HC Deb 15 May 1884 vol 288 cc473-8
MR. MAC IVER

said, he believed he was in Order, at that stage of the proceedings, in raising the matter which was embodied in the Resolution which stood in his name. The Resolution was— That, in the opinion of this House, Customs Duties should be replaced upon those Foreign importations which, contributing nothing to our National Revenue, come into unfair competition with our National industries; also, that; Spanish and French Wines and other Foreign alcoholic drinks should be made to contribute more largely, and that the moneys thus obtained should go in reduction of the taxation which is proposed by the Budget Resolutions. It seemed to him that the question that they had been discussing was part of a larger one, a question which deserved larger consideration than it was likely to get in the present state of the House. [There were not more than a dozen Members present.] Let him, before he passed to the specific subject, express his sympathy with what had been said by the hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) and the hon. Member who had just spoken as to our duty towards India with regard to the silver trade. He wished, in general terms, to express his concurrence in their objections to the proposals of Her Majesty's Government in the Budget, and he would proceed to speak, as briefly as he could, on the particular proposals he had expressed in his Resolution. It seemed to him that those questions in the present stage were questions for the country, rather than for the House of Commons; and he thought they had some reason to complain that those who directed the fortunes of the Conservative Party did not keep their eyes open as to the necessity of treating these trading questions in the way he thought they ought to do. They followed too much the error which applied to the Front Benches on both sides of the House, and thought too much of Party politics, and too little of the great questions with which the bulk of our population were concerned. As regarded the franchise, he remembered well a speech of the late Lord Beaconsfield, when he was defending himself, and how that great man said that, for himself, he could always trust the common sense of the people of this country. Like him, he (Mr. Mac Iver) felt that the common sense of the people might be trusted fully when the franchise was extended; and they would find the common sense of the people calling out for more attention to questions where their trade, their wages, and even their welfare and happiness were concerned. It seemed to him that, in the question of manufacturing industries, there was nothing of greater or more direct interest than the unfair competition of foreign manufacturers, and there was no part of Her Majesty's Dominions which had a greater complaint to make in the matter than the little Island across the Channel (Ireland); for when it suited us to be Protectionists, we destroyed her trade; and we destroyed her manufactures when it suited us to be Free Traders. He would have no case at all in support of his Resolution, if he could not show that the foreign importations which contributed nothing to our National Revenue was very large. It was said constantly that our importations were so trifling that it was useless to tax them. That, however, was not the case. The figures were very succintly set forth in a statement prepared by Mr. Slier-look, of Liverpool, whom he knew well. Taking only seven articles, which everyone would admit were manufactures, and which came in competition with our home industries, they got at once figures which completely disproved the case set up against him. The articles he proposed to take were silks, woollens, cottons, gloves, manufactures of tanned leather, clocks and watches, and manufactures in iron and steel. Looking back for the last 10 years, and simply adding up the figures of the Board of Trade Returns, what was the value of the importation of these seven articles? They might be insignificant, but he found that they amounted to more than £355,000,000 sterling. Those who maintained that it was useless to tax such articles had only to figure it out, and they would find that a duty of 10 per cent upon these seven manufactured articles alone would have produced in the 10 years £35,937,887 sterling, or something very closely approaching half the entire Revenue which it was proposed by Her Majesty's Government to raise by the present Budget. He went further, and said that there was not one of those articles which was ever purchased by the working classes of this country. They were the luxuries of the rich; they were not the necessaries of the poor. They were things which might well be taxed, and which, if taxed, would produce a large revenue, and which in turn would enable the Government to remit a large amount of taxation, and do a great deal to render unnecessary many of the proposals in the Budget, which generally he intended to oppose. It might be that the case which he sought to present to the House would receive very little attention or sympathy from politicians in the House of Commons; but he could assure hon. Members that he had had within the last year or two addressed working-class audiences in Bradford, Sheffield, Birmingham, Manchester, Ashton, Liverpool, Birkenhead, and elsewhere, and he had addressed audiences, not specially Conservative audiences, on this question, and wherever he had spoken he had found entire sympathy from the working men, who were perfectly able to