would be 
 half a farthing per week to the better, and the artisan 
 would be exactly the same. I have made this assump- 
 tion, but I do not believe in it. I do not believe that 
 these small taxes upon food would be paid to any 
 large extent by the consumers in this count^)^ I 
 believe, on the contrary, they would be paid by the 
 foreigner.''^ 
 
 Now, that doctrine can be supported by authorita- 
 tive evidence. In the first place, look at the econo- 
 mists — I am not speaking of the fourteen professors — 
 but take John Stuart Mill, take the late Professor 
 Sidgwick, and I could quote others now living. They 
 all agree that of any tax upon imports, especially if 
 the tax be moderate, a portion, at any rate, is paid by 
 the foreigner; and that is confirmed by experience.'* 
 I have gone carefully during the last few weeks into 
 the statistical tables not only of the United Kingdom, 
 but of other countries, and I find that neither in Ger- 
 many, nor in France, nor in Italy, nor in Sweden, 
 nor in the United Kingdom, when there has been the 
 imposition of a new^ duty or an increase of an old 
 duty, has the whole cost over a fair average of years 
 ever fallen upon the consumer. It has always been 
 partly paid by the foreigner.'^^ Well, how much is 
 paid by the foreigner? That, of course, must be a 
 matter of speculation, and, there again, I have gone 
 to one of the highest authorities of this country — 
 one of the highest of the official experts whom the 
 Government consult — and I have asked him for his 
 opinion, and in his opinion the incidence of a tax 
 depends upon the proportion between the free pro-
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 57 
 
 '^ Even apart from the fact that the pro- 
 posed compensator}-' reductions have already 
 been made, the calculation here presented is 
 worthless. The increased costs of bread, beef, 
 cheese, and eggs would alone exceed the pro- 
 posed remissions ; and no account is taken of 
 the increased cost of manufactures — clothing, 
 cutlery, crockery, and furniture. 
 
 ^' It will be observed that Mr. Chamberlain 
 finally says " they woiUd be paid," when his 
 previous language implied at most " they would 
 be paid to a more or less large extent." And 
 his definite phrase has been generally adopted 
 by his party, though his later argument implies 
 at most " they would be paid to some extent by 
 the foreigner." The fundamental insincerity of 
 the tariffist case is here flagrantly clear. If the 
 foreigner would pay the taxes on corn, meat, 
 and dairy produce, why in the nam.e of common 
 sense should he not pay the duties on maize, 
 bacon, and raw materials ? Either Mr. Cham- 
 berlain and his friends do not believe their own 
 doctrine, or they are incapable of following 
 their own arguments. 
 
 ^^ This is entirely untrue. Everything de- 
 pends on the degree of necessity of the import, 
 and Mill and others have always pointed this 
 out. A tax on a vitally necessary food is very 
 different from a tax on a luxury. 
 
 ^''' This also is untrue as regards articles 
 of necessity. Mr. Cliamberlain does not even 
 realise what evidence is needed to prove his 
 point. Comparison of prices under free trade 
 with contemporary prices under tariffs is 
 obviously necessary ; and his words show he 
 did not make the comparison.
 
 58 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 duction and the taxed production. In this case the 
 free production is the home production and the pro- 
 duction of the Colonies. The taxed production is the 
 production of the foreigner, and this gentleman is of 
 opinion that, if, for instance, the foreigner supplies, 
 as he does in the case of meat, two-ninths of the 
 consumption, the consumer only pays two-ninths of 
 the tax. If he supplies, as he does in the case of 
 corn, something like three-fourths of the consump- 
 tion, then the consumer pays three-fourths ofthetax.*^^ 
 If, as in dairy produce, he supplies half of the con- 
 sumption, then the consumer pays half of the tax. 
 This is a theory, like any other, that will be con- 
 tested,^^ but I believe it to be accurate, and, at all 
 events, as a matter of curiosity I have worked out 
 this question of the cost of living upon that assump- 
 tion, and I find that, if you take these proportions, 
 then the cost of the new duties would be 9^ farthings 
 to the agricultural labourer and 10 farthings to the 
 artisan, while the reduction would still be 17 farthings 
 to the labourer and 195^^ farthings to the artisan. 
 You see my point. If I give my opponents the 
 utmost advantage, if I say to them what I do not 
 believe, if I grant that the whole tax is paid by the 
 consumer, even in that case my proposal would give 
 as large a remission of taxation on the necessary 
 articles of his life as it imposes, and the budget at 
 the end of the week or the result at the end of the 
 year will be practically the same even if he pays the 
 whole duty. But if the consumer does not pay the 
 whole duty, then he will get all the advantages to 
 which I have already referred. In the case of the 
 agricultural labourer he will gain about 2d. a week, 
 and in the case of the town artisan he will gain 25^d. 
 a week.^^ 
 
 I feel how difficult it is to make either interesting
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 59 
 
 ^^ This is a bad miscalculation, whoever 
 made it. Where three-fourths of a food supply 
 is imported, the price will certainly rise by 
 the whole amount of the duty imposed, other 
 things being equal. 
 
 ^^ It is not only contested, it is disproved by 
 abundant experience. In France in igo8, when 
 the import of wheat was only one-fiftieth of 
 the total consumption, the average price of 
 wheat was 38s. 5d. per quarter, as against 
 32s. for home wheat and 36s. for foreign in 
 Britain, while the duty was 12s. 2d. per quarter. 
 The proportions do not even remotely approxi- 
 mate to those alleged by Mr. Chamberlain's 
 adviser. It may be taken as a rule that when 
 the import of wheat in France rises to 10 per 
 cent, of the consumption, the average price 
 rises by the full amount of the tax ; and in 
 Germany, where the import is now greater than 
 10 per cent., the price remains at the equivalent 
 of the English price plus the German tax. 
 
 ®^ As before, no account is taken of the 
 increased cost of manufactured articles.
 
 6o MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 or intelligible to a great audience like this the com- 
 plicated subject with which I have to deal. But this 
 is my opening declaration, and I feel that I ought to 
 leave nothing untold; at all events, to lay the whole 
 of the outlines of my scheme before the country. 
 
 Now, the next point, the last point I have to bring 
 before you, is that this advantage to the consumer 
 will involve a loss to the Exchequer. And you will 
 see why. The Exchequer, when it reduces tea or 
 sugar, loses the amount of the tax on the whole con- 
 sumption, but when it imposes a tax on corn or upon 
 meat it only gains the duty on a part of the consump- 
 tion, since it does not collect it either upon the colonial 
 or upon the home production. Well, I have had that 
 worked out for me, also by an expert, and I find, 
 even making allowance for growth in the colonial and 
 home production which would be likely to be the 
 result of the stimulus which we give to them — if you 
 make allowances for those articles which I do not 
 propose to tax — the loss to the Exchequer will be 
 ;^2, 800,000 per annum. How is it to be made up? 
 I propose to find it and to find more — in the other 
 branch of this policy of fiscal reform, in that part 
 of it which is sometimes called "retaliation" and 
 sometimes "reciprocity." Now, I cannot deal fully 
 with that subject to-night. I shall have other oppor- 
 tunities; but this I will point out to you, that in any 
 attempt to secure reciprocity we cannot hope to be 
 wholly successful. Nobody, I imagine, is sanguine 
 enough to believe that America or Germany and 
 France and Italy and all those countries are going to 
 drop the whole of their protective system because w-e 
 ask them to do so, or even because we threaten. What 
 I do hope is that they will reduce their duties**^ so 
 that worse things may not happen to them. But I 
 think we shall also have to raise ours. Now, a
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 6i 
 
 ^^ Finally, then, Mr. Chamberlain only 
 " hopes " that foreign nations will " reduce " 
 their duties, and this only for fear of still 
 higher duties. It is thus implicitly admitted 
 that, if we once put on a tariff, it will be 
 speedily raised should there be no reduction 
 of foreign tariffs. Now, in the first place, 
 tariffs never are reduced in response to the 
 mere raising of foreign tariffs ; when they 
 are reduced it is because of recognition of the 
 haiTn done by the domestic tariff. But, in the 
 second place, Mr. Chamberlain's principle of 
 Colonial Preference commits him to 7naintain- 
 ing his taxes when once they are set up. If 
 foreign countries did reduce theirs, he could 
 not respond by abolishing his " low " tariff, 
 for that would mean abolishing Colonial Pre- 
 ference. The foreign countries who send us 
 food (e.g., the United States), knowing this, 
 would not reduce their tariffs, whereupon, in 
 the terms of the case, the British tariffs would 
 be raised. The natural sequel would be a 
 Tariff War.
 
 62 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 moderate duty on all manufactured goods, not exceed- 
 ing lo per cent, on the average, but varying accord- 
 ing to the amount of labour in these goods — that is 
 to say, putting the higher rate on the finished manu- 
 factures, upon which most labour would be em- 
 ployed" in this country, and the lower duty on goods 
 on which very little or less labour has been employed 
 — a duty, I say, averaging lo per cent, would give the 
 Exchequer at the very least ;^9, 000,000 a year, while 
 it might be nearer ;^i5, 000,000 if we accept the Board 
 of Trade estimates of ^^148, 000,000 as the value of our 
 imports of manufactured and partly manufactured 
 goods.^^ Nine millions a year ! I have an idea that 
 the present Chancellor of the Exchequer would know 
 what to do with a full purse. For myself, if I were 
 in that onerous position — which may Heaven forfend 
 — I should use it in the first place to make up this 
 deficit of ;^2, 800,000 of which I have spoken ; and, 
 in the second place, I should use it for the further 
 reduction both of taxes on food and also of some other 
 taxes which press most hardly on different classes 
 of the community. Remember this, a new tax cannot 
 be lost if it comes to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 He cannot bury it in a stocking. He must do some- 
 thing with it, and the best thing he can do with it is 
 to remit other taxation .^^ 
 
 The principle of all this policy is that whereas 
 your present taxation, whether it be on food or any- 
 thing else, brings you revenue and nothing but 
 revenue, the taxation which I propose, which will 
 not increase your burdens, will gain for you in trade, 
 in employment,^^ in all that we most want to maintain, 
 the prosperity of our industries. The one is profitless 
 taxation, the other scientific taxation. 
 
 I have stated, then, the broad outline of the plan 
 which I propose. As I have said, this can only be
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 63 
 
 ^^ The proportion of labour cost to other 
 elements in cost is obviously highest in the case 
 of raw material. Why not then tax that ? 
 
 ^^ That is to sa}^ Mr. Chamberlain expects 
 nearly the whole of the taxed goods to come in 
 as bc-fore. There is, therefore, to be no appreci- 
 able amount of extra work for the British work- 
 man ! 
 
