CABLE NEWS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXV, Issue 214, 6 October 1903, Page 3

CABLE NEWS

FISCAL RtFQR^..

Br BMOTBIQ TEtEGRAPU—OOPYIH^'I.

♦ FOOD TAXATION FEB PRESS ASSOCIATION. London, October 4. Mi B»lfour, interviewed by the Daily Mad, says Mr Chamberlain agrees with him that the csuntrj is prepared to discuss food taxation. Mr Chamberlain tells him that he is bound with the colonies, and will therefore act 88 a missionary as regards the fcod question. The Daily if ail credits Mr Chamberlain with proposing new food taxes to bring in .£10,000,000, which replace old food taxes of a similar amount and then to remove remaining fcod taxes of X 3.000.000 by a ten per cent tai iff on foreign manufactures producing .£lO,000,000; devoting par: of this surplus to reduction of nuty on tobacco.

The Standard, in its money article, declares that city cireles, while favouring Mr Balfour and a small tax on food s'uffj, asks for a more definite programme than Mr Balfour's, and also inquires whether reforms will be in the h»nds of the Cabinet or a committee of experts. UK. CHAMBERLAIN'S PREFACE. OHALLBNGKB HIS OPPONENTS. Received S, 1.14 a.m. London, Octeber 5. Mr Chamberlain's preface to the ■eries of articles by the Vice-Becretary of the Imperial Tariff Committee, emphasises that the ac onomous colonies bad advanced, although they abjured Cobdeaism. He contends that the prosperity of the workers has increased in a greater proportion in countries than in the United Kingdom, and invitee the Cobdenites to ex-1 plain the stationary British exports and the great increase of those of protected countries. He challenges the Imperial Freetraders as to how to treat the colonial request for preference in return for reciprocal advantages. The Colonies were ever expanding, and likely to give ■ constantly increasing value to their concessions, bnt if the proposals were rejected there was a great danger of Britain losing the present trade. It was only the growth of the colonial trade that concealed the heavy decline in British foreign trade, and if the colonial advance were refused we may lose their trade through higher duties » and reciprocal arrangements concluded with foreigners. The Standard deprecates angry rhetoric, and considers the allusions to the colonies irjidicious, and that it would be wiser to avoid generalities and submit a clear explanation of how far he proposes to go and how be will meet the complicity of claims by the colonies and India. It is not clear if the colonies are willing to accept a fecal union on reciprocal lines.