nor to

markets against hostile tariffs, as well as irregular trade operations; and to recover fair access to foreign markets. This policy is defensive, not offensive; it is not contrary to free trade in its original lines, international law or usage. The stability of a State whose commercial prosperity is the main basis of its security, depends upon the continuous operation of the causes which have given rise to that security; and under present conditions, in our case this continuance is precarious. It is against all the experience of nations that any Power can long remain great which does not possess, or having once possessed has lost, a hardy and abundant rural population. It would be well, if even at this stage of the controversy, it could be removed out of party politics. Our aim in this Society is to deal with facts and the realitics of things-to promote the welfare of all classes in the communities within the British dominions, and to maintain the complete integrity of the Empire. In the course of years, altered circumstances require alterations in public policy. History abounds in records of such changes. We must beware lest we repeat in another form the great error of the 18th century-lest by incapacity, negligence, or party blindness, we disregard the aspirations of the Colonies, and allow the influences which are now at work to bring them under other commercial connections. The Colonies are sensitive about the disparaging remarks of English politicians; and about the habit of making questions, which are of vital importance to them, bye-words in English party politics. The political conditions of the 20th century are not likely to enable those who will come after us to retrieve errors which shall have diminished the great inheritance of the United Kingdom, India, and the Colonies, which has been confided to our generation.

In the words of Mr. Froude "it may be difficult, but it surely cannot be impossible, to unite the energies which are now exhausted in neutralising one another; and to make available such political intelligence as possess to promote the great interests of the Empire."

DISCUSSION.

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The CHAIRMAN said before calling for a discussion on Sir Charles Kennedy's paper, he felt that he must give some expression to the thought in all their minds of the greatness of the loss suffered by

the Society through the death of Sir Frederick Bramwell. He would not attempt to supplement in any way the obituary notice of Sir Frederick Bramwell by their scholarly and accomplished Secretary, Sir Henry Trueman Wood, which would appear with Sir Charles Kennedy's paper in next Friday's issue of the Journal. But having had the honour of serving on the Council of the Society for twenty-five years with Sir Frederick Bramwell, he was enabled to say with some authority that there was no member of the Society, since Sir Henry Cole, who had contributed more to its credit and reputation than Sir Frederick Bramwell. His authority over his colleagues had always been absolute. As Sir Owen Tudor Burne once felicitously said in that very room, they all looked up to Sir Frederick Bramwell as their "Grand Old Man." His influence over us was based not only on his professional eminence, and his sound judgment and good counsel in all business matters connected with the Society, or on his genial humour and ready wit and generous considerateness in social intercourse, but above all on the tried worth and loyalty of his sterling English character. And he was furthermore, physically, a splendid specimen of the race:--which, for him and every Englishman who has seen the working of the British raj "beyond seas," is always an item, however unconsidered at home, to be grateful for, not only from the artists' point of view, but from the patriots'. His old colleagues on the Council, felt his death as a personal sorrow, and it made a gap in their lagging lives, which could never be filled up.' The Chairman continued:-He felt in an entirely false position taking the chair at that meeting. He was not only altogether unworthy to preside over a meeting which was to be addressed by Sir Charles Kennedy, but he was utterly ignorant of the subject of his paper. He had been told by those who, in such matters had to be obeyed, that the reason for his selection as Chairman was that he had an impartial mind on the subject. The truth was he was deeply prejudicied on it, as men generally are on subjects of which they are profoundly ignorant. From the riotous days of the late thirties and early fifties he had been -by force of popular sympathy- not only a Free Trader, but a devil of a" Free

Trade. But the meeting might rely on his keeping the balance of the discussion that evening quite even; and if anything would help him to do so with satisfaction to all present, it was the exemplary scientific spirit and masterful manner in which Sir Charles Kennedy had dealt with the widereaching, complicated, and momentous question now before the whole country and Empire, and which he had expounded to them as a basis of academical debate. The paper, so far as he might venture to judge of it, from the stand-point of "the general reader," was all that they might rightly anticipate from a gentleman of Sir Charles

Kennedy's trained and matured learning. From his university days at Cambridge he has been distinguished for his knowledge of political economy, while in the service of our Foreign Office he has had a life-long experience of commercial negotiations, and a close and full insight of the intentions and policy of foreign countries in fiscal matters, and of their attitude in regard to economic questions. It was to Sir Charles Kennedy, indeed, that were entrusted the direct, personal negotiations of the French treaties of 1872-73.