 ^^' Apparently, then, no provision was to have 
 been made for Old-Agc Pensions or for Naval 
 Defence ! 
 
 ^' We have just seen that there was to be 
 no gain in the matter of employment, since 
 the foreign goods were to come in as before. 
 And there would be increased cost of all 
 manufactures, to say nothing of food.
 
 64 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 filled up when a mandate has been given to the 
 Government, when they have the opportunity which 
 they desire to negotiate and discuss. It may be that 
 when we have these taxes, or when we are prepared to 
 put a tax on manufactured goods, we might be willing 
 to remit or reduce it if we could get corresponding 
 advantages from the country whose products would 
 thus be taxed.*^ It cannot, therefore, be precisely 
 stated now what it would bring in or what we should 
 do, but this is clear, that, whatever it was, we should 
 get something. ^^ We should either get something in 
 the shape of a reduction of other taxation or some- 
 thing in the shape of a reduction of those prohibitive 
 tariffs which now hamper so immensely our native 
 industries.^ There will be, according to this plan, 
 as I have said, no addition to the cost of living, but 
 only a transfer from one item to another. ^^ 
 
 It remains to ask. What will the Colonies say ? 
 I hear it said sometimes by people who I think have 
 never visited the Colonies, and do not know much 
 about them, that they will receive this offer with 
 contempt, that they wall spurn it, or that if they accept 
 it they will give nothing in return. Well, I differ 
 from these critics. I do not do this injustice to the 
 patriotism or the good sense of the Colonies. When 
 the Prime Ministers, representing all the several 
 States of the Empire, were here, this was the matter 
 of most interesting discussion. Then it was that 
 they pressed upon the Government the consideration 
 of this question. They did not press — it is wrong, 
 it is wicked, to say that they pressed it in any spirit 
 of selfishness — with any idea of exclusive benefit to 
 themselves. No; they had IMr. Rhodes's ideal in 
 their minds. They asked for it as a tie, a practical 
 tie, which should prevent separation,^^ and I do not 
 believe that they will treat ungenerously any offer
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 6s 
 
 ^^ The United States send us chiefly food, 
 tobacco, oil, and raw materials. As we should 
 go on taxing their food exports to us for pur- 
 poses of Colonial Preference, they would have 
 no inducement whatever to reduce their tariff 
 against us. 
 
 ^^ We could not possibly get anything better 
 than " most-favoured-nation " treatment, which 
 we get at present. 
 
 ^'-' These tariffs are equally prohibitive to the 
 trade of all other countries with the countries 
 imposing them. If they will not yield to each 
 other's high tariffs, they will not yield to ours. 
 
 ^^ The futility of this promise has been 
 shown above, and it is shown more clearly by 
 the notorious experience of Protectionist coun- 
 tries, in which the increased cost of living 
 is now, 1911, the most urgent of all their 
 political problems. 
 
 ^^ Representative men in the Colonies have 
 since declared that they iiever made Colonial 
 adhesion to the Empire dependent upon fiscal 
 preferences.
 
 66 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 thai we may now be able to make them. They have 
 not waited for an offer. Already Canada has given 
 you a preference of 33 >^ per cent., South Africa has 
 given you a preference of 25 per cent., New Zealand 
 iias offered a preference of 10 per cent.^' The Premier 
 of Australia has promised to bring before Parliament 
 a similar proposal. They have done all this in con- 
 fidence, in faith which I am certain will not be dis- 
 appointed — in faith that you will not be ungrateful, 
 that you w-ill not be unmindful of the influences which 
 have w-eighed with them, that you will share their 
 loyalty and devotion to an Empire which is theirs 
 as well as ours, and which they also have done some- 
 thing to maintain. 
 
 And it is because I sympathise with their object, 
 it is because I appreciate the wisdom, aye, the 
 generosity of their offer, it is because I see that things 
 are moving and that an opportunity now in your 
 hands once lost will never recur; it is because I 
 believe that this policy will consolidate the Empire 
 — the Empire which I believe to be the security for 
 peace and for the maintenance of our great British 
 traditions — it is for all these things, and, believe me, 
 for no personal ambition, that I have given up the 
 office which I was so proud to hold, and that now, 
 W'hen I might, I think, fairly claim a period of rest, 
 I have taken up new burdens, and come before you 
 as a missionary of Empire, to urge upon you again, 
 as I did in the old times, when I protested against 
 the disruption of the United Kingdom, once again 
 to warn you, to urge you, to implore you to do 
 nothing that w^ll tend towards the disintegration of 
 the Empire, not to refuse to sacrifice a futile super- 
 stition, an inept prejudice,** and thereby to lose 
 the results of centuries of noble effort and patriotic 
 endeavour.
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 67 
 
 ^^ It is not denied, however, that if British 
 goods under the preference were found in any 
 large quantity to undersell Colonial, the Colonial 
 Protectionists would demand that the minimum 
 should be raised. In giving us a preference, 
 the Colonies sacrifice nothing. In setting up 
 a tariff to give them a preference, we should 
 sacrifice much. The Canadian preference, it 
 should be remembered, was the result of pres- 
 sure by the Free Trade party in Canada, under 
 a Premier who holds Free Trade principles, 
 though unable to get rid of the Canadian tariff. 
 And the Free Traders of Canada now demand 
 that a gradually increasing preference shall 
 be given to British goods without any quid pro 
 quo beyond our open ports. 
 
 ^'^ That is to say, Mr. Chamberlain had been 
 living upon futile superstitions and inept pre- 
 judices for by far the greater part of his life. 
 A little modesty and diffidence might in such 
 circumstances have been looked for.
 
 68 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 The Greenock Speech, Oct. 7, 1903. 
 
 It is a great privilege, which, however, entails a great 
 responsibiHty, to be permitted to address two such 
 meetings as that of last night and that of to-night 
 in the course of twenty-four hours. When I accepted, 
 a short time ago, a cordial invitation to Glasgow, I 
 received very shortly afterwards another invitation, 
 most moderate in its expectations, that I would pay 
 a passing visit to Greenock also, when I would appear 
 at a luncheon, and I was assured that at that luncheon 
 nobody would expect me to say more than a few 
 words. These things have a habit of developing 
 into inconvenient dimensions, and so to-night I find 
 myself addressing this magnificent meeting, perhaps 
 with insufficient preparation, but, at all events, with 
 a deep sense of the obligation under which you lay 
 me by your readiness to listen to what I have to 
 say. I am glad to pay my first visit to Greenock. 
 I am glad at this time especially to come amongst you 
 and to confer with a population whose commercial 
 history is rather different from that of many of our 
 great cities, and has an especial bearing upon the 
 great question that I want to discuss. 
 
 Now, last night I said that I did not regard this 
 question as a political question. It is an economic 
 question. It is a business question. It is a national 
 question.'^ It affects every man, woman, and child 
 in the country, but it ought not to be a party ques- 
 tion. ^^ And for my own part I hope that there are 
 many Liberals present here to-night, and that, how- 
 ever much they may differ now, and however much 
 they may continue to differ, from me upon every 
 purely party and political question, that will not 
 prevent them in the least from giving me a fair
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 69 
 
 °^ Political questions, then, are neither 
 " national," " economic," nor " business." 
 They would seem, thus, to be necessarily 
 ecclesiastical only. 
 
 '" Within a few years Mr. Chamberlain's 
 " machine " was expelling from the Unionist 
 party all those who did not accept his views on 
 tariffs.
 
 70 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 hearincf on a matter which, as I have said, is above 
 all party and above all persons. 
 
 I dealt last night more especially with one great 
 branch of the question of fiscal reform — that is, the 
 question of preference with our Colonies — and I did 
 that because it is, of all the branches of this question, 
 the one which most deeply moves me to exertion ; 
 and, in the second place, because it is the most urgent 
 part of the question." We have been going on for a 
 great number of years, much too long, with our ex- 
 isting policy, and, so far as foreign countries are con- 
 cerned, we might go on a little longer. A great part 
 of the mischief has been done, and I do not know 
 that we should suffer greatly if we waited a little 
 longer. But that is not possible with regard to the 
 Colonies. The Colonies have given you an oppor- 
 tunity. You cannot play fast and loose with these 
 kinsmen of yours. There is no doubt in what spirit 
 they have made their offer to you. It is in a spirit of 
 brotherhood, and in a spirit of unselfish'^ desire to 
 promote the interests of the Empire of which they 
 as well as w^e form an integral part. But you cannot 
 expect them to wait for ever on your pleasure. If 
 you think that your interests lie in another direction, 
 they will tell you to follow your interests. They are 
 not suppliants at your feet. They are not asking you 
 to make any sacrifice for them.^^ They think that 
 something can be done which may involve concession 
 on both sides, but which in the long run wall be good 
 for both. Have you, in your wisdom, come to the 
 conclusion that what is asked from you is more than 
 what they have to give in return ? They make no 
 complaint, they accept your decision. But they will 
 not repeat the offer. And then they will perhaps 
 receive all the reciprocal advantages,"" which they 
 ask from you, from other countries, which are not
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 71 
 
 ''^ Thus, unemployment is neither the most 
 urgent consideration, nor the one that most 
 deeply moved Mr. Chamberlain to exertion. 
 Yet he had declared, in the previous speech, 
 that it was ** enormous." 
 
 ^^ Seeing that the demand was for a deal 
 which, by Mr. Chamberlain's own account, 
 we might have made on commercial grounds 
 with any other country, the " unselfish " 
 theory is a bold stroke of imagination. 
 
 ^° That is precisel}^ what Colonial tariffists 
 are asking. True, the mass of the farmers of 
 Canada do not ask it. They do not ask for 
 Colonial Preference at all ; tlicy want relief 
 from their own very burdensome tariff. 
 
 ^°" If the proposal is one for reciprocal advan- 
 tages, in what way is it " unselfish " ?
 
 72 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 possessed of our prejudices and superstitions, and 
 whicli will ])e ready at once to jump at any offer of 
 the kind that is now made to us.'"' 
 
