IMPERIAL POLITICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 181, 18 December 1912, Page 7

IMPERIAL POLITICS.

; THE INSURANCE ACT. By Cable —Press Association —Copyright. London, December 16. Mr. Lloyd George will confer with the leading hospitals regarding ths treatment of insured persons in hospital. It is estimated that the contributions in London are likely to decline 23 per cent, and in the provinces u0 per cent. Subscriptions and legacies have already largely decreased. Thirty thousand insured persons weekly will require hospital treatment. It is suggested that £2,500,000 annually be granted to hospitals. TARIFF REFORM. IMPORTANT SPEECHES. Received 17. 0.25 p.m. London, December 17. Mr. Bonar Law, speaking at Ashton-under-Lyne, said that the greatest problem with which statesmen were faced v/as how to obtain a fairer method of distributing industrial wealth. He believed that the remedy lay in co-opera-tion, assisted by a fair fiscal system. If the Unionists were entrusted with power they did not intend to impose food taxes without first convening a colonial conference to consider the whole question of preferential trade. The question of food duties would only arise after the deliberations of the conference. That was why he objected to submit the proposals to a referendum. In dealing with food duties, an essential condition would be that the burdens of the poorer claSses should not be increased. The ideal policy was free trade within the Empire. It was impossible to get it now with the colonies, though a system of preference would tend to ultimately end in that direction. They could hive free trade with India to-morrow. India feared not the competition of Britain, but that of Japan. The whole experience of the civilised world was hostile to the British fiscal system. Our colonies had abandoned it, and no serious politicians in any country proposed to return to it. The Unionists did not intend to initiate a protective policy to foster unnatural industries, but would impose duties lower than any in any other industrial country, not to encourage the building up of monopolies but merely to give their own workmen preference in their own markets, where they were unable to compete with trade rivals; also to secure the lal'gest preference possible ih overseas markets. He promised clearly to define the proposed duties before the general election, and hoped that it would be unnecessary to impose more than a duty on wheat. If, after a conference with the colonies, duties were regarded as unnecessary, they would never be imposed. Mr. Austen Chamberlain, speaking at Carlisle, said that any suggestion of the postponement of tariff reform would split the Unionist Partv from top to bottom, and shake confidence in their honesty, and good faith.