LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL ON FREETRADE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1690, 26 January 1888, Page 4

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL ON FREETRADE.

The following is an extract from a recent speech delivered in the Prince of Wales’ Theatre, Blackpool, by Lord Randolph Churchill: — “ What is the state of things in the world of British industry? We are suffering from a depression of trade, extending as far back as 1874-—] 0 years of trade depression—and the most hopeful, either among our capitalists or our artisans, can discover no signs of a revival. Tour iron industry is dead, dead as mutton! Tour coal industries, which depend largely on your iron industries, are languishing. Tour silk industry is dead, assassinated by the foreigner. Tour woollen industry is in articule mortis—gasping, struggling; your cotton industry is seriously sick. The shipbuilding industry, which held out longest of all, is come to a standstill. Turn your eye where you will, survey any branch of British industry you like, you will find the signs of mortal disease. The self-satisfied Radical philosophers will tell you it is nothing ; they point to the great volume of British trade. Yes, the volume of British trade is still large, but it is a volume which is no longer profitable, it is working and struggling. So do the muscles and nerves of the body of a man who has been hanged twitch and work violently for a short time after the operation. But death is there all the same; life has utterly departed, and suddenly comes the rigor mortis. Well, but with this state of British industry, what do you find going on ? You find foreign iron, foreign wool, foreign silk and cotton pouring into the country, flooding you, drowning you, sinking you, swamping you; your labor market is congested; wages have sunk below the level of life, the misery in our large towns is too frightful to contemplate, and emigration or starvation is the remedy which the Radicals offer you with the most undisturbed complacency. But what produced this state ■of things ? Free imports ? lam not sure. I should like an enquiry; but I suspect free imports of the murder of our industries, much in the same way as if I found a man standing over a corpse and plunging his knife into it, I should suspect the man of homicide and I should recommend a coroner’s inquest and a trial by jury. Of this you may be certain —that an impartial inquiry into this great question will put more money into your pockets and more hope in your hearts than any Reform Bill. Do you know what Freetrade means in the month ,of the latter day Radicals ? It means that articles of food, necessaries of life coming from abroad, and which cannot be produced at home, shall be taxed heavily, and that articles of manufacture, luxuries coming from abroad, and which can be produced at home, shall be admitted duty free. Do you that your cocoa is taxed at 13 per cent, your coffee 18 per cent, your dried fruits, currants, etc., 26 per cent, the poor man’s tobacco, 504 per per cent, your rum 504 per cent, your brandy 114 per cent? Observe this curiosity—that rum which comes from a British colony is taxed five times as heavily as brandy, which comes from France; and with all this, silk,leather, wool, and iron are all coming into the country duty free, and hopelessly underselling your own products and driving your industrial population to America, to the colonies, to the workhouse, or to prison.”