 That being the case for preferential arrangements 
 with the Colonies, I proceed to-night to speak a little 
 more fully of the other branch of our policy, which 
 is sometimes called "retaliation," and sometimes 
 called "reciprocity." Now, I begin with a confession 
 of faith. I was brought up in the pure doctrine of 
 Free Trade. I will not say that I believed it to be 
 inspired, but I believed the statements of those who 
 had preached it and who induced the country to adopt 
 it. I accepted it as a settled fact; and nobody could 
 have surprised me more than if, twenty, or still more, 
 thirty years ago, he had (old me that I should now 
 be criticising the doctrine which I then accepted. 
 But thirty years is a long time. Has nothing changed 
 in thirty years ? Everything has changed. Politics 
 have changed, science has changed, and trade has 
 changed. The conditions with which we have to 
 deal are altogether different from the conditions with 
 which we had to deal thirty years ago.'^'' 
 
 Let no man say, because to-day you and I are 
 in favour of retaliation, or what our opponents call 
 " Protection " — let no man say that that is at all 
 inconsistent with our having been Free Traders under 
 totally different conditions. When the temperature 
 goes up to a hundred degrees, I put on my thinnest 
 clothes. When it goes down below zero, there is 
 nothing too warm for me to wear. When the 
 prophecies of those who supported Free Trade 
 appeared to be in the course of realisation, what 
 reason was there why any of us should consider the 
 subject or should express any doubts ? And for 
 something like five-and-twenty or thirty years after 
 Free Trade was preached and adopted, there was no
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 73 
 
 ^"^ What would be the nature of the " jump " 
 in question ? Has any foreign country offered 
 lower import rates to Colonial than to British 
 goods ? And is it pretended that the Colonies 
 will give lower rates to German, say, than to 
 British goods ? 
 
 102 <' Thirty years " carries us back to 1873 ; 
 " twenty years " to 1883. Is it implied that 
 not since 1883 had ]\Ir. Chamberlain been a 
 convinced Free Trader ? If so, he passes his 
 own condemnation. In 1885 he was using 
 language of the strongest kind against Pro- 
 tectionism.
 
 74 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 doubt wlialevcr in my mind that it was a good policy 
 for this country, and that our country prospered under 
 it more than it would have done under any other 
 system. That was for five-and-twenty years .'^^ But 
 what has happened during the last thirty years? In 
 the last thirty years the whole conditions have 
 changed; ^"' and it seems to me to be not the policy 
 of a Liberal, not the policy of a Radical, as I under- 
 stood such a policy twenty or thirty years ago, 
 but the policy of a rabid and a reactionary Tory to 
 say that when all the conditions have changed you 
 should not change, your policy too. 
 
 Now, let us look at some of these changes. There 
 was nothing upon which Mr. Cobden was more 
 assured, more honestly convinced, than that Free 
 Trade, as he understood it, was such a good thing 
 that if we gave the example every other nation would 
 follow us. He said in the most positive terms that 
 if we adopted a policy of Free Trade five years would 
 not pass over before all the other nations adopted our 
 views, and if they did not — he refused to conceive 
 such a hypothesis — but his arguments went to show 
 that if they did not adopt our policy then they would 
 be ruined, and we should gain by their distress.^'^^ We 
 are a great people, but, after all, I have never been 
 able to believe that all the wasdom in the world was 
 absolutely domiciled in this country. I have a great 
 opinion of our American cousins. But I have an 
 idea that they are people w'ith w'hom, if you wish to 
 deal in the most friendly spirit, you had better not 
 shut your eyes. I have some considerable respect for 
 the German people. I recognise that they have been 
 and still are the most scientifically educated people 
 on the face of the globe. I have a great respect and 
 a great friendship towards our neighbours the
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 75 
 
 ^^^ Here it is implied that Mr. Chamberlain 
 had doubts about Free Trade as early as about 
 1874. Then he was on his own showing guilty 
 of gross insincerity on the subject in the 
 'eighties. 
 
 ^^^ In the next paragraph Mr. Chamberlain, 
 in effect, alleges that there have been no vital 
 changes since 1846. Hostile tariffs, he repre- 
 sents, have remained the same all along. 
 This, of course, is not true, but the alternate 
 assertion, that tariffs have always been against 
 us, and that they have only recently been so, 
 is symptomatic. The truth is, in brief, that 
 hostile tariffs were high against us before 
 1846, that some were thereafter reduced, that 
 the American was a.gain made high in the 
 'sixties, and that others have been raised 
 since the 'seventies. The present conditions 
 of hostile tariffs were all established in the 
 'eighties, when Mr. Chamberlain was a strong 
 Free Trader. 
 
 ^'-•^ This passage is one of Mr. Chamberlain's 
 worst misrepresentations. Mr. Cobden's words 
 on the subject are well known, and were uttered 
 not as a general or habitual argument for Free 
 Trade, but only when the main battle over 
 the Corn Laws had been won. It was in 
 January, 1846, that he said : "I beheve that 
 if you . . . adopt Free Trade in its sim- 
 plicity there will not be a tariff in Europe that 
 wiU not be changed in less than five years to 
 follow your example." Free Trade has never 
 been " adopted in its simplicity," for that 
 would mean abolishing tlic customs duties on 
 tobacco and alcohol. Cobden never predicted 
 " ruin " for foreign countries. But, as a matter
 
 76 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 French. I think they have done immense service to 
 knowledge and civilisation in our past history. 
 
 I do not believe that all these people are fools; 
 and when I find that they *°^ absolutely refuse to adopt 
 the Cobdenite principle and to accept Free Trade as 
 the model and example which it w-as represented to 
 be, I say to myself, " It is worth thinking over. I have 
 perhaps been wrong." But that alone would not 
 have moved me, if, in spite of any respect for the 
 Americans, the French, and the Germans, I had 
 found that the facts were against them. If I had 
 found that they w^ere being ruined because they had 
 adopted Protection, and we were progressing 
 enormously because w-e had adopted Free Trade, 
 then I should have stuck to Free Trade in spite of 
 the majority being against me. 
 
 But now, what is the policy of these other nations, 
 deliberately adopted and deliberately pursued? It is 
 a policy to use tariffs to increase home trade, and, 
 if you like, to exclude foreign trade. 
 
 All these nations to which I have referred, and 
 every other civilised nation on the face of the earth, 
 have adopted a tariff"' with the object of keeping the 
 home market to the home population, and not from 
 any want of friendship to us. I do not believe their 
 policy has been in the slightest degree actuated by 
 ill-feeling to Great Britain, but because they thought 
 it was necessary for their own security and prosperity 
 they have done everything in their power to shut 
 out British goods. They have passed tariff after 
 tariff. They began perhaps with a low tariff. They 
 continued it as long as it was successful.^"* And if 
 they found it ceased to do what it was wanted to do,
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 77 
 
 of fact, foreign tariffs were changed in a num- 
 ber of cases as a result of our policy — the 
 American in 1846, the Dutch in 1854, the 
 French in i860, the Prussian in 1864 and 
 1876. 
 
 ^'^^ Nations are not entities with one mind. 
 There have always been Free Traders in Ger- 
 many, France, and America since Adam Smith 
 at least. In Mr. Chamberlain's own fashion we 
 are entitled to assert that the people of the 
 United Kingdom absolutely refuse to adopt 
 Protection. Are they, then, " fools " ? *' The 
 German people " are not Protectionists. The 
 land-owning class, who \\'ere Free Traders 
 down to the 'seventies, turned Protectionist 
 when American corn began to come in cheap. 
 Bismarck easily induced them to join with 
 the manufacturers in voting for a tariff that 
 enriched both. The " people " were practically 
 never consulted, and are to-day bitterly opposed 
 to the food taxes under which they suffer. 
 
 ^^'' Apparently Mr. Chamberlain knew nothing 
 of the fiscal policy of Holland, which has a 
 revenue tariff so low as to be practically non- 
 protective. 
 
 ^"^ Quite so. And as the rise began very soon 
 after the first imposition, it follows that the 
 tariff was not successful. In effect, every rise 
 of a tariff is a confession of failure. And 
 the rises are chronic.
 
 78 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 they increased it ; and what it was wanted to do was 
 to exclude foreign manufactures, and above all to 
 exclude the manufactures of this country, which at 
 one time held the supremacy of trade in the world, 
 and which was the greatest centre of industry in any 
 part of it. 
 
 Now, that was their deliberate policy ; there is no 
 doubt about that. Has it succeeded? Yes, it has, 
 whether it was right or wrong. What these people 
 intended to do they have done, and if you look back 
 for any term of years you will find that the exports 
 of British manufactures have fallen off to these 
 countries, while their exports to us have risen .^"^ 
 Well, I don't know — there may be something wrong 
 in my constitution, but I have never liked being 
 hit without striking back again. But there are some 
 people who like to be trampled upon. I admire them, 
 but I will not follow their example. I am an advocate 
 of peace, no man more so. I wish to live quietly, 
 comfortably, and in harmony with all my fellow- 
 creatures. But I am not in favour of peace at any 
 price. 
 
 I am a Free Trader. I want to have free exchange 
 with all the nations of the world, but if they will not 
 exchange with me, then I am not a Free Trader at 
 any price."" And again I say it may be a defect in 
 my constitution, but it seems to me that these things 
 go together, and that the men who do not care for 
 the Empire, the men who will sooner suffer injustice 
 than go to war, the men who would surrender rather 
 than take up arms in their own defence — those are 
 the men who also seem to be in favour of doing, are 
 consistently in favour of doing in trade exactly what 
 they are willing to do in political relations.'" I do 
 not care to what party they belong. I am not one 
 of that party, and accordingly, when I find that is
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 79 
 
 ^^'■^ This is simply untrue, as we have already- 
 seen. And if we take the trade movement since 
 Mr. Chamberlain spoke, we find that while 
 German exports of manufactures to us (includ- 
 ing goods re-exported) in the years 1904-7 rose 
 only from £34.3 to £38.5 millions, our consign- 
 ments of manufactures to Germany in the 
 same period rose from £18.5 to £29.7 millions. 
 In the same period, French exports of manu- 
 factures to us (including re-exports) rose only 
 from £26.6 to £27.6 millions (a fall from 1905-6), 
 while ours to France rose from £9.8 to £14.5 
 millions ; and those of the United States to 
 us (including goods re-exported) rose only from 
 £19.6 to £20.2 millions, while ours to the States 
 rose from £15.2 to £25 millions. 
 
 ^^'^ These arguments, if valid or rational now, 
 were equally valid and rational all along. Why, 
 then, was not Mr. Chamberlain a tarifhst twenty 
 or thirty years ago ? 
 
 ^^^ As Mr. Chamberlain professes to propose 
 a profitable policy, and not merely retaliation 
 for retaliation's sake, all this passage is undis- 
 guisedly an appeal to the worst and stupidest 
 passions of his auditory.
 
 8o MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 the effect of this policy on the part of other countries, 
 I look about for a means of meeting it. 
 
