EARL PERCYasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether his attention has been called to a treatise, entitled "Free Trade versus Fair Trade; by T. H. Farrer," recently circulated by the Cobden Club, in which the author, writing from the Board of Trade, says—
For the following pages I am alone responsible. They contain an attempt to illustrate established truths, and to expose exploded though not obsolete fallacies; but they trench so closely on the politics of the day, that I should have scarcely felt justified in writing them for publication without the encouragement of the President of the Board of Trade:whether Mr. T. H. Farrer is the permanent Secretary to the Board of Trade; and, whether the Government give their sanction to the permanent officials in the Public Offices, in that capacity and from those offices, issuing treatises upon controversial political questions, and to their encouragement in so doing by the Heads of their Departments? He also inquired the Prime Minister's opinion on a passage in the work wherein the writer 500 argued that the cession of the Transvaal marked the progress of international morality.
MR. GLADSTONEWith respect to the Question which the noble Lord has put upon the Notice Paper, I have considered it fully, and am quite prepared to answer it. With regard to the passage he has just quoted, I would rather have the opportunity of consulting the original work, in order to find in the context any explanation that there may be bearing upon it, before giving an answer. With respect to the original Question, I entirely accede, and so, I am sure, would my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade and all my Colleagues, to what appears to be the opinion of the noble Lord—namely, that criticisms upon controversial political questions ought not to proceed from the permanent officials. I have no doubt whatever that that is the general rule of the State; but I have communicated with my right hon. Friend, and he is of opinion, in which I am inclined to think he is correct, that this is really not to be brought under the category of controversial political questions. ["Oh!"] That is the opinion of my right hon. Friend, in which I concur. But I go a little further, and I would observe to the noble Lord that economical subjects have undoubtedly, according to the best of my recollection, as long as I have been in public life, whether rightly or wrongly, been treated as an exception to this general rule; and consequently, although Mr. Farrer, who has been a very able public servant, has himself called attention to these passages, yet I really believe that if he had not called attention to them he would have been acting within the lines of the action of his predecessor. I will give the House two instances which, though they happened long ago, are still fresh in my recollection. In 1841 I became Vice President of the Board of Trade, and at that time we had for one of the Joint Secretaries of the Board of Trade Mr. Macgregor, and, at the head of the Statistical Department of the Board of Trade, Mr. Porter. Now, the Government to which I had the honour to belong did not take Office for the purpose of promoting Free Trade, but rather in connection with opposite ideas. However, both Mr. Porter and Mr. Macgregor were, and had been, and con- 501 tinued to be, most active writers on behalf of Free Trade at large, and especially on behalf of the repeal of the Corn Laws.
MR. GLADSTONEI am not aware that my right hon. Friend encouraged; he did not discourage. It would have been odd, certainly, if Lord Ripon had encouraged these gentlemen to write against his own opinions; but there was no interference whatever with their own private opinions. But I remember also that Mr. M'Culloch, a gentleman of great ability and distinction, who likewise held a permanent office as head of the Stationery Department, wrote, when the New Tariff was introduced in 1842, in very high praise of the legislation of the Administration. Therefore, if I am correct in saying—and I believe I am correct—that these economical questions have never been excluded from the view of official men of that character and capacity, I am not prepared to say that we should make any new rule on the subject now.