IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

Gisborne Times, Volume X, Issue 969, 15 August 1903, Page 4

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

GREAT FISCAL ISSUE.

By Telegraph —Press Association—' 1 Copyright. LONDON, Aug. 13.

Mr Balfour, replying in the House of Commons to Mr Dalziel, said the Government were revising some advance proofs of Board of hrade re-

turns. The Westminster Gazette states that the latest' report carrying weight is that Mr Chamberlain is considering a scheme ot taxation o£ foreign manufactured goods, the revenue from .which will he devoted to subsidising the carriage of colonial wheat and other foodstuffs. The Standard, in an apparently, inspired first leader, complains 01. Mr .Chamberlain’s cataclysmic precipitancy. in introducing the fiscal problem, with a prospect of a more hopelessly shattered party than Were the Liibhrals on the occasion of Mr Gladstone’s Home Rule proposals. Mr Chamberlain agitating while the Cabinet is enquiring destroys collective responsibility, and the situation cannot last. Resignations in any. case are only, too likely when the Cabinet policy, which Mr Chamberlain so brusquely assumed to anticipate is announced. Disruption is not inevitable, if with com-mon-sense the proposal is limited to a revenue tax on corn and measures dealing with unfair bounbied competition of foreign manufactures on the Home markets. It would he possible to g'ain a Unionist majority on a programme capably and reasonably presented to constituencies. The solution rests with the .Cabinet, and above all, with Mr Chamberlain, if he chooses , to drop the idea of protective taxes on the food of the masses.