 Last night I said, quoting from figures, that the 
 exports of British manufactures to the principal pro- 
 tected countries had fallen over ;^42, 000,000 in the 
 course of thirty years. The Glasgow Herald this 
 morning says incidentally — I forget the exact \vords 
 — but they were to the effect that I ought not to have 
 chosen that particular period. I assure the Glasgow 
 Herald that I did not choose it with any sinister pur- 
 pose. I thought thirty years was a good long time 
 and a fair time to go back."^ I invite them to take any 
 other period, I do not care what. In this controversy 
 which I am commencing here I use figures as illus- 
 trations. I do not pretend that they are proofs. 
 The proof will be found in the argument, and not in 
 the figures. But I use figures as illustrations to show 
 what the argument is."' The argument which I used, 
 and which I defy the Glasgow Herald to contradict — 
 the argument is that since these tariffs were raised 
 against us our exports to the countries which raised 
 them have been continually decreasing."* Yes ; but 
 that is not all. If their prosperity had been going 
 down in equal proportion it would be no argument at 
 all. While our exports to them have continually been 
 decreasing, their exports to us have continually been 
 increasing. How do the Free Traders explain that ? 
 According to their view these foolish Americans, 
 these ridiculous Germans, these antiquated French- 
 men, have all been ruining themselves all this time. 
 They may have kept their home market. That is all 
 very well. But they would have lost their foreign 
 market. How could people whose cost of living has 
 been raised — how could people who have the little 
 loaf and not the big loaf — how could these people who 
 are hampered by tariffs. Protection, while they keep
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 
 
 ^^^ This is an evasion of the criticism. It 
 was not the length of the period chosen, but 
 the selection of a year of inflated prices for 
 the starting-point, that made Mr. Chamber- 
 lain's argument disingenuous. 
 
 ^^^ A transparent sophism. The argument 
 without the figures is blank assertion. The 
 figures were the sole proofs offered. If they 
 were not proofs, none were given. And the 
 figures selected were mystifications, inasmuch 
 as they contrasted a year of inflated prices 
 with one of low prices, suppressing the facts 
 as to the volume of trade done. 
 
 ^^■^This, once more, is untrue. In the years 
 1885-89, when our exports to Germany had 
 fallen below the average of 1865-69, their 
 average was £18 millions ; in 1895-99 it was 
 £23 millions ; and in 1900-4 it was £24.6 
 millions, the highest average up to that date, 
 with the exception of the period 1870-74, when 
 prices were so inflated. In the year 1898 our 
 exports of manufactures to the United States 
 had fallen to £12.5 millions, their lowest figure 
 for many years ; but in 1902 they had risen 
 to £19.4 milhons, while U.S. exports of manu- 
 factures to us (which include leather, kerosene, 
 and other virtual " raw materials ") had risen 
 only from £17.5 to £20.9 millions. Mr. Cham- 
 berlain here makes statements which are simply 
 false, offering no figures whatever.
 
 82 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 their own trade, as I have said, how could they 
 do a foreign trade ? *'' It may be very extra- 
 ordinary, but they have done it. Their export trade 
 has increased in very much greater proportion than 
 our trade,"^ the trade of the Free Trade country which 
 has the big loaf, which has all this freedom and none 
 of these disadvantages. I say that is a state of things 
 which demands consideration. We are losing both 
 ways. We are losing our foreign markets, because 
 whenever we begin to do a trade the door is slammed 
 in our faces with a whacking tariff. We go to another. 
 We do it for a few months or for a few years, but 
 again a tariff is imposed, and that is shut out."' And 
 one industry after another suffers in a similar way ; 
 and in that way we lose, although not altogether, our 
 foreign trade,"* and, as if that was not enough, these 
 same foreigners w^ho shut us out, invade our markets, 
 take the work out of the hands of our v.orking people, 
 and leave us doubly injured."^ 
 
 Now, I say that is unfair and one-sided. In my 
 opinion, it threatens more seriously the position of 
 every manufacturer, and, above all, of every working 
 man in this kingdom. It threatens the position of the 
 manufacturer. He may lose all his capital. His 
 buildings may be empty ; but after all he wall perhaps 
 have something left, and he can invest that in manu- 
 facture in some foreign country, where he w411 give 
 employment to some foreign workmen.^^° Yes, the 
 manufacturer may therefore save himself. And it is 
 not for him that I am chiefly concerned. It is for 
 you — the working men. I say to you the loss of em- 
 ployment means more than loss of capital to any 
 manufacturer. You cannot live upon your invest- 
 ments in a foreign country. You live on the labour 
 of your hands — and, if that labour is taken from you.
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 83 
 
 "^ Mr. Chamberlain's friends are constantly 
 telling us that it is done by dumping! The 
 protected manufacturer sells dear to his own 
 countrymen, and cheap to other nations. And 
 this plundering of the exporter's own nation is 
 held up as a proof of prosperity ! 
 
 11° Another untruth, exposed above. 
 
 "'' Mr. Chamberlain is careful to name neither 
 countries nor industries in this unillustrated 
 fable. 
 
 ^^^ All the while the volume of our foreign 
 trade had been largely increasing ! 
 
 11^ How, then, are the imported manufac- 
 tures paid for ? They can represent only (i) 
 payment for exports, (2) payment for freights, 
 (3) payment for insurance, (4) interest on 
 foreign investments. Which of these forms of 
 national revenue would Mr. Chamberlain refuse 
 to receive ? If we import more we must be 
 exporting more or doing more freight-carry- 
 ing, which is an industry, like another. If we 
 are receiving more interest we must have 
 exported more goods to constitute the invest- 
 ment returning the interest. Mr. Chamber- 
 lain's picture is a chimera. 
 
 ^2° In that case, the export of the capital 
 must be made in goods made by British work- 
 men ; and 710 interest will come in, so that
 
 84 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 you have no recourse, except, perhaps, to learn 
 French or German. 
 
 Now I go back for a minute to consider the im- 
 portance of getting that question answered. If there 
 are Free Traders — I should rather say Free Importers, 
 because in a sense we are all Free Traders — if there 
 are any Free Importers in Greenock, and you have an 
 opportunity of discussing this matter with them after- 
 wards in a quiet and friendly way, ask them this 
 question : You say Protection or Retaliation will be 
 very bad for this kingdom. Well, how do you 
 account for the fact that all these great nations, with- 
 out exception, which have adopted the system which 
 you say is bad for them have prospered more than 
 you have done ? "^ The Cobden Club says it is all 
 right. But the Cobden Club has not answered that 
 question;'" and I advise it to write to its foreign mem- 
 bers, and see whether they can tell it why Germany 
 and France and the United States of America — and if 
 you will remove all these from the calculation, then I 
 will take small countries, such a country as Sweden, 
 for instance"'— why have all those countries prospered 
 under a system which they declare would be ruinous 
 to us ? When that question is answered, I think my 
 occupation will be gone. I shall hide my diminished 
 head, and make room for the foreign members. Well, 
 now, I do not believe that all these foreign countries 
 are wrong. I believe they are better strategists than 
 we have been. This policy, as announced by 
 McKinley in America, and not by McKinley alone, 
 but by the greatest Americans long before his time, 
 by President Lincoln, by men like the original foun- 
 ders of the Constitution — this policy announced in 
 Germany by Prince Bismarck, who was in his time 
 a rather considerable personage, announced in
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 85 
 
 exports will increase and imports decrease. 
 What would Mr. Chamberlain have ? 
 
 ^2^ A reiteration of the untruth. 
 
 ^^^ The Cob den Club, like other people, had 
 shown that the " question " was a false asser- 
 tion. 
 
 i~^ The case of Sweden is specially fatal to 
 Mr. Chamberlain. No sooner had he made his 
 statement than the response came in avowals 
 from Sweden of the bad state of her manu- 
 facturing industry by reason of her tariff. Her 
 exports of cotton in 1896 were 3f million 
 kroners ; in 1905, only 590,000 kroners ; and 
 while her exports of metal goods and machinery 
 rose from loj million kroners in 1890 to 25 
 millions (= about £1.4 milhons sterling) in 
 1900, her imports of these articles rose from 
 35 to 65 millions (74 milhons in 1899). British 
 exports to Sweden, in the years under Mr. 
 Chamberlain's survey, had actually risen from 
 £2.5 milhons in 1889 to £4.4 milhons in 190T, 
 while Swedish exports to Britain (mostly tim.- 
 ber, wood-pulp, and iron, not the higher manu- 
 factures) had actually fallen from £9.2 in 1889 
 to £8.3 in 1894. Swedish expansion had been 
 mainly on the side of raw materials.
 
 86 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 France by many of their most distinguished states- 
 men — this policy had a great deal behind it.^" 
 
 Its main idea was to keep for a manufacturing 
 country its home industry, to fortify the home in- 
 dustry, to make it impregnable ; then, having left the 
 fort behind, which no enemy could attack with 
 possible advantage, to move forward and to invade 
 other countries, and attack especially one country, 
 and that is our own, which we have left totally un- 
 guarded against all these assaults. We have left 
 it unguarded because we think we are wiser than all 
 the rest of the world — and the result has been, that 
 although our fort has not been taken yet, it has re- 
 ceived a very heavy battering. The time may come 
 when perhaps we shall be unable any longer to de- 
 fend it. 
 
 Now, these foreign countries have every advantage 
 in their attack. They do not come like unarmed 
 savages, even to attack such a defenceless village as 
 Great Britain, but they come armed with bounties of 
 every kind. They have none of the disadvantages — 
 I mean in an economic sense — from which we suffer.^" 
 We, in a spirit of humanity of which I entirely ap- 
 prove, have passed legislation — to which, I may say 
 I think without boasting, I myself contributed very 
 largely — to raise the standard of living amongst our 
 working people, to secure to them higher wages, to 
 save them from the competition of men of a low'er 
 social scale. We have surrounded them with regula- 
 tions which are intended to provide for their safety. 
 We have secured them, or the majority of them, 
 against the pecuniary loss which would follow upon 
 accidents incurred in the course of their employment. 
 
 There is not one of these things that I have not 
 supported. There is not one of them which I did not 
 honestly believe to have been for the advantage of the
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 87 
 
 ^2-^ Yet Mr. Chamberlain calls the McKinley 
 tariff " abominable," and he had derided Bis- 
 marck's Protectionism in the 'eighties. 
 
 1-6 Towards the close of this speech Mr. 
 Chamberlain will be found asseverating that 
 " we have nothing to fear from the foreigner."
 