his opinion, to the transfer of capital to other countries for the purpose of providing employment in those countries, which should have been provided in our own. As the writer of the paper had intimated, there were several proposed cures for the existing state of affairs. There were gentlemen, generally barristers, who told the manufacturers of the country that they did not know their business, and that they had to educate themselves to a much higher extent than they were at present, and that what they needed was not a tarift but technical colleges. He was a manufacturer, and had been abroad a great deal and seen mills at work on the Continent, in France, Germany, and Italy; and he did not hesitate to say that the equipment of the woollen mills in this country was not only equal to the equipment abroad but immensely superior to it. There could not be a better proof of that than the fact that the mills on the Continent depended for their finest styles of Scotch tweeds, not upon their own superiority of design, but upon the patterns made in the South of Scotland and in Yorkshire. Therefore it was not deficient education which was the cause of the decline of the industry he had mentioned. He was perfectly certain that education would have no effect whatever against a tariff in France, Belgium, or Germany. He thought there was one cure for that state of affairs, viz., that the English manufacturers should have in the foreign markets the same chance of selling their goods as foreign mauufacturers had in ours, and the only way in which that could be obtained was by putting a tariff upon goods coming from other countries. English manufacturers were men of business. Commercial treaties were matters of business; and the only possible way they could get people to deal fairly with them when engaged in commercial duties, was to have in their hands weapons of the same kind as were used against us. The fact was at present before them, that in Germany and Austria very considerable augmentations of the present duties were proposed. As a member of the Commercial Intelligence Committee of the Board of Trade, he could not repeat in full what he knew in that connection, but he did not think he would be divulging any secret when he said that the Committee on the previous day had before them the answers given by Chambers of Commerce and other interested bodies throughout the kingdom in regard to the effect of the proposed new duties in Austria and Russia, and the absolutely unanimous opinion was, that while the present duties interfered most seriously with the various trades, the proposed duties would go a long way towards making trade absolutely impossible. Were they to go on as they were doing at present; were they to stay their hands and allow foreign countries to do everything they couid to kill British commerce, and, at the same time, to keep open British ports for the surplus goods of the makers abroad? He thought it was high time they ceased to stand in the open to

Mr. CRAIG-BROWN said that as a member of a Chamber of Commerce, and one who was very much interested in one of the largest textile industries of the country, he had frequently had an opportunity of coming in contact with Sir Charles Kennedy when he was commercial head of the Foreign Office, and he knew no man in Great Britain who was more competent to give an authoritative opinion as to the effects of tariffs upon the commercial trade of the country than he. He thought he would best consult the wishes of the audience if he gave them an account of how foreign tariffs affected the trade to which he particularly belonged, the woollen trade of the South of Scotland, and more especially the part which made Scotch tweed. The effect of foreign tariffs upon the woollen trade of South Scotland had been simply disastrous. The amount of goods now exported to the United States of America compared with the exports before the high tariffs were imposed hardly amounted to 5 per cent., i.e., for every 100 pieces of goods that were sent to America before the high tariffs were put on, not five pieces were sent now. A great number of the large factories, not only in the South of Scotland, but also in what was known as the hill districts of Scotland, had been dismantled; and he thought he was not exaggerating when he said that at least 200 sets of wool carding machines, each capable of turning out £5,000 worth of goods per annum, had disappeared from that part of the country altogether. The population of Galashiels and Hawick numbered, some years ago, about 17,000 each, but Galashiels at the last census showed a loss of 4,000, and Hawick of 2,000 or 3,000 in its population. Those facts, he ventured to think, were not only serious in regard to the trade of the particular district, but also when one thought of the same thing happening in other portions of the kingdom. The effects of the continental tariffs had not been quite so disastrous as the American, but they had, nevertheless, been very serious. The trend of things showed that while English exports of wool to the continent had decreased by millions the English imports of wools from the continent had increased by millions, which meant that very large numbers of the population of this country had been thrown out of employment, with its corresponding privations. That had led not only to the loss of very considerable capital in the country, but, what was much worse in

be shot at by men who were themselves defended by their own hostile tariff bastions; it was high time the people of the country ceased being the martyrs of an exploded dogma, and became champions of liberty in commerce throughout the world, as well as in law and in religion.

