§ COLONEL BARNE,who had the following Amendment on the Paper:—
That it be an Instruction to the Committee to consider the desirability of placing a duty upon the import of foreign barley and malt,said, he was quite aware that in the present composition of the House of Commons his views on this question would receive no large amount of support; but, as sure as the sun would rise tomorrow, so sure would this subject be brought prominently forward during the next very few years. The artizans had now found out the fallacies which were imposed upon them by Cobden and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (Mr. John Bright) 30 years ago; and they were beginning to ask what was the use of having a cheap loaf when they had no money to buy it with? The supporters of the system of Free Trade contended when it was adopted that all the other nations of the world would follow our example; but America and France and Germany were too astute to take that course, and the consequence was that there was not an industry in the country which was not being undermined by foreign competition. He ventured to say that the negotiations which were pending for a new Treaty with France would entirely break down, because we had nothing to offer in return for concessions. The majority of the people of this country were and ought to be producers, and there could be no doubt that it was in the interests of the producers to prevent foreign competition. There was hardly a trade in England that was not suffering from foreign competition. The other day he observed from a paragraph in The Standard that at a meeting in Birmingham with reference to the proving of firearms, it was stated that, whereas 10 years ago 36 per cent more gun barrels were proved there than at Liège, that state of things lead been re-reversed, Belgium now proving as many more than England; whilst, moreover, we had been importing fowling-pieces, and paying away to foreigners money which, by having the article made at home, we ought to keep in our own pockets. At the present time our imports exceeded the value of our exports by £60,000,000 per annum, a state of 1112 things that evidently could not continue. A Return published in 1878 showed that 14,000,000 cwt. of barley was annually imported into this country. Now, he did not ask for a foreign import duty on wheat, not wishing to tax the food of the people, but he would rather tax their drink, in which object he thought he might claim the support of the hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (Mr. John Bright) was, unfortunately, not in his place; but he wished to call attention to a letter written by him on April 15 of the present year to the effect that the home trade was bad mainly or entirely because the harvest had been bad for the last few years. Of course, if there had been good harvests trade would have suffered less; but foreign competition was so strong that British agriculture would have suffered a good deal in any case. It no longer paid to grow wheat, and the fanner's only chance was to get a fair price for his barley. In introducing the Bill before the House the Chancellor of the Exchequer had congratulated the brewers on the low price of barley. [Mr. GLADSTONE: On the high price.] But the farmers were unable to get a high price for it this winter, and the right hon. Gentleman must have been exceptionally lucky if he had himself been able to do so. The accounts from the agricultural districts were very distressing, and it seemed probable that of the £400,000,000 which, according to Mr. Caird, the tenants had invested in the soil, at least half was lost. In order to preserve to the farmers their last resource, he suggested that an import duty of 5s. a quarter should be put on foreign barley and malt. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham, in the letter he had just quoted, had expressed his opinion that the chief reason against a return to Protection was that we should have to confess to Protectionists abroad that we ourselves had been wrong and they right, and that Protection would be henceforth the justified policy of all nations. It might be doubted, however, whether it was worth while utterly to destroy the trade of the country in order to save the political credit of the right hon. Gentleman and his Party. If we had hitherto been wrong, we ought to put our pride in our pocket, and, fol- 1113 lowing the example of other nations, levy an import duty on foreign produce.