 88 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 country. But they have all entailed expense. They 
 have all raised the cost of production ; and what could 
 be more illogical than to raise the cost of production 
 in this country in order to promote the welfare of the 
 working classes, and then to allow the products of 
 other countries — which are not surrounded by any 
 similar legislation, which are free from all similar cost 
 and expenditure'^^— to allow them freely to enter our 
 country in competition with our goods, which are 
 hampered in the struggle? I say to my subjects and 
 fellow-countrymen, and especially to the great mass 
 of the people who depend on their work for their 
 wages and for the subsistence of their families — I say 
 you are inconsistent, you are adopting a suicidal 
 course. If you allow this state of things to go on, 
 what will follow ? If these foreign goods come in 
 cheaper, one of two things must follow : either you 
 will have to give up the advantages you have gained, 
 either you will have to abolish and repeal the Fair 
 Wages Clauses and the Factory Acts and the Compen- 
 sation to Workmen Acts, either you will have to take 
 lower wages, or you will lose your work. You cannot 
 keep your work at this higher standard of living and 
 pay if at the same time you allow foreigners at a lower 
 standard and lower rate of pay"^to send their goods 
 freely in competition with yours. 
 
 The Cobden Club all this time rubs its hands ^^* in 
 the most patriotic spirit and says : "Ah, yes ; but how 
 cheaply we are buying ! " Yes, but have you thought 
 how this affects different classes in the community ? 
 Take the capitalist — the man living upon his income. 
 His interest is to buy in the cheapest market, because 
 he does not produce. The lower he can get every 
 article he can consume, the better for him. He need 
 not buy a single article in this country. He can invest 
 his money in foreign countries and live upon the
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 89 
 
 1-* That is to say, foreign labour, under 
 Protection, is in a much worse condition 
 THAN British, under Free Trade. Appar- 
 ently the Protectionist countries could not 
 afford to protect their workmen against exploit- 
 ation ! 
 
 ^2" Here the avowal is explicit. Why do the 
 prosperous foreigners earn less ? After Mr. 
 Chamberlain spoke, British wages continued to 
 rise, and labour conditions were still further 
 improved. They are now on the way to be 
 improved further still. 
 
 1^^ The Cobden Club rubs its hands, if at 
 all, over Mr. Chamberlain's suicidal confession 
 that the " prosperous " and protected foreigners 
 are much worse off than we !
 
 go MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 interest;'"' and then it will be said that the country 
 is growing" richer because he is growing richer. But 
 what about the working men ? What about the class 
 that depends upon having work in order to earn wages 
 or subsistence at all ? They cannot do without work ; 
 and yet the work cannot exist if the article is not 
 produced in this country."" This is the state of things 
 against which I am protesting. You have suffered 
 here in Greenock and in many other parts of the 
 country ; but your suffering has been nothing to what 
 it is going to be. I raise this question not without 
 some boldness in a time of prosperity; but a time of 
 depression is at hand/^' and what is going to happen 
 then ? 
 
 Now I call your attention to a matter of the 
 greatest interest and importance which has just come 
 to my knowledge. In a letter recently published in 
 ths Times a correspondent calls attention to an inter- 
 view which was held in Philadelphia and published in 
 the Philadelphia Ledger, a great newspaper of that 
 city, between a director of the American Steel Trust 
 and a reporter. The American Steel Trust is the 
 greatest of all the American Trusts. It produces at 
 the present time about 20,000,000 tons of steel per 
 annum, a very much greater quantity than is pro- 
 duced in this country. The director told the reporter 
 that trade was falling off. There are many reasons 
 for that. Financial difficulties in America seem likely 
 to hasten the result."'^ Orders are falling off; the de- 
 mand for the railways is less ; and this director antici- 
 pated that before long the American demand would 
 fall several millions of tons short of the American 
 supply."' "What are you going to do ? " said the re- 
 porter. "Oh," said he, "we have made all our pre- 
 parations. We are not going to reduce our output at 
 all. We are not going to blow out a single furnace.
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 91 
 
 12^ How, save by exporting goods, the mak- 
 ing of which employs home labour ? 
 
 130 ^^Q have just been told that our wages 
 are higher and our working conditions better 
 than those of our Protectionist rivals. 
 
 ^•"^^ After four 3'ears of truly unexampled 
 prosperity it came, the depression having hegnn 
 in the protected United States, where it was most 
 severe and has lasted longest. This country, 
 under Free Trade, was the last to feel the 
 depression, the first to emerge from it, and 
 its recovery has been marked by a greater as 
 well as a more rapid advance in its export 
 trade in manufactured articles than that of 
 any other country. 
 
 ^^^ Under a tariff 
 
 ^^^ A falhng off, that is, in cmplo3micnt 
 under a system of protection.
 
 92 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 No; if we did, that would be injurious to America. 
 We should have to turn out of our works into the 
 streets hundreds of thousands of American workmen. 
 And, therefore, what we are going to do, is to invade 
 foreign markets."'^* And now remember, it may not 
 be easy for them to invade the German market, or 
 the French market, or the Russian market, because 
 there they will find a tariff which, if necessary, can 
 be raised against them."* They will come to the only 
 free market, they will come to this country, and before 
 you are three or four years older, unless there is a 
 change in the situation, I warn you, you will have 
 dumped down in this country here perhaps millions 
 of tons of American iron."^ 
 
 There is no iron manufacturer in this country who 
 can regard such a prospect as that without the gravest 
 anxiety. You will see many ironworks closed, you 
 may see others continued at a loss, struggling for 
 better times; but what will become of the workmen 
 employed ? Hundreds of thousands of English work- 
 men will be thrown out of employment to make room 
 for hundreds of thousands of American workmen, 
 who are kept in employment even during bad times 
 by this system.*" I sympathise with the American 
 workman. I am very glad that he, by any means, 
 should be kept in employment; but, after all, I be- 
 long to this country, and I admit I am not cosmo- 
 politan enough to wish to see the happiness, success, 
 or prosperity of American workmen secured by the 
 starvation and the misery and the suffering of British 
 workmen. 
 
 And now I venture to say that no one has striven 
 more continuously than I have to advance the condi- 
 tion of the working people of this country; but of this 
 I am certain — that all I have done and all others have 
 done is as nothing in comparison with what may be
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 93 
 
 ^^■^ Such was the prediction ! What hap- 
 pened ? Exactly the reverse. Furnaces were 
 blown out by the score, and hundreds ol thou- 
 sands of American workmen were turned out 
 into the streets ! It was announced on July 
 14, 1904, by the American trade journal, The 
 Iron Age, that " 25 furnaces were blown out in 
 June, and there are now in blast only 188 out 
 of a total 359 ; 171 have been blown out." So 
 much for tarifhst prophec}'. 
 
 ^^^ In point of fact, dumping chronically goes 
 on between protected countries ! Americans 
 complain bitterly and chronically of German 
 dumping. 
 
 ^^^ And yet it did not come ! And the 
 framer of this prediction professes to smile at 
 the predictions of Cobden. 
 
 1^' All of which failed to happen. The English 
 iron and steel trade went on expanding, the 
 exports (excluding machiner}^) rising from 
 £33.3 millions in 1902 to £53.5 millions in 1907, 
 while the American exports rose only from 
 £g.6 millions in 1902 to £16.6 in 1907 ; the 
 German from ;f24.9 in 1902 to £30.1 in 1907 ; 
 and the French from £/[.^ millions in 1902 to 
 £5.8 in 1907 ! American dumping began in 
 1908 through sheer distress ! On the other hand, 
 British imports of iron and steel fell from 
 1,131,000 tons in 1902 (with an intervening 
 rise) to 935,000 tons in 1907.
 
 94 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 done. Free Education, the Factory Acts, Mining 
 Regulations, Fair Wages Clauses, Compensation for 
 Accidents — all of these are good, all of them have 
 been of great advantage ; but they are nothing in com- 
 parison with any policy or any legislation which 
 would ensure continuous employment, full employ- 
 ment, at fair wages ; and if your employment is filched 
 from you, if you have to accept starvation wages, if 
 you have to give up the advantages which you have 
 obtained, then I tell you that your loaf may be as big 
 as a mountain and as cheap as dirt, but you will be 
 in the long run the greatest sufferers.*^* 
 
 Let us look a little farther into the matter; and, 
 again, I will give you a figure or two as illustrations. 
 Take other periods if you like. This time, in defer- 
 ence to the Glasgow Herald, I will not take 1872 as a 
 starting-point. This time I will take 1882 — that is 
 twenty years ago. In the course of the twenty years 
 since 1882 the total imports of foreign manufactures 
 have increased ^64,000,000,"^ and meanwhile our ex- 
 ports of manufactures to these countries have in- 
 creased ;^ 1 2,000,000, so that on the balance we have 
 lost ;^52, 000,000."° Now, I know perfectly well that 
 it is very difficult to make people appreciate the mean- 
 ing of a million. People who very seldom see many 
 shillings or pounds together find it very difficult to 
 understand what ten hundred thousand pounds 
 means, and still more w^hat fifty-two times ten hundred 
 thousand pounds means. Therefore I intend, as far 
 as I can, throughout this discussion to translate 
 money into work. What would this fifty-two millions 
 of money have^given to you if you had been able to 
 keep it? ^^52, 000, 000 a year would have provided 
 constant employment at 30s. a week for 333,000 work- 
 people. It would have provided, of course, subsist- 
 ence for their families, that is, for more than 1,500,000
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 95 
 
 ^^^ An extremely cheap loaf must mean a 
 very large import. How could it be paid for, 
 save b}^ increased exports or increased shipping 
 work ? 
 
 ^^^ There is something wrong with Mr. Cham- 
 berlain's figures, as usual. Our imports of 
 manufactures from foreign countries in 1880 
 were £54.6 millions ; in 1900, £95.0 millions — 
 an increase of £40.4 millions only. 
 
 ^^•^ The allegation of " loss " in this connection 
 is a good instance of the state of hallucination 
 in which men of Mr. Chamberlain's school live. 
 Of the increased import of " manufactures," 
 the greater part was of virtual " raw material " 
 — i.e., of such articles as leather, paper, metals, 
 chemicals, etc., which, manufactured so far, are 
 the basis of further and higher manufactures. 
 Most of this we either cotdd not have manu- 
 factured, or could have manufactured only at 
 an increased cost in labour and capital. Every 
 pennyworth of the imports was paid for by 
 (a) exports, or {b) shipping services (which Mr. 
 Chamberlain never reckons), or (c) under- 
 writing, or (d) came as interest on capital 
 invested abroad. Had the imports been all 
 burned on landing, on Mr. Chamberlain's prin- 
 ciples, we should have gained by their full value. 
 It should be added that the figures before him 
 did not give the export of ships. In the period 
 since he spoke the total British export of manu- 
 factures has risen from £290 millions in 1903 
 to £430 millions in 1910.
 