Mr. HAROLD Cox, secretary of the Cobden Club, after expressing his thanks to the author for the paper, said that Mr. Craig-Brown had described, in feeling language, the injury that had been done to his trade by American tariffs, but did not give the slightest inkling of the means cy which that injury was to be got rid of. The injury was that the Americans refused to buy Mr. Brown's productions. He talked generally of retaliatory tariffs, and of putting a wall round ourselves, corresponding to the wall which foreign makers had round them, but he did not explain how we, by building any number of walls, could compel the American people to buy Mr. Brown's stuff. Mr. Brown seemed to assume that England had merely to talk of retaliation, or even to put it into force, to compel other countries at once to drop their tariffs against our goods. The whole experience of the world was against that idea. This country had not always been a free trade country; it had only been a free trade country for a short time; and until it was a free trade country it was constantly trying Mr. Brown's panacea. Many persons would remember the famous speech in which Sir Robert Peel said that he personally had tried for 20 years, and found it was utterly impossible to get any satisfactcry terms out of foreign countries. England was always threatening foreign countries, and telling them that if they would lower their tariffs she would lower her's, but she got nothing. That was the policy of the country for more than twenty years, during the intervening period from 1820 to 1840, when the country was gradually getting rid of protection. If that was the experience of our own country, what was the experience of foreign countries? They were always trying the same game, and retaliating upon one another, but did they get any reciprocal advantages which we did not get? There was absolutely no country in the world that gave better terms to other countries than it did to us. England had abandoned the policy of retaliation, and yet obtained as good a right of entry into every neutral market as any other country. The Germans, for instance, wished to force an entry into the French markets, and therefore they adopted Mr. Brown's policy, and put on tariffs in order to force the French to drop their tariffs. They did not succeed very much, but, as far as they did, succeed, England obtained the full benefit; it simply sat still, did nothing, and obtained every advantage which the other countries forced from one another. But England obtained more than that; at the present moment they were admitted into the French market at a lower tariff than the Americans. That experi

ence threw very considerable doubts upon the probability that Mr. Craig-Brown's policy would be successful. Mr. Craig-Brown also implied that because he was unable to sell his stuff in America therefore the general woollen trade of England had declined, but that was not so, The test of the extension of the woollen trade was to be found in the amount of raw material worked up; there was no other possible test of the magnitude of the trade; and it was a matter of common knowledge that the amount of wool worked up in the United Kingdom had increased enormously. That could only mean that the wool spinners and weavers were more active than they were before. [A member enquired whether the increase was proportionate to the population; since the war of 1815 the population of the country had trebled; had the manufacture of clothing trebled?] He could not go back as far as 1815, but in the last 30 years the consumption of wool had increased from something like three hundred million pounds to five hundred million pounds. There was no doubt whatever that the woollen industries of the country had extended. That being so, he contended that it did not matter a brass farthing whether the woollen goods were sold to the Americans or their own people; in fact, he went beyond that, and said he would sooner sell them to his own people, because of the two he would sooner that they were the better clothed. One of the most notable facts in regard to the economic history of the past 30 years had been that owing to the cheapness of food, our own people had been able to afford better clothing. Therefore, when Mr. Craig-Brown wanted to satisfy that legitimate desire of all men, viz., the extension of his own business, the best way in which he could work for that end was by aiming, not at making the articles to be sold dear, but the articles that other people sold cheap; because if the people of the country could buy their bread cheap they would be able to afford to buy more Scotch tweed. That was a matter which was within their own control; the demand of the Americans for Scotch tweed was not. He defied any Ministry in this country to force the American people to buy Scotch tweed if they did not want to; he defied any ministry in the country to force the Americans to take off a tariff duty if they did not want to take it off, but the purchasing power of our own people was within our control, and that could be added to or diminished. Mr. Craig-Brown wanted to diminish it by taxing the food of the people of the country. So far as he did that he was diminishing the demand for his Own goods. He contended that the idea of retaliation would not have the slightest rest in people's minds if they brought it to the test of a concrete instance, instead of leaving it in vague language. They had not to ask themselves whether foreign tariffs were an injury; every one was perfectly ready to admit that the were an injury to particular traders; whether they were an

injury to the nation as a whole he was not so sure. Το his mind it was arguable that, on the whole, this little country gained by foreign protection; but it was a difficult question. This country would never have been able to build up such an enormously prosperous population if it had not been that our natural advantages had been supplemented by the follies of our neighbours. Whether that were so or not, his point was that, whether foreign tariffs were an injury or a benefit to the country they were of such a nature that they could not get rid of them by any device they chose to invent.

