LORD SALISBURY ON FREE TRADE

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 3136, 20 August 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

LORD SALISBURY ON FREE TRADE

Ik a speech delivered on. May 19 Lord Salisbury thus reiers to the prohibitive tariffs of foreign countriei as affecting British trade :—" England," he declared, " only maintains the position which she occupies by the vast industries existinghero, but danger is growing up. Foreign nations are adopting protection. They lire excluding us from the markets and trying to kill our trade. Tbe important point is, while nations are negotiating to obtain each other's commercial favonr, none in anxious about the favour ot Great Britain, because Great Britain has stripped herself of cho armour and weapons with which battles are fouirht. The attitude which we have taken in regarding it disloyal to the glorious and sacred doctrines of free trade to levy duties on anybody for the Bike of anything we get therojy may be noble, but uot businesslike (Cheers) If jou intend to hold your own in this conflict of tariffs, you must be prepared to refuse nations who injure your access to s'our markets. We complain most of the United States, and it so happens the United States maintains and furnishes us with articles which are essential to the good of the people, and with raw material which is essential to our manufacturers. We cannot exclude either without serious injury to ourselves ; but there is an enormous" mass of imports, such as wine, spirits silk, gloves, and laces from other couutries besides the United States, which ate merely luxuries, and of which the diminished consumption could be risked in order to secure access to the markets of our noighbonrs, I expect to be excommunicated for propounding such a doctrine, but I am boand to say I "think the freetraders have gone too far."