 96 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 of people.'" We are all agreed that that would be 
 worth having. If you could employ to-morrow, if 
 a new trade suddenly sprang up anywhere which em- 
 ployed 333,000 men and kept 1,500,000 people in 
 comparative comfort, would you not say that the per- 
 son who brought it to you was the greatest philan- 
 thropist you had ever known ? 
 
 But what do the Free Traders say? No, I will 
 not call them Free Traders. What do Free Importers 
 say? They say : "Yes, it is quite true the foreigners 
 are doing the work of 333,000 British workmen, and 
 that they are earning the wages that would have 
 supported 1,500,000 British people. This is true."' 
 That does not matter in the least to the British work- 
 men or the British people, because they have found 
 other employment. They have been turned out of 
 this employment or that employment,"' but they have 
 gone into something else. They are getting just as 
 much. They are just as well off as they were before."* 
 They have not lost by the change, and they need not 
 complain because the foreigner has gained." That is 
 a very comforting doctrine for the arm-chair poli- 
 tician, but is it true ? 
 
 Now I come to a subject which has a particular 
 interest for a Greenock audience. It so happens that 
 you have in your midst a certain experience with 
 regard to this. You are some of the people whose 
 trade has been taken from you by the superior ad- 
 vantages of the foreigner. Has it injured you in the 
 slightest degree or not ? Do you care whether that 
 trade was lost or not, or whether it should be re- 
 established or not ? Would you like to see one after 
 another following it, always confident that your 
 friends the Cobden Club would still stay, "Oh, you 
 will find some other occupation " ? I say you are 
 an illustration. Of course, I refer to sugar. Greenock
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 97 
 
 ^*^ This assertion stands for sheer hallucina- 
 tion. The 330,000 in question z&ere not un- 
 employed, as Mr. Chamberlain in the next para- 
 graph implicitly admits. There is not the 
 slightest justification for the assertion that 
 they might have been employed in making goods 
 identical with those imported ; but if they had 
 been, they would necessarily have been earn- 
 ing less wages, and their employers would have 
 been making less profits. 
 
 ^^^ The Free Traders make no such admis- 
 sion. See last note. 
 
 ^^•"^ This assertion is a reckless fable. Mr. 
 Chamberlain has not even attempted to prove it. 
 
 ^^' They are necessarily earning more than 
 they could have earned in making the imported 
 classes of goods, supposing these to have been 
 producible by us.
 
 98 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 was one of the great centres of the sugar trade. You 
 had many refineries here — a profitable trade, it not 
 only employing a great number of workpeople itself, 
 but also giving employment in subsidiary industries 
 to any number of your countrymen/*" 
 
 Then comes the foreign competition, aided by 
 bounties, and your trade declines enormously. Only 
 the very best, the very richest, the most enterprising, 
 the most inventive, can possibly retain their hold 
 upon it.^^® If there had been no bounties and no unfair 
 competition of this kind, what would have happened? 
 In the last twenty or thirty years the consumption of 
 sugar throughout the world has increased enor- 
 mously. The consumption in this country has 
 increased enormously; and you would have had your 
 share. I do not hesitate to say that, if normal con- 
 ditions, equal fairness, had prevailed at this moment, 
 here in Greenock, quite independently of all other 
 industries which you may have, there would have 
 been in sugar alone ten times as many men employed 
 as there were in the most palmy days of the trade. "^ 
 But normal conditions have not been obtained. You 
 have been the sufferers ; and, as I have said, a great 
 many of your refineries have been closed. Capital 
 invested in them has been lost, and the workmen who 
 worked in them — what has become of them ? 
 
 Now, that is a question I should like to ask you. I 
 wish I could follow the life history of every man who 
 was employed in a sugar refinery or any industry 
 which was depending upon a sugar refinery, and who 
 has been thrown out of employment by unfair foreign 
 competition. Has he found other employment ? In 
 the House of Commons in a debate the other night, 
 when the resolution was finally passed approving the 
 Act which abolishes these bounties, there were men 
 to be found, not on one side of the House alone, who
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 99 
 
 i« Obviously " it " could give at best no 
 more employment to subsidiary industries than 
 would imported sugar ; and if the home-made 
 sugar were the dearer it would necessarily give 
 less employment. Here Mr. Chamberlain makes 
 much (fallaciously) of the " jam and pickle " 
 industries. In the next section he derides 
 them. 
 
 ^-^^ It is here explicitly admitted that the 
 most enterprising and inventive can and do 
 retain their hold. Then Protection is proposed 
 for the sake of the less energetic and capable. 
 This is what Free Traders have alwa^^s said. 
 
 ^*7 There appears to be nothing that Mr. 
 Chamberlain would " hesitate to say " ; but 
 this assertion is delirious, even for him. And 
 even while asserting such possibilities he 
 deliberately proposes to reduce the duty on 
 imported sugar by one-half !
 
 100 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 defended them, to my mind with extraordinary argu- 
 ments. One speaker in particular ventured to tell 
 the British House of Commons that, in his opinion, 
 our primary industries were possibly doomed, and 
 that we should find compensation in secondary and 
 subsidiary industries.'*® We were to depart from our 
 high position, lose those industries for which the 
 country has been so celebrated,"" which have made it 
 prosperous in the past. We are to deal w-ith inferior 
 and subsidiary industries. Sugar has gone. Let us 
 not weep for it — jam and pickles remain. '■^° Now, of 
 all these workmen, these independent artisans who 
 were engaged in refining sugar and in making the 
 machinery for sugar refining in this country, I would 
 like to know how many have found a resting-place, 
 have found equivalent wages and comfort in stirring 
 up jam-pots and bottling pickles?'*' 
 
 This doctrine, this favourite doctrine of the 
 transfer of labour, is a doctrine of pedants, who know 
 nothing of business, nothing of labour.'" It is not 
 true. When an industry is destroyed by any cause, 
 by competition as well as by anything else, the men 
 who are engaged in that suffer, whatever happens in 
 the future. Their children may be brought up to 
 new trades, but those who are in middle life, or past 
 middle life, feel the truth of the old proverb that "You 
 can't teach old dogs new tricks." You cannot teach 
 the men who have attained skill and efficiency in one 
 trade, at a moment's notice,'" skill and efficiency in 
 another. 
 
 Free imports have destroyed, at all events for the 
 time, and it is not easy to recover an industry when 
 it has once been lost — iDut they have destroyed sugar- 
 refining for a time as one of the great staple industries
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS loi 
 
 lis What is a primary industry, and what a 
 secondary ? Tariffists are wont expressly to 
 make light of primary industries, such as yarn- 
 spinning, and to magnify the secondary or 
 higher industries. But the great industries 
 which produce cottons, woollens, ships, machi- 
 nery, are more flourishing now than ever. 
 
 ^"^^ If any member said this, he erred grossly. 
 Sugar refining is not one of the industries which 
 have made Britain celebrated. 
 
 ^^^ Quite so; and "jam and pickles" and 
 other sugar-using industries employ far more 
 men now than were ever employed in refining 
 sugar. It is interesting to contrast the case 
 of fruit-growing Italy, where sugar-making is 
 protected. The product is abnormally dear, 
 and cannot be used in preserving fruit, of 
 which great quantities annually rot on the 
 ground. The preserving is done in Britain. 
 
 '^'^^ Mr. Chamberlain appears to suppose that 
 the use of contemptuous phrases about jam 
 and pickle-making may take the place of 
 statistics and argument. It .might be supposed 
 to be interesting to him to know that his sugar 
 policy threw idle thousands of workers in the 
 sugar-using industries. 
 
 152 During the earlier part of his career, Mr. 
 Chamberlain lejas a man of business. Then he 
 was a Free Trader. It is since giving up busi- 
 ness that he has turned tariflist. So he was 
 on his showing a pedant while he was in trade, 
 and becomes an expert in trade after leav- 
 ing it. 
 
 ^^^ No one ever said so. But this trouble has 
 existed all along, and was felt on a wide scale 
 when machinery was ousting hand-work. Then
 
 102 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 of the country/^* which it ought always to have re- 
 mained. They have destroyed agriculture.^^^ Mr. 
 Cobden said — and again I am sure he spoke the truth 
 as it appeared to him — that he was convinced that, 
 if his views were carried out, not an acre of ground 
 would go out of cultivation in this country, and no 
 tenant farmer would be worse off.'"" I am not here 
 to speak to an agricultural audience ; but if I were, 
 what a difference there would be between that expecta- 
 tion and hope of Mr. Cobden 's and the actual circum- 
 stances of the case ! Agriculture, as the greatest of 
 all trades and industries of this country, has been 
 practically destroyed. Sugar has gone. Silk has 
 gone. Iron is threatened. Wool is threatened. 
 Cotton will go I^" How long are you going to stand 
 it ? At the present moment these industries, and the 
 working men w'ho depend upon them, are like sheep 
 in a field. One by one they allow themselves to be 
 led to slaughter, and there is no combination, no ap- 
 parent prevision of what is in store for the rest of 
 them. Do you think, if you belong at the present 
 time to a prosperous industry, that your prosperity 
 will be allowed to continue? Do you think that the 
 same causes which have destroyed some of our in- 
 dustries, and which are in the course of destroying 
 others, will not be equally applicable to you when 
 your turn comes ? This is not a case in which selfish- 
 ness will pay. This is a case in which you should
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 103 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain, the " pedant," had not a 
 word to say on the subject. 
 
 ^^^ It never was an34hing of the kind. 
 
 ^'°° At the South Shields by-election, October, 
 1910, the tariffist candidate expressly told 
 the electors that agriculture is doing so well, 
 under Free Trade, that it now needs no Pro- 
 tection. 
 
 ^^° That remained the fact for thirty years. 
 The change was due to the granting of new 
 lands in the western United States to farmers 
 on the sole condition of working them. That 
 caused an abnormally cheap production of 
 wheat. The conditions are now becoming 
 normal, and British agriculture is broadly re- 
 covering. The assertion that it has been 
 " practically destro^^ed " is sheer folly. 
 
 ^'"'^ We have here the measure of Mr. 
 Chamberlain's insight and foresight. Sugar, so 
 far from being " gone," is believed to have 
 before it new developments ; and the sugar- 
 using industries, hard as they were hit by Mr. 
 Chamberlain's sugar policy, are prospering. 
 Silk exports rose from ;£'i,638,ooo, in 1900, to 
 £2,010,000 in 1907, while the imports fell from 
 £13.3 to £10.9 milhons. Of the threatened 
 iron, wool, and cotton industries, the progress 
 has been as follows : — 
 
 Iron and Steel Products 
 
 Exports Imp oris 
 
 1903 .. •• £35,000,000 .. .. £7,909.925 
 1907 .. .. 53,000,000 .. .. 7,215,179 
 
 (French exports in this period increased only from 
 £4.2 to £5.8 millions ; German, from £26.1 to £30.1 
 millions; those of the United States, from £8.3 to £16.6 
 millions — after having been £13.1 millions in 1901.)
 