a

Dr. GINSBURG was pleased that on the present occasion Mr. Cox and himself were apparently able to see eye to eye on two or three points. People very naturally looked at the Board of Trade statistics of imports and exports, and followed them as a barometer. He did not think people realised how very small a factor in our trade the foreign trade was at the present moment. Sir Robert Giffen estimated the national income of the country at 1,750 millions, which, reckoning the population of the country at 40 millions, worked out roughly at £44 a head. The Board of Trade Returns gave the total value of our exports and imports combined as about 870 millions per annum, which, if divided by the 40 millions of population, worked out a little under £21 per head per annum. He had yet to discover a trade which was all profit; therefore he thought if they took 10 per cent. of the £21, a little over £2 per head, it was very liberal estimate. Thus the foreign trade which loomed so large in the Board of Trade statistics, only amounted to £2 per head out of the £44 per head of the population; i.e., 5 per cent. only of the foreign trade of the country came into the total income of the individual; therefore, the main portion of our income evidently came from the trade we did with one another. There were no statistics available, and he did not see how there could be, which would measure that internal trade. The point he was leading up to was that every country, except our own, had its home trade preserved to it by what Mr. Cox called a tariff wall. Thanks to the machinery which was being rigged up against us by foreign nations, they were able to hit, behind their armour of protection, not merely our foreign trade, but our home trade also. He was sorry to hear what Mr. CraigBrown said about the woollen trade, but he was still more sorry for his own trade, sugar refining, because they had not only lost their export trade, but also, to a very large extent, the home trade. One after another our trades were being attacked and cut off, first sugar, then wool, then iron. Were they, like the oysters in "Alice in Wonderland," to allow themselves to be picked off in detail, each man saying at the moment that what was being done helped him, and not caring about other people? They must put their backs together while there was yet time. He wished also to mention the shipping trade. Mr. Kennedy

had alluded to the fact that the Americans

had declared the trade between Honolulu and New York to be a coasting trade, and had shut out from it all foreign bottoms, thereby killing the English chance of living by that trade. Within the last few days the Americans had gone a step further, and had closed the trade between the Phillipine Islands and the ports of the United States. It was emphatically a question for statesmen-if we had any -to answer how the great question of our shipping was to be dealt with; that it would have to be dealt with sooner or later he thought admitted of no question. There was no doubt that, as at present constituted, free trade hung very largely upon coal. Mr. Thomas, in the paper referred to by the author, showed that England depended very largely for its outward cargoes upon coal, and that the country's ships would not be able to do the trade they did if the coal were not there. Indications were not wanting that our preeminence in coal would not continue, and he, therefore, submitted that it would eventually become a question as to whether or not England would be able to continue her present policy. In the meantime, English ships were doing a considerable trade between foreign ports, and there was a feeling amongst shipowners that if the proposals now before the country were accepted there might be a risk that they would be discriminated against and lose that international trade. He thought those gentlemen had lost sight of the fact that the foreigners did not use our ships because they liked us, but because they were obliged to; and, not having tonnage of their own, they would not be so foolish as to say they would not let our ships carry their goods, because otherwise they would not be able to place them on the various markets of the world.

Mr. E. L. HARTLEY thought the figures Dr. Ginsburg had mentioned, in dealing with the proportionate value of English foreign trade and home trade were erroneous from the statistical point of view. Sir Robert Giffen's figure for the national income was £1,750,000,000. From the total value of the exports had to be deducted the cost of the raw material used, and the balance of the two figures was the national income derived from the export trade. The national incoine derived from the export trade was not 10 per cent. on the volume; it was not the profit which the capitalist made; it also included the wages which were paid in the course of making the goods. Arguing the question from the free trade basis, he asked Mr. Harold Cox to say yes or no to two questions. First, was it the fundamental axiom of political economy that everything man required should be made where it could be made with the minimum of human effort? Was not the first proposition based on this fundamental axiom that any interference by Government with the natural or economic cost of an article was a violation of the fundamental axiom, and of the economic ideal of trade? He would apply that simple proposition to England's

