LORD SALISBURY ON FREE TRADE AND RAILWAY RATES.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2452, 29 March 1888, Page 2

LORD SALISBURY ON FREE TRADE AND RAILWAY RATES.

Si'KAKixr; at Liverpool lately the Prime Minister criticised Mr Gladstone's recent strictures on the leaders of the Conservative party. His Lordship said, Mr Gladstone was pleased to say that my statements were very unclear aud difficult to understand, and he coupled that with a compliment to my intellect, which implied that I was very insincere, I wish to say a word to illustrate and to enforce tiic statement to whioh ho took exception. My statement was this, that I was a Free Trader, and that I objected to Protection, but that I did not on that account approve of all the fiscal arrangements and all the fiscal doctrines to which Mr Gladstone has given his sanction. I believe that many doctrines injurious in the character, aud not consonant with Free Trade, but absolutely opposed to it, are sheltered under its broad mantles, and you are required to believe them under pain of being thought unsound. Let me give one or two illustrations. THE BOrSTY CI'OX SPfiAR. is a very good case in point. What the bounty upon sugar does is to favour tha consumer. Undoubtedly it does, and what I may call your false Free Trade assumes that everything that favours the consumer, whether it be legitimate or whether it is not, must be sanctioned by the doctrine of Free Trade, aud so you see people appearing in the newspapers and denouncing our efforts to remove the bounty upon sugar because they consider it is good for the consumer, and therefore it ought to ba encouraged. They do not see that advantages to the consumer secured by illegitimate means are only transitory in their character, aud that When they have served their purpose of destroying the industry against whiotl they are levelled tin advantage to the consumer will disappear. After pointing out that taxes on luxuries, such as wines, laees, and silks, did not bear so heavily oil the springs of industry as taxes that affected the ordinary income-tax payer, the Marquis referred in the following terms to ItAILWAY RATES, You know that railway rates are so adjusted in this country that it is cheaper sometimes to send a thing from New York through Liverpool to Loudon than to send it from Manchester to Birmingham. Of course, the inevitable result is the foreigner gets an artificial \aro taction enforced by our law. The consumer benefits undoubtedly for the moment, but the effect is to destroy thq native industry, rind the advantayeu which v. e would otherwise enjoy ; and when that industry is destroyed it will be found that consumer and producer on Knglt«h soil are bound up in a common interest and tall by a common fate.