 104 ^^I^- CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 take warning by the past, in which you can show 
 some foresight as to the future.^'^* 
 
 What is the remedy? What is it that the Prime 
 Minister proposed at Sheffield? He said (I am not 
 quoting his exact words) : Let us get rid of the chains 
 which we ourselves have forged, which have fettered 
 our action. Let us claim the same freedom as every 
 other civilised nation. Let us say to these foreign 
 countries, "Gentlemen, we desire to be friends with 
 you. We are Free Traders in the best sense of the 
 word. We are ready to exchange freely; but, if you 
 say that it is your settled policy that you will not buy 
 from us, we will tax your exports to us. We will not 
 look farther afield — no, we will look nearer home. 
 We will go to our own friends and kinsmen who are 
 perfectly ready to meet us on equal terms, who ask 
 only for reciprocal preference." 
 
 Then we are told that if we do this the foreigners 
 will be angry with us ! Has it come to that in Great 
 Britain ? It is a craven argument; it is worthy of the 
 Little Englander;"^ it is not possible for any man who 
 believes in his own country. The argument is absurd. 
 Who is to suffer? Are we so poor that we are at the 
 mercy of every foreign State,^^° that we cannot hold 
 our own, that we are to fear their resentment if we 
 imitate their own policy? Are we to receive their 
 orders "with bated breath and whispering humble- 
 ness " ? Now, if that were true, I should say that 
 our star had already set ; it was not worth anyone's 
 while to care to speculate on our possible future. But 
 it is not true. There is not a word of truth in it. 
 We have nothing to fear from the foreigner.^" I do 
 not believe in a war of tariffs, but if there were to be 
 a war of tariffs, I know we should not come out 
 second best.^" Why, at the present time ours is the 
 greatest market in the whole world. We are the
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 105 
 
 Wool 
 
 Exports Imports 
 
 (Home Consumption) 
 
 igoo .. .. ;^25, 946,037 .. ..£10,659,000 
 
 1907 . . . . 38,121,270 . . . . 9,667,000 
 
 (French exports in same period rose only 
 
 from £10.5 to £12.1 millions.) 
 
 Cotton 
 
 
 Exports 
 
 Imports 
 (Home Consumption) 
 
 1900 
 
 ■ • £69,700,000 
 
 .. £4,130,000 
 
 1906 
 
 . . 99,600,000 
 
 . . 6,700,000 
 
 1907 . . 
 
 . . 110,400,000 
 
 . . 7,000,000 
 
 (In the years 1905-7 American exports of cotton 
 manufactures fell from £11.3 to £5.3 miUions, while 
 the American imports rose from £10.9 to £15.9 
 millions.) 
 
 ^"^ Mr. Chamberlain will probably figure for 
 posterity as of all political prophets in history 
 the most destitute of foresight. Witness the 
 figures of the last note in contrast with this 
 passage. 
 
 ^■'^ It is worthy of ]\Ir. Chamberlain thus to 
 pretend that Free Traders ever put the argu- 
 ment, " foreigners v/ill be angry with us." 
 
 ^^'-^ Mr. Chamberlain had just been saying 
 that our industries were. He and he only has 
 used such figures of speech. 
 
 ^^' A little before (p. 86), ]\[r. Chamberlain 
 had declared that " these foreign countries 
 have every advantage in the attack. . . . 
 They have none of the disadvantages — I mean 
 in an economic sense — from which we suffer." 
 
 ^^^ From a war of tariffs there emerges 
 neither a best nor a second best, but simply 
 a pair of impoverished combatants who have
 
 io6 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 best customers of all those countries. There are many 
 suitors for our markets.'^' We may reject the ad- 
 dresses of some, but there is no fear that we shall not 
 have other offers. It is absolutely absurd to suppose 
 that all these countries, keenly competitive among 
 themselves, would agree among themselves to fight 
 with us when they might benefit at the expense of 
 their neighbours. Why, at the present time we take 
 from Germany about twice as much as she takes from 
 us.'*^* We take from France about three times as 
 much. From the United States of America we take 
 about six times as much as they take from us.^'^ 
 Who is it that stands to lose if there is to be a war 
 of tariffs? 
 
 And there is something else. We have what none 
 of these countries have. We have something, the 
 importance of which I am trying to impress upon my 
 countrymen, which at present they have not suffi- 
 ciently appreciated. We ha\e a great reserve in the 
 sons of Britain across the seas. There is nothing we 
 want that they cannot supply ;^*'^ there is nothing we 
 sell that they cannot buy.^" One great cause for the 
 prosperity of the United States of America, admitted 
 by everyone to be a fact, is that they are a great 
 Empire of over 70,000,000 of people ; that the numbers 
 of these people alone, without any assistance from the 
 rest of the world, would ensure a large amount of 
 prosperity. Yes ; but the British Empire is even 
 greater than the United States of America. We have 
 a population — it is true, not all a white population — 
 but we have a white population of over 60,000,000 
 against the 70,000,000 — who are not all white, by the 
 by — of America. We have, in addition, 350,000,000 
 or more of people in the States under our protectorate, 
 under our civilisation, sympathising with our rule, 
 grateful for the benefits that we accord to them — all
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 107 
 
 seen their former trade captured by their 
 rivals and forlornly seek to recover it. 
 
 ^•^■^ This must be meant concerning raw 
 materials, which, on that view, we import in 
 exceptional abundance. 
 
 ^^^ In this, as in other matters, there has 
 been change. As before pointed out, our con- 
 signments to Germany rose from £25.1 millions 
 in 1904 to £41.3 in 1907, while our consign- 
 ments from Germany rose only from £49.5 to 
 £57.1 millions. They consist largely of chemi- 
 cals, dyes, and sugar. 
 
 165 What we take is mainly food, kerosene, 
 tobacco, and raw materials. Mr. Chamber- 
 lain has promised to lower the tax on tobacco. 
 If America taxes her export of cotton to us, 
 how could we effectively retaliate ? 
 
 '^^^ It is only Mr. Chamberlain who is 
 capable of asserting that our Colonies can 
 supply us with the raw cotton we want. 
 
 ^^'~' Mr. Chamberlain does not mean what 
 he says. He is thinking, not of " sons of 
 Britain," as he professes to do, but, as the fol- 
 lowing sentences show, of the population of 
 India, etc. Our Colonial populations could 
 not possibly take up our cotton export.
 
 loS MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 of them more or less prospective or actual customers 
 of this country. 
 
 In times past we have in some inconceivable way 
 ignored our colonies. We have not appreciated their 
 greatness. We have not had ima/;ination enough to 
 see that, great as they are, there is no limit to what 
 they may become. We have gone through a time — 
 it is a most significant fact — when the men who ad- 
 vocated Free Trade in this country were at the same 
 time absolutely indifferent to all idea of Empire, and 
 considered the Colonies as an encumbrance which we 
 should be glad to get rid of.^^® That lasted for thirty 
 years, and in the course of that time we tried hardly 
 the patience of our sons across the seas. We tried 
 hardly their love of us, their devotion to the Mother 
 Country."* They began to think that we had no sym- 
 pathy with their aspirations; that we only regarded 
 them as troublesome children and wished to get them 
 out of the house, and therefore that it would be their 
 duty to break with the sentiment which would other- 
 wise have held us together ; that it would be their duty 
 absolutely to fend for themselves,''" and leave out of 
 account everything which concerned the Empire of 
 which they form a part. 
 
 That was not their fault. That was our 
 fault; and although now we have done our 
 best to correct that impression, although now 
 there is no man living who thinks, or, if there is 
 one who thinks, there is not one who dares to say, 
 that he would wish to get rid of the Colonies, that he 
 does not desire a closer union — yet we have a good 
 deal to make up for. We have to show that, whereas 
 at one time we or our ancestors advocated separation, 
 we are now prepared to do all in reason that is de- 
 manded of us in order to create a greater and a 
 closer union. The Colonies are no longer in their
 
 FACTS AXD COMMENTS 109 
 
 168 
 
 This was the view of Mr. Disraeh. 
 
 ^^^ For this false assertion Mr. Chamberlain 
 does not attempt to offer a shadow of evidence. 
 Since the establishment of Free Trade, Britain 
 has had no trouble with any of the Colonies, 
 save in South Africa. As to that case Mr. 
 Chamberlain can best explain. 
 
 ^^^ The Colonies have always had the assur- 
 ance of military protection by the Mother 
 Country, to the cost of which they until recently 
 contributed next to nothing.
 
 no MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 infancy. They are growing rapidly to a vigorous 
 manhood. Now is the time — the last time — that you 
 can bind them closer to you. If now you disregard 
 their aspirations and wishes, if when they make you 
 an ofifer not in their interests — not specially in their 
 interests — but in the interests of the Empire of which 
 we are all a portion, you reject this offer or treat it 
 with scorn, you may do an injury which wall be irre- 
 parable ; and, whatever you yourselves may feel in 
 after life, be sure that your descendants will scorn 
 and denounce the cowardly and selfish policy which 
 you will have pursued. ^^' We can if we will make the 
 Empire mutually supporting. We can make it one 
 for defence, one for common aid and assistance.^^^ 
 We are face to face at this time with complications 
 in which we may find ourselves alone. We have to 
 face the envy of other people who have noted our 
 wonderful success, although I do not think it has ever 
 done them any harm. We have to face their envy, 
 their jealousy, their desire, perhaps, to share the 
 wealth which they think us to possess. I am not 
 afraid. We shall be isolated. Yes ; but our isolation 
 will be a splendid one if we are well fortified and 
 supported, if this country is buttressed by the affection 
 and love of all those kinsmen, all the States of Britain 
 throughout the world. We shall rest secure if we 
 continue to enjoy tlie affection of all our children. ^^' 
 When I was in South Africa nothing was more in- 
 spiring, nothing more encouraging, to a Briton than 
 to find how the men who had either themselves come 
 from our shores or were the descendants of those who 
 had, still retained the old traditions, still remembered 
 that their forefathers were buried in our churchyards, 
 that we spoke a common language, ^^* that we owned a 
 common flag, still in their hearts desired to be remem- 
 bered above all as British subjects, equally entitled
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS iii 
 
 ^''^ Another pleasing illustration of Mr. Cham- 
 berlain's anxiety to " disclaim any imputa- 
 tion of evil and unworthy motives." 
 
 ^'=^ No such offer had been made by the 
 Colonies. The remainder of the speech is rant. 
 