present fiscal arrangements, and see whether they conformed to that proposition. Taking as an instance the production of wheat in England and in the United States, the natural price at which American wheat could be sold in London was the cost of producing it in America, plus the transport from America to London. The economic cost of transport included many items, freight, and ordinary insurance, and also ought to include a contribution towards the cost of the British Navy which provided for the safety of the ships while carrying the goods to our ports. The money spent on the British Navy was often regarded as a kind of insurance upon our ocean transit, and among the functions performed by the British Navy was the defence and safe-guarding of the ships 'carrying wheat from New York to England, and that was part of the economic cost of delivering American wheat in the English markets. Why should not this cost be added to the price at which it was sold in England? Why should we, by throwing the whole of the burden of the navy upon home-made produce, artificially decrease the market price at which imported goods could be sold in England below the economic price by relieving them from any contribution towards the Navy which protected them while they came to our shores. The imperial expenditure was 140 millions a year. That could be raised in two ways; in the first place by making foreign-made goods come more closely to the natural price by making them contribute towards the 140 millions. If that were done we should be able to relieve the home-made goods to exactly the ame extent. The prices of the whole of the things consumed in this country have to be raised until the one hundred and forty millions a year was paid. If the whole of it were raised from homemade goods a higher price would have to be paid for them, but if part of it were raised from the foreignmade goods, the cost of producing the home-made goods was decreased by precisely the same amount Thereby, the artificial stimulus now given to foreignmade goods would be removed, and the home-made goods encouraged; and as the generel average of prices would remain exactly the same, we should not be handicapped one jot in our competition in the neutral markets of the world.

Sir CHARLES KENNEDY, in reply, having thanked the speakers for the kind manner in which they had referred to his paper,

On the motion of the CHAIRMAN, a hearty vote of thanks was accorded to the author, and the meeting terminated.

Sir CHARLES KENNEDY writes:-I should like to add a few words on one point which (in order not to make the address longer) was not fully touched upon in my paper. This point is the insufficiency of the most favoured nation clause to safeguard all contingencies. Country A levied, very properly, a

higher duty on pure wool piece goods than on mixed woollens. Country B, in commercial negotiations with A, induced A to reduce the duty on the former being interested in that trade-and to recoup the loss of revenue, to raise the duty on mixed woollens. This change of Customs duties altered the previous conditions of trade, and hit Yorkshire manufacturers. It was known that owing to our fiscal policy and system, England could not take action to check this hostile tariff regulation. The moral is that we should not rely on "benefits " under the most favoured nation clause, but should possess the power of counter-action when it is necessary.

Correspondence.

ST. LOUIS EXPOSITION, 1904. Would you be good enough to make a correction in your report of my remarks on page 28 of the Journal, in the discussion on Mr. Parker's paper on the St. Louis Exhibition. I must ask you to do this as the report gives a quite incorrect notion of what I said and is most damaging both to the architects and designers of the Exhibition and to myself.

I never stated that Mr. Kiralfy had anything to do with planning the Chicago or St. Louis Exhibitions. Mr. Kiralfy said that he had offered some suggestions to the St. Louis authorities and he was glad to see from Mr. Parker's slides that they had been adopted. But to state, as I am made to, that he had been consulted by the architects when drawing up their scheme must have astonished Mr. Kiralfy as much as myself.

I also pointed out that there was a definite idea at St. Louis-the idea of a great Italian villa-that while Chicago, the Lake City, depended for its pictorial effect on water, on the lake, by the shore of which the Exhibition was built, St. Louis typifies and makes use of the hills and forests, the main buildings being (as I am told) placed on a slope backed by woods, as at the Villa d'Este at Tivoli. were the points that I tried to bring out, and these points (for your reporter at any rate) I failed to emphasize.

These

JOSEPH PENNell.

14, Buckingham-street, Strand, W.C. 28th November, 1903.

Obituary.

SIR FREDERICK BRAMWELL, Bart., D.C.L., F.R.S. -The death of Sir Frederick Bramwell, which took place at his house in Hyde-park-gate on Monday last, November 30th, removes from the Society one