THE FISCAL ISSUE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1716, 18 January 1905, Page 19

THE FISCAL ISSUE.

COLONIAL CONFERENCES. LONDON, January 13. Referring to the fiscal question, Mr Balfour, the Prime Minister, stated, in the course of a speech at a banquet given by the Scottish Unionists at Glasgow, that he had nothing to< add to his Edinburgh speech. He recommended his countrymen to avail themselves of every opportunity to produoe closer union. The colonies hoped that ooh»nial conferences would become as essential a part of the working machinery of the Empire as the House of Commons. Every effort of the Government in that direction was a forward movement. Whatever was to be the issue, he would rather fail with those holding a great ideal than succeed with purblind, narrow-minded unimaginative men,nevW gazing beyond a parish, and incapable of picturing the -future of the colonic® when in plenitude and strength they bound the Empire with organic ties. SPEECH BY MR CHAMBERLAIN. BRITAIN’S TRADE DIMINISHING. LONDON, January 12. Mr Chamberlain addressed a meeting attended by 5000 people at Preston, an important manufacturing town of Lancashire, and one of the principal seats of the cotton industry. In his opening remarks, he reminded Mr H. H. Asquith that the test of a nation’s prosperity rested on comparative, not positive, statistics. Sir Henrv’ Campbell-Bannerman had mentioned that 13,000,000 people were on th© verge of hunger in a rich and prosperous country, but he never quoted the fact that 3,300,000 people sine© 1900 had suffered reduction in wages—a reduction amounting to £12,500,000 per annum. Last year was a record year, but if the exports had increased, absence of employment, pauperism and crime had also increased. The increase in exports was due to dearer raw materials, especially cotton. Consequently the export of cotton manufactures had risen in value, but had not risen in volume. Therefore operatives had not benefited, and while Lancashire was on short time the protective countries used more cotton.

Statistics showed, said Mr Chamberlain, that sinoe 1876 Britain’s consumption of the world’s cotton supply had fallen from 41 to 25-1 per cent. There had also been less employment. “Our proportion of the world’s trade,” he added, “is rapidly diminishing, and the protected foreign competitor threatens our hold on neutral markets.”

Replying to a question, Mr Chamberlain said that under no circumstances did he desire to put a tax on raw cotton. He wished to reduce the duty on sugar and put a burden on articles of luxury. He advocated reasonable preference and reciprocity with the colonies.

Replying to free fooders’ attacks on the colonies, he said :—“ln the opinion of the colonies and in mine, they have more to give than we have to offer them. If you consider the material interests alone, a refusal to discuss with the colonies a matter of predominant interest to yourselves is imbecility.” Mr Chamberlain added that he had no doubt the oountry was too sensible and patriotic to lose the greatest opportunity of the generation towards a commercial union and the ultimate organisation of the Ehipire. A resolution in favour of the reconsideration of the fiscal policy and a conference with the colonies was carried with enthusiasm, there being few dissentients.

Mr Chamberlain, in referring io a remark made by the mover of the motion (Mr Tomlinson) that the proposition did not commit the meeting wholly to his policy, said:—“l think

that remark was a slip. The resolution commits you to Mr Balfour’s policy. 1 do not believe that either he or you would call a conference unless it was intended to pay great and favourable attention to its decisions. I am convinced that the colonies will then propose some scheme of mutual protection as well as a scheme for the development of inter-imperial trade.”

SPEECH BY LORD ROSEBERY.

“THE PILL IN THE JAM.” (From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, December 14.

Lord Rosebery has been inquiring into “the composition of the fiscal jam with which Mr Chamberlain has been feeding the colonies,” and he has discovered therein ingredients which he thinks will sooner or later render it extremely unpalatable to you. Speaking at St. Andrew’s Hall, Glasgow, the other evening, Lord Rosebery waxed sarcastic over the cablegrams sent from Australia to Mr Chamberlain in support of bis policy. They did not, said his Lordship, convince him of anything save that seme of the people there were extremely willing to embrace the very bountiful offers which Mr Chamberlain bad made them. What they were prepared to do in return remained in obscurity, and Lord Rosebery is therefore curious to know if people in the Antipodes know the whole of the Chamberlain policy. He is inclined to •think you do not, and if be had any influence with the people who transmit your cables, be would ask them to send this authoritative sentence of Mr Chamberlain’s, which occurred in a speech made by the ex-Oolonial Secretary soon after his famous appearance at Glasgow last year:—“Our colonial fellow-sub-jects are growing every day in strength and power. We have hitherto borne alone the burden of our great Empire. We have to look to them to share that burden with us, as they have shared its privileges.”

Oommeintmg on this sentence, Lord Rosebery said:—“Share the burden with us? I wonder if that has been put before Australia and Canada. And yet that is an integral part of the policy—the pill within the jam. I am greatly afraid that it as only the jam that has found its way to Canada and to Australia, if, indeed, it be not preposterous in the present condition of trade, to speak of our hawing any jam to export. Rut that is obviously enough' an essential part of the policy. No one could suppotse that a real Imperialist like Mr Chamberlain, or any real Imperialist outside an asylum, would come to the people of the United Kingdom and say, ‘You shall bear the enormous expenditure of this Empire alone, you shall bear the burden of .this Empire alone, and in addition I make the further suggestion that you shall tax your food on behalf of your well-fed kinsmen across the sea.’ Such a policy would have been wanting in balance and completeness, and, therefore, I am anxious that our colonial fellow-countrymen, when they weigh the advantages or disadvantages of this policy, should know exactly what it means.” His Lordship continued: —“We of the older school of Imperialism were satisfied to let things he as they were. We did not wish to make financial demands on our colonies. We rejoiced in the free co-operation, the free offers of money and of men, that we have received in times of difficulty, and we thought that these were surer securities of Empire than any artificial contribution which might be exacted, but which might he withheld. Mi- Chamberlain thinks that these artificial bonds are a new security for union. I wish I thought so>. I wish I did not think that they were calculated in their essence and in their result to he the soonest and the swiftest dissolvents of Empire.” As to the projected Colonial Conference, Lord Rosebery described it as a conference not for the union of the Empire, but a conference for the union of the Conservative party, and gave two central objections which he entertains to the policy of Mr Chamberlain. The first of them is this —that he believes

that if the Empire is subjected to the strain of these interests, all pulling at her in different directions, the Empire will be put to a strain which its structure cannot long resist. His second objection is that we, under protection, should become the hopeless, irredeemable slaves of interests which we could never shake off.