 '■^^ There appears now to be no question of 
 profit : " affection " is to suffice. 
 
 ^'^* The suggestion appears to be that it 
 would not have been surprising if they had 
 forgotten all those things !
 
 112 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 with us to a part in the great Empire which they, 
 as well as we, have contributed to make. 
 
 The sentiment is there powerful, vivifying, influ- 
 ential for good. I did not hesitate, however, to preach 
 to them that it was not enough to shout for Empire, 
 that it was not enough to bear this sentiment in their 
 hearts, but that they and we alike must be content to 
 make a common sacrifice, ^'^ if that were necessary, in 
 order to secure the common good. And to my appeal 
 they rose. And I cannot believe that here in this 
 country, in the Mother Country, their enthusiasm will 
 not find an echo. They feel, as I have felt, as you 
 feel, that all history is the history of States once 
 powerful and then decaying. Is Britain to be num- 
 bered among the decaying States? Is all the glory 
 of the past to be forgotten ? Are we to prove our- 
 selves degenerate sons of the forefathers who left us 
 so glorious an inheritance? Are we to be a decaying 
 State ? Are the efforts of all our sons to be frittered 
 away ? Are all their sacrifices to be vain ? Or are we 
 to take up a new youth as members of a great Em- 
 pire, which will continue for generation after genera- 
 tion, the strength, the power, and the glory of the 
 British race? 
 
 That is the issue that I present to you. That is 
 the great and paramount issue. The personal issue is, 
 perhaps, not less important. It is a question, as I 
 have said, of your employment, of your wages, of 
 your standard of living, of the prosperity of the 
 trades in w^hich you are interested.^''* These are ques- 
 tions vital to the people of Great Britain. They are 
 not to be decided by partisan outcries or personal 
 abuse. They are not to be decided by ridiculous 
 appeals to the big loaf and the little loaf, to bogeys 
 which do not frighten sensible people, to bogeys 
 which are only addressed to the timid man, or to the
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 113 
 
 ^^^ This cryptic utterance remains unex- 
 plained. A little while before we were pro- 
 mised " reciprocal advantages." 
 
 ^^'^ A few sentences earlier, we were ex- 
 horted to " make a common sacrifice." Now 
 we are asked to seek our own prosperity.
 
 114 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 man \vho is so prejudiced that he cannot open his 
 mind. These are the issues that I present to you. 
 
 And, gentlemen, the decision rests with you. 
 Thank goodness, we enjoy a Democratic Constitu- 
 tion. Rightly or wrongly — and, as I think, rightly — 
 the power lies with the people. No dictatorship is 
 possible. No policy can be forced upon you to give 
 a preference to the Colonies, or to put a duty upon 
 foreign manufactures, to protect your trade. If you 
 choose to remain unprotected, if you do not care for 
 your Colonies, no statesman, however wise, can save 
 those Colonies for you.'^^ You cannot shift the re- 
 sponsibility upon us. We look to you ; we appeal to 
 you; we try to put the question fairly before you. 
 The decision, as I have said, is yours. I have been in 
 political life for thirty years, and it has been a cardinal 
 feature of my political creed that I have trusted the 
 people. I believe in their judgment, in their good 
 sense, their patriotism. I think sometimes their in- 
 stincts are quicker, their judgment more generous 
 and enlightened, than that even of classes who have 
 greater education, and have, perhaps, greater belong- 
 ings, and so are more timid and cautious. Burke, one 
 of the greatest of our statesmen, said, I think, some- 
 thing to this effect— that the people were generally in 
 the right, but that they sometimes mistook their 
 physicians."^ Gentlemen, do not mistake your 
 physicians. I am told, or read the other day, in the 
 speech of a Scottish member, who, referring to this 
 subject, said that it was a matter for congratulation 
 that in putting these views before my countrymen I 
 was committing political suicide, that my career 
 would certainly be terminated. It was a kindly 
 thought, graciously expressed, worthy of the gentle- 
 man who uttered it, but it does not alarm me. I have 
 in times past more than once taken my political life
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 115 
 
 1^^ Another imputation, repudiated by the 
 Colonies. 
 
 ^^^ And the would-be ph3^sicians are some- 
 times quacks. In tlie present case a physician 
 who had been an allopath till yesterday, when 
 he saw fit to turn liomoeopatli in an instant, 
 failed to satisfy the people either of his moral 
 or his technical trustworthiness ; and the in- 
 dustrial health of the people lias held good 
 in consequence.
 
 ii6 MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S CASE 
 
 ill my hand in order to teach that which I beheved 
 to be true. No man as a statesman is worth his salt 
 who is not prepared to do likewise. I care nothing 
 what the personal result may be. I beg of you not 
 to consider it for a moment. I appeal to you to con- 
 sider that in this matter the interests of your country, 
 the interests of your children, the interests of the 
 Empire, are all at stake. I ask you to consider im- 
 partially^'' the arguments that I have put before you, 
 and I pray that you may come to a right decision.
 
 FACTS AND COMMENTS 117 
 
 ^^^ Impartial consideration was the last 
 
 thing Mr. Chamberlain wanted. It is not 
 
 impartial consideration that has filled the 
 coffers of the Tariff Reform League.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Agriculture, 22, 30, 52 et seq., 
 
 I03-3 
 
 American Steel Trust, 90 
 Australasia, 26, 29, 30, 66 
 Austria-Hungary, 19 
 
 Bacon, 54-5 
 Balfour, A. J., 6, 7 
 Bismarck, 84, 87 
 Board of Trade, 38 
 Boer War, 15, 25 
 Bounties, 98 
 Boxers, 41 
 
 Canada, 26, 30, 33, 37, 43, 45, 66-7, 
 
 Capital, export of, 21, 27, 83; in- 
 vested abroad, 95 
 
 Chamberlain, Mr., position of, 6 
 et seq.; election address of, 13, 
 17; on need of Imperial trade, 
 24, 26; on new employment, 
 38 ; on food taxes, 50 et 
 seq; on Colonial offer, 70 et 
 seq. ; on Cobden's prophecy, 
 74; a "free trader," 78; on 
 foreign trade, 82 ; on 
 "foreigner pays" theory, 56; 
 on the Empire, 10, 40, 42, 66 
 
 China, 41, 45 
 
 Cobden, 74-5, 102 
 
 Cobden Club, 50, 84, 88, 96 
 
 Cocoa, 54 
 
 Coffee, 54 
 
 Colonial system, 11 
 
 Colonies, offer of, 34, 70 ; trade 
 with, 36 ; an encumbrance, 108 
 
 Cotton, 102, 105, 107 
 
 Dairy produce, 54 
 Disraeli, log 
 Dumping, 83, 92, 93 
 Duties, proposed, on food, 50 ; re- 
 duction of, 60 ; on imports, 62 
 
 Emplo3^ment, 38, 48-9, 63, 82, 92, 
 94, 96-7, 112 
 
 Exports, 14, 17, 19, 26, 79, 93-5; 
 excess of, 23 ; to protected and 
 neutral countries, 22, 24, S0-2 ; 
 expansion of, 39 ; of Germany, 
 France, and U.S.A., 79; of 
 silk, 103; iron and steel, 103; 
 wool, 105 ; cotton, 105 
 
 Factory Acts, 88, 94 
 Fair Wages Clause, 88, 94 
 Farming, 52 
 Flour, 53 
 
 Food, proposal to tax, 50 et seq. 
 France, 17, 19, 23, 38, 59, 60, 74-6, 
 93. 106 
 
 Germany, 16-19, ^3) 34) 3^5 59) 60, 
 
 74-5< 93. 106-7 
 Gilchrist-Thomas process, 19 
 Glasgow, 8, 12, 65 
 Glasgow Herald, 80, 94 
 Greenock, 68, 90, 96, 98 
 
 Holland, 19, 77 
 
 Imports, 21, 93-5; German, 21, 29; 
 U.S.A., 29; Colonial, 41; how 
 paid for, 83 ; of flour, 53 ; of 
 iron and steel, 103 ; of cotton 
 and wool, 105 
 
 India, 25, 41, 43 
 
 Investments, S2-3 
 
 Iron (hematite), 19 
 
 Irofi Age, 93 
 
 Iron and steel industr}', 92-3, 102-3 
 
 Italy, 19, 60, loi 
 
 Jam, TOO 
 
 Lincoln, President, 84 
 Living, cost of, 8, 63-5 
 Lj'ttelton, Mr., 49 
 
 118
 
 INDEX 
 
 119 
 
 McKinley tariff, 35, S4, 87 
 Maize, 52 
 
 Meat, taxation of, 54 
 Mill, J. S., 56 
 Milling. 52 
 
 Navigation laws, 2, 3 
 Xevill, Lady Dorothy, 7 
 Xew Zealand, 66 
 Norway, 19 
 
 Offals, 52-3 
 Old-age pensions, 63 
 
 Philadelphia Ledger, 90 
 
 Pickles, 100 
 
 I'igs, S2-4 
 
 Population, increase of, 16 ; of 
 
 Pritish Empire, 106 
 Preference, 4, 32-8, 41-3, 48, 52, 
 
 54-5, 61, 64-7, 114 
 Protection, objects of, 8 et seq.; 
 
 not a political question, 68 
 
 " Raw material," 21, 39, 95 
 
 Reciprocity, 4, 48, 60, 70, 72 et seq. 
 
 Re-exports, 25 
 
 Retaliation, 2, 60, 72 et seq., 84 
 
 Rhodes, Cecil, 48, 64 
 
 Rosebery, Lord, 46 
 
 Russia, 19, 29 
 
 Sheflfield, 4, 104 
 
 Shipping, 21, 95 
 
 Sidgwick, Professor, 56 
 
 Silk, 102 
 
 Smith, Adam, 2, 4, 5, 77 
 
 South Africa, 26, 66, 109- ic 
 
 Spain, 29 
 
 Sugar, 54, 60, 98, 100-3, '"/ 
 
 Sweden, 19, 84-5 
 
 Switzerland, 19 
 
 Tariff, hostile, 75; charges in, 77; 
 
 wars, 105 
 Tariff Reform League, 117 
 Tea, 54, 60 
 Times, 90 
 
 Tin-plate industry, 32-q 
 Trade, alleged decay of, 12 14 
 
 Underwriting, 21, 95 
 United States, 16, 19, 23-8, 31-2, 45, 
 60, 74-5, 84, 90-3, 103, 106 
 
 Venice, 12 
 
 Wages, 38, 86, 112 
 
 Wheat, 52, 59 
 
 Wool, 88, 90 
 
 Working classes, 88, 90; pro- 
 tectionism among, in Colonies, 
 28
 
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