appreciate the reality of foreign competition, which was taking their employment from them and reducing their opportunity for earning wages. Take, for instance, the present position of our trade with France. They heard a great deal of the advantages of cultivating the trade with France; but it was not everyone who had carefully looked into the statistics of that trade, and there were comparatively few who knew what the trade really was. Without wishing to weary them, he wished to point out this—that the importations from France of farm and garden produce alone, amounted in value to something like £15,600,000 sterling annually. That was to say, those things alone, without any question of foreign-manufactured goods, were worth more than the whole of everything which this country was able to send to France. He was, therefore, surprised that hon. Members representing agricultural constituencies did not join him in asking that Customs duties should be imposed on the products of foreign countries. France would not take our manufactured goods; but we took from France every year manufactured goods to the value of upwards of £25,000,000 sterling, and the whole of these goods came into competition with the industries of Great Britain and Ireland. Take those articles of ladies' dress, which if they did not come from France, would come from Ireland. It seemed to him to be a monstrous injustice that we should continue to receive these things from France and other foreign countries, and that they should contribute nothing to the relief of our National Revenue. Those who manufactured similar articles in this country contributed to the National Revenue. It was only the foreign manufacturers which did not; and if our home manufacturers were able to make a profit—he was afraid that of late profit upon home manufactures had been very small—they were required to pay Income Tax upon that profit. One Member of Her Majesty's Government, and more than one hon. Gentleman he saw sitting opposite to him, invested their money in manufactories in Germany and elsewhere on the Continent of Europe, and it did not follow at all that they paid Income Tax on any of the profits that they received from the imports they introduced from those countries. His authority for the statement, if it were true, was Mr. Giffen, who enjoyed a dual capacity—a gentleman who, at the same time, was at the head of the Statistical Department of the Board of Trade, who was a Radical in politics and was one of the staff of The Times newspaper—who argued that there were large sums of British money invested abroad. The return from Income Tax on those foreign investments ought to correspond with the value of the shipments, if those shipments represented, as Mr. Giffen declared they did, the profits on our foreign investments. That gentleman argued against a case which some friends of his (Mr. Mac Iver) were endeavouring to show—the case of excessive importation of foreign-manufactured goods to this country. He told them they were wrong about the balance of trade being against this country—that this balance against us was really profit—and that any other idea was an old and exploded fallacy. Well, that was true in a way, but it was only true half-way. What was also true, was that, for the last few years, when this country had been depressed, we had a balance of trade not only against us, but much more against us than before. ["No, no!"] Mr. Giffen argued that such an excessive balance of trade against us was caused chiefly by foreign countries paying us for our shipments to them. It was very difficult to confute that statement, until they came to this—by considering the question of Income Tax generally; because if it was true, as Mr. Giffen said, that there were large sums of money invested abroad, the returns for Income Tax for those moneys ought, in some measure, to correspond with the value of the profits represented by shipment of goods to this country. Nothing of the kind, however, took place, because there was a large missing balance, and, therefore, he thought it was perfectly clear that the investments abroad, or many of them, altogether escaped the payment of Income Tax. Then, again, with respect to our commercial relations with Spain, he thought the Government were rather unwilling, at this time, that those relations should be spoken about. It was very difficult to get anything out of the noble Lord the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and he sometimes doubted whether it was because he was unwilling, or because he did not know. This much, however, we had been able to glean—that when the Government entered into negotiations with Spain, they properly asked to be put on the same footing with Spain. They were obliged to say, however—"We cannot give anything, because we have nothing to give;" and Spain declined to give us anything because we had nothing to give. Lord Beaconsfield pointed out how hopeless was the position of this country in sending to bargain with other countries, because we had no duties in hand, and nothing to give. The position he understood Lord Beaconsfield to take up was this—that it it was not for him to, or the Party which he led, to move in the question unless the country asked them to do so, but that we had a right to do what he (Mr. Mac Iver) asked the House to do that night—replace duties on the goods of foreign countries who would not meet us in a fair spirit, and then we should have something to give in return when we wanted anything to be done.