THE SUGAR CONVENTION.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 170, 17 July 1908, Page 4

THE SUGAR CONVENTION.

The proposed withdrawal of England from the Brussels Sugar Convention aroused less public interest than might have been expected when it was announced last July. The Convention in question was signed in 1902 by England, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Austro-Hungary, and Italy; and its purpose was to suppress the bounty system which, on the admission of all the Continental Powers concerned, ha: produced serious evils and abuses in connection with the sugar trade, and involved all the ■States in very heavj expense. The terms of the agreement were that for five years from September, 1903, the contracting parties should abolish direct or indirect bounties upon the production or export of sugar, and should prohibit or impose a countervailing duty equal to the bounty, upon bounty-fed sugar, while admitting at the lowest rate of duty sugar from any of these countries or their colonies. The Sugar Convention Act of 1903 gave effect to this agreement by prohibiting the importation of bounty-fed sugar into England. But the Liberal Government has decided that this contract is inconsistent with the principles of Free Trade, and so they propose to withdraw from it. It must be observed in the first place that the idea of the Sugar Convention was first suggested, not by England, but by the beet-growing Continental Powers, to counteract the evils that the bounty system had engendered. Incidentally, one of the chief motives that should have induced England to adhere to it was that by excluding bounty-fed sugar it gave direct encouragement to the West Indian sugar planters, who for the past half-century have been drifting to ruin under the baneful influence of Free Trade. But Sir Edward Grey has recently declared that he sees no reason for considering the prosperity or the existence of the West Indian sugar trade if the effect is to penalise the British consumer. The extent to which the cost of sugar has been raised in England through the effects of the Sugar Convention has been hotly debated; but it is certainly a small and almost inappreciable degree. At the same time, it must not be forgotten that England already imposes a revenue duty on sugar to the extent of several millions sterling a year. Mr Asquith certainly would not venture to sujrgest the abolition of the sugar duty, from which so large an amount of revenue is derived. But because the duty levied in accordance with the Sugar Convention Act has the effect of protecting an important British industry, that special impost is "inconsistent with the principles of Free Trade," and must therefore be abolished. It is a curious argument, and it gains fresh point from the strenuous and indeed pathetic effort that Mr Asquith has just been making to assure a deputation of excited Cobdenites that a new sugar convention into which England proposes to enter is entirely consistent with the sacred principles of Cobdenism. Of all possible illustrations of superstitious and unintelligent devotion to the fetish of Free Trade, this controversy over the sugar duties supplies perhaps the worst.