HC Deb 24 June 1898 vol 60 cc37-8
SIR C. DILKE

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he can state with regard to the Niger Convention to what territories Article IX. applies?

MR. VESEY KNOX

I beg at the same time to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what is the area over which English and French are respectively to receive the same fiscal treatment as nationals in West Africa; whether there is any provision to secure that French goods imported by way of the Ivory Coast, Senegal, or Algeria into the French territory in the upper part of the basin of the Niger shall be subject to any duty; and whether under the new Treaty it will be impossible to give Canada and other colonies which may decide to admit British products on specially favoured terms any reciprocal preferential advantages in the colonies of the Gold Coast, Lagos, and in the Niger Coast Protectorate without extending the same advantages to the French and, as a consequence, to all other Powers with which the most-favoured-nation Treaties exist?

MR. CURZON

The question in the first paragraph of the Question of the honourable Member for Londonderry identical with the Question standing in the name of the right honourable Member for the Forest of Dean. The fiscal areas mentioned in Article IX. of the Convention are marked on the large map which has been placed in the Library. Shortly summarised, they include the Ivory Coast and interior up to a point upon the ninth parallel, the Gold Coast and interior up to the eleventh parallel, with a projecting triangle, the apex of which is Wagadugu, Dahomey and its interior up to the same parallel, and Lagos and the Niger territories as defined in Articles 2, 3, and 4 of the Convention. French goods imported by way of the Ivory Coast, Senegal, or Algeria may be subject to any duty that the French Government choose to impose, but in the case of the Ivory Coast, which falls within the fiscal area, such duties must be identical with those imposed upon British goods. The answer to the last Question is in the affirmative.